#signal line diagram

[diamonddaze01]

Error 404: Feelings not Found

pairing: jeon wonwoo x f!reader | wc: 4.0k genre: fluff, electrical engineering student wonwoo (pulled out my textbooks for this) warnings: loserboy core a/n: for all my fellow left-brained girlies who have never really understood feelings. sometimes, all you have to do is feel // now playing: when he sees me // thank u kae @ylangelegy for the song suggestion and betaing ily muah!

summary: Wonwoo has always been comfortable in the world of logic.  But his crush on you? A catastrophic anomaly in his otherwise perfectly functioning system.

Wonwoo has always been comfortable in the world of logic. Numbers are predictable, formulas are consistent, and circuits behave exactly as they’re supposed to. But his crush on you? A catastrophic anomaly in his otherwise perfectly functioning system.

It’s not like he planned for this. (Wonwoo plans for everything.) He planned how to tackle his midterms, down to how much coffee he’d need for optimal brain function. He planned his study schedule for finals week with a level of precision that could rival NASA’s launch timelines. But he didn’t plan for you—didn’t account for how you’d waltz into his life, smiling like it was easy, and throw every variable he’d ever known into disarray.

Take last week, for instance. You’d borrowed his notes in Signals class after the professor’s lecture turned into a chaotic sprint of equations, leaving most of the class scrambling to catch up. Wonwoo’s notes, as always, were pristine—straight lines, perfect margins, not a single smudge or scribble.

“These are amazing,” you’d said, eyes scanning the page before handing them back. “Your designs are so clean.”

Simple, right? A harmless comment. But by the time he’s back at his desk, staring at his notebook, the words replay in his mind like an unsolved equation. Somewhere between “clean” and the way you smiled, his brain spins out of control, dragging him into an entirely unnecessary analysis.

By the time the clock strikes midnight, he’s halfway through a list of possible interpretations for the word clean.

Did you mean clean as in technically proficient?

Or was it a general observation, like, “Oh, clean lines, nice work”?

Was it just a filler compliment?

Wait, what if you didn’t care about the project at all and were just being polite?

…Or were you flirting?

By the end of the day, the list has ballooned to 27 points, each item meticulously numbered and annotated with follow-up questions. He’s considered:

The tone of your voice (friendly, teasing, or something else entirely?).

The duration of eye contact (exactly 2.3 seconds—long enough to register intent?).

The statistical likelihood of romantic interest based on casual interactions in a shared academic setting.

He even creates a small flowchart titled “Compliment Probability Breakdown” in the margins, complete with arrows leading to various outcomes: “Casual comment” → “Friendly disposition” → “No further analysis needed.” Except, of course, he does further analyze. He always further analyzes.

Mingyu finds him later that night, still hunched over the notebook with a pencil tucked behind his ear. “Wonwoo, what are you doing? It’s a compliment, man. Just take it.”

Wonwoo glares up at him, a little defensive. “Compliments can have layers.”

“Compliments are not onions, dude. Sometimes people just say stuff because they mean it.” Mingyu grabs the notebook, flipping through pages of scribbled notes and diagrams. “Wait, are you seriously tracking eye contact now?”

Wonwoo snatches it back with a huff. “It’s for clarity.”

“Clarity,” Mingyu repeats, shaking his head. “Okay, listen: not everything needs a breakdown. Maybe she just thinks you’re good at this stuff.”

The suggestion should feel reassuring, but it only creates more questions. Do you think he’s good at this stuff? Wonwoo’s chest tightens as the overanalysis starts up again, his brain racing to decode every minor interaction between you two.

And for the first time in his life, he wonders if there’s a problem even logic can’t solve.

The first time Wonwoo realizes he might have a crush on you is during a Circuits lab. The task is simple: build an EKG circuit. The professor’s voice echoes in the background, laying out the steps, but Wonwoo doesn’t need instructions—he’s already ahead, mentally piecing together the circuit in his mind like a jigsaw puzzle.

You, him, and Soonyoung are grouped together. Soonyoung, true to form, spends more time spinning a pen between his fingers and accidentally dropping it than actually contributing. “What’s a diode again?” he whispers, squinting at the diagram. Wonwoo doesn’t bother answering. He’s focused on soldering the components, the familiar rhythm of it calming.

Then you lean closer. Close enough that he catches the faint scent of your shampoo—something floral, light, completely unexpected.

“Wow, you’re fast,” you say as Wonwoo expertly attaches a capacitor to the circuit. There’s a trace of genuine admiration in your voice, enough to make him falter. “I’d probably still be looking for the resistor.”

The comment shouldn’t faze him. It’s just a compliment, nothing extraordinary. He glances at you, briefly, before immediately looking back at the board. It feels safer not to meet your eyes for too long. “Uh, it’s color-coded,” he manages, his voice steady but quieter than usual. “You just… follow the stripes.”

You laugh softly, the sound threading its way into his chest like a loose wire connecting where it shouldn’t. “Yeah, but it’s not that simple for everyone,” you say, brushing a stray hair out of your face as you turn your attention to the circuit.

The way you say it makes his chest feel strangely tight—like you’ve taken something as mundane as resistors and turned it into a compliment, like you’re saying he’s not simple either. It’s a ridiculous thought, and yet it roots itself in his mind.

Wonwoo’s hand, soldering iron poised mid-air, doesn’t move. His brain, which usually fires on all cylinders, freezes like an overloaded processor. The soldering iron hovers dangerously close to the board, but all he can focus on is the way your hair catches the light, the way your fingers curl around the resistor as you inspect it. Wonwoo doesn’t mean to notice, but suddenly he can’t stop noticing—the way the fluorescent light reflects in your eyes, the faint trace of soap on your hands when you adjust a wire, the warmth radiating from your voice when you hum quietly in thought.

It’s not until Soonyoung gently clears his throat that he realizes his brain has completely stopped functioning. His usually razor-sharp focus is now cluttered with incoherent static. 

“Wonwoo?” you ask, leaning back slightly to meet his eyes. There’s a hint of concern in your voice. “You good?”

He panics. “Uh. 100 ohms.”

Your brow furrows. “What?”

“Uh—100 ohms,” he repeats, gesturing vaguely at the resistor in your hand like it explains anything. “That’s… its resistance.”

There’s a beat of silence, thick and awkward. You blink at him, clearly trying to piece together whatever he’s just said. Then you burst out laughing, shaking your head as you turn back to the project. “Okay, resistor boy. Whatever you say.”

The sound of your laughter leaves his chest feeling tight, like someone’s replaced his heart with a capacitor about to blow.

Soonyoung, who’s been watching the exchange with far too much interest, smirks. He leans over the table, stage-whispering, “What was that?”

“What was what?” Wonwoo mutters, focusing on the soldering again, as if he can undo the entire exchange by sheer force of will.

“You’re usually all cool and robotic,” Soonyoung teases, wagging his pen like it’s some kind of magic wand. “That was… weird.”

Wonwoo shakes his head quickly, but the heat creeping up the back of his neck says otherwise. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, the words barely audible over the hum of the soldering iron. “I think I glitched.”

“Uh, yeah. Glitched hard.” Soonyoung grins, nudging him in the ribs. “Man, this is going to be fun to watch.”

Wonwoo groans, his ears burning. The circuit in front of him makes perfect sense—the resistors, the capacitors, the impedance of the op-amp—but nothing about you fits into a neat schematic. And for the first time in his life, that terrifies him.

Now, weeks later, Wonwoo is in his room, utterly consumed by the mess on his desk. It’s an anomaly in itself—Wonwoo is meticulous, his workspace usually a shrine to organization (he always says: clean desk, clean mind). But now, papers are scattered like fallen leaves, covered in scribbles, equations, and bullet points that grow increasingly frantic as they spread across the desk.

The centerpiece of this chaos? A flowchart spanning two pages, taped together like some sort of grand engineering blueprint. It’s titled, in block letters: “Signs She Might Like Me Back.”

Wonwoo taps his pen against the paper, staring at the branching lines as if sheer focus might make them reveal the answer he’s been agonizing over. Beneath the title are subcategories labeled “Physical Cues,” “Verbal Indicators,” and, his personal favorite, “Ambiguous Behavior That Could Go Either Way.”

Under “Physical Cues,” he’s written:

Smiles when she sees me.

Leans closer during conversation (but what if it’s because of background noise?).

Touches my arm (happened once, inconclusive).

Under “Verbal Indicators,” there’s a bullet that reads:

Complimented my handwriting. Significance unclear.

He’s in the middle of adding a new branch—“Initiates conversation (specific or casual?)”—when the door bursts open without warning.

“Wonwoo, what the hell are you doing? It’s 3 AM.” Mingyu strides in, holding a bowl of instant ramen and a look of mild concern. His gaze lands on the desk, and his expression shifts to outright amusement. “Wait… what is this?”

Wonwoo freezes like he’s been caught committing a federal crime. He instinctively moves to cover the flowchart with both arms, but it’s far too late. Mingyu steps closer, craning his neck to read the edges of the paper that Wonwoo couldn’t shield in time.

“‘Compliments: Genuine or Polite’?” Mingyu reads aloud, his voice rising in barely-contained glee. He sets the ramen down and leans over the desk. “‘Smiles frequently—friendly or flirty?’ Wonwoo…” He looks at his friend, wide-eyed and grinning. “Are you seriously trying to analyze feelings right now?”

“No,” Wonwoo lies, far too quickly. “It’s… theoretical.”

Mingyu snorts, dropping into the chair beside him and spinning it halfway around before leaning forward. “Theoretical? Dude, this looks like the final project for your psych elective. Come on, what’s the problem? Spill.”

Wonwoo hesitates, gripping his pen like it’s the only thing tethering him to reality. But the weight of weeks of overthinking finally tips the scale, and he lets out a long sigh, setting the pen down.

“I just don’t… get it,” he admits, gesturing vaguely to the papers. “Feelings are so inconsistent. They don’t follow any rules. There’s no formula to predict intent, no way to be certain what someone means. How do people know if someone’s interested in them? How do you know when to… I don’t know, do something about it?”

Mingyu leans back in the chair, arms crossed as he considers the question. “Easy,” he says after a beat. “You stop thinking about it so much and just ask them out.”

Wonwoo blinks at him, utterly horrified. “That’s… illogical. That’s guessing. That’s like building a circuit without testing the components first. What if the whole thing explodes?”

“Yeah, well, feelings aren’t supposed to be logical,” Mingyu says with a shrug, grabbing the bowl of ramen and slurping a mouthful. He claps Wonwoo on the shoulder with his free hand, grinning around his chopsticks. “Face it, man. You’re screwed.”

Wonwoo stares at him, expression blank but mind racing at a million miles an hour. “There’s got to be a better way than just… guessing.”

“Good luck finding it,” Mingyu says, standing up and taking his ramen with him. “But if you don’t make a move soon, she might just think you’re not interested. So, you know… keep that in mind.”

Wonwoo sits in silence long after Mingyu leaves, staring down at his flowchart. His pen hovers over the paper, but he doesn’t write anything. For once, the calculations feel insufficient.

And maybe, just maybe, Mingyu’s right.

The thing is, you keep throwing off his system. Wonwoo’s world is built on rules, a place where inputs lead to predictable outputs. But you? You’re the glitch in his perfectly functioning program, an anomaly he can’t solve no matter how many late nights he spends overanalyzing.

The way you laugh at his deadpan jokes—it’s too loud for the library but not loud enough to draw attention, just enough to pull his gaze toward you. It doesn’t matter that you’ve already heard that joke during last week’s study session; you laugh anyway, and the sound is unreasonably addictive. The way you ask for help even when he knows you don’t need it. Like last week, when you slid your notebook toward him with a confused pout.

“Can you help me with this? I don’t get it.”

He barely glanced at the equation. “You’re way too smart to not understand this.”

And then you laughed, a soft, warm sound that curled around his chest and lodged itself there. That laugh earned a solid 15 points on his internal ‘Possible Signs of Interest’ checklist, though he later downgraded it to 10 because he couldn’t account for external variables like your naturally kind disposition.

It’s infuriating. Why do feelings refuse to conform to logic?

He tries analyzing every interaction, mapping out probabilities and outcomes in the quiet corners of his mind. He’s drawn tables, diagrams, even flowcharts in an attempt to parse out the truth.

Was the way you leaned closer during study group last week a sign of interest? Or were you just trying to hear him better? Did the way you laughed at his dumb, offhand comment in class mean something? Or do you just laugh like that at everything?

Take today, for example: You brushed past him on your way to class, smiling and throwing over your shoulder, “See you at study group later!” That brief moment derailed his entire afternoon.

Did you linger when your arm touched his? Or was that just an accidental graze? Was your smile just friendly, or something more?

And why does he care so much?

Wonwoo spends the rest of the day distracted, his mind looping through possibilities like an endless algorithm stuck in an infinite while-loop. What’s worse is that he doesn’t even know what he wants the answer to be. A part of him craves certainty, some definitive sign that he should act on these feelings. But another part—a quieter, more cautious part—fears the idea of ruining the tenuous balance between you two.

Because what if he’s wrong? What if you’re just like this with everyone? What if he makes his move and you pull away, looking at him like he’s a problem to be solved instead of someone you enjoy spending time with?

By the time the study session rolls around, he’s teetering on the edge of complete disarray, not that he’d ever let it show.

Or so he thinks.

Because two hours in, he miscalculates an integral. An integral. Wonwoo never miscalculates anything.

You catch it immediately, tilting your head as you lean closer. He can feel the heat radiating off your skin, the soft rustle of your notebook as you shift it toward him.

“Are you okay, Wonwoo? You’re usually so precise,” you say, your voice light but with an edge of curiosity.

His ears burn. “Just tired,” he mumbles, avoiding your gaze as he corrects the mistake. He doesn’t add that it’s your proximity short-circuiting his brain, or that the way your hair falls over your shoulder is infinitely more distracting than any differential equation.

Your smirk lingers in his periphery, and he wonders if you can tell just how fast his heart is beating. He wonders if you feel the same strange, unexplainable pull that he does.

The study session stretches late into the evening. Most of the group has already packed up, and you’re the last one still typing away at your laptop when Wonwoo’s caffeine miscalculation finally catches up to him.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep—just the faint hum of your keyboard and the warm glow of the desk lamp. When he stirs slightly, he feels a ghosting touch against his face.

Your fingers are gentle as you slide his glasses off, careful not to wake him. He feels the cool metal leave his skin, followed by the soft brush of your thumb near the mark his nose pad left.

His heart lurches, and he has to force himself to keep his breathing even. A dozen thoughts rush through his mind all at once:

Is she doing this because she likes me?No, she’s just being considerate.But she’s touching my face.What does that mean? What does it mean if she’s touching my face?

He clenches his fists against the urge to open his eyes, to meet your gaze and demand answers. Instead, he forces himself to focus on the moment—the sound of your quiet breaths, the occasional click of your mouse, and the warmth that radiates from your side of the table.

For a fleeting moment, he thinks: Maybe emotions don’t always need to make sense. Maybe, just this once, he can let go of the need to understand everything.

Maybe, just this once, he can let himself feel.

Wonwoo doesn’t know how it’s come to this. One moment, he was perfectly content at home, considering a quiet evening spent debugging code or reorganizing his bookshelves. The next, Mingyu and Soonyoung were in his room, looming like conspirators with matching grins.

“You have to come,” Mingyu had said, tugging at the sleeves of Wonwoo’s sweatshirt. “It’s social interaction, it’s good for you. You’ll thank us later.”

“No, I won’t,” Wonwoo deadpanned, crossing his arms.

Soonyoung leaned in, holding up his phone with a smug look. “You sure about that? Because I might have accidentally taken a picture of that Venn diagram you made the other day.”

Wonwoo froze, his blood running cold. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but I would.” Soonyoung’s grin widened. “And I bet someone would find it very… interesting.”

That was how he found himself lacing up his sneakers with a grim expression, muttering under his breath about betrayal and bad friends.

Now, standing awkwardly at the edge of a crowded house party, Wonwoo is reminded why he hates these things. The music is too loud, the lights are too dim, and there are far too many people moving unpredictably around him. He’s already considering texting Mingyu and Soonyoung to demand their exact location when he spots you.

You’re standing by the makeshift bar, laughing at something someone said, your smile so effortless it lights up the room in a way the cheap string lights never could. Wonwoo doesn’t mean to stare, but his feet move before his brain can catch up. He tells himself it’s because you’re familiar, a safe point of contact in an otherwise chaotic environment.

But deep down, he knows better.

“Wonwoo?” you call out, your eyes lighting up as you notice him approaching from the edge of the room.

He halts mid-step, caught somewhere between relief and apprehension, and forces out a casual, “Hey.” His hands disappear into his pockets, his fingers fidgeting with loose threads, unsure what else to do.

You grin, leaning one elbow against the counter, your drink swaying lazily in your other hand. “You don’t seem like the party type,” you tease, tilting your head to study him.

“I was... coerced,” he replies flatly, and the corner of your mouth quirks up as you laugh.

“Oh, let me guess.” You raise an eyebrow, pretending to think hard. “Mingyu? No, no—Soonyoung. Or both? Definitely both.”

“They’re... relentless,” Wonwoo admits, almost sounding offended, but there’s a faint twitch of a smile at the edges of his lips.

“Wow. Dragged out of your hobbit hole just to stand here and glare at people? They must’ve bribed you with something really good.”

He looks away, almost sheepishly. “Something like that.”

Your laugh rings out again, easy and unforced, and Wonwoo feels a little lighter despite himself. “Poor you,” you say, your voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Do you need a drink to cope? A strong one?”

He snorts. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Well, you made it out of the house, so I guess that’s something,” you say, stepping closer. “Though you do look like you’re two minutes away from bolting.”

He shrugs, his gaze flickering between you and the crowd. “It’s not my scene.”

“And yet, here you are,” you point out, your tone playful. “Is it for Mingyu? Or Soonyoung? Or…” You pause, a slow smile spreading across your face. “...someone else?”

His brain short-circuits at your words, but he does his best to play it cool. “I think they just wanted to ruin my night.”

“Hmm,” you hum, unconvinced but amused. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. It’s always fun seeing you outside your natural habitat. Like spotting a rare Pokémon.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” he asks dryly, and you grin.

The two of you ease into conversation, the party blurring into background noise as you chat. Wonwoo listens intently, hanging onto your every word as if your voice alone could drown out the overwhelming din around him. He’s not even sure how much time has passed when you lean a little closer, the shift in your tone catching his attention.

“So,” you say, a conspiratorial grin tugging at your lips. “Do you have anyone you’re crushing on?”

He freezes. The words settle in his chest like a sudden, unsteady weight.

Does he? Of course, he does—you. But his brain stalls, caught between the truth and the absolute terror of saying it out loud. Instead of answering, he scrambles for something—anything—to say.

“I’m going to make an app,” he blurts out, the words tumbling from his mouth before he can stop them.

You blink, tilting your head. “An app?”

He nods, trying to steady his voice even though his heart feels like it’s about to burst. “Feelings confuse me. So I’m taking all the data I’ve collected and making an app to tell if someone’s interested. Algorithms are easier for me to understand, anyway.”

Your expression flickers between confusion and amusement before a slow smirk spreads across your face. “What data, Wonwoo?” you ask, setting your drink down and stepping closer.

His throat goes dry. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“Because if you’ve been collecting data,” you continue, your voice teasing as you close the distance between you, “I’d love to hear about it. What have you noticed?”

His pulse skyrockets as you reach for his hands, gently guiding them to rest on your waist. The warmth of your touch sends his mind spiraling, and for a moment, he forgets how to breathe. Your hands slide behind his neck, your fingers brushing against the sensitive skin there, and he feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff.

“I don’t know how much more obvious I could have been,” you murmur, your teasing tone softening into something warmer, more certain.

His mind blanks. He should say something—anything—but all he can do is stare at you, completely undone.

Then you lean in, your lips brushing against his, tentative at first, as if waiting for him to meet you halfway. And when he does—hesitant but earnest—you smile into the kiss, your fingers tangling gently in his hair, and it feels like the world stops spinning.

For Wonwoo, everything finally clicks.

It’s not a Venn diagram or a flowchart, and it doesn’t follow any logical formula, but it makes sense in a way he can’t explain. The way your hands fit behind his neck, the warmth of your body against his, the soft sigh that escapes you when his hands tighten on your waist—it’s all the proof he needs.

When you pull back, his head is spinning, but you’re still close, your breath mingling with his.

“So,” you say, your tone light but your eyes impossibly warm. “Do you still need that app?”

He chuckles softly, the sound unsteady but genuine. “No,” he admits, a small, shy smile tugging at his lips. “I think I’ve got all the data I need.”

You laugh, and the sound is music to his ears. For the first time in weeks—months, even—Wonwoo feels like he can stop overthinking, stop analyzing every little detail. He doesn’t need an algorithm, a chart, or a diagram to tell him what’s in front of him. Because some things don’t need to be solved.

Some things just need to be felt.

[cr4yolaas]

blue spring — something sweet

prev: monkey tie at the exhibit | masterlist | next: coping mechanism

"what prompted this?" she asks while taking a sip of the coffee he got her. it's filled to the brim with ice, much to her dismay, but the hints of lavender and cinnamon make up for the inconvenience. she's still dressed in her pajamas, lace-lined and adorned with ribbons, but she's wide awake.

"as thanks," he claims, but truthfully, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. "for inviting me the other night. and for returning my jacket." she shakes her head at his reasoning. her hand motions to their spot on the floor, signaling him to situate himself while she prepares her materials, and as she does so, kageyama soaks in her room again, this time with more intent. the papers that were on her desk a few days prior have been neatly stacked up and stored in a container beneath her desk, and the clothes that once piled up on the floor are nowhere to be seen. most importantly, though, the canvas isn't bland anymore. there's a sketch of a girl with her arms wrapped around an unintelligible creature in the center, and the face vaguely reminds him of her. this time, he questions it. "what is that?"

her movements come to a swift halt, and her eyes dart towards the easel. he can see the tension settle in her bones at the realization that the unfinished piece is on full display. "it's nothing," she replies, and instead of leaving it alone, she moves quickly to hide it in her closet.

his head tilts at her actions. "it looks great, though."

"thank you, but-"

the call of her name from the living room cuts her short, and she's escaping through the door before he can say another word. his fist curls in on itself subconsciously while he waits, the hushed talks on the other side of the wall failing to reach his ears.

when she returns, the air around her is heavier. a soft sigh leaves her lips before she settles herself on the ground and delves into the lesson for today. he doesn’t fail to notice the slight stiffness about her.

the time slips through kageyama's hands, and unbeknownst to him, wisps of warm golden sunlight are peering through her window. his legs have fallen asleep a long time ago, and his posture is unsalvageable. regardless, he listens. he listens to the soft timber of her voice as she explains each diagram, and he listens to the enunciation of each syllable that falls from her tongue. he's entranced, to say the least, but he doesn't realize it. all he can feel is the thump, thump, thump of his heart against his chest and the airiness in his stomach.

his notes have grown cleaner, compared to the last session. she compliments his organization, and embarrassingly, a barrage of heat hits his face. the change in dynamic shakes his awareness back into place, and he realizes the sun is already disappearing into the horizon, the hue of the sunset long gone. seemingly, his awakening draws her attention to the time, and she breathes out a small apology for dragging on for too long.

he's rushing to pack his things, realizing he'd overstayed his welcome. he can't read her expression -- it's an amalgamation of emotions he can't put a name to, and it bothers him slightly. nevertheless, she bids him farewell, this time following out to the front door.

"thank you," she whispers, her arms crossed against her chest to fight against the breeze. "for the coffee and sweets. i'll have to pay you back sometime soon." the small smile on her lips almost makes him forget to respond.

"you don't have to," he replies hastily, his words tumbling out all too fast. "you're already doing me a huge favor. y'know, by tutoring me."

she shifts her weight to a different leg, her gaze attached to his face. "okay. just get home safe, alright?"

he nods, pivoting around to walk down the hallway, to the street, and back home. the trip is quiet, save for the whirring of cars on his right and the hum of evening owls on his left. when he returns, the thumping of his heart dissolves into a softer noise, and the airiness in his stomach disappears.

𝜗𝜚 incoming family trauma :3

𝜗𝜚 tsukki is very caring behind the scenes as u can see (he wants to look nonchalant and cool for his bf but i didnt tell u that)

𝜗𝜚 yachi may or may not have eaten half of the pastry box

𝜗𝜚 yn orders the same noodles every time tsukishima says he's getting takeout and he uses the add-ons as a mood indicator. no add-ons means she's doing fine, the more add-ons equate to how badly she's doing

𝜗𝜚 kageyama is like a cat exploring a new area every time he enters yn's room LOL she's noticed it she just hasn't cared enough to mention it

taglist: @mfcherry @eggyrocks

[avengersmansion-official]

Hey so Whats Up With That hawkeye Guy?

he The hell is he Doing alongside The rest Of em?!

hes just a Dude With a Bow

That "just a dude with a bow" has performed feats of heroism and self-sacrifice that have saved the human race on multiple occasions. Hawkeye has earned his stripes as an Avenger along with the best of them.

(Photo from a promotional flyer for Tiboldt's Circus of Clint Barton as Hawkeye.)

Clint Barton was born in rural Iowa, the younger of two brothers. As a teenage orphan, he and his elder brother Barney ran away from their foster home and joined a traveling circus. There, the Barton brothers were trained in archery and swordsmanship by members of the circus - notable among them being Jacques Duquesne, the Swordsman. When Barton caught Duquesne embezzling money from the circus, he was beaten within an inch of his life, allowing Duquesne to get away.

Barton recovered and continued with the circus for a time, and later got to witness one of Iron Man's early outings. Inspired by the Armored Avenger, Barton decided to use his archery skills to fight crime - but was mistaken for a criminal himself, and then fell in with Russian spy the Black Widow, opposing Iron Man on multiple occasions.

Barton's big break came when the Avengers had their first major roster shuffle, and he was accepted into the team, getting to prove himself as a bona fide hero.

And prove himself he did, over and over again. From teaming up with the Two-Gun Kid in the Old West, to lining up a one-in-a-million shot with Ant-Man riding on his arrowhead, to founding and leading the Avengers' West Coast branch for a time, he's done it all and deserves every bit of praise for his heroics.

And that "just a bow" isn't just a bow, either.

(technical diagram of Hawkeye's quiver and trick arrowheads)

Hawkeye employs a wide variety of custom-made trick arrowheads in his fighting style in addition to normal arrows. Fired from a custom recurve bow at speeds up to 150 miles per hour, Hawkeye's trick arrows are largely designed to disable opponents rather than kill them, or to provide various other utility functions including use as a signal flare, a grappling hook, or contact-detonated explosives.

Saying that he's "just a guy with a bow" would be like saying the Black Knight is "just a guy with a sword" - technically correct, but in every other aspect dead wrong. Clint Barton is a respected veteran Avenger, and a hero in every sense of the word.

[hey-that-hurt]

More CRT TV Research for Tenna Purposes

GO TO PART ONE

please use this information to hurt him. or do other things to him. also send me links

DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert, a few days ago I knew almost nothing about CRT tvs, some of this info might be wrong but luckily not a lot of people still know a ton about CRT tvs so the chances of somebody noticing an error are probably pretty slim.

Alright, onto electronics and wires and stuff. I'm a bit more comfortable in this realm. Slightly. My degree is still far more in the software realm than hardware but I'll do my best.

I put together this diagram showing the wiring that would make up a CRT tv. Keep in mind that I am super duper not an expert and this diagram is simplified, probably has multiple mistakes, and should not be considered a reliable reference for any real life work or repairs.

Signal flow shows the process of data getting from the antenna or other input onto the screen. Control flow shows where instructions for things like volume, brightness, channel etc. are sent. Power shows where electricity goes, anything connected to the high voltage would be extremely dangerous to mess with. And sync flow... I don't entirely understand tbh. It's something to do with making the image show up correctly onscreen.

The most dangerous wires to mess around with:

again, anything connected to high voltage. In particular, connected to the screen and whatnot is the anode, a suction cup responsible for delivering massive amounts of charge to the area behind the screen. Could easily deliver a shock strong enough to kill a human if not properly discharged (turning the tv off is not enough, the charge is stored). The effects on a darkner may be different though.

The flyback transformer and connected cables would also be very dangerous to mess with, still potentially lethal, though not quite as dangerous as touching the anode cap.

Less dangerous are the wires on the neck board (part of the CRT bit on the diagram) and the deflection coil wires (also part of the CRT bit on the diagram, but directly connected to the H/V sweep)

Any other power wires can still deliver a nasty shock but are much less dangerous.

The signal wires are generally pretty safe in terms of voltage.

Now, danger in terms of breaking the TV.

Fairly safe to mess with:

Wires that are plugged in, like composite cables, are very replaceable as they are not built into the TV

Breaking the buttons may make it difficult to interact with the TV, but all the core functionality would still remain, and it is my understanding that buttons are fairly easy to replace.

The infrared (IR) sensor for remote controls is also easy to fix, and even if it breaks you can likely use the buttons on the tv anyway

Messing with the micon/microcontroller can mess with the settings and such, but again, the core functionality of the TV is still there

Messing around with the speaker and connected wires can result in a buzzing noise or no sound at all, but is again pretty non-critical and repairable. Same with the wires connected to the audio amplifier.

A bit risky to mess with in terms of effects and repairability:

The jungle chip handles a lot of image related stuff. If messing with it doesn't cause the image to cut out entirely, it could cause the wrong colors to appear or other issues

Messing with some of the wires connected to video stuff could also cause issues like loss of color in the image

Messing with the vertical timebase could cause the image to turn into a horizontal line, messing with the horizontal timebase could cause no image or severe distortion.

Very risky to mess with:

Flyback transformer wires: can cause electrical arcing that damages the tv

Wire to the anode: Can cause sparks and arcing and again, potential damage to the tv.

Messing with the power supply wires could result in a blown fuse. I imagine finding the right kind of replacement fuse might be hard, or you might need to solder the new one on.

The wires that go to the neck board are sensitive in terms of voltage and messing with them can mess up the picture the tv shows

Messing with the deflection yoke could cause it to misalign and thus cause the picture to be distorted

Other things

TENNA'S "SIGHT"

The Panasonic TC-14S3R I found has something called the Contrast Auto Tracking System. Basically, it seems like it's possible for the tv to adjust contrast based on room brightness, so it seems that the TV has some sort of light sensor... or camera.

Doing a bit more research, apparently this would have been separate from the infrared sensor (for the remote) which is apparently usually located inside the tv.

Apparently some high-end CRTs had light sensors for brightness/contrast, which would have been on the outside of the TV. I'm not certain, but I think the small shiny black rectangle at the bottom left of this image of a CRT from ebay may be that light sensor.

Anyway, if anything were to be Tenna's eyes, it would probably be either a light sensor like this, or the infrared sensor, which would be located internally and much harder to access. Or maybe both of them together are his sight, and cutting off either one would make him partially blind.

MAGNETS

Putting magnets up against a CRT screen messes with the electrons that create the image on the screen, as well as the iron mesh inside the tv (according to someone on reddit). Weaker magnets are unlikely to cause permanent damage, and temporary display issues can be fixed by degaussing, a process involving creating a controlled magnetic field to get all the magnetism and such for the TV back to normal. I believe some TVs will go through degaussing manually when turned off and on, or may have an option to run degaussing manually.

However, stronger magnets can cause permanent damage. Some external degaussing devices exist that can fix more severe damage, but some magnet damage simply cannot be repaired, permanently warping the image on the screen.

GO TO PART ONE

Anyway thanks for reading my posts have fun writing and drawing tv pain. Or tv sex. or both

Sources

CRT Torture: TV vs fun magnets, big magnet, and TOTALLY UNSAFE magnets

Vintage Panasonic TC14S3R Retro Portable 14” CRT Television Gaming SCART

What is this wire in a CRT TV?

Panasonic TC-14S3R User Manual

Degaussing TV: A Complete Guide to Enhancing CRT Image Quality

[cyrilau]

Pentagram Ritual Experiment:

At the heart of the crossroads, the spirit blooms into matter, on its tongue an alphabet pronounced in silence.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working my version of the Greater Invoking Pentagram Ritual in the morning, and the Greater Banishing in the evening.

My intention was to strengthen my relationship with the cardinal directions and elemental energies of my local environment. The Earth element/Malkuth/Horizontal level is absolutely foundational to all practical and transcendental operations (in my experience). The upper and lower worlds are linked here. The Tree of Life diagram illustrates how every sphere focuses into Malkuth. What is right around you, here and now, is the beginning and end of the Work.

I used the classic Golden Dawn/Crowley elements and 5 pointed star correspondence; including the God-names, grade signs, and angels. This evolved and changed as the month and practice progressed which I’ll get into in a second.

At first the invocations were a lot. Throughout the first part of the day I was spacey, and felt disconnected. There was a lot of energy coming through. On one level it brought habits and behavioral patterns that were crossing me up to the forefront. This felt like the first layer of elemental purification/strengthening, it put the desire of fire, cognition and thought patterns of air, actions and behaviors in earth, and the emotion in the waters all under a microscope.

Middle Pillar and sitting style meditations after the invocations really helped ground the influx of energy and it helped me integrate the influences better. As the weeks progressed I felt way more evened out, like the core aspects of my being were rounding out.

I frame the “banishing” ritual as a refinement process. I like to use it as a way to purify, stabilize, and bind/ground the energies of the element(s). This ritual felt like a good way to close up and seal the experiences and insight gained throughout the day. The time after the banishing is where I found the time to develop and specify my own elemental correspondences as they appeared throughout the days and weeks. Sort of like I was digesting everything.

The practice noticeably shifted after the Full Moon. I have a general skeleton of a full moon rite adapted from the Azoëtia, and when circle casting at the beginning of the Ingress rite I incorporated the greater invoking ritual. I subtracted the grade sign and God-names, instead I used the Azoëtia’s directional invocations in conjunction with the drawing of the pentagrams. The experience was intense but exceptionally rewarding. I tried returning to the golden dawn/crowley method after the ritual and it didn’t have the same effect at all. It felt like the signs and formula were half-dead.

A couple things I’ve been doing since the full moon is developing my own “signs”, functioning as signals and postures sigilizing and encoding my combined experiences/gnosis of the elemental and directional spirits and energies. I’ve also adapted part of the Dragon Book’s method of projecting the upright and averse pentagrams to charge the directions. I found this section in the DBoE so fascinating and it definitely resonated with my experience:

(The Fifth Arcana of the Hendecarch, Dragon Book of Essex)

One of the most nourishing outcomes of this operation is the feeling of the spirit anchoring into the physical. Sort of like the vertical line of the spirit moving down and extending horizontally in 4 directions. The 4 elements/directions allow the spirit to find form and function. I’m not exactly sure how to articulate this part of my experience, but the “subtle essence”, or quintessence, feels more tangible.

The daily repetition and consistent meditation practices have also had a huge impact on my overall mood and rootedness.

Lastly, during a few of my meditations after the invocation part of the ritual (around week 3) Christ symbolism kept surfacing. This got me thinking about the central egress rite; the sacrifice of the 4 elemental vessels and the 5th vessel of the quintessence: the death and resurrection of the self. In the center of the crossroads, the body becomes the gate.

[techav]

On Recovering From Disaster

Just before disaster struck with my 68030 homebrew, I had a plan to fork the project and take it in two directions in parallel.

The first would be my minimal Multibasic setup which was running great and was something I would be proud to exhibit at VCFSW '25.

Since that was working well, I didn't want to do anything that might make it not ready for the show. So I had assembled a second main board that I could use with other peripheral cards to continue development. My plan was to rework the memory map to move ROM and I/O addresses to the upper half of the 32-bit address space, which would allow me to use a DRAM card for up to 16MB of contiguous memory starting at address 0 — a perfect setup for running a proper OS

And then I burned up my good mainboard.

I had a spare CPLD on-hand, and I was able to get another 40MHz 68EC040 for cheap. But the 4Mbit SRAM chips are expensive, and I thought that if I was going to be paying for more SRAM, I should get the 12ns parts that would allow me to run RAM with no wait states at 50MHz. Which would require adapter boards, and more pin headers, and would have just driven the cost up even more.

Paralyzed by indecision and the rising cost, I decided to switch gears. I already have the DRAM board I built years ago, I just needed to get it working. And if I'm doing that, I may as well do the work on reorganizing my memory map.

So that's what I did. I made a new branch on my newly cleaned up repository, and set to work. I updated the mainboard bus controller logic to remove the no-longer-needed SRAM control, adjust the ROM address to start at 0x8000,0000, and move the 6850 UART address to 0x8008,0000. This freed up the entire 2GB space between 0x0000,0000 and 0x7FFF,FFFF for the DRAM card to use for main memory (my bus connector layout only allows for up to 16MB main memory, but that's plenty for my purpose).

Next, I needed to build the control logic for my DRAM board. I've done this once before on my Wrap030-ATX project a couple years ago, so I used that logic as a starting point. It … kind-of worked. Sometimes. Maybe.

I was getting random errors all over the place. Sometimes it was able to copy all of ROM into RAM and verify the copy without error, but it would fail when running code from RAM. Sometimes it wouldn't even pass the first two simple tests of writing a longword to RAM and reading it back.

Back to the data sheets to plan out the logic. I drew out a new timing diagram down to 1ns resolution, accounting for the specified propagation time for my CPLDs, and the measured signal delays for my CPU. This gave me the information I needed to build out a new state machine for the DRAM controller. In the process I also caught a few other bugs in my original logic, such as not ensuring the DRAM Write Enable strobe did not get asserted during refresh cycles.

The new state machine worked much better, but I got my timing off a bit. It worked reliably at 16MHz, but not at the intended 25MHz. At least it was working though; I can move forward with 16MHz.

The next thing to do was get my 8-port serial card working with this new setup. Every time the computer tried to access one of the 8 serial ports, it would get a bus error. This was a tough one that had me stuck for a while.

It looked like the serial card was getting addressed and asserting DSACK0# as expected, but I couldn't confirm the signal was making it back to the CPU. Every time I tried to measure the DSACK signals, the probes would increase the line capacitance (I think) too much and cause the whole computer to fail before it even got to the point of trying to address the serial ports.

I have the DSACK signals in a wired-or configuration. The logic on each card connects to the proper DSACK signal via an open-collector buffer, and is able to pull the signal low to signal that card acknowledging the bus cycle. The signal is then pulled back up to +5V by a 1kΩ resistor. This works well enough for small, slow systems, but with long bus wires or lots of chips on the bus, the extra capacitance means it can take a long time for that pull-up resistor to get the signal back up to +5V.

I made a change to my DRAM controller to actively drive the DSACK signals to +5V briefly at the end of a bus cycle before setting the pin to high-impedance. This helps ensure a fast rise time at the end of the cycle so it doesn't disrupt the next bus cycle.

It didn't fix the problem with the serial card, but it did allow me to actual probe the signals live to see what was happening — the Bus Error signal was getting asserted immediately after the CPU addressed the serial card. This didn't make much sense to me. My main board logic will assert Bus Error if no peripherals acknowledge a bus transaction within 64 clock cycles. Nothing should be asserting Bus Error so quickly.

Except … the main board bus controller. My original memory map used the lower half of the address space for the main board, and peripheral cards used the upper half. So my original main board logic was built to assert Bus Error immediately for an unused address in the lower half of the address space. I hadn't properly removed that bit of logic, so it was now asserting Bus Error for any accesses to the upper half of the address space that weren't used by the main board.

The challenges of working on a project after six years. I had forgotten that bit of logic was even there.

With that erroneous Bus Error assertation removed, the machine was finally able to properly load my Multibasic kernel and run BASIC for 8 users again.

At the moment it is running stable at 24MHz on my 25MHz-rated full 68030. It may not be the 50MHz high I was at, but after the frustration and disappointment of the past few weeks, I'm absolutely taking that as a win. 24MHz is incredible.

[chaos-chloe]

A Clooless Surpirse Attack

Summary: Enjoying your day off by yourself, that funny

TW: Platonic relationships

The sun lounged high in the sky, casting a golden hue over our backyard, I laid all sprawled out comfortably on my sun chair, a blanket of warmth coaxing my thoughts into a trance. My playlist hummed softly, a gentle soundtrack for a perfect, lazy day. But unbeknownst to you, your friends—Droid, Puffer, Grizzy, and Pezzy—were not so peacefully enjoying their morning.

In the shadows of the kitchen/dining room, a conspiratorial meeting was underway. Puffer, with his knack for technology, had hacked into the water gun app and was ready to unleash a sophisticated ambush. Grizzy, with his endless energy, was bouncing with excitement, practicing his sneaky stealth moves. Pezzy, the strategist of the group, had drawn a battle plan on the back of a pizza box, while Droid, the prankster, creatively envisioned how they could turn this simple idea into a video, or a topic on their podcast.

In front of them, remnants of last night’s pizza served as both their sustenance and battlefield strategy. The atmosphere was electric with youthful mischief, and the air buzzed with the promise of an impending adventure.

Puffer, eyes glinting with the excitement of his recent technological exploits, leaned closer, showcasing his phone. “I’ve hacked into the water gun app to modify our settings! We can control the range, the spray patterns, and even sync it to the beat of music we choose.”

“Epic! That means we can launch surprise water blasts and leave them confused with our synchronized strikes,” Grizzy chimed in, bouncing in place. He couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. The mere thought of their impending ambush had him practically vibrating with anticipation.

Meanwhile, Pezzy meticulously traced lines on the pizza box, layering it with doodles, diagrams, and battle plans. “Here’s the plan: we’ll start at this corner of the yard for a surprise attack, then we circle around to launch water balloons from behind the garden shed. Droid, you take the front line and distract them while we flank from the sides!”

Droid, the resident prankster and content creator, nodded enthusiastically. His creative mind ran wild with the possibilities. “And I can film everything! Just think about the footage we could get—the slow-mo, the dramatic splashes! We can turn this into the most legendary episode for our podcast. ‘The Great Water War of Summer 2023!’ It’ll get tons of views!”

With their plan solidified, each member took on a role that best suited their talents. Puffer gathered the modified water guns, fitting them with accessories for optimal function, while Grizzy practiced his low-to-the-ground sneaking technique, perfecting his silent approach. Pezzy checked their ammunition, arranging water balloons with military precision, while Droid set up the camera on a nearby tripod, ready to capture the moment.

As the appointed hour approached, the group exchanged glances filled with mischief and camaraderie. The target of their surprise was you—an unsuspecting sunbather, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing just beyond the kitchen door. A sense of solid camaraderie filled their hearts, igniting their excitement further.

“Alright, team! On my signal!” Pezzy whispered, holding up his finger and counting down. The energy in the room was palpable as they huddled closely. “Three… Two… One!”

With a sudden burst, they flooded into the yard like a playful tide. Grizzy, leading the charge, aimed his water gun with laser focus. Puffer and Pezzy flanked, expertly maneuvering through the yard to their designated spots. Droid, even the showman, activated the camera to capture the magic of their friendship.

The silence was electric. You shifted, sensing something was amiss, but before you could react, they launched into action! Water flew in every direction, bright laughter echoing against the walls of the house as you were caught completely off-guard.

“Surprise!” they shouted in unison as you stood up, wide-eyed and drenched. The sunlit joyous chaos unfolded before you, with slow-motion shots of water splashes, squeals of laughter, and the delightful cacophony of summer fun.

As the playful ambush transformed into an all-out water battle, Droid made sure every moment was captured—slow-motion sprays and gleeful escapes turned into a vivid tapestry of memories that would make for great content. You, initially shocked, broke into laughter, joining in the fray as you quickly grabbed a nearby water balloon to unleash your own revenge.

With laughter erupting from every corner of the backyard, the initial shock of the ambush melted away, leaving nothing but the exhilaration of a water-soaked skirmish. You quickly scanned your surroundings and spotted it—a brightly colored water balloon, just within reach. With newfound determination, you lunged for it, your heart racing with the thrill of battle.

“Time for some payback!” I shouted, my voice ringing with joy filled the air with laughter. In an instant, I was charging forward, aiming my balloon with all the precision of a seasoned water warrior. Grizzy, still caught up in his raucous laughter, turned just as I hurled the balloon toward him.

SPLAT!

The balloon burst spectacularly against Grizzy's chest, showering him with a cascade of water, causing him to stumble backward in surprise. The sight sent me into fits of laughter, which ignited the competitive spirit in the guys even more. Droid, camera in hand, caught it all—the moment of impact, Grizzy’s wide-eyed expression followed by his uproarious laugh, poised proudly for victory.

As I zigzagged around the yard, bursting balloons with the precision of a sharpshooter, Pezzy laughed heartily while dodging the water flurry, all the while yelling, “All’s fair in love and war—I just need to get a few more shots for the ‘great ambush reveal’ ceremony!”

Puffer, never one to back down, charged towards me with his water gun in full blast, expertly spraying me from head to toe. I barely had time to react as you raised your balloon defensively, half-soaked but still laughing.

“Get ready, Puffer!” I yelled, quickly retaliating with a water balloon that grazed his shoulder, sending him laughing into a spin.

The intensity of the battle crescendoed, filled with gleeful shouts and comedic antics—a game where everyone was an unwitting hero in their own epic saga. Droid remained in the thick of it, capturing frame after frame of the chaos unfolding, delighting in the beauty of friendship turned into playful warfare.

As the sun began to slip lower in the sky, painting it with hues of orange and pink, your group was laughing so hard they could barely keep track of water balloons anymore. Instead, it became a free-for-all, with whoever got soaked next was just part of the fun.

[cake-emu]

Lisa Swain therapy scene visual language analysis

We all (except Lisa apparently) knew it was coming: a Becky Swain mention in Lisa's first therapy session!

Yet while it wasn't a suprise for us as an audience, we still felt Lisa's shock in that moment. Let's look at how that was conveyed visually in the scene.

In this 10th July 2025 episode (directed by Merlyn Rice), we were treated to six whole minutes of Lisa in therapy. A goldmine! The scene we'll be looking at is the second of three that take place during the therapy session. As the scene opens, we're shown a number of close-ups (the clock, posters on the wall, the therapist writing notes, his potted plant) as Lisa casts her gaze around the room, frustrated and impatient following her decision to sit in silence.

We're then shown a wide shot of both characters sat in the room, to once again establish the scene, and also show us on which side of the room the cameras are located:

So we see that the scene is being filmed from the side that is to the therapist's left, and Lisa's right.

In filmmaking there's a convention called the 180-degree rule, aka the 180 rule. Like all rules, it can be broken but ideally you want to be breaking the rule intentionally, for a specific purpose* (e.g. to create a sense of unease or tension, to illustrate a character's shift in perspective or understanding, to signal a change in tone or atmosphere, to mirror shifting power dynamics, and so on). It's named for the 180° axis, which in this scenario is essentially an imaginary line, along which you have two or more characters situated, and which the cameras do not cross during the course of the given scene. Put simply, the rule governs where you can place your camera/s in the scene.

Here's a visual to help explain (courtesy of Adobe):

Note how we have two figures in this diagram, each with a camera placed behind them, and another camera facing them from side-on. The cameras in reality can shoot from anywhere within that half-circle that has been established for the scene (the dotted line is the 180° axis which the camera must not cross). So let's imagine the figure in blue is Lisa, the figure in red is the therapist, and the camera at the bottom of the graphic is showing us our wide shot we just highlighted above.

The camera behind Lisa gives us this over-the-shoulder perspective:

And the camera behind the therapist gives this over-the-shoulder perspective:

Rules exist for a reason, and this one acts as a guideline for viewers, maintaining a sense of continuity and creating spatial consistency so we as an audience understand where the characters are located specifically within the space they're occupying (here it's the therapist's office) and also in relation to one another. Ultimately, it makes the scene coherent for us, allowing us to focus on the 'action', in this case dialogue, facial expressions, and body language. If the camera kept crossing the 180° axis and was shooting from various different areas of the room, we would be disorientated, and become distracted by trying to figure out where we are being placed each time we cut to a new angle.

So crossing the invisible line can disorientate, but it can also be done to intentionally convey disorientation.

In this scene, Lisa has almost been lulled into thinking she's able to stick to 'safe' topics during the session: she asks the therapist about his plant and the discussion develops from there. She steers the focus to Carla briefly, and inadvertently to Betsy. Obviously she would prefer to not be having any kind of conversation with this man, and small talk about plants is no doubt far from her idea of enjoyable, but if she has to talk to him then these topics are just about acceptable to her, even if she is constantly grasping for control of the conversation. We can tell from her body language and fluctuations in her voice that she's uncomfortable, but she's playing along for now (although being a smartarse about it).

We get almost 2 minutes worth of conversation where we cut back and forth between coverage of Lisa and the therapist in a series of over-the-shoulder shots, mostly medium shots, with the occasional medium close-up on Lisa. Not only has she been lulled into a false sense of security (relatively speaking) but so have we. This repetition of shot type and content for almost two minutes doesn't have a soporific effect because we're engaged by the dialogue but it is disarming.

And then! The therapist says that magic word: Becky.

We can see instantly that Lisa is caught off-guard.

And then to really hammer home the unease, when we cut to the next shot, the camera has crossed the invisible line! Suddenly it's on Lisa's left for this over-the-shoulder close-up of the therapist:

It's jarring! What the hell are we doing over here?? We were so comfy and cosy watching this back-and-forth from the other side of the room, and now we've been flung to the opposite side without warning!

So when we cut next to Lisa, we feel her shock. She too is now shown in close-up from the other side of the 180° axis and she looks like she's just had the rug pulled out from under her feet.

And then we get a slow zoom in on Vicky Myers's extremely expressive face while the therapist talks, and we understand that Lisa has been left reeling by this mention of her late wife and the therapist's suggestion that they talk about her.

The scene ends there and we, like Lisa, are left a little stunned!

Imagine that somebody in the same room as you was watching this scene through earphones, so you could see the visuals but couldn't hear any sound. Even if you had never watched Coronation Street before, and had no context for what this scene was about, you would understand that this blonde woman had just heard something shocking in that moment and doesn't know how to respond.

If the cameras had stayed on the same side of the room for the entirety of the scene, and we had instead seen the slow zoom on Lisa's face from this side:

we would have sensed that she was stunned by the topic of Becky being brought up but would we have felt it as intensely? By breaking the 180 rule, the director has given us an additional visual clue to understand Lisa's emotional state in that moment. Vicky Myers is a strong performer and undoubtedly would have pulled it off regardless but this technique makes the effect extra potent. We have insight into what Lisa is feeling because to a lesser extent we feel it too!

-----

If you enjoyed this post, you can check out my other visual language analyses of scenes:

9th June 2025

26th May 2025

9th October 2024

-----

*if you want an example of the 180 rule being broken for no discernable reason, look no further than the 16th December 2024 episode in which Carla and Lisa are enjoying a spa day and making Christmas plans. We start facing both women as Carla finishes giving Lisa a shoulder massage and then they have a little heart-to-heart conversation with Carla moving to the bed and Lisa turning to face her. This results in the camera being on Lisa's right/Carla's left:

Then, partway through the conversation, we suddenly cross the line and cut to the camera being on Lisa's left/Carla's right:

Then we cross the line again as Carla jokingly warns Lisa that she won't be cooking Christmas dinner:

Before we cross back once more. Not only do we keep crossing from one side of the room to the other but the colouring is also different as a result of the decor, making the change stand out even more. There's no way the rule break in this (emotionally and tonally) very soft scene was intentional as the content/atmosphere really doesn't warrant such a jarring change, nor indeed repeated 180 rule breaks. It seems more likely to me that it was somehow necesitated by circumstances on the day of filming.

[goldenherc9]

DOMINION LEAGUE TRAINING: PART 4 – Mind Over Match

Dawn broke gold over the hills, light slicing through mist like prophecy. The training pitch lay silent, dew clinging to blades of grass. No drills. No weights. Only breath. Only focus.

Hercules and Ares stood at the center line, backs straight, eyes closed, arms crossed behind their backs in perfect mirror. Barefoot. Grounded. Listening.

Wind whispered across the field. A crow cawed. Somewhere, distant traffic hummed. The world moved—but not them.

This was mental terrain. No chaos. No crowd. No coach.

Just intention.

“Visualize the first touch,” Hercules said, voice low, steady. “Pressure from the left flank.”

“I step in,” Ares replied. “Interception. I break forward.”

“You glance. I shadow-run. You feint. Feed me.”

“Split second. Strike. Upper net.”

They opened their eyes. Eyes not just golden in color—forged in gold. Hardened.

Ares walked the pitch’s length slowly, deliberate. Every step rehearsed memory. “Flux scrambles formation. Their striker loves false angles. Thinks it’s clever.”

Herc followed, five meters behind. “Chaos is noise. We’re signal.”

At midfield, they dropped into meditative stances. Palms together. Knees low. Breath synced.

“Feel the patterns beneath the field,” Ares whispered.

“Feel the hum of the match before it starts,” Herc responded.

Silence returned. Ten minutes passed.

Then movement.

Ares broke into a jog—silent, swift. Herc mirrored from the opposite side. They traced patterns over the field: invisible triangles, pressure zones, passing lanes. No ball. No opposition. Just pure mental execution. The field responded like a diagram drawn in thought.

Suddenly—stop.

Both turned inward. Closed eyes. Deep breath.

Then:

“Mantra,” Herc murmured.

Ares nodded. Together, they chanted:

> “Strength is silence. Thought is weapon. Unity is edge. Gold flows. Gold strikes. Gold wins.”

Each repetition carved it deeper.

Ten times.

Twenty.

Fifty.

By the end, they stood again in the center circle. The field no longer just space—it was theirs. Claimed. Marked. Mapped.

Herc looked at Ares. “You ready?”

Ares smirked. “I was born ready. But today… I’m willed ready.”

No flex. No bravado. Just certainty.

Neon Flux would bring flash, frenzy, illusion.

The twins would bring inevitability.

Mental blade. Tactical hammer.

Outside, the sun climbed. The gold had risen.

Mental Fortress Constructed

Matchday: Imminent

Neural Dominance: Twin-Synced

@goldenherc9 and @goldengod-ares10 mentally and physically prepared twins.

[roseamongroses]

eggheads | en

Shuri/Riri Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Summer Camp Teacher!Riri, Auntie! Riri, Auntie! Shuri, Plot Device Rainstorm, Sexual Content, Missed Connections, Riri Williams is a Hot Mess, Shuri's into it

Summary: Sometimes smart people can be a little dumb when it comes to matters of love.

-

Shuri picks up her nephew from summer camp and meets his rather interesting teacher. Sparks fly--or at least they could, but it'll take a little more effort for them to get to the first date.

ao3

“Science camp?” Shuri repeated outloud, baffled—floored—befuddled even.

She swung her carry-on over her shoulder, her wide, glossy sunglasses sliding into place as she stepped outside the airport, “You paid…American dollars... to send my nephew—my cherished blood— to an…" she tasted the words on her tounge, disgust plain, "American, science summer camp? You could have sent him home for free. Is he being punished?”

Nakia’s holograph flickered over the left lens of Shuri’s sunglasses, “Not at all,” she said with a light-hearted chuckle, “You must understand, he practically begged to go. He wants to be like his auntie,” she teased, eyebrows raising pointedly, “Every kid his age apparently goes there for the summer, so I thought it’d be a good experience.”

And at that—Shuri’s heart warmed a smidge with smug satisfaction, “What does he even do there?” she asked, signaling her driver.

“Well, last week they learned about rock formations and visited a river to collect samples. This week they’re learning about circuits and— ” Nakia paused, squinting a bit, lips pursed as she thought, “He wants to show you himself, so I can’t spoil all the fun.”

“Bah--keep your secrets then,” Shuri said, popping the trunk to her car and throwing her suitcase in without a second glance. She accepted the keys from the driver, passing back a sizable tip in return, “What’s the address again?”

-

Miles away there was a little brick building across from the East Shore Public Library. It was a community center that had seen better years, but it wasn’t any less lively. Rainbow paper-chains threaded through the metal chain-link fences, green cups peppering the front window sills that were filled with budding sprouts, and a faded mural of stars and planets spanned the wall facing the street.

Several kids burst out of the front doors, capes tied around their shoulders as they clambered after one another. They all sprinted towards the jungle-gym out back--an adventure has begun it seems.

Inside, chipped, sickly-yellow walls were littered with peeling flyers. The words were bright, demanding you remember that--and dream for this--and volunteer for that. Little heads slouched along one wall, dark eyes staring ahead--the lot scowling, pouting, and grumbling as they waited to be freed from time out.

A line of colorful doors dotted down the hallway. Inside each classroom there were equally colorful tables, chairs, and walls. The kids clustered around each one--voices overlapping like a chirping nest of birds, grubby fingers reaching for the many tools and materials sprawled across the surface of their respective table. Scissors, wire, little light-bulbs and batteries--they all fought for their weapons of choice.

Their teacher moved about the classroom with ease. She stood tall--which wasn’t saying much, but she stood tall enough. Her grown-out, auburn braids were gathered in a messy bun, sitting crooked at the top of her head. She wore a long, cargo skirt that dragged behind, the sound of her beat-up work boots catching your ear long before you saw her face. The kids dutifully worked on the project, following her instructions.

Well…most of the kids did.

Toussaint stared at the scattered pieces in front of him. Clunky, disconnected--looking nothing like the cartoon diagram. He frowned, mouth shrinking into his face, hands crumpling the instructions as his frustration grew. It tickled his throat and clogged his breath.

“I…don’t get it,” he mumbled to himself, lip wobbling a bit.

What was he doing wrong?

Everyone else understood the instructions just fine. Little lights flickering on one-by-one, each one leaving him behind.

“But it's so easy? I’m done--” Demitrius boasted next to him.

He was a boy who was more afro than face. He had been doodling on the paper and table for most of the time, his project hastily put together long-before they even got instructions. It looked equally wrong and was covered in pudding--gross.

Across the table, the only girl at the table was slumped over, snoring away. Lunella had spent a total of five minutes putting together her project with little difficulty. She didn’t follow the instructions at all. There were parts moving, blinking, and whirring away--most of which she had grabbed from her bag.

She was most likely closer to being a scientist then any of them--then him.

Toussaint flinched at the realization, blinking rapidly as those little drops flowed.

He stared at the paper--it started right back.

Why didn’t it make any sense? Why couldn’t he do something so simple--

Looking up again, Demitrius did a double take, crayon falling as panic flashed across his face. His hand shot up, waving a bit, “Uh…Titi?” he called out, eyes darting around the classroom.

Riri let out a long, drawn out sigh, pinching her nose, “No, lil-man you cannot eat the wires. I done told you this--” she turned around, face falling.

No matter how long she's done this--she could never get used to the face of a crying child.

Toussaint sniffled quietly, tears running hot down his cheeks. They fell onto the instructions, blotting out the words like scattered shadows-- his hands shaking. He didn’t hear the footsteps nor the dragging skirt. He doesn’t know when, but he blinked and the sickly, yellow walls of the hallway were around him.

Riri crouched in front of the child--speaking low and unhurried.

Toussaint didn’t catch a word of what she said, but he pretended to hear. He wiped his nose, “...I’m okay,” he said, voice small--easily swallowed by the noise of the classroom and hallway, “I’m okay, I promise,” he repeated, hoping she’d believe him. Hoping she wouldn’t bring it up to his mom--she was busy enough. He didn’t want to worry her because he was being stupid. At that thought, he let out another choked up sob.

“Hey-hey, hey, I believe you,” Riri reassured softly, nodding as she wiped his face, “We’re jus’ gonna chill for a bit, that’s all.”

Toussaint nodded, sniffling as he blinked back the remaining tears.

After a while they finally returned to the classroom.

Miss Riri eyed the remains of his project curiously for a moment.

Toussaint fidgeted in his chair, looking off, embarrassed, but by the time he looked back--the light was blinking. It didn’t even look all that different from how he had it before and yet it worked.

Bright eyed, Toussaint looked up, “You fixed it,” he said, awed, prodding the project carefully.

“There wasn’t much to fix,” Riri said with a small smile, pointing to the two wires--purple and orange--he had unintentionally crossed, “You were on the right track, you just got a little mixed up.”

Demitrius nodded along, afro bobbing with the movement, “Of course she fixed it, my Titi’s the smartest in the world” he boasted, flashing a toothy grin.

Miss Riri snorted, ruffling his hair, “Well I guess I-”

At that, Toussaint’s nose scrunched up, “She’s not the smartest,” he said, matter of fact.

Demitrius scowled, head whipping around, “Yes she is-”

“No she isn’t-” Toussaint huffed, eyes narrowing as his chin raised, no lingering tears to be seen, “My Tati is the smartest.”

“No my T--”

“I’m sure we’re both smart,” Miss Riri said, cutting them both off with a no-nonsense look, “It’s not a competition, so--" her words were cut short as loud shrieks erupted from a nearby table--a kid threw up. Riri rushed over, conversation long forgotten as she tried to settle down the chaos.

In the meantime, Demitirus and Toussaint stared at each other, eyes glinting as a new challenge had been issued.

-

Afternoon pick up was a shit show like always.

Kids forgetting shit-- the shoes on their feet and the beads in their head. Parents acting tough for no good reason. Xavier had to break up several fights in the parking lot already. One kid crawled behind the front desk and scribbled over the entire sign in/out sheet in metallic sharpie. Then when she went to confiscate the sharpie, he threw up on her.

So yeah-- a normal, shit end to a shit day.

Riri didn’t hate her job, per say, but it certainly wasn't something she ever imagined doing. Wiping noses, breaking up fights, teaching the planets through song. It wasn’t exactly the filthy rich, inventor, astronaut she always envisioned herself becoming.But...it wasn’t like she had many options at this point. It helped that she liked dealing with kids better than undergrads, but she wasn’t sure that a consistent check was worth the biohazard-ass conditions.

After the first wave of pick-ups--the usual stragglers were left. The rest of the summer staff began to either clean up or supervise the remaining kids playing out back.

Riri manned the front desk, busying herself with the mountains of paper-work. She flipped through the sign in/out sheet, wincing as she noticed the sharpie was bleeding on everything else in the stack. Knowing her boss, he’d expect everything to get reprinted. She’d been bugging the man about setting up a digital sign-in, but he was averse to anything that wasn’t invented before the 1900s.

The bell on the front door rang, but she didn’t bother to look up, eyes darting between her open laptop and the stained paperwork.

Light footsteps approached the front desk and someone cleared their throat, “I’m here to pick up Toussaint,” they said with an accent she couldn’t quite place immediately.

Riri was briefly annoyed about the lack of a last name, but then remembered Toussaint was actually the only kid enrolled with that name this summer. She glanced up, before doing a double take.

That...was not Toussaint’s Mama.

Slim fingers with neatly trimmed nails rested against the counter, a long line she couldn’t help but follow up. Tall, lean, with tightly cropped curls. Shades blocking her eyes, dark and glossy like the athleisure set she wore. Expensive. She stood out—then again, she’d stand out anywhere. The stranger smiled—a cheeky flash of silver and dimples. Riri’s stomach flipped--funny—distantly she heard children laughing.

“Uh, right,” Riri blinked, brain doing a hard reset as she set aside the papers she was sorting through, “Can I see some I.D?” she asked, mouth on autopilot.

Reaching behind the desk, she found a beat-up binder, bursting at the seams. She flipped through the pages and accepted their Passport I.D comparing it to the student’s file. Very professional, calm, mature--fuck she looked a mess. She confirmed the information and picked up her walkie-talkie, notifying them to send Toussaint up.

Riri inhaled, putting on her best customer service smile, “You must be the famous Tati,” she mused as she handed back the I.D. She then adjusted her top, hoping to hide the stains.

Shuri raised her sunglasses, perching them on top of her head—distracting, dark eyes, catching the fluorescent glare like unearthed, precious stone, “He talks about me?” she asked.

“You’re all we can get him to talk about,” Riri shared, unconsciously tugging a braid loose from her bun and twirling it as she spoke, “He had us thinking you're the Queen of England.”

“Oh?”

Riri looked her up and down, eyes taking great care to take in every detail. She leaned against the counter, “I can believe it,” she said, looking around before her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “You’ve got a presence--real regal like.”

“Uh-huh,” Shuri murmured with a creeping smile, “What? Are you saying I'm intimidating?”

“Something like that…” Riri said with a low laugh, fingers tapping against the counter.

Everything about the teacher was--distracting.

Those hands, always in motion. The little cartoon band-aids around her thumbs, a bright, vibrant orange that matched the chain of little flags looping around the marbled, front desk. Gold hoops and a matching chain hanging above her collarbones, moles dotting the curve of her neck. Those broad shoulders and toned arms. Cropped tank-top and that long skirt that hung low on her hips--nothing indecent, but enough to be appreciated. The way her eyes never hesitated to meet her own--a silent challenge—a question.

Then Riri smiled again or rather her smile changed. It became smaller—less polished. Crooked—shy almost. The front gap in her teeth peeking through her lips. Distantly she heard children laughing.

Shuri was unable to decide where her eyes should land.

It was hard to describe--that lingering, something. The air tense, but not unfriendly as they stared at each other-- expectant. As if they were both waiting to see who’d be the first crack--the first to exhale--the first to ask--

Riri stiffened as her walkie-talkie went off again and she remembered herself--her job. She cleared her throat, “Yeah, Toussaint is a sweet student, but…”

At the mention of her nephew, Shuri's attention sharply pivoted, “Did something happen?”

“He had a tough time in lessons today,” Riri gently explained, “He got overwhelmed and had to step out of class for a little bit. Otherwise, he had a pretty good day.”

“Overwhelmed…?” Shuri repeated, uneasy, “Are the lessons difficult?”

After a certain age, she never saw the boy get upset at much. He was always a bright, cheerful child.

Then again, the same could’ve been said about her growing up. More often than not, she became rather adept at hiding the nastier feelings.

Riri sent her a sympathetic look, “The lessons are age-appropriate, but sometimes kids get frustrated and that makes it harder for them.”

Sometimes it wasn’t a matter of being smart enough. Humans are far too complicated to be ruled by logic alone. She knew it unsettled some guardians when their kids struggled. Knowing that it wasn’t something that’d be a quick fix or easily brushed under the rug. Sometimes she’s even had parents pull their kids out of the program--accusing her of all sorts of things, before eventually re-enrolling once they realized the options in the area for affordable S.T.E.M programs were slim to none.

Shuri looked a bit concerned, but she nodded her head, “I’ll be sure to inform his Mother. Thank you for letting us know," she said, making a mental note for later, “So... do you help plan the lessons?” she asked, conversationally.

Riri barked out a laugh, “Nah,” she said, shaking her head, schooling her expression quickly.

Shuri raised her eyebrow, “Not a fan, then?”

Riri hummed, looking off to the side, “The lesson plans are...fine,” she reluctantly admitted, “But, some kids are further along then others, so they get bored and…act up.”

“I’m sure they keep you busy.”

“Mhm," Riri's mouth pinched at the thought, muttering under her breath, "It’s my karma for all the shit I pulled in school growing up.”

“You? A troublemaker?” Shuri asked, leaning against the counter.

“You don’t believe it?” Riri's eyes squinted, cocking her head. A clean scent crept into her space--she didn't entirely mind.

Oh, Shuri believed it.

The teacher was trouble. From that ever elusive smile, to those dangerously sharp eyes--all carefully tucked behind that flimsy professional demeanor.

Growing up, the elders always said that where there was trouble, Shuri would follow.

Today wasn’t any different.

Shuri considered this for a moment, knowing what her next move should be, but--

“Tati--!” Toussaint shouted, sneakers squeaking as he rushed to greet his aunt.

The pair jumped at the sound, pulling away from each other.

Shuri cleared her throat, glancing back uncertainly, but she was quickly distracted as Toussaint jumped into her arms with a bubbly laugh. He was as bright as she remembered. Her worries eased, if only for that moment. It seemed as if her nephew had already forgotten his difficulties.

She lifted him up, the squirming boy falling into another fit of giggles as she tossed him about before setting him down.

Toussaint grabbed her hand, pulling her along as he chatted away. He tossed a careless wave behind, “Bye-bye Miss Riri, ” he called back, pushing through the doors.

Shuri sent Riri one final, lingering look before she was dragged away.

Once the door slammed shut, Riri sucked in her teeth, body slumping against the front desk. She pressed her head against the cool countertop, knocking it a few times for good measure as she collected her thoughts. She let out one, lengthy groan--disappointment rolling right into frustration.

Fucking dammit.

Sure she was sleep-deprived, covered in questionable stains, and looked a mess, but she definitely still had a chance.

If she was lucky, maybe she’d get to see her again.

-

Shuri swung that baby-blue, back-pack decorated with pink cats over her shoulder. She walked slower then normal, eyes glancing back towards the building every-so-often before inevitably returning to her nephew who was skipping, full-speed ahead.

She was confused, to say the least. They were interrupted, but Shuri had some time to at least ask for her number, give her number--something. But her mouth was dry, intended words lost and easily swept away by her nephew’s excitement.

It was undeniable--she froze.

That big brain of her--faltered, lingering far too long to get to the point. That never happens. She’s been attracted to women in the past. It certainly wouldn’t have been her first time initiating and yet she hesitated.

Riri was working. She was clearly exhausted. It didn’t…feel right to hit on someone when they couldn’t easily reject her advances.

That was probably it.

That was all there was to it.

Shuri shook her head, annoyed at herself. Regardless, the other woman was clearly interested. She should’ve taken the chance, but there was no point in getting too hung up over it. She was leaving in a week anyways.

She settled into the car, starting it up. She glanced into the rear-view mirror, making sure her nephew didn’t forget to put on his seatbelt as he continued to talk his head off.

“Did you go to college--” Toussaint randomly asked in the middle of describing the latest episode of that cartoon series he’s been watching.

Shuri took a moment to process the change of topic, pulling out of the parking space, “...College?” she echoed, confused, “No, I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

At that, her nephew’s face crumpled. He fiddled with his hands, mumbling, “Demitrius says you can’t be the smartest if you don’t go to college…”

Shuri paused at that, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

Demitrius?

It must be one of the kids from camp.

“Our education system isn’t structured the same as western institutions,” she said, meeting his gaze in the mirror.

Toussaint straightened up at her tone, recognizing it as another one of her haphazard lessons.

Seeing that she had his attention, Shuri continued, “A good percentage of our population resides in rural areas, so our education system is relatively decentralized and the other tribes--”

Shuri’s built more schools then she’s attended to be honest. Over the years she’s even expanded beyond Wakanda to set up outreach and educational facilities. It was the reason she was in Chicago to begin with--she was overseeing the final touches of the newest facility.

Toussaint listened avidly as she detailed the various tribes and their educational systems. Sometimes she worried if she was going too fast or using too many words he didn’t understand, but he never balked at their discussions. He always took everything in, drinking in each word. Later on he’d usually quietly ask her to elaborate or explain anything he didn’t catch the first time. She figured that he preferred not to be babied. And considering the fact that he was their future King--she knew it was best to inform him the best she could.

Then out of curiosity, she asked what they were even talking about to bring up college to begin with.

“Oh, Demitrius said Miss Riri was smarter then you cause she went to MIT,” Toussaint explained, scowling at the reminder.

“She did?” Shuri asked, interest stirring once more, “Do you know what she studied?”

Toussaint scratched his head, nose scrunching up for a moment before he shook his head--no.

Shuri sighed, a little disappointed, “...Anyhow, you can’t quantify intelligence based on education alone," she said, deciding to move on, "There're far too many variables that can impact that and it can be difficult to compare across regions. Do you understand?”

Toussaint nodded, arriving to a conclusion. Although it probably wasn’t the conclusion Shuri anticipated. He stared out the window, watching the raindrops scatter towards the bottom, envisioning his raindrop beating the rest to the finish line.

[quietwingsinthesky]

people are saying he « led her on » because he did. the fact that he kissed her in the first episode set the tone for the rest of the season and if you can’t perceive the flirting I’m sorry but how?? he didn’t make anything clear he sent the craziest mixed signals in the world. there’s nothing revolutionary about claiming that Martha was being pushy toward someone who was clearly not interested it’s 1) weird to claim in what it suggests about her 2) factually not true.

I wasn’t gonna respond to this at first because the top half of this ask is pretty much just individual interpretation and I don’t really care about it. Like, no, to me, the Doctor doesn’t seem especially flirty towards Martha. He’s just sort of Like That. That’s his damage, you know, Mr. I need to traumadump on anyone who tolerates being around me for more than five minutes. Mr. If I don’t develop an intensely codependent emotional bond with the companion I have currently I’ll die. It doesn’t read to me as him trying to lead her on because that bit’s honest, and he does it with damn near every companion he’s ever had.

And if nothing else, because we do see Ten when he tries to flirt intentionally and he’s a fuckin dork about it. Kind of guy who looked up romance in the dictionary and took notes. Kinda guy who draws diagrams to maximize kissing potential. It would have been obvious even to me (<- romance-blind as all fuck) if he was flirting with Martha on purpose because he’s not smooth at all; he flirts like he’s gotten lines in a play and he’s super excited to be the main star.

But anyway, as I was saying, that’s just how I see it. And if you see it different, no skin off my back, I just disagree.

But I take umbrage with you putting words in my mouth. I never said Martha was pushy towards him. Because yeah, she’s not. If I implied that she was, then it was a result of poor phrasing on my part. Martha’s not at fault for what she feels, for wanting there to come something of it. No more at fault than the Doctor is for not returning those feelings. It’s a bit weird that you’re assuming that I think one of them has to be the bad guy here when that was the opposite of what I was saying. My point was: When it comes to their romantic subtext of their relationship, it’s weird to pretend like either of them are to blame for them not being in a relationship at the end of s3, and even weirder to assert that as part of why Martha supposedly wouldn’t like the Doctor afterwards when they’re. friends. they continue to be friends into s4.

Martha’s not pushy. She has a crush on her friend. It happens. He doesn’t return it. This also happens. Both of these facts are pushed to the extreme because he’s a time-traveling alien with poor emotional skills and she’s put herself in the position of needing to help him from minute one of meeting each other. That’s why it’s fun to watch, because the Doctor is both so open and so unavailable in turns, because Martha’s feelings for him grow and change as she knows more about her Doctor until she decides to step back.

I don’t know, man. You seem to be coming at this as if one of them has to be The Problem™️. I don’t think either of them is, not so definitively. I think boiling their relationship down to that is reductive and an insult to the way they both grow over s3, to Martha’s choice to continue to be his friend while also establishing her own boundaries, to the fact that the Doctor is able to let her go without immediately trying to kill himself afterwards when she’s not there to catch him.

[spark-hearts2]

tell me everything about AC to DC filters Right Now

:0

Dear god.

OK I have to make some assumptions or else this is going to get really long. I am going to assume that you already know what AC and DC are. I am going to assume that you took (and passed) geometry, so a sine wave and it's variations are familiar to you. I am also going to assume that you also know the difference between voltage, current, and resistance.

So, what are AC to DC, why do we care about that? Well, the electricity coming out of the wall is AC, but in order to, lets say, charge your laptop battery, you need DC. In fact, if you look at a laptop charger, you'll see The Brick. The thick rectangle that gets hot when charging the laptop.

THAT'S THE AC TO DC CONVERTER

I just called it converter instead of filter. Why? Because filters technically only remove a 'ripple' from DC current, so a current that's almost DC but not quite. If you are making the entire jump from AC to DC, then that's called a converter.

Now here's where things get fucked.

These are all of the parts after the plug. The load is your laptop, the regulator is your filter.

Let's say that this is your AC signal (this graph showing the voltage over time). Now, the first thing this passes through is the transformer, which only adjusts the voltage to the correct level. Some devices need it higher, some lower. Let's say that this transformer is a step up transformer, because it made the signal bigger.

The next step is the rectifier. Now, traditionally this part is taught in stages in order to show it's affect on the signal. I'm going to speed run that. I will assume that you're familiar with what a diode is. If you aren't, just know that it only allows current to flow in one direction. So, anything going backwards will be removed. Picture a one way valve.

So, if we were to send this signal through one diode, then that would leave us with

just the positive half! That's why this setup is called a Half-wave rectifier.

But what if we were to use two diodes. As in, fill in the blank spot that the negative half left with another positive bump. That would give us

This lovely thing! Which is great, but it requires another AC signal that is 180 degrees off from the original one in order to exist. Which, transformers exist which can provide that, but it's not cost effective. So, that leaves us with the most common setup, the Bridge Rectifier.

I've been skipping the circuit diagram so far, but now it's important.

THIS thing is a bridge rectifier connected to the transformer (yes that's what transformers look like according to circuit diagram shorthand). Now, I am American, and for some reason American electricians use that up and down sharp thing in the middle of the diamond to indicate a resistor. Europe uses a rectangle. Again, I am going to assume that you know what a resistor does.

Those four black triangles with lines? Those are diodes. The line across the tip of the triangle indicates what direction they are allowing current to flow into. Now picture you were a positive signal flowing in through point A into the bridge. There's a split in the circuit, but one way (diode D4) is blocked, so you have to go across diode D1. Now you're at the edge of the diamond, once again two ways you can go. You head towards diode D2, because diode D3 won't let you through. What that looks like is this

What about the other direction? Well that looks like

Notice that the edges of the diamond are called out? Points C and D. That's the money makers. You see, if you plug into point D as your positive and C as your negative, you get a full wave signal! (so sorry for not going fully in depth on why that works just trust me it's a bit of a mess and should really be taught with the actual circuit in front of you, not across the internet like this)

A full wave signal is completely positive, but it's not exactly DC yet. That's where smoothing comes in. This is done with a capacitor!

The capacitor is charged up and then slowly releases it's charge. But before it can completely discharge, it gets recharged by the next wave. Quick review, a capacitor is like a battery where it can be charged up, but unlike a battery which holds charge with chemistry, capacitors hold charge with physics. They can still wear out, but not nearly as quickly as a battery.

What does that red line look like? Well, almost like a straight line, except it has RIPPLES! That's right, we're finally back to the filter! Or the regulator as the diagram calls it. Means the same thing.

Sometimes, this step is skipped. If the device getting signal isn't too sensitive or it's just cheep, then the electricity stays bouncy. Some devices really care about any fluxuation in the signal, in which case they get a big expensive filter.

Unfortunately, the inner bits of a filter are many, so I won't be going into all of that. But you want me to go into that, so I will show a circuit diagram.

This is a diagram of the ADP1612

This website has a downloadable version of the spec sheet!

But that's a level of detail that you usually only get into if you are planning on building a circuit. The day that you're flipping through spec sheets in order to check compatibility is when you've really become an engineer.

So that's how you go from AC into DC. Yes, I just spent an hour typing this all out. I like electricity a lot.

Here's a GREAT video that goes over all of this but the guy actually has a circuit and an ossiliscope in front of him to show the signal.

[geniusboyy]

Covenants and other Provisions

Chapter 45

Aperture

     The southbound road unspooled ahead of them in long, indifferent miles—a single‑lane ribbon threading through stands of lodgepole pine. The sun kept pricking holes in a quilt of low, sea‑bound cloud, then vanishing again, leaving fine needles of drizzle that streaked the windshield before the wipers sighed them away.

     Fiddleford drove with one elbow hooked over the windowsill, the other hand loose on the wheel, thumb tapping a silent metronome against the vinyl. A thermos rattled in the cup holder with every rise and dip of the old logging road alongside country radio drifting in and out of signal. Fidds didn’t bother changing the station; he seemed to like the company of half‑lost songs.

     Ford, relegated permanently to the passenger seat, sat in silence. On his lap, a battered manila folder lay open like a book of relics: proofs and diagrams that once felt combustible with promise. He’d run graphite over those pages so many sleepless nights that the numbers now looked faintly bruised, smudged at the margins like fingerprints on vellum. He turned the sheets out of habit, but he hadn’t actually read anything since they’d crossed the county line—Bill’s name might as well have been embossed in the margins.

     Ford stared past the math. Somewhere out there—beyond the trees, beyond the boundary of three‑dimensional sense—his muse waited expectantly. Their pact had started as a barter of genius for access, each accepting the other’s appetites because they were useful, containable. But usefulness was such a flimsy seawall. Affection slipped in through hairline cracks, then flooded the foundation outright. Now Ford felt the ghost of Bill’s hand at the hinge of his jaw whenever he remembered last night’s goodbye.

     How did you quantify a feeling that rewired your moral circuitry? Easier to compute vacuum decay than to weigh the sweetness of surrender against the mass of what Bill had already done—what Ford himself had done in service of bigger answers, of moving forward.

     He once told himself it was the intensity of shared knowledge. The high of finally having someone who kept pace with him—outpaced him.

     And Bill knew—he knew—all of it. The full ledger. Every shame, every secret, every jagged corner Ford had tried to keep buried. And still he looked at him like he was singular. Brilliant. Chosen. An us, he called it. Not an idea or a theory. A fact. Ford didn’t pretend to understand what they were becoming. He just knew they were. Becoming. Together.

           He turned another page, unread.

     Ahead, the pines and clouds began to thin, peeling back to reveal a jagged coastline shaped by time and tectonics. The foothills rose and fell in steep, brambled folds—quilted in dark cedar and threadbare switchbacks of loose scree. Between their ridges, a sliver of Pacific cut through the haze: blue, bright, almost unreal. It gleamed like some surgical alloy, something manufactured in a lab rather than stirred by tide and wind.

     The road widened as they descended, the forest falling away behind them. Asphalt straightened, shoulders smoothed, and the pitch beneath the tires shifted—from the rough percussion of gravel to the quiet, institutional hush of interstate pavement. Civilization crept back in. Signs thickened. Exit numbers. Billboards. The remoteness peeled away in layers, revealing the world beneath: manicured, modular, already waiting.

     The hotel appeared not long after, rising clean and glassy at the edge of the university’s sprawl. Tall and tasteful, its facade gleamed with brushed steel and imported stone, framed by ornamental hedges clipped into quiet submission. A broad plaza opened before it, ringed with slender palms and artfully placed benches no one ever used. The whole thing looked expensive in a way that didn’t need to flaunt itself—subtle, yet, unsettlingly sterile.

     They eased into the roundabout drive. Valets in matching jackets moved like clockwork beneath the entrance portico, their gestures precise and choreographed, opening doors with a kind of frictionless deference.

     Fiddleford gave a low whistle as he shifted into park. “Well,” he muttered, “looks like West Coast Tech’s alumni funding’s alive and well.”

     Ford stared at the revolving doors, the neatly clipped hedges, the stone archway engraved with the symposium’s emblem. Something in him went still.

     The place was perfect. Over-designed. Everything about it screamed we want you now that we don’t need to take a risk on you.

     Fiddleford caught Ford’s expression. “Guess they really want to make a better impression on ya.”

     Ford stared up at the gleaming building, fingers tightening imperceptibly around the stack of papers in his lap—formulas and proofs and data, none of which could tell him how to navigate the discomfort now settling beneath his ribs. He was comfortable with rejection, accustomed to obscurity, but this—this lavish acknowledgment felt alien, loaded, an uneasy spotlight he wasn’t sure he wanted.

     With a quiet sigh, Ford folded the papers neatly, tucking them into his jacket. “Or intimidate me,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

     He stepped out of the car, the air sharp with the metallic tang of city traffic. The lobby doors slid open silently, beckoning him forward, and despite himself, Ford squared his shoulders and took a breath, preparing once again to face a world that had never known quite what to do with him.

     Once they got to the room, Fiddleford disappeared almost immediately, saying something about “poking around” the grounds—already halfway out the door, his badge swinging on its lanyard.

     Ford didn’t follow. He dropped into one of the room’s ergonomic chairs, its spine-contoured frame creaking faintly beneath him. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled past the elbows, cuffs slack at his forearms, and his tie—loosely knotted—felt more like a noose than formality. From the complimentary “mindfulness” gift basket on the table, he’d plucked a dense rubber stress ball. A cheap, branded thing. Blue. Springy. Embossed with the symposium’s logo.

     He threw it against the far wall. Catch. Pause. Thud. Catch again.

        The motion was steady loop.

     His mind, by contrast, moved arrhythmically—already drafting rebuttals, anticipating questions, reconstructing old proofs in the back of his mind. He went line by line through his published corpus, noting gaps, considering every theoretical leap he’s made in the last decade. And beneath all of that, humming low and constant, was Bill, the second processor cycling at twice the speed.

     Ideas surfaced in parallel, sharper than before. Counterarguments bloomed before the imagined questions had finished forming. Data from old experiments reordered itself, clustering in ways he hadn’t thought to consider. Synapses lit with clarity that felt stolen or divine. Anomalous patterns sparked new possibilities—insights so fast they came pre-assembled, arriving fully formed with no origin Ford could trace.

        Thud. Catch.

     He visualized one of them now: the coordinate collapse model—proof #12.3B, from Transdimensional Cartographies. A staple. He’d written it years ago. But now, as he ran the equations again, something shifted. Something subtle. The variables flexed beneath his gaze, bending into a different arrangement, like magnetic filings under a stronger field.

     Shared harmonics, he thought suddenly. Heartbeat convergence. The way anomaly data curved inward, gravitational, as if being pulled. As if it wanted to align. The math rewrote itself, right there behind his eyes. New connections fell into place, elegant and chilling.

        Thud. Catch.

     That’s new, he thought. Or maybe Bill thought it.

        But it sat just beneath the surface, shining through his thoughts like filament under worn paper. All he’d need was a marker and a few square feet of glass. He could lay it all out—deconstruct the entire theory and rebuild it in another key. One purer. More exact.

        Thud. Catch.

     He leaned forward, elbows pressing into his knees, the rubber ball wedged tight between his palms. The pressure helped. For a moment, it anchored him.

     Bill liked this part. The verge. The tension before creation. Before unraveling. The thrill of possibility just about to tip over.

     Ford exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes. Tomorrow, he’d sit beneath fluorescents, surrounded by polite nods and loaded questions. He’d defend his work to an audience that still hadn’t decided if he was a cautionary tale or a visionary. He’d say all the right things. Impress some. Infuriate others. Resurrect the version of himself they thought they remembered.

        But none of them mattered.

           Not really.

     The only one he needed to impress was already with him—threaded through every spark of insight, every restructured line of math.

        An idea crossed his mind just then—

           “Hey,” Ford said aloud, breaking the silence.

     Bill stirred at the edge of his mind, slithering forward with a lazy hum—closer now, the way he always was when Ford spoke directly to him. A flicker of static buzzed behind Ford’s right ear, a sensation like warm carbonated air curling through the folds of thought.

     “You wanna see something cool?” Ford asked, voice low.

     “You mean something better than watching you brood?” Bill purred. “Sixer, come on—there’s nothing more entertaining in all the dimensions.”

     Ford caught the stress ball mid-bounce, rolling it once between his palms before setting it aside on the table. “I think I can do you one better.”

     “Oho?” Bill’s curiosity tickled at the edges of his mind, flickering like a lit fuse. “You know I could just crack open that shiny cortex and look. No need to be all cryptic about it.”

     Ford smiled—small, tight-lipped, genuine. “Don’t. Let me surprise you.”

     That earned a low hum of interest, the mental equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “Suit yourself, mystery man.”

     Ford left the hotel without fanfare, taking the rear exit that spilled into the quieter end of campus. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for—only that he’d seen it once on a map, half-forgotten until the moment snapped into place like a lodestar. The air cooled as he moved farther from the conference buildings, toward the hilly edges where the university bled into nature again. Out here, the manicured lawns gave way to untamed shrubbery and wild sage, the smell of dust and coastal wind rising thick in his lungs.

     The trail curved abruptly, his boots crunching over gravel now as the pavement gave way to a dirt path.

     They hit a ridge. The path narrowed, curling into a stone stairwell that led up the side of a steep cliff face, hewn right from the natural rock. Weeds grew in the cracks between the steps, and a handrail ran along one side.

     Ford placed his hand on the cold metal and turned slightly inward. “Close your eyes.”

        There was a beat of silence. Then—

     “What eyes?” Bill said. “I’m not exactly Mr. Occipital Lobe over here.”

     “You know what I mean,” Ford said, climbing. “Just don’t look. Not yet.”

     Bill groaned theatrically. “Fine. But if I guess it right, you have to tell me.”

     The steps grew steeper as they ascended, narrower with each turn, the wind sharpening into a steady push against his coat. Gravel slipped beneath his boots, grinding against stone in soft, treacherous bursts. The sea opened behind him in jagged intervals, framed between rocky outcroppings—gleaming in pieces like shattered glass. 

        Bill, of course, filled the silence.

     His voice drifted in and out, a string of absurdist guesses delivered with increasing theatricality. “Is it where they keep the experimental cadavers?”

        “No.”

     “A fallout shelter?”

        “No.”

     “Is it an underground bunker housing a dormant tesseract? Be honest.”

        “Not even close.”

     The stairwell coiled tighter as it climbed, the turns compressed, the stone cool and damp beneath Ford’s fingertips when he steadied himself. The night air thinned—not cold, exactly, but clean in a way that cleared his head. His heart thudded harder, not from the climb, but from anticipation—a quiet, pressurized thrill that settled low in his chest.

        And then, the stairs ended.

     The path widened without warning, leveling into a broad stone landing that opened into stillness. Ford stepped out, letting the moment unfurl.

     An observatory stood before him like a monument—massive, domed, monolithic in design, the panels of its surface gleaming with decades of salt and starlight—more a cathedral than a lab.

     Ford stopped at the edge of the plaza, hands buried deep in his coat pockets, eyes climbing the curve of the dome. He knew what was housed inside: one of the largest refracting telescopes in the country. A marvel of optical engineering. A machine built to look outward, not inward. Locked down, of course—guarded by card readers and red lights and after-hours access policies. The kind of place you only entered with a grant number and a six-digit login.

     The kind of place that didn’t open its doors to unaffiliated panelists wearing guest badges on borrowed lanyards—but the sky was so clear.

     He stood there a beat longer, breathing in the air, letting it settle in his lungs.

     Then he moved—circling along the perimeter, boots scuffing softly against the gravel path. He’d already skimmed the visitor packet earlier. Noticed a name he recognized under the systems architecture credits. Tracked the badge reader model. Noted the legacy failover. Universities liked their prestige, but they rarely liked redoing infrastructure. Especially not when it still worked well enough.

        “A cryogenics vault?” Bill tried again, hopefully.

     “Colder,” Ford replied.

        “Pun absolutely intended, I assume—”

     Ford crouched beside the side panel, pulling a multi-tool key from his coat pocket. The code plate guarding the panel was a relic—dull plastic gone yellow at the edges, the pushbuttons half-faded and pitted from time. Ford pressed his thumb to it, felt the rattle beneath his hand. Loose screws. No one had serviced it in years.

        Perfect.

     Ford wedged that precision driver and levered the housing until the faceplate popped off with a soft snap. Inside: a logic board that belonged to another decade. Exposed jumpers, dusty resistors, DIP switches standing proud and silver like tiny monoliths.

     He clipped BYPASS to TEST with a length of raw copper wire. A beat later, the mag-latch on the next door disengaged with a low, resonant thunk. Then, soft beep. A small shift of magnetic tension.

          The door unlocked.

     “What’s with all the high-techy heist sounds?” Bill said before letting out a dramatic gasp. “Stanford, are you breaking and entering again?”

     “It’s not breaking and entering if you’ve got clearance,” Ford retorted.

     “You don’t have clearance—That little guest badge wouldn’t get you into a vending machine.” Bill quipped. 

        “Technicality,” Ford muttered, straightening.

     “Technicality, he says! You’re lucky I find your blatant disregard for institutional order charming.”

          Ford stepped through the entry tunnel and into the dome proper, where the air changed—cooler, thinner, laced with metal and ozone. All the lights were red, cast low along the baseboards: just enough to see by, and just enough to keep the human eye tuned to night. They pooled faintly on the floor and ribs of the structure, casting long shadows that made the dome seem even larger than it was.

     Overhead, steel beams curved inward and upward, an arcing exoskeleton of ribs that cradled the entire structure. They met at the apex, converging around the observatory’s great iris—shuttered for now, though Ford could still hear the hiss of wind pressing faintly at the seam.

     He moved soundlessly inside, swallowed by scale.

     Above him loomed the telescope—monolithic and pale, suspended on a horseshoe mount that arched like a celestial collarbone. The main mirror was hidden in shadow, the barrel of the instrument angled down like the bowed neck of some great beast. 

     “Okay, are we in a high security facility-only sensory deprivation tank or something?

        Ford’s lip twitched. “You’re terrible at this,”

     He moved closer to the mount, one hand trailing the chilled girder of the declination axis. The structure was breathtaking, yes—but more than that, it was perfect. His marvel was already giving way to calculation. Bearings, gears, the counterweights and cable feeds—superimposed over the instrument like blueprints unfolding across glass.

     He could taste the math: parallax, tracking error, adaptive skew.  Better than he’d dared hope.

     He withdrew a small floating-gate semiconductor from his coat and clipped it to the control console’s pass-through port.  The display woke—a pale green grid blooming with live telemetry.  The interface came to life. A grid blinked to life on the aging CRT monitor, lines resolving into graceful lattices. 

     Outside, the slit motors stirred, grumbling against their restraints. Gears turned. Hydraulic relays groaned with the effort of movement long denied.

         Ford keyed in a manual override.

     The great mirror tilted obediently. Somewhere beneath the floor, relays snapped and locked. The dome itself began to rotate—slow, patient, massive. The telescope slewed toward a known coordinate. A quiet, empty quadrant of sky.

     A forty-inch reflector. Precision-forged. Anchored into a mount engineered to resist the very motion of the Earth. Its long body curved upward, stilled and majestic. Light from the red lamps streaked faintly across the mirror’s edge, a crescent gleam like a half-lidded eye.

     Ford approached, his footfalls softened by the padded mesh of the catwalk. He let his fingers brush the outer housing—cold, immaculate, dense with possibility. He moved methodically, tracing the curve of the equatorial axis, then the thick loops of coiled cable strung along the trusses above. Every detail was accounted for. Every piece exactly where he knew it would be. 

     He reached the console again, fingers steady as he adjusted the interface. A slow smile ghosted across his face—equal parts reverence and thrill.

     Outside, the dome finished its rotation. The motors gave a final, satisfied groan. And then—

        With the sound of a breath being drawn—The great eye peeled open, revealing a thin slice of black sky.

     Ford leaned forward, slow and deliberate, bracing one hand against the chilled edge of the housing as he bent to the eyepiece. Light caught his face from multiple angles—dim red from the baseboard lamps, pale green from the console, faint ghost-light from the stars now funneled through ancient glass, speckling across his cheekbones.

     “Okay,” he whispered. Then, to Bill—softly, but with all the weight of intention: “Open your eyes.”

        Silence followed.

     But it wasn’t absence. It was presence—dense, charged, a silence that gathered around his thoughts, pushing softly against the inside of his skull. Bill didn’t speak.

     Not a quip. Not a hum. Not even a breath of static.

     Ford adjusted the fine focus knob, his fingers moving with almost ritual care.

     The telescope drank starlight—light that had traveled through ruin and silence, torn from stars that died long before Earth had learned to name them. That light had passed the crushed skeletons of collapsed suns, slipped through the thinnest threads of dark matter and the flared rims of gravity wells. It had no target. It had no destination.

     And yet, it arrived. Here—now—gathered in one perfect axis, bent into clarity by intention.

        Ford didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

     He could feel Bill—closer than breath, closer than thought—hovering at the very front of his mind. Still. Utterly still. Held in place by wonder. Not tethered, not manipulated, not pulled—just… suspended. Witnessing.

        Staring.

     The moment stretched long and slow, and still Ford didn’t turn away. The eyepiece framed a pocket of sky most would’ve called empty. But he knew what was there: spectral data, gravitational distortions, the signature of something that defied classification. It was a region of space where theories buckled. Where reality misbehaved. And he gave it to Bill.

     Something in the shared space between them went utterly motionless.

     Wonder was a rare creature in Bill; Ford recognized its footprint now: a stillness so complete it felt like time halting. A long moment unfurled—infinite, silent, crystalline.

     When Bill’s voice finally surfaced, it did so unsteadily, stripped of its usual velvet and bite.

     “Six—” Bill started, and stopped, as though the word itself required recalibration. When he spoke again, it was softer. “How did you…know?”

     Ford nudged the dial a hair, sharpening a cluster of blue-white suns until they snapped into impossible clarity, glittering like iron filings dragged by an unseen magnet. He kept his eye to the lens, yet the faint smile that crossed his features was unmistakable—shy, almost boyish, tinged with a tenderness he reserved for only one.

        “Intuition,” he said.

     A hush rooted itself between them—older than quiet, something sedimentary that sank layer by layer until even the faint whir of the tracking motors felt distant. Ford remained bowed to the eyepiece, centuries of time pouring through across the glass at once, sparking in his eyes. Bill’s presence hovered only a lash away.

     For long breaths neither of them moved. Ford felt the minute vibrations of the dome’s drives as they compensated for the Earth’s rotation, felt the cold of the instrument seep into his palm, felt Bill’s stunned stillness echoing down their shared synapse like the held note of a hymn.

     “You know,” Ford began, “this field isn’t on any undergraduate star chart. Most people think it’s noise—gravitational mirage, sensor error. But the spectra say otherwise. There’s structure out there. Motion.” He glanced toward the open slit, then back down into the eyepiece. “I think it’s a corridor—something folded tight enough that even light forgets which way is forward.”

     “One day,” Ford went on, slower still, “we’ll follow it. Map the warps, trace the red-shift, see what the universe is hiding on the far side of sense. I’ll build the array; you’ll keep the door open—and we’ll go far beyond what these mirrors can reach.”

     He let the promise hang there, bright and impossible.

        “Would you like that, my muse?” 

     A beat—then Bill’s answer, small and earnest, flickered across Ford’s mind:

        “…I would.”

     The smile that followed wasn’t sharp or smug or scientific—it was quiet. Certain. A joy only they could recognize—holding the shape of something permanent.

        “Good,”

[Previous Chapter][Next Chapter]

[Read Entire Work Here]

[j3nnt]

The First of Many

The garden behind the Nakiri estate was peaceful that afternoon, the kind of quiet reserved for lazy summer days and soft, rustling breezes. Sunlight filtered down through the trees, dappling the stone tiles and tall grass, while the scent of rosemary and citrus wafted from the herb beds.

Alice had danced through the edge of the garden with a mischievous grin. She had spotted a cluster of sunflowers growing tall and bright against the garden wall and decided, without any explanation, that they were exactly what the afternoon needed.

“Hold still,” she’d said, already threading one of the golden blooms through Ryo’s messy hair, just above his left ear.

Ryo blinked up at her. “What are you doing?”

“Making you look less like a grumpy hermit and more like someone who belongs in a garden,” Alice replied primly, reaching up to adjust the flower.

He muttered something under his breath—something about her being ridiculous—but he didn’t stop her. When she turned back around, she slipped a smaller sunflower behind her own ear too.

They sat cross-legged on a wide blanket beneath a lemon tree. Alice’s lavender sundress was immaculately pressed despite the grass stains slowly creeping up from her knees. Eyes narrowed in fierce concentration on a book.

Beside her, Ryo was hunched over a much smaller but no less dense manual on fish butchering. His dark red eyes scanned an illustrated page of mackerel anatomy, one finger lightly tracing along the lateral line diagram. His hair was a tousled mess, the way it always was.

A small bowl of salted chips sat between them, forgotten in the heat of their academic interest—until Alice reached for one and casually held it up to Ryo’s mouth.

“Eat,” she said, not looking away from her book.

Ryo blinked, then glanced at her. “What?”

“You haven’t eaten anything since we got out here. And you scowled at the chef at lunch.”

He opened his mouth with a sigh, letting her feed him the chip. “It was overcooked.”

Alice shrugged as though that proved her point. “Still.”

A soft crunch passed between them as he chewed. She popped a chip in her own mouth, satisfied, then resumed annotating her page with a pink pencil.

A rustle on the gravel path signaled someone approaching. One of the house staff—an older woman with short gray hair and a linen apron—approached carefully, holding a cream-colored envelope with a gold Nakiri seal.

“Forgive me, young Miss, but this arrived by courier.”

Alice perked up immediately, taking the letter with careful hands. Ryo watched silently as she slit it open with the corner of her pencil and unfolded it. Her red eyes danced across the page, widening slowly.

A beat passed.

Then, without warning, she turned the letter toward Ryo with a beaming smile. “Look! I won an award. For my flavor pairing thesis!”

Ryo stared at the letter for a second, unimpressed.

Then he scoffed, eyes returning to his fish book. “Took them long enough.”

Alice blinked, then laughed softly—not at him, but with something warmer in her chest. That was just Ryo’s way. She had long since stopped needing flowery compliments from him; it was in the way he checked her seasoning, or stood behind her when people got too loud. This? This was his brand of care.

“Thanks, Ryo,” she murmured, folding the letter carefully and tucking it beside her book.

He didn’t look up, but one corner of his mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile—but close.

She leaned sideways just slightly, their shoulders brushing as they returned to their books.

Little did Alice know that this letter—this simple piece of parchment—was only the beginning.

The first of many awards. The first of many afternoons like this. And the first of many, many chips she would feed the boy beside her.

They're nine year old babies in this story.

Story courtesy of ChatGPT.

[sanddusted-wisteria]

A Builder, a Researcher, and a Rooftop, Ch. 29: Norepinephrine

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"I'm scared."

Also on AO3

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Whoops and cheers.

The beeping of the telegram.

“HQ, copy: switching to Plan Zeta. Jam all signals. Occupy Sandrock. Cut the rail links! Signal blackout NOW. Whale express in route!”

Silence.

Grace cursing under her breath.

Justice cursing rapid-fire.

Qi’s grip on the tracking device tightening.

An uncertain glance at Qi.

Qi’s uncertain glance in return.

The mayor’s plea.

A grin spreading across Qi’s face.

A plan.

A hint of unease lingering in Qi’s eyes.

Nervous murmurs in the town square.

Refueling the generator.

Watching the mailbox.

The clang of the forging machine.

Watching the mailbox.

Restless sleep.

A letter.

------------

Attached is the diagram for the air cannon and its ancillary power unit. Please set it up in front of City Hall when it’s finished. In a more peaceful time, I would be ecstatic to see my creation built (especially by your hand), but that is unfortunately not the case. I just can’t shake the dreaded feeling that this will be the last diagram I will ever be able to give you. No matter how many times I calculate our odds of survival, no matter how much I account for you as an anomalous factor, my blasted emotions keep telling me otherwise.

If one or both of us do not survive the events to come, I sincerely hope you know that it has been an honor to work with you. To know you. As your researcher, as your friend, and as your partner. You have my eternal gratitude for all of your time, care, and affection. I can only hope that I have managed to provide you with even a fraction of all that you’ve given me in return.

I love you.

Yours, now and always,

Qi

------------

It had appeared in their mailbox in the morning, significantly later than Qi had promised it. It took a mere minute to read, but it stayed burned into their mind for the whole day. Even as they kicked their machines into overdrive to produce the cannon parts, it burned a hole in their pocket. Even as they screwed and bolted and welded all the parts together, their mind would drift to the letter sitting innocently on their workbench nearby, secured in place with no fewer than three paperweights. Even when they finished setting the cannon up, and Justice told them that Qi had entrusted them as the sole operator, all they could think about was how he was nowhere in sight that day, and the quiet, resigned sorrow behind his words.

The builder circled their thumb absentmindedly around those last three words as they ate their dinner, careful not to brush over them and smudge the pencil. They were written so much neater and clearer than Qi’s usual scrawl that the builder couldn’t possibly miss them. It was as if he had to slowly force his hand to make each line. They imprinted themselves beyond the page and straight into their skull.

That was the first time he’d ever said it to them on his own. Not saying it back when they said it first. Not with a hug or a gentle touch instead of words. Not leaving the all-important L-word out and only implied.

It wasn’t that they were ever bothered by it. Qi had his own ways of expressing himself in everything, including his “I love you”s. His sentiments could always come through in the things he did. But those three words, plain as day, even only in writing, shook them to the core. As they read his letter over and over again, they could almost hear his voice murmuring it into their ear. They heard the idiosyncrasies of his accent, how the usual formality in his tone gave way to something softer, the resolve of the declaration in spite of the uncertainty.

They set their fork down on the now empty plate, feeling an ache building in their chest. They shoved themselves out of the chair and tossed the dishes into the sink. Then they ran to their bedroom, ripped the blanket off their bed, then turned tail and ran out the door.

Even though the night was still young, the town was completely blacked-out. Everyone was trying to salvage as much sleep as they could before tomorrow. Who knew when they’d next get any kind of restful slumber?

Nevertheless, the builder ran towards town, treading a path so familiar they could walk it in their sleep. All the way, Qi’s illusory voice echoed in their head.

If one or both of us do not survive the events to come…

They leapt over the tracks in a single bound.

It has been an honor…

They burst out of the pipe tunnel.

You have my eternal gratitude…

They slowed down and tip-toed across Mi-an’s deck, not wanting to rob her of sleep.

I love you.

They got to the base of the rooftop stairs and sprinted up, two steps at a time.

Yours, now and always…

“Qi.”

There he was, as they expected. He was sitting with his knees tucked to his chest and staring anxiously up into the sky, as if the Duvos airship would appear any moment and strike him down. At the sound of their voice, his gaze snapped back down to them, still just as anxious.

“Why…?”

“You know why.” The builder hiked the last several steps up to his side and sat down right up against him, wrapping the blanket around both of them and snuggling close. “You send me a letter like that and expect me to not try and find you?”

Qi had no answer. He just rested his chin on his knees and looked away.

The builder sighed. “Qi…please. Talk to me.”

He remained silent. The builder didn’t falter, their gaze gently prodding him. Finally, he spoke with a meekness they never thought he could have.

“…By all means, we should survive,” he whispered. “I’ve accumulated every possible variable that I could think of… I’ve run the numbers so many times in the past 12 hours alone… And that’s not even factoring in you and–and everything you are, but…”

He took a shaky breath. “I find myself completely unable to look at the odds of success for what they are. All I see are the inverse odds of failure…and all I can envision are scenarios where something goes horribly, irreversibly wrong and I—“ His breath hitched.

“I’m scared.”

Their heart wrenched. Just like it did when they saw him lying right here after they came back from the supposed dead, cold and alone. Just like it did when he collapsed into their arms. Just like it did when they heard him cry.

They gently laid a hand on top of his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I am too,” they breathed. “But I’ll protect you. I promise.”

Qi hugged his knees tighter to his chest. “That’s what I’m scared about.”

Another blow to the builder’s heart. For the briefest moment, they were tempted to leave it all behind. Gather some supplies, take Qi by the hand, and follow the railroad tracks out. Abandon Sandrock, the home they’d made there, and everyone they’d come to know. Head somewhere safe. Where? They didn’t know.

But they couldn’t do that. They knew that. Qi knew that.

He went on. “Even as we were formulating our plans in City Hall, it was already clear to me that you were the only one who could operate the cannon. None of the Civil Corps are competent enough. No other civilian could do it. And I…I do not trust myself. You are the only one with the intelligence and strength required to use it.”

He sighed. “I sent the diagram late because I needed to rerun my calculations and check for errors again. If an oversight on my part caused it to malfunction…I’d never forgive myself.”

“Even if it did, it wouldn’t be your fault, Qi.”

“It would,” he muttered, hands clenching the fabric of his pants. “I am a researcher. It is my job to produce accurate diagrams. My calculations are flawless. They…they have to be. Otherwise…y-you…”

He took a few haggard breaths. Then he swallowed and met the builder’s gaze. “The letter that accompanied the diagram…” he whispered. “N…nothing about that was hyperbolic. Even if the threat of war wasn’t upon us.”

The builder’s heart swelled and twisted and ached all at once. All they could do was give his hand another squeeze, and say the only words that they could conjure.

“I love you too.”

“I’ve never doubted that.” Qi turned back to the stars. “Not even for an instant.”

A quiet breeze rustled through their hair, its chill warded off by the enveloping warmth of Qi and the blanket.

“Can you…” Qi spoke up suddenly. “Can you stay here tonight? I…” He trailed off, looking down.

They didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

Qi nuzzled closer to them without a word. They let out a long, quiet sigh, letting themselves melt into each other.

The builder stared up at the beautiful, yet indifferent cosmos, as if they could will the sky to stop turning. As if they could beg the stars to let them stay in this one last moment of solace forever. To just hold Qi tight against them until all the fear in both of them dissolved away into the morning light.

But they couldn’t. The stars still turned far above their head. Time still ticked forward.

And when the sun would rise tomorrow morning, so would Duvos.

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[erindrifter]

I have a story to tell you. One of the VERY few college stories I have.

So, I took this math class, right? The teacher... Wasn't very good. He was much more interested in telling stories than actually teaching mathematical principles. I actually stopped attending his classes except for tests, and instead just sat in the cafeteria and studied the textbook on my own terms. I got a C. So, I passed.

Anyways. One of the classes, the teacher told a story. Of the Mars Climate Orbiter. My beloved.

NASA wanted to get some more info about Mars, so they teamed up with Lockheed Martin to build a probe designed to orbit Mars and gather information about the atmosphere and climate, and how it changes over time.

So NASA and Lockheed Martin spent the next several months communicating back and forth about this project.

There was actually some importance to this project, due to the loss of the Mars Observer probe. It was sent to Mars, and three days before it was scheduled to enter orbit the probe just vanished and stopped sending back signals. So, NASA kinda needed a win here.

Anyways. I don't know how long it took to construct the probe, but eventually it was completed and sent to Cape Canaveral for launch. As a side note of little importance to the story, NASA uses the SI unit of measurement (metric system) and so they design all of their equipment with that in mind. Lockheed Martin, on the other hand, uses United States Customary Units (which are NOT technically imperial units, though it's widely known as that) in all of their designs. So, someone had to specifically translate the measurements between the two systems for each of their correspondences.

Anyways. December 11th 1998. The price is launched. And nothing goes wrong. It actually goes quite well, and the probe is on its long journey to Mars. September 23rd, 1999. The probe arrives at Mars and begins the process of entering Mars orbit.

This process is automated, since a signal would take too long to transmit from Earth. So, EXTENSIVE math was done to ensure that the probe would do all the things at the correct time to enter orbit at the correct altitude. The general idea was to use the Mars atmosphere to help slow the probe down for each pass, so it was planned to arc into Mars's upper atmosphere. Here's a diagram of what I mean:

Anyways. The probe encounters Mars 49 seconds too early, and at a MUCH lower altitude than was planned. This may not seem like too much, but it is CATASTROPHIC in a mission like this. The probe then went behind Mars and the signal was lost. This happens, signals don't usually like going through planets.

The signal never came back. The Mars Climate Orbiter, much like the Mars Observer, was lost.

So, naturally, an investigation was launched.

Remember that anecdote about measurements that I said wasn't important? I lied. It's important.

Just about 2 weeks before the probe made it to Mars, the probe made a course correction. It was supposed to do that. The probe was just lining up to hit the atmosphere at an altitude of about 226 km, as planned.

Some more science jargon time! The Orbiter was planned to be at 226 km, but it had the potential ability to survive being as low as 80 km in atmosphere. The scientists keeping an eye on the probe noticed that the trajectory was seemingly going to be at about 150-170 km. Not good, but survivable. Right before the orbital insertion, it was estimated to be at 110 km. Starting to look bad, but maybe recoverable? Well, the investigation showed that the probe would have hit at 57 km of altitude. Which would have either destroyed the probe completely, or jettisoned it back out into space.

Why did this happen? Well, Lockheed Martin supplied a navigational software that calculated the thrust needed for the maneuvers. The LM system provided numbers in Pound-force seconds. The NASA supplied system designed to predict the location of the craft expected numbers to be in newton-seconds. Nobody performed the needed unit conversion between the two systems, so the course correction sent the probe to a completely different location than the probe thought it was at.

So. Basically, the world should just use a single unified unit system so this stuff doesn't happen.