#so far this is the weirdest use of my mechanical engineering degree

[burningknucklecraftworks]

More progress. 14 days to go.

[theringers]

V-card anon: hi sorry about that first ask i kinda went into a fugue state (spelling?) altered state of reality maybe when i wrote that and damn near outlined a fic in your inbox

The way we played hot seat was either part of a larger drinking game when a certain card was pulled from a deck, or just on it's own. You sit in a circle, everyone has a drink, usually a beer or cider. In the card pull version, the one who pulls the card gets asked a question by every person playing and if they refuse to answer they drink from their drink. In the standalone, you do that but everyone gets a turn being asked until people get bored and leave. Fun way to find out shit about people. Usually the unwritten rule is that you can't lie. I imagine everyone sitting on shitty chouches and chairs in a semi circle around a table full of cups and bottles playing it

Questions i have been asked: are you a top or bottom? Do you like anal? Wheres the weirdest place you've fucked? Body count? Favorite position (sexual)? Fuck marry kill/ignore people in this room (EVERY TIME I PLAYED I GOT THIS QUESTION)? Tits or ass or other? Favorite non sexual body part ex. Thigh? Ideal fuck buddy? Sex regrets? Etc

Also more weird details i have head cannoned out for some drivers and most likely does not fit with irl personalities, do with this what you will, use it or don't i just have feelings. Also everyone is like compressed in age to like 20-27ish except for some of the grid who i will just think of as younger alumns who come back:

Danny R: social chair, owns a jeep he takes the doors off of in the summer, walks girls home at night to make sure they're ok, tries to DJ house events and is rebuffed by literally everyone, has like 30 pairs of vans you trip over in his room, stolen roadsigns everywhere, masters in something arigcultural or physiological, cutoff frat shirts for days, fuckboy but nice, a bit cringe, will drive around with you at night so you can scream, met reader bc she had a band tee on and wanted to talk to her about it (no gatekeeping)

Charles: some kind of engineering or math degree but no one has any idea how the fuck he's gotten so far, 4.0 never studies, games with other house members, will show up at events randomly you will have no idea how he gets on your couch but he is there, the best and worst taste in clothes, is the only one allowed to play the piano in the house, sweet, cannot help you with studies but is always down for helping you out after, has to be reminded to clean stuff, disaster bi, reader met his gf first and they probably met through that

Pierre: good fashion and music taste, shirt is gone halfway through the night, also fuckboy but wholesome, actually studies, plays a sport for sure probably soccer in some way either club or Division he's too good for rec, will hold your hair back so you can throw up, will tell you your outfit sucks, good at math, also part of the squad that games, econ major, workout buddies with reader anday have taken a math class together

Max: is part of the hockey team he will go pro, also actually studies, got into gaming because of Charles, has the nicest car, is serious until he gets a couple drinks in him, he and Daniel are close and roomed together at some point, owns like 30 sets of the same outfit a white tee and jeans, knows reader through Dan and they get dragged by him to some of the same stuff

Lando: is a pledge or new member his big is Carlos, undeclared major, just happy to be here, gaming squad, used to play lacrosse or something equally obscure, king of knowing where the good snacks are, weirdly good at beer pong, growing into a fuckboy wholesomeness level tbd, probably sweet with reader as she helped him through a blackout or something, met her because she's basically house mom for some of the new boys (the kind of mom who will teach you to do laundry or iron ONCE)

Carlos: hockey flow but does not play hockey, actually studies and is smarter than what people give him credit for, came from a private high school and uni really opened his horizons, also good study buddy, gets along with most people, goes to office hours the most out of the actually studies gang, fun at parties, owns the frat dogs, he and reader met at Office hours (they were the only students) and found they had mutual friends too

Lewis: is/was president of frat, great grades greater bod, did full evolution from fuckboy to good man, has the back tests and the moral support, up for late noght talks about life, definitely was a D1 athlete, best fashion game, implemented no hazing policy, fits into notable alum or PhD category

Mick: undergrad like Lando, also plays soccer or something, too sweet, also walks girls home/holds your hair back etc, cleans parts of the house that aren't his responsibility, higher alcohol tolerance than you expect, everyone is bizarrely protective of him, legacy member (his dad was a legend), drives a motorbike around campus and can't decide between law and psychology, actually studies, met reader through the frat and she would die for him, brings her to class on the bike sometimes because the bike is faster

George: business major, frat treasurer, three ring binder business casual in class kind of guy, nice enough, shirt comes off when drunk, runs marathons and a podcast about investments, best notes in the game and great study partner, actually studies, is drinking monster at 6AM but not because he stayed up late, he and reader met through the frat and sometimes drink wine and bitch together

Lance: hockey player, legacy member, studies sometimes, sarcasm on point, great at stack cup, very chill, knows every good nap spot on campus, also has high alcohol tolerance, is the kind of person who does well in the cold but does not like it, wears headphones so people don't talk to him, great one on one but not in crowds, business major and minor in computer science, probably also met thru Lance's gf but vibe as more introverted people and will cover for each other if one does not want to go out

Nicky: a good boy, part of the walks people home squad, sets up designated drivers for parties, good snack game, future in medical field, good listener, pretty good study buddy, midnight snack enabler, met reader through frat and his gf he and reader are on babysitting duty together sometimes when others get too drunk/high

Yuki: also a pledge or new, majoring in games or computer science as they gave me the same energy as him, games squad, bit of a mad lad, has several stolen street signs, good, met reader through frat and Yuki is the only one patient enough to explain some games to reader, they cuss people out on mic

Esteban: good man, has a full ride scholarship, actually studies, also good study buddy, Dan's little, plays soccer but maybe on a rec team because he prioritizes school, very sweet guy as well, probably chose a really practical major/dual major, met reader through Dan and are also dragged similar places by him

Antonio: manbun, philosophy or classics major possibly business dual, generally good natured but can be seen supplying his own wine at parties, used to be really into metal but kept the hair, does not know that people find him attractive, soccer boi, met reader through frat and she's the only one who will (pretend) to listen to him rant about philosophy

Alex Albon: another full scholarship guy, somehow gets along with everyone, switched majors due to an asshole professor, electrical engineering or computer engineering, actually studies, helps with frat pets,will show you pictures of his cats at home, sweetie, another contender for will hold your hair or walk you home, probably met reader through a class or club and found they had mutual friends and that reader is friends with his gf

Notable alums:

Checo - dad, successful in finance somehow (he looks like an really successful accountant of CFO to me idk why)

Kimi - dad but people forget he is, holds the record for most drinks in 24 hours that will never be come close to by anyone else, shows up on random alum weekends with 2 kegs, legally cannot tell you what he does or he would actually have to murder you

Valterri - was good at a sport when he was there, now a very effective lead engineer at an architectural firm

Seb - environmental or mechanical engineering, all around good guy with someone the best grades in frat history

Alonso - legendary for sexual exploits (consensual)

Anyone I put as actually studies is probably the type reader would hang around for more serious stuff/schoolwork and would probably be closer to, with the exception of Dan bc I feel like he'd be like we're friends now :)) we shall hang or Charles bc he will just show up. I also imagine she has a pretty good friendship with any existing gf, however if a driver does have a gf and he is the love interest sorry bb girl u gotta go for the purposes of this fic

Sorry this is so long hahaaaaaaa glad you liked my Charles thoughts ilu

i honestly wasn’t going to share this like the rest of the anon asks i’ve gotten that i keep close to my heart but this was just too good to keep to myself.

LOOK! AT! THIS!

f1 drivers as frat bros/college students headcannon

i’m writing a series - each “chapter” will be a smut with a different frat bro and i’m hoping to post a sneak peek this week some time but here’s something to hold you over and give you some ideas

to my vcard anon - i appreciate this so much. my inbox is always open for ur thoughts bc they are SO GOOD !! can’t wait for you to read the first part of the series bby

PS if some of this doesn’t make sense to u feel free to send in asks (i know a lot of this is focused on american college culture so if u don’t get it i’m happy to explain)

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 113

Sooo.... I completely did not realize my queue dumped itself again, or that this chapter didn’t post when it should have. So I’m sorry for the slightly-delayed update!

Thanks to @baelpenrose​ for their beta-reading, as always.  This chapter loops back to something that came up previously and I hate loose ends dangling around everywhere. Content warnings for anger issues, trauma, and poor coping mechanisms.

“Dude, I’m making soup,” I jokingly scolded Maverick as I took the bowl of pumpkin seeds away from him.  After the camping trip, I had made the brilliant decision to roast the seeds we had harvested. All of them. Ten pounds of them, it turned out.  How he wasn’t sick of eating them, I had no idea.

 With a pout, he made grabby-hands at the bowl. “What kind?”

 “Potato,” I informed him as I pivoted away and carried the bowl back to the kitchen and put the lid on it.

It didn’t take long for him to join me and start requesting potatoes from the food console.  Even though they were freshly-generated and already clean, he started washing them anyway.  I was pretty sure the action ranked up there with utensils being in exactly-the-right place, because he always washed the vegetables that he got from the console.  It didn’t hurt anything, though, so we generally just let him do it.

About an hour later, we were sitting at the table with two bowls of velvety, off-white soup - his topped with sour cream, bacon, and cheese, mine just topped with scallions - and dug in.  Conor was on Beta-shift at work currently, so we made sure to put the lid on the rest to keep it warm.  Even though the temperature on the Ark never changed beyond a ten-degree variance, the camping trip had triggered something in me that said “Autumn”, and soup was exactly what I needed right then.

I had just finished my first bowl, and Maverick was halfway through his second - with somehow even more bacon - when the door opened and Conor stalked in.  Everything in his body language screamed that he was angry about something, and I subconsciously held my breath.  Glancing at Maverick, I saw him arch an eyebrow at me before turning to our clearly-upset partner.

“Everything okay?” he ventured slowly.

“Work. Huynh,” he grunted, shoving a hand through his hair as he started pacing into the kitchen, past the table, into the living room, and back.  “Stupid pre-fab structures. We don’t… Stupid!” Grasping for words, he only seemed to get more and more frustrated.  On his next trip into the kitchen, he grabbed a bowl and  thought he was going to try to eat, but instead I saw him start to raise the bowl higher.

Maverick stood, rushed over, and snatched the bowl from him. “We talked about this. If you throw that, you’ll give Sophia the panic attack she is trying not to have right now. I told you before, if you give her a panic attack again, I would knock you out. Please don’t make me keep my word.” Rather than angry, he sounded distressed and sad. “What are you supposed to do when you get frustrated like this?”

“Run,” Conor grunted, rubbing his face briskly before gesturing at his sweat-stained coveralls. “And I did. For miles and miles. It didn’t help. And I’m supposed to try to talk about what I’m angry about, but that’s even more frustrating, because I… I can’t explain it fast enough.”

Nodding, Maverick ladled soup into the bowl before gently pushing Conor to the table and setting the now-full bowl in front of him.  Without even realizing what he was doing, Conor started tearing a roll in half and dipping it in the soup - he ate every soup like that, and it was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. But it meant he was calming down, apparently, because he couldn’t rant and eat at the same time, and the man had priorities.

“I’m frustrated, because Huynh wants us to start prototypes for the pre-fabs that we will be using on Von,” he confessed, angrily dunking another chunk of bread and shoving it in his mouth. “I still think it’s too early.  I talked to Noah, and the last information they have about the planet is a decade old.  We aren’t close enough to drop out of whatever FTL we are using and get fresh scans, and we can’t get communications while we’re travelling, apparently, because… FTL.”

I nodded tentatively, encouraging him to go on, and started putting butter on a roll to keep myself calm.  So far, he wasn’t nearly as angry as it usually took for him to start throwing things, and he hadn’t had an episode in a while, so…. So far, so good.

He saw my nod and kept going. “I just think he’s putting the cart before the horse. We shouldn’t be constructing things based on old data, and major climate change can happen over ten years.” We’d found that out the hard way, unfortunately.

“What does Charly think?” Maverick asked.

“She’s on Gamma shift this week, so I didn’t get a chance to ask her,” he confessed sullenly.  At this point, he was out of soup and still trying to stab a piece of bread through the bottom of his bowl, so Maverick gently took it away and refilled it. “Thanks, love. So, I couldn’t ask Charly her suggestion, Huynh won’t listen, and I just… I feel like I’m barking in the wind.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I tried to do everything I was supposed to do.”

“I don’t think it’s working.” Maverick’s statement wasn’t said unkindly, and Conor shrugged and nodded in response. “What else have you and your therapist discussed?”

“I have an appointment tomorrow,” he answered, rather than answering the question.

“Then you need to talk to them about another way to vent your frustration,” Maverick insisted. “And where these anger issues are coming from.”

Conor mumbled something, prompting us to lean forward to better hear him.  When I made a gesture to repeat himself, he sighed. “We’ve talked about that, and I think I know where it’s coming from, it’s just…. It’s embarrassing.”

“It can’t be any more embarrassing than anything you know about either of us,” Maverick tried to point out, prompting me to scowl at him. “Hey! I literally slept through the end of the world.”

That got a chuckle out of Conor, but he got serious again quickly. “The anger…” he started, clearly reluctant. “So, I was an orphan. Parents died when I was - four? Five?” We nodded - this wasn’t new information so far. They’d died in an accident, and neither had any family. He’d mentioned siblings, but they were his foster siblings throughout the years. “I got bounced around the foster system a bit as a kid, but I think I got lucky.  None of my foster families were bad, necessarily, but I think that made it worse when I got moved from home to home.  Every time I started to let myself get close and open up…. I would get taken and moved to another family for one reason or another.  This family moved, that couple got too old to keep fostering kids, one of my foster mom’s got cancer and her wife couldn’t take care of me and Mum at the same time.  No one’s fault but… I felt so betrayed. So I… I started getting angry and pushing people away, making sure that I wouldn’t get close to them just to lose them again.” That word, betrayed, tickled something in my mind.  It was too familiar. “I got moved from family to family even more after that, but it hurt less, right? Because I wasn’t getting attached, and I was being moved because of anger issues. Because of something I did.”

“So… you’re pushing us away?” I asked, not even trying to hide my hurt feelings.

“I’m getting there, swear.” His response was very firm before he picked up where he left off. “Eventually, I turned eighteen, I was on my own, and now I really felt like I had control over my life.  I started an engineering program, I saw a therapist, and a lot of that anger went away.”

“That’s where the You we normally see came out?” Maverick asked, direct as always.

“Yeah. I was happier, calmer… I wasn’t a scared little boy anymore. I felt more stable.”

“And then…?”

“And then the world went tits up,” Conor laughed sadly. “I didn’t have much control over which people were in my life and which weren’t, but it was the After, right? I did manage to find a group who were pretty peaceful, and I stuck it out there.  Then I woke up here, and I could be happy again. I tried to be the version of myself that I liked, instead of that angry little boy.”

That was when it clicked. Betrayed. “Then Arantxa…”

“Yeah, then Arantxa,” he confirmed quietly.  “And you almost died.”

Tyche’s words from the day she busted my lip came back to me. For three weeks, I had to watch you try to figure out if you were going to live or die! Conor had to watch you… “Three times,” I whispered without realizing it.

“Twice,” Conor corrected, not realizing I was talking about what Tyche had said. “Once after you were attacked, and once when we were trying to figure out what was going on with Else.” Huffing, he shoved his now-empty bowl toward Maverick. “Please take that, I’m getting angry again.”

“Thanks for recognizing that,” Maverick nodded. “But I don’t think you’re mad. I think you just feel out of control again thinking about it.”

“That’s what my therapist says,” he admitted. “But inside, it feels like anger. And after Arantxa, when I started feeling that kind of angry, I… I felt like that scared little boy again. I didn’t realize I was doing it, until I started talking to Josh, but they think I subconsciously started pushing you away more every time something would happen.” He took a deep breath to compose himself. “To… I don’t know, make you show me who you ‘really’ are, to make you leave me before you can decide to leave, or before you actually die one time.”

“So, this is about me,” I ventured slowly. “Not Maverick at all.”

“I don’t mean it’s your fault,” Conor objected quickly. “None of this is your fault, that I react the wrong way when I feel like I need more control over situations.”

It started dawning on me what he was talking about. “PTSD.  You’re talking about PTSD. Not just the kind we all have from the After, but… from moving around so much when you were growing up. From not having a secure situation.”  

My mind started racing, connecting the dots.  Before moving in with me, neither Maverick nor Conor had what would have been considered ‘proper’ quarters - both had essentially chosen personal quarters barely big enough for a bed.  Maverick had admitted early on when we were still only friends, that he had chosen his because he never really had anything and spent his entire life after his dad died wandering from place to place, never really belonging. So he had a habit of being ready to pick up and go at a moment’s notice, and tried to take up as little space as possible in the process.  It was no secret - he did it deliberately and had no shame regarding the situation.  

It had never occurred to me that Conor did the same thing without realizing it.

Maverick shook his head.  I thought he was negating what I had said, but then he sighed. “We’re a mess, you know that?” Leaning back, he stretched and put his hands behind his head. “I think we should have a therapy session or four, together, about all this.”

Both Conor and I turned slowly to stare at him, wide-eyed. “When did you start being the sensible one?”

He pointed a finger at me. “You run headfirst into every dangerous situation you can find.” The finger flicked to point at Conor. “And you are convinced you’re an idiot, which is the only idiotic thing I’ve actually heard you say.”  Smugly, he put his hands back behind his head and smiled. “I’ve always been the sensible one.”

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[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space..... Pets?

I am really sorry guys. This was a new idea and style that turned out to be kind of complicated, so it will be longer than usual. As someone who typically writes novels, this short story stuff is really demanding since it requires you to be entertaining and concise without description which is my favorite. So, Hope you like it. 

“Tell us your oddest story, Captain.”

“Weirdest story, huh?” Captain Vir sets his glass down on the bar and tilts his head back thinking as he stares at the ceiling, “Well, you know what, since it’s been declassified, I suppose I can go ahead and tell you.” He picks up his drink again and takes a draw.

“Have you ever heard of Heaven’s Gate Nebula?”…”Of course you have. Well, so it’s this really weird cluster of stars just off Andromeda, not technically part of the galaxy but sort of orbiting it. Now you Know Nebulas are actually star nurseries, so generally stars within nebula tend to be really young….. the problem here is that emissions form Heaven’s Gate indicated 100-200 main sequence stars. I know, not a whole lot for a cluster. The GA had tried to investigate before, but with no real luck, they thought maybe a human crew would have more luck. And as a newly promoted captain with a newly christened ship, I was ready for any job they wanted to throw at me. So, with my new crew, and my new ship, I headed in, this was all before I met Sunny and Krill, and before I lost my eye.”

He finishes the glass and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, “We took it into the dust cloud, and I had to take manual control of the ship. I was nervous, I fly jets, and jets are relatively small, but I had to remember that I was about a thousand feet wider than I am used to. We were navigating mostly by short range radar, so I would only have a few seconds to make it through. Luckily there was no real debris in our way, and when we broke out of the cloud a few hours later, we enter this ….. Open area about solar system wide. Scans showed it had one main sequence star and four planets with a collective 12 moons. There was one planet in the goldilocks zone, so we took her in. I ordered our navigations expert to plot a landing course onto the planet for a shuttle, and then I went down and got together a team of Marines to take our first look. Ok, maybe I was being an idiot, I’m the captain, leading search parties isn’t exactly my job, but I would be damned if I was going to miss exploring an entirely undiscovered planet.”

***

“Alright, Jar Heads, suit up, we’re approaching the LZ.” Behind him the sound of helmets clipping into place over suits was comforting. Captain Vir pulled on his own helmet quickly locking it into pace with one hand as he maneuvered the shuttle towards the planet’s surface. It was green, Like Earth, very green though it wasn’t really due to trees. The ground itself was covered with a very thin layer of moss…. Or so it appeared. The foliage itself was rather sparse, with an odd assortment of trees, and some sort of ferns.

He chose an area next to one of these little clusters, lading their craft with a soft whirr of air. He cut the engines and grabbed his weapon.

The marines were waiting for him ready for exit weapons at the ready, “Alright, Chairfroce, your orders?” The sergeant asked with a good natured nod.

“I defer to you, jarhead. This is simple recon, stay quiet, and keep low. If you see anything, do not engage, we aren’t here to start trouble.” The men nodded, at the front one held up a hand counting down from five before pressing the button to drop the ramp, and in a coordinated unit, the group rushed from the craft and into a wide circle around the ship leaving the copilot to watch over the ship. Captain Vir stopped behind the point man lowering his weapon and checking the readings from his suit. He had been trained to determine the safety of a particular atmosphere. It was a chill 22 degrees F but the oxygen level was 14.8% oxygen content which would equal out to feel like a relatively high altitude. The rest was nitrogen like you would expect on Earth. With one hand, he slapped the point man on the shoulder who, in turn, gave a hand signal to the rest of the group. One of their designated men reached up, and pressed the release sequence on his helmet. It dropped into his hand with a hiss and he took a deep breath. The group watched as he took a few more deep breaths monitoring his blood oxygen content from the monitor on his suit before giving a nod to the captain, who gave another signal. The rest of the group removed their helmets, though a few kept face masks close at hand, not comfortable completely with the low oxygen content. Helmets were strapped to their waists.

Captain Vir ordered them into a loose arrowhead formation at a good 20 feet apart. He fell in at the very far left of the formation towards the thickest area of foliage weapon pressed into his shoulder lowered into a ready position as they began moving slowly through the foliage. He the advanced eye piece over his left eye to keep track of the crew as their red dots moved through the foliage. He couldn’t always see the next man over and up, but he could see the dots.

He was coming up on a very thickly wooded area now, and cut into the trees doing his best to keep up with the marines who moved low and fast through the trees. They were near silent, and he did his best to emulate them as he did so. Yeah, he was trained in combat, but the last war he was in took place strictly on stone, moss and ash, branches hadn’t really been a problem.

He took another step forward into the foliage trying to find a grounded place to put his foot… but then…. There was nothing there. He had one moment of horrible realization before his stomach dropped out from underneath him, and he went plunging downwards.

He hit the rock with a hard crack maybe five feet below, and then bounced over to go tumbling like a pinball down the hill. He might have heard the cry of one of the marines over the com before it was dashed to pieces against a rock. In an attempt to keep his head covered, he turtled into the collar of the space suit, allowing it to take most of the impact as he rolled into another rock and was sent flying down a mossy incline. His weapon was ripped from his hands, and the sling snapped catching him on the cheek as it went.

Now loosed from its grip, his arms flailed and clawed at the ground as he fell. Body crying out in anguish against the pain of his fall. The end of the hill came, and he was pitched over another, small, five foot drop. Landing flat on his back… The pain was incredible, not as bad as losing his leg, but still. He looked down through his bleary vision…. Shit…. His leg, the entire F***ing thing was gone…..

A shadow passed over him from above, and in groggy delirium he looked up squinting against the silhouette, massive, hairy, and reaching out towards him.

He blacked out.

***

He woke up to the chatter of unknown creatures, lying on his back on a bed of soft moss staring up at a leafy ceiling above. Squinting past his own delirium and the bright light in his face he tried to make sense of the scene forcing himself to sit up past the pain in his body and the weight of his suit. The striations in the leafy ceiling resolved themselves as he stared on….. realizing in horror that he was looking at bars. He pushed himself upwards the rest of the way limping/hopping over to the bars where he stopped staring out at the world around him. Stacks and stacks of cages, full of strange alien creatures with fur and feathers, and spines chattering and gambling about their cages hissing and yapping at each other.

He rushed around the cage tugging at the bars, trying to find a locking mechanism, but seeing nothing. He tried to force himself through the bars cursing when his chest was too wide to make it through, even sideways. He tugged even harder and came down hard to the ground without the support of his prosthetic. Missing a leg, there was only so much he could do. The boot of his suit and half of the lower leg had been ripped off leaving him with a useless and dangling bit of fabric. He cursed the stupid thing silently. His REAL leg wouldn’t have just fallen off like that. Sure his remaining leg hurt like a bitch, but at least it was still working.

Piece of garbage.

He glanced around a little more taking a deep breath. First thing was first, he had to find out where he was. He didn’t get much time to figure this out before the air itself was rocked and shattered by an immense vibration. It was a sound like someone had turned the base all the way up on their car speakers. The bars of his cage rattled, his insides rattled, his teeth rattled. Whatever made that sound had to be f***ing massive.

And that’s when the absolutely immense creatures stepped into the room. It was at least 40 feet tall and looked like a cross between Sasquatch, a bear, and King Kong. With a gasp he scrambled back in his cage, as two of the other creatures stepped into the room with it. One of them was about as tall if not taller, and the other was maybe 30 feet tall give or take. As their mouths open, the entire room rumbled with the deep base of their voices. He fell to one knee hands to his chest as if he was trying to hold in his bones.

He couldn’t have known that the creatures were quite sentient naming themselves the Magnites of the Magnapedibus, and they were here for one very specific reason. The taller, and older of the two guests browed their way around the room glancing in cages and speaking to each other in their impossibly deep voices. A couple of times, they opened one of the cages and took out one of the other creatures. Vir watched from the confines of his cell with a sense of growing horror.

This could not be happening, and to make it all worse, his coms were down, and those things were getting closer to him their feet thudding like thunderclaps on the floor below. Quickly, he burrowed himself under a layer of the moss staring out form a minute hole at the scene unfolding before them. He could see that the cages lifted from the top, but there was no way he was going to manage to make it out if that was the case: no way in hell he was going to be able to lift that thing.

The creatures had moved onto the cage right next to his looking over a creature that had some odd recumbence to a giant rat. The smaller creature didn’t seem particularly interested in it. Little did the captain know was that the creature had daned the rat to be not cute enough for its taste. They were arguing among themselves about what the third creature was looking for. What could possibly pique interest when they had gone over the entire place, and yet there was nothing to be seen?

The shop owner gave them one last option, something strange he had picked up out in the woods today, but something he didn’t think was likely to survive. It would require special care, and he had yet to look it over for injury. They moved over to the next cage, just to find nothing visible in site. The larger creature gave a look of confusion to the owner who waved him off. The creature was scared, probably hiding. He threw open the cage lid and reached in prodding around in the moss.

Captain Vir lay as still as he possibly could feeling the ground rumble beneath him eyes closed teeth gritted. And then a massive weight pressed down on his back.  Like someone was standing on him, making it hard to breathe. The weight lifted off him and light poured into his little hiding spot. The ground trembled with another mass vibrating noise

Shit! He rolled to the side just as a massive hand came down towards him. He barely escaped crawling up to one knee and scuttling to the side as the hand came after him again. A line of expletives ran through his head as he rolled dodged ad ducked out of the way hindered by his missing leg forced to scramble on three limbs as he tried to get away.

He wasn’t fast enough, the cage wasn’t big enough, and he was caught around the waist by a massive hand. He gasped for air, as the hand grew tight around his middle against his struggling and squirming. He panted pressing his hands against the clenched fist trying to pull himself out, but it was no use.

The massive creatures looked down at him with surprise and confusion. What was this thing? The owner wasn’t totally sure, but he had found it lying injured in the forest. He thought it was supposed to have four limbs, and if that was the case than it was missing one of them. The smaller creature thought that it was horribly sad…. The creature in itself looked terrified squirming and wriggling as it was, and with only one leg it must have been in immense pain. It had very large eyes, a brilliant green color and a small tuft of hair atop its head, kind of adorable, otherwise it was furless…. It must have been very cold. It held out its hands begging to hold the creature, and finally they gave in.

Vir was transferred from one hand to the other, a grip that was lighter this time, the smaller creature. He tried to squirm away again, but then became very aware of the twenty to twenty five foot drop….. he didn’t think he was likely to make that unscathed. Another massive hand was lifted up, and he cringed away as a single huge finger rubbed against the back of his head and down his upper back. Damn, it was like being stroked by a ten pound dumbbell….. it was rubbery and the palm was cracked like the pad of a dog’s foot.

The creature thought it was very cute, whatever it was, and it didn’t seem too dangerous, just an adorable, crippled little creature.

He swore that if they did that again he was going to have to beat someone’s ass, he didn’t care how tall they were…. That was just as soon as he figured out how to get away from this nonsense. That didn’t seem likely to happen as the large creature took him back, and began looking him over pinching his limbs between its massive fingers flipping him into his back like you would to examine a lab rat. He kicked out with his remaining foot as the creature tried to get a good look at his severed leg. He’d be damned if he was going to ACTUALLY get probed by aliens. At least the last ones had asked nicely.

There was more roaring, more rumbling as they tried to figure out what exactly the thing was, despite missing a limb, it didn’t appear to be in pain, but it was a feisty little creature. If they were to sell it, it would need special care, somewhere warm, a special diet, but perhaps it would make a good pet.

***

Vir was about 0% pleased with the outcome of this. His first mission and things had already gone to hell in a handbasket, or in this case what felt like a massive ass paper bag. He had been dumped into one with a handful of the strange moss, and breathing holes poked in the side. Outside he could hear more grumbling and could feel the ground underneath thudding with the footsteps of the giant creatures. He couldn’t stand with only one leg, and lay in the bottom, face pressed against the moss as they moved in short starts and stops. Eventually the rumbling died off a bit, and the movement continued bouncing him up and down inside the bag which swung back and forth.

***

Is this what it was like to be a hamster? Whatever it was like he was done.  The creature had barely let him go since it had brought him back to its den. It let him go in its lap, and he’d try to scramble away only to be pulled back. If he was let down on the floor, he would have tried to run, but he was missing something kind of important. There were tons of these things being invited over to hold, pet stoke, and play with him, and he hated every moment of it. He tried to bite at least once, but that turned out to b not worth it at all, the things tasted like ass, and their skin was too thick to bite through. And then it insisted on wrapping him up in randomly soft items like it thought he was cold, like he wasn’t wearing a thermal conserving space suit. This was just a load of bullshit.

Giving some time alone, he was sure he could construct a decent pair of crutches, but that wasn’t going to happen if the creature kept insisting on holding him.

He had one other option…. He could play dead, at this current moment, which seemed to be his best option, so the moment that someone stopped paying attention, he fell limp eyes half closed just willing them to fall for it. When they came back, he watched their shadows moving around, could hear the thrumming and thudding of their voices. They picked him up, and he let his body flop to the side, he did his best to breathe as little as possible, hoping they wouldn’t notice when he did. The roaring grew more urgent, he was moved around constantly laid down prodded, poked, and he refused to move, did his best to keep still as they picked him up. There were many of the creatures there now speaking rapidly, one of them sounded very upset.

He just had to stay still.

And that’s when he heard the roar of the shuttle. The creatures apparently did too, and he watched as the ship roared in through an opening over the heads of the creatures before circling down. The creatures made some more roaring sounds. He could hear voices as the carrier landed. Wind whipped at his clothes, there was more roaring.

“CAPTAIN!”

He opened his eyes just in time, as one of the marines grabbed him by the arm and hoisted him over his shoulders racing back towards the carrier as the others covered him from behind. He was thrown to the deck inside the carrier as the ship lurched form the ground and roared forward.

The roaring grew louder, the ship tilted and swung. The marines held on for dear life as one had him pinned to the ground keeping him still as the ship rocked and rolled.

And then they shot forward and the roaring died away. Captain Vir let his head rest back on the floor breathing heavily.

“Are you alright, Captain?” The marine asked looking him over for injuries.

“Relieved to see you Marine….. relieved to see you.”

[edenfalling]

Ooh! Homestuck, Dirk, Roxy, cuddle. It's the post-Sburb world, and there are too many people all the time, and only Dirk and Roxy want to flee screaming to a (pair of) faraway mountains. Bring back the blissful solitude of the post-apocalypse.

Notcompliant with the credits snapchats, because reasons. :) [2,700 words] 

---------------------------------------------Some Little Talk aWhile of Me and Thee--------------------------------------------- 

The stupid part is, up until that one moment, Roxy washaving a really good night. All her friends (except Dirk, who hung grimly onthrough dinner and absconded immediately thereafter) together in one room, enoughdinner for everyone to eat their fill and then dessert on top of that, thepleasant ache of an honest day's work building the infrastructure of their newworld... yeah. A good night. 

Except the thing is, as much as she needs people -- and sheneeds people a lot, needs that feedback loop of attention paid and returned --there's a big difference between hanging out online and hanging out with adozen people jammed together in a single room. And she hasn't been gettingalone time during the days either, always busy working with a crew ofcarapacians (who at least are quiet) and consorts (who are emphatically not). 

Roxy doesn't notice the slow buildup of stress, but she canpinpoint exactly when the night tips from I-can-manage to oh-god-make-it-stop. 

She's been kibitzing on the edges of Rose, John, and Jane'smeal planning session (defusing any baby disagreements before they grow intoanything serious), keeping half an ear on the Pictionary session Callie,Kanaya, and Terezi have going in the far corner, and watching Jade gleefullyannihilate Dave and Karkat at Mario Kart. It's maybe a little bit much to betracking all at once, but the satisfaction outweighs the strain until Davethrows a piece of popcorn at Jade, who teleports it into the tangle of Karkat'shair, who draws breath in preparation for an inside-voice-what-inside-voicerant, and Roxy is abruptly and completely done.Zip, zilch, finito, cutlery shop's closed up and all the merchandise is gone. 

She shoves herself up from the warm and squashy armchair shestaked out as her private territory back when they first built this grouphouse, and says to nobody in particular: "I'm gonna go check on Dirk, it'sbeen a while since he noped out and I want to make sure he hasn't broken his neckor started a robot apocalypse in his sleep." 

Rose and Jane break off their debate over the relativemerits of fish tacos and sushi to give her a pair of sharp glances. John justlooks adorkably confused. 

Roxy dredges up a smile from her last reserves of sociability. 

It must not be very convincing, because Rose frowns andtenses like she's going to ask if Roxy needs any help, or maybe even stand upand give her a hug. Her concern is like a warm mug of hot chocolate, but thething about warm mugs of hot chocolate is they're awesome on a frigid winterday after messing around in the snow for a couple hours, but this specific timeand place are more like a metaphorical scorching summer day when you're alreadysugared out and anything sweet makes you want to gag. In other words, amomdaughter's loving attention is nice in theory, but it's not conducive tonoping the fuck out of the room, not to mention if anyone touches her rightnow, Roxy might actually break down and scream. 

Fortunately, Jane rescues her. 

She does something to Rose -- elbows her? kicks her underthe coffee table? hard to say -- and while Rose is busy trying to regather hertrain of thought, Jane grins at Roxy, somehow managing to make the expressionboth obviously fake and equally obviously made of 24-carat solid goldsincerity. 

"That sounds like an excellent plan!" she says."When you find him, tell him that Jade needs to run the latest plans forthe electricity grid past him, particularly the battery storage systems forevening the solar and wind outputs. I think the files are in the civilengineering dropbox account, so he shouldn't need to ask her for anything untilhe's finished reviewing and annotating them." 

Roxy nods. 

"Well, what are you waiting for? Scram!" Janemakes little shooing motions with her hands. 

Rose, apparently catching on to Roxy's actual state of mind,smiles benevolently and waves goodbye. "Au revoir," she says in herperpetually dry tone. "If anyone asks where you are, I'll tell them I sentyou to give daddy dearest my love, perhaps in the form of seagull pie." 

Jane rolls her eyes. John snickers and sticks out his tonguein mostly mock-disgust. 

"Thanks, guys," Roxy manages to say, and flees. 

--------------- 

After a indeterminate period of time trying not tohyperventilate in her en suite bathroom, she sits cross-legged on her bed andwonders if she ought to make good on her escape excuse. 

Dirk's even worse with large groups than Roxy is and doesn'tmake any attempt to pretend otherwise, but he's still human (no matter how muchhe sometimes dislikes that fact) and even the most introverted human is, atbase, a social animal. And not all contact has to be as overwhelming as groupevents. 

Roxy pulls out her phone, briefly contemplates calling him,then tosses that plan right the fuck out the window. Voices are bullshit. Textis their mutual mother tongue, and she'd bet at least half a baby universe Dirkisn't up for vocalizing right now. 

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified[TT] -- 

TG: the thing nobody ever tells you about other people ishow fuckin NOISY they areTG: amiright?TG: i never thought id say this, but i miss ourpost-apocalyptic disaster zoneTG: not like, the looming threat of the batterwitch n shit,but the quietTG: maybe even some of the survivalist stuffTG: rose and the crockerberts gave me the weirdest look wheni said we should make seagull pie for our next movie night extravaganzaTG: there is GOOD EATING on seagullsTG: and they make a nice change from fish you know?TG: i thought id finally gotten away from descaling fishwhen we ditched sea hitlers water hellscape, but nopeTG: here we are back to fish for every meal that doesnt comestraight from our alchemiters and dwindling stocks of gristTG: (its ok you dont have to talk back if you dont want to)TG: (i just wanted to bitch to someone who gets it)TT: It's cool.TT: I know exactlywhat you mean about the quiet.TT: If you're game toendure the ultra minimum of human contact, i.e., breathing within the samecubic meter of air, I'm on the roof by the south chimney.TT: If not, I can seethe dock and it's currently unoccupied.TT: Assuming this isa day when the incessant susurrus of waves will invoke positive memories ratherthan negative ones, that could make a decent temporary retreat.TG: awww, ur a sweetie, sitting watch over our friends likea depressed gargoyleTG: on due consideration im ok with breathing your grosspre-breathed airTG: maybe if we get really daring we can work up to touchingpinky fingers!TG: le gaspTT: Scandalous. What will the neighbors say?TT: But I'm down forperversion if you are, Ms. Lalonde.TG: k hang onto your panties, im coming up 

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified[TT] -- 

--------------- 

Roxy scrambles over the edge of the roof (she could justfly, of course, but where's the fun in that?) to find Dirk not just near thesouth chimney but actually curled up in the angle where it meets the solartiles, using the heat radiating from the bricks to counter the early autumnchill. He has his shades off in deference to the darkness, but his eyes are closedinstead of aimed up toward the frankly gorgeous light of the pink and whitemoons, both approaching full tonight. 

Roxy flops back against the dark tiles of the roof, armsspread wide, and watches the moons flirt with thin veils of cloud. Her friends'voices drift out of the open windows downstairs, but distance and the ambientsounds of wind and wave blur them into a companionable sort of white noise. Theconsorts' various weekend parties are louder, but further away; noticeable onlywhen a line or two of song finds a favorable breeze or a new branch tossed on abonfire sends a gust of sparks above the trees and roofs of the slowly growingtown. 

The carapacians' celebrations, of course, make no sound. 

She and Dirk breathe in companionable silence for nearly anhour, while the white moon travels fifteen degrees toward zenith and the pinkmoon nearly twenty degrees in the same direction, edging toward partialeclipse. Roxy's still kind of giddy over the orbital mechanics of a three-bodysystem, and the difference two moons make in the rhythm of the tides. It couldtake years to work the changes into her bones. 

She has years tospend on things like that. She spent her whole childhood isolated and trappedunder an incessant, shadowy weight. Now it's gone. She's free. She's not aloneanymore. 

It would be nice if she were better at coping with thatchange. 

Beside her, Dirk sighs, pulls his legs up to his chest, andrests his face between his knees. Something's gone cockeyed in his head again,and if nobody interrupts him he'll just debate himself into knots and grandiose'for your own good' bullshit stunts. 

And hey, an hour of silence isn't enough to get Roxyanywhere near ready to face a crowd, but it's more than enough to talk to heroldest friend. 

"The dumbest thing," she says, jumping straight inbecause what's the sense in wasting mouth noises on irrelevancies, "isthat weekend movie nights aren't even party-parties,nothing loud or crazy intense. It's just all our best friends hanging out oncomfy sofas playing goofy sleepover games, but stupid me got so wound up I hadto run screaming into the night. Otherwise I would've lost my shit at them overfish tacos and a popcorn fight, and that's just wrong with a capital R." 

"Capital W," Dirk mutters, uncurling slightly andtilting his head until a sliver of orange iris is visible over the edge of hisright knee. 

"Pedant," Roxy says, rather than draw attention tohis temporary lack of shades. "I just keep thinking, it shouldn't bug meso much. You've got a perfect excuse to flip out at extended socialinteractions, mister raised-by-robots. I actually had real live neighbors. Ishould be over this by now." 

Dirk shrugs, which looks incredibly doofy when he's allcurled up like a pill bug. "As people keep telling me, brains aren'tparticularly logical organs. Besides, there's a pretty big difference betweensign language and a dozen plus people with actual vocal cords, some of whomhave a tragically shaky grasp of appropriate volume control." 

"Ha. Yeah. Still." 

"Still," Dirk agrees. 

Roxy spreads her arms wide, staring up at the moons and theas-yet-unnamed constellations of their new universe, galaxy, solar system.Their new sun's a little brighter than Sol used to be -- a little smaller inthe sky, a little more pure-white than yellow-white -- and more like Alternia'ssun in its position vis-à-vis galactic center, which makes for some amazinglydense and brilliant starscapes. And she's saying this as a person who grew upwith no artificial light to blank out old Earth's night skies. 

"Humans made the trolls' signs into constellationswithout any outside influence, just the shape of the universe orsomething," she muses. "I wonder if it's cheating to design ourconstellations ourselves." 

Dirk shrugs again, a faint movement of shadow against darkershadow in the corner of her vision. "All our sessions were fucked from thestart; we had to cheat just to get out alive. What's a little more cheatingcompared to that? Ethical qualms aside, I'm pretty sure this planet isn't goingto be the focus of any future Sburb sessions. That dubious honor goes to the billionsof native planets kicking around this universe. If anyone's getting gentlymanipulated into using three-eyed cats and purple horrorterrors as part oftheir star myths, it's all those statistically inevitable aliens out there inthe wild black yonder." 

"I bet their myths kick ass," Roxy says. 

"I believe that's more or less implicit in thedefinition of the word. I'm not sure what they'll make of a hat or an LPrecord, though," Dirk says. 

This time it's Roxy's turn to shrug. "Old-schoolD&D monsters, maybe? Or no, ten gets you one they'll go with crows andseagulls instead." She pauses, reconsiders. "Then again, Terezi'ssymbol is basically a giant lab tool with a shit-ton of cultural baggage, andKarkat's is kind of like, handcuffs, right? Maybe hats wind up as a symbol ofintellect and general badassery -- oh! or artificial life, like Frosty theSnowman's magic hat, 'cause of your robots and puppets thing -- and recordssymbolize creativity and art and stuff." 

"Hats as a symbol of hubris and overreach, morelikely," Dirk mutters. 

Roxy wriggles sideways until she's just close enough toflick the fingertips of her left hand against the side of his shoe. "Knockit off, dumbass. Nobody gets to badmouth my best friend -- not even my bestfriend." 

Dirk unburies his face and meets Roxy's eyes straight on,one eyebrow raised. "I was under the impression that that title belongedto either Jane or Calliope. When did I inherit the position, and why was I notpreviously informed of this change in status? Are you sure you're followingfriend protocol correctly?" 

Roxy flicks his shoe again. "Friendship is a bigcategory! You're all, like, different instantiations of the concept of 'bestfriend' -- Callie's my squee and kissing partner, Janey's my partner in crime,Rosie's my sister, Jake's my goofing off friend, Dave's my surrealism feedbackdude, John's my maybe-kinda-sorta other kissing partner, and so on and soforth. You, Dirk Strider, are theperson who knows me best in two and a half entire fucking universes. Okay?You're the one who knows what it's like. If I ever run off to be a hermit on amountaintop, I want you to come be a hermit on the mountain next door. We cansend heliograph messages back and forth, or learn how to yodel and shit, andonce a month we'll get together and have a wild and crazy hermit party, justthe two of us. That's the kind of best friend you are for me." 

Dirk is silent for a long moment. Then he unwraps his righthand from his legs and lets it drop downward until his fingertips are justbrushing the soft, ticklish (completely un-carapacian) skin of Roxy's leftwrist, right over the veins carrying blood back to her heart. 

"All that, back at you," he says. 

Roxy blinks back a sudden rush of tears, and laces theirfingers together. Dirk lets her. 

"Jade has some electric grid plans for you to lookover," she says after a minute. "You can do that anywhere,right?" 

"Yeah," Dirk says. 

"Then come seagull hunting with me tomorrow. Just the twoof us, out on the water. Like old times. I have a harpoon gun I've been wantingto try out, and we can tell anyone who complains that we're taking soundingsand stuff for potential tidal generators. Hell, we can even actually do that.But I miss you. I keep getting tangled up in everyone else and losing sight ofus." 

Dirk squeezes her fingers. From him, it's as good as a hug. 

"Yeah," he says. "It's a plan." 

Roxy looks up at the night sky rather than try to put heremotions into words. There's a patch that looks a bit like a cat with wings, ifshe squints and takes some heavy artistic license. She holds up her phone inher right hand and adjusts the camera settings until she can snap a usefulpicture. She'll photoshop the constellation in later tonight and show it toDirk tomorrow: their friendship, immortalized in stars. 

"Cool," she says. 

They watch the pink moon overtake the white one in silence,fingers still entwined, the same air pumping in and out of their lungs. 

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

End of Fic 

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

It's still a little disjointed, I think, but whatever. Iwin. \o/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND HISTORIANS

Using first and rest means 50% more typing. Your program is supposed to mean. We're Jeff and Bob and we've built an easy to use web-based database might resist calling their applicaton that, because it could be a useful language feature. There are four main reasons: Moore's law has made hardware cheap; open source has made software free; the web has made marketing and distribution free; and more powerful programming languages mean development teams can be smaller. I just want to make a language popular? For the most part they punt. Though indeed, it's been a while since they were writing about symbolism; now they're writing about gender. TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed. Bush seemed old and tired. It's what acquirers care about.

The reason you can expect to feel this is that what you do, as well, and in fact can't be done by collaborators and design can't? That is, how hard would this be for someone else to develop? Good software designers are no more engineers than architects are. Show features in an order driven by some kind of read-macro. In the software business, you can't be a company of one person. A number of Lisps now compile into byte code, which is to design beautiful software, would be much more difficult. Want to make someone dislike a book? Those are interesting questions.

You may dispute either of the premises, but if you get bored halfway through and start making the bricks mechanically instead of observing each one, the drawing will look worse than if you had merely suggested the bricks. Same story in 2004. Many employees would work harder if they could, and most would be better off. The most concise descriptions seem misleadingly narrow. You can take as long as you keep plugging away, you'll win in the end. Don't get too deeply into business models. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered. Most painters start with a throwaway program and keep improving it. You can write programs to solve common problems with very little code.

Get a version 1. The texts that filtered into Europe were all corrupted to some degree by the errors of translators and copyists. If I say this, some will say it's a ridiculously overbroad and uncharitable generalization, and others that are comfortingly routine. This seems to be the scripting languages of early IBM mainframes. As a child I read a book of stories about a famous judge in eighteenth century Japan called Ooka Tadasuke. Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions if that is the word of product managers into code. So if you're a founder, here's a deal you can make with yourself that will both make you happy and make your company successful. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. Money is a comparatively recent invention.

If it seems like no one cares, look more closely. Whereas if you solve a technical problem that a lot of wiggle room. But unfortunately that was not the one to choose is your growth rate to compensate. It will be good to be popular to be good, but it is not merely influence but command: often the expert hackers are the very people who, as their bosses or faculty advisors, tell the audience. This pattern doesn't only apply to companies. Bill Gates? One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to art school to study painting. Nothing could be better, for a new techology, than a few years and they're ready to write checks again, they may simply violate it and invite you to sue them. If parents will let undergraduates study. The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward. An example of a useful, general idea, consider that of the controlled experiment.

Seem confident. So although there may be, in certain specific moments like your family, this month a fixed amount of money can change a startup's funding situation completely. I found that the best big programs begin life this way, you wonder why anyone would think there was. You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways. But when you understand the origins of this sort of essay I thought I was going to study philosophy in college. So instead of entrusting the future of the software to one brilliant hacker, most companies set things up so that it is not only manufacturing companies that create wealth. But in medieval Europe something new happened. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking. At each step, flow down. At other Y Combinator events we allow outside guests, but not quite. I don't think that physical books are outmoded yet. And they are a classic example of the power of TV, Kennedy apparently would not have won without fraud by party machines in Illinois and Texas.

Perl by default, because it would make programs easier to read. Where does it go wrong? There are worse things than having people misunderstand your work. Nothing is deprecated, or retained for compatibility. Suppose as before that you only extract half as much from users as you could. Instead it does y. Measuring what hackers are actually trying to do is other things. A hacker may only want to subvert the intended model of things once or twice in a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to work with Rtm and Trevor again. They will use whatever language does the job. That was as far as I know, when painters worked together on a painting, they never worked on the same parts. It will tend to be an equal participant in its design. Both took years to succeed.

Thanks to Steven Levy, Ankur Pansari, Patrick Collison, Robert Morris, Yuri Sagalov, Trevor Blackwell, Jackie McDonough, and Harj Taggar for putting up with me.