#so the placeholder will be here for a bit longer. will update everything once the story gets going and receives a proper title!

[whomeidontknowthem]

Eyes on me – an interactive whump story. Part 2.

Previous part. Masterpost. Next part.

Content warning: institutionalized slavery, imprisonment, dehumanizing language, it/its for an unhuman whumpee, pet whump.

"In folklore, any mythical, magical creature is commonly called 'fey'," they book that Lord Teelo had ordered after returning to the inn room said. "It is, of course, a wide misconception that is not accepted in any theory that has even an ounce of respect for itself. Fey is not just another way to say "magical", but a registered phenomenon different from a spirit, a magic-infused animal or a demon, and especially has nothing to do with tiny folk with wings, whose existence is widely refuted…"

It went on and on, an irritatingly salty response siting some previous debates and calling out authors the lord had never heard about. It could be entertaining in its own right – Lord Teelo was anything but impartial to loud grudges and decades old arguments – if not for his lack of experience with the topic rendering the details tedious and the fact that it wasn't idle interest that led him to seeking out the book.

The papers had been signed in half an hour, the impressive sum of money changing hands as the decision had been finalized at the spot. The arrangements had been made immediately after to transport the creature to the lord's summer house. It was to spend its last night at the auction house, and then, in the morning, they would ride – Lord Teelo in his usual carriage and his new property in an impressive cage – towards its new home.

The thrill of the purchase was sure to keep the lord awake, and he decided to spend the time on research. Learning about the kind of thing that came into his possession was paramount – after all, he didn't want it to die before its time because of his ignorance.

"Fey is defined by any reputable source as an otherworldly creature. It does not come with as many defined characteristics as an unsoundly educated person would believe: a creature from another dimension does not have to have wings and three pairs of limbs, though it is not out of the realm of possibility. A fey can look exactly as your regular cattle. The one thing that makes it fey is that it is not from the reality we live in."

The text wasn't very useful. In the two chapters Lord Teelo had managed before throwing the book into his bag and settling in bed, there was an infuriatingly little amount of actual, useful advice. The further he read, the more sure he was: he would have to figure things out by himself.

It was the thrill that came with owning the never before seen creature, one he wasn't even sure was from the same world, one, if it wasn't, that would catch the interest and desire for experiments by mages all over the world.

Now that he thought about it, maybe he should get into contact with a few. Their insight would be valuable either way – the lord was doubtful that the rainbow marks on the creature's skin could be the result of anything but magic, and magic tended to come with complications he wasn't confident he could deal with by himself.

Getting in contact with the sailors who caught the thing was a good idea, too. He'd already asked for the name of their ship and drafted a letter to a good old acquaintance in Froien. She would get the information to him in no time, even if he'll definitely have to show the creature to her afterwards. Keya, as he knew her, was curious beyond all else. Lord Teelo couldn't wait to see her face and the faces of his other acquaintances when they saw the kind of prize he'd gotten. The images of their amazement and barely hidden jealousy made him giddy with anticipation.

He wanted to make the most out of the day, and so was up and in the back garden of the auction house barely an hour after sunrise, despite the morning chill finding its way to his very bones through the layers of fabrics and furs he'd donned. A cart made into a cage with thick iron bars – provided with the purchase, of course, and with how much he'd paid Lord Teelo would be personally offended if it wasn't – was hurriedly readied and brought to the doors of the building.

The sounds of clattering and clinging and human voices burst through the open door before the creature was dragged out. It was the size of a northern wolf, bound and twisted and carried by two cautious servants. It craned its neck and bared its teeth through the muzzle, a wild animal, a scared one, and if not for the lines running down its skin and the weirdly human-like hands – with thumbs even if they were too long to actually be human – Lord Teelo would have taken it for nothing more than a dumb beast. Then it opened its mouth as wide as it could and let out a whole string of sounds – low and guttural and constantly repeating in patterns that made the lord think that it was trying – no, saying something in an unfamiliar, alien language.

He felt his pulse high in his throat, watching the creature as it was pushed inside the cage, chains around its limbs secured and the door locked behind. It kicked and threw itself against the metal only to settle back a moment later, too smart to waste energy on a fight it couldn't win.

And then, it noticed him.

Lord Teelo thought it recognized him – or maybe it was a wishful thinking fueled by the way it stilled and stared and then craned its neck to the side and forward, baring fangs in a display that was chilling even despite the binds. The unblinking yellow of its eyes pierced right through him.

He felt goosebumps creeping up his arms but refused to acknowledge it. He was safe, he reminded himself. It was tied up and helpless. No matter how it bared its teeth and tried to look scary, he was the master.

He stepped forward, lifting a hand up to place at the edge of the cart. The creature glanced at it, then continued staring. The lord smiled, "Hello there."

The creature growled and then said something. Lord Teelo continued soothingly, "No need to be so tense. We'll get to know each other -- you'll get used to me in no time."

In the light of the starting day, its skin didn't look like that startling black he saw in the dim cell. It was more grayish – still dark, though, and still unnatural. The pattern of colorful lines didn't look any less striking. His fingers ached to touch it, to feel if its skin was rough under his touch or as human-like as some of its features were. As the black short fur framing its face and ending in the middle of its back in a sort of haircut. Fey, Lord Teelo thought fervently. It had to be one. It was too strange in some ways and too familiar in others. It had to be a creature from another world. What other explanation could there be?

"Lord Teelo?" A voice came from his side and soon he was regrettably distracted, finishing the transaction and discussing the details. Servants pulled a thick piece of fabric covering the cage from view. Lord Teelo dismissed the pang of regret at their actions, reminding that he was going to have months worth of time to play around with the new toy.

He wondered what it'd be like. How it'd act. Would it be able to learn the human tongue, or prove to be too dumb for it?

He wondered where it would live. And – ah, this was an urgent question, was it not? He should send a letter to make sure it was all taken care of by the time he arrived.

Updates every 7-10 days (depending on how much time I have and how obvious the poll result is)

@isikedmyself878, @fraugustends, @otterfrost, @fuchstastisch, @3-2-whump, @the-lone-youth

Tell me to be tagged in the new parts!

[akaashislover1]

Is it just me or does anyone else think Yuji Itadori would spoil the hell out of you on Valentine’s Day?? This takes place when reader and Yuji are of age and you guys both work full time jobs. Whoop.

He would start off by preparing you breakfast in bed. A plate full of waffles topped with scrambled eggs and bacon with a pool of syrup on the side for you to dip what you wanted. There was a cup of coffee and a cup of apple juice for you too choose from. (He would take what you didn’t choose)

You would talk all morning about everything and anything. From updates about your favourite shows to how the both of you are feeling in general(you loved being vulnerable with him and him with you).

Yuji would be cracking jokes about everything. He made it his mission to remind you about the time Kugisaki spilt coffee on Gojo’s shirt and how He, Kugisaki, and Megumi tried to get the stain out but failed.

You loved the way he smiled at you. You would tease him every time you caught him staring for too long. Saying the classic: “take a picture, it’ll last longer!”

He would turn red and give you a light smack.

“What? It’s not my fault you’re the most gorgeous person on earth!” He would say chuckling.

Once you finish breakfast and got dressed for the day(obviously you’d wear the matching red and white outfit Yuji had bought for you for this special day), Yuji led you into the living room for you to find heart shaped balloons which varied in color. Pink, red and white.

There were also multiple boxes of your favourite chocolates sitting on the coffee table, waiting to be eaten by the both of you.

He also had the tv turned on, the screen displayed the menu of your favourite movie waiting to be played.

“We can rewatch this full series and then once that’s done I have more surprises!” He said happily.

“Yuji, you didn’t have to do all of this. I would’ve been fine just spending the day with you.” You felt bad. The only thing you were able to get him was a card from the dollar store and a gift card for his favourite fast food place tucked inside. You didn’t have a lot of time this year and you’ve been stressed out.

“No it’s fine. We spend everyday with each other anyway. Today is special! Plus I wanna do this.”

After your guys movie binge, Yuji had told you to get ready. He wouldn’t tell you where you were going but that you had to dress nice. So you did.

Yuji fought so hard with himself to not rip the spaghetti strapped black dress that ended just above your knees and had a completely opened back(which he didn’t like the thought of you wearing it out, he didn’t argue).

You checked yourself out in the mirror, flattening down every rumpled bumps out of your dress. Your fingers raked themselves through your neatly straightened hair.

“You look perfect,” Yuji’s voice startled you. You found his eyes in the mirror. He was wearing a subtle pink dress shirt with a black tie and black dress pants.

“Although, I do have something that will go perfect with your dress.” He finished as he walked towards you. It was then when you realized he was carrying a little paper shopping bag.

Your heart skipped a beat when he pulled out a long black velvet box. Yuji opened it.

You eyed, through the mirror, the beautiful diamond necklace that sat perfectly in the box accompanied by a set of diamond stud earrings.

You felt your eyes water as you turned around. Yuji had the biggest smile on his face. His light brown orbs began to water a little and you noticed that he was having trouble speaking.

“Yuji, you didn’t have to get this I-“

“No, don’t even start. I had to. I know this isn’t a ring, but these are placeholders for the real deal.”

“Real deal? What are you talking about?”

“Gosh, I thought I was the dense one. I wanna marry you y/n. I’d marry you right here on the spot. But I just think with everything going on, I think it’s best we wait a bit, you know?”

You chuckled lightly as Yuji started to put the necklace on.

“You ran out of money didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah, big time. I honestly thought you were gonna get full on chocolates so we wouldn’t have to go to dinner but seeing you in this dress is worth it.” Yuji snorted as you felt his fingers clasp the necklace around your neck. Once you had the earrings on, you gave Yuji the tightest hug. His arms flew around your waist and he rested his head on top of yours, smelling your shampoo.

“Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.” He whispered into your hair.

“I love you too, thank you for today.”

You smiled into his chest, your heartbeats syncing together.

“Now let’s go, I’ll pay for dinner.”

“Can’t argue with that! I was waiting for you to say that!” Yuji chanted as he kissed the top of your head. You rolled your eyes playfully as he made his way to the door, you following shortly after.

“You’re lucky I love you too much!”

Sorry this is late, i had to work all day today and the day before i just got back from a trip to even start. Hope you enjoyed!💕

[lazar-codes]

16/08/2023 || Day 66

React To-Do App - Log # 2

I struggled a bit today with this project and almost just looked up how to create a to-do list app with React, but after watching the first 5 mins of a tutorial, my stubborn genes kicked in and I exited out of the video and tried to figure it out. Essentially, the logic behind the app is that I will have an array of objects, in which each object is a Task and each Task object has a field for a description, which is what the user wants to add to their to-do list. Now, when a user creates a new task, the description is empty, and it's only until the user types something in the input that the appropriate Task will update its description field. With React, I iterate through the array of Task objects and pass each entry into it's own component which comprises of the checkbox, input, and delete button.

So far, I have semi-functionality with adding tasks and deleting tasks. I still need to save info to local storage and then retrieve it, so that way the user's tasks are saved upon refreshing the website/app. I'm really happy with how I have the code for updating the task description:I'm using a parent callback function to pass the input from the child component to the parent component when the input field is no longer in focus, and setting the task description to the input from there. Here's the code in the child component:

Once the data is passed up to the parent component, here's the code to handle the event of saving and updating a specific tasks' description:

And then once everything's down, we iterate over each task in the list of task objects and create components while passing down the task's description:

I also got the basic CSS down, but will obviously fiddle with that more (though I really like the colour scheme). Next up will be to improve on the way I give input data (i.e. right now, the text in the input field are serving as the "placeholder" variable, so if I were to click on one and type in it, it would remove what's currently there).

Here's a WIP shot:

[softforklave]

The Big Klave Fic Rec

Reginald Hargreeves does everything he can to learn about the Umbrella Academy’s powers, but Klaus is the one who finds out why they have their powers. No one expected the answer to be “we’re fallen angels” but here they all were. This is for my lovely @cemeteryklaus I hope you enjoy this! You will not run out of klave fics on my watch ;)

I have excessively been reading klave fics since s1 came out in February 2019, when there was only one page under the Klaus Hargreeves/Dave tag on ao3 (before our King shared his full name on Twitter). There are currently 2056 fics on ao3, and I can (un)fortunately say I have read almost all of them (what am I doing with my life?). Klave has been blessed with so many talented writers, so this is quite the list. Many of them have written more than one fic (some even over 50!), and since they are all amazing, it would take ages to list them all. Therefore, I have decided to recommend authors who have written two or more klave fics and linking to their the umbrella academy ao3 works page. Go read all of their works, and I can guarantee that every single fic is wonderful! And dont forget to leave kudos and comments, our writers deserve all the love and appreciation that we can give them! 

I also highly encourage people reblogging with their favourite fics, if you want to show the writers some more love or if I have forgotten your favourite fic (you can also dm me if you want me to add it on)! I have tried to @ the authors, but sometimes it can be hard to find the right blogs. Please let me know if I have tagged you wrong, forgotten to tag you or dont want me to tag you, I will remove the @ at once! I will try to update this as I continue to excessively consume klave content (though this is limited to ao3 and tumblr), so please come back to this list for more recommendations. Happy Reading! <3

Authors (2 or more klave fics)

A - B

a_nybodys /// accidentallyanoctopus /// actuallymaxie ///admirabletragedy @admirabletragedy /// aelisheva /// AliNear /// Allandnothing /// allthempickles /// Ama /// Anglophile_Rin @anglophile-rin /// aubrey_writes /// aye_of_newt @aye-of-newt /// bacondoughtnut @spookybeez /// Becca_Hay /// Bendy_CA @apocalypse-gang /// bennybentacles @bennybentacles /// blazeofglory /// Bluebacchus @bluebacchus /// bluetigerlillies @frogsarebxtches /// brionylarkin @brionylarkin 

C - E

CaptainAmericaoftheTardis /// CharryWotter /// covenofthearticulate @codenameseance /// CowgayKermit @cowgaykermit /// crisecardiac @thistlemoth /// Cyane /// Dancinbutterfly @dancinbutterfly /// dandelyre @dandelyre /// deargalileo/// deathishauntedbyhumans @deathishauntedbyhumans /// discohargreeves /// Doctor959 /// Dog_Bearing_Gifts @dogbearinggifts /// Drhair76 @handcoversheart-76  ///  dyllpickless @dyllpickless /// electric016 @electric016 /// Eternal_Peace_Is_Overrated @flowercrownsandbooks 

F - K

Faetality @faetxlity /// forestdivinity (ForestDivinity) @forestdivinity /// forthekidswhoaintgotnosoul @prime8svevo /// FrazzledSquidz G33kinthepink /// ghostbythesea @gay-poster-child  /// goldieknocks @goldieknocks  /// Hemitreunited @hermitreunited /// hippieklaus @hippieklaus /// hujwernoo /// iamnotalizard @lizard-overlord /// ilikeshipment @theseance1968 /// intheflowers /// Karturtle (karturtle) @karturtle /// Katplanet @katplanet /// KawaiiCommunism @kawaiic0mmunism /// KindaCool @kindasickkindacool /// klausmoon 

L - P

lastyoungrene-gay-de @lastyoungrene-gay-de /// livid /// LiviJoyann /// livtontea @zontiky /// loves_buckybarnes ///  Lyviel @justatiredghost /// Majure @fanthings /// Mars_and_Moon /// mieczyhale @mieczyhale /// momebie (katilara) @charmingpplincardigans /// noodlerdoodler ///  MusicLover19 ///  Nyctae /// obscurityofphylum /// ohmygodwhy @gaycinema /// Opal_Lakes /// @opal-lakes /// ophelibob_writes @a-human-pippin-took /// Papapaldi @wykart/// perceptuallydisorganizedwriter ///  PickledBeef  @pickledbeefwastaken ///  polarkai /// princejoopie @princejoopie /// punk_rock_yuppie

Q - S

queenbaskerville /// QueenOfAllCorgis /// rumbleroarsslumberingcubs /// Scalliwag @sscalliwag /// seancequeen @seancequeen /// sehn_sucht @sehn----sucht /// SerpaSas @queenbeyondthewalll  /// Shadowscast ///  Shamefulshameless @shameful-shameless /// Sharpworksamurai/// shipNslash /// Siriuspiggyback @cowboyklaus /// Smallswritesstuff @mychemicalxmen /// smile_it_will_get_better @smileitwillgetbetterbitches /// softforklave @softforklave (shameless self promo) ///spookyfbi @spookyfbi  /// stuckinmybook /// Squintern @chinchillinator ///  squishitude @squishitude /// sunriseseance @sunriseseance /// sunshineklaus

T - Y

tealeavesandtrash @carry-on-my-wayward-hobbit /// thefangirlingdead @thefangirlingdead /// TheMadHatterOfficial /// thetreasuerhunter @yeah-klave /// tjstar @i-seeaspaceshipinthe-sky /// TobiBooneTheSmallSpoone @tobiboonethesmallspoone/// TotallynotRemus @totallynotremus /// TwistedIllusions @courtneytarynofficial /// twosidedcoin /// VeteranKlaus @veteranklaus /// wildeism @knifecatklaus /// writer_inthe_dark /// yukiawison /// zweebie 

Fics (authors with currently only one klave fic)

Placeholder by Ace_Chey (mrs_sakuma) @cheydoesfandom

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A FIRST DRAFT WIP, EXPECT MISTAKES IN SPELLING, GRAMMAR, AND TIMELINES after NaNo I plan to edit and republish a cleaner, more complete version in 2021 ~~~

When Klaus sees the news that their father is dead, they’re feeding their seven-month-old daughter, Grace Kelly Katz, one year sober, and finally back on T (prescribed this time). Their siblings still haven't met Dave, let alone Gracie, and Klaus can't bear the thought of introducing them, not now, under these circumstances, so they go alone. But when the family reunion becomes complete with Five's sudden and bizarre arrival, not from 45 years in a wasteland, but directly from the lunch he ran away from 20 years ago, they realize things are going to get more complicated and they might not be able to put it off any longer.

Words: 58,217 Chapters: 36/? Status: Hiatus

Snapshots of a Life Well Lived by Ace_of_Spades_400

One week into Vietnam and the briefcase is broken. Klaus is never going home. He's just going to have to make the most of his life here, now.

Words: 13,960 Chapters: 3/3 Status: Complete

Run for miles just to get a taste by Agf

Dave comes back to 2019, and Klaus has some memories best exorcised with new ones.

Words: 1,666 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Not a Replacement, Never a Replacement by AndThenHeGotKnockedUp

Klaus hasn't piloted a Jaeger in years. He hasn't wanted to without Ben. He's spent all that time wandering far, far away from anything having to do with the Academy and kaiju.

Unfortunately for him, the world is ending, and Luther doesn't give him a choice.

(Pre-Klave! Will have a follow up in the future.)

Part 1 of the UA PacRim Fusion series

Words: 2,625 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

soldiered together by Anonymous 

"... I was foolish enough to follow him all the way to the front line."

Words: 2,993 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

know tenderness by applepandowdy

Klaus wished, more than anything, that they had just had a bit more time.

Words: 1,266 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

whatever words I say, i will always love you by ariya167 and bigembarrasingheart @ariya-167and @bigembarrassingheart

Dave kissed Klaus first, but Klaus kissed him back.

Words: 921 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

if i could choose anything in the world (id pick you every time) by aseriesofessays @macroglossus

"Would you have come back?"

He thinks about a farm.

Words: 588 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

The Boy and The Ghost by Astheroid 

“Look for me. Promise me Dave, promise you’ll look for me at the Umbrella Academy!”

Dave never knew what those words meant, the parting words of the man he loved, and they made absolutely no sense.

Until thirty-four years later when he found his purpose.

“Our world is changing. Has changed. There are some among us gifted with abilities far beyond the ordinary. I have adopted six such children. I give you the inaugural class of the Umbrella Academy.”

or story of ghost Dave finding thirteen year old Klaus and swearing to protect him from all evil.

Words: 4,494 Chapters: 2/? Status: WIP

new year, new me (things always turn out how they’re meant to be) by Astronomical_Aphrodite @aesthetic-antheia

When they travelled back through time, Klaus wasn’t expecting to be the only one who remembered. 

Part 1 of maybe by next January

Words: 80,770 Chapters: 18/20 Status: WIP

Five times Klaus dies in Vietnam and comes back, and One time Someone else does by BabyPom

Klaus can't seem to die, at least not permanently.

Words: 1,169 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

How The Hollyhocks Bloom by batcavemasquerade

In which Klaus Hargreeves, a retired pacifist, is dumped headfirst into the Vietnam War. Klaus never comes home and his brothers and sisters claw their way back to him, one by one, after the end of the world.

AKA: The siblings go back to the 1960s to regroup and to get a few measly moments of goddamned peace and quiet, and find Klaus serving in the Vietnam War, different and sober as can be.

Words: 24,035 Chapters: 16/20 Status: WIP - Chapter 16 is the new chapter 1. For the rewrite, read from 16 and upwards.

i hope you know you're my desire (i hope you know you're the one) by beezran

It must be fate when Dave puts his hand on Klaus’ cheek right as Klaus starts to ache for his kiss.

Kiss me.

His touch makes Klaus stand up straighter and edge closer to him.

“You’re beautiful, you know?” Dave says, and even with all that they’ve been drinking, Klaus knows it isn’t that what’s talking.

“Kiss me,” Klaus actually says it. He can’t take it back, and he doesn’t want to when Dave is looking at him like that.

Dave’s breath ghosts over his lips and Klaus keeps repeating it in his head like a prayer.

Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

Or he might have said it, he’s not sure when he’s so caught up in the feeling of Dave so close to him.

Words: 22,708  Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Arcane Incidents of Anoxia by Bellovebug

Klaus dies.

Klaus dies, and Dave can't breathe.

He forgets what it's like, the feeling of oxygen entering his lungs, the sensation of carbon dioxide exiting them.

He remembers, though, the stories Klaus used to tell. He remembers that joke he'd made about that briefcase he always carried around being a time machine. He remembers the tall tales of a family of superpowers, a less than stellar father. He remembers the stories he'd spun out of thin air, of time travel and a disappearing brother and a talking chimpanzee and a robot mother.

(He remembers the true story he'd told about seeing ghosts.)

He only learns once he opens that mysterious briefcase under Klaus's cot that all of the stories were true.

Every one of them.

Words: 22,075 Chapters: 4/? Status: WIP

life is full of pain, i'm cruisin' through my brain by bigembarrassingheart @bigembarrassingheart

Bullets whizzed past his ears, and he would have screamed but he already was. Klaus grabbed Dave’s face, stroked his cooling cheek, rested his head on his shoulder like he did when they had nights alone. There had to be some life left in his body. In any second he would feel the heave of his chest. He had to.

or

Klaus takes a pit stop before going back to the future.

Words: 1,188 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

found by burlesquecomposer

Klaus’s right hand is Dave’s favorite one to hold. As long as they embrace hello, Dave says, they’ll never have to say goodbye.

But war is a bitch, and Dave is the one who gave him an excuse to charge into it head-on.

Words: 2,628 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

You Drew Stars Around My Scars by caliibee

“Does it hurt?” Klaus asked softly, running his fingers over Dave’s face and down his neck. He trailed down his chest, mindful of the deep-set wound that always sent a shock through his heart no matter how many times he’d seen it. Dave caught his hands and brought them back up to cup his face.

“No, not anymore.”

Words: 792 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

The Umbrella Academy: Winter Soldier by chiquitasdave and ratsbaby (orphan_account)

Luther lands an uppercut to the jaw, sending the soldier flying, and Diego’s moving before he even lands. His grip on Klaus tightens and his mouth opens to say something, anything, to pull him back to the safety of the car they crouch behind, but Klaus beats him to the punch. He leans forward to better watch the action, to cheer his brother on (or clean up his remains, depending on how this goes), and stops cold as the soldier pushes himself to his feet again.

Klaus' first thought is that he’s beautiful. Klaus’ second thought is that he knows him.

The threat of danger is sensed and signals fire to tell the brain, no, not yet! We weren’t meant for this! He can’t take it now! The body reacts to stop him, but Klaus steps forward anyway. He ignores every impulse because he knows him, because love makes him stupid, because he has to.

Klaus takes another step forward.

‘Dave?’

‘Who the hell is Dave?’

Words: 13,120 Chapters: 3/10 Status: WIP 

I Could Not Be At Rest, I Could Not Be At Peace by CosmicJourney @cosmictapestry

With the apocalypse delayed, there's now ample opportunity for Klaus to open up to his siblings about his past. There's also ample opportunity to try and conjure Dave. Unfortunately, one of these has to take precedence over the other.

(Season 1 AU)

(Sequel to "I'll Find Sleep, I'll Find Peace")

Words: 52,274 Chapters: 10/10 Status: Complete

Sick Of Losing Soulmates by CrazyAngel

"Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences."

Back in 2019, things are the same but also different. The Hargreeves have messed with the timeline way too much and some things clearly aren't the same — like giving the chance for Klaus to meet Dave again. Klaus knows nothing about reincarnation or if it was really he and his brothers fault for this, but he'll take the chance anyway. Even if this Dave is blind now.

Part 1 of the Right Back Where We Started (Again) series

Words: 26,417 Chapters: 6/6 Status: Complete

Admist the Chaos by crazynadine 

Ten months. Klaus spent ten months in Vietnam, fighting a war he didn't belong in, falling in love with a man he didn't deserve.

The long and convoluted tale about how a time traveling junkie and a disillusioned solider found love amidst the chaos of war....

Words: 87,700 Chapters: 10/10 Satus: Complete

The beginning of something by DoctorProfessorSong @doctorprofessorsong

The Hargreeves siblings find themselves in a future they barely recognize. Their father is alive. Their home is occupied by a mixture of strangers and familiar faces calling themselves The Sparrow Academy. None of them are friendly.

But it's all going to be okay. Five has a plan to restore the timeline. The rest of the siblings just need to sit tight and lay low. Just don't wander off. How hard can that be?

A continuation of the story from S2 because I am impatient for more. This one is gonna get real dark but I promise I am going to give the Hargreeves a happy ending.

Words: 52,548 Chapters: 18/18 Status: Complete

take me out, baby by downpours @fourhargreeves

For someone who spent a decade running from the debts he owed, Klaus spent an alarming amount of time trying to recompense Dave for loving him.

Words: 6,802 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Your Song by eithergayorgayer @yerbluues9

"And you can tell everybody, this is your song."

In which Klaus can play piano and sing and decides to serenate Dave who is watching from above.

Words: 3,578 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Hands by GoldenBones

Late at night after the disco when everyone else is asleep, Klaus kneels at Dave’s bunk and whispers a silent prayer into Dave’s hands. In a rare moment of peace against the harsh Vietnam winter, Klaus holds Dave’s hand against his face and tries to sleep.

Words: 1,640 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Ink and Dirt, Eggs and Orange Juice by HappySeaNinja

It’s a quick job on an overcast day, in and out, smooth like coffee, and the only hitch is in his voice when he says goodbye. There’s dirt under his fingernails, ink on his stomach, and a lingering shot of whisky on his tongue.

Really, it’s all that’s left.

Non-linear moments in Klaus and Dave's relationship across seasons 1 and 2. Please don't read unless you've watched all of season 2 as there are spoilers.

Words: 4,631 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

oh love, i'm there in memories by hellchoirs

"If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again."

Words: 1,536 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

To Have a Home by heterophobe

Dave Katz is a simple man. He values kindness, honesty and strength of character. As someone who is queer and homeless, he also has a fairly substantial distrust of law enforcement.

This is why—when a twig of a man, with kohl-lined eyes and a vibrant pair of purple tights, sprints across the alley-way he’s seated in, skids to a halt at the corner of a dumpster, and balls himself tightly out of view from the street—Dave doesn’t make a move to flag down confused-looking uniformed officers that follow him into the mouth of the alley.

It’s also why—when said officers approach him, and ask him if he’s seen anyone come by—he takes one look at the man’s pleading eyes and shakes his head mournfully. “No, sorry officers.”

OR:

As told through a series of non-linear snapshots, Dave and Klaus come to know one another.

Words: 3,346 Chapters: 2/15 Status: WIP

Dream A Little Dream of Me by idkpeachystuff

"Klaus, thinking back, had always thought that was a strange term. Making love. He wasn't actually certain why. Sex had always felt like...well, sex. Fucking. Nothing entirely special or intimate that he felt had the effect on his heart like nearly everyone had made it seem it should be. And despite how utterly and disgustingly cliché it sounded, that was of course until he met Dave."

Klaus wakes before Dave on their last morning together, on a weekend out in town that is, leaving him with one of his only options to remember everything that had happened the night before and realizing that he was deeply in love, and no matter what, he was never getting out

Words: 3,015 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

projected stars across the night sky by iheardarumor (sonicraptors)

The best nights he’d ever had in his life were spent at his side.

Words: 1,496 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Late Shift at The Umbrella Café by intravenusann @jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s

Klaus and Ben have the afternoon shift together almost every day. But not every day are the customers as nice — or as hot! — as this new Dave guy.

Or, in other words, a story where Klaus gets his life together enough to get a boyfriend.

Words: 45,563 Chapters: 6/6 Status: Complete

Need Some Advice by Jenni4

Niki wasn’t used to anyone asking her opinion, so she was surprised when Vina walked into work with an extra energy drink and slid it to her. “Need some advice.”

Niki raised an eyebrow and opened the can and took a big gulp. Vina had been sitting next to her at the call center for exactly two days now. “What makes you think I’m qualified to give anyone advice?”

Vina shrugged out of her jacket and took her seat. “You seem to have your shit together.”

Niki almost choked on her laughter at that one. “That’s so far from the truth but…”

Words: 5,192 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Farewell by JuliusQuasar @juliusquasar and LittleRit @littlerit

Day 20: Shipwrecked

Part 10 of the LittleRit's MerMay Fills 2021

Words: 100 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

a life so demanding by kaijugore @kaijugore

"He was still carrying the war in his heart, how was he supposed to talk about that?"

Ten months. 304 days. 7,300 hours. 438,000 minutes. It would never ever ever be enough time.

Part 1 of the i am (not) afraid to keep on living series

Words: 1,861 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

the sugar rush, the constant hush by kamisado 

The scars across his body mark a treasure map of mistakes. Tiny shrapnel scars and rosy-red roadrash, a lifetime of being thrown to the ground by Academy training and the real world. The ivory line tracing across his jaw, almost invisible. The tattoos and the traintracks, the pockmarked puncture wounds scattered like a horrifying constellation across his body.

He’s so tired.

[a klaus s1 character study]

Words: 3,801 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

By The Firelight by keatches @klauzoleum

They share a long look, their lips still tilted in small, secret smiles.

“I’m Dave.” He extends an open palm, skin callous but inviting. Klaus reciprocates with a clap of his own hand against his.

“Klaus.” He tilts forward as the bus jolts, trundling them away to disaster. The briefcase knocks against the heel of his boot, but Klaus absentmindedly nudges it aside.

The five significant times Klaus spoke to Dave. The one time he never will again.

Or, how they fell in love.

Words: 14,681 Chapters: 6/6 Status: Complete

in midnights, in cups of coffee by klausgraves

Dave is just trying to keep his bookstore open, and the stoned hottie that keeps wandering in and talking at the air really, really isn't helping.

Words: 7,316 Chapters: 3/? Status: WIP 

Sehnsucht by KimbaSprite @pokemonmasterkimba

Day 26: Longing

What was supposed to be a casual night out takes a turn for the weird when Dave encounters a mysterious stranger stranded on the beach. His sister keeps telling him he needs to meet new people and make connections, so why not with Klaus? Even if he is so attractive that Dave feels he may get sick from nerves alone.

-

“Hey, my eyes are up here. Careful, or you may get lost in them.“ He looks into Klaus’s eyes as instructed and hmm. Yeah, wow.

Klaus bites his lip in a way that is definitely attractive, and Dave wonders if he realizes what he’s doing to him. Probably. Probably. Klaus seems like the kind of person who knows just how powerful they are.

All at once Dave finds himself sympathizing with old-timey sailors; he could see himself risk drowning just for the chance to exist in the same space as Klaus.

Words: 8,585 Chapter: 1/1 Status: Complete

I'll Never Let Them Hurt You (I Promise) by LaceratedLullabies

But whatever apocalyptic future Dave found himself in couldn’t be worse than the present. His world had already ended. - On February 21st 1968, Klaus Hargreeves dies in Vietnam. A heartbroken Dave follows his last connection to the man he loves: a time-travelling briefcase. 50 years out of time, Dave has to deal with a changed world, his aborted grief and a tortured Klaus who doesn't know him yet. Oh, and the impending apocalypse.

Words: 13,851 Chapters:7/? Status: WIP

I Will Follow You by lostonthisisland @distilledspirit

After Dave's death on the front lines of the Vietnam War he's pulled through time to witness important points in Klaus' life.

Was going for a 5+1 format, but it's a bit looser than that. So, in other words, 5 times Dave sees Klaus and 1 time Klaus sees Dave.

Words: 6,693 Chapters: 2/2 Status: Complete

i get down on my knees and pretend to pray by marinersapptcomplex @wavesknowshoress

He was quiet, for once, standing silent and breathing in the air around him. There were tears in his eyes.

Words: 2,044 Chapters: 1/1  Status: Complete

Soulmates by Meilena

"Klaus was twelve, as high as a kite, and in fact, did know why his soulmark looked so thin and light."

Everyone has a soulmark, which is where the name of their soulmate resides on the skin of their left forearm. Klaus has one too, only his is a little different.

Words: 853 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

(Feels Like) Heaven by Melivian @melivian

When Klaus wakes up in the afterlife, he can't believe his luck.  Somehow, despite his checkered past and wobbly moral compass, he's made it into the Good Place, where he'll spend eternity with his dream soulmate in a dream neighbourhood.

Only there are two problems. The first is that he's pretty sure the architect of this neighbourhood has the wrong person. And if she catches on that Klaus doesn't belong with all the heroes and philanthropists here, he'll be sent to the Bad Place.

The second is that for the residents, this dream is starting to feel a lot like a nightmare...

Part 1 of the I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door series

Words: 23,496 Chapters: 5/28 Status: WIP

Hello, Goodbye by michaelfalls

His eyes stare where Klaus can’t see. His soul goes where Klaus can’t follow.

Words: 2438 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

come on, baby by myeyesarenotblue @myeyesarenotblue

“Dave, my sister has powers,” Klaus says, matter of factly, bobbing his head up and down, “She’s had powers this whole time but my asshole father decided she was too-” and he looks down at the notebook, does finger quotes with one hand, “- 'uncontrollable' and 'dangerous’ to use them.”  

“Powers?”  

“Yeah.”  

“As in- superpowers? ”  

“Yeah,” Klaus says, and then- “I have to tell her," and then- "Wanna come with?"

Words: 5,081 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

your fingers weave quick minarets by nerdsandthelike @nerdsandthelike

According to Five, they have an apocalypse to stop in the future and here Klaus is fifty years too early trying to get in the pants of some probably straight GI who Ben keeps reminding him looks like Luther before the protein shakes. Because he’s not Allison, Klaus decides to put that particular observation waaaaaayyy to the side.

Words: 6,615 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

My Heart Is Playing Hide-And-Seek (Wait And Count To Four) by nessbess (orphan_account)

Klaus had spent what felt like a lifetime searching for Dave after he died in 1968. But Dave found him first, long before that. Klaus was five years old the first time he appeared.

Words: 11,908 Chapters: 8/? Status: WIP 

Five and Dave's Life Changing (Life Saving) Field Trip by neuronary

The little boy, who Dave could now see was not as little as he’d first thought, shoved a tin mug at him. “Drink this.”

Dave drank. It tasted sickly sweet and slightly citrus-y. “Who are you?”

“Five.” The boy’s scowl deepened at Dave’s confusion. “Klaus’ brother.”

Or, Five saves Dave's life to stop Klaus from moping. From Dave's perspective, a very grouchy, sleep-deprived twelve-year-old kidnaps him and he finds it much more entertaining than he should.

Inspired by Lyviel's 'Fixes to the Timeline'

Words: 1,728 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

breathy on the bits by Nucci @maundering-marauder

“So Fivey, tired of the school boy chic?” Klaus asked with a manic grin, “Because do I have so many ideas for you.”

“As long as it’s warm, I don’t really care.”

“Warm, check” Klaus noted, miming checking a box with his finger, “Any other demands?”

“No sequins,” Five replied and blipped out of the room.

---

Or, Five’s tired of wearing the Academy uniform and Klaus offers to help. As is wont to do with the Hargreeves, emotions and miscommunication ensues.

Words: 8,702 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

The Collision of Your Kiss by orphan_account

Klaus spends ten months in Vietnam.

Dave is why.

Words: 4,505 Chapters: 1/1 Status: discontinued

pieces (skin to bone) by orphan_account

The first time Klaus dies, he is thirteen. He dies again at seventeen, eighteen, twenty-four. By his fifth death, he has resigned himself to the blackness that awaits him. Not that he much cares: anything would be better than this, even blissful oblivion, even floating in blackness until his mind decays, and, like Five, he starts seeing people where there aren’t there, falling in love with a mannequin or a fleck of dust in his eye.

-

Dave won't come to Klaus, so Klaus decides to go to him.

Words: 2,128 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

in the mountain of the crouching beast by patrocluus

Dave catches his eye later, when they’re sitting next to each other in the bumpy truck, men jostling into each other on all sides; the corner of his mouth quirks up a little, just enough to make Klaus’ heart jump in his chest. He doesn’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that: like they have a secret to share, and that secret is the most important thing in the world, even if that world seems to be ending around them.

Or: It's 1968, and deep in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, Klaus meets a man who feels like home.

Words: 8,203 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

in the january rain by phcbosz

And all Klaus has left to prove that any of it happened and wasn’t just one fucked up dream is a pair of bloody dog tags, a tattoo on his arm, and the taste of ash sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Words: 5,226 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drum by PlaneJane

Klaus escapes from one terror, and finds himself in another: the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, 1968.

"They kissed at midnight, breath heavy with liquor, the first brush of Dave’s lips making Klaus weak at the knees. Giddy at the gentle way Dave took his face in his hands, like Klaus was something precious."

My Klaus and Dave backstory, because the show didn't give me enough.

Words: 1,498 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

His name was Dave by punkspiders

Klaus reflects back upon his time both in the Vietnam War, and with the man he loved more than himself.

Words: 1,654 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

How Not To Propose by RhubarbDuck

His life follows a monotonous routine: wake up, smoke, go to the same shitty grocery store, space out for eight hours and occasionally stock shelves, more drugs, rinse, and repeat.

His life was, at some point, a little more exciting (if exciting meant going on a week-long bender and waking up in a cell with the worst headache he ever experienced). After a couple weeks in jail and the threat of a rehab that he could never attend, he met Dave. Honestly, Klaus couldn’t remember his life before Dave. Dave was kind and understanding and way too put together to be with a fuck up like Klaus, but for whatever reason he seems to love Klaus- or at least he tells him so twice a day.

Or

American Ultra AU

Words: 19,824 Chapters: 5/? Status: WIP

The Moments We Had by RosyPages @thesevenumbrellas

A series of moments between Dave and Klaus as they fall in love during the war.

Words: 2,044 Chapters: 3/8 Status: WIP

In the Dark by runrarebit

So they're back in the past, they're thirteen again, Ben is alive, Vanya doesn't remember, her siblings are suddenly treating her differently, better, and all of a sudden she and Klaus are bonding- Klaus who is still trying to be clean and sober- except things are never easy, are they? There’s their father to contend with, once more alive and at the height of his power over them, and there’s secrets, always secrets, always in danger of getting out, and after their father decides that a clean and sober Klaus is a Klaus that can resume his training Reginald Hargreeves just might not be the scariest man walking the halls of the Umbrella Academy- even if only one person can see him.

The thing about Klaus is that, even trapped, in the dark, he is never alone. Never alone. Never. And the past he's been running from ever since he was a small child might just now be something he can’t escape from.

Words: 61,243 Chapters: 18/18 Status: Hitaus

well, the clock says it's time to close now by rythyme (pugglemuggle)

The first time Klaus falls in love, it's in the middle of a war. Fate really does enjoy cruel irony.

Or, a series of vignettes from the ten months Klaus and Dave spent together in Vietnam.

Words: 3,788 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Fancy Seeing You Here by Saccha @sacchariwrites

Dave miraculously survives being shot in the chest, and is present when Klaus gets in a fight at that vets bar.

Written for EnKlave Fest.

Words: 1,891 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Valentine’s Day in Vietnam by salvador-daley @salvador-daley

A hungover Klaus awakes after a night in the arms of a young man from Dallas

Words: 1.7k Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

In the Dark of the Night by sassmaster_tiresias @i-will-fong-you

The flashlight is still on, peeking out between the folds in Dave’s comforter, and Dave remembers how frantic Klaus had been to turn it on.

He remembers how he couldn’t even really see Klaus when he’d first woken up, his beautiful face obscured by the darkness. Then, he remembers the Christmas lights in Klaus’ room—strung in a haphazard zig-zag up the wall beside his bed, the soft glow that was present every time Dave had been in that room.

“The lights,” he says.

Words: 2,437 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

War is Hell by sauropod @occult-criticality

Klaus' hands were still filthy with dried blood and muck as he fumbled at the clasps, the combination lock on the top. Desperate, blind hope had his heart going a mile a minute. The dial still read that seemingly random set of numbers it had the first time he opened it on the bus, what felt like a lifetime ago.

0213-18-02-1967

“Please.” Klaus choked. “Please work.” He opened the briefcase.

Words: 80,813 Chapters: 21/? Status: WIP

New and Familiar by Snabby

If you told Dave a year ago that he had a loving (if a bit crazy) boyfriend, in a relationship which he didn’t have to hide, he wouldn’t have believed you. Although that thought isn’t as crazy in comparison to being in the future and the fact that his boyfriend, can not only see ghosts but was raised in a crazy cult-like superhero family.

In Dave’s opinion, the oddest thing out of the whole family is Five

So he was a little shocked and confused when Five popped in front of him.

“I need you to get a decent fucking cup of coffee” shoving his little finger in Dave’s face

----------

Or Klaus and Dave pretend to be Five's parents so the poor little dude can get coffee

Words: 1967 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

It's a Piece of Cake to Bake a Pretty Cake by StardustInYourEyes

Prompt: Flour fight in the kitchen Klaus and Dave's attempt at making a cake

Words: 2,535 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

i just wish that you were here, now by sapphictomaz

Immediately after the Season One finale, Klaus finds himself back in 1968, and is forced to so some soul-searching while dealing with the rest of his siblings and the memories he has of Dave from the first time around.

Title from "Wish You Were Here" by Marianas Trench.

Words: 4,055 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

face to face (and a thousand miles apart) by shadowlancer_95 @shadowsofmoonracer

His strides were long, and shaky as he stumbled through the darkness, relying on the barest threads of memory to Allison’s house. The cut on his lip stung in the cold night air, his throbbing cheekbone a mere shadow of the agony in the hollow cavity where his heart used to be.

Or,

Klaus, after his second (and most disastrous) meeting with Dave.

Words: 1,799 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

i wore his jacket for the longest time by sharkhette

So, maybe Klaus wasn’t in his right frame of mind. Maybe he hadn’t been for a long time. But Dave was dead, and that meant Klaus should be able to conjure him, one way or another. The traditional method of cleaning up his act and sitting around to wait hadn’t worked, so it was time to get imaginative.

Klaus just wants to see Dave again, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen, no matter the cost. Includes conversations with Ben, Diego, God, a surly preacher, and gratuitous references to certain MCR songs.

Words: 7,252 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

His oxygen belongs to Death by Sophiethegeek

He can almost taste their bloodlust on his tongue, feel their rage heavy in his breastbone. They’re bad today, and it’s safe to say he’s having a very bad day as a result. Each swipe is sending icy pain across his skin, making him shiver. God, he’s cold.

He closes his eyes, pretending not to hear the faint roar of the snarling, crying, screeching mass around him. Why did he think sobriety was a good idea? Christ on a cracker, this fucking sucked.

Or: After hopping around time, and returning to the day of the apocalypse that never was, Klaus falls apart slowly, then all at once.

Words: 91,661 Chapters: 8/? Status: WIP

Love You, Sugar by spaceysev

There’s a reason Klaus can’t listen to Total Eclipse of the Heart anymore, and it’s got everything to do with the only man who was ever allowed to call him Sugar.

Words: 3,828 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

musical preference by sourcheeks

“Of course you don’t like country.”

“I never said that,” Klaus replied diplomatically, even though it was true.

Words: 227 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Wings of Feathers and Wax by TerezFox8989

A look at the morning after their first time.

Hell, he always considered it a personal victory if he could put a name to a face after, which had suited him just fine. Sex had always had a means to an end, he used and was used; drugs, food, sleep, alcohol. But never this...not mornings after wrapped up in each other talking about family.

Words: 1,534 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

One Night in Saigon by terracotta_heartbreak

They're drunk, they're in a Saigon Hotel, and Klaus is smoking on the bed, but that's nothing new. But it's such an odd thing to be alone together, that doe-eyed strange man who never made sense here, and the soldier who'd fallen for him, for all those eccentricities. How are you meant to make sense of each other in the 60s, in that musky haze of war, drugs and the sounds of political blues rock?

Words: 2,011 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Just One in Thousands by TheArchaeologist @ancientstone

Take the idea that Five is followed by all his victims from his time at the Commission, and take the idea that Five is responsible for Dave’s death, and what do you get?

Pain.

Pain is what you get.

Words: 1,351 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Dancing with a Ghost by TheBestofEverything

"Would you like to share this dance with me?" Dave asked quietly.

"I'd love to," Klaus smiled as he took Dave's hand in his.

(Klaus is finally sober, and he conjures Dave.)

Words: 664 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Bad Enough for You by thehoundisdead

Dave can be bad. He doesn’t want to be but he can. He wants to spoon Klaus; to gather him up tight enough against his chest to hold all of his pieces together, to let him relax for once. He wants to take a bath with him and shampoo his hair and make him breakfast in bed and wrap him up in his softest blanket. But that’s not what Klaus wants, at least not yet. Dave has a strong suspicion that Klaus has never been treated softly by a partner. So, bad boy.

based on the song bad enough for you by all time low

Words: 8,757 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

The Way Light Swallows Shadows by TheSevenUmbrellas (RosyPages) @thesevenumbrellas

Dave is a vampire hunter who has never hunted a vampire in his life. Klaus is a vampire made for a war that ended before he was even born. When ten years of peace are put at risk after the death of a hunter, they’re both faced with the possibility that maybe the war isn’t over after all. Separated from their respective sides, Dave and Klaus have no other option but to depend on each other to get home before a war can tear their lives apart.

Words: 5,932 Chapters: 2/24 Status: WIP

Tag, You're It by totallyevan @totallyevan

Dating in Vietnam was never easy. Klaus and Dave have to watch out for everything, but thankfully they know their way around the system. Things escalate quickly and the only witness is the moon.

Words: 11,116 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

something so magic about you (so tragic about you) by Tremble

Snippets of their live in Vietnam or Dave slowly finding out that Klaus is nowhere near ordinary. --- This was originally suppose to be a 5+1 thing, but uh that didn't happen. oops

Words: 6,625 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

21.02.1960 by Uglyfrogboi

It was funny how time worked, how it was both only a couple of weeks ago yet it was also exactly nine years in the future. Why is he mourning a day that hasn’t technically happened yet? It’s a simple answer really, that was the day he thinks he last felt anything other than that horrible, thick, smothering, emptiness that seems to follow him around. Today, nine years from now, is the day that his world ended.

<>

How Klaus deals with being dropped in the past, ten days before the anniversary of Dave's death.

Words: 3494 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

you're getting on my (optic) nerves by untrustworthyglitch 

Klaus Hargreeves is many things. He's a former child superhero, an estranged brother, a drug addict, a frequent flyer at the local rehab facility. He can talk to the dead and never seems to die and loves a good thunderstorm.

He's also blind, but he wasn't always.

Part 1 of the blind!klaus (hazy, but hopeful) series

Words: 6,375 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

Scarlet Song by UrsaCentum(phantomviola) @flecket

Klaus isn’t a big fan of Hell.

drabble written for TUA AUgust 2021 Day 25: Angel/Demon

Part 6 of the Ursa's AUgust Fills 2021 series

Words: 100 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

never felt so high (think i'm coming down) by wewhofightmonsters

“Dave,” he whispers, and he leans down to press a kiss, light as a summer breeze, to Dave’s forehead, “Dave, I’m a fucking idiot. I love you back. I love you back.” And as he says it, he knows it to be true, and that small, closed up part of him that has languished in the dark and the constant haze of drugs, unfurls and stretches out towards the light. “I love you back,” he says again, in wonder.

(Klaus and Dave, and second chances)

Words: 24,536 Chapters: 8/? Status: WIP

Curl Conditioner by wormbcy @nastyworm

Klaus tidies up his supplies and puts it all back in the cabinet, and then hums to himself in thought.

"Hey Dave, space for another in there?"

Words: 6,524 Chapters: 1/1 Status: Complete

would it be enough (if I could never give you peace) by ZJpotter

The Hargreeves' and their sixties love. 

Chapter 2: Klaus, bugs, and the definiton of home. 

Words: 2,909 Chapters: 2/2  Status: Complete

[elliewan]

Boom Boom - Behind the Scenes

Hi everyone! As hinted in Chapter 14th notes, here is a (long?) tumblr post for some behind-the-scenes trivia about Boom Boom! I’m sorry it took me some time, but I’ll probably develop my HC for Thermite and Ace in another post :]

So. Here’s a small table of contents for this post. And of course, massive spoilers incoming! haha

Origin of the Title

Chapter and Rhythm building

Thermite’s friendships

Interviews with Harry

IQ/Kali’s background relationship

HC Timeline

In a nutshell

1. Origin of the title

The initial placeholder title was “Norwegian Dynamite”, then “From Texas with Norway”, then… “Boom Boom”. I’m still not happy with the title, but I think it’s good enough. And funfact, it’s kind of a mistake, but not so much. In French, my native language, heartbeat’s onomatopoeia is “Boum Boum”, while I read that in American English (the English I tended to use for my fanfic), it’s supposed to be “Thump Thump” or something like that. But I also read than in most of Norwegian dialects, “Boom Boom” could be understood as a heartbeat too. So anyway, Boom Boom refers both to the beating of their heart and to the explosions of their hard-breaching gadgets. It’s also dual, meaning that each of them is a “Boom” haha And it’s also a cute Mika song about two people being totally in love despite what their families think, and making love everywhere haha (cause in French “Faire crac crac boum boum” [“doing crac crac boom boom”] means “having sex” haha)

2. Chapter and Rhythm building

Unlike most of my fanfics, Boom Boom wasn’t written “as it goes”, I didn’t “discover” the fic while writing it. In fact, I hadn’t contemplated writing a multi-chapter for them until some comments on my Siegetober Ace/Thermite one-shots where people showed interest in the ship and a potential multi-chapter or longer story for them. 

So after the Siegetober rush, while I had several wips ongoing, I started working on it. The first blank page was basically: Ace/Thermite – how do they get together for real and a series of bullet points for potential scenes. Then, I opened a PowerPoint file and started filling the following diagram:     

Though this is now a bit obsolete, this was the first foundation. Thanks to this diagram, and the several bullet points for potential scenes I had brainstormed, I started building the story in a (ugly) board. Once again, several things are obsolete and I never really updated it – it was more of a working document for the “pre-writing” of the fic, to see if the story really made sense:

And one thing that really didn’t help was Ubisoft releasing the cutscene about Aruni out of nowhere haha. At the beginning, I panicked a bit because I thought it changed several things in my Thermite HC, but it happened to eventually fit quite well and even help adding more drama haha

And once I was ok enough with the board, despite it having several plot holes, I tried to measure the intensity of “love” and “dramatics” to see what kind of rhythm the fic was going to follow and check if I found it entertaining enough:

3. Thermite’s friendships

In the initial draft, Castle had a MAJOR part as Thermite’s best friend. He would help him sort his feelings, see the evolution of his relationship with Ace, and even go to Texas with him to help him face his family. But when re-reading for the umpteenth time Thermite’s file, I realized there was not a single mention of Castle, contrary to Hibana, Twitch and Thatcher. Not to mention Harry’s board where it’s written Thermite has a “sibling” relationship with Ash.

And that’s when everything ticked: Thermite is surrounded by great women. Sisterhood is part of who he is, how he was raised, how he lives. And this is why those women should have a stronger place in the story. So Hibana, Twitch, Aruni and Ash became real sisters to him. Hibana and Aruni being more like the big sisters – they’re reliable, sturdy and coolheaded, they provide him with advice and comfort; Aruni especially is quite similar in temper to his biological sister in my HC. Twitch is more like his same-age sister (though she’s younger), they see eye-to-eye but there’s no authority nor “big sister” feels between them; she’s the confident. As for Ash, she’s more like that distant sibling that has evolved a lot in life to the point where they don’t talk as mush as they used to… but who could move mountains just to get to him if she hears he’s in trouble. This is what I tried to convey :’)

4. Interviews with Harry

Honestly, interviews with Harry were my ultimate cheat code to give more information regarding Ace and Thermite’s psychological statuses, and various hints regarding their mental health. Though I sometimes prefer to bring this sort of nakedness and vulnerability throughout conversations with close friends, it wasn’t very possible here because: 1. Ace had no close friends with whom he could be this vulnerable, and he’s still new at Rainbow. (and he’s not even aware of his coping mechanisms and insecurities) 2. I kind of wanted Thermite to be incredibly good at clouding his issues, changing subjects and rejecting any kind of help, meaning that only Harry could get him to openly talk (or so he thought haha) about his mental health.

As for Harry’s behavior, I tried to render him as this kind of smooth, yet not evasive, therapist. One that wouldn’t be in the judgement, and who could wait whole minutes for the person to take their time to open up, and slowly but gently poking at the aching spots, and providing various resources to help them :)

Also, since in most of his psychological reports he seems to be very aware of friendships at the base, and to push some operators to meet some others, I tried to convey this vibe too. Just like when he says that he finds similarities with Ace, Dokkaebi and Sledge. Or when he offers Thermite to ask Lion and Meghan about their tattoos etc.

Also, here’s a bit of HC on how each of them deals with Harry haha

5. IQ/Kali’s background relationship

I have to admit I may have accidentally mirrored a lot Ace/Thermite’s relationship with IQ/Kali’s. Thing is that I wanted Kali to change too! I wanted her to be this impartial and authoritative bossy businesswoman that would slowly change into someone, though still sharp and arrogant, more human. I wanted Jaimini to show up a bit more. I have given veeery small hints to offer some glimpses at her true self, at what’s behind that mask. For instance, there is that moment in the fic where Ace and Kali argue, and he tells her:

“Jai, you and I both know very well that you didn't take this contract just for the money.”

Which makes Kali pale a lot, because he’s hitting a good nerve. In fact, I kind of headcanon Kali having softened enough around him, throughout their collaboration, to have confided a tiny bit about why she created Nighthaven, and all the frustrations she had grown up with. And thing is, Kali created Nighthaven because she wanted to be a hero too, just like him. She wanted to be at the heart of the battle, to protect people, to save lives, and she dreamed of a soldier life, of self-sacrifice and heroism. She just slid the wrong way, and her childhood dream turned into a private corporation of which she became a ruthless tycoon. Just like Ace, I think things went out of control at some point for her, and she just lose connection to reality and morals.

And the thing with IQ happened quite naturally. At the beginning, once I was okay with the three main squads (especially Alpha and Bravo), the relationship just happened on itself. While Montagne and Twitch were just those lovely and patient sweethearts, IQ was the one that had the hardest time with the Nighthaven folks, whether it were Ace or Kali. Both because she didn’t trust them and their secrecy, and because she has very little patience for people with difficult tempers in general haha

So, Kali being that bossy and defiant puzzle, refusing to let her see Nighthaven’s gadgets’ blueprints, things were just meant to sparkle between them. And Kali just couldn’t resist teasing IQ and reminding her she was untouchable. And through the teasing, the premises of a relationship were born. But unlike Ace/Thermite, I don’t think it followed a Colleagues to Friends to Lovers progression, but more an Enemies straight to Lovers progression haha

So anyway. I wanted to give a little boost to Kali, so that she opens up a bit more with Rainbow, and to bring a truce between Rainbow and Nighthaven’s disputes. And love just happened, once again, to be the perfect last push <3 

Another thing that could have helped her would perhaps have been some true challenging from an authority she does respect, but I found it difficult to stage and Kali wasn’t the focus of the fic anyway – perhaps another time ;)

6. HC Timeline

And here is the ugly timeline I worked with haha It’s still probable that there are some inconsistencies, but I tried to avoid them as much as possible and I’m sorry if you find some! I’m horribly bad with figures, years and stuff haha

I used most of the canonical dates, except for Jordan’s mother and sister deceases, which weren’t accurately dated in his biography and which I reinterpreted a bit to fit my story.

Also, isn’t it absolutely lovely that their birthday is only 1 day apart? u_u #ProudPisces!

7. In a nutshell

So, those were my major documents that helped me build the foundations of the fic. What happened next was some drafting and pure writing, following the publishing tempo. I think the gist of what I wanted to convey through the story is still there, even if I reworked some chapters entirely. The journey (and the destination <3) is still the same.

+ I want to once again give a proper shout out to all the wonderful readers of the fanfic, whether they’re anonymous or not! I had never received so much feedback, and so many sweet words on any work before, even back in my time on fanfic.net. I feel so grateful for that, and though I already answered to everyone who commented, and wrote many notes, I still can’t find the way to properly translate just how much it means to me. So once again THANK YOU :’D

And thank you for reading this post too, if you did haha <3

[bae-roman]

Can you do 54. “They’re not your kids, back the f*ck off.” for Roman or Bill

Ahhh I’m so sorry this took literally 5ever, but as promised, I’m clearing out my inbox so here you go! Hope it was worth the wait  😘

You and Roman had been over for 2 years. As much as you loved him, you couldn’t get past his constant self destructive ways. It was fine when it was just the two of you and Nadia, due to her not being biologically yours, you didn’t have much say despite your many efforts. But when the twins came along, everything changed.

As much as you wanted to stay with him, you had to do what was best for the children so you took the kids and moved out. Though Roman was extremely angry and hurt at what you’d done, he agreed for you to bring Nadia because you were essentially her mother and you both agreed that all the siblings should be raised together.

Despite whatever resentment he had towards you, he shoved it aside and put all his focus into co-parenting your children.

Though he hid it well, Roman was a complete wreck without you. He wallowed in his grief attempting to self medicate with drugs, hookers and alcohol but none of it came close to filling the void you left. You, alternatively, had put all your efforts into being the best mother you could be. You still loved - and believed you always would love- Roman but it wasn’t only about you anymore. You hadn’t even considered dating someone else until your friends made you go out on a date with one of their co-workers, Avery.

Avery was a catch. Steady career, independent, smart, funny, handsome, great in bed… but he wasn’t Roman. You had continued to see Avery, hoping that you would feel something close to how you felt for Roman but that never happened.  If there was a spark between you and Avery, you and Roman had a wildfire and being completely honest with yourself, Avery was nothing more than a placeholder. You knew it was wrong of you to stay with him for so long, lying to him and yourself about your feelings but  you were terrified that if you didn’t move on now you would be stuck on Roman forever.

You waited seven months before introducing Avery to your children. Roman obviously wasn’t thrilled about this, let alone the whole Avery situation altogether, but you allowed him to do all of the security and background checks he wanted until he no longer had any reasonable grounds to object.

In preparation for this new man entering their lives, he took the family on an impromptu trip to disney world and then let them run wild in Toys R’Us, giving them multiple reminders that “Daddy is the best”, “They only have 1 dad” and “Avery sounds like a girl’s name”.

The kids and Avery had gotten along well. You introduced him as a friend that would be spending more time around as opposed to your boyfriend - though the boys were too young to even grasp what a boyfriend was.

As time went on, the children got more comfortable with Avery and Roman became more comfortable with you having another man in your life. He knew that there was no longer anything he could do to change your mind but if it was his decision, you’d still be with him.

On one of the days Roman was meant to pick up the children, he informed you that he was running late. You were out at a work lunch and the kids were at home with the nanny. Despite your offer to pay her extra, she couldn’t stay later due to her own family commitments and even with you leaving now, there’d still be 20 minutes where the children would unsupervised. Desperate, you called Avery and asked if he could go over to your place early. You’d already had plans to spend the weekend together so it wasn’t too much of a hassle. Under normal circumstances, you would never leave your young children alone with anyone but this was an emergency, the kids liked him and you trusted him. You updated Roman, who was already on his way, of what was happening and told him you’d be there as soon as you could.

When Roman arrived to your home, the sight in front of him made his blood boil. The boys were playing on the swing set in the yard with Avery while Nadia was sitting alone on the porch, looking sad.

Roman parked the car and walked up to her, “Hey princess, why aren’t you playing with your brothers?” he asked, while picking her up and kissing her cheek. The 5 year old wrapped her arms around his neck and replied, “Avery said I’m bad and can’t play and I have to sit here…but I wasn’t being bad daddy!”

Roman wanted to kill him.

“I know you weren’t, sweetheart. Go play with your brothers.”

At some point during this exchange, Avery noticed that Roman had arrived and walked up to him. Before he could say anything, Roman cut him off, “You ever try that shit with my kids again, I’ll break every bone in your fucking body, got it?”

“You weren’t here, you don’t know what she did. She’s a fucking brat.”Avery, not one to step down easy shot back while poor Nadia was still in ear shot.

Roman fought back every instinct he had to snap the man’s neck in half solely due to the presence of his children. He did, however, place a firm grip on Avery’s shoulder, hard enough to leave bruises in the shape of his fingers.

“They’re not your kids. Back the fuck off” Roman growled.

“I would, but your ex seems to want a real man around.”

At this point, you came home to see your twins still on the swings and Nadia looking upset while standing near her father who was clearly furious. Knowing Roman, you assumed that whatever situation you were walking in on had something to do with dumb male jealousy so you rushed over to Nadia, grabbed her hand and led her away from the angry men, over to the porch.

Still having no idea about what the argument was really about, you crouched down so that you were eye level with Nadia and brushed her hair behind her ears.

“Don’t worry baby, Daddy and Avery are just… play fighting. Like your brothers do”

Nadia looked down and shook her head, “Am I bad?”

“What? Of course not sweetie, where did you hear that?

“Avery said it. And he said bad words and that I was a brat” she responded sadly.

You instantly saw red.

Giving Nadia a peck on the forehead, you assured her that she was nothing short of an angel before instructing her to get her brothers and take them inside.

You marched over to the adults, in the middle of an increasingly aggravated argument and gave Avery the dirtiest look you could muster.

“Me and you are finished. You fucking piece of shit” you spat at him then turned to Roman, “You have my full permission to do whatever you feel is necessary. Just make sure the kids and the neighbours don’t see.”

Avery tried to say something but before he could form a full word, you slapped him across his face as hard as you could. You rushed to the door, meeting your kids just as they walked into the house.

Roman smirked at Avery and dragged him into the back garage.

It was hours before Roman entered your home. You noticed he had changed his clothes.

“Kids napping?”

You nodded, continuing to make dinner

“How are they?”You sighed, “The boys are fine. Nadia is…. better. I think we should have a talk with her later, both of us. I mean I told her that Avery was just a bad man who lies and that she’s not even close to what he said but I feel like it might be better if she hears it from both of us?”

Roman nodded his head.

It was quiet then, for a bit at least. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

You finally broke the silence, “So Avery… he’s gone?”

Roman nodded once again, “Yep. His car too, there shouldn’t be any trace of him around here but incase the cops come knocking-” “- Say nothing and call you, I remember the drill” you both chuckled then, and it was nice. Like old times, when things were good between you two.

“Did he suffer?”

Roman ran a hand through his hair, “You really want to know?”

You debated for a second before nodding

“Yeah, he did.”

“Good” was all you could respond.

Once again it was quiet.

“Are you okay?” Roman asked, genuinely concerned at you lack of reaction.

It wasn’t what he said or how he said it, but you burst into tears. You were trying to hold them back but couldn’t any longer. It wasn’t that you were sad about Avery. Finding out what he said you your little girl was more than enough to make you hate him with every fibre of your being, you just couldn’t get over how blind you had been. You’d been with this man for over a year now, you went on trips with him, slept with him, brought your kids around him thinking he was this great guy but really, you had no clue what he was capable of. You felt so guilty and ashamed and stupid, like you were the worst mother in the world.

Once you broke down, Roman grabbed you and held you in his arms while you let it all out. He rubbed your back and comforted you as best as he could.

“You know you’re like the best mom, right? I would have never let Nadia come with you if that wasn’t true” You sniffled an nodded your head, keeping it buried in his chest.

“And you weren’t stupid you were… in love” Roman continued, audibly grimacing as he said the last part.

You couldn’t help but pull away form him and laugh, “The only person I’ve ever loved is you Roman, he was just….a warm body to keep me company.”

Roman smirked, “Well what did you expect? You already had perfection. It could only go down from me”

You rolled your eyes and playfully smacked his chest before going back to finishing up dinner.

“I know it’s supposed to be your weekend but do you want to just stay over? We can have family time and take the kids to the park or something? Isn’t the carnival in town? That could be fun”

“Yeah, that sounds nice”

[ghost-nabbers-imagines]

They Propose: Larry

Larry

(Set like summer after high school before Sal and him have moved out)

The first time it wasn’t really planned.

The gang was out at an arcade. You were playing Dance Dance Revolution while Sal and him were up at the counter deciding what to spend their tickets on.

They had spent the night having a brotherly competition over who could score the most tickets. Sal bought a ton of candy but something caught Larry’s eye. A fake diamond ring. He got that mischievous smirk of his as he traded in his tickets.

The two boys returned to the table Sal now noticing what his step brother purchased.

“Larry are you gonna propose to S/O!?”

“I think so little man. I think it’s time.”

The whole group eventually returns to the table laughing and talking as they enjoy pizza, wings, fries, and beer (except for Sal who had a Caprisun.)

Larry has one arm wrapped around your shoulders his other hand fiddling with the ring in his pocket. He had a small bit of nervousness in his stomach but not as much as he would’ve thought. He knew this was the right move.

“Larry they updated the DDR machine with some new music. They even added Singular.”

“Oh hell yeah you and me have to go dance to Sanity’s Fall!”

He’d excitedly pull you from the booth. Sal had everyone follow pulling out his phone in preparation.

Larry put in some quarters and you too began following the steps to your guys favorite song.

Ash, Maple, Chug, Neil, and Todd were a bit confused as to why Sal made them follow but they all stood around while Sal filmed you both.

When the song came to an end you smiled noticing your score was slightly higher.

“Take that Johnson. Your (girlfriend/boyfriend/ partner) just kicked your ass at your favorite song.” You’d tease as you faced your friends who all had shocked and happy faces. You tilted your head confused making them point to behind you.

You turn around to see Larry down on one knee holding out the toy ring.

Your hand comes up to cover your mouth and your eyes began to water.

“Larry what are you doing?”

“S/O I’ve loved you for a every second I’ve known you. You’re my sun, my moon, and all my stars. I never thought I’d be the kinda guy to propose or to ever want to get married after what my dad put my mom through but I know you’d never abandon me and I can’t think of any future that could be better than one where I get to call you my spouse. The way you get along with my mom, how you always help her around the apartments without anyone asking you too, how you love chilling in my room just listening to music and watching me paint or playing video games together, how you are with Sal and my friends. These reasons and so many more are why I love you and want to spend the rest of my life loving you. So (your full name) will you marry me?”

You nodded your head excitedly the tears falling down your cheeks.

“Yes Lar bear of course!”

He’d kiss your hand before sliding the ring on your finger which fit perfectly. Then he’d stand up and wrap his arms around you lifting your feet off the ground.

You hold onto each other tightly as he spins you around mumbling I love you’s into your ear. Once he set you back down he’d tip you giving you a passionate kiss.

Sal would stop recording and the group would come up congratulating you and group hugs all around.

Larry and you would go into the photo booth and take cheesy engagement photos for his mom

On the walk home he can’t stop holding you and he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

“I’m gonna get you a real ring babe that’s just a placeholder.” He’d say watching you observe the fake diamond.

“You better not I love this ring.”

“It’s plastic and only cost 25 paper fuckin tickets nah you’re getting a real one someday.”

When you woke up the next morning Lisa was actually sleeping in for once so you made breakfast. Sal helped you come up with the idea of making cinnamon knots.

Larry tried helping but he’s not great in the kitchen and not all that awake. So instead he drew up a pretty note that said we’re tying the knot. He even paper clipped the photos to the sign.

When Lisa came out you had everything all nicely set up on the table.

“Morning mom here take a seat. S/O and Sal made breakfast.”

“Larry what did you do? Please tell me you didn’t drag my sweet Sal and lovely S/O into anything dangerous or illegal.”

“What? No chill we have good news I didn’t do anything bad.”

She looked at you and Sal to see you smiling and Sal doing a thumbs up so she shrugged and took a seat.

Larry sat her coffe down in front of the tray of food and the sign.

She took a sip from her cup before moving her eyes to the food. You could see she quickly read the sign and her eyes moved to the pictures her suspicious expression changing into a much happier one.

When she looked back up Larry was standing with his arms around you as you held out your hand with the ring.

“You’re engaged?!”

“Yea I proposed last night. Wasn’t planning on it but couldn’t wait any longer.”

She’d jump up pulling you both into a bone crushing hug.

“My baby’s getting married!”

“Mom we can’t breathe.”

She’d let go grabbing your hand to admire the ring.

She notices it’s just a toy and eyes her son for a moment before leaving the room.

When she returns she has a small box in her hand.

“This was the ring your father proposed to me with. He’d want you to give it to the person you love.”

She’d hand Larry the ring box. And he looked at both of you silent.

“Mom are you sure?”

“Yes. Besides I have my ring from Henry now. I haven’t worn that in years.”

Larry smiled hugging his mom again.

When he pulled away he turned his attention to you. With that signature grin of his he got back down on one knee.

“What do ya say babe is the answer still a yes?”

“Always will be you goofball.”

He’d replace the plastic ring with a real one but you insisted on wearing the original on your other hand at least.

[ahnmakes]

devlog # 8 // mapmaking, part 2 (plants, blender modeling + refining map visuals)

welcome back to the world of Gamedév!

okay, so, it’s been a couple weeks since the last devlog, but honestly, it feels like years have passed.  to let you know a bit of what i’ve been up to, i’ve mainly been reflecting on pursuing further education in a formal setting.  for close to a year now, i’ve already been studying computer science and game development pretty intentionally on my own - with the abundant resources available online, it is more than possible to receive a full and competent education without university studies. however, there are a few things that self-studying does not always make easy or accessible, namely: a) tangible, structured evidence of the skills you’re learning, in a format others (employers) feel they understand, b) opportunities to collaborate and build with other people around your skill levels, and c) in-person connections, leading to further interpersonal and career potentials

these are things that i think university education does tend to provide more consistently, and they are the reason that i am nearly certain i’ll be pursuing more formal education in the coming months.  i am mainly waiting to hear back on a funding opportunity, so more details on my plan in the next devlog ..

as far as progress on zodaia, the main thing i worked on this week was getting some new models into the game.  as you may remember, in the previous devlog, i had made a number of environmental models .. pretty much entirely out of cubes.  the first model, a tree, allowed me to render a stunningly realistic and artistically compelling forest:

it may be difficult to tell, but this is a digitally-rendered forest scene, not a photo; hard to believe, but if you zoom in close, you might see subtle indications that these models were created from geometric shapes.  while i did not imagine i could improve upon the flowing asymmetry of the grass or the bold sharpness of the rock faces, i thought i would give it a shot.

putting these placeholder assets temporarily aside, i decided to start with a sort of leafy plant because it seemed like something i couldn’t fuck up too much.

i opened blender, deleted the initial cube, and started with a flat plane, just the default one provided.  i then extruded it a couple of times, making a longer, flat plane - it seemed easier to work with the leaf as a flat piece before bringing it more into 3d.  i next curved the shape by selecting loop cuts and scaling them down as made sense to me; i didn’t follow any guide, just went along adjusting the shape into something pleasing to me.  once i had a flat leaf that looked nice, i put a loop cut down the length of the leaf, and i rotated the whole leaf up, keeping its base close to the center, where the axes meet.  i then pulled this center loop of vertices down, creating an indent in the leaf, then individually adjusted the side vertices up and down to create more depth, as if the leaf were rotated or growing differently along its edges.

and that brought me to this:

i know that is a lot of blender/3d-modeling talk, already, so let me know if you’d like a more in-depth blender introduction; if you support me on patreon, i will definitely make a tutorial so you can know more about the modeling process!

anyhow, once i had this one leaf, i just duplicated it and started manually positioning the leaves to make something that looked decent.  i’m sure there is a more perfomant or efficient way to do things, but my goal right now is simply to make - i have spent years trying to conceptualise an ideal way to do everything, which often led to me not making anything at all, but the intention of this blog is for ahn to make.  so, this is what i made:

obviously, as this was the first model i’ve made for the game (aside from the hex model, which will also soon get a rework), i couldn’t wait to see the model actually in the game.  i made a basic green material, imported the model (as an fbx file) into unity, and simply replaced this with the model in one of the original InteractableObjects - i think i replaced the bush?

here’s how it looked:

already stunning!  sincerely, this time.  i am in love with the simplicity of this effect - and though i might feel differently later, right now, i love how this plant looks.

next, i continued swiftly on with a tree, since i imagined that is the thing that would be most engaging and also most visually rewarding.  in the past, i have created low-poly trees before and absolutely loved the effect, so i also decided i would go for something similar this time.

skipping most of the modeling details, i basically just started with a cylinder and extruded, extruded, extruded and repositioned vertices until i got this shape - it took probably 5 minutes (including the part where i needed to bond the duplicated tree branch by manually creating faces between the central and duplicated branch vertices).

i then added in some icospheres, which i just pulled around and contorted into these shapes, which i (again) duplicated.

after creating materials for the tree bark and the tree top and putting a light in the scene, this was the quick render result.

and now, in the game..

the difference is absurd, especially considering how little energy it took to make these trees.  i created a dark and a light variation once i had the models imported into unity, and will certainly make variations with many more shapes - however, right now, there is only that one tree model in this scene.  could you tell?  without studying the trees too hard, i think the automatic rotation (included in the procedural generation) gives a convincing effect, as if there are many tree models there.

and since i was coasting on the excitement of having these models complete nearly immediately, i decided to go ahead and do the grass and rock models, too.

again, start with one shape ..

then duplicate and make material ..

et voilà.  also featuring the rocks i made.

actually, the first time i imported the model and pressed play, it crashed unity and looked like this:

why? i initially thought it was because i had made the noob mistake of making 3d grass (which i did) instead of using 2d images, but actually, it was because i had also imported a light and camera for each grass model; remember to delete them from the scene in blender before exporting!

with that, i was pretty in love with how everything was going.  the environments are starting to look more organic and how i dream of them being.

updated glacier: (not much going on here yet; needs more water effects, snow falling .. but i did update the ice color and transparency to be more distinct from the snow)

desert scene with a very bright weather:

ash biome looking almost exactly the same:

gardens at night with an ambient light:

and two new biomes: the tundra, a mostly frozen, rocky landscape with some plant-growth:

and the cove, dark because it’s inside/a cave:

overall, i am super pleased with these developments and *so* thrilled for the next changes to come.

look out for the next devlog, where i’ll probably be working on a couple more models (or texturing/modeling the hexes?) and especially the more weather-y environmental effects: lighting, post processing, clouds, rain, lightning, water, the sky -- much to come.  until then..

with love and hopefully a low poly count,

ahn

// support me on patreon?  click here to join my party and help me keep making content like this <3

[theconcernedpotato]

Information overload

So today marks the first round of closed alpha tests. i am finally there. The feed back i got already was mostly good, some good points that were made along with some being completely irreverent. But i Get more into that later on within this blog. 

A ton of work has been done just in this last week, which generally means going to bed at four/five in the morning and up at seven for another round, all week long, so here it goes.

  Knocking out a basic Figma ui/ux flow, i set to work trying to get that within the game. For the most part it stayed quite close to what i had within Figma.

After having to steer at a screen for so long, i darkened up the whole game so it was easier on my eyes. 

So the basic Home screen remain the same with only getting an icon swap since everyone understands what a play button is. (Which by the way, everything you see including icons are all placeholders). Here you will see Stan within his house/caravan with all items you have won displayed around his home. With future updates having items you can buy (using in game money made from your stunts) to customize your home and stunt items. 

Both the Movie selection and stunt selection remain untouched from prototyping.

The game screen again mainly remained the same, with small changes here and there. icons would get a a face lift with trying to keep to things people could identify and understand without words. 

The item selection on the right is no longer retractable, although i may add that back for anyone that wants to navigate the level with a much larger screen visible, i mean whats the harm, use it or not?

The pause button has been removed completely since it was just irreverent in a game like this. 

The stunts budget and how much you currently have spent added  and also a working bin

You may have noticed a new button.. Was meant to be highlighted and was within the giff tool but oh well. At the push of this button it it takes your finish point, then once released, returns you to your previous point. 

Also you may have notice an increase in select-able items. i wont show case the crash mat since its just that. Stops Stan going splat. Currently you dont need it since i have yet to place in a payment system, but future updates will see you using them else Stan’s med bills will come directly out of his pay (med insurance can become expensive 😷😰).

The second item is a high powered fan. Self -explanatory really. Been having quite a bit of fun with this item.

The option menu remains a sore point. As it is I think the current one lacks the looks the mock up one did. Unfortunately its not clear the back arrow takes you back to the stunt screen rather then the game. Hopefully i will find a pretty solution.  

So once you finish the stunt, the man in charge looks over the sheet (figuratively speaking) and you are evaluated on how well it went. Now it may not have been clear but all those white dots are camera shots your producer really wanted to get for the movie. So you are evaluated on how many of those shots you got and how well you managed to keep under budget. 

At the end of the day there isn’t really a lose condition. As long as you get to the end point, you’ve completed the level, so its very possible to be way over budget and not get a single asked for shots, cause at the end of the day, no footage is wasted.

Once all the stunts in the movie are complete its released out into the world to be judged, much like this game will D: 

For reasons i wanted to go with having a rotten tomatoes score system within my game, mostly because i think it gives a better over all idea on how you went. You can totally boom the egg score but might kill on the Audience. leaving many options for rewards and different out comes depending on your own play style. 

I decided to condense the reward screen and movie screen in one. Just made sense, plus i was rushed off my feet, so anything that saves me work (like making, setting up or coding another screen is a win in my book).

So what didn’t make it to alpha.. mainly the in game shop. Not only was I crazy rushed off my feet, but i had no items for people to buy for Stan, nor did i have his payment for doing the stunts set up.

This will differently be rectified come the second round of testing (third i guess since you guys weren’t in on the first).

Now i know I’ve been pretty bad at this blog thing on this project, mainly because so much is going on with in-work and out that it's kind of been pushed to the far side of the brain. 

 A few notes that I failed to mention, in my prior posts is i have been corresponding with a musician over discord, who I only no as Greg. 

Things started with a bang, with me having all these grand ideas of themed music for each stunt, and other areas of the game like within Stan’s home. Even ideas of tracks being able to be purchased if you wanted something different to listen to. What I didn't account for was this would increase the file size dramatically and being on mobile, contrary to what you have herd, size is everything.. 

Currently I have placeholder music within the game, one tract that plays throughout the entire game. Passing the bad news to Greg, he came back with a single track will hopefully find a home within my this game. 

Now lets take about development. What a week, had its ups and downs and even learnt some new dance moves this week- I call it pushing alpha. 

 Five forward, seven back, three forward, two back, two forward. Kind of sums up the state of affairs this week, but at least it's moving. 

 Friday I was on fire! Unfortunately in my sleepy slumber I forgot to check off or write down where I was at.. this bit me in the ass I decided to take my little's out into the world for the day, mostly because i needed to step away from work. This landed me laying on the beach half the day looking up at the sky. Later with mind cleared, tea done and little's down, i jumped back into it. 

Unfortunately a large part of Saturday night saw me retracing every job I had done Friday night to see if it was done, set up for, or half completed.. once thinking I knew where I was, I was off again making progress. 

Before getting into the crazy stuff, i looked at the levels i had chucked together. Although not final levels as i had yet to design any, what i did through together needed reordering. turns out the second was way harder then the first four..

Along the way I started working on a job that gathered all the information of each level, then using that information, turned it into a usable score which would tell you how the movie was receive at the end of the last stunt. (Egg and Aud score) but It seemed I had actually wrote such a code the night before, but completely different to the one I had just done. Now I will fully admit I was on that next level shit and may have been possessed by the coding God when I wrote it, because as it stands, I have no idea how it works, but it does, so it's probably best I don't touch it and keep fully away from the Alien code. 

So with my eyes glowing red probably from Rad poisoning being on the computer for the last eight hours straight  #justjokingbutprobilynot, and Saturday resulting in nothing but net.. i went and did something stupid again. Last minute I break my game completely.. Half four and the kids will be up in a fe hours a head to bed in such a foul mood.

 Up a few hours later to make breakfast, as the little’s ate i jump back on. i in my state renamed one script somehow which saw the whole game destroyed.. on the plus side i found it, plus see that it needs to be more robust if one naming convention can do that.   

Wasn’t the first time. earlier in the week i spent two day looking for a bug that stopped play after you finished the first level, one that wasn't throwing up any warnings or stopping any other function. I had paused time at the end of the level and hadn’t turned it back on.. To be fair I’ve had about two hours of sleep every night for the last week. Don’t do it, its not good nor does it help in the long term. seems all these little mistakes caused from being over tied has pushed back the project rather then moved it forward.

Sunday nights I was up hitting all those notes till 5:20 this morning yet again, then up an hour later. Play test day.

So all that work came falling down in a heap on the floor in my time of need. Now i didn't ask for much but i figured when you put work in to something it should pay off.. Built out the game for the test phone i had and boom, I’m holding a seven week turd in my hands. Functions that worked before no longer did for some reason. Panning the camera, so placing items where you wanted them couldn't happen. the bin also no longer worked, nor the restart button. 

Deciding not to shit myself in front of a room full of people really to test the game (along with other dev games), coffee was needed.

So the game works well enough on the computer still which is good. Although not for the computer, i did at least have the functionality in there that aloud it to be tested to an extent, so i built out a computer version. Which is where some of the irreverent feed back comes in.. UI too big,  no exit button, no zoom in or out.. 

I wont go into it fully, as it made me realize a few thing like why not add functionality for the computer? Controls at least at the moment since a computer version will need more items and options etc. But as it stands, as annoyed as i am with a broken mobile game, its coming together. 

Hoping to fix those Mobile issues, and add some computer functionality, then push it out to the world on Wednesday. Till next time, Fingers crossed!

[cyfox604]

Stardew Valley Download Mac Free

Stardew Valley 1.4.5 Mac Free Download

Stardew Valley 1.4 Mac Download Free

The Stardew Valley modding community is very welcoming. Feel free to ask the community for help. Unpack game files. You can't edit an.xnb file itself, you need to edit the file that's inside it. Pulling out that inner file is called unpacking, and putting it back is called packing. There are two main XNB unpackers available. Free Download Stardew Valley PC Game – You’ve inherited your grandfather’s old farm plot in Stardew Valley. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land. STARDEW VALLEY PC Game free. download full Version via direct link. Below we are going to share complete information about Stygian STARDEW VALLEY Game with screenshots, game-play, user reviews, and much more. STARDEW VALLEY Free Download PC Game Cracked in Direct Link and Torrent. It Is Full And Complete Game.

Call of Duty Black Ops II Multiplayer & ALL DLC PC Game Repack-Games.com. Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 ALL DLC’s Free Download PC Game Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Download For PC Latest Version Repack-Games

Pushing the boundaries of what fans have come to expect from the record-setting entertainment franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops II propels players into a near future, 21st Century Cold War, Call of Duty Black Ops II Multiplayer & ALL DLC PC Game Repack-Games.com. where technology and weapons have converged to create a new generation of warfare. Apocalypse Nuketown Zombies Map Aim and Shoot in CoD Black Ops 2 Most Played Multiplayer of All Place Now Shot it to the last New Game To Play Call Of Duty 2 Black ops Repack-Games Play for Free All new Games Online Multiplayer Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 + ALL DLC’s Free Download PC game .

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 + 36 DLCs + MP with Bots + Zombie Mode

Zombies maps from Call of Duty®: World at War, Call of Duty®: Black Ops and Call of Duty®: Black Ops II. Complete maps from the original saga in fully remastered HD playable in Call of Duty®: Black Ops III.

INCLUDED DLCs

Apocalypse Nuketown Zombies Map Revolution Uprising Vengeance Extra Slots Pack African Flags of the World Calling Card Pack Afterlife Personalization Pack Aqua Personalization Pack Asian Flags of the World Calling Card Pack Bacon Personalization Pack Beast Personalization Pack Benjamins Personalization Pack Breach Personalization Pack Comics Personalization Pack Coyote Personalization Pack Cyborg Personalization Pack Dead Man’s Hand Personalization PackDia de los Muertos Personalization Pack Dragon Personalization Pack European Flags of the World Calling Card Pack Graffiti Personalization Pack Jungle Warfare Personalization Pack Kawaii Personalization Pack North American Flags of the World Calling Pack-A-Punch Personalization Pack Paladin Personalization Pack Party Rock Personalization Pack Rogue Personalization Pack South American Flags of the World Calling Card Pack UK Punk Personalization Pack Viper Personalization Pack Weaponized 115 Personalization Pack Zombies Personalization Pack

HOW TO INSTALL

How To Install

Download The Game

Extract It Using (WinRAR)

Run The Game As (Admin)

That’s It (Enjoy 🙂 )

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7. Windows XP is not supported

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz

Memory: 2 GB for 32-bit OS or 4 GB for 64-bit OS

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB

DirectX: Version 9.0c

Hard Drive: 16 GB

MIGHT NO LONGER BE WORKING. IF NOT, NOTHING WE CAN DO. DOWNLOAD AT YOUR OWN RISKDownload Here

How to Create Stardew Valley Mods

What is a SMAPI mod?

A SMAPI mod uses the SMAPI modding API to extend the game logic. The mod can respond when something happens in the game (like when an object is placed in the world), run code periodically (like once per update tick), change the game’s assets and data, etc. SMAPI mods are written in C# using the .NET Framework, and Stardew Valley uses XNA/MonoGame for the game logic (drawing to the screen, user input, etc).

Why do mods use SMAPI?

SMAPI does a lot for you! For example, SMAPI will…

Load your mod into the game. Code mods aren’t possible without SMAPI to load them.

Provide APIs and events which let you interact with the game in ways you otherwise couldn’t. There are simplified APIs for game asset/data changes, player configuration, translation, reflection, etc. These are covered later in the guide.

Rewrite your mod for crossplatform compatibility when it’s loaded. That lets you write mod code without worrying about the differences between the Linux/Mac/Windows versions of the game.

Rewrite your mod to update it. SMAPI detects and fixes mod code broken by a game update in common cases.

Intercept errors. If your mod crashes or causes an error, SMAPI will intercept the error, show the error details in the console window, and in most cases automatically recover the game. This means your mod won’t accidentally crash the game, and it makes it much easier to troubleshoot errors.

Provide update checks. SMAPI automatically alerts players when a new version of your mod is available.

Provide compatibility checks. SMAPI automatically detects when your mod is incompatible and disables it before it causes problems, so players aren’t left with broken games.

Can I make a mod?

Yes! This guide will help you create a simple mod step-by-step. If you follow along, you’ll have created a mod! Then you’ll just need to make it do what you want.

If you’re new to programming: many mod developers start with little or no programming experience. You can certainly learn along the way if you’re determined, but you should be prepared for a steep learning curve. Don’t be too ambitious at first; it’s better to start with a small mod when you’re figuring it out. It’s easy to become overwhelmed at first and give up. The modding community is very welcoming, so don’t be afraid to ask questions!

If you already have programming experience, you should be fine. Programming experience in C# or Java will make things easier, but it isn’t critical. If you’re unfamiliar with C#, you can skim through the Learning C# references below to fill in any gaps.

Can I make a mod without SMAPI?

Yep. Many SMAPI mods support ‘content packs’, which let you provide JSON text files, images, etc which they use. For example, you can use Content Patcher to edit the game’s images and data with zero programming needed. The rest of this guide is about creating a new SMAPI mod; for content packs, see the documentation for the mod that’ll read it.

Where can I get help?

The Stardew Valley modding community is very welcoming. Feel free to ask for help in #modding on the Stardew Valley Discord.

Get started

Learn C#

Since mods are written in C#, it’s a good idea to get acquainted with it first. You don’t need to memorise everything, but a grasp of the basics (like fields, methods, variables, and classes) will make everything else much easier.

Some useful resources:

C# Quickstarts teaches the basics of C# with interactive examples.

C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners is a video guide which will walk you through C#, from the basic concepts to event-driven programming (which is what SMAPI mods mostly use).

Requirements

Before you start:

Read the Player Guide. The rest of this guide assumes you’re already familiar with using mods.

Install Stardew Valley.

Install SMAPI.

Install the IDE (integrated development environment).

On Linux: install MonoDevelop.

On Mac: install Visual Studio 2017 for Mac. (This is a rebranded MonoDevelop.)

On Windows: install Visual Studio 2017 Community. When the installer asks about workloads, enable .NET Desktop Development.

If you’re not familiar with Visual Studio 2017 (on Windows/Mac) or MonoDevelop (on Linux), Modding:IDE reference explains how to do the important stuff you need for this guide.

Create the project

A SMAPI mod is a compiled library (DLL) with an entry method that gets called by SMAPI, so let’s set that up.

Open Visual Studio 2017 or MonoDevelop.

Create a solution with a .NET Framework class library project (see how to create a project). Make sure you choose .NET Framework, not .NET Core or .NET Standard.

Change the target framework to .NET Framework 4.5, 4.5.1, or 4.5.2 for best compatibility (see how to change target framework).

Reference the Pathoschild.Stardew.ModBuildConfig NuGet package (see how to add the package).

Restart Visual Studio/MonoDevelop after installing the package.

Add the code

Next let’s add some code SMAPI will run.

Delete the Class1.cs or MyClass.cs file.

Add a C# class file called ModEntry.cs to your project.

Put this code in the file (replace YourProjectName with the name of your project):

Here’s a breakdown of what that code is doing:

using X; (see using directive) makes classes in that namespace available in your code.

namespace YourProjectName (see namespace keyword) defines the scope for your mod code. Don’t worry about this when you’re starting out, Visual Studio or MonoDevelop will add it automatically when you add a file.

public class ModEntry : Mod (see class keyword) creates your mod’s main class, and subclasses SMAPI’s Mod class. SMAPI will detect your Mod subclass automatically, and Mod gives you access to SMAPI’s APIs.

public override void Entry(IModHelper helper) is the method SMAPI will call when your mod is loaded into the game. The helper provides convenient access to many of SMAPI’s APIs.

helper.Events.Input.ButtonPressed += this.OnButtonPressed; adds an ‘event handler’ (i.e. a method to call) when the button-pressed event happens. In other words, when a button is pressed (the helper.Events.Input.ButtonPressed event), SMAPI will call your this.OnButtonPressed method. See events in the SMAPI reference for more info.

Add your manifest

The mod manifest tells SMAPI about your mod.

Add a file named manifest.json to your project.

Paste this code into the file:

Replace the <...> placeholders with the correct info. Don’t leave any <> symbols!

This will be listed in the console output when the game is launching. For more info, see the manifest docs.

Try your mod

Build the project. If you did the create the project steps correctly, this will automatically add your mod to the game’s Mods folder.

Run the game through SMAPI.

The mod so far will just send a message to the console window whenever you press a key in the game.

Troubleshoot

If the tutorial mod doesn’t work…

Review the above steps to make sure you didn’t skip something.

Check for error messages which may explain why it’s not working:

In Visual Studio, click Build > Rebuild Solution and check the Output pane or Error list.

In MonoDevelop, click Build > Rebuild All and wait until it’s done. Then click the “Build: XX errors, XX warnings” bar at the top, and check the XX Errors and Build Output tabs.

See the troubleshooting guide.

If all else fails, come ask for help in the #modding in the Stardew Valley Discord.

Go further

SMAPI APIs

SMAPI provides a set of APIs you can use to do more. See SMAPI reference for more info.

Crossplatform support

SMAPI will automatically adjust your mod so it works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. However, there are a few things you should do to avoid problems:

Use the crossplatform build config package to automatically set up your project references. This makes crossplatform compatibility easier and lets your code compile on any platform. (If you followed the above guide, you already have this.)

Use Path.Combine to build file paths, don’t hardcode path separators since they won’t work on all platforms.

Use Helper.DirectoryPath, don’t try to determine the mod path yourself.

Decompile the game code

When you start working on more complex mods, you may need to look at how the game code works.

To decompile the game code so you can read it (though it won’t be fully functional due to decompiler limitations):

On Windows:

Open StardewValley.exe in dotPeek.

Right-click on Stardew Valley and choose Export to Project. Accept the default options to create a decompiled project you can open in Visual Studio.

On Linux/Mac:

Open StardewValley.exe in MonoDevelop through File > Open.

Change Language from Summary to C#.

To unpack the XNB data/image files, see Modding:Editing XNB files.

Stardew Valley 1.4.5 Mac Free Download

If you are a fan of Stardew Valley, you should probably know that mods are a really useful tool. One thing is that Stardew Valley mods enables you to upgrade the game in the way you want. But that’s not all – you can also develop Stardew Valley mods yourself and expand your options even greater. In case you don’t know where to begin, take a look at our tips about how to create Stardew Valley mods. You have almost unlimited options to upgrade your Stardew Valley, therefore it’s definitely an opportunity not to be missed. It would be hard to name all kinds of mod types – the variety is really vast ranging from maps, buildings or objects to trailers, trucks and various tools. You will be enabled to remake and personalize your Stardew Valley. It’s even greater because you can share your achievements with others Stardew Valley community members, so don’t snooze! Learn about how to create Stardew Valley mods and enjoy the game to the fullest!

Stardew Valley 1.4 Mac Download Free

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Loading...

[hpdailydeviant]

After thirteen and a half years on InsaneJournal, we’ve decided that it’s time to relocate Daily Deviant to DreamWidth. We’ve loved living on IJ, and we’ve stayed put for as long as we could, but recent months have made it apparent that the comm can no longer thrive here. Spam commenting has become a major issue. We can’t leave anonymous commenting on without getting thoroughly flooded with junk. And with anon commenting turned off, no one can use OpenID to comment with other accounts either. Therefore, no one can comment or participate unless they have an IJ account. Even more limiting is the fact that new users can no longer open IJ accounts without an invitation code from an existing user. This creates a situation that’s counter to the atmosphere of participation and interaction that we’ve always attempted to foster. So, we’re moving. We already have a Daily Deviant comm on Dreamwidth. Up until now, it’s only been used as a placeholder and a spot to crosspost announcements. Over the next couple of months, we will work on getting it set up to be a fully functional community. We will officially be designating November as "Moving Month." There will be no kinks/themes for the month. Instead, we will focus on making sure that all of our members get moved over and set up, and that everything is up and running. All of this means that our plans for Kinky Kristmas are changing. Since our energy will be focused on the move, we won’t be able to run KK as the full, double-blind anonymous event as we’d originally intended. Instead, we’ll be running Comment Kink again. However, we’ll be running it on DW, which means there will be a much greater opportunity for open participation. And then we will be running Banging Birthday as the full, double-blind anonymous event in March. (Actually, we’ll probably run it in April to allow plenty of time for prompt claiming and writing/drawing after KK... but exact details will be hashed out later.) We’re optimistic that, by that time, everyone will have heard about the move, participation will be high, and gobs of smutty fun will be had by all (or at least a great many). Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be focusing on making sure as many people as possible are aware of the move. We’ll be reaching out to members who’ve been a bit absent and whipping up some advertising banners. We’d really appreciate it if all of you would help us to spread the word. Let your freaky friends know that the pervy party is continuing at a new address. Once we have banners, please repost them. As always, this comm is great because of its members! Stay tuned for further updates regarding the move, Kinky Kristmas, Banging Birthday, and more. Things will continue to be "business as usual" for the rest of September and October here on IJ until Moving Month in November. Keep on kinking the place up. Then we’ll see you in our new home soon!

[eurekakinginc]

"[P] Sigma – Creating a machine learning framework from scratch (Update on high school thesis advice thread)"- Detail: TLDR: Asked this subreddit for advice in deciding on ML topic for high school thesis 2 years ago (see original thread), ended up writing a machine learning framework from (almost) scratch in C#/F#. It can’t do as much as all the others, isn’t as fast or as pretty, but we still think it’s kind of cool. Here it is: our github repo and a short UI demo.ResultsUpfront the current feature set of our framework Sigma, to give you an idea of what the next few paragraphs are about:Input, Output, Dense, Dropout, Recurrent, SoftmaxCE / SquaredDiff cost layersGradient descent, Momentum, Adadelta, Adagrad optimisersHooks for storing / restoring checkpoints, timekeeping, stopping (or doing other things) on certain criteria, computing and reporting runtime metricsEasy addition of new layers with functional automatic differentiationLinear and non-linear networks with arbitrarily connected constructsDistributed multi- and single- CPU and GPU (CUDA) backendsNative graphical interface where parameters can be interacted with and monitored in real-time  1. IntroductionThis is the story of us writing a machine learning framework for our high school thesis, of what we learned and how we went about writing one from scratch. The story starts about 3 years ago: we saw a video of MarI/O, a Super Mario AI that could learn to play Super Mario levels. We thought that was about the coolest thing of all time and wanted to do something at least kind of similar for our high school thesis. 1.1 The Original PlanFast forward, over 2 years ago we asked for help in deciding what kind of machine learning project we could feasibly do for our senior year high school thesis (see original thread). Quite ambitiously, we proposed a time investment of about 1000 hours total (as in 500 hours each over the course of 8 months) – for what project, we didn’t know yet. In that thread, we were generously met with a lot of help, advice ranged from reproducing existing papers to implementing specific things to getting to understand the material and then seeing what peaked our interest. After some consideration, we figured we would implement something along the lines of DeepMinds arcade game AI and then make it more general, figuring that would be easy for some reason. When planning our project in more detail we however quickly realised thatwe had no idea what we were doing andit would be a shame to do all that work from scratch and have it be so arbitrarily specific. 1.2 PivotingBefore doing anything very productive, we had to properly study machine learning. We figured this might take a while and allocated that part of our time to writing the theoretical part of our thesis, which conveniently overlapped. But because around that time we had to hand in an official target definition for our thesis, we set the most generic “goals” we could get away with. For reference, for a concerning number of months our project was officially named “Software framework for diverse machine learning tasks” with an even longer and even less specific subtitle. During further study and first attempts to draft the actual target definition for our project, our plans gradually shifted from a machine learning framework for playing specific types of games pivoted to an “any kind of visual input” learning framework and then finally to an “anything” machine learning framework – because why not, it seemed like an interesting challenge and we were curious to see how far we would get.  2. Research and PlanningAlright, so we've decided to write a machine learning framework. How does one create a machine learning framework? It takes many weeks to get reasonably proficient in just using a given framework, and that with proper guides, video tutorials and forums to ask for help. Creating a machine learning framework is a whole other story, with no 12 step guidelines to follow. For a considerable amount of time, we were at a loss at what we actually needed to implement – constantly encountering new and conflicting terms, definitions and not-so-obvious-“but the actual conclusion is obvious”-articles. After a little over a month we slowly got a very basic grasp of how this whole machine learning thing worked – something with functions that are approximated at certain points in steps typically using differentiation to make some metric go down – still magic, but a bit less so (until we read about CNNs, LSTMs and then GANs, each of which confused the heck out of us for some time). 2.1 Sketching our FrameworkAs soon as we knew a bit about the art of machine learning we got more serious about the writing a new framework part. Because there are no guides for that, we resorted to reading the source code of established frameworks – all to us relevant parts, many times, until it made some sense. In the meantime, we had decided to use C# as our primary language – mostly because we were already very familiar with it and didn’t want to also have to learn a new language, but officially also because there were no other proper neural network frameworks for .NET. Alongside reading the source code of machine learning libraries (mainly Deeplearning4J, Brainstorm and Tensorflow) we sketched out how we wanted our own framework to be used. After some time, we felt like there was some unnecessary confusion in getting to know machine learning frameworks as an outsider and we set out to design our API to avoid that. Note that because our design makes sense to us doesn’t mean that it makes more sense than the existing ones to other people, nor do we recommend everyone wishing to use machine learning to write their own framework, just to spare their own sanity.Our naïve ideas on how a machine learning should look like was clearly inspired by our C#/Java based programming experience, as is evident from the code example we drafted a few weeks in:Sigma sigma = Sigma.Create("minsttest"); GUIMonitor gui = (GUIMonitor) sigma.AddMonitor(new GUIMonitor("Sigma GUI Demo")); gui.AddTabs({"Overview", "Data", "Tests"}); sigma.Prepare(); DataSetSource inputSource = new MultiDataSetSource(new FileSource("mnist.inputs"), new CompressedFileSource(new FileSource("mnist.inputs.tar.gz"), new URLSource("http://....url...../mnist.inputs.targ.gz"))); DataSetSource targetSource = new MultiDataSetSource(new FileSource("mnist.targets"), new CompressedFileSource(new FileSource("mnist.targets.tar.gz"), new URLSource("http://....url...../mnist.targets.targ.gz" [, output: "otherthandefault"]) [, compression: new TarGZUnpacker(), output: "mnist.inputs" , forceUpdate: false])); DataSet data = new DataSet(new ImageRecordReader(inputSource, {28, 28}).Extractor({ALL} => {inputs: {Extractor.BatchSize, 1, 28, 28}}).Preprocess(Normalisor()), new StringRecordReader(targetSource).Extractor({0} => {targets: {Extractor.BatchSize, 1}} [, blockSize: auto/all/1024^3]); Network network = new Network("mynetwork"); network.Architecture = Input(inputShape: {28, 28}) + 2 * FullyConnected(size: 1024) + SoftmaxCE() + Loss(); Trainer trainer = sigma.CreateTrainer("mytrainer"); trainer.SetNetwork(network); trainer.SetInitialiser(new GaussianInitialiser(mean: 0.0, standardDeviation: 0.05)); trainer.SetTrainingDataIterator(MinibatchIterator(batchSize: 50, data["inputs"], data["targets"]); trainer.SetOptimiser(new SGDOptimiser(learningRate: 0.01); trainer.AddActiveHook(EarlyStopper(patience: 3)); trainer.AddActiveHook(StopAfterEpoch(epoch: 2000)); gui.AccentColor["trainer1"] = Colors.DeepOrange; gui.tabs["overview"].AddSubWindow(new LineChartWindow(name: "Error", sources: {"*.Training.Error"}) [, x: 1, y: 0, width: 2, height: 1]); gui.tabs["overview"].AddSubWindow(new LineChartWindow(name: "Accuracy", sources: {"*.Training.Accuracy"})); sigma.Run(); And skipping ahead a bit, it should be noted that the final framework is extremely similar to what we envisioned here: merely changing around a few syntax things and names, the above example from about a year ago can be used 1:1 in our current framework. The jury is still out on whether that’s a sign of really good or really bad design. Also note the python-style kwargs notation for layer constructor arguments, which was soon discarded in favour of something that actually compiles in C#. But back to the timeline. 2.2 The Sigma ArchitectureAfter defining the code examples and sketching out the rough parts we felt a machine learning framework needed, we arrived at this general architecture for “Sigma.Core”, divided into core components (which translate almost 1:1 to namespace in our project):Util: Mostly boring, well, utility stuff, but also registries, a key part of our architecture. Because we wanted to be able to inspect and visualise everything we needed a global way to access things by identifier – a registry. Our registry is essentially a dictionary with a string key which may contain more registries. Nested registries can be resolved using registry resolvers in dot notation with some fancy wildcards and tags in angel brackets (e.g. “network.layers.*.weights”).Data: Datasets, the records that make them up in various formats, the pipeline to load, extract, prepare and cache them from disk, web, or wherever they come from and make them available as “blocks”. These blocks are parts of an extracted dataset, consist of many individual records, and are used to avoid loading all of a potentially very large dataset into memory at once. Also, data iterators, which slices larger blocks from datasets into pieces that are then fed to the model.Architecture: Abstract definitions for machine learning models, consisting of layer “constructs”, which are lightweight placeholder layers defining what a layer will look like before its fully instantiated. These layers may be in any order and connected with however many other layers they would like.Layers: Unfortunately named since we started out with just neural networks, but these are the individual layers of our machine learning networks – they store meta-parameters (e.g. size) and actual trainable parameters (e.g. the actual weights).Math: Everything that has directly to do with math and low-level computations. All the automatic differentiation logic (which is very much required for doing proper machine learning) and everything that modifies our data is processed here in various backends (e.g. distributed CPU / GPU). To support calculating derivatives with respect to anything we opted for an approach with symbolic objects – essentially an object for a number or an array where the actual data was hidden (it can be fetched, but only via copies). These symbolic objects are passed around through a handler which does the actual data modification. This abstraction proved to be useful when implementing CUDA support where, due to the asynchronous execution of the CUDA stream, the raw data could not exposed to the user anyway, at least not without major performance hits (host-device synchronisation is very slow).Training: The largest component with many subcomponents, all revolving around the actual training process. A training process is defined in a “trainer”, which specifies the following:Initialisers, that define how a models parameters are initialised, which can be configured with registry identifiers. For example, trainer.addInitialiser(“layers.*.biases”, new GaussianInitialiser(0.1, 0.0)); would initialise all parameters named “biases” with a Gaussian distribution of 0.1 (mean 0).Modifiers, that would modify parameters at runtime, for example to clip weights to a certain range.Optimisers, that define how a model learns (e.g. gradient descent). Because we mainly considered neural networks we only implemented gradient based optimisers, but the interface theoretically supports any kind of optimisation.Hooks, that “hook” into the training process at certain time steps and can do whatever you want (e.g. update visualisations, store / restore checkpoints, compute and log metrics, do something (e.g. stop) when some criteria are satisfied).Operators, that delegate work to workers which execute it with a certain backend computation handler according to some parameters. Notable is our differentiation of “global” and “local” processing, where global is the most recent global state. This global state is fetched by local workers that then do the actual work, publish their results to the operator which merges it back into the global scope. A global timestep event is only ejected when all local workers have submitted their work for that timestep, enabling more fine control in distributed learning, at least in theory.Sigma: The root namespace that can create Sigma environments and trainers. An environment may contain multiple trainers, which are all run and, if specified, visualised simultaneously (which was supposed to be helpful in hyperparameter search).Monitors: Technically outside of the core project, but still a component. These monitors can be attached to a Sigma environment and can then, well, monitor almost everything about the trainers of that environment using the aforementioned registry entries. Behaviour can be injected using commands, a special form of hooks that are only invoked once. This way monitors can be used almost independently of the core Sigma project and can be pretty much anything, like a graphical interface or a live, locally hosted website.  3. ImplementationAnd that’s what we implemented, step by step. We started out with me mainly working on Sigma.Core and my partner on our visualisation interface, working to a common interface for months until we could finally combine our individual parts and have it miraculously work in a live graphical interface. The specifics of implementation were very interesting and quite challenging to us, but most of the particulars are probably rather dull to read – after all, most of the time things didn’t work and when we fixed something, we moved on to the next something that didn’t. 3.1 Low-level Data and Mathematical ProcessingThe very first thing we did was getting the data “ETL” (extract transform load) pipeline up and running, mainly fetching data from a variety of sources, loading them into a dataset and extracting them as blocks. I then focused on the mathematical processing part – everything that had to do with using math and calculating derivatives in our framework. I based our functional automatic differentiation, aptly named “SigmaDiff”, on an F# library for autodiff named “DiffSharp”, which I modified heavily to support n-dimensional arrays, improve performance significantly, fix a few bugs, support multiple simultaneous non-global backends, variable data types, and some more stuff that I’m forgetting. The specific details of getting that to work aren’t very interesting – a lot of glue code, refactoring and late-night bug-chasing because the backpropagation didn’t work as it should with some specific combination of operations. One memorable bug was that when remapping backend operations to my own OpenBLAS-based backend I forgot that matrix transposition did more than just change its shape – a mistake that cost me weeks in debugging efforts down the line, because things just didn’t work properly with large layers or more than 1 record per minibatch (duh). 3.2 Performance OptimisationsCompared to all the backend work, the “middleware” of layers and optimisers was rather trivial to implement, as there are hundreds of tutorials and papers on how to create certain layers and optimisers, where I only had to map them to our own solution. Really, that part should have taken a few weeks at most, but took that much longer because we only then discovered dozens of bugs and stability issues. Skipping over a lot of uninteresting details here, it should be noted that at this point performance of the framework was quite bad. I’m talking 300ms/iteration of 100 MNIST records with just a few dense layers on a high-end computer bad. This bad performance not only slowed training but also actual development down by quite a lot, hiding a few critical bugs and never letting us test the entire framework in a real-world use case within a reasonable time. You might wonder why we didn’t just fix the performance from the get-go, but we wanted to make the actual training work first so we would have something to show for our thesis. In hindsight not the ideal choice, but it still worked out quite well and otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to demonstrate our project adequately in time for the final presentation. 3.2.1 A Self-Adjusting BufferIt took many months before we finally got around to addressing the performance issues, but there was no single fix in sight, rather a collection of hundreds of small to medium sized improvements. A major issue was the way our SigmaDiff math processor handled operations: for every operation, a copy was created for the resulting data. That added up. The copying was necessary because backwards differentiation requires all intermediate values, so we couldn’t just not copy things. We couldn’t even create all required buffers in a static way ahead of time because there was (and still is) no way to traverse the operations that will be executed – the computation graph is constructed anew every time, and we can’t completely rely on them to remain constant. To introduce a reliable way of buffering anyway, we introduced the concept of sessions: A session was meant to be a set of operations that would be repeated many times. Iterations, essentially. When a session is started we would start storing all created arrays in our own store and when an array of the same dimensions was requested in the next session we could return the one from last session, all without allocating any new memory. If more memory was required than last time, we could still allocate it, if less was used, we could discard it for the next session, rendering this neatly self-adjusting. To not overwrite data that was created within a session but was needed for the next one (e.g. parameters) we added an explicit “limbo” buffer, which was basically just a flag that could be set at runtime for a certain array that marked it as “do not reuse”. 3.2.2 SIMD and Avoiding Intermediate AllocationOther significant performance improvements were adding SIMD instructions (which enables processing of typically 8 values at the same time for CPU-bound arithmetic operations) wherever possible and reducing other memory allocation to a minimum by adding some in-place operations wherever intermediate values weren't strictly needed. For example, copying results when accumulating gradients during backpropoagation on nodes with multiple operands is unnecessary because the intermediate values aren't used. By analysing profilers to death, I eventually got the iteration time for my MNIST sample down to an acceptable 18ms in release configuration (speedup of about 17x). Incidentally, the core was now so fast that our visualiser sometimes crashed because it couldn’t keep up with all the incoming data.3.3 Monitoring with Sigma 3.3.1 The monitoring SystemWhen developing Sigma, we not only focused on the “mathematical” backend but also implemented a feature rich monitoring system which allows any application to be built on top of Sigma (or better said Sigma.Core). Every parameter can be observed, every change hooked, every parameter managed. With this monitoring system, we built a monitor (i.e. application) that can be used to learn Sigma and machine learning in general. 3.3.2 The WPF MonitorUsers should be able to not only use Sigma, but also learn with Sigma. To address this issue, we built a feature-rich application (with WPF) that allows users to interact with Sigma. plot learning graphs, manage parameters and control the AI like controlling a music player. This monitor, as every other component of Sigma, is fully customisable and extensible. All components were designed with reusability in mind, which allows users to build their own complex application on top of the default monitor. But why describe a graphical user interface? See it for yourself, here is the UI (and Sigma) in action. (Example builds of Sigma can be downloaded on GitHub).Learn to learn at the press of a buttonDirect interaction during the learning processSave, restore and share checkpoints3.4 CUDA Support and Finishing TouchesOnly 2 months ago we started finalising and polishing our framework: adding CUDA support, fixing many stability issues and rounding off a few rough spots that annoyed us. The CUDA support part was particularly tricky as I could only use CuBLAS, not CuDNN, because our backend doesn’t, by design, understand individual layers but just raw computation graphs. A problematic side effect of the previously described session-logic was that there was no guarantee when buffers would be freed, as that was the job of the indeterministic GC. To not leak CUDA device memory I added my own bare-bones reference counter to the device memory allocator, which would be updated when buffers were created / finalised, which works surprisingly well. With CuBLAS, many custom optimised kernels and many nights of my time we achieved around 5ms/iteration for the same sample on a single GTX 1080, which we deemed acceptable for our envisioned use cases.  4. ConclusionApproximately 3000 combined hours, tens of thousands of lines of code and many long nights later we are proud to finally present something we deem reasonably usable for what it is: Sigma, a machine learning framework that might help you understand a little bit more about machine learning. As of now, we probably won’t be adding many new features to Sigma, mainly because we’re working on a new project related to it that’s now taking up most of our available time. Even though it lacks a lot of default features (most importantly the host of default layer types other frameworks offer), we’re quite happy with how far we got with our project and hope that it’s an adequate update to our original question 2 years ago. We would be happy if some of you could check it out and give us some feedback. 4.1 The Cost of Creating a Machine Learning FrameworkExcluding time, it’s quite cheap. Honestly, with some solid prior programming experience (so that the low-level programming part doesn't become an issue), the whole thing isn't terribly difficult and is probably something most people could do, given enough time. A lot of time. Overall, we it took us approximately:Some 600 hours of researchSome 2400 hours of development2 tortured souls, preferably sold to the devil in exchange for less bugsWe have long since stopped properly counting, so take these numbers with a grain of salt, but they should be in the right ballpark. 4.2 Final remarksAll in all, an undertaking like this is extremely time intensive. It was very much overkill for a high school thesis from the get-go, and we knew that, but it just kept getting more and more elaborate, essentially taking up all of our available time and then some. It was definitely worth it though, for now we have a solid understanding how things work on a lower level and, most importantly, we can say we’ve actually written a machine learning framework, which grants us additional bragging rights :). Caption by flotothemoon. Posted By: www.eurekaking.com