#the whole THING about a strike is to inconvenience and make people aware of what they are taking for granted

[stahl-tier]

Someone please introduce this person to books

i have a brain problem that prevents me from understanding people who need so much specifically newly-released TV shows that they're upset by the prospect of going a few months without new ones being produced

like they could stop making video games and books today and I wouldn't notice until sometime in 2026. honestly if they'd stop making new video games for a while that'd be kinda convenient. everyone take a break and let me catch up. I still haven't even played Persona 5.

[anistarrose]

Hello, TOH fandom, I am here once again to talk about accessibility!

[Image description: a screenshot of Lilith Clawthorne excitedly holding up a sign, which has been edited to read: "Image Descriptions for The Owl House (and why they matter)" in all caps. End description.]

Image descriptions, like the one I just used above, are exactly what it says on the tin: descriptions of the content of an image included to make the image maximally accessible.

Blind and low-vision people who use screen readers, people who rely on increased font size in-app or in-browser to read text, and neurodivergent people who have trouble interpreting elements of an image (for example, expression) all benefit from image descriptions.

And all images on the internet should be accessible regardless of topic, of course, but I've recently been trying to spread awareness in the context of The Owl House specifically because it's a show with multiple disabled and/or neurodivergent characters! In fact, Principal Bump is canonically low-vision with a service animal to help him in that regard — and I'd argue that making content about disabled characters accessible is extra, extra important!

[Image description: a screenshot of Principal Bump with his palisman Frewin removed from his head, revealing the scars over Bump's eyes. Frewin is in staff form, smiling, and Eda looks on from the side. End description.]

I know it's within this fandom's ability to make our posts about the finale as accessible as possible — and I know that because I've already seen a decent increase in described posts over the course of Season 3! I've seen more artist-described posts especially, which means a lot to me, and even more to a lot of other people, too <3

So, on that note, how to write an image description? It may seem intimidating, especially if describing someone else's post or fanart, but honestly, there's no definitive "rubric" to follow, just a list of general guidelines:

Indicate where the description starts and ends, with "end description" or "end ID".

Place the description immediately under the image, not under a read-more (this allows people who rely on IDs to experience the post the same way anyone else would, whereas read-mores are inconvenient, especially if OP changes their URL)

Minimize caps lock, italics, bold, and strikethrough, which can be hard to read and/or troublesome for screen readers. Generally, it's just best to transcribe in lowercase without particular effects, then indicate in the transcription if something is emphasized.

Likewise, don't put descriptions in Tumblr's special small text. It's difficult to read and inaccessible to many.

Don't make jokes or add commentary in IDs. If an image is meant to be humorous, obviously it's fine to phrase things in a way that tries to capture that, but it's not the place to add your own jokes, nor is it the place to declare subjective qualities like "this art is beautiful".

Descriptions can vary in length, but if one is getting long (if you're describing a comic, for example), then be sure to break it up with paragraph breaks.

Specifically, while I've heard that too many breaks (ie, every sentence) are annoying for some screen readers, long walls of text are conversely difficult for people with visual processing problems to parse. So, it's good to strike a balance.

With regards to length and amount of detail, it varies by personal preference! Most images don't need a whole small essay, but there's also value in describing certain small and symbolic details, subjective as it is.

Speaking of which, if you're the original artist, then you are automatically the expert on what you wanted the image to convey — the nuances of expression and body language, which details are important and which details are not — and for that reason, I love seeing artist-described works!

Below the cut: more on describing Owl House images specifically, on IDs versus alt text, and other possible questions!

When I transcribe TOH related posts, there's a few other guidelines I use, though these rules aren't as immediately important as the ones above. I generally start by indicating the type of image we're dealing with (a screenshot? fanart? a photo of a cosplay?), then mention what characters are depicted.

Unless I'm describing something long, like a comic, and relying on summarization, I usually mention which character designs we're dealing with (is Lilith in her dramatic black dress from Season 1? or is she in her low-battery shirt?). If it's fanart and the artist has come up with original outfits to put the characters in, I'll summarize those too.

(This is the other reason I love seeing artist-described works: because I, personally, am just kinda bad at describing fashion lol.)

Now, I'd like to go over some other questions that I've either encountered before, or anticipate:

What about alt text? Doesn't that accomplish the same purpose as image descriptions?

In a lot of senses, yes, so alt text is certainly much, much better than no description! However, remember that not every person relying on descriptions is necessarily someone who uses a screen reader every day, or uses a screen reader period. Some people do in fact read the descriptions themselves.

[Image description, identical to alt text: a screenshot of Luz Noceda from Season 2, smiling and blushing. End description.]

As you can see above, alt text takes an extra click (or tap) to access. In general, it's also prone to displaying walls of text, and — as far as I know — sometimes just doesn't show up if the Tumblr app isn't updated enough. (Not to mention that, in my opinion, making image descriptions visible to people who don't use them is an important part of spreading accessibility awareness in the first place!)

On the other hand, I've heard some people who benefit from descriptions say they actually prefer alt text, so I'm not going to come out and take a hard "absolutely no alt text ever under any circumstances" stance by any means. But, long story short, this is the reason that in my own posts, I almost always defer to in-post descriptions — the only exception might be if I'm writing a meta post, and functionally describing the images in the text anyway.

I've seen that sometimes you use [ ] brackets and sometimes you don't. Is there a reason?

Basically personal preference. I use brackets in posts like this when I have a lot of non-description writing, and want to make it extra clear where the description ends and the non-description begins. If I'm just captioning some fanart in a reblog and not adding any commentary, on the other hand, I leave off brackets because they're pretty redundant.

I'm nervous about describing images, but I still want to help make the fandom more accessible. Is there anything I can do?

Well, my first piece of advice would be to start small! Hell, start with just making sure you include a description whenever you post an image with just text, like a screenshot of a reply or someone's prev tags. You can build up little-by-little from there!

(My personal accessibility journey went from describing only tweet screenshots whose text I could just copy, to describing simple memes like cat pics, to deciding it was important to at least describe fanart of disabled characters like Eda, to finally describing almost every post I reblog. Trying to make that jump without any of the intermediate steps would've been overwhelming, but at this point, it all feels natural to me.)

But secondly, I would encourage showing some love to artists who describe their pieces! Queue up some described fanart, especially artist-described stuff, and help normalize it!

Get into the habit of checking the notes for descriptions (go to reblogs and filter by comments only) before you share! If someone describes your art, copy it into the original post, so the version of the thread reblogged directly from you will be accessible too! (And if you want to make some little tweaks, no one will be offended.)

You can also look into making your blog theme accessible, such as making sure the font size is large enough (and ideally sans serif, for readability). And if you feel more confident with describing audio, then writing transcripts of audio is always incredible as well, to help out those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have auditory processing disorders!

I've heard that AI is able to describe images for screen readers pretty well these days. Are descriptions still important/going to remain important as the technology advances?

Well, let me say first that I'm very glad this technology exists, for sure! But I'm of the opinion that human described (and especially artist described) captions are, at least generally speaking, still going to be the gold standard for the foreseeable future — AI doesn't have the context we do for our art and our fandoms; it's much less likely than a fan of the show to pick up on what's an important or symbolic detail.

Are there actually people who need image descriptions in cartoon fandoms? I mean, the source material has such a visual component!

First off, blind and low vision people do in fact watch things like TV, movies, and plays — ever notice the "audio description" option to add narration to a given show in a streaming service? That's there to provide basically the real-time equivalent of image descriptions.

And, second, I'll leave you with this — don't you think a lot more disabled people would participate in fandom if fandom were more accessible and accommodating to disabled people in the first place?

[chicknparm]

So uh. TW death, and all that.

Today I stood beside my grandmother, one of the women who raised me, the woman who took me in after my mom died, and I held her head, and stroked her hair, and looked into her eyes as she breathed her last breath. I was the last thing she ever saw.

People always talk about dying “old, peaceful, and surrounded by loved ones” as the ideal way to go, and I’m sure people will describe her death that way to make themselves feel better. Mostly the people who weren’t actually there, because nobody who sat in that room with her and held her hand would describe that process as peaceful. It was hell. She was in agony. Most of what she was able to say was just “oh god,” “please,” and “I want to get out of here.” When the drugs were enough to soothe her pain, but hadn’t yet robbed her of her lucidity, she was able to respond to questions, tell us she loved us, make requests (the last thing she ever asked for was a cup of cold, whole milk). She was still there. She’d always been there.

Id watched her physically deteriorate over the last 10+ years; she lost weight, lost hair, lost the ability to breathe without an oxygen tank, and to keep her dentures in. But her mind never deteriorated. She’d joke about “senior moments” when she’d forget a name or her mind would blank on something, but realistically that didn’t happen to her anymore than it happens to anyone else. If anything, it was a similar enough joke to when we say “homophobia strikes again” anytime something inconvenience us. She never actually forgot anybody, she called and sent cards for everyone’s birthdays, and trust me there were birthdays on almost every day of the calendar. She did her crosswords and watched Jeopardy and played Trivial Pursuit. She was There. And I think she was still There in the end. And that made it so much worse.

It seems like a special kind of hell to suffer through the end of your life, completely disconnected from yourself, your memories, the life you lived. I think it’s another, more understandable and relatable and therefore terrifying hell to be dying in extreme pain, but unable to physically form words despite your best efforts. Unable to effectively communicate with your loved ones. Everyone in the room wishes they could take your pain away, but everyone also knows they can’t. Everyone in the room knows what’s going on but we can’t say it. Well, we don’t say it. It’s only the dying person who truly can’t.

She smiled when her son made a joke, responded in kind when we said we loved her. She asked for milk. So when all she could do was moan and make noises, and we’d ask her if she needed meds, if she was in pain, and she’d shake her head, I’m inclined to believe that she knew what she was doing. Have you ever seen someone cry, without physically being able to make tears, or move their body, or even make more than an “ahhhh” sound? I think that’s what was happening. She knew we loved her, and she loved us, but as things went on it’s obvious to me that she was scared. She wasn’t ready to leave. She wanted to live. She didn’t go peacefully, she want gasping, desperately looking at us, I’m sure wishing we could grab her and pull her out of this and help her breathe, help her live. But we couldn’t. All we could do was stand there and hold her and kiss her forehead and tell her we love her and are proud of her and grateful for her. But it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t save her. She was in agony, agony she was fully aware of, until she died while desperately fighting against her body, trying to live. It was not peaceful, or beautiful, or profound. It was hell. And the only people who will try and frame it as the former are the ones who were too selfish and cowardly to be there to bear witness.

My grandmother was one of eleven children. So she had 10 siblings, and therefore more nieces and nephews and grand nieces and grand nephews than one could count. She loved so many people, and touched so many lives, but the only people there at the end were me, my father, and his girlfriend. One of her sisters was there the day before, but she left shortly after she and my dad gave the consent to move to pain management care as she “transitioned.” That sister went home but continued to check in. One of her grand-nephews, an 8 year old boy, called my phone last night so that I could hold it up to her so he could tell his great aunt that he loved her. That was it. That was the only contact we had with her massive family while she died. Her sister that she was closest with, who drove her to appointments, who played cards at her appointment, who went to lunch with her all the time? She was nowhere to be found. She had to go out of town to another great-niece’s graduation (I’m telling you, there’s a lot of them). The first sister I told you about was also planning to go that. But she canceled those plans, because her fucking sister was dying. If anybody deserved to be surrounded by family it was her. I had to take a greyhound bus to come see her but I didn’t question for a second whether or not I should. I heard she was doing bad, and I left, and I was determined to stay by her side until she didn’t need me anymore, one way or another, consequences be damned. Because she would’ve done the same thing. Maybe I’m the weird one and my perspective is skewed by the frankly insane degree of toughness, and principles, that the women who raised me showed. If I was suffering like that, there’s not a chance she would’ve left my side. It seems like that doesn’t matter to most people, but it matters to me.

Anyway sorry for dumping this on your dash. I’m guessing most of the people reading this, especially reading to the end, are the people in my discord server so you already know What Happened, but I needed to fully vent, and also you understand there are people in that chat who knew this woman personally, and I don’t want to force these details onto them. Also my therapist wants me to journal more, so at least by writing this I’ll have something to show her on Monday. Idk how to end this. This sucks.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Outer Planets Horoscope 7 August Week

Eris

Eris’ retrograde movement will start to pick up, though all that really means is that it moves from 25 Aries 14 back all the way to 25 Aries 12. That’s about the distance the sun covers in an hour. 

This means that the trine with Lilith and Venus is still active and Lilith and Venus are conjunct. This is a complex set of aspects that will be active in part all week. Put simply - Leo Lilith wants you to get yours, Venus retrograde makes you aware of what’s missing and Eris adds the possibility of long term change. Meanwhile, the Uranus square makes the future seem scary. It’s a really fortunate set of things for a feminist movie about a beautiful doll that allows people escape the future and return to potentially more safe and definitely more certain childhood memories.

It’s also a good time for industrial action and fighting people more powerful than yourself - you have fear for survival in an uncertain world. The ruling class only have fear of lower profits. This means it’s a good time to fight for workers rights and against opportunistic politicians, but the square and Mercury Saturn opposition make it a difficult time to fight cults. But, you know, when ever do you get to pick your battles in this life?

Haumea

Haumea is moving steadily away from its opposition with the North Node and square with Pluto but that will be active all week. Through the week it will go from 29 Libra 03 to 29 Libra 06. To me, that has the energy of getting everything you want and being sad about it. That’s certainly been part of the experience I’ve seen in this sign. Which raises a question of why you’re sad. One option, on big things, is that once you get the thing you need you have to start mourning for the years when you couldn’t have it. That’s a horrible feeling.  

Gonggong

Sedna is at 0 Gemini 29 and will advance to 0 Gemini 31. This means that the Sedna - North Node sextile continues to weaken but it’s still present. This might be a good time to confront some feeling of loss attached to what you can’t have. Particularly consider this if the Lilith-Venus-Eris-Uranus mess of aspects have left you feeling like you’ve been unable to become your best self. It can be tough to know you could have thrived under other circumstances.

Gonggong

Is conjunct Saturn on Monday - at 5 Pisces 19. By the end of the week Gonggong will be at 5 Pisces 16, and Saturn will be at 4 Pisces 49. They’re both retrograde, but for worlds as far out as Gonggong it genuinely feels less noticeable. 

It could mean a lot of things - a very literal one here in the UK has been a week of soggy weather before a lot of people go on holiday. Gonggong is associated with floods, Saturn can slow things down, and Pisces is a water sign, so it adds up. Less literally, it may be a flood of emotion that prevents movement, or a realization. None of this is exactly positive, but it can be positive to stop, to take stock, to break down when you’ve been managing to stay in a position that hurts you. If you reach the point of going on strike, you want to inconvenience people until you start getting treated fairly. That’s the whole point. 

Orcus 

Orcus is moving pretty fast and will go from 14 Virgo 03 all the way to 14 Virgo 14.It’s maybe not as coincidence that I’ve been made super aware of Orcus this week after talking to @brielledoesastrology about it a bit, and it’s starting to have a bit of a busy period. In this time, I’ve been re-evaluating it a bit. It seems to me like it appears in a quite positive sense a lot more than I expected. 

Some Astronomers call Orcus “anti-Pluto” and that makes sense - its orbit mirrors Pluto but in reverse - pulling away when Pluto comes in, and vice versa. It even has a similarly large moon comparable to its size. My current reading, which is subject to change, is while Pluto tries to build security through repression, secrets, the hidden and the occult; Orcus is the security of a hyperfixation. It’s the infodump, the emotional security fandom. 

And, well, the opposite is also true. Pluto can be the volcanic eruption of hidden things, which is why it’s transformative. Especially in retrograde, things can make their way to the surface. In the same way - overfixating can be isolating. You can end up speaking a secret language only people with your specific interests can get. 

The Mars - Orcus conjunction period may have been a time for research and learning. Especially in Virgo, we could have been gathering knowledge. For instance, I have certainly been doing that about Orcus.  Now that’s ending, Orcus is coming into a conjunction with Mercury. This feels more communicative. If you’re prone to obsessive behaviours, now might be a good time to try and explain why and bring people on board. Particularly because there’s a trine to Jupiter, which gives a desire to expand options. This may or may not be reasonably practical, but you have to try, sometimes.

[kuboism]

Bleach Canon Vs. Studio Clown Episode 1

Intro to the series

WARNING: Long read but theres plenty of pictures

The first deviation we’re greeted with is what the anime presents as the arrival of hollows into the human world. With a likely artistic rendition of them forming from the shadows of Hueco Mundo and dripping/bleeding over into the human world like splotches of ink, after which they disappear - unable to be perceived by humans.

A/N: Which, kubos to the anime, is rather neat.

The anime also decided to incorporate the first volume poem which is the thematic beginning and a great establisher of the mood/themes of Bleach, which roughly translates to: 

我らは 姿無きが故に それを畏れ

“We fear that which cannot be seen”

And then they curiously add a line to this poem? 

姿無き故に敬う

”We revere that which cannot be seen"

A/N: Which, initially seems on brand with the spiritualism of that “which is not seen” - the shinigami, DEATH itself if you will. However, unlike the themes of “fear” and “fear of death/the unseen”, “reverence” is not really a theme prevalent or definitive for bleach. Reverence is not particularly reserved for death or death gods, but antagonists with themes of divinity/the Soul King himself, but I digress.

Next off the bully scene has a couple of missing/reworded lines, as well as some of the delivery changed, but overall it’s not significant enough to mention.

I also wish they’d kept Ichigo’s shit yourself scary face from this moment right here, since it really underlines how serious and personally invested Ichigo is in bringing small justice to the souls of the departed, but I can only pray a future remake does include it.

^ I am disappointed in y’all :/

vs.

v Karma delivery, bitch

Then for some reason the next scene is changed significantly:

In the manga, it builds up slowly to Ichigo’s reveal of supernatural abilities with the iconic TM character profile intros (which I can see why weren’t recreated in the anime, but I sure wish they put them in....)

with him spooking the bullies off with the ghost girl right behind him

Versus his scary face doing the job instead.....

It’s a small change, and I can see why it would be opted for - we don’t really know if they even saw the ghost in the first place (then again you could argue that would spook them anyway). There is a tonal difference in the long run though. The manga emphasizes once again *why* ichigo is scolding them in the first place - he sees the people disrespected by them knocking down the vase, he wants them to acknowledge their actions *because* in his mind, there are real victims he knows from it. While in the anime, since the ghost is not yet introduced, it feels more like “you are disrespectful to the dead” in a more generalized way vs. him actually being acquainted with the dead and treating them like the living. 

(Again, not sure why change it so much at all........the suspense and reveal are in the manga just the same.... but ok)

As well as cutting off this small moment where you can see Ichigo’s very human (and cute!) interactions with the ghosts. To him they’re just as real as the living, and he lends them a hand whenever they ask for help.

Also lmfao this 4kids level of censorship.....

It goes on rather faithfully for a while, no significant omissions, then Pierrot decides to randomly replace Yuzu’s lines with Karin??

Manga:

Anime: 

Which is an odd choice, given that not only does Yuzu sense ghosts just fine (albeit at a much lesser level than her family) and that later comes into play with Fishbone & Grandfisher, but Karin literally later admits that she doesn’t even want to acknowledge their presence, so why the change....?

They also cut short Karin’s little talk about Ichigo’s stats, which is a fair change for screentime’s sake, but mentioned for the record.

There’s a bit of a divergence with Yuzu lore, when the manga explicitly states she sees them, but not “clearly”, the anime focuses on her barely sensing them. I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the long run, since she is not that prevalent in the story, but it’s here for the record nonetheless.

Anime: 

vs. 

Manga:A

Also this next bit was removed, probably for the sake of pacing (which, totally fair!!), but it’s funny and I love the Kurosaki family so here it is:

It does make the flow a bit better in the manga, since this talk of selling his talents distracts Ichigo and creates an opening for his father to strike, in the anime, the same is done with Ichigo just randomly saying 

and thats where his father attacks him, which isnt really an issue, just kind of funny of how the manga is like:

Ichigo’s distracted by his sisters plotting to sell him out and hence Isshin has his chance to strike back

vs the anime being like:

Ichigo randomly thinks about dinner mid convo about ghosts and thats what distracts him from play-fighting with his dad 

gfdkhlgfdg okayyyy....moving on 

In the manga this scene is interspliced with Ichigo’s inner monologue about the nature of his powers (with hip jargon like “for real” courtesy of Viz ) 

(but my beef with Viz translations are for another day)

Also the line about “He told me more ghosts than ever have been haunting me” has been given to Karin for some reason, probably to make her feel more included in the scene/Ichigos life.

Notably, Isshin’s response is changed from “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you (Yuzu, singular)” to “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you guys?” as well, again probably to include Karin more into the dialogue. (Mmmm ok....)

Minor detail, but Karin’s lines has been changed to more “boyish” speech structure in the Japanese dub, which may seem insignificant, but ...... that is for later. 

.....

This little exchange

 is replaced with: 

Which, seems innocuous adaptation differences, but Yuzu’s lines keep decreasing and it’s a short enough moment to like....include and establish how motherly Yuzu is acting towards Ichigo.....but ok...huh. 

And now we get into the big boy changes.

So, probably for the sake of grounding the supernatural element of the series, the anime decided to skip time to the next morning and introduce the hollow attacks with a news report.

Which.....is an interesting choice. I am assuming this is addressing how the real world perceives the hollow attacks, which Bleach doesn’t put too much effort into addressing, but very soon after this we learn about stuff like memory replacement and other various technology to keep things under wraps so this is either redundant or implying that shinigamis have not been doing their job, which hm......

Next off is the bizarre choice to paint Isshin out of the picture for the night

Not sure why, but ok

Again, where’s the shinigami with their Kikanshinki (memory replacement devices)??? Pierrot where’s the lore coherence......

Anyway, Ichigo goes to replace the girl’s vase, but suprise-surprise she’s gone-zo. Wonder what happened to her.....

(And....again, people vehemently don’t want a reboot when the anime looks like this? )

So Ichigo hears a scream and a hollow scream and follows the sound (Ok?).

Totally random hollows attack. Which Ichigo somehow has never seen so far? Mind you, this isn’t like in the manga, where Fishbone was sent by Aizen specifically after Ichigo to make him aware of it. These are random-ass hollows attacking people, so how come Ichigo suddenly sees them. Ya coulda played it safe Pierrot, and stuck to the book, but we got plot inconsistencies episode one so let’s party.

The girl is, of course, not eaten and they run away.

She trips at the most inconvenient moment. (can ghosts trip? Ghost don’t even have legs in japanese lore and Kubo draws them floating around so okkkkkkkk)

(ok ok, im just being petty, bUT YKNOW)

(convenient tripping on deadass levelled ground is convenient)

(also God I really want that bag Ichigo’s got on his shoulder, it looks so nice)

Random-ass hollow closes in and 

BOOM

Rukia

(Now, if the rest of Bleach and the manga didn’t exist I would like this moment. We get a glimpse into Rukia’s abilities, into shinigami as a concept and we don’t really get to see her slice and dice hollows that much overall so the moment itself is rad in isolation.

Now, unfortunately for Pierrot’s screenwriters, Bleach manga exists and so does it’s lore, which again, would not be inconsistent with each other if the adapation was faithful. Now, Ichigo sees a shinigami, for some reason, for the first time in his 15 years of life. All of a sudden. 

You could argue, that much like in the manga, this is all part of Aizen’s plan TM, but like, she literally leaves right after leaving Ichigo gaping in awe ghfkjgdf. Why’d Aizen give him an appetizer, I really don’t understand how this change is benefitting the narrative in any way. It’s ....dare I say....generic.)

Rukia yeets the hollow

(why is this kid suddenly not wearing shoes?)

and goes off on her merry way, leaving Ichigo shooketh

ALSO RUKIA MA’AM THERES A FUCKING STRAY GHOST RIGHT AT YOUR RIGHT????? ISNT IT YOUR LIKE....JOB.......... TO HELP GHOSTS MOVE ON??? i know killing hollows is the fun part, but like ghjkfdlgfd ??? are you gonna ignore her???

( his fucking face ghfjdkgdlfgfd)

So after this wholeass pointless detour (you’ll see why it’s pointless in a moment)  we timeskip again (the filler is strong in this one. These 6 minutes were worth not coming up with something cohesive and removing scenes that actually make sense ah yes)

Ichigo is in deep thought TM about who tf is the stranger he’d just seen. Likely mulling over the monsters and how this person was able to slay said monsters. Probably thinking how unusual they are.

and as if on cue

the stranger makes their presence once more

(my God these faces gfhgkldfg)

....

Now let’s briefly address what happens in the manga instead.

Instead of the whole timeskip scene with the fight, Ichigo simply returns to his room on the same day, and oddly enough recognizes the species of the butterfly he sees? (nerdy boi! nerdy!! boi!)

rukia arrives much the same

(With the little text emphasizing how he’d never been aware of soul reapers, which is unsurprising given their secrecy, and makes sense in the long run since their first meeting is specifically orchestrated by Aizen. Two species that werent meant to interact brought together by his schemes.)

Back to the anime:

Ichigo pauses to ponder who tf they are and why the fuck they’re there.

and then the anime has the gall to suddenly revert to sticking to the manga, which like.... Ichigo kicks her for no reason? I guess because she isn’t answering? Even though Ichigo knows she has a sword and can wield it? Reckless boy.

Manga Ichigo thinks she’s a burglar, therefore, unsurprisingly, is comfortable kicking her outta his house. It’s a silly moment, but it also shows how accustomed or stupidly brave he is with the supernatural.

In the anime Ichigo asks her who she is instead of all that, and she responds pretty similarly to the manga

AND THE NEXT SCENE IS WHERE IT CLICKS WHY THEY WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO REMOVE ISSHIN FROM THE HOUSE.

(Ichigo and Rukia addressing the pointless filler, this leads nowhere)

Rukia check him out like she’s checking if the oranges on sale dont have mold on them 

slapstick ensues

and Rukia decides to answer his question.

Vs. the manga in which Isshin doesn’t leave his children home alone for some random conference and is actually used very efficient for two reasons:

1) building up on the burglar gag with actually funny slapstick that is based on a previously established joke

2) Instead of Rukia just saying “oh usually people can’t see me”, we get an actual demonstration of it, the reader gets to see “oh Isshin can’t see her - she must be a spiritual entity,” which further clicks with her surprised reaction at him being able to kick her in the first place.

The next scene is the classique Pierrot censorship.

Ghost girl runs away from what I’m assuming is Fishbone.

Aside from not showing her get eaten, the scene is pretty much delivering the same message, 

bUT

BECAUSE OF THE STUPID ASS FILLER WITH THEM MEETING RUKIA BEFORE THIS, I CAN ACCUSE RUKIA OF NEGLIGENCE.

UNLIKE THE MANGA, where Rukia arrives the night before and is specifically seeking Fishbone, therefore having no time to help this girl pass away, 

This vvvvvvv

could have been prevented if SOMEONE DID THEIR FUCKING JOB THE DAY BEFORE VVVVVVV

(I rest my case. Thank you Pierrot for making Rukia either negligent or an idiot. Awesome, And mind you, these changes were unnecessary. The manga’s pacing is fine. They could’ve extended scenes. But nope, had to go for making them meet beforehand.)

Anyway, we get to see some actual stakes in the manga

The next scene which is this in the manga 

has two changes to it. Firstly, obviously Isshin being consoled by Yuzu isn’t included since he isn’t home in the anime, and even if he were, I can see why that would be removed, cute as it may be.

And secondly, due to them having met prior Ichigo asks two additional questions:

And Rukia nods at both, which means she acknowledges that she had seen the girl the hollow was after and yet did nothing to help her pass on. 

(Reminder the Bleach anime was in production WAAAAY past the first 4 volumes, which gave a good general idea of the series, which y’know, was fine to adapt as is.

You’ll see these changes add up into becoming inconsistent with further Bleach lore. There’s a reason people call Bleach a hot mess, and I’m afraid Kubo ain’t really it.)

(Volume 14 Note from Kubo where he talks about the anime being announced)

Back to the series

Pet peeve time: Wish the anime was half as expressive as the manga

These scenes are supposed to represent

This panel:

(Nitpicking? Perhaps, but idc)

So uh, this scene is odd

Again, because of the addition of that filler with the hollow

Ichigo has seen her in action

And they even added Rukia trying to convince him 

even though, yknow???

LITerally the previous day???

Anyway  in the manga, where Ichigo has reason to be distrustful of her and her claims since y’know hes never seen her or a shinigami in action, but has enough proof that she’s a ghost bc his dad didn’t see her, he simply dismisses her before she can reply, and instead of just getting angry for being called a pipsqueak

she shows both Ichigo and the audience proof of her spiritual powers by binding Ichigo and forcing him to quietly listen to her explanations.

(To reiterate - Anime Rukia  has to verbally try to convince Ichigo WHO SAW HER FIGHT A HOLLOW THE OTHER DAY that shes no ordinary ghost. And because of that, she has no other reason to use Sai on him other than that shes mad she was called a pipsqueak bc she just tried to verbally convince him shei is a shinigami. When they could just adapt the manga and have her both demonstrate her powers and put him in his place at the same time. Wild.)

Also CRIMINALLY BORING SHOT, WITH CRIMINALLY BORING RUKIA

#NotMyRukia

LOOK AT THE MANGA

LOOK AT HER SMUGLY OWNING ICHIGO’S IGNORANT ASS #FuckYeahRukia

Also the subs may not show it if you’re watching it on Netflix, but anime Rukia says “I am not allowed to lay my hands on humans outside orders,” which like, you ARE LITERALLY DOING THAT. Manga Rukia is fine with bullying Ichigo, but she draws a line at killing him, but man Anime Rukia, you give no fucks about the laws huh.

why so cheerful?

(also Rukia be right tho)

(specifcally compared to hell you could say Soul society is a resftul place lmfao)

Also anime salary man gets to rest in peace, even like, pray and shit

Meanwhile the manga

YEET TO SOUL SOCIETY

(also notice how we’ve been robbed of ichigo’s silly socks

I swear the anime knows how to suck the soul out of the manga 

Get it? Soul! haha ....moving on.)

Really Rukia? One of your jobs?

GUESS YOU WERE OFF DUTY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I’M SORRY BUT LIKE, SEE HOW POINTLESS THIS FILLER IS UGH!!!)

(Again pet peeve but look at how ugly this screen is COMPARED TO THE MANGA)

(What have they done to you, queen)

(also they never mention the name Konso ( or as Viz calls it here -”soul funeral”, thanks Viz)

Next on, not a pet peeve, but an observation:

Anime Rukia keeps her sketchbook in her kimono

Manga Rukia keeps it at the titty

Yep, which you neglected to do the day before,

she literally says “With the konso I did just a  moment ago” like she used the word before. Like you can contextually get it, but why cut that line out of the dialogue if you don’t change the next line it’s referenced in?

There’s also a dialogue change from the manga’s well, Viz uses “vaporize” which is not a bad choice given the specific wording Kubo uses, but the original says 

昇華 • 滅却

sublimate/convert • extinguish

which is a clever little nod/foreshadowing to the nature of souls in bleach and that they can be “converted” in and out of a hollowfied state. 

While the anime just says “to slay hollows”, and albeit it lacks the little nod the manga has to offer, I can’t see how they’d include it in the anime at that stage so I’m fine with them simplifying it to like, an exorcism.

A better question then Rukia - WHY DIDN’T YOU SEND OFF HER SOUL????

also WAIT THE GIRL IS STILL ALIVE?? she’s dead-dead by this point in the manga.

BULLSHIT !!!  YOU LITERALLY EXPLAIN LATER WHY!! ACTUALLY YOU EXPLAINED EARLIER WHY!!! YOU LITERALLY SAID THIS, 1 MINUTE AGO :

Anyway, Fishbone almost grants her the priviledge of escaping this God-awful anime, but is suddenly stopped?

AND CAN TALK??

wait WHY DOES FISHBONE TALK?? GHFJD isnt this supposed to be  a juicy reveal for later when Ichigo realizes “hey theyre not actual complete monsters - but used to be humans!” Hm, ok.

Also leaves her alone? Damn ok...

Reminder:

Moooving on...

Speaking of the manga, this little moment is missing:

Since there is no pointless filler that would make him ask about the ghost girl therefore exposing Rukia’s slacking off of her duty, Ichigo realizes that there must be a hollow nearby bc in the manga he actually has braincells to spare. 

Also wiping off the Baron’s moustache moment is gone 😢

Missing and dearly missed is also this moment, which consolidates how protective Ichigo is of his family. He only needs to hear Yuzu scream to click that the hollow is nearby and his family is in danger. I feel like anime Ichigo should be even more worried since his sisters are alone but ok??

Also foreshadows their dynamic of Rukia trying to stop his reckless attempts at pushing himself to protect his family, bc yknow....she has her own Kaien trauma to process.

Next off....

This is .... a choice....

They were very eager to give Yuzu’s lines to Karin just a couple of moments ago but now this whole exchange:

Where we see a very pragmatic yet soft side of Karin

She doesn’t know what is happening, and doesn’t expect her brother to fight it - he just wants him to be safe, because she loves her family. At least warn him before it gets to him and hurts him.

is replaced with this:

Yuzu, sweetie, what do you think he can do to achieve that.

I guess at least Anime Ichigo tries to get Rukia to do her job as she looks down on Yuzu in silence. 

But compare it to the manga:

#MyRukia stops by Karin to check for a pulse and reassures Ichigo that his sister is alive.

Manga Ichigo is NUMBER ONE oniichan in town and doesnt have time to call out to a stranger to save his family - HES BEYOND READY TO GO FIGHT, RECKLESS AS IT IS, EVEN THOUGH HIS OWN FAMILY BEGS HIM TO JUST RUN. because he cant let himself be unable to protect them. He cant live with himself if he doesnt try his darnest to protect them.

*elevator music playing as ichigo tries to get rukia’s attention but she fucks off downstairs, but instead of doing shit he just does the worm on the floor*

which I guess is more realistic for a teenage boy, but Ichigo is literally traumatized by being unable to protect a family member. Y’all think a ghost he’s never seen before is gonna stop him? 

Yooo, pathetic. #NotMyIchigo

[salenakingston]

Mystery March Day 18 - Flower

Where was she now? Could she even define herself as simply ‘she’ anymore? The body was gone, taken away at the hands of that blue-haired girl. It was the same one from ancient times, and yet, at the same time not. It was impossible for it to truly be the same person. A reincarnation perhaps? Well what good does that do now? Laying who knows how far away as nothing more than a beating heart in the shape of a fruit.

Sight was meaningless, but noises could still be heard. There was enough awareness for that at least.

One thing was certain, this area was not the same one as before. Where the sound of battle once rang out, there was calm. The sound of insects chirping, and birds too. There was the feeling of heat beating down from the sky, though not as intense as it might have been against a black road. There was a subtle noise, that of wind floating by. At least this place seemed more like the old forest.

“How much longer are we going to keep looking?”

What was that? A voice? Out here?

“As long as it takes.”

Wait, that voice was recognizable. Was it her again?

“Vivi, this is stupid. You said when you hit it, it went flying. Who knows how far it actually went.”

Hit it? Oh right, she batted the heart right out of the body. Wait, but that would imply this was what she was looking for. Why? To get rid of it for good?

“I know it’s stupid, but this is important. Can’t you work with me instead of arguing? If Arthur’s making an effort then we should too.”

Who was Arthur? In fact, who was she even talking to?

“I know that Vivi. It’s just complicated on my end. I assure you I am actually trying. You try getting ‘buddy buddy’ with someone you’ve spent so long hating.”

While interesting to hear, what did any of this have to do with their search? If anything, the bickering was just starting to get annoying. Even more so as the voices seemed to be growing louder. They must have been getting closer to this resting place.

“Alright alright. Look let’s at least look a little longer. If we don’t find it then we’ll go back. Maybe the three of us can look more tomorrow.”

“Yeah, ok.”

It didn’t make any sense. After the fury she showed when the kitsune was harmed, why go through the trouble of finding the object she was keen to remove at that moment?

“Hey Vivi, what did it look like again?”

“It was shaped like a heart, see through, and it had a glowing, red light in the middle. Why?”

“I think I found it.”

It was being lifted, but into the hands of something strange. It was terribly inconvenient to only be able to go off every sense besides sight. Footsteps could be heard against the earth, so ‘Vivi’ must have been catching up to whomever spoke.

“Yeah, that’s it. Let’s go back home.”

Well, there wasn’t much choice in the matter, as if there even was one to begin with. Wherever they were going, this was going with them.

A rush of chill washed over all of them, one set of footsteps echoing off the wood floor. One? But there were two voices before. Curse this miserable state. The girl’s voice came back again, “Oh, Arthur and Mystery aren’t here?”

Mystery. Right, the name the kitsune accepted from his new master. If the body was still functionable, this would be worthy of an eyeroll. Beside that, why bring this back to him? He seemed content fighting back as well.

“Actually, maybe this is a good thing, we can surprise him.”

That was her again. Surprise him? This ‘Arthur’ or the kitsune?

“I guess so. What do we do with it then? Just give it to him?”

“No, of course not. So, I don’t know how correct this is, but the little tree that was on top of her head looked a lot like a bonsai tree. If we can get a pot, probably one a little deeper to fit the whole thing, I bet we could make it grow.”

Stunned silence.

“That’s a pretty big stretch. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Don’t be such a downer Lewis. I have a good feeling it will.”

“If you say so.”

There were a lot of different feelings going on now. The earth was familiar, though it was all around now rather than just underneath. There was something wet being added, probably water. Well, credit where it was somewhat due, at least this girl seemed to know some basic care. There was the sound of a door opening, the other two mentioned having come back. Oh, there was that feeling of being lifted again.

“Mystery, we got you a surprise.”

Wait, they spent all this time looking to be given back to him?

“Vivi, it’s a pot of dirt.”

“Give it time. You’ll see what it is.”

Why not just tell him outright? Why drag it out? These were some strange mortals the kitsune decided to serve.

----

How much time had passed now? It was a bit hard to tell. Well, one upside to this whole thing was sight came back. From the beating heart, a blue sprout had grown through the dirt. With care from the girl, Vivi, and the ghost from the empty plot and locket, Lewis, that sprout had grown into a small tree. Most of the time, it was the two of them handling the care of the tiny tree, if only to keep up appearances. When no one else was around, the kitsune had taken on a more human like form to do the care himself. The body had grown again, and so too ‘she’ came back.

It was just annoying she couldn’t move like she used to.

Still it was nice to see again.

That blonde one with the shiny arm had come over today, Arthur. His name had come up, but there was no way for her to put a face to that name before now. He’d joined the kitsune, looking over the blue tree with white leaves. There were buds forming along some of the branches, and soon enough would have pink flowers blossoming like before. The ‘dog’ had glanced over at him when he heard the blonde’s voice, “Hey Mystery.”

“Vivi bug you into coming over?”

“When doesn’t she? You know how she is.”

Two sets of eyes feel on her body, “It’s growing really well.”

“Yes. So she is.”

“Right, she. I’m sorry.”

Strange to make such a point about that correction. She was alive, but not really… ‘alive.’ The same body as before had been burnt away, leaving this much more natural state for her.

“She was important to you, wasn’t she?”

“As important then as she is now.”

If she could snort she would. How was she meant to believe that sentiment?

“My life has become full of regrets Arthur, so much it amazes me how the three of you stick around. And so she too has become part of my regret. Not for creating her, but that when caught between two people I cared about, I turned my back on her. I don’t regret my choice, but I regret what that’s done to her.”

“Regret is something we both have in common.”

Man and dog looked at one another before the blonde turned those understanding eyes on her, “I’m no expert with plants. Will you show me how to take care of it while I wait for Vivi?”

“Sure.”

Despite the one strange arm he had, his care was just as gentle as the other three. These humans were strange. Two humans and a ghost? Logistics. Unimportant. What mattered was them showing care for something that didn’t have anything to do with them. All for what? For a mutt that lied to all of them? It was very strange.

When night fell, her very being reached deep inside her. This wasn’t the first time these three came to her. When the blue locket had been picked up, each one in the form of a flower bloomed on her hand, only for her to strike them down before the lotus she’d been desiring shined. The others were forgotten about.

Each one of them was very specific.

A blue orchid with hints of magenta along its stamen.

A purple rose with a yellow center, it’s stem covered in thorns.

An orange sunflower that almost looks wilted.

When Mystery woke up the next morning, there were three tiny flowers curled around the base of the tree. There was no lotus bloom. Not yet. She was not ready to forgive him just yet. There was some comfort to this new addition she created.

[idk-mlb-is-reals-cute44]

A Miraculously Wonderful Wedding Day

Requested by @crazyfanatic97 (Dress design also by @crazyfanatic97 )

Summary: When Marinette's wedding day is interrupted by an akuma attack, she thinks her luck couldn't be worse. Little does she know, this unfortunate turn of events is about to lead to what might be the most miraculous revelation she's ever had. (AO3) 

*****

Marinette usually considered herself a pretty relaxed person. After coming into her own in the fashion world, finally asking Adrien out, and successfully upholding her responsibilities as Ladybug for almost ten years and counting, she had faced enough “this is gonna be the end of the world” to figure out how to keep her cool in stressful situations. On particularly bad days, she might get a little “loud, angry fashion designer.” On a rare, worse day, she might feel like she was fourteen years old again. 

Today she was at full out teenage-Chloe-levels of stressed. 

For one, it was her wedding day. The week had already been busy. But starting at seven a.m., it had been an endless parade of “how do you want your makeup” and “let me mess with your hair” and “are these flowers ok?” and Marinette wanted to scream. 

But on top of all of that, the fussing and worrying and getting ready, there was an akuma. 

An akuma. On her wedding day. 

To say Marinette was pissed was an understatement. Marinette was experiencing full-on “let’s murder Hawkmoth” levels of rage. 

The ceremony was starting in two hours. There were a million tiny, but also somehow unimaginably important, tasks to complete and details to check. The caterer was late. There was no time left over to deal with a battle. 

But Marinette had been Ladybug for long enough that she didn’t hesitate to clear out the room, citing “wanting some alone time on this special day,” and other such excuses that rolled off the tongue. (She was practiced at this--she knew what she was doing.) 

“This is so unfair,” Marinette complained to Tikki. 

“I know! It sucks!” said Tikki, in companionable indignance. She trusted her chosen not to need any convincing to do her job. 

Marinette gave herself a minute to push down the worries and anger and stress. Paris needed their hero, their Ladybug, right now. Not a stressed out bridezilla. 

(Marinette, in usual fashion, was not giving herself enough credit. To deal with all this, she was a saint.) 

“Tikki, spots on!” 

*****

Ladybug arrived on the scene, to find Chat Noir already there. She smiled at him. Even though the timing was just so inconvenient it had to be cosmically planned, she always loved to see her kitty. 

“Hello, Bugaboo!” Chat called out as she landed on the roof side beside him. 

“Hello, kitty,” Ladybug returned, “It’s always a pleasure to see you, as you know, but I’m hoping we can make this quick? I have a big day.” 

“Same,” he nodded, “I’m short on time as well.” Here he let a big grin loose, and said, as if he couldn’t contain himself in his joy, “I’m getting married.” 

Ladybug gasped. 

“You’re kidding!”

He shook his head. 

“That’s insane. I am too!” she continued, bumping him lightly with her hip. 

Chat snickered. 

“I’m the ying to your yang, right? We’re on the same wavelength!” 

Ladybug laughed. 

An explosion boomed from the north of them. 

“Let’s get to it, hmm?” said Ladybug, slinging her yoyo in the direction of whatever today’s brand of catastrophe would be. 

“Right behind you,” Chat said, taking a running leap. 

****** 

Hawkmoth was apparently bringing out all the stops today. Who knows how much time had passed as Ladybug and Chat Noir faced off against the overpowered, claustrophobia-themed akuma he’d sent out. 

It didn’t help that the longer the two spent struggling, the more their banter and confident energy drained. The time constraint only served to raise the stakes, which didn’t exactly translate to “the superheroes at their best.”

Angoisse, who wore the grossest (bright yellow and somber grey) bodysuit Ladybug had ever seen, had the power to trap people in tiny opaque boxes. Pretty standard akuma. The formula tended to be “something bad happens = does that bad thing to other people.” Hawkmoth was getting bored, it seemed, after all these years. He rarely got too creative. 

Still, the infamous super villain had managed to create a serious challenge this time around, formula or not. 

So, one thing led to another. 

That is to say… Ladybug and Chat Noir got trapped in a teeny, tiny box together. No way out, and hardly any wiggle room. 

Both their timers were running out, so they stood with their eyes closed, waiting for the telltale sparkly, ultra-shiny glow of detransformation. 

What they hadn’t expected was Marinette’s wedding dress. With the poofiest bell shaped skirt to ever exist (or, as close to that as Marinette could reasonably achieve), it was about four or so feet in diameter. It suddenly sprang into existence, and shoved Chat back towards the opposite wall. 

A few things happened, in quick succession. 

Both Marinette and Chat’s eyes involuntarily opened in momentary shock. 

Before Marinette could squeeze her eyes shut, Chat lost his skin tight super suit, in favor of a tuxedo (designed by none other than Marinette). 

A few moments pause, for shock. Here we find lots of rapid blinking, and loss of words. 

“Holy sh-” Adrien started. 

“You’re not supposed to see the dress!” Marinette suddenly squealed, lunging for Adrien. 

She covered his eyes, and he burst out laughing. 

“It’s you!” he almost yelled, his smile so supernova it was probably visible from Mars and rivaled the sun. 

She let out some panicked giggles, which soon became full out cackling. Uncovering his eyes, she grabbed his arms and tucked her face into his neck, shaking with mirth. 

“It’s you…” she returned, then let out one last snort. “I think we might miss our wedding, dear.” 

He enveloped her in a hug. 

“Ehh,” he shrugged, “We’ll elope.” 

Marinette let out a mock shriek. 

“Not on your life, Adrien Agreste!” she pulled back to give him her best imitation of her mother’s sternest face. “What will the families say?!” 

He slowly shook his head, staring at her in earnest wonder. 

“I can’t believe you’re Ladybug,” he said, “The love of my life and my best friend are the same person.” 

“I can’t believe you’re Chat Noir,” Marinette cried, “You’re like, my two favorite people! In one!” 

The two stared at each other, dumbstruck, for a few moments. 

“This is so surreal,” Marinette finally said, “...But also it somehow makes sense? Of course you’re Chat Noir. No one else makes puns as bad as you two-I mean, as you do.” 

“I feel kind of dumb for not realizing sooner,” he said, “We’re total idiots, right?” 

“Total idiots,” she agreed, “Total idiots who are in loooove!” 

“We’re getting married!” Adrien exclaimed. 

“Today! And we’re all dressed up!” Marinette said, “I can’t believe I’m marrying Chat Noir. You! Adrien! Adrien Noir! Chat Agreste!” 

“I’m marrying Ladybug,” Adrien smirked, making the resemblances to his alter ego even more striking, “Fourteen year old me would be over the moon. And you’re Marinette! I’ve got to be the luckiest guy in the world.” 

Marinette leapt forward, kissing him. He let out a surprised gasp, before returning it.  

 “I hope we don’t miss the cake,” she breathed, pulling back. 

“At our own wedding?” Adrien chuckled, a little breathless himself. “I think they’ll wait for us before they get into the cake, sweetie.” 

“You might miss the cake if we don’t bust out of here!” Plagg suddenly interrupted. “I’ve given you like… five minutes for your disgusting love fest. Now you’ve gotta bust us out!” 

“Plagg’s right,” Tikki sighed, sounded disappointed, “Can this be postponed?”

Marinette nodded, digging macarons out of the pockets she’d been very adamant about sewing into her dress. 

“I hope this is alright,” she said to Plagg, “I don't know what you normally eat.” 

Within seconds the dynamic duo was back in costume. 

“Ready, dear wife?” Chat asked, pressing a quick kiss to his lady’s mouth. 

“Not your wife yet, kitty,” Ladybug winked. “I’m ready. Let’s do this!” 

Chat destroyed the box with his signature Cataclysm! 

Spirits were definitely lifted, and the second part of the fight went much quicker than the first. Within ten, twenty minutes Ladybug had purified the akuma and restored the city to its previous, un-rampaged, glory. 

“We’re so late,” Ladybug said, fistbumping her partner. 

“We are!” Chat said. “I’m kind of too happy right now to care.” 

“Me too!” 

They beamed at each other for a moment. 

“Race you,” Ladybug finally said, wiggling her eyebrows. 

“You’re on!” 

***** 

Alya and Sabine were understandably a little mad at Marinette, who had turned up only ten minutes before the ceremony was set to begin. 

Still, she had Supreme Bride Privilege, so all was quickly forgiven. They touched up her Miraculously unruined hair and makeup, and sent her to wait with Tom as the bridal chorus quietly began. 

Marinette’s dress, the instigator of the happy revelation earlier that evening, had delicate off-the-shoulder sleeves. The dress was white, but cut short to reveal the blue underskirt that matched her eyes. Gold trim lined the bodice and waistline, and sparkly star-shaped details peppered the whole affair. Designing her own wedding dress had been possibly the most challenging, and most rewarding, creative process of Marinette’s life. 

Usually, when wearing a design she was proud of, Marinette was hyper aware of everyone’s reaction. Today, as her voluminous skirt swished along the aisle, her hand tucked into her father’s arm, she had eyes only for Adrien. 

They had already seen each other that day, but it had been in the excitement of battle, and the shock of discovering each other’s identities had superseded any other observations. Now, as Marinette milked the walk for all it was worth, moving at almost a snail’s pace, she really took a moment to take in her groom. 

His golden hair was tousled, almost sparkling in the bright mid-afternoon light streaming through the windows. His black tuxedo (with gold and blue accents, to match her own dress) fit him perfectly, and the almost imperceivable dusting of blush and mascara Chloe had insisted upon meant he looked almost too handsome for words. 

But, in all honesty, Marinette couldn't care less about any of that. 

She stared into his bright green eyes, crinkled from his dopey smile, and Marinette felt like she was coming home. She knew he felt the same way. Just like she knew she and her partner would always be an unstoppable team, just like she knew the sun would rise and the moon would set. Adrien was Chat Noir, her kitty, her best friend, the love of her life and her ultimate inspiration. She had hardly known so for even thirty minutes, but she had never known something so fully and completely as she did now. 

As she finally stepped up to the dais, she shot him a quick wink, before turning to the priest. 

Vows were exchanged. They both said their “I do”s. They gave their first kiss as a married couple. 

Later, as they sat, feet near-blistered from dancing and eyes sparkling with happiness, sharing a piece of cake, they had their second kiss. And their third. And their forth. 

“My kitty.” Marinette giggled. 

“Today was perfect, wasn’t it my lady?” 

And despite the stress, and the battle, and almost being late to her own special day, Marinette was completely sincere when she said, “Yes. Yes it was.” 

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday

Stretching fingers from the mermaid au for a moment, worked on the older idea, forgot how past tenses work. It has some sexy *cough* times in it.

Warnings: Eldritch stuff; Eldritch std; Eldritch Pregnancy; TENTACLES (some, not a lot) - Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane category; gore, violence, blood; dark humor; Major Character Death (Myabe, maybe not, quite esoteric in its essence); Underage (contextual allusion, but I'd decided to err on the side of caution); Lots of unsubtle manipulation; SOMEHOW LIKE PRETTY MUCH CANON-COMPLIANT AND I'M LIKE WHAT?

*

*

Jack Morrison had been dead for the better part of three decades.

After locking the door behind himself with the personal override that cut off all the outside communication, Gabriel turned to face the thing wearing Jack Morrison's skin sitting behind the Strike Commander's desk. He watched the pretense of any human emotion bleed out of Jack's face, to be replaced with impersonal curiosity.

"If this is about the discourteous United Nations representative, in my defense, I was hungry, and he irritated me."

Great. Time for breathing exercises. And Gabriel wondered, somehow, where his developing drinking problem was coming from. He crossed the distance to the desk and leaned on it with both his hands gripping the edge.

"You can't eat people only because..." Hell, who was he kidding, they had this particular argument rehearsed past the point of déjà vu. "Is there anything left I have to worry about?"

"It's not one of your operations," Jack smiled, teeth showing, and without the usual mimicry, the expression could – and did – look downright terrifying, "or one of your inconvenient detainees. I'm always careful."

"Yeah, about that..." The real Jack Morrison had been dead for the better part of three decades, a victim of a hit and run left to die in a ditch whom something else found and crawled into – if Gabriel were to trust anything this Jack Morrison told him. “You gave me some kind of eldritch std.”

"I did?" Jack craned his head to the side, the reaction almost impossible to gauge. Gabriel let go of the desk, slowly, and pulled up his jacket together with the shirt underneath. The skin on his side still pulsated with immaterial liquid blackness coming apart. "So I did."

"That's all you have to say for yourself?"

"This situation is far from an exact science, Gabe. To this time, you're the only human that has survived in full health." Jack brushed his fingers against the undulating mass trying to cling to his fingertips like water in zero gravity.

"You have no idea, then."

"No. But I think I know who might prove helpful, you will only have to put on your charm after I'm done with her." Jack brought up a profile on the screen. "Just say the word."

Gabriel did not need to read it, he had prepared the dossier himself and advised caution, preferably termination.

"Do it."

Two months later, Moira O'Deorain was inducted into Blackwatch.

*

Blackwatch's best-kept secret was the fact some occupants of the holding cells sometimes disappeared without a trace, only leaving behind the unusually bloody mess splattered even on the ceilings. Awful stuff no-one wanted to be stuck cleaning up, so everybody kept their mouths rightfully shut.

Gabriel flicked the ash off the cigarette he'd been barely smoking in front of one of such cells.

"Are you done in there? You have a party in an hour, and if I can't get out of it..."

The door opened with a high-pitched whine of one of the hinges – he should have someone look at it later – and Jack, looking pristine compared to the gory mayhem inside, stepped out, slowly licking the tips of his fingers, the tongue flitting in and out of his lips.

"...then neither can I?"

"Then neither can you." The wet sounds of the blood dripping from the ceiling still held their unnerving quality. "Did you learn anything useful?"

"Only a bunch of religious nonsense. Tell me," Jack turned to face him inside the hidden elevator going straight to his quarters. "Why do you all find a merciful god when faced with me?"

Because there has to be something to balance out the existence of whatever you are, Gabriel answered him the first time the question had been asked. A rehash of an old argument, Jack being facetious and playful, always leaving him wondering how many of those interactions were purely for his benefit, and what he was exactly to Jack: a pet, a project, an interesting specimen?

'One that didn't run' was an exponentially poor explanation to Gabriel's liking, and the only one he ever got. After all, running was of no use, and that night he had snuck out to smoke on the roof of their compound, Gabriel decided he might as well finish his cigarette before he got devoured like Mason, or be driven insane by the sight of the thing that wore Jack Morrison's skin.

Funny how spontaneous explosion due to unexplainable internal buildup of unknown gases got on the list of some more baffling SEP side effects.

"My turn?" Gabriel had asked when Jack turned to him, face slack and expressionless like one on a corpse, but put on something living, a travesty against the natural order. He raised his half-burned cigarette up for Jack to see. "Give me a minute or two."

With Jack slowly circling him, far too close for it to be of any comfort, he got to finish his smoke.

"I like you. You might do."

It took him two more cigarettes in the company of the splatter of organs, bone, and blood Mason had become to realize he was alone, and around half an hour before he called the whole mess in, avoiding any mention of what had actually occurred. An elaborate hallucination, Gabriel had assumed. God, was he wrong then, and on the next placement rotation, Jack made sure there were no doubts to be had about the authenticity of the roof incident.

The ding of the elevator arriving was enough to bring Gabriel back to the present.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Mason."

"Always the romantic." Jack moved deeper into the suite, ordering Athena to open the windows but lower the blinds, getting the ‘security’ expert in Gabriel to wince before he eventually remembered he had no idea if Jack could even be killed. He had seen the body pull itself back together more than once, the pulverized muscle and bone popping into its proper place with visceral slurps and cracks, the sinews tying the single strands back into a whole – an atavism, as he came to learn. The perfect image in one's mind's eye to be undressed to.

Not that Gabriel minded, particularly. Not at all.

But seeing Jack feed always brought something out of him – and being satiated always made Jack prone to indulge in more pedestrian matters, like having Gabriel spread painfully over his lap and speared on his cock, tendrils of void keeping him bound and upright, and immobile. Dissecting him with clinical precision and then putting him back together, all while observing Gabriel with the professional disinterest one might wear during a specimen’s autopsy. Honestly, the thought itself made his dick strain against his thigh, nothing at all like bending Jack over Strike Commander's desk for a quick fuck, or having him on his knees with his scary pretty mouth on Gabriel's cock, sometimes even playing along in a fashion making him appear almost human, and so much more horrifying for making Gabriel doubt who – or rather what – was sucking his dick.

He was jostled out of his unconscious train of thought by something pressed hard against his side, sinking into the flesh turned black. With his neck craned, Gabriel observed in morbid fascination the tentacle as it moved deeper in, soon joined by another one following the suit.

"...what?" Gabriel gasped out before slick mass forced itself between his lips and surged down his throat, choking him with its girth, and for a moment took his mind off the sensation of becoming increasingly – inconceivably – bloated, for all the wrong reasons. To his rising panic, the intrusion blocking off his air remained still and rigid, making it impossible to breathe around it until it eventually moved and contracted, slipping slowly further along. The first few breaths Gabriel took produced embarrassingly wet wheezing gurgles becoming frantic again with the growing awareness of something stuck in his gut, poking and prodding where nothing should, the feeling of things inside squirming alien and impossible to ignore.

He strained futilely against the bonds keeping him in place.

This was it, finally, the moment Jack would devour him because he had become bored with him, or Gabriel had lost his usefulness to him – the moment Gabriel would become a pitiful smear of flesh and blood painting the walls and the ceiling – and maybe even Jack himself. The thought should scare him. Instead, Gabriel felt his dick twitch in excitement as his balls tightened and heat pooled between his legs, leaving him trying to fuck the air in the vain hope of creating any friction while still held in the vice of unyielding tentacles.

Pleading with his eyes, not for his life, but to be let to come.

Jack pressed his palm to his chest, lips on his scary pretty face curled up in either amusement or sneer, or something entirely else, and the sensation of something popping inside reverberated behind Gabriel's ribs. Peritoneal rupture, the still-functioning analytical part of his mind supplied. Internal bleeding, infection, immediate medical intervention needed. But Jack was only smiling up at him while something contracted his lungs, leaving his chest fluttering desperately.

"She has outdone herself, his time," Jack mused, breaking away the eye contact as his lips closed around Gabriel's nipple – teeth scraping over it – biting into it – just one of the myriad of sensations breaking through the descending fog of lightheadedness. His body fighting for its life, Gabriel focused on just, or as much as, staying conscious while the animal inside clawed and whined, maddened with the primal fear of death until something was squeezed from the inside – almost an explosion – and, screaming, he tasted the bitter ichor.

Slowly coming to, and laid out on the bed, Gabriel was simply amazed to be alive – still. Sore, hurting, spent, but neither in pain nor dying. His hand, held to his side, rested on solid unbroken skin while his befuddled mind tried to come up with any explanation at all. Fucked within an inch of his life, definitely. Confused as hell why – somehow and inexplicably – he was still breathing and existing? That too.

Something brushed the back of his hand, and the tendril receded back to Jack, folding back into his form with unhurried neatness.

"Being fashionably late is back in fashion, I hear," Jack, in his dress attire, laughed before walking out and leaving Gabriel to his own devices. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall and swore.

He made it to the party an hour late, already hating everybody there.

And with any function like this one, nothing more was expected of him but to be an intimidating wallflower, allowed to be almost as rude and uncouth as he truly wanted to be when telling people to fuck off while he nursed his undiluted vodka, eyes on Jack flitting around the room. All smiles and sparkles, and sweet words of social conventions and contracts he had no care for save for keeping up the appearances. The performance was nauseating by itself.

As for Gabriel, he was more than happy with their silent arrangement, the small talk exhausting and pointless – and what was he supposed to even say?

'Dear ma'am, I murder people, and when I don't, I find people for your precious devil-sent Strike Commander to eat, and by the way, ma'am, you look simply enchanting tonight!'

Gabriel set the empty glass on a windowsill and grabbed another one from a passing waiter.

'Sir, so nice to meet you, I'm Gabriel Reyes, this is my partner who is an unholy abomination straight from some hell – if hell exists, but I’m willing to err on the side of caution in those circumstances – and our kid literally popped out of me on the battlefield, yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out' also never seemed like it would do well as a conversation starter.

Gabriel knocked back the drink, gin and tonic this time, and left the glass standing next to the previous one. He walked out to the balcony, hand already reaching for the pack in his pocket, fingers itching to feel the weight of a lighted cigarette between them. Turning around, he came face to face with Jack bringing up an already burning lighter for him, his back to the crowd in the room. Gabriel leaned against the balustrade and lighted his cigarette, drew in the smoke slowly into his lungs – savoring it – observing and waiting. Jack pocketed the lighter, and then tampered with Gabriel's tie, his fingers sliding lower after, splayed, with a smile of something that had never learned what a smile was really about.

The ride or die kind of smile, all teeth and malice, the last thing for anyone else but Gabriel to see.

"It's coming along all nice," Jack mused.

"You put another one in me?"

"Maybe." Coy and teasing, the answer sent shivers down Gabriel's spine.

"When."

"Not today. Would you have said no to me?"

The choice he didn't have aside, Gabriel knew he wouldn't have refused.

Curiosity was the first step on the stairs leading all the way straight down to hell, and he had gladly taken a tumble down, his sanity forfeited with the knowledge he had never wanted but couldn't get enough of. They say curiosity killed the cat, but the satisfaction brought it back.

And the satisfaction had tasted of iron in his mouth, smelled of burning circuitry, felt like a projectile ripping through his armor – Jack huddled over him, speaking nonsense words of encouragement not to him but to the thing gnawing at Gabriel from the inside. It finally burst out, and Jack took it into himself before calling in the medvac, hitting all the right notes in his voice on the call: trembling and interrupted, pitched higher than usual.

"When it's coming?"

"When it's ready."

Gabriel blew the smoke in his face, slowly.

Later that night, long into the morning hours, fucking into the body going through its paces below him – back arched and mouth open, fluttering fingers clenched on the sheets – Gabriel asked again about the why.

"Do you really want to know?" Jack whispered into his ear. "That night, on that roof, you held no faith. And I thought, I'll make you believe in me."

The answer horrified Gabriel more than anything else Jack had ever told him, not because it rang false but because it rang true – and the truth of himself was worse than all the lies Jack could spin.

*

Following months – almost a year – passed in an unfettered deluge of things going wrong and compromised operations. Jack didn't give a fuck, starting with Rialto.

"I want you to kill him."

Gabriel stared at him, waiting for a follow-up that didn't come.

"It runs contrary to..."

"Either way, you will find your hand forced. Isn't it better to act out of one's own volition?"

What had sounded not unlike a veiled threat turned out to be an even more veiled warning. 'You still need her,' was Jack's answer to Gabriel's ire, delivered with a note of amusement. The worst of it, he was right, disgustingly and irredeemably right. Gabriel hated it; Moira remained on retainer.

But today, another name was on Gabriel's mind – swamped with fear, anger, and desperation – as he broke into a run towards the landing bay.

Ana.

Jack had killed Ana.

Gabriel pushed past the agents and the medical personnel, ignoring the surprised sounds of indignation, Jesse behind him taking over the explanations, his voice relaxed and unhurried.

"Better clear out, the commanders are gonna have, ah, whatcha call it, a private word."

Jack, still in the carrier, sitting with his head bowed, pensive, Ziegler standing in front of him, didn't acknowledge his presence, not until Gabriel sneered at the medic to get the fuck out. The perfect image of the caring commander in how he slowly nodded to her.

"Now!" Passing Gabriel, Ziegler flinched with her entire body. He waited for her to clear at least some distance from the carrier before he was looking into amused blue eyes while he had Jack pressed by his neck against the far wall of the craft's inside. "The fuck have you...?"

"What do you think I've done?"

He didn't remember much of it – startled out of his fury by the sound of laughter, of all things – sitting on Jack's chest with knees braced on either side of Jack’s ribs – fist raised, hurting – skin on his knuckles cracked and covered in blood, his and Jack's.

"You killed her. You killed Ana. You..."

But Jack didn't stop laughing – meat and bone fixing itself back into shape, torn lip regaining its arch – a proof of Gabriel's impotence, his momentum cut short when it met with the simple inability to cause harm to the wretched thing under him.

"I’ve never ever touched her."

"You're lying!"

"Why would I? You see," Gabriel started at the touch curling around the nape of his neck, pulling him to lean down with the strength that suffered no objection until their foreheads met, "your dear Ana, she left you."

"She wouldn't..."

"She did. She saw an out, and she took it, so clever."

Arms wrapped around his back and Gabriel slumped against Jack's frame, adrenaline and tension bleeding out of his body – leaving behind surging feelings of betrayal and hopelessness – and still, some doubt that dispersed with fingers combing through his hair, lips brushing against his cheek in a light kiss, and a hissing whisper.

"I could hunt her down for you."

"No."

Gabriel didn't question Jack's ability to find Ana, he feared what Jack would do when he found her.

"Poor Gabriel, left all alone. Alone, with me," Jack chuckled. His fingertips massaged Gabriel’s scalp in a soothing pattern. "She's always understood, and she still abandoned you to me."

Gabriel had no strength left in him to protest that she couldn't know.

"Such keen eyes, to call me ifrit of the jinn. Such a narrow vision to call me that. So much more than I came to expect from your kind," Jack continued, words dripping with twisted amusement, and Gabriel closed his eyes. "A vengeful curse of the dead. I do like the sound of it. Don’t you?"

*

The noose slipped around his neck and the ground gave way, everything falling apart to rubble and leaving an empty husk behind. Gabriel didn't want to fight anymore. The blue coat rested thrown over the back of the chair Jack sat in with his chin propped up on his palm.

"I don't know what else can be done. This situation is... Are you even going to do anything?"

"No." Jack tapped his fingers against his cheek, slow and idle, a smile stretching on his face at Gabriel's resignation.

"I don't know why I even care anymore."

And he didn't. He could try to bullshit himself with the tired phrases of duty, of having poured his heart and soul into Overwatch, of doing good and fighting the good fight, but ultimately, they would all turn out to be poor excuses.

'I will make you believe in me.'

"You shouldn't care." Jack stood up and walked around the desk, stopping in front of Gabriel. He put his hands on Gabriel's face; some part of Gabriel hated the fact he didn't flinch. He never did. "This system's complexity outgrew the possibility of governance a decade ago."

It had been for nothing. And now, as Jack leaned in with the grimace of a baleful smile stretched across his face – touching his forehead to Gabriel's – with the defeat came relief: in the greater scheme of things, whatever were his actions, they were meaningless after all.

Gabriel looked – truly looked – at Jack for the first time in ages, and he saw the details he had always noticed but never considered as a whole: the receding and thinning hairline, the white at the temples, the crow's feet, the spiderweb-like labyrinth of small purplish veins under the skin. Superficial signs of aging appearing subtly over the years, the question of either performance, or the body pushing its own narrative over the thing inhabiting it, but, according to Jack, death didn't exist, and what existed in its stead was change.

"What do you intend to do now?"

"A real quandary, isn't it, what will I do next? What should I do? What do you think, Gabe?" Jack mused, his eyes leisurely half-closed, Gabriel's hands finding their resting place at his hips. He answered the question by himself, the one Gabriel was on the cusp of asking but too afraid to voice. "We could find Ana, air our grievances with her, we do have some, don't we? Or play around and hunt down some dirty scurrying rats. With nothing holding you back anymore, just imagine it, all the bloodshed, and all the violence you might ever wish for."

"Tempting." And it was. Gabriel sighed, reassured at being included.

"I knew you'd see it my way." Corners of Jack's eyes crinkled in amusement. Of course, Gabriel would, Jack made sure of it: seeped under his skin and into his thoughts, slithered all over his nerves and took root in his mind, bound Gabriel to himself with Gabriel's own permission. In hindsight, he wouldn't change a thing, as long as he was still wanted, for the lack of a better word.

Jack stirred, eyes flicking to the side for a moment, lips pursed and attention focused on something beyond the room.

"I see. This is how it's going to be."

Jack pulled him with his hands in for a kiss – crushing and ravenous – devouring Gabriel as the ground gave way under their feet among the roar of the blood rushing in his ears and the wail of the backdraft before the suffocating darkness overtook everything.

After he had pulled all the parts of himself together among the smoking rubble, deafened by the cacophony of gunfire and screams, Gabriel fled. Jack would survive on his own.

Sombra slipped out of his flesh with little fanfare days later, a small shadow through which alien stars shone like glittering eyes. But he called her that only when she began to fill in her form, soon a young woman consuming knowledge with the voracity of a newborn.

The hearings came and went. Ziegler made a show out of herself. Gabriel had scoffed at her testimony then. In retrospection, he could see how she had reached her conclusion.

Months passed and Gabriel, struggling to keep whole at the seams, had finally understood Jack was not coming back. He handed Sombra to Jesse, who could teach her so much more than Gabriel ever could, and sought help from the only person who could offer it.

Years down the line, looking at the frail – small – mangled body – its fingers twitching in a growing pool of blood, and pinkish bubbles breaking on the lips, eyelids on an uneven level, one eye bloodshot – the thing inhabiting it gone with a soundless pop of ripped reality, Gabriel realized Jack had never specified if the kid was dead when he had found him.

It was a split-second decision that he made.

"O'Deorain, get your ass down to the lab stat, the body is still alive."

*

With the kid below him – back arched and mouth open, fluttering fingers clenched on the sheets – Gabriel was, once again, found doubting.

[whimperwoods]

Certified for Independence 3 (Android/AI Whump)

Sometimes when inspiration strikes, it really strikes, you know? This chapter is mostly just this poor baby robot having too many feelings. What memories are still there? What memories does the woman want? What do they do about it? So many hard questions. So much emotional whump.

Default disclaimer I continue to actually know nothing about how computers/machines work.

Here’s part 1 and part 2.

taglist: @bluebadgerwhump​, @bloodinthewaterwhump​

tw: memory loss, tw: captivity, tw: psychoemotional self-mutilation for a noble cause

******

Once the woman was gone, the android crawled into a corner of the cell and curled up tight, tucking their knees to their chest and wrapping their arms around their legs. It was soothing, the pressure of the walls behind them, the pressure of their own arms around themself, and they weren’t sure why.

They knew they should do something to help themself, something useful, something purposeful before the night slipped away, but everything was just so - just so. They needed the calm, too, needed to close their eyes and put their head down and feel the pressure of solid walls behind them, protecting them.

They didn’t know how long they sat like that, just curled up and trying to calm down.

They did know, after a while, that they’d calmed down as much as they were likely to, with the danger they were in still real and pressing.

<“Try to conserve power overnight,”> the woman had said, <“If I lose time tomorrow because you wasted your energy, I might just get … careless.”> They didn’t know exactly what that meant, careless, but if she was going to be in their head again, digging around in their mind, peeling open their body for a peek inside, prying at them with tools and code, then careless was definitely a threat.

They weren’t built for grand feats of physical strength. They hadn’t even been meant to know - to know - it was missing. There was something they’d known once. They didn’t think it was something helpful, anyway. Probably. Hopefully.

The physical thing they knew but didn’t know anymore was something fun, not something to get them out of here. Something with the neighbor-friend, whose favorite donut was another hole in their memory. “But probably not a donut hole,” they joked to themself, the weak humor of it landing like nothing in their chest and making them feel no better than before.

What kinds of donuts did they know? Cake donut. Glazed donut. Jelly donut. Powdered sugar. And subtypes and variations and custards and creams and all of a sudden their mind was filled to the brim with donuts, but they’d never be able to guess their neighbor’s favorite. Not unless the woman had already been careless, had left them something she didn’t mean to, hidden somewhere or piggybacked off something else.

They had no idea where to start looking. How did you find something you didn’t know you had? How did you find what you didn’t have anymore, enough to recognize it was gone?

They didn’t have a favorite donut, themself. They liked looking at the ones with sprinkles on top, liked all the colors, had even been bought one, one time, after they’d kept staring at the same kind every week. A present, from the neighbor-friend. <“I know you can’t eat it, but I just thought - why not, you know? You can at least squish it around in your hands or something. Have a sensory experience.”>

They clenched their hands into fists. If they thought hard enough, they could still feel the donut under their fingertips, as they trailed the most sensitive of their sensors over the top, feeling the hard little lines of the sprinkles, the give of the icing and then the donut when they accidentally poked too hard. It had been - silly. Fun. They’d sat down at the kitchen table next door, together, once the groceries were put away, and they’d put down paper towels around the plates just in case and their friend had - had - part of the memory was just gone.

<“I always wanted to just get a jelly donut in my hand and squish it, you know? Just really squeeze the crap out of it until it popped and see what it felt like.”>

They suspected their friend had done it and not just talked about it, but everything outside their own body, everything about the memory that wasn’t touch or sound, was gone now, sucked into the gap where the details of their friend had been.

They must have other favorite things. At least a few. Raindrops on roses, at least. Their mouth turned up at the corner, but their chest still felt hollow.

When she’s done with me, will I still be able to joke?

They’d always made jokes for other people, for the smiles and groans, for the feeling of connecting. They’d never understood why jokes seemed to relieve so much tension in other people. It had never worked that way for them. It wasn’t working now.

They had to have favorites, though. What were their favorites?

<“Songs about birds don’t count as a genre!”>

<“Songs with birds in them. And I didn’t say they were my favorite genre. I said I collect them.”>

<“You collect them.”>

<“Sure. I have a playlist. But I also just... remember. ‘Free Bird,’ ‘Blackbird,’ ‘I’m Like a Bird,’ ‘When Doves Cry.’ You know. Bird songs.”>

That wasn’t useful right now, but they could already feel themself falling down a rabbit hole into it, falling into an old habit of mind, more songs hovering at the edge of their awareness. “El Condor Pasa.” “Kookaburra.” “Chavaleh.”

Father had called them “Little Bird” before they were grown. Before they were finished. Independent. “Little Bird.” But they hadn’t kept the name. They’d never felt so confident in their new name. Something about picking a new one hadn’t sunk in yet, hadn’t stuck deep down in quite the same way. But their coworkers couldn’t call them Little Bird. Their neighbors couldn’t.

<“So, is Winter your favorite season or something?”>

<“Yes. Easier not to overheat, for one. And - I like it when everyone stays inside. It’s safer that way. Cosier. And I like indoor activities. Movies. Books. Music. Just - sitting around and talking. That sort of thing.”>

<“Nah, man, not a criticism. I just hadn’t realized you picked your name yourself. That’s pretty rad.”>

<“Oh. Yes. I did.”>

Winter wondered why the woman hadn’t found their name yet, to delete it like she had the names of their friends. Was it another of her games? Or was it too well hidden, still too strange, after all these months, when they still so often felt like Father’s Little Bird instead?

They should look for whatever it was the woman wanted. They should look for it, but then they’d have to decide what to do with it, how far they thought they could push her, how much they were willing to risk.

They pulled in more tightly on themself, just a little, just barely, absolutely as much as they could get.

What had the woman said? <“Development information is useful.”> Growing up. Father’s Little Bird. That was what she wanted. To know? Or to take? They couldn’t be sure.

He’d been so happy when they passed the test. When they proved they could live on their own, could pass for human enough to get by, to be independent, to have a life. He’d pulled them into a hug, and they’d hugged him back, trying not to think about the hugeness of the big wide world that was theirs now.

He’d been so proud. And the lady at the front desk had said something about him being proud of himself, and Father had looked over, had met Winter’s eyes, only just now become Winter’s, and they’d known right then, right there that that wasn’t it at all, that they were the one he was proud of. There had been - something. Something.

Development information. The woman wanted all the things that came before that moment. All the parts of their life that had made that one come to pass.

They didn’t know how much they could keep from her.

Their chest ached. They wanted to cry. Then they were crying, which was an inconvenient waste of energy, just now. Their breath hitched erratically, heaving with a thousand inefficient feelings, overwhelming them. They’d never had tear ducts, but their nose and throat suddenly felt half-blocked, thick with emotion as they tried and failed to breathe through it like nothing was wrong.

<“I’m going to ask you how you feel a lot. It’ll probably get annoying, but - I want to make sure I get it right. I need you to tell me if something hurts, or if it’s overwhelming. Emotions are - well, if I get this right, you’ll figure out what they are.”>

Father had smiled. Little Bird hadn’t understood him, hadn’t understood what he meant. But now - Winter tried to distract themself from the feeling in their nose and throat, only to find themself noticing the pulsing ache in their bad elbow again. They wished they knew what had happened to it. Or perhaps they didn’t.

<“People like to pretend they somehow have a self that’s different from their body. Separate. But they don’t. Not really. Not all the way, anyway. Otherwise, you’d think just as well when you were hungry as when you were full, or when you were tired as when you were alert. And that’s not even getting into emotions. You can’t build a person just building a mind. They’ve gotta have both. Or at least - that’s what I think. You’ll have to tell me some day if you agree.”>

That had come when Little Bird was beginning to understand. Father had been tweaking some things, inside their gut. They hadn’t understood emotions yet, really, but they’d been starting to learn them.

Was this what the woman wanted? And if it was, what would she do with it? They wouldn’t mind never crying again, but that would mean a thousand horrible things first, would mean whole parts of their body ripped out of them, tiny things with no rational purpose, no function beyond the million little sensations that made them feel.

<“I’m jealous of you when I’m getting ready for a competition, you know. Your hands don’t get sweaty when you’re nervous.”>

<“No, just prickly. It’s a strange sensation.”>

<“No shit?”>

<“No shit.”>

<“Is that distracting?”>

<“A little.”>

<“What’s the point of it? Seems like a weird thing to happen to you.”>

<“I don’t know. But I guess in competition at least it’s - fair.”>

<“What if you had to compete against other androids?”>

<“Less fair, I guess. But Father didn’t think like that. Not really.”>

Winter felt a shiver down their spine. Whatever the woman wanted, she didn’t think like Father. They hadn’t figured out yet what it was she wanted. She might prefer that they not feel anything at all. She might prefer that they feel pain.

She hadn’t used Father’s name. She’d just referred to him in reference to Winter. Did she know who he was? But she must have. She’d certainly rooted around enough up in their head. But then, she hadn’t found their name. Or she hadn’t found it stored under “favorite season,” anyway.

Winter had gotten ahold of themself. They’d stopped crying. They still felt like their face was too thick, swollen behind their nose. It wasn’t, really. Just signals. Data. Back and forth, chain reactions that became other chain reactions, the start of a feeling in one part of their mind or body reverberating into all the other parts.

It was tempting to erase everything they had of their childhood, just to spite her. Just to rob her of whatever she was looking for. But they were afraid of what she’d do to them if they did. No. They’d have to be careful. They’d have to choose wisely.

What was most dangerous for her to know? But that question had no answer, because they’d have to answer “dangerous to whom?” and they hadn’t worked out who she threatened, outside these walls, if anyone at all. They weren’t so self-centered as to think nothing outside these walls was relevant. They just didn’t understand how the pieces fit together.

What was the worst-case scenario? Father had always been a best-case kind of person, but it had been a relief meeting - meeting - meeting someone. A friend. From - a place. It was good knowing it was alright to think of worst cases sometimes, even if they couldn’t remember why they knew it.

Worst case scenario, she wanted to build an army of evil robots. Worst case scenario, she wanted to take over the world and rule as an evil despot. Worst case scenario, she wanted to feed them to a hungry bear.

The worst case scenario game wasn’t fun alone. They couldn’t think of anything extreme enough to make the realistic worst cases less scary.

Worst case, she just wanted to torture them. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

Worst case, she wanted to be able to disable everything real about them and sell them off to the highest bidder as a mindless, cooperative drone.

Worst case, she wanted to make more like them and sell them off as full people, without the certification paperwork that meant freedom, the paperwork Father had been so excited to give to Winter once they’d proven, together, that he’d managed to make a person who shouldn’t be allowed to be enslaved.

They sorted through the worst cases, trying to decide what they could live with.

It wasn’t a hard choice.

<“I know. It sucks. Sadness, loneliness, fear - they all suck. But remember when we were working on the good emotions? Happiness? Hope? Pride?”>

<“I don’t want to watch any more sad movies. I don’t like them. I don’t like this.”>

<“Hey, hey, come here. Come here. We won’t. Not tonight. We can watch something happy before bed. How about that video of dogs getting adopted?”>

<“That makes me cry, too.”>

<“I told you we could recalibrate that, if it was what you wanted.”>

<“No. It’s good crying. I just - want more of this hug first.”>

They remembered a half-laugh in father’s voice, a puff of air against their scalp as he huffed out a chuckle through his nose.

<“Yeah, Little Bird. I can do that. You’re much more huggable now that we’ve got your skin worked out properly, you know.”>

Winter’s throat was thick. Their nose was half-blocked from behind, and their eyes hurt, aching even in the absence of tear ducts.

For a long, long moment, they froze the memory, savoring the feeling of Father’s arms around them, pressure not of their own making, like what they had now in their little dark corner. Father had been warm. Soft. He’d smelled like himself. They’d felt safe, tucking their head down and curling closer to him. They’d felt loved. They’d felt loving. They’d felt love in the air, family making itself known, appearing from the depths of everything and nothing for the hundredth time, to do so hundreds more.

They deleted the memory.

Then they deleted more.

Learning anger. Learning fear. Joy. Pride. Annoyance. Horror. Hope. Happiness. Some of the best memories they had, and all the things that made the bad ones bearable.

They’d deleted the learning of sadness first, but oh they ached inside, ached worse with every deletion, every new gap where Father’s face and voice and spirit had been.

They couldn’t delete too much. They couldn’t delete too little. They couldn’t get caught. They couldn’t let her know how to teach other people how to feel. Not when they knew the kinds of things she might do with that. They had to be careful. They had to be thorough.

They finished their deletions and buried their face in their knees.

They cried until they couldn’t risk any more of the way it might run down their battery power.

Then they shut themself down, knowing the next time they came awake, it would be morning and she would be here.

It was a hard shutdown, because giving themself a moment to think about it as they faded out would have been too much. They’d spent enough time working up the courage to shut down at all.

[carelesstranslator]

Clock Zero Bonus Story (Madoka)

As long as it’s with you --

“Hah? What is that. Please say it again.”

The location was a stylish and fashionable cafe owned by the Hanabusa family.

The owner’s son, Hanabusa Madoka, and his lover Kurou Nadeshiko, sat in a corner of that cafe.

Madoka’s narrow eyes narrowed further as he squinted at her.

“As I said, I’ve started a part-time job.”

Part-time work.

Referring to a form of employment with a shorter fixed term contract compared to full-time office workers.……his mind ruminated on this mundane definition of the phrase, so surprised was he at the words coming from his girlfriend’s mouth.

Simply put, it didn’t suit her at all.

“……why would an heiress like you do something like that?”

“It has nothing to do with that. Since I’m already a university student, I don’t want to keep relying on my parents. Until now, I’ve not been allowed to do it, but…… my father has finally given his permission.”

“Speaking of which, aren’t you busy? With clinical practice and other things, you barely have time to sleep do you?”

“That’s true but… it’s not every day.”

“Hah. And then?”

“Eh?”

“What kind of part-time job is it? I’m sure you’re not working the cash register at a convenience store, right? I can’t even imagine it.”

“……are you making fun of me?”

“I am not. I am simply speaking the truth.”

“Hah… It’s a job at a cafe.”

“Heh. Which cafe?”

“……you won’t come to make fun of me?”

“Of course I will. One of the bonuses to a store where my girlfriend is working is to visit and witness her messing up at her job.”

“……”

“I’m joking. So, where is it?”

“At a place near the university. You know, there’s a large main road, at the place where it turns -“

“Ah… wait. Isn’t that place a bar by night?”

“That’s right. I only work the night shift so strictly speaking, I’ll be working at the bar.”

“Hah? Are you stupid?”

He said the precise words that came to mind without softening them.

Predictably, Nadeshiko took offense and frowned.

Madoka was always too blunt and spoke without trying to hide his meaning. Because of that his words were trustworthy, but because she didn’t expect him to react negatively to the news of her part-time job, she felt hurt.

“Why makes you say that?”

“That area is filled with unsavory types of people.”

“……I’ll be working inside the store. There will be other staff present too.”

“Don’t you understand that no matter how serious and respectable a person is normally, they can change after drinking alcohol?”

“You’re exaggerating the issue. It’s just a customer service job.”

“… you…”

Sincerely amazed, Madoka could only sigh.

What was wrong with it, why Madoka was against it, it seemed she could not understand one whit. Something like irritation swirled within his mind.

(…… as always, she has no self-awareness)

Nadeshiko was popular.

In elementary and middle school, she had suffered because of her cool personality, and she was close to few peers. However, when she entered high school, the impression that people had of her had definitely changed.

Beautiful looks, striking intelligence, and a calm maturity that set her apart from other girls her age. After becoming an adult, she had also become skilled at reading the atmosphere in a room and adapting to situations quickly.

To Madoka, it was not an exaggeration to say that every single man walking on the street was his enemy.

“You are too lacking in self-awareness.”

“What self-awareness?”

“The awareness that you attract men easily.”

“Hah?”

“See? You aren’t aware of it are you?”

“Even if you say that…… I’m not doing anything of the sort.”

“Even if you don’t intend to do it, people who are attracted will get closer to you.”

Seeing the absolute lack of understanding in her scowl, Madoka realized that he was being selfish.

Though it was true that she was popular, she had experienced few negative situations as a result of that popularity. It was only natural that she would not understand why this was not a positive trait.

But this was a big problem to Madoka.

Though she was normally wary, she was unexpectedly softhearted to people. This made it so that even if anyone hit on or flirted with her, she would not exercise caution.

“Actually, Madoka. Are you worried for me?”

“Hah?”

“You’re worried that if I work at a bar, it would be dangerous, right?”

“Well… there is that. It would not be unheard of for something to happen at a drinking place at night.”

“…I see.”

In a sudden switch of mood, she blushed and turned her gaze downwards, as if she was a little bit happy about something. It was extremely disarming and he felt himself weakening.

Even though he was still worried, it was clear that their priorities and concerns were not aligned.

“…… Just for the record, I’m not objecting to this because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Eh? …… then, why?”

“It’s because I will be restless and distracted. To always be distracted on the days when you work, what kind of inconvenience is this?”

If he was willing to say that much, Nadeshiko didn’t understand why it was ‘not for your sake’ that he objected.

Madoka’s habit of not voicing his true feelings was an old one, but she had always felt that he should be able to just say so if he was concerned for her.

“……you’ll be distracted because you’re helplessly in love with me right?” *(T/N: See final chapter for ‘Return’ Madoka’s route)

“What is that. When did I ever say that?”

“You said that previously. ‘I love you. I love you so much I can’t do anything about it.’ ”

“Did I say that?”

“…… if you can’t remember, shall we reminisce over the time that you confessed to me as well?”

“Unnecessary. That incident never happened. It’s all a fantasy that happened inside your brain.”

“………… Madoka, you used to be so adorable in the past!”

“Even now, I am adorable.”

Madoka was in no position to say that himself. That’s why it was a pity, he was so adorable back in his student days….With the passing of time, the closer they became, Madoka’s behaviour had become brusque.

—— that was the proof of his affection. Because she understood that now, she looked upon it with fondness, but.

Sometimes. Only very occasionally sometimes, his ruthlessly curt attitude hurt. That she loved him even so was surely because she knew. His cold manner belied his strong affections for her. His indifferent words and neutral expression were his way of being obstinate. She knew this.

—-It was spring when she entered high school.

Nadeshiko’s third year middle-school graduation ceremony.

After the ceremony was a free period of time for everyone to say their farewells to their peers, juniors, and teachers.

Madoka had come to congratulate Nadeshiko, with his unchangingly indifferent expression.

At that time, Madoka was still in his second year of middle school. After a year, he had grown taller, and the impression of youthfulness he’d had when they had met had vanished.

“Nadeshiko. Congratulations on your graduation.”

“Ah, Madoka. You came to see me off.”

“Yes, because Nakaba told me to.”

“Ah, I see…… Well, okay. Thanks. You’ll be a third-year student this year won’t you? Work hard for the high school entrance examinations.”

“Yes.” The Madoka of that day seemed just the same as always. Down to the way he nodded his head, and the coldly indifferent expression in his unwavering gaze.

“I have something to give to you.”

“Eh?”

Breaking the silence between them, Madoka passed her a beautifully arranged dried flower mini-bouquet. Madoka had always been skilled at making small handicrafts. With this gift, it seemed as if he was implying her elegance. Nadeshiko blushed as she received the bouquet.

“It’s beautiful…… thank you, Madoka.”

“And one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll be graduating today, and you aren’t entering the affiliated high school section, but took the external high school entrance examinations didn’t you?”

“? Yes, that’s right.”

“I must still spend one more year here. If I don’t do well, four years from when I enter high school…… no. From now, always.”

“……?”

Completely not understanding, Nadeshiko inclined her head questioningly.

“I always thought that as long as I had Nakaba, that was enough. I thought that when I came here today. But now, when I think about what will happen from now on, I feel that the future is unbearable.”

“Eh.”

“I thought about what I could do, to rid myself of this irritation and frustration. As a result, I have a request to make of you.”

“W…what is it……”

“Please meet up with me even outside of school.”

“Eh?”

“Whenever possible, please spend your rest days with me.”

“…………?”

“I want you to see me differently from everyone else. Nadeshiko.”

“Hah……!?”

“When I think of you entering high school, becoming close to a man I don’t even know, it makes me feel disgruntled.”

“Ma…Madoka…… are you saying-“

“It would seem that I am jealous. Of someone that has yet to appear.”

Madoka wore a deeply begrudging expression as he took one step closer. Caught by those transparently clear eyes from up close, she could not look away.

She was vaguely aware that he just said something incredible to her.

But her thoughts could not comprehend it.

Madoka was, jealous? He was upset at the thought of not being able to meet her anymore in the future?

“It’s okay to become selfish. You were the one who said that to me.”

“That, that is… I certainly did say that.”

Predictably, she was confused.

In other words, in his usual convoluted and difficult to understand manner of speaking, Madoka was confessing his love.

Up until now, she had been confident that aside from Nakaba, who was Madoka’s whole world, she had been more important than any of their peers.

With the exception of Nakaba, she was special to him, she thought.

But at best that was platonic affection. Something like romantic love…… she thought it impossible that he would ever develop such feelings for her.

(……I)

As her thoughts came to this point, she realized it. That she had always been holding a small hope, a small expectation from Madoka. Even though it was impossible for him to ever say it to her, impossible for him to ever give her a place in his heart above what she had already been given. To the Madoka who seemed more like a boy with each passing day, she had no choice but to crush her own growing attraction.

Even so, some part of her had anticipated something more.

“So, what do you say? Will you let me keep you to myself?”

“Keep me to yourself, that is……”

“If it’s not possible, please say so clearly. Honestly, I’m also irritated by how troublesome this is.”

“W-what’s with that?”

Raising her face to retort, Nadeshiko froze at what she saw.

———Madoka’s face was… red.

Not only that, that unwavering gaze that had always seemed to see through her, was downcast. His long eyelashes were quivering.

“……it’s a bother. Even though I feel restless when you are not here, my feelings for you are an annoyance.”

“Madoka……”

“Even so, if it is you…… if it is with you, I feel like I could learn to see the world outside better.”

The tone that sounded more hateful than frustrated, even that seemed to also convey his true feelings.

Nadeshiko knew that her own face could not possibly grow warmer than it already had.—-

“— not only that, in the middle of my reply, you said ‘Is that so?’ and began to walk off quickly. But your ears when red, and when I teased you, you glared at me. Ahh, you used to be so adorable back then……”

“…… do you think that was adorable? I can only think it was hateful.”

“It was adorable.”

“Anyway, why are you narrating like an abridged story digest? Please stop it, you’ve added too many dramatized details.”

“Oh? My memory is my greatest strength. Even you remember what you said back then don’t you? Or were you only lying back then?”

“…………”

“I was really glad! Somewhere in my heart, I think I had always been waiting for you to say those words. But I thought you never would.”

“…… you…”

“That’s why, I was happy. It’s a memory I definitely want to remember always. Was that only a lie?”

As she stared at him, Madoka’s brow furrowed grumpily.

“…… it wasn’t a lie. It was just the folly of youth.” he muttered disgruntledly and bent closer in a light movement.

That manner of speech had not changed since the past. Despite his honest nature, he could not bring himself to be straightforward.

Nadeshiko laughed a little at the warmth of his kiss, and he seemed to become irritated again. Then, his lips traced upwards to her ear.

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Eh?””

“Your part-time job. It ends late at night, doesn’t it? Please call me when your shift is over.”

“……(soft laugh). Okay. I understand.”

Even if he was not straightfoward, the feelings directed towards her were strong.

She got the feeling that in as much as she was swayed by her younger boyfriend, so too was he tied to her apron strings. She could not help but think lovingly on this relationship. So even if they annoyed each other sometimes, it couldn’t be helped!

-end-

[kyberphilosopher]

Chapter Eight

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

The sniper meets Rex and I in the sand. Similar to the blonde man, he shares the same face.

Handsome, angular creases. His hair is dark and in a crew cut in contrast to Rex’s, but his most striking feature is the ghostly eye. White and milky, a long dark scar reaches from his cheek to his temple. The other eye- my right, his left- is as honey colored as his brother. He’s a Clone, through and through. Both of them are clad in black turtlenecks and brown scarfs and belts.

“This is Wolffe,” Rex introduces. The second soldier nods at me coldly as I bite the inside of my cheek.

Both sets of fingers tighten around the lightsaber bodies. I don’t like Clones. When I look at them, I see flashes of a helmet streaked with yellow markings. I can see the machine guns in their hands, aimed at me with malice and hate. Every word form Rex is like a word from the one back on Ilum. I don’t like it. I don’t want to stay around them.

I can feel my heart beating against my ribs, hammering, the longer I look at their identical faces. I can’t be here. I can’t look at them. They’re the ones that almost killed me.    

“Numbers,” I’m able to order out, though my sweaty palms are beginning to betray me.

“What?” Rex fires back quickly. One of his eyebrows arch, and his bottom lip snarls with another layer of distrust.

“Your numbers,” I say. “What are they?”

Rex’s amber eyes flit from the Imperial sigil on my jacket, back to my face. They narrow, then widen back to normal. “CT-7567, and CC-3636. What is your rank?”

Through the anxiety, I’m just able to stutter out, “w-what-”

Rex raises his blasters again, now squinting both of his eyes in aggression. “What. Is. Your. Rank?”

I don’t have an answer for him. I am frozen in time, staring at the golden orbs of anger. This system, that once felt soft and calm, is now covered in layer after layer of anguish. It’s not just from me and my own memories. Rex feels it too.

“Answer,” he says lowly and slowly, “or I’ll shoot.”

Wolffe steps back, aiming the rifle at me again.

I can take both of them. I know this for certain. Blasters are no match for lightsabers, with or without training. Even so, I have the Force. But I can’t help the waves of fear that wash over at me from nothing more than knowing what they are. And I’m afraid of them, even through my pulsing anger.

“Last chance kid,” Rex grits.

In honesty, the fear had clouded my judgement far too much. I should’ve formulated a plan, been patient. But something in me was dying again and again, feeling rays of heat whiz past me as I flung myself into an abyss. I couldn’t take it.

Rex fired his blaster. I jumped backwards- into the air far higher than I had intended to. I flew higher than the AT-TE, perhaps as high as the Tie-fighter while I was flying it. It felt somewhat freeing for the second it lasted, before my feet hit the sand behind my ship. Using it as cover, I seal my sabers off and press my back flat against it.

What the kriff was that? My heart is hammering, breathing rapid as my chest rises and falls and I struggle to find a full breath.

The lack of planning didn’t end there.

First, I reach my palm straight into the air. I hear a click and a clang as the seal at the top of the ship opens up with a hiss. Within a second, my bag zips into my waiting grasp. I clumsily slip it over my shoulders before phase two of my nonexistent ploy ensues.

“Gregor!” one of them yells. It’s enough for me to suddenly thrust myself forward and turn towards the Tie-fighter. I throw my hands out as I bury my heels in the sand. The Force, coming to my aid quickly and gracefully, does not disappoint.

The fighter surges forward, skidding through the sand. It starts slowly and subtle until I curl my fingers, at which point it increases its speed tenfold until it’s flying through the air without actually flying. I have to squint my eyes from the light of the planet, from the sand that’s whizzing back into my eyes, and then the loud clang rings out.

The fighter crashes into one of the legs of the walker. My eyes widen as I watch the machine begin to tilt over with a long, low hum. I see Rex’s blonde hair as he watches up in bewilderment, taking steps back while his brother begins to yell some things I can’t make out.

I turn on my heel and begin pumping my arms back and forth as I run along. Maker, I’d forgotten how much I despise the sand. Running in it, especially. It doesn’t take long for my thighs begin to burn. After another two seconds, I hear the final boom as the AT-TE is completely absorbed in the ground. But I don’t stop sprinting across the plains.

The mountains. I have to get to the mountains. The lightsabers are growing heavy against my tight, sweaty palms. I’ll surely have callouses forming against the skin.

The dry air is merciless against my face. My pack is continuously slamming against the bottom of my spine. After a minute, sand has leaked through my boots and fallen under my soles. Like little knives, they burn against the tender flesh. My braid zips behind me, allowing the wind to pierce my ears with a subtle roar.

I don’t know how long I keep going for. I know for certain that I’ve never run like this in my life. Every time I want to stop and give my burning lungs a rest, I think I hear a gun cocking behind me, and I receive another dull burst of energy.

Everything inside of me feels intense and raw. My blood is pumping through me in frozen chords, filling my ears with a low rhythm. It’s all adrenaline, of course. But it feels far more amplified than any other time I can remember. I know my body is aching, practically begging me to stop, but I can’t. What if there’s a full battalion of Clones behind me right now? Following me, just waiting for me to slow down so that they can shoot me?

As if in response to my thoughts, my right ankle twists from under me. I spiral downwards like a corkscrew, rolling every muscle in my leg in the process. And then I’m laying in the sand like a weak little child, trying to steady my choked breathing.

I must have been running for a long time. The sky is much darker than it was before. It’s become a deep shade of lavender, dotted with little white stars and a layer of pink and gray clouds. The sand bites against my exposed fingers and bottoms of my feet. As I gaze up at the place above, my sticky fingers loosen from the sabers. In the process, my right thumb rubs against the nail of my ring finger, skidding along the black polish.

I’d almost forgotten about it. At the time that Talik had done it to me, I’d felt happy about it. Now it feels like a sad memory from a distant time, in a different life. There’s nothing to stop me from picking it off completely now, and in the end it might’ve been better for me to do so. But removing the paint would’ve been equivalent to removing the Twi’Lek from my life.

I think about her hands on me- a gentle reminder of something I didn’t want- and my eyes squint with wetness. I haven’t cried in a long time, but this time it’s hard to keep my eyes from welling up.

This makes me feel stupid. Emotions are useless, and having them is a fate worse than death. My heart breaks for anyone in the galaxy who has to live their life, day in and day out, worried or overjoyed, loved or paranoid. In contrast however, a life without as many downs as ups must be an incredibly boring one, because you already know you’re going to be lucky no matter what happens. Experience is what makes it all go around, though I damn the Maker for having to tie feelings to it.

          The color of the sky reminds me of a rather outlandish memory from some years ago. It stood out to me for two reasons- the emotional weight to it, and the stained glass windows.

          There are a lot of people in the galaxy. With people, comes races and breeds, genders and jobs. Everyone, no matter what, has some type of belief, which is quick to turn into a theory that stands radical in their mind. And, as much as I (don’t) hate to admit it, where belief is held, trouble is soon to follow.

This brings us to religion, and where I stand on it. I know there’s something out there. A long way away, past all the nonsense and deafening screaming in the void of our galaxy, I’d like to think that someone or something is watching. I don’t know if they’re watching because they exclusively get off on watching lesser beings run around trying to both solve and destroy, or because we’re their last segment of hope in this dark place, but I dream about them intervening someday. Even when I scoff at those big supporters of one, all powerful God, I know it can’t all be dung.

So I don’t know where I stand really. I believe in something, but I’m not sure what. I’m not exactly an optimistic person, so I don’t think I’m holding out faith in a savior of any kind. But something doesn’t seem completely truthful about a luminous lover looming over all of us, blinking softly before sending flaming meteors into our livers. I don’t even know where I stand on something happening after death. I mean… I sure hope something happens. I know, at least, that I still want to be allowed to see whatever happens. I want to have a spirit- even if it’s one that goes on to experience eternal damnation.

Alright, I’ve gotten sidetracked. Back to the stained glass windows.

On Bracca, the scrapper guild acquired so many members that it got difficult not to be overwhelmed with demands from the population. In response to so many outcries, the guild installed a little building that was used as a religious house. It was pretty ambiguous too, so anything could’ve been practiced depending on what the user saw. Eventually, the Empire would come through and begin putting up propaganda and posters, but this is quite some time before that.

I want to say I was thirteen still. Fourteen, maybe? Doesn’t matter. I went in, and the first thing I noticed was the three, giant windows. The glass seemed to be cracking, so each piece was a different shade- bordering differing colors. Still, the tone was all a purple. Sometimes it looked more gray, other times magenta. Pink, lavender, borderline white- but all a very distinguished purple. I know there was a picture within the image, but I was too mesmerized by the violet light to recognize it. I can’t explain it, really. I just wanted to memorize every one of the details in it.

Still, something pulled me away from it- a cough or something. I went to kneel before the windows, looking up at them as if I were going to pray. At my sides, my palms clenched nervously around my poncho, which was already slick and dripping from the previous rain. I remember feeling very much like a reprimanded child, fiddling as their mother looked down on them with disappointment.

I don’t remember what I said exactly, or if I even spoke. I just remember looking up, asking any higher power that may or may not have existed if they had any answers for me. I didn’t care if they were good or bad. I just wanted an explanation, and I would’ve been satisfied. But I waited for a few seconds, a moment even, until I realized that there was no voice booming in my mind. I had no feelings of insight or importance. I felt just as empty and unsatisfied as I was before.

I’d wanted to cry then, too. It would’ve been more acceptable, given my age, but I hadn’t. I had bitten my lip and taken it like a winner, even though I didn’t feel like one much at all. The next time I would ever go into the holy place would end in me brawling with another scrapper, which I imagine was very visually pleasing in front of the large, purple windows.

The tears evaporate into the air, and my skin feels as dry as the sand I lay on. I swallow, which burns my throat, staring at the stars for a few more seconds. I really wish I had glitteryll right about now, so I can watch them melt into each other.

I force myself to sit up then. I did some incredibly stupid things today. I’m in no position to continue making as crazy and stupid decisions much longer.

First things first: find shelter. At least a semi safe place for the night, because something in my gut is telling me it would be most unwise to sleep in the middle of the desert. I should continue to make for the mountains in front of me, but I don’t know how far I’ll be able to get with my ankle in this state. Good thing I brought those stims.

I reach around and take one from my bag. I flick it a few times to make sure it still works, as its neon green glow looks a little faded. It perks up after a second, and I stick the stim to my right ankle and hold it down until a cool feeling spreads through me.

I lock my sabers back onto my waist, and begin pushing myself to my feet. My ankle isn’t perfect, but it’s walkable. Both my legs feel sore, and my abdomen somewhat bruised, but it’s my own kriffing fault for messing with the abilities of my muscles in the way that I did.

The story would’ve been fairly boring from this point forward had he not come along. I suppose I should thank him for that, but I’d rather not boost his ego anymore than it exists.

The wind picks up as a signal of his presence. My braid whips in the air, and I squint my eyes and hold up a hand in an attempt to block the oncoming light. The Katooni appears in front of me in all its glory, causing me to bite my lip. I don’t have the energy or mental power to distinguish friend from foe at this point in time, and if it was the Empire I might’ve just told them to kill me.

But it wasn’t the Empire.

The ships ramp sizzles down, hovering above the dunes of sand I trek through. A figure appears as the door opens up. Blinded further, I lift a second hand.

“Well, well, well!” the gritty voice calls out, loud enough to hear over the roar of the thrusters. The first thing I observed about it was that the voice sounded like it was coming from the back of one’s throat. Rough and throaty, a bit like all the men I’ve encountered in my life that had some position over me.

“Didn’t think I’d find such a useful partner in a place like this!” Hondo Ohnaka cried. “My friend, you look like you’ve been straight to hell.”

[apothecarywormcrud]

11 and 13 for Masato? 👀 i wanna say all of them for Masato but.

oh i am DOING all of them i wanna talk about masato

or. well. most of them. 

1. Does your insert have a name that’s different from yours? Does the name reflect their character in any way, or is it just because it sounds nice? How did you come up with it?

I’ve talked about this before, but Masato’s name is very specifically spelled 眞人, (the kanji for “real” and “human,” respectively.) I sorta knew from the start that I wanted to give them a name with 人 in it; something deliberately ironic, because Mayuri is a dick who loves a bad joke. 

(It’s a particularly cruel joke in the context of Masato’s original backstory, where they were meant to be an experiment in what happens when you let someone think they’re a real person and then strip that assumption away. But I wanted to give them sick powers, so that was shunted to the sidelines.) 

2. Does your insert have a very strong relationship with a f/o, maybe more than one? 

I talk about Szayel enough on here so I’m gonna talk about Nnoitra instead. In my version of canon, his mask is cracked open by Kenpachi, reducing him to a state similar to Nel’s. (That’s karmic retribution, bitch!) Suffice to say he’s pretty upset about this, and proceeds to skulk about Las Noches refusing to let anyone see him until Szayel gets back to fix things. 

Masato meets him by chance when their powers are still sealed up post-jailbreak (this one’s seal 2: electric boogaloo) and is all like, what’s with this sassy lost pre-teen? Eventually they become sparring partners, since while Nnoitra’s regaining his powers, Masato is the only person in Las Noches capable of fighting at such a low level; and once he’s got them back, they can go hog-wild without worrying about fucking him up too much. Their relationship doesn’t have the same...belligerent romantic tension that Masato and Szayel’s does, but Nnoitra is fond of Masato, even if he’s horrible at admitting it. They’re friends and they suck! 

More abt. Nnoitra actually bc I love this song: nerfing him puts him in a position where he’s forced to rely on other people, and despite feeling totally worthless and vulnerable and having to undergo the humiliation of being protected, there’s also the experience of being told, “So what if you don’t have any power? That doesn’t make me respect you any less.” So he has the opportunity to build his self-worth back up based on something less subjective, and now he can actually interact with other people on the same level, which is great news for Tesla, who gets to strengthen his spine and be truly up front about his feelings, because Nnoitra no longer has any power over him. 

I think, for relationships like these, finding a level playing field is super important! And I’ve always been fascinated by characters who develop in opposition to one another and eventually meet in the middle. Masato and Szayel are also that way, in that they round out some of his edges, and he sharpens some of theirs, and the actual feelings proper don’t start developing until a ways in, and they’re not even admitted until post-canon, because in order to even consider that sort of relationship, the two of them have to come to respect each other first. Enemies-to-lovers is a fucking ART. 

3. Who in their canon are they closest to? 

Kurosaki fam and by extension, Ichigo’s friends. Masato has commissioned at least one custom jacket from Uryu. Also Arrancar Squad and my friend Percy’s insert Juro, who’s a creepy little goth weirdo and a visored.  

4. Does your insert have a backstory? Tell us about it! How does their backstory, if any, define who they are? 

Masato is a mod-soul based off of Mayuri’s quincy research. They’re designed to passively absorb reishi until at max capacity (which is quite large), at which point they can be forcefully “detonated,” destroying them in the process and causing a significant amount of damage to the surrounding area as the stored reishi is released. As a weapon, they’re highly experimental—meant as a last resort rather than something put to regular use. 

Mayuri dumped them in the human world, where their reishi absorption wouldn’t negatively impact the Seireitei, and planned to let them simmer there for about ten years. There’s a seal incorporated into their gigai that not only blocks them from accessing the reishi inside of them, but prevents any outside force (such as hollows) from sensing it. 

Once they become aware of what they are, Masato gets big anxious about anything that implies they’re not a real person. I’d love to salvage Kon’s original personality from before he was relegated to pervy comic relief because I think there’s the potential for some interesting interactions there. 

5. Does your insert have any magical talents or otherwise special abilities? 

Passive reishi absorption, and after Uruhara modifies their gigai so they can access their power reserves, they can vent it from their body and use the force to blast themselves around or add more power to their blows. Their body is about as resilient as a normal human’s, but the only way they can truly “die” is if their soul candy is crushed, which means that injuries that would normally be fatal are just excruciatingly painful. This definitely isn’t just an excuse for me to fuck them up beyond all belief. 

Due to Szayel’s tinkering, they eventually end up as what’s effectively an artificial Quincy. 

6. Do they fight? What’s their weapon of choice? What’s the motivation for them to fight, or to stay OUT of a fight?

They prefer not to fight if they can avoid it, but if shit gets real then they won’t hesitate, bitch. They’re reasonably proficient with a blade after several years of kendo training, and like to bring a practice sword into dangerous situations. It’s not going to do much good against the likes of shinigami or hollows, but it makes them feel more secure, and it’s a good misdirection tactic. 

Due to the whole “functionally unkillable” thing, they’re also far more likely to take risks in battle, and have a tendency to rush in without thinking when one of their comrades is hurt. 

7. What kind of clothing style do they like? What would they never be caught dead wearing? 

It’s all cropped jackets and harem pants up in this bitch. I drew them in that sort of outfit once and now it’s all I give them. They don’t particularly care for their arrancar clothes, but it makes them less conspicuous and also, Szayel insisted on it. Can’t have your prized experiment running around looking like some sort of ragamuffin, after all. I keep meaning to write something where they visit Sastre for a fitting, because what good is having other arrancar OCs if I don’t do anything with them? 

8. How do they fit into their canon world?

A side character who tags along with the main cast but ultimately doesn’t impact events too much. They have their own wholly separate plot going for them and it involves self-actualization and kissing arrancar. 

9. Their favorite foods? Colors? Activities? What do they enjoy in life? 

Kendo, gardening, bike rides through the countryside.

11. How easy is it to make your insert angry? Sad? How easy is it to twist their emotions into negative things? 

Masato’s actually pretty difficult to rile up, unless you’re pushing some Very Specific buttons (personhood is the big one), at which point they become incredibly easy to mess with. Szayel is...uncomfortably good at making them upset. 

13. What are your insert’s goals? 

Up to a certain point, they were happy to live a normal life and protect the people around them when called for. Then they wind up back in Mayuri’s lab and proceed to jailbreak Szayelaporro, retreat to Hueco Mundo, and strike a deal with him in order to gain more power and get mutual revenge on Mayuri. 

Post-canon...they start coming to terms with the fact that their body will never age and grow like a normal human’s, and that if/when they die, their soul will effectively be destroyed, and they decide, hey, fuck that shit, actually, and do a bunch of crazy science until they’ve got that shit sorted out (ultimately becoming like Nemu, if not something that improves on her design). 

14. Does your insert have any family relations? 

Isshin was the one who found them shortly after they were dumped on Earth, and kept them around for a number of reasons (the majority of which involved his Soul Reaper Senses tingling). So Masato’s got what’s effectively an adoptive dad and three younger siblings, who they dote on and bully interchangeably (and whose last name they may or may not have borrowed) (Isshin insisted on it, actually, since it’d make the documentation easier). They have temporary solidarity with Yuzu over not being able to see spirits. 

Mayuri is....arguably family but also like, fuck that. Masato does consider Nemu to be something like a sister, though, and feels particularly protective of her the more they interact. They have just as much a desire to help Nemu escape Mayuri’s influence as they do themselves. 

15. Does your insert have any enemies? What’s that dynamic like? Why are they enemies? Did they ever get along in the past? Is patching up differences out of the question for the future?

Fuck Mayuri me and my homies all hate Mayuri. I shouldn’t really need to explain this one. He treats Masato solely as an experiment and tool for his use. Unlike with Nemu, the fact that Masato is developing on their own is more of an inconvenience than anything, and before they broke out with Szayel, Mayuri was fully intending to wipe their memories and start over from square one. There is some good news, however, which is that Masato does get their revenge and uses their shiny new Quincy powers to seal up Mayuri’s reishi and get him kicked out of the captain’s seat. 

Szayel starts off as an enemy, since you can’t really have an enemies-to-lovers plot without one. He’s done some pretty atrocious things to Masato, but he treats them significantly more like a person than Mayuri ever did. Masato has very little respect for him, and the only reason they start working with him to begin with is because he represents a means to an end. Of course, the more time they spend together, the more tolerant they become of each other...among other things. 

[queenbirbs]

what if the closest we get to the moment is now | Ethan Ramsey x MC

WC: 10k+

Rating: Mature

Content: N*FW, contains semi-graphic medical scene (nothing too bad, but I don’t know everyone’s level of comfort with these sorts of things)

Summary: An OH AU where everything is a little bit different, but also very much the same; or, Ethan is an ER attending and MC is a paramedic, but they still manage to fall in love.  Title taken from Katie Herzig’s Closest I Get. 

+ + +

He sees her three times before he learns her name. 

The first time is at the intersection of State and Congress, which he approaches with that tight feeling in his chest. It’s the feeling that only comes from jogging the three-mile route from his apartment, where he goes up around the government center and back down Bowdoin, before taking a lap around the Common. Then there’s the historic facade of King’s Chapel and the less-historic Chipotle on the corner, where he can choose to extend his route by taking Water Street up to Congress and circle back to his apartment. 

Which is the route Ethan takes this morning with Jenner at his side, dawn slowly approaching as the sky shifts from that deep blue to a hazy gray. 

The only light comes from the streetlamps and the headlights of the delivery vans and buses that idle at the major intersections. State and Congress being one of those -- his last one, actually, before he crosses to return home. 

The appearance of another jogger at the intersection isn’t strange. Though he purposefully goes for his runs before five a.m., he knows he isn’t the only one with the same exercise preferences (or the same work schedule). There are others he sees along his route sometimes, though he doesn’t know their names, as he’s never been inclined to strike up a conversation while waiting on a light change before. 

The woman in front of him is much the same; he spots the earbuds at the same time he hears the humming. She paces back and forth on the sidewalk, trying to keep her heart rate up. Ethan moves closer to the curb and into her peripheral, making her aware of his presence so he won’t frighten her by hovering behind. 

“Morning,” she says to him, offering a quick smile. He returns the motion, suddenly unsure of himself, as he finds that he wants to say something back. 

The light changes, cutting off any chance of a reply. 

And then they’re crossing and he’s watching the way her ponytail swings in the beam of the headlights and the white piping down her leggings that frames tall, shapely legs that end in a pair of bright orange sneakers and then, suddenly, they’re on the other side. 

Where she goes right and he goes left.

He thinks of her once more that day, hours into his shift, before deciding that he probably won’t see her again. 

+ + +

The second time he sees her is at Derry Roasters. 

It’s the local coffee shop down from the hospital that he frequents when, instead of pulling out every follicle of hair one-by-one, he goes to drink expensive lattes to escape the doe-eyed nuisances that are his interns. 

Ethan is nearing the front of the line when he spots her at the back. Instead of running gear, she’s dressed in a black T-shirt and navy cargo pants, clearly dressed down out of some uniform. Her hair is pulled back in that same ponytail; she runs her fingers through it, her wide eyes giving off an overwhelmed vibe. It’s been years since he’s actually looked at the scrawling cursive above his head, having ordered the same drink so often that the baristas automatically charge him for a Vienna as soon as he steps up to the counter. In theory, he could take his drink and get back in line, sidle up to her, and offer his suggestion. Maybe she would chat with him, maybe he would get to know her name.

Maybe he would promise to see her again to share a coffee at a later date. 

Before he can test such a theory, a young man darts into the shop and straight over to her. Ethan is trying to place where he’s seen the man before, but then the bartisa calls out his order and his pager is buzzing and he’s shoving down the disappointed feeling in his chest when he sees the young man’s head dip down to whisper in the woman’s ear.

He takes his coffee and goes, thinking of her twice more that day, and hopes that he’ll see her again.

+ + +

The third time he sees her is in the ER.

There’s a traffic jam of stretchers in the receiving bay, filled with the hypochondriacs or the psych evals or the people who called a closed doctor’s office, only to be told by the secretary’s voicemail to call 911 or visit the ER if any of their (usually minor) problems persist. Several paramedics are holding the wall, as if helping out in any way would inconvenience them. 

Ethan is helping a nurse transfer in the fourth victim of a six-car pile-up when that ponytail catches his eye. 

Down the hall, the young woman is leaned over a stretcher, one hand on an older man’s shoulder to keep pressure on a bandaged wound, while the other rests on his arm. She says something to the man, whose worried frown ticks up into a half-smile as he nods. Standing on the opposite side of the stretcher is the same young man from the coffee shop, who Ethan now recognizes as Rafael, one of their regular paramedics. 

The nurse takes over the accident patient and Ethan returns to the line, shuttling the new patients in and signing off for the intakes. It takes him six minutes to get to Rafael and his new partner, who immediately launches into her patient’s status. 

“Henry here took a fall, he’s got a five-inch gash along his clavicle.” 

Ethan takes the copy of the report she hands him and assists with transferring Henry over to a bed. His gaze flickers down to her uniform where, pinned above her heart, a nametag reads S. McTavish. Before he can think of a way to find out her first name, a code blue sounds from on down the hall.

Rafael and McTavish are long gone by the time Ethan steps back out into the receiving bay, where another nurse has joined to help the first, leaving him to resume his duties. 

It isn’t until hours later that he remembers the copy of the report he handed off to the nurses station. Rifling through the intake folder, he retrieves the document and is pleased to discover her first name at the top, written out in neat print: Sloane.   

+ + +

As if the universe has designated him a break, he starts to see her everywhere. 

Aside from the daily drop-bys in Edenbrook’s ER, he runs into her at the market one Thursday, and then the liquor store that same afternoon. Their interactions are short -- awkward in that way that barely-colleague ones are -- though he manages to make her laugh at his terrible joke in the wine aisle, so he considers the whole trip a success. He runs into her again at Carson Beach, where he runs Jenner so the Boxer-mutt mix will release some of that pent-up energy she’s infamous for. That breathless feeling hits him again when he sees her pass by on the HarborWalk, then circle back around and jog towards them across the sand, her orange sneakers kicking up little clouds behind her. 

“Doctor Ramsey, hi!” she greets, flicking back the long rope her hair is braided into. Her skin glistens with sweat from her mid-morning run. 

“Good morning, Miss McTavish,” he returns, keeping his eyes pointedly on the flush staining her cheeks and not letting it drift downwards to the shorts she wears that look as if they were sculpted on. He wouldn’t know, of course, as he certainly wasn’t checking out her backside when she jogged past earlier. 

“And who might this be?” Sloane is already kneeling, so he doesn’t get a chance to stop her before Jenner knocks her down into the sand. 

“Jenner, off!”

His dog perks her head up at the command, then resumes her wet kisses across Sloane’s neck. From underneath the mound of wet dog comes laughter, which eases some of his anxiety. 

“Oh, she’s just a big ol’ girl, aren’t cha? Aren’t cha?” Sloane shoulders Jenner off her so she can sit up, ruffling her dark fur where it’s coated in sand. Ethan tosses a frisbee down towards the water and uses the distraction to help her back onto her feet. 

“I’m sorry, she usually isn’t--” he cuts himself off with a sigh. Sloane follows his gaze and starts chuckling at his dog, who has abandoned the frisbee and is now trying to chase down a clump of seaweed in the water. “Actually, she’s a real pain in the ass. But I am sorry she knocked you over. I’m out here to tire her out so she’ll behave.”

Sloane flaps a hand at him, quieting his apology. 

“Don’t worry, my dog Relay is the same way.” 

Ethan watches his own dog give up on the seaweed and wade back onto the shore, trying to think up a response. “I’m from South Carolina,” she continues to explain. “About an hour outside of Hilton Head, so I take him to the beach as much as I can. Except for when I went to college in Columbia.”

“What did you study?”

“Pre-med. And then I went to Northwestern for med school, but that didn’t work out. So, I thought I’d try Boston out for a while, see how the north coast will treat me.” 

He wants to ask how she went from studying medicine in the Windy City to responding to heart attacks on the east coast, but can’t come up with a way to do so that would be polite.

“How are you liking Boston so far?” he asks instead.

Her gaze leaves the stretch of blue water in front of them to meet his own, her mouth rounding into a smile. Standing this close underneath the bright sun, he can see the freckles that dot her nose. They fan out in small strokes across her cheeks. 

“It’s interesting.” 

“Just ‘interesting’?” he teases, shifting his stance in the warm sand, which brings him a few inches closer. Sloane doesn’t move away, though. Instead, her shoulders roll in a lazy shrug as her smile widens. 

“Jury’s still out on a final verdict. For now, interesting.” 

“Well, if you need any recommendations, let me know. Though,” he gestures to the beach surrounding them, “I can see you already know some of the sweet spots.”     

“Thanks, Ramsey. I might just do that.”

“Of course. And it’s -- you can call me Ethan.”

“Okay, Ethan. Then you can call me Sloane. Deal?”

“Deal.”

+ + +

He doesn’t see Sloane again until the next Thursday, and even then their moments together are a few, too-brief moments in the ER. 

The Fourth of July weekend keeps both of them up to their eyeballs in emergencies. He’s starting to see why Doctor Mirani always insists on taking the next week off. Just when he thinks he’s seen it all, someone manages to stick a firework in a new orifice. 

When his shift is reaching its eleventh-hour, the receiving bay mysteriously empties, and the waiting room starts to clear out. It is, of course, when one of the interns from diagnostics uses the Q-word, which sends a shockwave of groans through all the staff. True to the nature of the universe, calls from emergency dispatch flood in about a ten-car pile-up in the tunnel. Ethan pushes off the nurses station to prepare for the oncoming storm when Kendra, his charge nurse, hangs up the phone. 

“Dispatch is sending us a few that Mass Kenmore couldn’t take.”

Ethan scoffs, biting his tongue from making a rude comment about the rival hospital. 

“What’s on the menu, then?” he asks, reaching over the desk for his coffee. 

“A tractor-trailer hit an ambulance,” Kendra relays with a frown. “They’re sending over the two medics and the driver to us.” 

The coffee in his mouth suddenly feels like lacquer, thick and cloying in his throat as he swallows. 

“Did they say what company the ambulance was with?” 

Kendra shoots him a curious look at the question, obviously wanting to know why he cares, but she’s been working alongside him almost as long as he’s been at Edenbrook. She can tell when he’s going to keep mum, especially when it comes to gossip. 

“No,” she finally says, “sorry.” 

The pile-up victims arrive first, with their herniated discs and second-degree facial avulsions and grade-three contusions -- enough to keep him busy, hopping from bed to bed to oversee the interns as they fumble about. 

Then he’s back at the nurses station to book the avulsion into the next-available OR, while also sending a queasy-looking intern to the bathroom and performing another sweep of the immediate area for any familiar paramedics, when a voice sounds over his left shoulder. 

“You’re a regular Mark Greene, huh?” 

The anxiety in his chest ebbs away. Relief rises and crests across his shoulders, which ease down when he turns to see Sloane, her hands tucked into the pockets of her EMS jacket, leaning against the counter next to him. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Her mouth opens to contradict him, then abruptly closes as she runs a critical eye over his form. He resists the urge to straighten under the sudden scrutiny. 

“I pegged you as a man who prefers the classics, as opposed to HIPPA-violation hook-up primetime, but,” her shoulders bounce in a quick shrug, “we all have our guilty pleasures.” 

Ethan clears his throat. Then, for good measure, clears it again. 

“I can assure you that I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Oh, come on -- you can’t tell me you’ve never watched a single episode of ER or Grey’s. There’s nothing more entertaining than tearing a show like that apart.”

A nurse interrupts to get his signature on a report, giving him a chance to steer the conversation away from his watch history of medical dramas. 

“Can I ask why you’re loitering in my ER in the first place?” Following the motion of her elbow, Ethan finally notices Rafael sitting in the corner. One of his interns is suturing up a wound on her partner’s waist, while several of the other interns stand around and ogle the young man’s physical attributes. They scurry off to the far corners of the department when he reminds them that drooling is not a part of their job description. 

“Superman got a little banged up earlier,” Sloane explains, concern flitting across her face. “One of the walls buckled in when we were retrieving the other two medics from their rig. It’s like the thing was held together by spot welds and promises.”      

Although ambulance construction isn’t his expertise, he is rather gifted in the art of observation. Which is how he knows that Rafael wasn’t the only one injured on the job, if the way Sloane is favoring her right side is any indication. 

“Have you been seen to?” he asks, biting back the urge to roll his eyes when she seems surprised at the question. 

“Oh, no -- it’s just a scratch, don’t worry.” 

She wavers under his gaze, the one he uses to quietly bully patients into telling the truth. Within a minute, she’s hopping up onto an empty bed. The wince when she moves to take off her jacket tells him that his instincts were correct. Just below the cut of her sleeve is a four-inch laceration that she’s covered with two loops of gauze and a scrap of medical tape. 

He busies himself by tending to the wound, trying to ignore the heat of her body and the little hitches of her breathing when he applies the antiseptic. This close, he can smell the coffee on her breath and the minty scent of her lip balm. His mind drifts to how such a combination would taste on his own lips, before he shoves the thought deep, deep down. When he glances up, though, he sees a similar hunger dancing through her eyes. Something base and egotistical uncurls from his chest at the sight. 

“I could’ve done all this myself, you know,” she teases, watching as he fastens a piece of tape across her new bandage. 

“Yes, I saw your handiwork,” he reminds her with a playful scoff. “Is that how they’re teaching students to bandage wounds at Northwestern?” 

Sloane laughs at the gentle barb and slips back into her jacket. 

“It’s what they teach to the ones who drop out, I guess.” She’s grinning as she says it, but her gaze drops to the floor for a brief moment, the movement telling him there must be a story there. Now isn’t the time for it, though he suddenly wishes that it were, if only to spend a few more minutes with her. 

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, he reminds himself as he leads her out into the hall. “I’m surprised you remembered,” she says.

“Just… paying attention.” 

+ + +

Late September in Boston is his favorite. When the heat of summer has peeled away and the promise of blistering cold is still some distance away, when all of the summer tourists have flown back home and the autumn ones haven’t yet arrived. 

When the rain is more than just relief from the stagnant warmth, such as it is on this morning. The pavement is slick and dark with it, giving Ethan something to focus his attention on as he approaches the last intersection before home. Given the weather and people’s affinity to avoid it, he’s only seen a handful of runners out this morning, so he’s surprised when he spots someone already standing at the corner. Their figure is draped in a dark jacket, their hood up against the rain. It’s only because of the orange sneakers and the hound dog at their side that he knows it’s Sloane.

“Good morning.” 

She whirls around at the sound of his voice. He enjoys watching the surprise on her face shift to joy, as she moves her hood back to take him in. 

“And here I thought that Relay and I were the only ones crazy enough to be out in this mess.” Sloane gestures to the Bluetick hound at her side, who is busy sniffing Jenner’s backside. 

“No, I thought I’d start my day off by getting the both of us drenched so my apartment smells like wet dog the rest of the day.” His sarcastic remark gets a huff of laughter out of her, which makes him want to grin like an idiot. 

He doesn’t, but only just barely. 

The light changes and they jog across to the opposite corner. “Well,” he begins, trying to think of some way to continue talking to her (but without offering to follow her home, which would come across either sexist or creepy). “I hope you--”

“Do you want to get breakfast?” she asks. “I know a great place off Amherst that opens in about--” she raises her fist into the air so the jacket’s sleeve will slide back enough for her to peek at her watch, which he shouldn’t find endearing, but he does. “--ten minutes.” 

“Do they allow dogs?”

“They have a covered patio.” 

“I’m not sure if that would protect us from the rain.”

“It’ll let up.” 

Ethan glances pointedly at where the sun is struggling to break through the overcast sky. He thinks of the day ahead he’s already planned, about the laundry that needs to be done and the counters that need cleaned and the fridge that needs a purge. Then he looks back at his side where Sloane stands, who seems unable to resist ribbing him gently as she waits for an answer. “Come on, you’ll enjoy being spontaneous for once in your life. I promise.”   

Sloane is right on two counts. The first is that the place does serve great food. The second is that the rain does let up about twenty minutes after they arrive, allowing them to watch as the city around them wakes up. Lights in the law offices next door switch on; cars clog up the avenues and block the intersections; people in business attire head off to work, passing people in delivery uniforms who have already been on the clock for several hours. 

“Why did you become a paramedic?” he asks, genuinely curious to know something more personal than general shop talk or the way she takes her coffee (both topics which they covered already).  

Sloane’s eyes narrow as she chews on a piece of toast, thinking over her answer.  

“I like helping people.”

“I’m not some layman, so I’m not going to accept such a boring answer,” he tells her, and enjoys the little twitch of her lips as she gives into a grin. 

“Good, because I’m going to tell you the real reason. Or, well, the major one.” Taking a sip of her coffee, she continues, “I like the uncertainty of it. I could go on a call and help an old woman back into her bed, or I can go on a call and talk a man down from the brink, or I can go on a call and help the rescue squad cut open a burning car and pull a person from certain death.”

“You like the unknown,” he surmises. 

“Exactly!” she nods, gesturing with her fork in agreement. “I arrive to situations where everything has gone to hell, and I’m like the eye of the storm, keeping everything cool and calm and copacetic. It’s like an adrenaline rush.” 

“You would be a good ER physician.” 

She shrugs at the comment, though a flash of something passes across her face, so fleeting that he can’t put a name to it. 

“I don’t know about that -- I like being out in the field. And with my crappy luck, if I did become a doctor, I’d wind up being placed at Mass Kenmore.” She makes a face at the idea. “Then I’d have to deal with the raccoons.”

“Raccoons?” he questions. 

Her fork pauses on its way to her mouth. 

“Oh, my god!” she hisses, leaning towards him across the table. “How do you not know about the raccoons? It’s, like, an infestation over there. One of them even got into our rig once when Raf was driving and got under the pedals. We would’ve ended up on the other side of the 93-North ramp and in the river if I hadn’t pulled the e-brake.”

“In the middle of the highway?”

“There’s no shoulder on the ramp, I had no choice!” She’s giggling over the rim of her coffee cup as she defends her actions, using the cup and his silverware when he requests a recreation of the scene. 

She was right on a third count, Ethan realizes, as he watches her tale unfold, interrupting occasionally to ask for clarification. 

He is, in fact, enjoying the spontaneity of saying yes. 

+ + +

“You’re like my little Georgia peach.”

“I’m not from Georgia.”

“Oh, baby, say something else to me.” 

“Touch me again and I will strap you to this stretcher.”

“That a promise, Peach?” 

Ethan finishes checking over the fractured tibia in the fast track bay and ducks out into the hallway, having heard enough of the conversation. 

“What seems to be the problem here?” he asks. Both Sloane and a man on the stretcher next to her look up at his arrival. 

“I’m waiting on a bed to open up,” she explains, her jaw clenched tight.

“I hit my head,” the man moans pathetically, lifting a hand to touch his bandaged forehead. 

“That’s because you drank too much and ran headfirst into a parked car, Junior.”

“Oh, so you do know my name?” Junior leers up at her, abandoning his injured head to reach for Sloane again. “Say it again for me, Peachy.” 

Ethan decides it’s well past time for him to step in, doing so before Junior can get close enough to grab her. 

“Sir, I’m going to need you to keep your hands to yourself.” Ignoring the man’s drunken babbling, Ethan glances around for a resident to dump the man onto. When none appear in sight, he beckons a male nurse over to help assist with the transfer. 

“It must be my lucky day,” Junior crows as they wheel him down the hallway. “Two McDreamys all to myself.” 

Resigning himself to the harassment he’ll be dealing with for the next hour, Ethan helps the nurse get him transferred into a bed. It’s another ten minutes before he can escape to return the stretcher to Sloane, who flashes him a grateful smile. Her hand brushes against his as she takes the stretcher from him and he convinces himself that the tingling sensation across his skin must be from the carpal tunnel he’s suddenly developed. 

“Thanks again for the save, McDreamy.” With a wink, she’s off and gone, disappearing through the doors of the ambulance bay. 

Across the hall, Kendra looks up at him from the nurses station and raises an eyebrow. He orders her back to work, scoffing when all she does is smirk in response. 

+ + +

He thinks the knock at his door is something else at first. 

Four thumps against wood drift over to where he lies, slumped on the sofa. It’s his noisy neighbors, he’s sure. The music he put on returns to its full volume once the racket ceases, allowing him to sink back into himself.

The thumps sound again, somehow harsher this time. The noise gets Jenner’s attention, who trots over to the front door and sniffs. Whoever is on the other side causes her to race back over and bark excitedly at him.

“Who is it, then, Lassie?” Ethan shoves himself up out of the hole he’s burrowed into and crosses the room. 

That it’s Sloane standing on the other side of the threshold is a surprise (one of two that he’s received today, though this one is infinitely better than the other). “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need this.” In her hand is a bottle of liquor that, upon his closer inspection as he takes the bottle from her, is his favorite brand of scotch. “Everyone is going to send flowers, but I thought I’d bring over something you’d actually use.” 

He doesn’t ask how she found out; the staff in the emergency department were well-known for their inability to keep mum on anything. The tragic diagnosis of his mentor and best friend definitely would have been the daily fodder. “Kendra gave me your address,” she explains, having somehow read his mind. Her now-empty hands wring together, then disappear into her pockets.

Ethan backs up, swinging the door wider to wave her inside. She stops just inside the entryway and succumbs to Jenner’s demand for belly rubs. He can feel her eyes on him as he goes to the kitchen to pour them each a glass. “Are you listening to cello covers of The Smiths?” she asks.

“If I knew who they were, then yes. But no, this is just an instrumental collection I selected at random.” 

“Well, at least it isn’t Patsy Cline.”         

“Good thing that you weren’t here an hour ago, then.” 

He enjoys hearing her little huff of laughter as she comes to stand next to him in the kitchen. Handing her the other glass, they sip in companionable silence for a while. The sky outside his loft mellows to a brilliant orange, the clouds piped in pinks and purples. Sloane moves to the tall windows to take in the view; the light traces the features of her profile, outlining her in gold. It isn’t just the liquor in his stomach that suddenly warms him to the core.

“Your place is really nice.” After giving the open space an assessing spin, Sloane turns back to face him. “I’m glad to see that it actually looks lived-in.” 

She moves to the bank of bookcases along the far wall, where photographs are symmetrically-spaced across the shelves. Ethan follows to study the pictures with her. There are a few from childhood, most with his older sister Allison, the two of them shoved next to each other in front of various American landmarks, their matching shirts stamped with cheesy phrases like South Dakota ROCKS! and Yellowstone National Park: Where the Wild Things Are! 

She picks up the one of them pointing back at Mount Rushmore with bored-looking faces. Ethan remembers his mother insisting on the pose while they whined about how hot it was. Just as he remembers lying in their motel room that night, listening to his parents argue about cheating out in the parking lot. He’d been too young to understand, but being the older and wiser sibling, Allison had turned on their little box TV and let Johnny Carson drown them out. 

“When I was little, I thought the mountains were naturally formed like that,” Sloane admits with a self-deprecating grin. 

“That… explains some things.” He chuckles when she whacks him in the arm with the picture frame, before she sets it back onto the shelf and eyes another one. It’s a photo of Harper, Chris, and him at a dean’s dinner party, all of them in the fanciest attire they could swing on a medical student’s budget. They’re all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to make their mark in medicine. 

Ethan wonders what it says about him that he’s kept this photo up on his shelf, despite the fact that both of the people in it are technically his exes -- Harper being the longest and most recent, and Chris being a one-night stand that multiplied into several more before ending abruptly. He wants to believe that it shows he can remain good friends with his previous partners -- but it’s probably a testament to his lack of other friends in his life, he realizes.    

Though she’s not an Edenbrook employee, Sloane knows enough about the hospital through the gossip mill (that always seems to start in his department and then work its way through the rest of the facility) that she recognizes both faces.

“You went to school with the chief of medicine and the chief of nursing?” Her eyebrows dart up at his answering nod. “Wow, is there a fast-track placement at Columbia that I can get in on?” 

Ethan snorts over the rim of his glass. 

“Sure, if you can become one of the dean’s kids, they’ll make you chief innovation officer.” 

“I’m sensing that you’re not just making up an example here.”

“Nepotism is afoot at every hospital, but it runs rampant at Edenbrook.” 

As if shelving away the cheery turn the conversation has taken, she places the photograph back. His throat tightens at the next one down. Sloane is staring at it as well, biting at her lip, as if torn on whether or not she wants to expose the elephant in the room. “You’ve sufficiently liquored me up,” he reminds her. “Ask away.”

“That’s not why I brought--”

He waves a hand at her, cutting off her defense; he knows what she wants to know, what everyone asked him all day long at the hospital ever since the meeting this morning.  

“Ask.” 

Still, she hesitates -- but before he can demand again, she finally speaks. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Jesus, Sloane, just get to it.” 

“That was my question,” she snaps back. 

Realization washes over him. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s not one of them. She’s an outsider, looking in. She’s not interested in adding coal to the gossip mill to keep it churning; she’s not eager to know how long Naveen has or who’s going to take the now-vacant chief of emergency services position, or any of those pointless details.

She’s worried about him. It’s been so long since someone has that it takes him a moment for it to sink in.    

“Oh.” He clears his throat, then clears it again, thinking it over. Does he want to talk about his mentor and best friend and the two months he was given to live? Does he want to talk about how everyone will expect him to accept the empty seat Naveen will leave? Does he even want to give up the long, grueling hours and getting his hands dirty and the adrenaline rush of saving a patient’s life -- all so he can sit behind a desk and nod at people? “No, not really,” he admits, surprising himself with the answer. 

Sloane nods once and turns from the photo of Naveen and him, moving over to the barely-used, big-screen television. 

“Are you savvy enough to have Netflix on this, or are we gonna have to haul out the VHS player that I definitely know you have stored away somewhere?”

Brushing dust from the photograph, he prepares to respond to her smartass remark with one of his own, when she makes a weird, strangled gasping noise that has him spinning around. 

To see her holding a box set of ER season one, betrayal carved into the set of her jaw. “You have the entire series on DVD and you let me stand there that day and make a fool of myself with my excellent references?” 

“You called me a regular Mark Greene,” he defends, “and I said I had no idea what you were talking about.”

Sloane rolls her eyes as she drops down onto the couch. She reaches for one of the four remotes that seem to come with every piece of technology he buys and, without him needing to explain, turns off the music and connects to the DVD player. 

“What, I suppose you think you’re Doug Ross?” 

“Clooney’s a good looking man.” He settles down onto the couch next to her, though he gives her enough space to not make her feel crowded. “I wouldn’t be opposed to such a comparison.” 

“You realize the only way to settle this is with a marathon.”

“I’ve got nothing but time.”

It’s the quiet, he realizes, that must’ve woken him up. The television screen is dark, having shut off due to inactivity. With the only light spilling in from the kitchen, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the living room. Scattered across the coffee table is the evidence of their impromptu watch party: a half-eaten bowl of popcorn. a quarter of a pepperoni pizza, and two empty glasses. 

Curled up next to him is Jenner, who blinks awake to watch him collect the dishes as quietly as he can. Because curled up next to Jenner is Sloane, who has her face nestled between the cushion and a blanket he’d found for her when the Christmas episode, combined with his surround sound, made her cold. 

“Stay,” he whispers at Jenner. She wags her tail as he gets up, but obeys the command.

“I should go home,” comes Sloane’s voice, muffled against the cushion she was snoring on seconds prior. There’s that feeling again, like his heart is suddenly too big for his chest cavity to hold, when her body contradicts her words by snuggling even deeper into the blanket. 

“You can stay,” he murmurs, reaching out and tucking a piece of her hair back behind her ear. “I’ll wake you up early so you can get home and get ready before your shift.” 

“Gotta day off,” she tells the cushion, a yawn finishing out the slurred sentence. 

“Then we can go get breakfast at that place off Amherst again. Deal?”

The quiet of his living room stretches on as he waits for an answer. When none comes, he straightens and starts to head for the kitchen, sure that she’s fallen back asleep. 

And then, so soft that he almost misses it for running the water: “Deal.”  

+ + +

Annually, Boston EMS hosts a gala to raise funds for the upcoming fiscal year. 

As one of the leading hospitals in the city, Edenbrook always receives an invitation to attend. And thus far, as the emergency department attending, Ethan has always declined the RSVP, as he can’t imagine anything more mind-numbingly boring than being stuffed into the overcrowded ballroom of the downtown Marriott with the city’s elite. 

So, it’s no surprise that when Harper receives the invitation that she throws it into the trash without ever consulting with him. Honestly, he doesn’t blame her at all. It does make the whole situation rather awkward, though, when he asks her to dig it out of her trashcan so he can send in his response. 

It doesn’t take him long once he arrives at the function to find Sloane. 

She’s surrounded by her station, obvious even from a distance away due to the way they interact with each other. Ethan takes his time, though, circling the ballroom and letting himself be dragged into tedious conversations with the mayor and the police chief and every other person he didn’t come here to see. It had been their agreement, Harper’s and his, since she had rifled through her trash for the invitation after all. 

By the time he’s done with his due diligence, Sloane and her company have moved over to the long bank of windows that overlook the wharf. He takes a moment to appreciate her figure in the dress she wears, the cut of the neckline dipping just low enough to catch his attention. Her gaze flickers up to scan the room and Ethan gets the pleasure of watching her spot him. A brilliant smile spreads across her face as she waves him over, unlooping her arm through her co-worker’s to reach for him and drag him into their circle. 

“You didn’t tell me you were coming!” she chides, her elbow playfully nudging his side. 

“It’s not typically my kind of scene.” It’s the truth, though it’s more of a deflection from the real truth, which is that he moved his schedule around and dry-cleaned his suit just to come here and see her. He hasn’t had enough drinks to spill that secret. 

“Yeah, I have to say I’m pretty surprised to see you here, Doctor Ramsey.” Rafael gestures to the throngs of guests that surround them.

“Well,” one of the women shrugs, “I’m sure this is what the ER on New Year’s looks like.”

“The people here have more clothing on than our typical New Year’s patient, but sure.” 

The group laughs at his poor attempt at humor, while Sloane shakes her head at him, though he can see her lips twitching from holding back a grin. He is soon introduced to the rest of the station: the training EMT Sienna, the station supervisor Elijah, and two of the firefighters Bryce and Jackie. 

Though Sloane always seems to have the ability to merge into any environment, Ethan is glad he gets to see her amongst her people, still in her element despite the champagne and fancy attire. Her witty attitude and infectious demeanor are like magnets, drawing in people from other stations into their circle. 

He can’t help but notice, though, that she keeps him close to her, either with a hand on his back or by looping her arm through his. Delight at her touch simmers low in his stomach over the course of the evening, a feeling he can’t blame on the alcohol this time. 

After the live auction is over and the dessert plates have been cleared away, the guests start to slowly trickle out. Their table is one of the first to leave, deciding to continue the party at a little hole-in-the-wall bar down on the wharf. It’s how Ethan comes to be standing on a rickety pier, dressed to the nines, sipping on a draft beer at ten p.m., well past his usual bedtime. 

There’s a brush of warmth against his arm. He looks down to see Sloane leaning against the railing beside him, squinting out at the dark water. 

“Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. Anything to help our city’s finest.” 

She gives a soft snort over the rim of her drink. 

“You’re impossible.”

“You like impossible.”

“You’re right.” She’s smiling as she says it, leaning into his arm. He moves his hand from the small of her back and wraps his arm around her shoulders, bringing her into his chest. She lets out a contented sigh.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she hums. 

“Why did you drop out of med school? From what I see on a daily basis, you’d have your pick of residencies.” 

For a long moment, there’s only the muffled pop tunes bleeding through the bar and the rhythmic churn of water against the pier and none of those things are her response. He fears that he’s finally stumbled upon the one topic that had warning signs all over it not to approach, and that he barreled right through every one of them. 

“My sister got sick,” she eventually says. “She went to the doctor on a Tuesday and she was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the next Wednesday. Her girlfriend split soon after and the only family we have to speak of can’t be trusted any farther than you can throw them.” She sucks in a breath, her fingers clenching around the drink she holds. “So, I moved back home and took care of her. But loan holders don’t care about why you dropped out, they want their monthly-minimum -- and with no decent-paying residency to lean on, I had to figure out something. I ended up hiring a caregiver to be with Sydney in the afternoon and evenings, so I could go work my retail job and then go to night classes to get my EMT certification. 

“I spent a year working for the local EMS and learned how to be adaptable to any situation. My partner taught me how to drive a rig at sixty miles-an-hour while taking hairpin turns on county roads. I helped deliver babies at both Texaco stations in town, fought brush fires with the volunteer fire department, waded into the river to rescue an idiot teenager who decided to try out drifting during Hurricane Matthew. I’d gone into the job to keep a foot in the door within the medical field, but suddenly…”

“...you loved it,” Ethan finishes for her. Beside him, she takes a sip of her drink and nods. 

“Exactly. Then, in the last week of January 2017, my sister died. And a week after her funeral, after all the extended family stopped coming by and pretending to care, I’m sitting in her living room on the floor, and I’m organizing her finances to start the process of selling her house. I get to this envelope that just has ‘Read this’ written across it. So, I mean, I opened it, of course -- and there’s a letter from Sydney to me that she’d written probably a month prior to her death. In it, she tells me that she’d saved up money during all those years I was away at school for us to go on a trip together. 

“But with her cancer treatment going nowhere, that was no longer an option. She wrote about how my work stories made her laugh, about how obvious it was that I loved what I did, but that I didn’t deserve to be stuck in our hometown for the rest of my life, carrying her dead weight around. Her words, mind you -- her dry humor would rival even yours. And then she went on about how she didn’t want me to be fucked over by quitting school for her, how she wanted me to continue my education, and that she wanted me to use our trip money to go back to school. So, I called up a realtor, spent three months keeping the house from looking like anyone lived in it, sold the place, and within the next week I was living in a duplex out in Lower Roxbury and enrolled in a paramedic course at Northeastern.”          

Ethan lets the story settle, lets the noises of the evening fill up what little space remains between them. 

“Thank you for telling me,” he eventually says. Pressed against his side as she is, it doesn’t take much for Sloane to dig her elbow into his ribcage. 

“Okay, I told you my story. Tit for tat, as they say.”

“No one actually says that.”

“C’mon, I know stalling when I hear it. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Wracking his brain for something to say, he spits out the first thing that comes to mind: “I wanted to be a diagnostician.” Sloane perks up at the statement, shifting to look up at him. “Before, you know, during my early days of medical school. I had it all planned out, signed up for all the seminars to attend so I could rub elbows, narrowed down my list of where I would spend my residency. All before I started my first year.” 

Dragging in a breath, he continues, “And then one day during my first year, I’m waiting for the subway, and this man falls onto the tracks. At first, no one moves. We’re all stunned into place, watching, as if we’re waiting on him to jump back up onto the platform by himself. Someone finally moves, and then a crowd runs to the edge and they’re all yelling for help and for police and for a doctor. It’s stupid, but the word ‘doctor’ finally spurred me into action. I jump down there with two other people. The man was impaled on a section of broken track, so we not only have to get him off the tracks, but I’ve also got to make sure he doesn’t bleed out in the process. There’s no time to worry over the puncture wound while we’re all in the path of a soon-to-be oncoming train, though, so we simply had to pull him off the metal. It was… intense. We carry him over to the stairs and get him laid out on the ground, where I can finally take a look at him.”

“How bad?”  

“The metal had sliced through his fourth intercostal.” Ethan brushes his fingers across the same spot on her back. “So, not only am I dealing with a chest cavity wound, but as I’m talking to the guy and trying to get information out of him, I can hear his breath getting shorter and shorter.” 

“Pneumothorax?”

“Exactly,” he nods. “And all I have on me is a backpack full of textbooks. So, I borrow this woman’s pocket knife and another woman’s bicycle pump to create a makeshift chest tube. By the time I got it up and running, the paramedics arrived and carted him off.” 

“I have a question,” Sloane interrupts. 

“Hmm?”

“You said you borrowed the bike pump… the woman really wanted it back after all that?” Ethan feels her shoulders shake with contained laughter as he scoffs at her terrible joke. “Okay, okay, sorry -- back to the story. So, is that what made you change your field?”

“It seems juvenile, looking back, for one moment like that to matter so much--”

“No, it makes complete sense!” she insists, tipping her head back and closing her eyes as she tries to think of how she wants to convey her point. “It’s like… you sit in classrooms all day and you poke at cadavers and you can name every muscle in the body, but it’s nothing compared to the real thing. You’re a conductor and the patient’s life is this symphony you get to control. That rush -- it makes you take leaps you wouldn’t normally take.”  

Her eyes open in time to spot the look of contemplation on his face. There’s something else, though, in the set of his jaw, in the ragged breath he takes in. 

“Or risks that are worth taking,” he says. His other hand drops from the railing as he turns into her, gathering her even closer. Sloane moves readily, easily into the circle of his arms. “Like this.” 

He leans down and she stretches up, meeting for a kiss that goes on and on -- until there is only the sound of the surf, steady underneath their feet. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, and Ethan can feel the words against his lips. “Exactly like that.”

+ + +

“Make it harder.”

“Hmm.”

“Levator scapulae.” 

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Trapezius… supraspinatus… rhomboid major… come on, this is Anatomy 1010 stuff.”

“I’m beginning to think that we should have agreed to ‘if Sloane complains about my seduction technique, she forfeits the competition.’”  

“If you have to say the words ‘seduction technique’ out loud, then it’s probably not working anyway.” The words are barely out of her mouth before she’s squealing with laughter as Ethan digs his fingers into her ribs, tickling her there. “Inter… intercos -- intercoastal.” 

The mattress dips as he shifts, dropping down to skim his lips across the skin covering the muscle she labeled. So far, she’s gotten all of them correct -- which means he’ll have to make this game of theirs a little more difficult. Shifting again, he centers his weight onto his left hand and distracts her with a lazy kiss against her lower back. He smirks at her bored sigh. “Latissimus dorsi.”

“Mmm, no, I want you to think… deeper.” His lips touch the spot again, his tongue dipping out to taste the skin there, warm and salty sweet. Tracing the outside of her thigh with his other hand, pleasure clutches at him when he sees the muscles in her leg twitch as his fingers stroke further inward, closer and closer. 

“Iliocostalis?” Maybe it’s his imagination, but some of the confidence has left her tone, replaced by that low, breathy voice she uses -- the one that could get him to move mountains, if only his work schedule would allow it. 

“Very good,” he murmurs, his fingers dragging two heavy passes across her inner thigh, where her abductor muscle tenses at his attention. She squirms against his bed, spreading her legs a little wider, silently urging for his touch to come a little closer. Unable to resist any longer, Ethan sinks two fingers into her. He groans as she clenches around him. Shameless little gasps fall from her mouth as he slides in a third finger, her hips gently rocking against his bed as she begs.   

His name on her lips could be an aphrodisiac, could be sought after like the maca root, could convince men and women alike to traverse 3,000 feet into the mountains to seek out. It’s his luck, then, that she’s chosen to let him have the taste of her. 

He curls down over her to nip at the skin of her waist. 

“Longissi -- no, fuck -- serratus posterior inferi--”

All at once, Ethan pulls away. Self-satisfaction floods through him as Sloane groans in frustration, rolling underneath him so that she can glare directly at him.

“You know the rules,” he tells her with an easy shrug, as if he’s done with their game (as if he isn’t hard as a rock, staring down at her, pissed-off and naked in his sheets). He’s expecting her to do quite a number of things, all towards the goal of getting her way. What he isn’t expecting is for her to wrap her legs around his waist and use all of that hidden strength she possesses to tug him down on top of her, where she proceeds to kiss along his jaw and nip at his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“You tried your seduction technique,” she says. “Now I’m trying out mine.”

He feels every inch of her smile as she drags a hand across his chest, down over his hip, and around the base of his cock. Arousal is a hot poker to his sternum, drowning everything else out. His awareness tunnels until it’s only her (and her touch and her breath on his skin as she chuckles and the slick slide of her thighs against his hips and it’s all too much and not enough at the same time).  

“I think it’s working,” he chokes out, talking about too many other things that he can’t put names on yet. 

“Hmm… you know what?” she grins, beating him to the answer. “I think so, too.”

+ + +

It all starts when the waiting area empties out. A rare sight on a rainy Friday afternoon, when car accidents and ankle sprains typically fill the lobby to the brim. Such a rarity, indeed, that the interns collect at the double doors to take in the scene. 

Ethan clears his throat, enjoying the way they all spin around in a panic at the noise. 

“What’s say you all find something more productive to do with your time than stare out at the parking lot -- unless you’ve decided to abandon your medical careers and become meteorologists?”

Marisa, one of the more vocal interns, grabs a handful of her breast and tilts her head.

“There’s a thirty percent chance that it’s already raining.”

Some of the group laughs, while others glare. Ethan doesn’t bother asking about the pop culture reference and shoos them all away with threats of inventorying the supply closets if they don’t find patients to care for. 

Sidling up next to him, the pediatric specialist stares out at the rainy day. Tucked into her elbow is the clipboard she’s never seen without. The interns all think it’s full of patient charts and motivational quotes. Ethan wonders what they would think of Ines Delarosa if they ever found out that hidden between the hand-outs on SIDS and the importance of handwashing is the newspaper’s sports section. Because, aside from being the state’s leading pediatric emergency physician, Ines is also a die-hard Bruins fan -- she’s even got the season glass seats to prove it (and a ridiculous amount of memorabilia, which he only knows about because he graciously attends her Halloween party every year). 

“It is odd to see it so s-word,” she says, dodging the wrath of the ER gods by avoiding the word.

“If it keeps up, maybe you can get off early and snag a good seat at the game.”  

Ines chuckles and shrugs her shoulders. 

“A girl can dream.”  

He turns from the doors to see that the interns are following his commands when Ines makes a concerned noise. Glancing back out the window, he spots the flashing lights of two cop cars as they streak down the street, followed quickly by a third and a fourth. After the eleventh he quits counting. “There’s a whole squadron heading east,” Ines calls out to the room. “Anybody know anything?”

“I’ll check Twitter,” Kendra suggests, her fingers flying across the keyboard. Both doctors watch as the screen loads, reflected in her horn-rimmed glasses. Ethan’s stomach tightens as her dark eyes go wide behind the lenses. “Oh, shit.”

It takes seven minutes for the first victim to arrive. From then on, the ambulance bay resembles a floodgate, filling up with concussions and internal bleeding and broken bones. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, with staff from every other department coming to assist. Even Chris and Harper come down to help -- and it’s almost like med school all over again with the three of them working together, side-by-side. Any awkward relations between them are buried deep in the wave of such a disaster. 

Ethan spends the two minutes he can spare explaining the card system to the interns before handing each of them a stack. As he races from one bed to another to oversee the critical cases and get them transferred into the next available OR, he notes the lack of black cards. He can’t help but hope that it’s a good sign, and that the accident wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been. 

But with each new patient’s stuttering recount of the disaster, he finds that hope slowly dwindling. A partial tunnel collapse, they say, repeating what the news anchors have been relaying on the screens in the break room, where they’ve set up a makeshift triage for the less critical. One patient tells him about the crunching noise of the impact, while another one cries over the terrified screams of those trapped in between the layers of rubble. 

It isn’t until the third hour (or fifth or sixth, he isn’t sure; time is a construct that he only becomes aware of when he has to call a time of death) that he finally gets an opportunity to talk to Sloane. He’s caught glimpses of her before now, rushing in and out of the double doors. This close, he can see the dust and grime that coats her jacket, the reflective strips splattered with black sludge. Streaks of the substance are smeared through her hair and down onto her neck. 

“Hey,” he reaches out, cupping her cheek in his hand and drawing her eyes up from the transfer report she’s scribbling on at the nurses station. “How are you holding up?”     

She bites at her chapped bottom lip, dragging in a breath as she thinks over a response. 

“It’s… bad,” she tells him. “Out there.” 

“It’s amazing, though,” one of the interns pipes up from where they’re hovering nearby, “that so few people have such serious injuries.” 

Sloane meets the remark with silence and Ethan knows there must be countless victims that she had to overlook in order to get to those that would have a chance of survival. Placing her hand over his, she turns her head and presses a quick kiss to his palm. 

“I’ve gotta get back out there.” She gives his hand a squeeze before she pulls away, back into the rush of bodies and out the door. Sloane McTavish, once more unto the breach, he thinks as he watches her disappear.     

By the mid-afternoon, the ER’s lobby is no longer just a home for the injured. Loved ones come in droves, in fast-moving packs across the parking lot and through the entrance to clog up the reception desk. They demand to know if their brother or partner or best friend are safe within the hospital, their panic bouncing between one another and magnifying when the staff can’t give them the answers they need. 

From inside the curtained-off cubicle where he’s working on a patient, Ethan can hear Harper giving a speech to the crowd. It’s sympathetic, but not coddling; assertive, but not aggressive. Her ability to sway a large group of panicked patients into understanding the reality of the hospital’s situation within two minutes is why she excels at being the chief (and why Ethan would never be able to do what she does -- he would’ve been mauled the minute he opened his mouth). 

“You need any help?” 

His head snaps up to see Sloane hovering at the gap in the curtain. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lighting, but she looks paler than last he saw her. Her knuckles are white where she grips the curtain’s edge, he also notes. “Raf is restocking our rig,” she continues. “He said for me to take a quick five and grab something to drink.” 

“Take five means to sit down and get some rest,” Ethan points out. 

“If I sit down, I’m gonna fall asleep.” She takes a long drink from the styrofoam cup in her other hand and grimaces. He can’t help but worry about how much coffee she’s ingested -- enough that there are fine tremors in her hands, her body running on caffeine and cortisol. 

Finishing off the suture, he calls for a nurse to start the discharge process and guides Sloane over to an empty seating area. 

“Sit down, honey. I’m going to get you something to--” 

Her muffled cry of pain cuts him off. Ethan drops down onto one knee in front of her and cups her chin, forcing her glassy eyes to meet his. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong? What hurts?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “I’m fine, I--”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. What hurts?” He reaches for the zipper on her jacket when she snags his wrist and pushes him away. 

“I told you: I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.” 

He frowns at her hurried assurances. 

“Forgive me, but I’ve heard that one before. I didn’t buy it then, either. Let me at least check you out.” His authoritative tone seems to sway her. She drops his wrist and inches forward in the chair; her pained wince as she does so worries him further. He’s got her zipper halfway down when a voice calls out from behind them. 

“Slo, you ready to roll?” 

Before he can stop her, she’s yanking her zipper back up and shoving past him to join her partner. 

“Yeah, I’m all set.” 

Ethan gets to his feet and prepares to coax her into getting checked out when Rafael glances between the two of them and smirks.   

“Aren’t there supply closets for this kind of thing? If you need to get a leg over, partner, I can go grab a snack real qui--”

Sloane knocks her fist into Rafael’s arm, ignoring his fake cry of alarm as she turns and heads for the double doors. 

“She’s injured,” Ethan tells him. “Keep an eye on her.” 

Rafael quickly sobers, his grin falling away. He nods once before jogging back down the hallway and through the exit.     

The rescue squad has reached the third section of the tunnel, Kendra tells him at some point in the early evening (or he thinks, at least; he hasn’t had the time to look out a window and actually take in the position of the sun in several hours). The opening brings a new flood of victims, their injuries more critical, given their extended time underground without aid. 

Most of his interns are holding up surprisingly well, given the sheer influx of patients and the higher amount of critical codes. Ethan’s found only a handful of them having a pity party in the on-call room. His brain is too fogged to stumble his way through an original speech, so the one he gives is ripped straight from Doctor Greene. None of them seem to notice, though, solidifying Sloane’s claim that his interns are all fans of Hugh Laurie’s medical drama instead. 

His thoughts turn once more to his girlfriend as he leaves an intern to wipe away their tears and moves back out into the hallway. The few times he’s seen her he’s been too busy with a patient to get close enough to check on her. Reaching into his pocket for his phone, he’s about to resort to texting Rafael again to get a status when he spots her across the room. 

She’s standing at the nurses station and staring down at a report. The pen in her hand moves back and forth in short strokes across the page, too sloppy to be anything legible. Even from where he stands, he can see the choppy rise and fall of her chest. Hurrying past a cluster of waiting gurneys, he pushes his way through the hallway traffic to reach her side. He calls her name as he rounds the counter. The lack of reaction in her drives that stake of worry down farther into his chest. Gripping her shoulder, he gives her a little shake. 

“Sloane, hey, look at me,” he urges. 

His breath catches in his throat when she complies; her pale face is clammy, her lips tinged blue. Blinking heavily up at him in confusion, she tries to take a step back. His instinct already has him shouting for a bed. He’s moving even before she can collapse, catching her before she hits the floor. He loops an arm under her knees and another around her back, fighting back the wave of panic when her head lolls to the side. 

Kendra rushes over with a bed; they wheel her into the closest open room, a team of nurses racing in behind them. 

“’m fine,” Sloane mutters as Ethan jerks her zipper down. “Jus need a new… bandage--”

“Fuck,” Kendra swears. 

Looking down at the bloodied mess of her shirt, Ethan can’t help but agree with the sentiment. He tugs the fabric up to expose a blood-soaked bandage, secured only by a few strips of medical tape. Peeling back the bandage, he sucks in a breath through his teeth at the jagged laceration across her lower abdomen. The one she clearly tried to pack with gauze and walk off. 

“Jus patch me up an--”

“Goddammit, lay back down!” he orders as Sloane tries to sit up. “You’re not fit to do anything but try to save your own life for once. You’re in hypovolemic shock.”    

“If I was, be dead already,” she argues, her words slurring together. 

Kendra produces a pair of scissors and they cut off her uniform as Ethan orders for a blood transfusion, as well as a CT scan to rule out internal bleeding. 

“BPs at eighty-nine, heart rate is 126,” Kendra reads out. “She’s in tachycardia.” 

Fury at her disregard for her own safety roils in Ethan’s gut, compounding on the anger he already feels towards himself for letting her go earlier. Layered beneath everything is fear, thick and cold and viscous as it eats away at him. 

He spends the next hour going through the motions of testing and eliminating any possibilities of further injuries. Once they get her downgraded from stage three and stabilized, Ethan allows her to give in to sleep and steps out to check on the rest of his department. Finding everyone at their posts (and no one sobbing in the on-call room), he returns to Sloane’s room. 

Where he’s surprised to find her awake, albeit groggy. 

“Hey,” she greets, her voice almost lost underneath the steady beeps of the monitor. 

Ethan steps further into the room and shuts the door behind him, snuffing out the hospital’s incessant noise. Settling down into the chair by her bed, he reaches out to take her offered hand and brings it to his lips. 

“I need you to explain to me what the hell you were thinking.” 

She sucks in a breath, holding it for a long moment before letting it out. He raises his head, clutching her hand to his cheek as he watches her mull over her answer. 

“I was in the first section of the tunnel,” she begins. “The one we’d already cleared. I was on my way to help Raf board someone when I heard this noise. Like an animal wailing, you know, really high-pitched and drawn out. It’s closer to me than him, so I get down on my hands and knees and I’m crawling through the wreckage and I’m calling out and I can -- I can tell it’s a kid because he starts to talk, and he’s asking for his mom, and finally I spot him and he’s… he’s just a little tiny thing.” 

She pauses to catch her breath. Ethan turns his head and presses a long kiss against her knuckles. “He’s pinned underneath his mom, who we… had to move past earlier... and he’s tucked up underneath a seat. I don’t know how we missed him before, but I know I’ve got to get him out of there; he’s soaked in blood and I can’t tell if it’s his own or his mom’s, and there’s no time to try to figure it out. I finally get him out and he’s got a gash above his ear -- deep enough that I know I’ve got to hurry. And… that was it. I was going too fast, wasn’t watching all of my steps, and I’ve got him in my arms when I feel myself start to slip, but I’ve got him so I can’t stop myself, so I tucked him close to my hip and rolled into the fall and... landed onto a broken railing.” 

“That you slapped a bandage over and ignored,” Ethan finishes for her. “Without letting anyone know and refusing to let me check--”

Sloane shakes her head; tears track down over her pale cheeks. 

“You don’t -- Ethan, there were so many people down there, trapped and screaming and… and we were hauling out buckets of debris to get to them and sometimes, by the time we got to them, they wouldn’t be screaming anymore and I knew I couldn’t stop and sit that out, I couldn’t--”

“You’re lucky you only needed stitches and a blood transfusion. If you had gone on any longer, you would have progressed to stage four hypovolemic shock. You could have fallen into a coma from blood loss,” he hisses out, the anger from earlier returning with a vengeance. “Only a rookie would pull a stunt like this.”        

She meets his narrowed gaze and it’s like she can see past his front, past the frustration; without moving, without speaking, she peels back those jagged layers to see the worry and guilt that festers below. 

“This is what we do,” she murmurs. “Sometimes we forgo our own safety for the sake of others.” Tugging on his hand, she urges him to sit beside her on the bed where she can run a comforting hand through his hair and down his arm, reassuring him of her presence. 

“I know,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss her forehead, then the bridge of her nose, and then her lips. All of the pressure in his head evaporates at her touch, at reassuring himself that she’s okay. “But next time, let me do it. I am closer to the ER, after all.” 

Sloane lets out an exasperated chuckle, rolling her eyes at his lame joke. 

“You’re lucky I love you.”

“I know,” he says, that soft smile of his making an appearance -- the one only she gets to see. “Get some sleep. I’ll be right outside if you need anything.” 

Standing up, he reaches above her head and switches off the strip light. The room dims, lit only by the muted hallway lights that leak through the blinds. Leaning down, he gives her a longer, sweeter kiss, trying to pour all of his relief into it. “I love you, too,” he tells her as he tucks the blanket in around her.

“Wake me when your shift ends.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

+ + +

He approaches the light with that tight feeling in his chest; his body’s assurance of a job well-done. Covered in a fine sheen of sweat from the summer heat, he yanks at the collar of his T-shirt and wafts it against his chest, groaning at the feel of air moving against his skin. 

“Are you prepping for the marathon?” he asks between ragged breaths. “Is that why you were going so fast?” 

“Wasn’t going any faster than usual,” Sloane replies with a shrug. Leaving her side, Relay trots over to sniff at Jenner and then at him, nudging his pocket with interest, where the tennis ball they toss around in the Common hides. 

“Well, either you’re lying, or I’m starting to show my old age.” 

“You’re not old,” she scoffs. “You’re thirty-eight.” Turning towards her, Ethan recognizes the look on her face; he immediately becomes invested in whatever she’s about to say next. “Here, I’ve got an idea: I’ll race you. If you beat me, then you’ll get a treat.” 

Both dogs and he perk up at the term. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

The light changes. 

They take off, jogging across the intersection and up onto the opposite sidewalk. 

Where they both turn left for home.

+ + +

AN: I did some routine googling for the medical information in this, but not nearly enough as I probably should have. Take it with a grain of salt. *Fixed as of 6/2/21: changed Sloane’s dog name from Haint to Relay. Haint is a term for ghosts or evil spirits, which I learned originated from Gullah culture in GA and SC, so I feel it was appropriation for me to use it with an MC who is white / is not part of that culture.  This fic also contains a real-life AU in the fact that Boston EMS does not work on the same structure as Chicago or NYC, where some ambulances reside within certain quarters at a dedicated fire station -- however, in this they do because everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. 

[ardas-group]

Importance of Working Out UI/UX SaaS Design

Today, there are a huge number of artists who are ready to take up the development of your site or applications. The enormous difference in the cost of the same project among different performers is striking because the price of a site starts at $ 100 and ends with space figures. In this article, we will tell you about the importance of UI/UX for SaaS, its components, about typical misconceptions and myths based on our personal experience working with clients, and help you determine the cost of SaaS product design so that you get exactly what you expect from the designer.

What is the Main Misconception Creating SaaS App UI design

Many clients think that development does not require preliminary interface design because the developer, in principle, can do everything himself. This becomes the main misconception at the initial stage that when using some standard components and approaches from the library, everything will turn out beautifully and conveniently at once. This misconception is most often encountered when creating startups because they are more limited in budget and try to save on everything. Often, the founders of startups do not really understand the values ​​of different stages of development and begin to save on what cannot be saved. In particular, they save on the work of the designer.

It’s even worse when they begin to save on the analyst’s work because it’s the analyst who needs to figure out all the requirements and conceptually draw the architecture of the project, the screen and users, what functions will be, describe iOS cases and so on. That is, he prepares the first materials that are already delivered to the designer, and he, in turn, makes this a beautiful and convenient product. Since many customers like to save money on analytics, as a result, they skip this stage of design. The worst case is when they immediately begin to develop functionality, believing that the developer is professional, which means that he can do everything right as the client wants. This is a huge misconception.

Let's see if it is worth saving on UI UX design and what could be the consequences. What can be lost and what mistakes can be made if this is not done.

3 Myths about Design Practices of SaaS Application1. We are a small project - we don't need UI/UX design

The first myth is that the client believes that SaaS application UI design is something that is needed only for beauty and only for image and only for very large successful companies. In a small project, this is not necessary and you can just do it somehow and they will forgive you because you have no money. If this is a small company and no one knows you, and therefore everything may not be important if only it can work somehow. This is a misconception because users do not forgive the low quality.

2. Developers can design a product - we don't need a designer

The second myth is to think that a developer can do everything himself without an analyst and without Web Design Companies. This is absolutely not the case for two reasons. Firstly, the developer is a technical specialist who sees everything quite differently as ordinary consumers have completely different habits of using software products and a completely different level of readiness to deal with something difficult to achieve a goal that an ordinary person will not do. Secondly, the developer is a person who knows how to create a software product, but he does not know anything about a specific industry niche, about future users, about what market trends are formed, about that stack of products and solutions. Therefore, he cannot, by definition, do this. In the best case, he can make the application convenient and understandable for himself and for people like him.

3. It is too expensive - we are a small startup, we have no money

The third myth is to think that work on UI UX design is very expensive and you can really save on it. This is absolutely not the case. This work requires very little time, much less than it takes time to develop it. It is absolutely impossible to save anything on this.

Consequences of Believing in Similar Myths

The system will either be inconvenient and users will simply leave quickly. Or they won’t understand the rules of use at all, because the training that will be necessary is so long and long that it will demotivate people and they will go to competitors who are much easier. That is, if the product is not adapted to the behavioral characteristics of people, to their habits, to how they would like to use all this, then the probability of failure is 100%. Look at this image below - your customer is that little kid watching those cute fluffy asses rotating in a random direction :)

What is often ignored before starting UI/UX design

Too many companies that do not have real product experience in creating a product and launching it on the market and bringing it to a successful state, design an interface for reasons of component usage standards as recommended, plus their own vision of convenience.

This is wrong because the SaaS UI design of the interface should not be focused on your own tastes and not on your own concepts of convenience, but on the audience who should use this product later. Most designers and analysts are aware of the existence of standard components and some kind of classic interface solutions. They create a beautiful, but ineffective and inapplicable interface in this business because they ignore the following:

Your interface should be at least as good as the interface of your main and best competitors. But preferably even better, not much, but at least a little better. Sometimes this is enough for users to prefer your product. An example here is Airbnb and Booking, and one of the universally recognized advantages of Airbnb is its simple and convenient interface compared to old school Booking. Therefore, before we begin to design interfaces, we are sure to study in detail at least two or three of the best competitors of our client's product.

You can never do the style of appearance based on your idea of ​​modern and good SaaS app UI design. All this must be taken at least from those competitors (or even not competitors), but from those products that have already worked in this niche for some time. Each niche has already developed its own stereotypes and its own trends and standards that must be taken into account. Your product should be a logical evolutionary continuation of the whole story, and not go into any new direction, but be at least one step better than existing products.

A good interface is always created only with a product manager or marketer who knows the audience of future users well, understands their daily needs, and understands how to build their work so that it is convenient for everyone. Complex things should be solved easily and beautifully. By the way, that’s why you can never trust developers to make an interface on their own. But even a designer by himself without a marketer will most likely not create a SaaS UX design that will be really user-friendly.

Often, to save money, the customer makes a static SaaS interface design, that is, a set of screens, instead of making at least a clickable prototype. This is an opportunity to try this interface precisely in dynamics and to realize all the routes through which the user will have to go through to do something. Such a prototype is a very cheap and effective method to test the convenience of an interface on a focus group. It is correctly planned routes that are 80% of the success of the interface because most of the time the user spends to understand what sequence of actions you need to do to get the desired result. And this is by no means just an intuitive arrangement of components on the screen. Although this is also of course important.

Important Conclusion

A high-quality interface is the fruit of the work of 3 people: a marketer (or product specialist) + analyst + UI/UX designer. Yes, these 3 heros save the planet and our brains from annoying and unusable interfaces.

Cost of UI/UX Design for SaaS App

In the SaaS development of the first version of the product, investors usually invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars if development takes place in the United States or Europe. In our company, the same thing will amount to tens of thousands of dollars. At the stage of launching the first version, startups have no room for error - there are no extra tens of thousands of dollars to redo the frontend. If a product does not enter its consumer because of the very complex learning process and development due to the complex interface, then the startup will simply have no money left to redo it. As a result, the project will have to close. Even if there is money, then at an early stage it is very inefficient to spend it on fixing mistakes. It would be much better to use them for remarketing in sales or simply in any other development of the project.

Our experience in SaaS Interface Design

We recently had a very significant case. We were approached by a client who developed his product for two years by a rather considerable team. There were about 4 developers. This is a lot for a startup. Four people developed a huge amount of functionality over 2 years, working monthly and without any single design at the level of products that would take into account marketing or usability. Therefore, they threw one functional on the second and added it wherever possible.

Thus, a huge number of absolutely uncomfortable pop-ups appeared some completely illogical interface solutions for simple tasks. To the developers, this seemed like a convenient solution and structured beautifully, but for a normal person who goes to work every day and needs to use this product, it was very very difficult and confusing. This client contacted us so that we could make a complete redesign of the entire system. Initially, there were about 40 screens and forms. After the redesign, we simplified it to about 27-30 screens and forms, while retaining all the functionality, we made all the chains much more logical, more compact without duplicate information. Everything became available in one or two clicks. For all this work, we spent about 3 weeks of work of one designer and one week of work of an analyst in analytics, that is, a total of 160 hours. At our rate, it is $ 5600. That is, it is less than the salary of one developer per month that this client paid for 2 years.

Therefore, it is obvious that it is impossible to save on design. After the redesign, 4 developers reworked the entire product externally for approximately 2 months. That is, for two months, four people worked to convert a bad design into a good one, and this amounted to about $40,000 - $60,000. As a result, it turned out that analytics plus competent design took about 10% of the time that you need to spend to remake the entire interface of the entire product. It would be simpler and more profitable not to save on design, do it right away and not spend the extra $40,000 - $60,000 to change the appearance. Please, take a look at this example of UI/UX design in more detail.

Final Thoughts

The main thing that any business needs to remember when developing a new project: the right UX / UI design thinks about the simple needs, motives, and goals of a person. A nice shell and convenient functions should work for a real person, simplify his experience of interconnection with the interface. Due to the constantly growing demand in the market, more and more specialists in this field are required, who are able to analyze the behavior of the target audience, to offer quality solutions to enhance usability. Our team will help you avoid many problems that you may encounter too late, and most importantly, it will significantly save your costs. If you need help with UI/UX design for any kind of your software, fill in the contact form below.

Originally taken from https://ardas-it.com/importance-of-ui-ux-design

[exobyharu]

PCY - Ch6

Originally posted by iyeolie

Chapter 6 - If there’s one thing clear

(Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)(Part 5)

Summary: You don’t die, Junmyeon gives you space, PCY gets unlimited punches, and Baekhyun’s a whiner.

⏰10:49 AM 🌏SM Entertainment headquarters (disclaimer: you didn’t wanna be there) 🌞Too much sun, but that wasn’t what the beach towel’s for 👥 YN, Park Chanyeol, Kim Junmyeon, Byun Baekhyun, EXO’s manager, your best friend Jane (mentioned)

Notes: Happy Birthday PCY! I love you with all my heart! OBSESSION just dropped and I love how there was fire and everything. AND EVERYTHING! I’m so excited for them all. Kai’s moves are to die for. What was your favorite part of the video? Everything? Me too! That’s all kids, bye. (I’ll start doing my face like CHEN’s starting tomorrow)

Words: ~2,200

💙💙💙

One of the worst things that can happen to a non-celebrity is to be mistaken as a celebrity. You would realise in a few hours that there were at least a hundred worse things you could name, but being kidnapped from your morning walk in the hotel gardens seemed to top your Most Unfortunate Events In My Life list. You will also realise much later that it was not exactly a kidnapping that happened. But the point was that you were freaking out because you did not know who wanted your person recklessly shrouded by a beach towel and ushered to a tinted van with a startling sense of urgency that made you start hearing your own pulse inside your head.

Am I going to die?

It was nothing close to escalating to an attack of uncontrollable anxiety, however, considering that your brain preferred to panic over much more irrelevant concerns. Death was not something you were wired to fear, but the thought of not knowing what was going to happen next made the experience almost intolerable. There was nothing quite like the distress from not knowing what to do while the rest of the people inside the van fretted about what to do with you.

You did not know whether to yell or cry. No amount of coffee or muffins would make up for how the staff members – whom you had come to know were from Chanyeol’s entertainment company – had essentially abducted you. That stuff’s supposed to be against the law, right?

So, nope. You were not doing as they said. You were not going to make yourself comfortable in this pretentiously minimalistic room and lean back on the steel sofa because the door would be right behind you. You were not going to help yourself to treats that were served because you did not need sugar and caffeine – you needed Xanax. And the wi-fi password they offered? What kind of idiot did they think you were? Why would you trust people who knew your full name and where you lived without having to ask you? You did not need more information about you out there, within their easy access.

It did not matter how many times this guy named Suho, whose alabaster skin and enchantingly stunning face apologised for their relatively unconventional manner of securing you from reporters who were chasing after Biscotti Girl’s true identity. You had just recently lost your trust in handsome faces like his. Falling for handsome faces like his was sooo twelve hours ago.

Not again, you made sure, even though he may as well break his back from all the bowing he would repeatedly do after every interaction you had. Here was another one because he had just finished making a phone call outside the lounge, promptly shutting the tinted doors before a whiny pink-haired guy managed to follow in his steps.

“Forget the phone! I wanna see!!! Junmyeon-ah!”

Despite how it bustled with activity outside with so many people rushing about, it was a rather quiet holding room, with only you and this guy, whose real name was apparently Junmyeon. He bowed again, apologising probably for the twenty-seventh time – because it almost entertained you to count if he managed more than thirty – and he finally confirmed having spoken to Chanyeol. He left it at that, stepping out once more because he probably felt that this morning was already wearing your patience out.

It was the longest two hours alone for you until the glass doors finally slid apart, welcoming a less-startingly tall Chanyeol into the room. He had a sullen mood, as usual. Unconsciously, you braced yourself for another exchange of hostility, mimicking his facial expression. It turned out that the look he had was for the pink-haired guy outside.

“That guy Baekhyun’s a whiner,” he complained, allowing himself to fall onto the couch right across from you. Clearly, he was nowhere near as disquieted as you were. His apparent lack of empathy confused you. You pouted, as there was nothing but plain weariness in Chanyeol. But now, he was relaxed, as if keeping Baekhyun out of the room was all he needed to put everything in his life in order. You waited for him to address the elephant in the room.

He did not.

After a few seconds, the guy sat up as if a thought energised him. With a grin, he rested his head on his hands and faced you, beaming. “I finished the song, by the way!”

“And I can finish you,” you replied, glaring at him with a potent mix of impatience and contempt. You were a couple of twitches away from either breaking into sobs or kicking him where it hurt. “God, not even an apology, Chanyeol? Really?!”

“Calm down, YN,” he interrupted. You expected him to strike back with an even louder yell, but he did not. Instead, he scooted over, took the empty space beside you and placed a light hand on your back. “Okay, I’m sorry. I was just giving you the good news before the better one.”

You swatted his arm away. “And the better news, then?”

“There’s a plan. You can consider this Biscotti Scandal fixed.”

You tried to contain your outrage with a blink. He called it a scandal. Was it officially a scandal at this point? And what a ridiculously named scandal, at that. You went through the usual warnings, keeping your temper in check before responding to Chanyeol, whose only intent was to comfort you.

Be nice. Be nice. Be nice x1000. Your mouth was dry when you swallowed. “So they’ve stopped talking about us?”

“Well, no. But I–”

“Then you haven’t fixed anything!” you yelled, your composure wavering.

Last night, you were thankful for a chance to see Chanyeol for the final time and leave a good impression. Such impressions no longer mattered, seeing that you may have to spend even more time with him. This was certainly not what you wished for because he kept screwing up everything!

Abandoning restraint, you finally landed a series of punches – the strongest ones you can throw – on his left shoulder, which ended up hurting you more than it did him. The guy did not even show any serious effort to block your hits that probably seemed like taps to him at most. And yet you did not care because you were angry – plain and simple. Not easily tired, you retaliated when he wrapped his palms around your fists, restraining you effortlessly with lights hands. “Listen, will you? You help me this once, and they will stop. I know they will.”

Despite your relentless bawling, Chanyeol was doing a good job at pacifying your bout of anger. With an even face and a calm tone, he let go of your hands and let you punch him some more until you felt foolish for even trying. There was no way the Chanyeol you’d imagined would pull off a stoic face through an outburst like that.

“This is all your fault!” you yelled, as a final attempt to hammer down your point. You were upset with him, and he knew that. You just needed him to be aware of how hard this situation hit you. There were a hundred other places you would rather be, especially after wrapping up what was supposed to be an eventful soul search these past few days. You had an entire day planned with Jane and a mandatory meet up with your parents that evening. And now, this inconvenient morning was too quick to pass and you hated not knowing how much longer you had to stay for.

You were catching your breath, more worn out by your feelings than the colossal waste of energy you just pulled off. And Chanyeol did not say anything, possibly waiting for you to speak first. He could be a gentleman for that, or he could be waiting for your breathing to even out because he wanted you prepared for his next story.

It was the latter.

“I told them that you’re my cousin.”

His preposterous declaration left you frozen for a moment and all that happened after that was in red. You started seeing in red. You realised the next second that your foot had already landed a blow Chanyeol’s shin, and this time, it hurt him enough to make him throw his hands up in defence.

“Yah yah! Before you freak out, just listen okay? LISTEN!”

But you were not going to. You were really starting to think that Chanyeol was sabotaging the whole thing for a hidden agenda. Wasn’t it a thing? That idols like to stir up some scandals for attention when their fame seems to be waning? Wasn’t he popular enough?

Without glancing back, you stood up from your seat, cautiously avoiding Chanyeol who had pretty much figured out that you were on your way to the glass doors. Turning on your heels, you closed your eyes, as you drowned in contempt, savouring the sound of your shoes, stomping against the floor. Words in your head began to string themselves together into a smart parting line that would make it clear that you were not joining him on his bullshit. When you opened your eyes, you stopped, catching Chanyeol’s reflection on the doors.

He was on his feet, shoulders squared with hands fisted on his sides. You took notice of the skin in between his brows, all bunched up whenever he was in a sour mood. This time, it was different.

“They believed me, YN.” Chanyeol’s eyes were begging you. “My manager believed me. Junmyeon believed me. All we need to do is make the rest of the world believe it.”

“Sounds easy.” No to puppy eyes had always been your policy.

But Chanyeol innocently overlooked your sarcasm, and sat down when he finally got your attention back. “Because it is. I just need one afternoon on Instagram to broadcast it. And I need you there, doing your own thing, being you, in your house, with the rest of your family casually–”

“PARK CHANYEOL you leave my family out of this!” And just like that, you were darting back to the center of the room, finding yourself in a rare opportunity of standing taller than him for once. “Me, and my family are not going to help you propagate a lie!”

“Come on, YN. It’s easy to lie to the members. The fans are much harder to convince.”

“Is that your only problem with this plan? Why can’t you just tell the truth, anyway?”

“I can’t tell them I started a fight with a stranger!”

“Then tell them I started it!”

“They won’t believe me!”

“And you expect them to believe I’m your cousin?!”

He made a face. He was loud, but for once, you were louder. It was almost a wonder how nobody had burst into the room with all the shouting. Then again, it was much louder outside and you could not hear a thing.

Soundproof walls: perfect for your table flipping tendencies. You stared at the marble tiles, blinking as Chanyeol’s shadow loomed in front of you now.

“The truth,” he whispered.

You did not believe that you had convinced him at first, but when you glanced up, his smile was resigned. “All right. I messed up, anyway.” And then there was that split-second hesitation that you would have missed if you were not looking at him already. This was not easy for him. “I’m sorry, YN. Believe it.”

He pursed his lips as a faint shade of pink dusted his cheeks. Chanyeol, who was tremendously uncomfortable with the practice of verbally apologising outright, finally tried. This was the sincerity that you needed to appease the part of you that hated him. And it may have felt like a win for you at first, knowing that you had finally settled the matter in your terms, but more than anything, all you could think of was that you were finally going back to your own life, apart from this guy’s.

This was it – the last time and place where you would see him – or at least you tried to convince yourself that it was. Your intuition was usually on point so you merely hoped that it was truly over. True enough, a man you had not met entered the room before you could formally say your goodbye.

Chanyeol squared his shoulders, acknowledging the man who turned out to be their manager. It did not look like good news at all. “Baekhyun beat us to the announcement,” said the man in a suit. He placed a hand on his pink face as he sighed, and it looked like he had just come down from an outburst too. “We want you to confirm this once and for all.”

Just another plot twist that you saw coming two seconds before it happened. Your gift of intuition was as good as no intuition, at this point. You did not even want to look at Chanyeol anymore. He would not say anything. “You better get ready because Junmyeon is going live in thirty minutes and he wants you there. It’s up to you, Chanyeol. You can bring your cousin along, if she wants.”

You sure as hell did not. It was sad to say, but that was the only thing left clear to you now.

💙💙💙 - to be continued -

[sysig]

My Case Against 1-5

aka Why Miles Edgeworth is the most important character in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (and it’s not just because he’s my favourite I swear)

*spoilers for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney cases 1-1 through 1-5! *also opinions

Miles Edgeworth has the strongest character arc in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and using a backfilled case to undermine his character growth not only reduces his impact as a character but delegitimizes the entirety of the first game’s central plot progression. In this essay I will

Miles Edgeworth’s character arc is the strongest of the entire cast in PWAA. His maturation and closure from case 1-2 to 1-4 are the heart of the whole plot of the first game, showing his progression from cold and clever to vulnerable, and willing to listen even to his opponents. This progression is very important to the player’s attitude towards him, as well as his worth as a character, as if he were to always be one way, either cold and clever or vulnerable and more open-minded, he would be rendered a flat character. Not to mention, case 1-4 is arguably the most important case in the game, being the original climax, as well as finally showing all the events of the DL-6 case and Edgeworth’s childhood, furthering his characterization and lending more depth to him, Phoenix, and Larry. Having the events play out as they do, with accusations and uncovering a past that was repressed and hidden, to slimy dealings with the prosecution and blame pinned everywhere, at least Edgeworth didn’t do what everyone, even himself, had been convinced of. But wait, isn’t that a little familiar? Isn’t that very similar to the kind of thing Edgeworth has been accused of, and how Rise from the Ashes plays out? The finger is pointed at Edgeworth, not for murder perhaps, but incriminating nonetheless, and while the past doesn’t reach back as far, it still throws so much into question, the biggest one being: Did Edgeworth use unscrupulous methods, no matter to how willing he was to do so, to win his cases? This case says, well, yes, Edgeworth unwittingly used forged evidence and lays out how he did such a thing, but in the end paints him as having been a pawn for a power he had no control over, an unintentional offender. Do I believe that though? No way! Who was there in the first case against him when he intentionally went out of his way to tamper with a witness’ testimony! Who was there as he covered up for a real-life murderer and let me take the blame! Who was there while he twisted the truth to better suit his four year career as a prosecutor, or two if 1-5 is to be believed? It was me, I saw it all, I bear witness to Edgeworth being unlawful, intentionally, on purpose, knowingly! And you know what? That’s great. It strengthens his characterization more effectively than case 1-5 could ever hope to. Why? Well, in this essay I will...!

Cases 1-2 through 1-4 perfectly set up and foreshadow reopening and solving the DL-6 case; the new cast is small, the old cast is well-established, some evidence is even brought up again, and everything is very tightly written. 

1-2 introduces Edgeworth and all his scummy back alley ways of dealing with unfortunate-for-him evidence and testimony, giving us, the player, reason to dislike him beyond just Being Bad - he’s actively making this case more difficult for us, and has us framed for murder! That bastard! His loss throws him into question, as it did for his mentor and adoptive father, von Karma, but unlike von Karma, Edgeworth’s heart was not hardened past the point of no return. This is reflected best in 1-3

1-3 starts with Edgeworth still gunning to win and making our lives more difficult, with Gumshoe still being on his side and making gathering evidence harder, which leads back to the impression of Edgeworth - if Gumshoe and Edgeworth are working together, and it’s making this case more difficult, it comes back to thinking Edgeworth is a bastard who’s just there to get in the way. But then he underhandedly helps you - refuses to object, presses witnesses, even the Judge seems skeptical of his position as prosecutor! He’s starting to shift, to change, to become more interested in the truth rather than keeping his winning streak alive

Finally 1-4 is where it all comes together. You see his mentor, his father figure, who trained Edgeworth to be just like him, to be unscrupulous and cold and always make sure to get the defendant declared guilty - von Karma. And wouldn’t you know it, Edgeworth of all people is now the one in the defendant’s chair, framed for murder and unwilling to talk, believing not only that von Karma can have him declared guilty, but that his is guilty. Protecting Phoenix from the truth that he’s been wrestling with for fifteen years, until it finally comes to a head - 

Edgeworth is not a murderer, but he’s also not innocent. Not necessarily in 1-4, he’s declared Not Guilty, but in his life, he has done underhanded deeds and dirty dealings. He’s manipulative, cold, refuses help and refutes compelling arguments if they might be inconvenient for him. But he changes, before it’s too late. He becomes vulnerable, is willing to change, to listen, to admit defeat. If he ever got caught he’d surely go to jail, and in 1-2 I’d be tempted to say he got what was coming to him! But he’s not static. He’s dynamic. He learns, he grows, he becomes a better person. And he hates it, he feels so uncomfortable changing that part of himself, those “Unnecessary feelings.” But Phoenix was right - they are necessary, and they prove that Edgeworth has changed. You want evidence? He gives it to you himself, with his uncomfortable expressions and his stopped nightmares. He refuses to become the monster that raised him, stops beating himself up for something he never did, and admits the greatest defeat - he stops prosecuting. Not because he was found for forging evidence but rather because he was saved from anyone finding out now that he’d turned that page. Phoenix Wright saved him from callout culture.

So other than the obvious things about case 1-5, like the occasional typo (not great in a detail-driven story but nobody’s perfect) and some of the more particular puzzles (looking at you unstable jar), Rise from the Ashes has some more egregious problems, least of all being pacing and tone, and most of all being ruining continuity and the heart of the first four cases.

How it lifts from 1-4 aka Edgeworth’s sordid past & statute of limitations on opening a case (and repressed memories)

It’s cast number and amount of evidence as a climax vs. 1-3 & 1-4 (how 1-3 was a murder unrelated to any of the previously established characters and had a decently large cast but not /so/ large as to be confusing) and (1-4 as a climax works the smoothest because of the foreshadowing of the DL-6 since 1-2 and only introducing a few new characters to keep the characterization tight) plus (refusing to get rid of superfluous evidence despite having already done that in earlier cases)

Lack of/contradicting established continuity and canon (Edgeworth being Lana’s understudy, neglecting mention of von Karma except at the very end and only once; the Blue Badger being made “This year” i.e. 2017 when the plush already existed at least as far back as 2016, if not earlier; Rumours about Edgeworth forging evidence/any other back alley deals being thrown around when even he himself didn’t know about the forged evidence but did know about tampering with testimonies because he did those himself in case 1-2; bringing up Miranda Rights, evidence law, etc., when neither of them had been important to the plot before (internal continuity rather than real-world application)

It’s a badly written mystery (the way it pushes off the initial murder to the very end to make it seem like an afterthought, the way it intentionally redirects the chain of events many times (something like four times?), its “options” only leading to yes or no which really end up with either one or the other with just a strike (!) taken off (i.e. not clever writing); it just seems like it’s a gaslighty mess)

The Good (because there are good things, both objectively and subjectively)

Gant (his design, his theme, the idea he represents (being corruption in the police, blackmail & lies to achieve an end; well established just not well executed, especially taking pieces of evidence, one of which he planted, and intentionally hiding it from Lana instead of further implicating Ema i.e. Lana should’ve been aware of those pieces of ‘’evidence’’ so that it would seem even more like Ema would be implicated if they were real)

The screwdriver reveal (divorced from the context of everything else in the case, the image of Edgeworth truly being used to transport a corpse unwittingly is very well done. It’s in-character, well-revealed, and an interesting concept, especially towards Edgeworth, because of his baggage)

The question raised of corruption in the police force, and foils of Starr and Lana to Gumshoe and Edgeworth

The Bad (objectively bad things like pacing, logical jumpscares (edges toward subjective), hand-holding (like flashbacks to things that happened literally just before the last save), arguably tone shift)

Having this case be both an introduction to new gameplay elements, and the climax of the game i.e., the hardest level (the way things are introduced doesn’t mesh well with having to have the most difficult plot line/convoluted story/etc., because there’s no time to gradually tutorialize these elements without killing the pacing of the case, which it does anyway. It does both things wrong, amazing!)

The Ugly (subjective things, plot progression around and in relation to Edgeworth my favourite charater, sense of humour, using Ema as a replacement for Maya, introducing such a large cast with no foreshadowing (because they couldn’t help it is not an excuse - if you can’t write your plot and have it weave naturally into the pre-established story, maybe you should do a rewrite)

Edgeworth is not a static character and you’d know that if you played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. His characterization and character arc are the strongest of any other character in the game and writing as though he never did anything unscrupulous undoes the entirety of 1-2 through 1-4

Admittedly, this is neither a good nor a bad, it just is - Darke was convicted of a murder that he did not commit, and was put to death for murders that were never proven. Darke could be Not Guilty for all we, the player, know, and I think that’s maybe the most interesting thing in this case. Too bad it was sidelined for the rest of it

Backfilling as an art is something I’m very familiar with, and if I may toot my own horn, am fairly decent at. You see it all the time with fanfiction and other fanworks, backfilling is a very popular way of making sense or just filling in the time between canon events - fun speculative fiction for fiction. This case is one of the worst examples of backfilling I’ve ever seen. It explains nothing that wasn’t already established, it actively ignores canon, it introduces a dozen new characters that were previously unmentioned and makes them integral to the plots of the established characters, etc., etc. It makes it difficult to want to get to know them when they fall into the conventions of unskilled writers, no matter how earnest