#watched it for the first time (that i can remember) (the original good one) amd umm. my life is changed. i need to be in cats

[groupwest]

so. i need to be in cats

[venomous-ko]

Wine Drunk while watching Godzilla vs Kong

Some major spoilers up ahead!

Mans really just annoyed the shit out of his coworker until he left so he could hack shit, huh?...I love it! 🤣🤣

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You mean to tell me that the explanation for why Godzilla attacked the one tech company site by the dude who studied Kaiju communication and behavior for a living is just, “sometimes people (and creatures) change”???? Like some dumbass justifying a toxic person/relationship??? Like excuse me???? Why are the literal teenagers making more sense than you?????

Also, we’re all in agreement that this facility is either housing Ghidora’s dead head, Mecha Godzilla, or Mecha Ghidora, right?!?

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Lol! “Apex Cybernetics!” That’s not foreshadowing! 🤣

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Apparently, I didn’t get my fill of white nonsense from Falcon and Winter Soldier, bc someone decided to put this blonde-hair-blue-eyed little bitch in charge! That’s not ganna go wrong somehow. 🙃😑👀

Like this bitch literally wanted to send a fucking child into unexplored hollow earth territory without a second thought! 🙃🙃🙃🙃 I was literally like 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕 for that entire convo.

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I’m sorry! This conspiracy man just met these teenagers, and his first impulse was, “yeah, theses seem like some good people to break into a tech conglomerate with!” 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Why are these people surprised Kong knows sign language? These are people who study Kaiju (and presumably other animals in order to draw conclusions about certain behaviors) for a fucking living!!! We have primate species that recognize and communicate in sign language already! Why is this surprising???!?! Like...has NO ONE except this precious child tried this????

Also, nothing bad better happen to this child.

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That ship literally fucked around, and Godzilla let it find out! Lmao!

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Kong: Hey, Godzilla...look at me...

Godzilla: >:[

Kong: ...bitch.

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Precious girl: Thank you, friend 🧏🏽‍♀️

Kong: ☺️😴

THIS GIRL IS TOO PRECIOUS!!!!

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Bitch-ass White Man: How’s Kong with heights?

BITCH, you really ganna try that?!?! You really think you ganna find any aircraft(s) that are ganna be able to support all that weight?? Never mind any other problems with Kong trying to nope the fuck out of that situation and all kind of other hosts of problems!

And if you do somehow have one (or multiple) WHY TF DIDN’T YOU USE THAT BEFORE KNOWING FULL AND WELL YOU RAN THE RISK OF GODZILLA MERCING KONG’S ASS IF YOU TRAVELED VIA SHIP!?!?!?!

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Down the Hell Naw tunnel we go!

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“I think it’s romantic,”

I fucking love Millie Bobbie Brown’s character!! 🤣❤️🤣

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WHY IS THIS TEENAGER SMARTER THAN EVERYBODY OMG!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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“This is page one in the ‘Playing God’ handbook, right?”

I’ve decided I love this character! 🤣

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WHY YOU GETTING INSIDE THAT THING—Oh god! 😨 Why y’all got eggs!?!? This is like if Weyland-Yutani succeeded in getting Xenomorphs! 😬

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Oop! Locked in! THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T HIDE OUT IN MYSTERIOUS ROOMS!!!!

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Oh shit! Apex Cybernetics think they on that Wakanda shit now!

Also, why was that one Apex Cybernetics bitch bitching about how one of those HEAV crafts could power Vagas for a week if y’all clearly have a whole network or transportation using this tech!

And I never understood how tech companies kept that shit to world domination shit! Build a public transportation system with that shit! Boss man said he likes ideas that make him rich! Pretty sure that would do the trick!

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WINE BREAK!!!

Saving the rest of the last bottle for coking Gumbo, so gotta open up a new bottle

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Aw, Kong is so sick of this bullshit! 😂😭

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“It’s not working”

Bruh! Give it more that two seconds!

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HOW DARE Y’ALL USE KONG’S LOSS AGAINST HIM!!!! HOW DARE Y’ALL!!!

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HEAV go Brrrrrrr Shoooooooooooom!!!!

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LMAO!!! Monarch has their own brand of bottled water!?!?! Idk why that amuses me so much!

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This hallow earth portal thing is some Pacific Rim bullshit right here, lol!

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NYOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM

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Are we...are we really Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaur-ing this shit rn??? 😂😂😂

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“It’s beautiful,”

Of course it’s beautiful! No hoomins have touched it! Lol

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Y’ALL GOT FUCKIN DRAGONS IN THIS BITCH!?!?!?!!! 8D YO!!! SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!!!

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*marvels at the creature creation ideas*

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Kong’s first thought: *nom the dragon guts*

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THE ROCK HAND OMG IM GANNA CRY!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 It’s the same gesture the Precious Girl did OMG!!!!

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“We going in?”

“Yeah”

The BALLS on this child!

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“AAAAHH 😐”

*fear*

LMAO!!!!! I’M FUCKIN WHEEZING!!!

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“Sacrifice Pit”

OMG 🤣🤣🤣

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I KNEW IT!!!! MECHA-GODZILLA MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!! 8DDDDD

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YO PACIFIC RIM RAN SO MECHA-GODZILLA COULD FUCKIN SPRINT!!!!!!!!

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YO IT’S A GOOD THING I AIN’T SEEING THIS IN THEATERS BC I’D BE FLIPPING MY SHIT!!!!

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“Humanity, once again, will be the apex species,”

THERE it is!

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Why Mecha-Godzilla so skeeny?!? He need ta be thicc if he ganna take down REAL Godzilla!

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*Ryan Bergera conspiracy voice* Is this the real reason Kong was contained!? So this douche could snatch up Skull Crawlers without Kong intervention???

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OH SHIT!!! I think this thing is emitting alpha waves (or whatever we’re calling it) and THAT’s what set Godzilla off!!! He fought Ghidorah, heard this shit and went, “Nu-uh, bitch! NOT AGAIN!!!”

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Monarch dude: Yo, Godzilla’s headed to Hong Kong for some reason?

FUCKIN CALLED IT!!!

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This look like the door to fuckin General Grievous’s lair,da fuq?!? 🤣🤣🤣

 ——————————————

I got waaay too emotional over that handprint, y’all! 😭😭😭

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Y’all, the fucking art history major in me is fuckin screaming at this temple scene! The fact that some of these Kaiju not only had the urge and drive and capacity to build a fucking temple around this power source or some shit and create weapons like the axe that Kong just fucking Excalibured the shit out of that one skull crawler’s skull fucking implies the fact that there is intelligent civilization amongst these fucking Kaiju and all that shit! I want to know more about this shit! Take that you fucking racist-ass white historian motherfuckers!

(Note: I definitely needed to use talk to text for much of this bit, because there was no way I was going to be able to contain all my excitement in just typing, alone, lmao)

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BRUH!!! Why y’all exiting g the HEAV without no breathing apparatus or lead suits or nothing!?!?! In previous movies, y’all implied that these Kaiju lived in environments in which their environments were hella radioactive compared to our own!!!

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Kong is s the true heir to the iron throne, Lmao!

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FUCKING CALLED IT!!!! THEY HAD GHIDORA’S REMAINS IN THERE SOMEWHERE!!!!

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OH FUCK!!!! Y’ALL AINT JUST SENDING OUT ALPHA VIBES WITH YOUR MECHA-GODZILLA!!!! YOU SOMEHOW USING GHIDORA’S HIVE MIND OR TELEPATHY SHIT TO DO IT!?!?!?! AAAWWWWW SHEEEEEET!!! Y’ALL ARE BONED NOW!!!! FUCKIN BONEROWNED!!!!

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Godzilla! My bruh! My dude! You didn’t HAVE TO get up right where that bridge was!!! 😂😂 Ya douche bag!!!

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At the same time, tho, I can just hear him going, “Ah! FUCK! NOT AGAIN!!! Sunova bitch!! Motherfuckin!! STOP BUILDING sHIT SO DAMN HIGH!!! Goddammit!”

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You know, with all the Bright twinkly lights in Hong Kong, I can’t help but think of the sequel to the original Gojira movie ( that I can’t remember the title of ,rn) where he was fucking triggered by fucking lights. And I wonder if this little scene where he’s stomping all through Hong Kong is a tribute to that or whatever. But I’m probably overthinking it.

[Sober Edit: it was Godzilla Raids Again]

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*GASP* HOLY SIHIIIT!!! The axe is made out of Godzilla skute!?!?! GOLY BALLS THAT’S NOT ONLY COOL BUT CONTRIBUTES MORE TO THE FACT THAT THESE KAIJU (likely Kong’s species, in particular) WERE REALLY FUCKING INTELLIGENT AMD TJOUGHT, “Imma beat this muthafucka with their own spiky thing! Bc that’s what screws us over, so, why WOULD��nt it hurt them!?!” I need SO MUCH MORE of this Kaiju/Kong culture studied and shit! HOLY FUCK!!!

It even fucking glows!! Like ... they managed to fucking piece together that its glow was a fucking warning sign like Sting or some shit!!!! Holy fuck!!!!

Also, how does that work? How are the skutes still connected even after dismemberment???

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NO FUCKIN WAY WRE YOU—AAAAAAAAHHH!!! Excalibur that shit my boi!!!!

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I FUCKIN LOVE YHIS MOVIE HOLY SHIT!!!

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“ that’s Apex property now,”

Excuse me bitch! Are we really not gonna listen to the scientist who saying “hey we don’t understand the shit out of this fucking power! Maybe we should hold off on taking some fucking samples!”

Are we really just gonna ignore that shit???????

 ——————————————

Kong said: TRY ME BITCH!!!!

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Oh thank the GODS this Serizawa dude is taking precautions like his old man! Also, what is his relation to Ken Watanabe’s Serizawa!?!?!

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UH OH!! SOLDIER DUDES GETTIN ATE!!!

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OH SHIT!!! PILOT JUST GOT ATE!!! FUCKIN DRAGON BASEMENT UP IN THIS SHIT!!!

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BITCH YOU REALLY GON THROW A ROCK AT IT!!! FUCKIN NONSENSE OF THIS BITCH!!!

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LOVE AND FITE ME ENERGY IS STORED IN THE ATOMIC BREATH

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“Shoot him!”

WHY!!!???!! He literally had NO problem with you before then!!!

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Why does white man who don’t know anything about this vehicle suddenly know how to pilot this shit!???!?!!!!!

 ——————————————

Y’all love had SO MUCH wine!

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The FUCK this dude got a flip flop phone for!!!?!????!!!?

Da fuq!?!?! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 yeah that’s the most unrealistic part of this entire fucking movie! Not the fuckin Kaiju robots. Not the fucking hollow earth bullshit! The fucking flip phone! LMFAO!!!!

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“Maintenance! I’M MAINTENANCE!!! This bitch ain’t buying it”

That made me laugh WAY FUCKIN harder that it should have!!!!

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Y’all really ganna try to shoot at a kid!?! REALLY!?!?!??!

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GAWD, I’m so glad I impulse bought these oatmeal bites from Dominos! 🤤😋

[Sober Edit: I have no idea how my autocorrect managed to convert “Parmesan” to “oatmeal,” but okay! 😆😅]

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Kong be like, “Hey, bitch!!! You lookin’ for me!?!?”

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Find you a partner that bites your neck like Godzilla does! Lmao!

Sorry, I’ll be crawling back into my hell hole, now.

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EAT YOUR FOOKIN VEGETABLES GODZILLA!!!!!

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Did Godzilla just axe throw with his fuckin teefs!!!????!?!?!

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THIS IS THE FOOKIN MONSTER VS MONSTER FIGHTS IVE BEEN CRAVING SINCE KING OF THE MONSTERS HOLY SHIT!!!!

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“Really? Groupies, again?”

First of all, again!?! What happened last time???

Secondly, where tf are YOUR grpupies, asshole! No need to judge! Ya cunt!

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“There can only be one alpha,”

Really! You really gotta bring your toxic masculinity into a fuckin monster fight, my dude!?!

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Kong said, “Yeet! YEET SELF!!!”

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I am living for the feral fight scenes!!!!

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Kong’s expression , tho! 🤣🤣🤣

Like, “Can you ducking NOT, Godzilla?!? Can you, like, fucking chill??!!? Aight, fine! ASDASHKLSDJKLDZJL ADKLKDZDJ!!!!!!”

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Awwwww! Godzilla let Kong go, bc he knows what it’s like to be the last of his species! 🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭

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“This is how we [...] win!”

Oh, honey, you ‘bout to die! Lmao! 😂

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Oh god! I knew he was going to use the sign for “coward” at the most inappropriate time! Lmao! At least the Precious Girls is smart enough to know what Dumbass White Man means, lol

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Oh, thank god we do t see this dumbass in any sequels!

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Dammit, he escaped!

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This girl is too good!

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Did y’all really think you were ganna break into a semi-sentient Mecha-Godzilla by GUESSING ITS FUCKING PASSWORD!!?!?!?!!!!???? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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YEAH!!!! TEAM-UP COMING THROUGH!!!!!

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“I was hoping to die with adults, but that’s okay,”

🤣🤣🤣

——————————————

“I’VE GOT TO DIE WITB YOU AND SOBER!!?!?!”

GOD, I love this movie!!!!

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OOOOOOHHHH HOLY SHIT!!!!! 😱😱😱😱😱 He powering up the axe!!!!!

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YOOOOOO KONG WENT PREDATOR/YOUTJA ON MECHA-GODZILLA’s ASS!!!!

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Kong said, “I’m done, y’all! Imma take a nap!”

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“Dad. Uh...Bernie.”

I fucking love Bernie!!! 😂😂😂😂

——————————————

JIA NOOOO!!! Don’t go running between two disgruntled Kaiju bby!!

——————————————

Yo, why do monsters have less toxic masculinity than we do??? Lol!

——————————————

Yaaaaaay! Kong has a new home!!

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WELP!!! I fucking loved this movie, and I highly recommend it to everyone!!!

[loquaciousquark]

Hi! I think I remember you posting about "making" your own computer? I'm sorry to bother you with something like this, but was it difficult? Would you say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it? Thanks!

Heck yeah!!! Oh man!! Gosh guys can I talk to you about building computers and how EVERYONE willing to do some basic googling is almost certainly capable of this I promise?

Welcome to:

Okay okay okay so let me spin you a li’l yarn: I was in optometry school in 2010-2011ish and I had been living up to now on prebuilts, mostly laptops, but DA2 was recently out and gosh darn it I wanted something I could play a proper game on. A friend of mine had a 10yo daughter who wanted to build a computer herself, and he told me if I’d buy the parts, he’d walk both of us through how to do it (what really happened was the 10yo built my first computer and I watched and brought drinks, so–no, I wouldn’t say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it!).

The physical requirements are some basic manual dexterity & arm strength (you gotta be able to manipulate some tiny things and put some pressure on some connections) and you will most likely need to lift up to 15 pounds, although you can limit that if you go for smaller components. The ability to bend forward and twist and reach will also probably be necessary, although some careful planning can also likely mitigate that.

I think I have pictures of the actual build process somewhere, but regardless, it resulted in this bad boy that served me well for about nine years. I was shocked to see how easy it was to put together, honestly; if you can follow a Lego assembly book, you can put a computer together. With tools like PCPartPicker that have built-in compatibility checks to make sure all your pieces fit, it’s a piece of cake to put together a parts list that you can feel really good about. You just pick whether you want your motherboard to come with fancy lights or not (hint: rgb is unironically cool & i’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).

In the end, you’ll need a set of basic components. You’ll need:

A case to put all the pieces in

A motherboard, the circuit board of the computer that connects everything, basically the heart of the computer

A CPU, the brain of the computer that determines processing power, or basically how fast it can do math and direct traffic

a CPU cooling system, which can be either mechanical fans or liquid cooling, gotta keep that baby chill; may or may not come packaged with the CPU depending on what you get

A graphics card (aka GPU), the thing that makes video games look pretty (and what will probably be the single most expensive item in the build depending on how good you go)

RAM, a short-term memory processing component that comes in different amounts (4gb, 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, 64gb if you’re a madman) depending on how fast you need your short-term memory to work. Good RAM allows you to do things like open a bunch of Chrome tabs at once, run Photoshop at the same time you’re listening to youtube videos, or process the demand of loading up a host of enemies in Mass Effect. Most everyone these days can get by just fine with 16gb of RAM, which is what I have.

a hard drive (or the new, faster, more expensive version, a solid state drive) which functions as your long-term storage bins. This is where you save documents, images, and install your programs. These come in tons of sizes–the larger your files are, the more storage space you’ll want. I always put at least a terabyte of storage in my builds.

a power supply unit or PSU, which gives the electrical juice for everything to run

a monitor (the more hertz, the smoother the video will be - you’ll want either 60hz or 144hz depending on how much your number of frames-per-second matter to you)

a keyboard and mouse

speakers or headphones or both!

Optional addons:

RGB lighting for everything :O

an optical drive (aka something to put DVDs, Blurays, or other physical CD disks into)

fancy liquid cooling pipes

additional case fans; most cases come with adequate fans, but if you are using the computer in a room with poor ventilation or you find that certain components are running hot, you can install additional fans

coincidentally you can also get fans with RGB lighting too

cable extenders when you are going for a specific color scheme

So it can definitely all look overwhelming at first, but when you start to look at how everything is laid out, you’ll notice some trends. Look at these motherboards, for example.

These are just four random motherboards I pulled off Newegg, a commonly used computer parts purchasing site. Sure, the colors are a bit different, but the layout between them…is all basically the same! Here, I’ll draw it out.

In just about every modern motherboard you buy, this will be the rough layout. Everything else is window dressing–what kind of GPU you get, what kind of CPU you get, whether your RAM lights up cool colors or not. Your motherboard will ALWAYS include a map that has extensive descriptions of what each connection does.

Much, much, much more under the jump!

Most of these you won’t even need!

There are always some compatibility things to consider–as I mentioned, PCPartPicker can help you figure out a lot of these–but the biggest one to care about is the CPU. There are two major companies that make CPUs, AMD and Intel. They both have pros and cons on the chips they make, but right now, AMD makes a family of CPUs called Ryzen that both outperform and are cheaper than Intel’s current leading brands, the i7 and i9 lines. Intel was king of the hill for a long time, though, and their CPUs are still really good quality, so some people still go with them over the cheaper alternatives for now. (There are some reports of black screens with the new Ryzen lines, but as I’ve never owned one, I can’t personally speak to how common that is.)

Regardless, once you pick which family of CPUs you want to go with, AMD or Intel, you just have to pick an Intel-friendly or AMD-friendly motherboard. This is always specified in the description of the motherboard. I own the Asus z370 motherboard, so here’s what it says in the description for CPU:

Anyway, once you’ve picked all your parts and had everything shipped to you, it’s literally just a plug-n-play, step by step until everything’s plugged in. Your motherboard manual will also include recommended order of installations, too, and often how to install them.

It helps to remember that the manufacturers of all these parts understand that they are expensive, and they really DON’T want to make them hard to install! Broken or difficult pieces during installation means that the customer is upset, and upset customers ask for refunds and lose brand loyalty.

It also helps to understand that a lot of these connections are based on certain standards–I didn’t realize until I was rebuilding my current machine that these holes set for screws really do work with just about everything you get, as long as it’s the same generation, because motherboard manufactures WANT you to have the flexibility to go any attachment brand you like and still be able to use their board to mount them. 

So, you pick your case and open it up, and you put the motherboard down on top of all the little screw holes until they match, and then you screw all the screws down firmly.

Old rig, partially disassembled:

New, in approximately same state:

(One of the reasons I went with this larger white case than a smaller, slim case like my old one, is because this nicer case has what’s called “cable management;” that means there’s a built-in back area behind the motherboard where all my cables can be jammed without messing up the “aesthetic” of the glass window. My first build obviously did not have that, as seen in that first picture at the top of this post, so I had to just jam my cables wherever I could fit them so that the sides would close, haha.)

Anyway, you can see that the motherboard is just screwed in where it should be, and my CPU is already installed where it should be. I haven’t mounted the cooler for it yet because I needed to clean off the old thermal paste and install new thermal paste before doing so. My two sticks of RAM are also mounted in the top right in the motherboard’s recommended configuration & locations for two sticks (vs. one, vs. four).

Then, with the cooler in place, it looked like this:

So the cooler I have is liquid cooling in a closed system (the thick black tubes running right to left) which is attached to a fan that mounts in place of the white fan on the left from the previous picture. It was as simple as unscrewing the old fan and putting the new one in its place. I think I even used the same screws. The fan is powered by that thin cable running along the top of the case that plugs into a little socket on the motherboard labeled “CPU Fan.” It was as simple as just finding the right plug; it doesn’t even have directionality, just a three-pin socket, so it doesn’t even matter which way you plug.

Already it’s looking like a proper computer! And because this case has cable management, I took a picture of what it currently looked like from the backside.

This case is cool because it has a neat set of connectors mounted on the back of this little hideaway to connect the case fans. I could have run the white fan cables through to the front of the motherboard for them to get power/marching orders, but it was cleaner aesthetically to attach them here in the back. Nothing wrong with connecting them on the front, though–that’s what I did in my original build!

You also might have noticed I’ve mounted the PSU in that white case by now as well. It’s the large black and red box in the bottom corner, seen best from behind. The white case comes with what’s called a PSU shroud, which just means there’s a fancy white cover over it to keep the ~aesthetic~ when viewed from the front side.

The next step is to mount the graphics card!

There’s instructions in your manual as to exactly how these mount, but it really and truly is just removing the dust cover brackets where you need to, and then a delicate plug & play, pushing that big guy in until you hear the click! (Click good, snap bad. Haha. I’ve changed out these cards several dozen times and never broken one, though!)

You can also see the ugly red-tipped cables plugged into the GPU and the motherboard, both on the right side. These come from the Power Supply Unit (they are all permanently connected in most brands, and look basically like a squid’s tentacles–once you have your items mounted onto the motherboard, you just look for the connector from the PSU with the right number of pins and plug it in!)

This guy is the worst. He is fat and hard to maneuver and always requires SO MUCH FORCE to click into this delicate bendy board and your heart will ALWAYS be in your throat as your fingers shake from how hard you’re having to push to sink it, and it will ALWAYS eventually go in but you’ll hate every second of the doing. I hate you, 24-pin EATX. I hate you so much.)

The next thing I did was mount my optical drive (because yes, I still own one), my hard drive, and my solid state drive.

The hard drive and SSD both serve the same purpose (long-term data storage), but the SSD is much faster and uses newer technology. It’s also more expensive for the amount of storage you get, so I have a 256gb SSD that holds my operating system, my heavily-used programs like Firefox and Photoshop & Premiere, and one or two video games I play the most that I would like to load as fast as possible. This is the drive that can allow me to restart my whole system in less than five seconds.

The hard drive is 1.75 terabytes and holds everything else: fics, pictures, videos, music, other games, etc.They mount onto the racks with pre-drilled screws. The optical drive just slides into the socket snugly until it hits the back of the rack.

All of these use a standard connector called a SATA cable which runs between the back of the drive to a SATA socket on the motherboard. Most motherboards come with at LEAST six or seven of these connector slots, and some come with more. They look like this:

and are pretty universal. Any kind of extra storage or drive you want to add to your computer will probably connect with a SATA cable. I think my motherboard, my SSD & HD, and my case purchases all came with a pack of loose SATA cables of different lengths to be used for whatever I wanted.

The rack each drive is mounted to came installed with the case and pre-drilled with screw holes (and provided screws) for attaching either the HD or SSD in every slot. Because this case is all about aesthetic, it also comes with two vertical SSD mounts on the back of the case if you wanted to remove the right-side rack altogether, but as I mentioned, I have the optical drive, so I couldn’t go with that option.

So now we have all the major pieces mounted! The last set of connections are a collection of small fiddly pieces that all plug in roughly the same area and do things like light up the case’s LED, provide that startup beep, connect the USB sockets on the case’s front to power, etc. This is by far the section that takes me the longest because I guarantee I will ALWAYS plug at least two into the wrong socket and not have a beep, or my audio won’t work or something until I go back and reconnect them.

The next thing was to plug in my monitors and…see what happened when we hit the power button! (Monitor connections just plug directly into your graphics card in the back of the case.) And here’s what happened!

So it turned out when I was connecting my SSD (which has my OS on it), I was pushing on the little connector while sitting on the back side of the case. I thought I had the thing in the socket, but what I’d actually done was jam the connector just under the lip of the motherboard (that is, not connected to anything at all, just hanging in open space). Once I realized, though, it was an easy fix!

The last thing I wanted to do to complete the clean white look I wanted was to replace those UGHLY red PSU cables with what are called “cable extenders.” I bought some white ones on Amazon; because most PSUs’ cables are permanently attached at the box, you plug your cable extenders into the other end and then feed them through the case, so that’s the only portion visible. The ugly PSU cables are still there at the other end of the white cables, just hidden in the cable management area behind the motherboard.

I spent some time fixing up the cables to curve exactly how I wanted them to, then picked my LED RGB colors and closed up the open side with the glass wall. All that was left was to plug in my mouse/keyboard/speakers/headphones/mic/webcam, etc., and we were done!

Ta-daaaa!

The first build I did, the one in the blue & black case, took us about two days due to some unexpected problems. First, we were trying to salvage an old CPU from my HP prebuilt to save a little money. Unfortunately, they used basically no thermal paste to connect it to its fan, and when we were trying to get the fan off, it actually tore the CPU out of its socket and bent a bunch of its pins. I ended up going to Best Buy or something and getting a replacement off the shelf.

The other issue I had was that I foolishly didn’t back up my files, and lost a bunch of them in the rebuild (including my Hawke’s original run through the DA2 game :( :( :( ) Always back up your files before ever going in and messing with your case!

Over the years I replaced a bunch of components in it, which is why it lasted me so long, but the transfer into the new case only took me about three hours, and that was with a bunch of breaks throughout. I probably could have done it faster if I hadn’t wanted to savor it, haha. The cable management for the backless desk took a lot longer, though! (…and a LOT of zip ties.)

I do set my new build on a small glass stand (again, from Amazon) because Hamlet’s pretty sheddy and I wanted to keep airflow as good as possible. I’m limited on how many case fans I can install since I have the optical drive rack taking up a lot of space on the right, but I could install new fans on top if I wanted. My temperatures are great, though (I monitor with CoreTemp & GPUTemp, as well as my motherboard’s built-in temp monitoring software), so I don’t need to unless I decide I need more RGB.

Anything I might want to add, I run through PCPartPicker to make sure it’ll fit what I already have. For example, my parts list looks like this (full view and complete parts list available at this link): 

ANYWAY.

If you are patient, if you can fit small Lego-like pieces in labeled sockets, and you are a decent googler, you can build your own PC. It’s really, really hard to do serious damage to components nowadays, even if you plug something in wrong. There’s a bunch of resources, though, and I’d recommend the following places to start:

newegg.com - parts for sale, getcher parts here

pcpartpicker.com - put your list of components together, and it’ll flag any compatibility issues or known problems

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ - great starting point for new builders, tons of advice and how-to’s for every step of the process, and a decently responsive community to help troubleshoot any issues you might have

And I obviously love doing this kind of thing, so if there’s anything I can help with, I’m more than happy to try! Just let me know, and I hope this was helpful!

[ariluisi]

Hanakotoba (花言葉)

- Tsumugi Tsukioka × Yume Character

— the Japanese form of "language of flowers".

— Episode 1 starts after the cut.

— Not proofread. Therefore, I apologize for the typographical errors and wrong grammars.

Shion or Aster Tatarius in Japanese flower language, it means "remembrance" or "I won't forget". (Wikipedia)

The sun, the gentle breeze, and the cicadas along with the field of flowers. Tsumugi watched her with loving eyes as she took a closer look at the purple flowers.

"These flowers are so beautiful." She whispered sofly as she gazed at the purple flowers.

"Those are called Shion and in flower language they mean 'I won't forget." The male said as if he already knew that the women would ask.

"Then this flowers symbolizes my feelings and my memories of you." She looked at Tsumugi with a sweet and gentle smile.

"Of me?" Tsumugi asked confused.

"Yes, because I don't want to forget everthing about you and I won't let myself forget. You are the best thing that happened to me." She smiled with a lonely yet content smile.

The male felt his cheeks flush and looked away and muttered, "You're always so sly. But, I'm the same, I don't want to forget."

——————————

Tsumugi's eyes fluttered as he heard the sound of his alarm as well as the sound of his roomate getting ready. Ah, was he dreaming of something before he woke up? He can't remember but he feels warm and sense longingness.

"Oi Tsumugi, wake up. It's time for morning practice." Tasuku Takato, a member of Winter troupe in Mankai Company as well as Tsumugi's childhood friend, said as he noticed Tsumugi waking up.

"Good Morning, Taachan..." Tsumugi Tsukioka, the leader of Winter troupe greets Tasuku still half asleep.

"I already told you to stop calling me that. Anyway, I'm going ahead." Tasuku said and left Tsumugi alone to get ready.

As Tsumugi starts getting ready he bumps in his desk and a book fell off. He picked it up, placed it back to it's usual place but something fell without him noticing. It was a bookmark with Shion pressed flowers in it.

——————————

The day passed for Tsumugi, there is nothing unusual. The dorm is just as lively and noisy as usual, but somehow he feels lonely it was as if he's yearning and finding something that used to be there but not anymore. He can't find out what is it though, no matter how hard he tries to think and remember, he just can't. Some of the members notice the small change in Tsumugi's behavior, and some thought that it's just him being the acting idiot like he usually is.

"Good afternoon Tsukioka." A voice suprised Tsumugi as he stares at the Shion flowers that just bloomed in the dorms garden.

"Guy-san, good afternoon." The male greets the newly arrived male.

"Is there something wrong?" Guy ask the male as he too looked at the newly bloomed flowers.

"There is nothing wrong, I'm just thinking about something. I just can't figure it out though." Tsumugi answered honestly not wanting to make the other worry more.

"I don't know what it is but, we are here to listen. Takato is also worried." Guy said

"Sorry for making you all worry but I'm really fine. And thank you Guy-san." Tsumugi thanked Guy and they continue sitting comfortably in silence as the suns light disappears.

—At the same time in different location.

She once again hear the sounds of the cicadas, she looked outside the window and saw the moon is already out, providing light in the darkness of the night. She stood up and put her book down.

"The Shion are in bloom once more, so is the loneliness in my heart and yearns for your love." She whispered in the thin air.

She stared at the book she just putted down, eyes filled with loneliness and yearning. Oh how she wish to see him once more. She doesn't want to be in the way of his growth and resolve, so she stepped away. 3 years ago, they both ended their relationship and not once they have spoken in those years. And every once in a while, she stares up at the moon and remember the happy days they have. What a lovely memory, she just want to bask in those memories forever if she can. Even if years already went by, she still sounds like a young girl inlove whose lover left her alone and broken, but she knew she can't act amd feel like, because that's not what happened. They both went seperate ways in peace. Also, Tsumugi isn't the only one who made a resolve and chased his dreams, she have to work hard too.

"Ame, are you done packing your things?" A man knocked in her door.

"I'm almost finish. I'm just taking a small break, Dad." The man who she addressed as her father nodded and left her alone to pack, "Veludo Way, never thought that Dad will personally suggest we move there. But that's not really important now is it? I better finish this now or else Dad might leave me behind tomorrow." she said as she picked up the book from earlier and placed it inside one of the boxes.

Masterlist || Next Episode.

Author's Note:

The first episode of Hanakotoba (花言葉) Act 1 is here!! I actually found this quite hard to write maybe it's because I want the characters to stay as they are in their original set-up for a more realistic feels (in my opinion). And I also want this to be kind of a long chapter that reveals what it needs to show but still keeping the female lead, Ame , mysterious and the flow interesting. And I still have alot of twist and turns that will be soon revealed as the story goes on, and I hope that I can reach all of your expectations. As well as provide a story that isn't boring and exagerated in any way. Also, I will *try* to update every 2-3 days but sometimes it might take longer because I want to provide quality and keep things original. Thank you so much for reading!!

With much love, Al.

[ikevamp-annalyne]

Annalyne Sonata [IkeVamp OC]

Hey guys! I am so verry happy to finally being able to officially introduce my IkeVamp OC, Annalyne! ٩(●ᴗ●)۶

This is a very long post, but I hope you won’t be discouraged and will enjoy learning a bit more about her, and the story I imagined for her (^.^)ゞ

I also commissioned the MOST AMAZING ARTIST EVER @lemonsqueazie​ for drawing my baby OC! ღවꇳවღ She is my favourite artist, and also an amazing human being that I love very much. She is so attentive to what you tell her, always doing everything to meet your ideas and make the best art for you! I highly recommend to check out her blog @lemonsqueazie​ alongside her Instagram and her DeviantArt post about her commissions! You can also find all the infos here.

NOW, ON WITH THE OC! (๑ゝڡ◕๑)

Name: Annalyne

Last name: Sonata

Nicknames: Anna, Nana, Lyn

DOB: June, 19, 1995 (25 years old)

Origin: French

Languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean

Height: 160cm (5.25ft)

Sexuality: pan

Job: freelance fashion designer, blogger, gamer

Passions: fashion, drawing, eating, baking, cooking, videogames, reading, music

Phobias: larvas and maggots, bugs (except ladybugs)

Lover: Leonardo Da Vinci

"Heh? What is this? Kinda like a storage room?"

Annalyne is a very chill woman, taking things at her own pace and working hard towards her goals and dreams. When she doesn't work, she becomes a lazy slug chilling with a good book or videogames -part of why she is also a gamer-.

Her most prominent traits are definitely: her kindness, her humour -made of bad puns and references-, her caring side, her clumsiness and her supportive behaviour. Number one fan of her family and friends.

She will always go out of her way to make her loved ones feel loved, supported or just important. She can also easily throw hands if needed. No one messes with her or her close ones without getting punished.

She has a hard time trusting people. It looks like she is close to everyone, but she hardly confides in people. It takes a hecking long time to build a relationship of trust with her -due to some childhood traumas-

She is strong-willed and -way too- a tad stubborn. But she compensates by being very sweet and cute. She can be very anxious but eating calms her, explaining her chubbiness. Also, count on her for helping everyone.

She is very good at cooking and baking, and loves making things herself. She loves dogs, but honestly, she loves almost every animal ever. She has a talent with them, understanding them beyond reason: animals love her.

"Call me the PUNisher."

She is easily triggered by disrespect, racism, homophobia, bullying and abuse. She can kick your ass off if needed, being very rude and violent when angry -she already broke the arm of a racist, and slapped Shakespeare...-

Comte is the one engaging conversation with her, asking her if she likes this painting. She is hyper excited talking about it and Comte cannot help but giggle, finding a Da Vinci's fangirl in modern days being pretty rare.

How she met Comte:

Annalyne lives near Paris and absolutely loves museums. Therefore she spends a hella lot of time in the Louvre, especially contemplating Da Vinci's works. She meets Comte in front of Da Vinci's painting Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

They spend some time debating and chatting over Leonardo Da Vinci's life, works of art and other controversies. He smiles a lot throughout the whole chat, since he wonders how his old friend would react.

How she ends up in Comte's mansion:

Comte bids her goodbye after they have finally seen Mona Lisa from up close. She thanks him for the delightful conversation, happy she has met someone as knowledgeable as him on her favourite historical figure.

She is taken aback, quite surprised, and thinks the mansion is a storage room. Maybe the man is actually an employee? She is curious though so she walks through the hall and stares at everything in awe.

When he leaves, waving his hand, his pocket watch falls and Annalyne picks it up. She chases after Comte all over the museum and sees him going through a door. She opens it and ends up in the mansion's hall.

Who she meets:

While discovering the hall, she stumbles upon Leonardo who's asleep. She doesn't want to wake him up but God, she stares for a good minute at the sleeping man. "I have never seen such a gorgeous man..."

She walks past him and continues looking for Comte. But then, Napoleon appears and asks her who she is, and what she does here. She tells him she wants to find the gorgeous blonde man to give him his watch.

He offers to give to him in lieu of her. But she is wary of him, a stranger. And Comte appears, the noise having caught up his attention. He recognises Annalyne and is surprised she is there. She gives him the watch.

The first dinner:

Comte gladly accepts the watch and asks her if she wants to dine with him and the residents of this mansion. Mansion? She stares at him, dumbfounded, and frowns. "Mansion? Isn't that a storage room or something?"

Comte giggles and promises to explain it all over dinner. Her trust for Comte and her love for food makes her accepting the offer. How surprised she is upon seeing all these people gather around a huge table!

She sits down and gets served by Sebastian, under all the surprised looks. Comte then proceeds on explaining it all to her: how all the residents in there are famous historical figures, and how she is the past.

How she reacts:

She is surprised, but she believes in timelapse, magic, etc. So she just stares in surprise and shock but is soon overexcited to meet all these people who changed history and inspired her throughout her whole life.

She will ask a bunch of questions to each of them, questions she has always been curious about, like the rumours and alleged controversies. Even when she hears about not being able to go back in her time, she is strangely chill about it.

"Well, there's no helping it! I will come up with a lie when I go back there!" But she will write letters and leave them -along jewels of hers- in places she thinks her friends or family could find them in the future.

Meeting her soulmate:

Sebastian shows her her room and then tells her to explore the mansion if she wants to. What she does! She then remembers the man sleeping in the hall? He must be a historical figure as well, but who can he be...?

She wants to know so she goes to find him and stumbles upon him, nearly falling on top of him. He seems awake since he is sitting on the floor. He had heard her footsteps so he smiles at her. "Well, who do we got there, Cara Mia?"

She smiles at the Italian nickname and tells him everything about her being here. He is surprised she is so chill about it but he smiles and introduces himself. "Well Cara Mia, nice to meet you. I'm Leonardo Da Vinci."

Upon hearing the name, her eyes widen and her breath catches in her throat. She stares, her heart beating faster every passing second. His smile is intoxicating and she cannot help but blush and stutter.

"W-well, nice to meet you, Leonar- huh Sir Leonardo? How, how should I call you?" He laughs."Leonardo is enough, Cara Mia." He smiles and pats her head before standing up. "Watch yourself, Cara Mia."

Her reaction upon the vampiric reveal:

After having talked with Comte and decided to stay in his mansion, she actually wonders how he could resurrect them. She decides to ask Sebastian, her new colleague, and he just shows her the Rouge and Blanc bottles.

"What's that?" She asks, pretty curious."Take a look and you will understand." She first goes for the Rouge and recognises the metallic smell of blood. She stares at Sebastian. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"They are all vampires. Except I, who is human." She widens her eyes, sueprised, and then goes "Aaaaah, that's how he did! Makes sense!" She smiles. "Is Comte the one who transformed them all or no?" "He did, yes."

"So, is he like, a pureblood vampire? A superior vampire who can turn humans into vampires?" "How do you know about this?" "Oh please, Sebastian. Cinema, animes, mangas and books are full of vampires."

Sebastian stares at her, bewildered. "And you are not afraid? They could easily feed off of you, even kill you." "Oh please Sebastian, they're more like puppies than wolves! If they were capable of this, you wouldn't be here!"

"Plus," she says while flashing a big dumb grin. "If they wanted to eat me, they would have already bitten me and emptied me of all my blood. They are not dangerous." Sebastian is shocked at how chill she is.

Her relationships with the residents:

She gets close to every resident ofthe mansion pretty fast, especially since she is not pushy, funny, kind, calm and knowledgeable on a lot of matters. They all grow a soft spot for her, even shyer and harsher residents.

Napoleon: they bond over cooking and baking. Also, since she is French, she can tell him about the impact he had on her country.

Mozart: music is common ground for them. She knows a lot about him and will sing for him, being allowed in the music room.

Arthur: writing sessions together, in his room or hers. They tease each other a lot and she is quick to react to his flirting.

Vincent: they are very close, bonding over drawing and painting. They talk a lot about art and have art sessions.

Theodorus: she doesn't let him win with his harsh replies and he likes that. She is strong and adores Vincent: he likes her a lot.

Isaac: she isn't pushy and gives him room so he likes talking with or teaching her a few things. They often meet in his room.

Jean: he likes how pure she is but she doesn't let him avoid her. She will do anything to befriend him and he gives in.

Dazai: sharing writing ideas brings them closer. They also laugh a lot because they are both airheads amd chaotic walking memes.

William: she likes his work but hates him. She will always avoid him, or shoot sharp daggers glares at him.

Comte: the father figure. She loves going to him to talk or when she needs some calm, and having tea together.

Sebastian: always laughing and teasing each other. She will flick his forehead when he assumes things for her.

Her relationship with her soulmate:

She is a Da Vinci's fangirl so of course, she is a mess around him. At first, she just blushes a lot, stutters a bit around him and she fangirls when he is not around. "Omg I can't believe I witnessed him sketching!!!"

They bond very easily since they both love arts. And Leonardo is very curious about her fashion style, her job, and basically how the world works in modern days -she spent an entire night talking about phones-

One day, he finds her sighing in her room: "what's the problem?". "Ah, nothing, I'm just, not comfortable in Comte's dresses. I'm more into trousers or skirts from my time." He is curious so she tells him about modern day fashion.

"Ah, so women wear pants and shirts. Whatever they want." She nods excitiedly."Yeah, and I hope one day men will be able to do so as well! Wear skirts and dresses and heels. But toxic masculinity is still pretty deep..."

"Wait for me, Cara Mia" and he dashes off the room, to come back later with a stack of shirts and trousers. "Here, take these. They're mine but for now, it will do. Tomorrow, we're going shopping for you."

And they do go shopping the next day, buying loads of men clothes alongside jewels and shoes. Also, they buy fabrics, needles and everything for Annalyne to sew her own clothes. He loves seeing her so happy.

She spends the next days adjusting Leonardo's clothes and the ones they bought to her chubby curves. And Leonardo surprises her by wearing a dress. They go have dinner like this: her in men's clothes, him in women's clothes.

Legend says every resident nearly choked themselves of either shock or laughter. And Leonardo and Annalyne really enjoyed it a lot and decided to do this at least once a week -Leo enjoyed the dress, actually-

The purebloodness revelation:

She catches very early on that he is a pureblood, without him even telling her. She is extra sensitive so she kinda feels auras and saw how Comte and Leonardo's eyes are similar. His genius made even more sense.

"Leonardo. Are you like Comte, a pureblood vampire?" She asked him while they were shopping for fabrics. Leonardo nearly fell out of surprise. "What are you talking about, Cara Mia?" "Well, you know..."

"Same eyes as Comte, genius who can do anything, super strong and intimidating aura. Open-minded as if you've already seen everything, and laziness that can be explained by already having done everything possible..."

He stares at her and then laughs, patting and ruffling her hair. "You're awfully clever and intuitive, Cara Mia. Yes, I am a pureblood. Does it change anything between us? "HELL NO!" she shouts. "But I've got questions!!!"

She drowns him under questions on everything he's done, seen, lived. They spend almost all of their time together, teaching each other about their lives and their knowledge. Residents are jealous of the Leonardo monopoly.

How it "ends" between them:

She is a strong woman and will go back to her time. But she promises Leonardo she will find him, right after returning to her time. He asks her what day it was, when she entered the mansion. "March, 15th, 2020."

When she leaves, while everyone is crying, Leonardo calculates. "Okay, gone for a month in her time, so she'll be in the Louvre in April, 15th, 2020. Ah. My birthday." He smiles. Almost 200 years, but it will be so worth it.

When she passes through the door, she is back in her time. Asking a guide what day it is. "April, 15th, 2020". The day they agreed upon, and Leonardo's birthday. She smiles and then proceeds to rush out of the Louvre to look for him.

But then she passes in front of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Her favourite painting. A tall and gorgeous man is standing there, in a blue shirt and blue jeans. She feels it. She goes to the man, pats him on the shoulder, and asks: "Leonardo...?"

The man turns around, a huge grin on his face, bright golden eyes shining with love: "Was about time, Cara Mia..." she cries and throws herself at his neck; he spins her, crying as well, burrying his face in her neck.

"I missed you so much. Never do this again. 200 years was worth it but it was too long." She is a mess while crying. "I, I pwomiss Leo, I will neba leaf you again-" he laughs at her messy face. "Look at you, silly girl." He kisses her.

"I want you to see how much I love you in my eyes. They speak on my behalf."

Trivia facts:

She has a tiny water spray bottle she labelled as "Holy Water". Whenever a resident smiles or laughs, she opens it and "collects" their happiness. Thus, when one is talking shit about himself, she sprays the water on them.

"There, you have been blessed with Holy Water. Now love yourself or I agressively hug you." -the mistake on the label,on "thoughts" is intended, as it is is a mix between thots and thoughts, bitch thoughts she's gonna spray away.

She hates Shakespeare, Faust and Vlad. Whenever they pass by the mansion, she grabs the garden hose she labelled "Garden Hoes" and splashes water on them. "Oh no, you walking sin, stay away from my babies!"

She eats A LOT and puts shame on Theo when it comes to eating sweet things. They have pancake-eating competitions -and guess what, she wins-. She will be snacking 24/7 when nervous, anxious, sad and basically under negative emotions.

She listens to every type of music. She really enjoys any kind of rock music, and is also very knowledgeable on classical music. She likes to dance on Kpop and sing on Disney songs: her favourites are definitely I’ll Make A Man Out Of You and Why Should I Worry -in French-

She used to practice martial arts so she can beat the crap out of anyone being a little sh*t with her or her loved ones. She also has a very scary aura when furious, leading to most people just running away from her wrath.

She loves gossiping with Arthur. Whenever she knows about some rumours, or when she needs to talk about something that upset her, she goes to his room with coffee or tea. They both irradiate chaotic gossiping energy when together.

She is the mom friend, and becomes the mom of the mansion. She already told Jean to “get his bottoms in the living room to eat with all of them”, else she was going to kick his butt so hard he would be unable to sit or practice fencing.

All the animals LOVE her. Chérie is missing? She is cuddling with her in the patio. Lumiere is not under the bed? He is sleeping on her laps while she reads. King is nowhere to be found? She is playing with him in the garden. Snow White vibe.

She loves flowers and will put some all over the mansion. She puts one every day in front of every resident’s door, with a message written on a tiny piece of paper, something like: “You are a sweetheart and you deserve the best, keep going, dearie!”

[themadauthorshatter]

I should probably back-track to Ninjago Season 1.

I've been excited for the rewrite of Episode 7😈

For context, in Episode 4, we'd see Zane's "green ninja" dream, which Wu would ask he share. He does fully; he half truths it to the others, exceot Cole, who gets pushy. Like I said in Episode 5's rewrite, he collapsed and heard the falcons shouting his name.

This is also the episode, hopefully, where Zane talks the most. And there's a lot of glaciershipping in this one.

We start in the dead of night, as a pan over the ninja shows they are all sleeping peacefully. All except for Zane, who we see close up tossing and turning as he writhes and groans in a cold sweat, possibly having a seizure and a nightmare.

In this nightmare, Zane sprints through a wooded area as hands and snake tails reach out to grab him. He's tired, sweaty, and really doesn't want to be grabbed because he doesn't want to know what could be waiting to pull him to his doom.

Thankfully, he breaks through the foliage and lands infront of a pair of a certain black clad six year old.

"Lloyd?" He asks as he stands. "Lloyd, thank goodness. Sensei has been worried sick. Quickly, we must-"

"Why, Zane?"

It rattles Zane to his core that a girl's voice comes oit of Lloyd's mouth, but not enough to pull him close as dark figures approach and surround them.

Zane pulls Lloyd close and unsheathes his shurikens to defend the two of them.

It gets worse when Zane can't move because the figures are armed men, not serpentine.

Lloyd asks him, 'Why?' again, and this time Zane backs away because half of Lloyd's face looks sunken in while the other looks fine enough considering how he's crying and coughing up blood, as in his tears are also blood.

He loses his shurikens and, in his panic to gind them in black colored snow, gets a muzzle to the cranium and a boot to the stomach.

"The hell's your problem!?" He gets another kick, this time to the face. "First you ask for a fight, and now you can't even make it a good one!?" Zane groans as the soldier stomps on his ear. "You little coward! You worthless, spineless bastard!"

As he tries blicking all the hits as more soldiers join in, Zane hears numerous people screaming his name, begging the soldiers to stop. He sees the messed version of Lloyd try to reach him, even though he's being held back by a smirking Pythor.

He cries for it all to stop, the screaming, the kicks and punches, and the pain he's in, quiet at first, but soon shouting as loudly as he can.

"STOP IT!" Zane screams as he shoots off his back and readies a kunai under his pillow; all you need to know is that Kai and Jay tried pulling a prank, and it went TERRIBLY wrong, and he feels safer, despite being among friends.

Regardless, Zane pants as he looks around and sees that the others are sleeping soundly, even though there's some movement from Cole's bed, like he just got back into it. (Hmmmmm?)

He calms down and holds a hand against his very sweaty forehead, very much shaken and stirred by his nightmare as he groans and rest his head against his knees. "Damn. Why?"

Hope you noticed that detail of Cole moving because we cut to his perspective as he lies on his side and pretends to be asleep. He's really just keeping his eyes on the wall as he listens for any more distress from Zane, who cautiously leaves his own bed and the bunk rooms entirely.

After a minute, Cole quickly gets up and follows him. He doesn't bother trying to be quiet because Kai and Jay can sleep through anything.

It's night and the moon is out, which gives the perfect lighting for Cole to look for Zane on the deck, where he is not.

He looks up and finds him on the mast, more specifically the part that actually holds the sails.

With Zane, he's sitting and switching between staring at the sky and staring at the kunai knife from his pillow, turning it in his hand and sort of inspecting it, not noticing Cole climb up to meet him.

"You know, you're pretty hard to wake up, especially when you're having those seizures."

Zane bites back a retort as Cole joins his side, egging him on to express himself.

"For the leader of the tean, you are terribly disciplined."

Cole takes the jab, and asks what he dreamed of, seeing as how shaken up Zane is.

Zane shrugs it off and simply half-lies that he's worried about Lloyd, hoping that he's okay. Cole agrees and asks for Zane to try and go back to bed, because it's late.

As Cole goes back to bed, Zane stares back up at the sky, seeing a very vague shape of the falcon fly above.

Cut to the serpentine, who walk to an underground cavern with Lloyd, who's in a cage and really doesn't want to be here.

Like before, Pythor needs the general's staffs to reaveal the silver fang blades on a map.

They set it down on a "table" with the staffs just strewn around it like before, and they all sit and play the waiting game.

Yeah, short jump cut, but the serpentine play a minor role here.

Back with the ninja, Zane is under water because he dropped a training shuriken and just stayed under because he's still stressed about the nightmare.

He stays under for almost an hour and a half before resurfacing.

They ask if he's okay, and Cole covers for him that they might be reaching their full potential.

We get the 'full potential' talk with Wu and the origin of how Garmadon became evil, though the only thing I'm changing in the origin story is that we'd get a flashback of Wu and Garmadon talking, where Garmadon attacks Wu and screams in his face that it's his fault Garmadon's on pain and sick from the snake venom. Their father pulls them apart and Wu runs, terrified as Garmadon shouts that he's weak, a coward, and should be the one who got bit.

Wu leaves and, TV perspective, we get a pan shot of the ninja seeing him off, though we focus on Zane, who's still contemplating the whole "break through your inner limits to reach your full potential" and wonders what's holding him back, considering all he knows about himself. We fade to the ninja enacting their greatest plan yet: using fliers to get info or locations on the fang blades; they already searched a library and archives and found nothing.

Zane's zoning out until Jay shakes him out of it. "Hey! Keep up, man! We need to put up as many of these as possible."

Now it's Kai's turn to ask what's wrong, citing how Zane woke up screaming, was distant all morning and is a lot quieter than usual, even refusing to be carried on Cole's back.

Before he can respond, Zane spots a little girl being picked on by two other kids, a boy and another girl. Good thing her older brother saves her and scares them off.

Rather than a seizure, it gives him a very bad headache, one that makes him fall to the ground and drop the fliers, much to the annoyance of some passersby.

Cole holds him as Kai and Jay pick up, though they aren't focused on their task for long as the spot the falcon.

Nya, who's totally been hear the whole time, takes up putting up the fliers as the ninja go after it, first by foot, with Zane on Cole's back where he belings, before switching to their vehicles, where Zane must ride with Kai as he has another headache, though the death metal grunge trash Kai listens to does absolutely nothing except piss him off.

When they're back on their feet, the sky's getting darker as dusk approaches and Jay falls behind because he may be fast, but he can't run forever.

Kai, Cole, and Zane continue, until Kai falls behind, then followed by Cole, who we stay with as Zane races onward. He calls for Zane to stop as he catches his breath, finds the 'Beware of treehorns' sign, and wonders to himself how Zane can run forever like that.

Speaking of Zane, he sprints after the falcon, demanding where it's taking him.

It continues to fly until it falls, panting as it instead hops onward.

Zane stops running and, getting uncomfortable, goes for and turns on a small flashlight in his pocket.

Turns out that stupid bird led him to a graveyard, which he learns by seeing numerous tombstones in the light.

"I apologize for breathing on all of you."

The falcon chirps, and Zane follows, finding it on top of a tombstone that is next to many other tombstones, all the first names different, but the last names the same. A family. The falcon pecks on the one it's perched on and Zane reads it.

'Zane Silver. Beloved son, and a brave fighter. May he rest in peace.'

The falcon walks away from the grave and leads Zane to a large tree...

Where a cougar-robot hybrid thing leaps out in front of him, growling and hissing at him

Zane fights it, even though it beats him senseless, and prevails.

Good thing, too, because the falcon pecks at the tree, which Zane opens to find the 'lab' from before, except it's bigger and the lights turn on when he steps inside.

The falcon makes a rough landing on a desk, amd Zane follows in half-wonder, asking why it brought him to here and the graveyard.

He gets his answer when he examines the papers and journal on the desk. TV perspective, we don't see what he's reading, but he removes his hood and shows confusion before that melts away into utter fear and despair, shaking his head and muttering, "No," over and over again as he searches them all over again in a crazy jump cut montage that shows his face, controted with pain and even more Danganronpa style despair, his hands practically tearing through the papers and journal pages, and flashes of his dreams and images of people he doesn't remember meeting(yet).

Unable to take the pain, Zane throws the journal, shouts, "NO!" and collapses as he hears the screaming from his nightmare, and even the sound of people just saying things to him.

We don't see the images, but we hear the voices, which stop as Zane, clutching his head as he screams at the very top of his lunges.

CUT TO THE SERPENTINE!!! That piece of paper has done nothing and they're all sitting and being bored. Maybe we can have a gag of a Constricti and a Hypnobri playing poker as Lloyd watches, just for shits and giggles.

Pythor, however, isn't in the mood for that, and growls that something MUST be missing.

Hope you remembered that drawing of either Garmadon or a shaded figure drawing blood on a map, because Skales wonders if blood mixed with the Great Devourer's venom will help, seeing as how Garmadon was bitten by the thing.

He and Pythor turn to Lloyd, who panics as they approach him. The Hypnobri, however, grabs him arm and holds his hand out to the two of them, and Pythor shushes Lloyd as he rubs his head.

We see the serpentine all brace themselves for what's going to happen next, but breathe a sigh of relief when Pythor simply pricks Lloyd's finger and takes a small amount of it and returns to the table.

He drips it on the paper and, through the power of some magic BS I can't explain, it makes a map of ninjago, but no location of the fang blades.

So they're back to watching and waiting, except Lloyd, who's seriously planning on how he can escape.

BACK WITH THE NINJA!

They find the tree lab and see Zane lying on the ground on his side with the falcon trying to get under his hand, so it can get pets.

Cole rushes to his side and shoos the bird away before pulling Zane into a sitting position to see if he's hurt.

He's fine, but his eyes are red and puffy, his hair is messier than Kai's, and his cheeks are heavily tear stained.

Kai and Jay catch up and they ask if he's okay, what happened, how did he end up like this, etc.

He just shoves past all of them and sprints out of the tree lab, journal in hand, which prompts them to follow, the falcon on Cole's shoulder and pretending to fly because it's exhausted from flying for real.

"Can't the guy just WALK for once!?" Kai shouts, "We've already done enough running!"

Fade to them walking through the trees, with Kai lighting the way with his sword, as they reach the cemetery and Zane.

He's kneeling and holding on to his tombstone as he shakily weeps. They're all at a loss of words for seeing him like this.

Cole approaches and puts a hand on his shoulder, asking him what's going on with him.

Zane sighs and takes a breath before standing and moving away from the tombstone, so the others can see it.

Without looking at them, he takes a scalpel that was in the journal, which he tosses to them, and unties his gi so his torso is showing.

GORE TW, even though it's not that explicitly shown in TV perspective, Zane carves lines into his body, a straight line that goes between his pelvic bones, a straight line going up from that line, his stomach, and stopping at his heart, and to diagonal lines that meet at the vertical line, making a Y shape.

The ninja are horrified, especially at the fact he didn't even react.

Zane meets their eyes, sad and very emotionally drained, and pulls his skin back to reveal a bunch of mechanisms and gizmos inside his body, especially the core I talked about in his character touch-up post.

They all scream, and this is what follows:

"Y-You...," Kai stammers. "Zane, you're-"

"You're a ROBOT!?" Jay shouts.

Zane sighs and shakes his head. "No, Jay. I... I am not a robot."

Kai babbles on about nonsense in the background with his hands in his hair as Jay pales and Cole only slowly shakes his head.

"You're... No. You can't be. How!?"

"I do not know," Zane admits as he holds his head in his hands. "I just learned myself, and... I don't know."

Kai calms down and states, "Hey, we just learned this, too, so maybe we can figure it out together. I mean, you have all the time in the world now, so..."

"A-and it probably explains why you didn't get jokes before, right?" Jay offers.

Cole glares at them both, but Zane continues.

"Didn't get jokes before. How could I when I did not even remember?"

Zane turns to the other graves and drops back onto his hands and knees.

"Wait," Kai murmurs. "'Remember?'"

"Yes. I believe I am starting to remember, but I do not yet know everything. Someone killed me and I had been brought back to life. That lab was where I... resided for many years."

"Why'd you leave?" Cole asks as he kneels next to Zane.

Zane only clenches his fist on the ground. "I... don't remember."

"Didn't you just say-"

"Kai, didn't I just say I do not yet know everything?" Zane snaps, effectively shutting him up before continuing. "I remember asking someone to make me forget, but... what was so awful that I had to force myself and my mind into hiding?"

He breaks down again, but this time, Cole puts an arm on his shoulder.

The ninja comfort him and tell him he's still Zane, even with the elephant in the room of him being not exactly alive.

They try motivating him to fighting again, but he tells them he'll catch up, because he needs a serious minute to think about what he just learned; he has been dead for a WHILE now.

The ninja leave him, but are then swarmed by treehorns, though it's a harder fight because it's night out. Yeah, that cougar-ribot thing was meant to keep them away.

Zane hears rhem and races to help, but he too get his ass handed to him as his powers are stunted from learning the truth. He ebds uo getting thrown into the tree lab, where he tumbles down the steps and breaks his fall on the desk before hitting the ground. (As Cinemawins would say: Brutal).

We cut back to the fight, and see the ninja do well enough until they don't. Cole, especially, who frantically shouts for Zane, having not seen him step in earlier.

Good thing I bring up Zane, because he comes to and finds the falcon in front of him. He sits up and asks what it's teying to tell him and why, seeing as how he knows the truth.

Silly Zane. Knowing is not understanding.

The falcon gives him the journal and flips to the very first page, which Zane begrudgingly reads.

We get a voice over from the writer as he talks about how, as a 'taboo' scientist, he's had to choose serving the army over being executed, how the village he's stationed in really maked him want to continue his research, and how he met a boy that's really caught his attention, one with quite a large family, a mother, father, grandfather, uncle, 3 cousins, and 5 siblings, where the boy was the second oldest-having learned from having dinner with them after a mishap in the street.

Zane has another headache and sees flashes of this family, and the man who wrote the journal, who, as a slight gag, sits very uncomfortably between two arguing twins before they ask this secind eldest to take a side.

He reads on and remembers more, seeing more of his family, that he did indeed die, get resurrected, and lived until the doctor-soldier died of old age and left Zane alone.

The mechanisms and circuits meant to keep these memories away give, and Zane weeps at all of this new found knowledge, even the fact that HE HIMSELF asked to forget his family.

That word catches him: Family.

He may have had his adopted family, who are all dead, but then there's his new family. Sensei Wu, Cole, Jay, Nya, Kai, and Lloyd. People he's laughed with, semi-cried with, trained with, fought with, people he genuinely doesn't like, but people he really loves with every ounce and fiber of his being.

The falcon watches Zane collect himself and examine the core and mechanisms in his body, remembering the doctor, his father, tell him it will keep him alive, and that it, ironically, makes him more human because his heart is literally bigger than his brain, amd humans are usually more emotional than logical.

With a rush of vigor, Zane seals up his torso with some skin glue, ties his gi back up, and races back outside.

Thank goodness because Cole is being thrown like a rag doll, Kai's exhausted, and Jay's about to become fast food, which Zane prevents by dive-tackling him and tossing him a few yards away, making some snow for him to land in, which surprises them both.

Zane ignores it for now and saves Kai and Cole, the latter almost hugging him before Zane shouts that they need to focus.

They regroup, amd we get an Avengers spin around them, because it's cool, and they leap back into it, Zane lending a huge hand as he uses his ice powers to help them, given their injuries.

As they continue fighting, Zane can't help but notice he feels extremely light on his feet, like a weight's off his shoulders.

They fight off a majority of the treehorns before the queen struts her way in, and Zane is more than happy to oblige her a challenge.

The ninja tell him they can ALL take her, but, TV perspective with Zane's back to the camera, the white ninja states, more serious than he's ever been in his life, "I lost my family once to a power hungry monster. I refuse to let it happen again."

The snow on the ground circles Zane and he glows brightly as the queen of the nest snaps at him.

He levitates and holds a hand out, shooting ice at her at freezing her into a treehorn-cicle.

The other treehorns back off as Zane floats back to the ground.

His powers cease and Zane sighs as he falls back onto his rear, panting as the ninja join him and tell him how awesome that all was, Cole especially so as he asks how Zane did all that.

Zane admits he doesn't know, but reveals he now remembers EVERYTHING, his life from before he died, that he died trying to keep them and others safe, that he'd been brought back and 'raised' by his father, who erased his memory for him before dying himself, and how Wu RE-FOUND Zane and let him join the team. He remembers playing with his siblings, and annoying his older sibling, remembers helping his father-the doctor- with his research and how they even played chess. He remembers that dying SERIOUSLY hurt and was killed for trying to save an old man who was getting hurt. He remembers having his mind physically altered so he wouldn't remember, and that the seizures were due to his mind literally fighting itself.

For those in back, HE REMEMBERS EVERYTHING.

The ninja are all silent upon hearing this and, knowing he'd been the first to ask, Kai apologizes for everything Zane's been through, especially with the seizures.

Zane shakes his head, admitting with tears in his eyes he's too glad for words he remembers. He now knows that he wants to keep others safe, even the team, and hopes he can still help in stopping Pythor.

He's still in, and the group decide to camp out at the tree lab for the night before heading back, though as they settle in, Zane is about to drift off before he feels his old bed creak and someone hold him close with their arms around his shoulders.

It's Cole, though the falcon hops its way to Zane and falls asleep next to him, glad to have him back.

Back with the serpentine, they've all had it, tired of waiting and having their time wasted before they discover the venom in the staffs and use it ro reveal the fang blades' locations.

The episode ends with Pythor holding the map up in victory and Lloyd staring at the map in fear of what's to come

[wallypollyanna]

I am so sorry this is late, but here is my g/t gift for @xxpeach-bobaxx ! Based around "Fred Astaire" by jukebox tje ghost, with royalty, and tiny! Roman! @secret-sanders-sized

-

"It seems like I can do no wrong

Through your eyes

Sing the wrong lines to my own song

You don't mind

Make it up as we go

All the words we don't know"

"It's pretty ironic" Patton started to think, as he waited backstage. Tonight was the night, his first big performance as a dancer.

That wasnt what was ironic, though.

What was ironic, is the fact that it is him, the clumsy one, the one who had two left feet, was gonna go up and dance. The fact that it was him,instead of his talented, confident boyfriend, who could easily command the crowd and entertain all.

The biggest difference between them, however, wasn't Patton's clumsyness and Romans deliberate steps.

No, it was that Patton stands at a normal 5'7, while Roman stands at a whooping 4 inches.

-

"Even When I'm a drunken mess

You don't care

Still like me better than the rest

I swear

I don't understand it

How you like me when I'm dancing"

-

Patton never intended to ever let Roman see him dance. It was something he had taken a lot of interest into when he was a kid, but could never get the hang of. He knew he looked like a fool when he did, and didn't want to embarrass himself in front of his preformer boyfriend.

That all changed one night, when he and Roman hosted their friend group over.

Patton was sitting on the couch with Roman on his shoulder, and Virgil and Logan next to them. Remus and Dee, who were both about the same size as Roman, we're on the couch cusion beside them.

It was a casual enough gathering with everyone talking about their weeks and making jokes. Later in the night, drinks were brought out.

Which was Patton's first mistake.

He knew he was a light weight, and it would take very little to get him drunk, so he was originally opposed to the idea. All it took, though, was some goodeing from Remus to get him to drink some.

Which would have been fine, if it weren't for the fact that Patton lost all sense when drunk.

Music was put on, and Virgil, who had known Patton since childhood, couldn't help but groan when he saw the look in Patton's eyes.

"Pat, please don't. Please sit down, your gonna regret it if you don't." He said, trying to pursae him into sitting back down.

Roman, who had no idea what Patton was up to, was curious. "No no, Mr doom and gloom, let him do whatever he's wanting to"

Patton the stuck his tongue out, and did something a sober Patton would never.

Began to dance.

If you asked a sober Patton, he would even be hesitant to call it dancing. It was more him swinging himself around, and jumping from foot to foot.

But to the others, it was hilarious.

"Woah, get it Pat!", Remus yelled, clapping along to the music's beat. Virgil groaned amd covered his eyes, while Dee and Logan chuckled at him. Roman could help but giggle at his boyfriend, realizing that this was both the first time he had seen him dance, and b that he wasn't even that bad, despite being completely drunk. He then decided to make it his goal, to get Patton to dance.

-

"Those eyes, damn, those eyes

They get me every time

Those eyes, in those eyes

I can do no crime

When dance like I don't care

You call me Fred Astaire"

-

After that night, Roman was determined to get Patton to dance again.

"Ro, it's really not that big a deal. I used to be into when I was younger, that's why I know a little bit. I never got very good, so I don't really see why you want to see me dance, I'm not nearly as light on my feet as you."

"Patton, that's nonsense! You were having so much fun dancing, and I'd love to teach you! Just imagine. You, the cheering crowd, me, getting to watch my beautiful boyfriend up there, wooing all of us! Wouldn't that just be the most amazing thing, love?" While saying this, he ran danced around on their table, emnphosizimg the parts he found important.

"Well, mean that does sound like it would be fun" he said, putting his head and arms on the table, resting on said arms.

Roman walked over to him, and hugged his head as much as he could. "That's because it would!"

"Ok, ok. You got me, I'll do it" Patton said, loosly wrapping his finger around Roman for a hug. Roman sqeuled out happily, and hugged him tighter.

-

"All my idiosyncrasies

You like 'em

Annoyed at all the little things

I know I can be frustrating

But you still like me when I'm dancing"

-

It didn't go nearly as easy as Roman had hoped. Sure, he himself was an incredible dancer, but Patton could only see so much of what he did.

"You see, you put your right foot in front and your left, lift up like so, and move forward!" Roman said, demonstrating what he wanted Patton to do.

"Roman, love, i can barely see you legs from up here." He joked.

Well,sort of. He really couldn't see Roman all the well from where he was standing, and Roman was moving so that also wasn't helping.

"How about instead" Ran said, inching his way to the remote "I play some music, and you dance to it, then I tell you what was good and what was bad."

Patton thought about the proposal.

" Promise not to laugh?" Roman nodded, and put on some music.

When it started, and Patton didn't do anything, Roman knew it was time to bring in the big guns.

"Do you want me to turn around until your comfortable?" He asked.

nodnodnod

He turned around, amd listened closely to the sound of Patton's dance.

He was taking a lot of steps, from what Roman could hear. He could as hear the sound of Patton's charms clinkng as he moved, so he took that as a good sign.

"Can i look now?" He asked, turning around with his eyes covered.

"Yeah, go ahead." Patton said.

When Roman opened his eyes, he saw Patton dancing much like he had when he was drink,but much more controlled. Once again, Roman was surprised by the mostly deliberate way of his movements.

"See!" He said "Your doing fine! All I'm really gonna do is help you adjust more into your own style, and learn some new moves!"

-

"Those eyes, damn, those eyes

They get me every time

Those eyes, in those eyes

I can do no crime

When dance like I don't care

You call me Fred Astaire"

-

"What?? Why can't you join? Patton questioned, confused by Romans words.

"They said that apparently I'm "too small to be seen", and that "If we wanted to see a child dance we would bring in a toddler" So basically, they said they only accept "normal sized" performers." Roman said outraged.

"What? That's" He struggled to find the word. "That's just stupid! If your not doing it, then neither am I!"

"No, your not quitting on me now!"Roman said.

"But-"

"No buts!" Roman said, climbing up to be eye level with Patton. "Your going to go and compete, and show how good a so called "child-who-isnt-importent-enough-to-get-help-to-preform", can teach a so called "Normal sized person."

"But I'm-" "No buts!"

"Roman! I'm not gonna be enough to do good in this competition. You've been a wonderful teacher, but I just can't keep up. I'm better off just dancing by myself alone, with our friends, or with you."

"Patton, thats ridiculous! You just as good as anything person who's going to enter the contest, and your gonna do amazing! Honestly, you sound so much like Virgil. How much time have you been spending with him? Your reeking of the kind of negitivity only he seems to constantly have."

"I don't know" Patton said. "I guess I just kinda had the dream crushed when I was a kid, so I'm not very eager to see it be crushed again."

"They won't be crushed, i promise!" Roman insisted.

"Well." Patton began. "If you really think so".

-

"When I lose myself

There's no one else

Who else is?

Quite like you"

-

So here he is, backstage and nervous.

"Is a Mr. Patton Hart back here" called a voice.

"Yes! Oh, i mean, yeah that's me" he finished sheepishly.

The person nodded. "Your on next. Be onstage to ready to start in 3 minutes."

He gulped.

The 3 minutes passed by much much faster then he really wanted them too, and he quickly found himself onstage, waiting for the curtains to raise and the music to start.

"You can do this." He thought to himself. "Roman believes in you! You have to do this for him"

The curtains raised, and Patton had a momentary thought of thankfulness that both Roman amd Remus were small, because if they weren't,the would both absolutely be yelling positive if not strange things (Remus) at him

Then he heard his boyfriend yell.

"PATTON!" He looked into the audience to see Dee, Remus and Roman all sharing a seat.

With a megaphone.

Virgil and Logan sat next to them, clearly pleased (Presumably because they megaphone idea was theirs.)

"YOUR GONNA DO AMAZING, LOVE. SHOW THEM WHAT YOU LEARNED FROM A SHORTER THEN AVERAGE SIZED PERSON!"

"YEAH, KICK THEYRE ASS'ES" Remus yelled. "KNOCK THEM STRAIGHT OFF"

They're yelling to some may have been embarrassing, but to him, it was the inspiration he needed. He remembered that everyone would be proud of what he did, no matter what.

So when the music began (Supersonic by Caravan Palace, something both he and Roman agreed on, seeing as it matched the dancing Patton was attempting to master.) He was ready.

He started the dance Roman had taught him for the first half, which was (for anything to do with Roman) relitivly easy.

But he wanted to do more.

So he switched from a chorographed dance, made to look good and be easy, to free style.

And boy did he have fun with it.

His movements became more lively snd wild, flinging his arms and legs around, doing poses, am just genuinely radiating joy.

-

"Those eyes, damn, those eyes

They get me every time

Those eyes, in those eyes

I can do no crime

When dance like I don't care

You call me Fred Astaire"

-

After his performance, he went straight off stage and go his friends.

Roman and Remus both complimented him and congratulated him loudly, while Logan, Virgil, and Dee did so in a quieter tone.

The took they're seats again, watching the last couple of performers, before the results were announced.

"And in third place, we have Miss Katherine Westerburg with her wonderful Flute playing!"

"Second place, we have Miss Kimberly Thompson, with her presentation of her animation of "Mr Blue Sky" by elo!"

"And Now" the announcer took a minute to pause, to add onto the dramatic effect, "First place. Our first place winner is..., Mr Patton Hart, with his dance to "Supersonic" by Caravan Palace!"

His friends cheered louder then they had before during the night.

"See, I told you you could do it" Roman said, teasing him. " Mister Fred Astaire."

[ancanosaur]

Shirai ryu headcanons

Becuase i love Hanzo and he loves his clan and i think about these things a lot. Gonna be some subscorp in here bois

Much like Kuai does for the Lin kuei. Hanzo takes in orphans, the homeless, and misfits into his clan with open arms. He also takes in those with disabilities, becuase "useless" isnt apart of his vocabulary and everyone deserves a place and a family. Those that do have disabilities within the clan will be given duties that fit with their needs but not to belittle them. Everyone's job benefits the clan in one way or another.

Hanzo loves children. He may come off and hot tempered and like an old grouch. But he will never raise his voice if young one's are around. The children of the clan really like their master Hanzo amd think he's just a big teddy bear. They also like to sit in his lap and hang around him to keep warm, they dont understand why he's so warm and why snow just doesnt stick to him so they always say it's becuase he has such a warm heart and Hanzo cant help but smile.

He always wants to meet the newest members born into his clan. Babies arent born into the clan as often as it was in the original Shirai ryu. So Hanzo is always happy to hear a couple is expecting. Babies love Hanzo just as much as Hanzo loves babies. Once again, the man is a walking heat blanket and even when being handed a wailing infant it will soon quiet down in his warm arms. It makes him happy, but theres always that small tug at his heart at the reminder of his own child.

Takeda always helps around and is practically second in camand without the title. He loves wrestling with the younger members and comforts those who have lost thier parents, being that he can relate so much to them. And he tells them that as long as you love someone and remember them, they never truly die.

Hanzo also loves to see Kenshi and Takeda growing close. He's greatful to see the young man no longer despise his father and that they have become a family. Takeda comes to him one day to give him a small reminder that he'll always be like a father to him and that he's beyond greatful for him, for raising him and teaching him. Hanzo smiles softly and shakes his head. Takeda has always been so soft hearted and knew just what to say to the ex wraith.

Takeda also needs to stop wiggling his brows like a child whenever Grandmaster Subzero comes for visits! It is strickly business and talk of their clams working together, Takeda!

Kuai admires the surrounding lands around the temple, much different than his own. The green rolling hills of Japan truly are a sight. And maybe Hanzo takes way too much notice in how the warm sun reflects into Kuai's ice blue eyes making them seem a warmer hue of blue.

One meeting they have, sitting in the courtyard on a cool spring afternoon, Hanzo takes notice of a few of his younger students practicing their spying skills on the two ninja. "I believe we are being watched." Kuai says with a gentle smile as he sips his tea. One of the children decides hidding is over rated and walks out of the thick brush and comes up to Kuai. "You're the man that makes ice come from his hands!" The young girl says. "Yuna, do not be rude, speak properly to Grandmater-" Hanzo huffs only to hear Kuai give a deep, warm chuckle. "The word is Cryomamcer, my dear." He says, cupping his hands togeather, making crystals from around his finger tips as he forms a small rose from ice. "Woah~" the young girl says, mouth agape as she is joined by the other two children who look just as amazed. Kuai hands the icey rose to the young girl with bright red hair. "But it'll melt!" She protests as her tiny hands hold the smoking cold rose. "It will not, young one. It's a different kind of ice." He smiles at the chilren. Hanzo in the meanwhile is feeling his chest swell with affection for the grandmaster at how gentle and good with children he is. Only to be interrupted by one of the children asking if he can do that with fire. "Yes, Hanzo." Kuai shoots him a devilish yet handsome smile. "Can you?" Bastard.

Hanzo will sometimes play match maker in small ways. If he notices one of his clan members having feelings towards another he will team them up together for simple missions, and training exercises. Life is short and harsh, so love is something he wishes everyone to experience at least once in their lifetime. "His birthday is on the 20th and he favors the color red." He tells one of his guards as he has caught him eyeing up one of the other ninjas a few times. The guard looks at Hanzo with surprise in his eyes only to be met with a small smile from his master. He gives a small bow. "Thank you, master Hanzo." The young man says gratefully.

Theres a shiba inu that lives at the temple. One of the teen students picked it up during a mission and at first Hanzo was against it, saying that dogs can be messy and you muat care for them carefully, but with a few "pleeeease Master Hanzo? Pleeease?" He soon gave in. It is a cute dog. One of the chilren made the comment that it looks like Hanzo, making him shake his head but smile. They named the dog Hanz and he even has his own Shirai ryu vest, yellow with the symbol on his back and everything. The dog sleeps with the chilren in their quarters, wich Hanzo cant lie about how cute it is to open their door only to see them all piled up in one bed with Hanz in the middle. It's painfully cute.

Hanzo and Kuai will let their clan memebers spend time together, training and matches for the older students as the youngers simply play together. The two of them greatly enjoy seeing yellow and blue mix and mingle together. At peace.

I think about these types of things way too much lmao. Please forgive any grammar/spelling mistakes.

-Onyx♤

[kyotakumrau]

2019.02.01 Kaoru's exhibition 'Nouteikarano・from the bottom of my mind'

The exhibition building was located short walk from Tsukishima station, in a simple white building with industrial looking black doors. I attended on the second day in the afternoon. There was a decorative board with the exhibition name outside the building.

About 10 minutes to the start of the slot we were let inside the building where we could see exhibition posters with the information about 'photos allowed (撮影 ええぞ)' for that room and 'photos not allowed (撮影アカンぞ)' for after entering the main area. At the entrance area there were also signs designed by Kaoru pointing the direction of entry. And at the floor entrance they placed flower stands received.

As we were waiting the staff was explaining the rules like lining up for goods, ordering the reprints and phone cases and the exhibition areas. At the ticket check we received a sticker designed by Kaoru (there was different design for each day).

I had a late number so when I entered the first thing I saw was the long line for goods... As this was my only visit I decided beforehand to skip it in the beginning and focus on the exhibits.

When I checked later (when the line was gone) pamphlet like some other items got sold out. I got a folder, Krim&Zon notebook and one acrylic stand.

By the goods table on the wall they placed three reprints fans could order as well as the table with phone covers and order forms.

I liked the fabric signs they had on the wall at the entries to each room - very Japanese style designs with the room name, red and white for K&Z and black and white for Noutei.

Krim&Zon Exhibition

The first on the right was Krim&Zon exhibition. The glass table displays contained Kaoru's drawings of his characters for various occasions - for his tour picks, book illustrations, LINE stamps, merchandise for dir and related projects like Freedom of Expression presents. Above the glass tables they placed various framed pictures.

Next to the tables was kind of 3D projection？hologram? of Krim amd Zon in a clear pyramid.

Next wall had the display consisting of 3 character figures with drawings above them. It looked very cute :3

The wall on the left had various videos. First table had two huge Macs with different videos and above them on the wall there were frames with sketches of the scenes shown in the videos. I don't know know if those videos were used anywhere before. One had adventures with Krim and Zone meeting other characters, being captured and then hanging tied up. Other one had two hands protectively holding something. Further in the room there was a bigger screen with another video and 5 color portraits of different characters.

Nouteikarano Exhibition

By chance, after the table in the middle I went anticlock wise in this room and I think it was the right way to enjoy it.

This room again had display glass tables and more framed pictures on the walls. All black and white.

The display table in the middle housed Kaoru's guitar (the one with 'I'm emotionally drained ~ will just die doing nothing' text), the detailed design (it was fun to compare the changes done in the actual guitar), tour picks, Ugeee and some of the jackets that Kaoru painted.

I really liked that under most of works there was a little note, with the title and date, how was it drawn or painted (for example many were painted only by using fingers, no brushes), the background story or idea behind it and so on.

On the right wall there were many designs Kaoru made for his equipment and magazines etc. In the display tables Kaoru placed more sketches for various goods, it also housed Kaoru's sketches when preparing the exhibition rooms.

In the corner there was the work in progress station with the easel, canvas and two paints (yup, you guessed right, it was carbon black and zinc white xp), (dir tour goods 😂) mug with pencils and some papers. When Kaoru came to the exhibition at various times I guess that's where he worked - fans could watch him working at such time, but it didn't happen during my time slot (which was actually good because then I wouldn't be able to see everything).

The back wall had 4 works, starting from the one that shared the exhibitions title 'the bottom of mind',

'世界・world' was a canvas painted black with only Kaoru's signature (he signed all painting with か). He explained it in the text he prepared for the last wall.

見えないもの・things we cannot see

The 4th one was '消えそうな手・hand about to disappear' - I remember it because the little note underneath had explanation like 'I don't know if it's my hand or yours.'

The wall on the left had 6 more canvases. My bet is that 餌食 was the one that took a month to finish, it was very detailed, with many characters.

The last one was titled 最後の顔・the last face, I really liked the little note for it:

'The last thing seen in the dark world. Because more than a half of pieces here have white parts. If we agree that black=darkness=anxiety=loneliness, and white=light=hope, then we can say that in the end hope had also appeared.'

I wish instead of an hour there was 90 minutes per slot! There were many interesting comments, but there's no way I could take a note of all of them. I hope some Japanese fans will provide more detailed reports! Or the pamphlet has those notes as well - I wasn't able to get one.

The last wall had a huge panel with the promotional photo of Kaoru, arrangement of smaller photos taken in Europe and something Kaoru wrote about the event.

The text (according to notes done in a rush because clock was ticking):

"The dream I saw in my childhood, the dark place, faraway, something unknown is there, but I always woke up before finding out. I had the same dream many times.

It's easy to express various things using hands. I can show many things with my drawings.

I don't know if black is for dead. But something lives there, I feel something there. But it's hard to see. With the painting '世界・world' you can't see anything anymore even though something was there in the beginning.

This started as a dream, but me now continues. Shows what is at the bottom of my mind.

I didn't have any drawing lessons so my work might be shit quality, but I have freedom when drawing. Some of it might be embarrassing, I know you will be kind, having this theme that originated in me, I wanted to feel this darkness inside my mind for the first time. I've made things using sound, but things that had no sound had no shape. Thus I decided to give them shape. Books are another [form of expression], but those are created together with editors. To completely unveil the dark part of one person, such feeling.

I want to see a dream of such world. To tell the truth I don't dream much at the moment.

Kaoru"

It was a very interesting experience and I could see the connection between the drawings and dir's music. I certainly hope to see more of Kaoru's work in the future!

[aweebwrites]

Captivity

(This was supposed to be posted yesterday for the oc slot for pride week but not only is this late but it has absolutely nothing to do with pride so I guess just enjoy.)

____________________

"How did I end up in this mess?" Lucy whined to herself, carrying a stack of books to the non-fictional area of the library that was all but turned on its head after the Overlord's attack. "What did I do to deserve this? Surely I've never did anything bad enough to warrant this? I mean, I littered that one time but I turned back and picked it up!" She set the books down on a nearby table then returned to the piles of books stacked high.

The entire debacle had knocked over entire shelves of books and created general chaos. It's been three days since the defeat of that monstrous dragon that they called the Overlord and the city was recovering still. Rather quickly actually. Cyrus Borg had stepped in and not the city was becoming something out of futuristic fiction. It was amazing at first- but then she kept receiving offers to have the library torn down so it can be rebuilt as some kind of technological storehouse for information. She declined every one. This library was her pride and joy and she'd be damned if they take it from her.

She deposited another stack of books on the table with a grunt.

But that was the very least of her problems.

She stopped by the small mountain of books with a sigh then looked towards the check out desk by the door. In the semi circled space sat an intimidating figure in red, their helmet rested in their lap, right on the four very sharp, very intimidating butterfly katanas. He was seated on the ground, his back pressed against the desk as their long black hair blanketed their face. As if sensing her watching him, he lifts his head, his hair sliding back enough on one side to reveal a piercing, glowing green eye that stood out against a white face with red markings.

Lucy looked away, reaching up to brush her short brown hair back nervously. How General Kozu, leader of the Stone Army ended up at the library was a mystery. She rode out the Overlord's brief reign here in the archives below and when she came back up, it was to him collapsed by the door, using his sword as a means to keep the doors locked.

She sighed to herself, taking up another stack of books.

She supposed it was her fault to begin with. She hadn't called the ninja when she found him like that. Instead, she had tried to help him like he was any ordinary person. But he wasn't. He wasn't even human. There was nothing to do but keep the library closed and watched him. He was far too heavy to move too. The moment she had taken off his helmet to hopefully help him somehow, she had a sword to her neck.

Funny how it only occurred to her that he was a dangerous entity until after she was being held hostage by him. For the past two days.

Her stomach growled as she set the book down and she whined. Water wasn't exactly a problem since there was a small kitchenette the original librarian added where the old archives used to be. But food was. She only stored light snacks in there and she had already ran out. Plus! She smells awful! She should march right over there and demand that he either leave or let her leave back to get apartment. She nodded to herself determinedly then shook her head rapidly. No way! She couldn't! He'd probably slice and dice her and be done with it, no matter how weak he appeared to be. She walked back over to the mountain of books with a sigh. She might as well get some work done while she was being held hostage. Her stomach growled again and she flinched when it wasn't the only thing that growled.

"What is that annoying sound mortal?" The General questioned irritably and Lucy swallowed.

"Um… It's… From me." She managed to say, not changing to look at him and possibly make him more irritated.

"Cease it immediately." He orders but her stomach growled again, as if protesting.

The General didn't like that very much.

"Nononononono! Wait!" Lucy yelled, backing up once the General got to his feet with a growl, long legs making quick strides towards her. "Please! I'm- I'm not doing it on purpose!" She was quick to explain as she was now cornered against a table filled with books, shard swords dangerously close to her person.

"Explain." He says, narrowing his slitted eyes at her. "I don't need you alive mortal. Remember that." He says, tilting her chin up with the blade and she swallowed thickly.

"I-I, um." She took a breath, her heart pounding in fear still. "My stomach makes that noise on its own whenever me or any other uh, mortal are hungry… We-we need to eat food in order to stop the uh, growling. And more importantly… To survive…" She explained, looking anywhere but into his intense green eyes.

She saw him frown, head tilting a little in confusion.

"I can go more into details if you're confused but that's the uh, that's the basics of it. Mortal bodies are different from that of uh… Stone… Warriors." She says, staring at his hair now.

It had… Surprising volume. It needed a comb though. Not that she would risk her life any more than she already was.

"... And this… Food. There is none here?" He questioned, head tilting further.

"N-no. I ah. Ran out of it a few hours back. I would… Have to leave to get more." She says, not needing to meet his eyes to know he was superbly skeptical now.

"You seek to fetch the ninja." He glowed low and Lucy quickly look her head, careful of the sword under her chin.

"No! I don't! I just want a bath and some food! I don't even know how to get to the ninja anyway!" Maybe she shouldn't have admitted that but it was true. "I'll come right back here! I promise! You can stay here for as long as you want! I won't say anything! I just need baths and meals and my own bed would be nice- but I can sleep here! I won't call anyone! I swear! I'll come right back!" She rambled/pleaded, finally meeting his narrowed eyes again then looking away after a moment.

She was never good with eye contact.

He gave a low, considering hum as she all but held her breath. He stepped back, pulling his sword away.

"You have an hour." He spoke and she looked up at him wide eyed.

That wasn't a lot of time but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Any later and I will hunt you down." He warned and she gulped then nodded.

"An hour. Ok." She says, gently scooting around him before taking off, grabbing her bag and rushing out, only looking back to lock the library doors.

She blinked, realising that it was nighttime. Even better. Thankfully her apartment complex was just a block away.

"Oh! Lucy! I haven't seen you since the attack! I feared something happened to you!" Her neighbour Jerry says as she reached her floor, panting from taking the stairs.

"No! I'm fine! Don't worry!" She panted out, pulling her keys from her bag and unlocking her door. "Just uh, library stuff! Gotta go! Bye!" She yelled then locked the door behind her quickly.

"Um… Bye?" He says confused then headed back into his room.

Lucy felt bad for doing that. Jeffrey was a sweet old man but she had- 50 minutes left!

"Crap!" She swore then shucked her clothes, heading for the shower.

___________

She emerged 15 minutes later and began packing all that she had been planning in the shower. It took another 20 minutes to do that and an additional five to get dressed.

"Shoot! 10 minutes left!" She says, looking at the clock then swung the bag on her back, picking up her pillow that couldn't hold inside.

She paused as she was about to step out then looked back at her other pillow. She thought on carrying it for him for a few seconds then grabbed it too. Curse her overly nice nature. While rushing back to the library, she came to a stop then backed up, looking at the male clothes in a display store. She looked at the large hoodie and bit her lip. She'll be late… She walked away- only to walk back, going into the store.

When she made it back to the library, she was a whole 15 minutes late and very, very nervous. She peered in, frowning once she saw no-one inside. She closed the doors behind her then looked around with a frown. She gasped once she was grabbed, a hand covering her mouth, another holding her hands behind her back, a third holding a sword to her neck and a fourth held another sword defensively.

"You are late." The General growled from behind his mask. "Why is that?" He demanded, slipping his hand from her mouth, giving her one chance to explain.

"I-I stopped b-by to get you s-some normal c-clothes. The uh…" She swallowed. "The armor makes you stand out." She got out, legs trembling.

"So you haven't called the ninja?" He asked suspiciously.

"N-no! I promise I haven't! I still don't know how!" She stuttered out.

Kozu narrowed his eyes then pulled back a little, keeping his sword at her neck. She heard the rip of her bag and internally sighed.

Well. There goes that birthday gift.

He moved the sword away completely from her neck and she chanced looking over her shoulder to see him looking over the hoodie curiously then the shirt.

"I'll have to cut extra arm holes into the shirt but I'm sure it'll fit." She says, turning around to face him.

He looked up at her then back at the clothes.

"These… Clothes. They will help me fit in?" He asked, looking at the hood oddly.

"Yeah. I have to reopen the library soon and people will come in to read. This way, they won't know you're a Stone Soldier." She says then chanced reaching out and taking the grey t-shirt, pleased when he let her take it. "Let me fix it up." She walked around the counter smd set her things down, grabbing a pen and just the shirt.

She then stood before the curious soldier again.

"Um. Mind lifting your arms?" She asked and he shot her a wary look but did so.

She lifted the shirt before him and made a note of where his second set of arms were on the shirt and how big they were. She then sat around the desk and grabbed a pair of scissors amd got to work.

Kozu on the other hand watched the mortal curiously as she worked on the fabric, confused and very wary. The mortal was being… He paused to think of the right word. Nice. That's it. Why? He has held her captive for almost 3 days now. He hadn't expected her to return but he certainly expected the ninja to. He still does. He doesn't trust her and refuses to let his guard down for even a second, especially when he still felt so weak… It would take him a while to recover so for now, he would play along with 'fitting in'. He won't start a fight he doesn't have to… Not yet at least.

"Done." Lucy sighed, holding up the shirt with four arm holes now, the edges stitched with her emergency needle kit to prevent tearing. "Here. Put them on." She says, adding it to the jeans and hoodie and handing it to him.

He accepts them and checked them cautiously before setting them down on the desk. Lucy watched in awe as he began to take his armor off piece by piece, layer by layer. It was more complicated than it seems. Only when he was completely topless did it occur that she should probably stop watching. She flushed, looking away quickly when he reached for his pants. She fiddled with her own fingers, back to him as she flushed heavily.

Well. That's something you don't see in the ancient scrolls.

"This one has no space for all my arms." She heard him speak and she blinked then turned around.

Wow.

He was looking at the hoodie in hand, holding it by the arms with his lower too arms on his hips. That's the least however. The shirt was quite tight, ready to be torn off with a wrong move but at least his pants seemed to fit from what she could tell. It's just… Looking at him as he was now, wearing casual clothes and not intimidating armor… Her cheeks were red.

He was really handsome…

Thick, straight black hair framed his face perfectly, his defined jaw holding a stubborn set to it as he frowned. His eyes were something else. From this angle, they appeared to have a bit of glowing yellow… He met her eyes and arched a brow, holding up the hoodie impatiently.

"Oh! Um! Yeah. I left it like that!" She quickly says, looking down. "We, uh. We Ninjagians don't have two sets of arms. You'll have to uh, wear it to hide that. The um, hood is to hide your face a bit if you want." She shrugged and Kozu looked the dark gray hood over.

"... I see." He says then set the hood down on the desk.

Lucy's stomach interrupted, reminding her that she was hungry.

"Haven't you consumed food as yet?" He asked her, annoyed. "Do so now." He says before she could answer, picking up his weapons and armor.

Lucy didn't argue, pulling the box of hot pockets from her bag and heading to the kitchenette just behind the door by the desk and set it in the microwave.

"What is that device?" Lucy jolts once his voice came from directly behind her.

"It's a microwave. It's used to heat food." She explained with a hand over her chest.

He only hummed, looking it and her over suspiciously then walked out. She sighed, taking her meal out and leaned against the small countertop as she ate. Now what? She can't live at the library but she was sure he wasn't about to let her come and go as she pleased. And how long did he plan on staying anyway? She took a bite as she stared ahead blankly. She was stuck with him. The Ninja won't just swing by the Library for no reason. And even so… He was a living, maybe not breathing relic. She wouldn't want them to destroy him. Maybe… Arrest? But what are the odds that they would do that?

She took another pocket.

But she couldn't keep him. He wasn't some… Thing to be kept. He certainly doesn't appear to be someone who wanted to be kept. She sighed, pulling her phone out from her pocket. Here she was thinking about it like she had a choice. She scrolled through the news to see what she missed. She frowned at a chubby man wearing what she knew was the Helmet of Darkness. She frowned as she looked at it. If he had that then he would be able to control the General. She only prays he doesn't put it on again. If it hadn't been for a friend of the former librarian dropping in as often as she did, researching about everything that has to do with 'The Final Battle', she wouldn't have known as much as she did. She looked at an image someone captured of the Overlord and his army, the General rejoining them. If she was stuck with him, she might as well do her own research.

________

Kozu watched the mortal as she bustled around the library with purpose, placing books on the shelves and leaving a few out. He sat by the check out desk, in a chair this time with a hand on his cheek, another on his sword and his upper two crossed. What was that mortal planning… And what was with the humming? He narrowed his eyes then glanced away, looking at the books that lined both sides of the door to the kitchenette, protected by glass doors. These books were more colourful and graphic. His eyes narrowed in on a particular one. He stood, reaching out to slide the glass door back and took a look at it.

"Ah! Be careful with that!" He glared at her from the corner of his eye and Lucy swallowed. "Ah. They're… School books. For children in school to borrow for homework… They're… expensive so we only have one or two copies…" She told him sheepishly, fiddling with a scroll.

He ignored her in favour of looking at the book and began reading through it, twirling his sword in hand. Interesting. This book goes on to explain a mortal- a human's makeup and what does what and why. It was… Interesting. He has discovered at least, the mortal wasn't lying to him about her hunger. He closed it half way in. If this place has a guidebook to the mortal body… Then perhaps he could find a means, a weakness for them. He could hold it over them all and take revenge for his fallen brothers. He gritted his teeth at that and set the book aside. He looked around the library, immediately on edge when he couldn't immediately see the mortal.

He picked up another sword and began searching the room, his glowing eyes missing nothing. He spotted the blue clothes she had worn back over a stack of books then walked over, a sneer revealing two of his three sets of fangs.

"Y-" He cut himself off, realising that the mortal was resting again, laying on one of the strange sacks she arrived with.

Humans need at least 7-9 hours of sleep, he remembered. It was about accurate for him at the moment too. He felt the exhaustion in him with every move. But he couldn't have the mortal thinking him weak. He looked down at her then across to the table that had the other sack and walked over to it, holding it up. Huh. It was… He gave it a squeeze. Soft. He recalled something then took it and returned to the book he left on the desk. The numbers on the page made it easier to find what he was looking for. Two images confirmed his suspicions. Mortals sleep on these odd sacks. He looked the sack over then the images of the two humans sleeping on them.

Huh.

________

Lucy woke up with a yawn a few hours later, rubbing her eyes as she sat up.

"Ow." She hissed at the pain in her back.

Laying at such an odd angle all night was bound to do that. She stood then cracked her back and sighed. She looked around the library as she walked away from the desk. She didn't have a lot left. She'll use today to finish shelving books and research. The library should be ok for opening tomorrow. She paused then.

Hey… Where was he?...

She walked over to the desk he seemed to make his base then covered her mouth to hide her wide smile. There, on the ground, laid the Stone Soldier all nuzzled into the pillow, laying on his side. His face was relaxed in sleep as his hair made a mess around him. He looked… Adorable… For a leader of an indestructible army that could kill her at any second. She walked over to her bag, smiling still and took out the sheets she was too tired to take out. She returned and gently covered him, careful not to wake him. She took a moment to look down at him before walking away to the books that needed shelving. Maybe if he doesn't feel very homicidal, she'd offer to do something about his hair…

____________

(I'll reblog an art piece I did for both Kozu and Lucy that I did a while back in a second. I swear I'll do a character ref for her but so far, all you need to know is that she isn't an em and has a totally normal life and backstory. The only exciting thing that happens to her is the unconscious stone soldier she stumbles across. I have decided their ship name will be called Stonescrolls because why not. I hope you like it!)

[queen-scribbles]

Ghost Story

For @pillarspromptsweekly fill #93: Mission. I filled it with Sagani doing the Lovers’ Light mission in Adi’s Stars Rewritten canon. 

Sagani was not particularly happy on boats; she preferred solid earth under her boots. That went double for stormy weather. Give her the risk of trees falling on her head over capsizing any day. Yet here she was. Rowing out into the Grace of Ciamena during a storm. All to chase a ghost story. One that might actually be true, from what she could tell, but that didn’t make the pounding rain any warmer or the salt spray sting any less. Still she’d promised Adi she could handle this while Adi saw to whatever trouble was brewing up in Stalwart.

“Sounds like the Republics are lovely this time of year,” she joked. “Once you’ve seen one snow-covered landscape, you’ve seen ‘em all. The change of scenery will be nice, and I’ve never tried tracking ghosts before. Sounds fun.”

Adi had laughed and wished her luck before heading off to round up her chosen companions for this adventure.

Bet my good hunting knife she takes Heodan, Sagani had thought to herself. Despite repeated claims of not being a fighter, the soft-spoken rogue sure seemed to enjoy traipsing after their illustrious leader on adventure after adventure that involved just that. And for all her worrying about him, Adi kept asking him along. Sagani was pretty sure she knew why.

She was pulled from her reverie as the boat shuddered into the trough between two waves, tossing her into the Ondrite priest next to her. The woman yelped and both started to lose their balance before a sailor hauled them upright.

“Sorry,” Sagani said ruefully, watching Revena rub the sore spot from their collision. “Not used to boats. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have my fox with me, huh?” Itumaak would have been decidedly less gracious about being tossed practically in someone’s lap.

The priest chuckled. “Interesting a sight as a flying fox might be, ac, I think it not being here is for the best.”

Sagani laughed as well, but before she had a chance to continue the banter, one of the sailors swore and pointed off the port side of the boat. “There!”

Sagani shifted past Revena to get a better look at the twin lights that hovered over the storm-tossed water. Even as she shielded her eyes from the rain, the faint sound of singing wove between the chaos of the storm.

“It is them!” another sailor cried, followed by a string of Vailian Sagani didn’t understand, though she did catch ‘Alessa’ and ‘Pellanne’ in there, so she had a good idea what he’d said. The rest of the crew all froze in their duties to stare at the dancing lights, some murmuring what sounded like prayers as they did.

The boat lurched, and Sagani’s grip on the side tightened til her knuckles went white. The sailors didn’t seem to notice--or if they did they didn’t care--their attention still claimed by the twin lights. As she peered through the rain and churning water, Sagani could almost believe the lights took the ethereal forms of two folk women. But even as she peered out, wondering how much that was influenced by tales of star-crossed lovers and the mob that chased them to their deaths, the boat gave an even harsher lurch and then capsized completely.

If being on a boat during a storm was bad, being in the water was even worse. The Grace was fierce, and the pummeling waves soon destroyed any lingering hope of knowing which direction was up. Sagani still tried; this would be a bullshit end to her hunt for Persoq, and Adi would feel guilty forever over letting her go.

She was really, really glad she hadn’t brought Itumaak.

Struggling against the waves proved futile, especially not knowing which way to go, so Sagani finally relaxed. Just in time for her head to break the surface. She barely had time to gulp down a lungful of air before the roll of another wave sent her tumbling. And then another.

But when this one retreated, there was the sting of gritty sand against her palms, knees, face, and Sagani found herself on a beach of sorts. 

In a cave.

A big cave.

She coughed and sputtered until she purged what salt water she’d  swallowed, and only then let herself sit back and take in the surroundings. Even as she did, another roll of the surf deposited Revena and a couple sailors--Gialo and Edden, if she recalled correctly--on the beach with her.

“Ondra’s tits,” Edden groused, spitting sea water and shooting a sheepish look at Revena. “I see why the duc wants that dealt with, it’s a bloody menace.”

The priest was busy wringing water out of her robes and seemed to have missed his abuse of her goddess’ name. “Ac, there are many who fall prey to the romanticism of seeing ghosts with their own eyes.”

Gialo pushed himself upright and finger-combed sand from his shaggy hair as he chipped in his two pands. “What’s romantic about being run off a fucking cliff to your deaths?”

“The star-crossed lovers part, I believe,” Revena replied tartly.

Sagani tuned out the rest of their semi-friendly bickering as she continued examining their surroundings. This cave was massive. The wreckage of whole warships and trade vessels peeked through the water’s surface or hung precariously between rocks along the walls. Squeezing water from her hair, she cautiously approached the closest such wreck. She wasn’t terribly surprised to see mostly-decayed remains dotting the shoreline near the beached hull. What did surprise her was the fact the remains had been stripped--there was no evidence of clothes, jewelry, weapons, anything.

“There’s someone living in here,” Sagani muttered, instinctively reaching for her bow. It was, of course, not there. She hadn’t counted on needing it to investigate a ghost story. Which meant it was safe back in her rented room with Itumaak, at least, rather than lost to the roaring surf.

She turned to inform the others of this development and discovered they had multiplied. The constantly rolling waves had dropped almost all the remaining crew on the beach as well. All coughing up sea water and growling various oaths and epithets as it sank in they weren’t dead. There were a few injuries Sagani could see as she approached; gashes from hitting the stone wall on the way in, colorful bruises, a couple with skin scraped raw like her from how they hit the sand.

Sagani set two fingers in her mouth and whistled loud and sharp, the echoes chasing toward the impossibly high cavern ceiling. The low rumble of chatter and complaining stopped abruptly and all eyes swung toward her in the dim light of phosphorescent fungus that pocked the walls in clumps. 

“First things we need to do are get wounds bound and start a fire,” she said. “I think there’s kith of some kind livin’ in here, so we’ll need to keep an eye out--’cause that means tunnels--until we can investigate.”

No one so much as protested or back-talked her plan. Some of the less banged-up sailors went to gather wood for a fire, some started ripping up shirts to bind wounds--salt water sting or no, it was better than letting them bleed--while keeping half an eye out for trouble. In short order, they had some semblance of a camp set up. With the brighter firelight, they could see the mouth of a small tunnel along one wall. Sagani wouldn’t have any trouble, of course, but some of the taller sailors, like Gialo, would have to duck.

“So, who’s coming with me to scout?” she asked, fashioning a better than decent torch from a spar of hull-wood.

The sailors all exchanged looks before Edden raised  hand. “Fuck it,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll go.”

Gialo and another uninjured sailor(whose name Sagani felt guilty for forgetting) quickly followed suit. As they prepared additional torches, there was a low, animalistic hiss from the direction of the tunnel.

Eyes glittered in the light of Sagani’s torch as she moved closer to investigate. The figure finally revealed was hunched, matted hair and beard hiding most of the face. He snarled and backed away from the light, only to run into the pair crouched behind him. All three watched with baleful, feral eyes as Sagani approached, finally turning and running when she waved the torch at them and hollered as she reached the mouth of the tunnel.

“Yeah, you’ll want to keep that fire going while we’re gone,” she called back to Revena and the others. “Maybe get a couple torches going, too.”

“Whaddya think they are?” Edden asked.

“Kith,” Sagani said slowly. That part had been obvious. “But from the look of ‘em, they’ve been down here their whole lives. Maybe descended from survivors?” She gestured toward the wrecked ships. Something dark and wet-shiny caught her eye where the trio had stood. Upon closer scrutiny, it proved to be a handful of blackberries. Fresh blackberries. “There’s a way out.”

“What?” Gialo frowned.

“These berries.” She scooped them up to exhibit. “They’re fresh, need sunlight to grow, and don’t smell like salt. They’re from outside. Which means who- and whatever these ferals are, they have a way out of here that doesn’t involve ocean water. We just need to find it without gettin’ lost and we can get out of here, too.”

She felt a little guilty scrapping her original goal for this trip, but plans changed when you were shipwrecked. Getting to safety was more important, and maybe once they were out Revena could perform funeral rites from the cliffs overlooking what was undoubtedly Alessa and Pellanne’s watery grave.

Edden snorted. “Without gettin’ lost bein’ the tricky part, yeah?”

“The alternative is to stay here and either turn into or be eaten by that,” Sagani pointed out, gesturing after the ferals with her torch. “Which I’d rather avoid, personally.”

He gave a reluctant grunt of agreement, and the four of them started down the tunnel.

~~o~~

It proved relatively straight, and the first few offshoots dead-ended quickly, which saved a lot of time. Sagani made sure they marked their choice at the first serious branching very clearly. There was another decent-sized side passage not far past it, and when Sagani paused to mull over whether it was worth checking, Edden and the third sailor--Cirocco, she’d finally remembered--cocked their heads.

“Do you hear that?” Cirocco asked.

Even as she opened her mouth to reply, Sagani realized she could.

Singing. The same song they’d heard out on the Grace, in fact. Drifting faintly up the passage she’d been about to skip. “Wait here.”

The sailors all nodded, and Sagani ducked down the passage. It twisted a little but wasn’t a terribly long way before dead-ending in a small, eerily beautiful cave. Streaks of the glowing blue cave fungus ran along the walls, rock swirled with the glitter of mica, and in the back, so close as to be intermingled, lay the bones of two people. The haunting melody.was louder now, and she could see why; a pair of cean gŵla hovered over the remains, hands clasped as they sang their mournful song.

Sagani took in the sight, whistled softly, and slowly backed away, hoping these two would remain as calm as the one in the lighthouse had for Adi. They did, and she swiftly backtracked to the waiting sailors.

“Dead end?” Gialo asked, sounding unsurprised.

“Yeah, but I found ‘em,” Sagani said. “Alessa and Pellanne. Pretty sure it’s them, anyway. There’s a pair of  cean gŵla hanging over them singin’ the same song we heard out on the water. So who wants to go get Revena? She can do the burial rites that’re the whole reason we’s here.”

“I’ll go,” Cirocco volunteered.

Sagani nodded. “Don’t dawdle. Soon we can get outta here, the better.”

“Wasn’t plannin’ to,” he promised with a boyish smile, and took off.

~~o~~

True to his word,Cirocco returned shortly with Revena in tow--as well as the other surviving sailors. Some sported new injuries that looked suspiciously like claw and bite marks.

“Those... people fell upon us again,” Revena explained, lips curling at calling the cave dwellers people as she brushed dark hair out of her eyes. “I believe they came to scavenge and were surprised to find living kith. We drove them off, but not easily, as you can see, ac? The beach was clearly no longer safe, and we were already preparing to follow your trail when young Cirocco appeared and said you had found the lovers we seek. So we all came, rather than risk some being attacked again.”

“Fine by me,” Sagani shrugged. It wouldn’t really make finding their way out any harder. “But before we get back to looking for the exit, let’s take care of these poor ladies, hmm?”

“Oh, ac.” Revena nodded, attempting to straighten her sodden robes. “Lead the way.”

Sagani showed her--and a few of the more curious (superstitious) sailors--to the cave. Revena murmured something in Vailian and began issuing instructions. A shallow grave was dug in the sandy grit of the cave floor, and the bones collected. As she helped with the latter, Sagani caught the faint glimmer of blue on skeletal hands. Closer inspection revealed rings, clearly meant as a set. One was silver, set with a single large round sapphire that fit snugly in the notch between the two smaller sapphires that decorated the copper band. The craftsmanship was amateurish but still beautiful; if only for the care that had clearly gone into their creation. She pocketed them, figuring they’d make good proof of completion for the duc, and returned to helping.  It wasn’t long before Alessa and Pellanne were interred together with solemnity and respect. Revena spoke the burial rites with the wailing of the cean gŵla rising and falling in the background, finally fading into silence as she finished the rites and the spirits disappeared.

They all stood there a moment longer, the silence almost as haunting as the song. Sagani finally turned and headed back up the tunnel, gesturing for the them to follow. They’d seen to the dead, time to worry about the living.

~~o~~

It took a few more hours of searching, a couple wrong turns, and at least one frayed temper, but they did find the opening the cave people must have used for raiding. It was more of a crack, really, and an uncomfortably tight squeeze for some, but it was a way out.

They found themselves on a rolling hill near sunset, and quickly made for the nearest house to figure out where the hel they were. The poor farmer, who didn’t know what to make of this group, explained they were two hours’ travel outside Barda before before graciously offering to let them spend the night in his barn, given the hour. They accepted, and Revena prayed a blessing over the household for such kindness.

Tired as she was, it took a while for Sagani to fall asleep. She was worried--and slightly guilty--about Itumaak, but finally convinced herself he’d be fine. And she had enough money to compensate the innkeeper for any damage a bored fox might cause to the room.

They made for Barda first thing in the morning, settled up, and went their separate ways. Sagani reunited with Itumaak and gave him several strips of jerky to apologize for her long absence, which seemed to mollify the fox. She cleaned up and put on fresh clothes before heading to meet the duc.

He was shocked and impressed by her tale, convinced by the rings she brought that the cean gŵla had been the unfortunate lovers. “I can never thank you enough for your help, or your Lady for sparing so able an adventurer.” He nodded to a servant, who produced a small pouch of coin, and picked up the rings to offer back. “Keep them as part of your reward, ac? I regret I cannot spare more, for your travails, but our town has hit hardships recently....”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Sagani assured him, looking at the rings as they rested on her palm. Something about the way they glinted made her think there was magic of some sort involved, but even if not, giving them to Adi would be fun. “I know someone who can use them.”

[capriswritingnartshenanigans]

Irradiate My Heart, Chapter 3: Finally, Investigations Started, and Reunions Planned

SFW. John Hancock/Fem Sole Survivor (Arabeth) slow burn. Words: 1681. Catch the entire series on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14578878/chapters/33689385

Chapter 2: https://capriswritingnartshenanigans.tumblr.com/post/175661692131/vault-tec-the-memory-den-and-synths

November 2, 2287

While Arabeth had immediately wanted to get to searching for Shaun upon returning to Diamond City on the 30th, she, Piper, Nick, and Dogmeat needed rest. Piper and Nick also had to work on their own jobs (with some of Arabeth's help for both) before heading out on quite possibly a big expedition.

This small period of rest also had some talking. A lot of talking, especially about Arabeth herself. She admitted to being a medical student, who was nearly done with her degree when everything… went to hell.

Nick and Piper had quickly agreed that she could provide a lot of help to the wasteland if she ever wanted to after finding Shaun. It was certainly food for thought; one of her major reasons for becoming a doctor was to help people, after all. She didn't think more about it, yet, though… still too fresh, too painful. She spent a lot of time exploring and counting down time till the investigation got back on its feet.

When it finally did, however… she quickly found herself fighting the wish that it hadn't.

~~~

Mmm, ‘jackass’ is a rather polite word for Mayor McDonough, Arabeth decided quite quickly into her conversation with the piggish man. It also rapidly became clear to her that the Mayor was protecting Kellogg for some reason… he continuously made excuses as to why she shouldn't look further into his disappearance, even after telling him how Kellogg… kidnapped Shaun.

It quite honestly took all of her willpower to not continue questioning him on his odd behavior, but she had a feeling it'd result in nothing less than getting the entire Diamond City crawling up her ass 24/7.

Firming her grip on the key as the poor excuse of an elevator lowers back down to the rest of the city, she finds herself having another round of knots come into her stomach; God only knows what she'll find in Kellogg’s apartment. What if the Mayor is right, and this is all a moot point?

No, no, I can't think like that, she scolds herself mentally. I have to keep going. For Shaun. For Nate. For me.

The trudge up the stairs to where Nick waits causes her stomach to bottom out, just like it had the last time. Who the hell thought it was a great, absolutely fantastic idea to make a long staircase with no railing? Arabeth silently hopes that whatever genius engineer who made the staircase didn't also make the water sourcing equipment. She clutches her side when she got to the top, feeling a small stitch beginning there, but tries to not let it show as she makes her way to Nick. Gonna get in shape soon enough if I keep this up, she thinks to herself. Not like it's avoidable by a common wastelander; if her body didn't start shaping up soon, she’ll be lucky to continue surviving out here.

“Are we in luck, then?” Nick asks, nodding to the Vault Boy keychain in her hand. She releases it as she holds the key up for his viewing, grinning slightly.

“It sure seems so.”

“Good, good, I knew you had it in you. I'll give you the honors.” He waves towards the rusty, sheet-metal door as he speaks. She nods, trying to do her best to steel her nerves. You've got this. You have no choice but to have this.

She opens the door.

And it's… not as dark or decrepid or even alarming as she expected it to be. The apartment looks rather nice compared to what people “down on the green” tend to live in. It's a small (well, perfectly sized for someone living alone) apartment with a small set of stairs leading up to what she guesses is a loft. She hears Nick and Dogmeat come in after her, and the creak of the door closing. “Alright… Let's have a look around and see if we can find anything Kellogg left behind.”

Arabeth nods, and draws her 10 millimeter just to be on the safe side. She heads up to the loft first, and finds she's right about it being such, as it only holds a bed and a small bureau. She snags the handcuffs and flip lighter sitting on it for later, but after a quick look around, she finds nothing of interest to them up there. “Nothing up here, Nick. You find anything yet?” She asks as she begins to descend the stairs down to the small living area.

“Not a thing. Doesn't this place seem small to you?... Figure a guy like Kellogg would think bigger.” She finds him rifling around the couch and its nearby nightstands, then looks around for something else to check.

“Yeah. Big egos tend to call for big things. Bet there's a hidden space here… Somewhere…”

“My thoughts exactly.” She goes to the desk she skipped by earlier, and begins checking around it for anything. She finds a few more cases of ammo in one drawer, and sets it on top of the desk for grabbing when they leave. Frowning, she finds nothing in the drawers. No, she finds nothing until she looks underneath the raggedy metal desk. There she finds a button concealed in the corner where the desk top meets the drawers.

“Ah-hah!” With a soft cry of eagerness and huds-pah, she mashes it. A loud, grating scrape goes through the room as a sheet of metal walling pulls back to reveal a small room of supplies and other interesting bits. Nick quickly stands up straight, turning towards the now revealed room.

“Well… That's one way to hide a room.” He briskly makes his way over to it with Arabeth right at his heels. Upon entering it, she quickly sees that there's far more to this room than she originally thought: a well-kept plush chair is centered in the middle, alongside it a side table with high-end cigars and Gwinnette Stout beers. In the far back, she sees an equipment tuner, a few shelves of tools, and some medical supplies as well as food rations and back up ammo.

“San Francisco Sunlights, Gwinnette Stout… A regular man-cave. A rich man’s man-cave.”

“Yep, quite a distinctive brand, alright. But it won't lead us anywhere on its own, though.” Arabeth frowns at his words, before grabbing a nearby duffel bag and quickly booting the supplies into it. “Well, he certainly won't be needing those… Let me see if-”

An excited flurry of barking cuts him off as Dogmeat runs into the room like a bat out of hell. He gives the cigars a furious sniffing, before going back to the room's entrance and whining at Arabeth, stamping his paws hurriedly.

“You… You can track him, boy?” She quickly asks, a ball of excitement forming in her chest. He barks loudly again, getting into an eager crouch, before flinging himself towards the door. She and Nick look at each other for a moment, before they get to moving after him. She nearly forgets the ammo in her hurry out the door, but she remembers in time and bee-lines back inside to grab it. When she's back outside, she sees Nick and Dogmeat waiting for her at the edge of the stairs. “Let's go get Piper and our supplies, then we'll go find that son of a bitch!”

~Three hours later…

After stopping at Piper’s and carefully (but speedily) packing for the search for Kellogg, the three plus Dogmeat set out at a good pace with plenty of sunlight left. Dogmeat led them for a near full three hours across the wasteland, back towards an area a little ways south of Sanctuary. They passed through a few subway and train check stations, one of which had clear signs of a fight and Kellogg being injured. They passed through a few areas with some unsavory creatures (Piper is sure she'll never get the smell of rotting brahmin out of her coat), and finally to somewhere Arabeth knew a little about.

Fort Hagen. It was a fort Nate had reported to quite a few times in their relationship, especially for medical check-ups and tests. It had once stood so stoically and resolutely to the surrounding areas, but now… it's once intimidating high, steel fences are now rusted and busted, and most can sneak through them with ease. Its medical center stands over-taken by horribly large mosquitoes and the elements, with much of its upper floors caved in from two centuries of no upkeep. Fort Hagen even stands crumbling, its exterior slowly being taken over by vines and foundation cracking.

Fort Hagen is no longer a thing to admire, a building to be impressed by. It's just like everything else in the wasteland from her time: decaying and wasting. She swallows harshly as she continues to look over it, the sunset coloring it in dark pinks and vibrant oranges. She just stares for a bit, thinking, considering.

“Hey, Blue? Are you okay?” She snaps out of her daze when Piper begins to shake her shoulder, and quickly tries to plaster on a smile. She has to be okay. There's no room to not be.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. It's just… It's weird to see this building so in disarray, is all.” Arabeth watches Piper nod unconvincingly, her concerned expression still present. Arabeth looks down amd pushes past her to stand by Nick and the now resting Dogmeat. “What's the plan, Nick?”

“Well, I think our canine friend deserves a well-earned break while we go deal with the… unsavory characters no doubt lurking in this place. We need to be very careful, Arabeth. If Kellogg’s here, he's not going without a fight.”

“I doubt he'll go willingly at all-”

“Yeah, well, it's three people against one, and if need be we could call for some more help.” Piper comes up beside them, voice overly confident, though her face betrays her nervousness; probably why she turned away from them.

Arabeth takes a deep breath, and readies her now well-modded trusty 10 millimeter. It's time. Time for a Reunion.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago My RSS feeds from a decade ago, a snapshot of gadget blogging when that was a thing

Rob Beschizza:

I chanced upon an ancient backup of my RSS feed subscriptions, a cold hard stone of data from my time at Wired in the mid-2000s. The last-modified date on the file is December 2007. I wiped my feeds upon coming to Boing Boing thenabouts: a fresh start and a new perspective.

What I found, over 212 mostly-defunct sites, is a time capsule of web culture from a bygone age—albeit one tailored to the professional purpose of cranking out blog posts about consumer electronics a decade ago. It's not a picture of a wonderful time before all the horrors of Facebook and Twitter set in. This place is not a place of honor. No highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. But perhaps some of you might like a quick tour, all the same.

The "Main" folder, which contains 30 feeds, was the stuff I actually wanted (or needed) to read. This set would morph over time. I reckon it's easy to spot 2007's passing obsessions from the enduring interests.

↬ Arts and Letters Daily: a minimalist blog of links about smartypants subjects, a Drudge for those days when I sensed a third digit dimly glowing in my IQ. But for the death of founder Denis Dutton, it's exactly the same as it was in 2007! New items daily, but the RSS feed's dead.

↬ Boing Boing. Still around, I hear.

↬ Brass Goggles. A dead feed for a defunct steampunk blog (the last post was in 2013) though the forums seem well-stocked with new postings.

↬ The Consumerist. Dead feed, dead site. Founded in 2005 by Joel Johnson at Gawker, it was sold to Consumer Reports a few years later, lost its edge there, and was finally shuttered (or summarily executed) just a few weeks ago.

↬ Bibliodyssey. Quiescent. Updated until 2015 with wonderful public-domain book art scans and commentary. A twitter account and tumblr rolled on until just last year. There is a book to remember it by should the bits rot.

↬ jwz. Jamie Zawinski's startling and often hilariously bleak reflections on culture, the internet and working at Netscape during the dotcom boom. This was probably the first blog that led me to visit twice, to see if there was more. And there still is, almost daily.

↬ Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society. Curios and weirdness emerging from the dust and foul fog of old books, forbidden history and the more speculative reaches of science. So dead the domain is squatted. Creator Josh Foer moved on to Atlas Obscura.

↬ The Tweney Review. Personal blog of my last supervisor at Wired, Dylan Tweney, now a communications executive. It's still going strong!

↬ Strange Maps. Dead feed, dead site, though it's still going as a category at Big Think. Similar projects proliferate now on social media; this was the wonderful original. There was a book.

↬ BLDGBLOG. Architecture blog, posting since 2004 with recent if rarer updates. A fine example of tasteful web brutalism, but I'm no longer a big fan of cement boxes and minimalism with a price tag.

↬ Dethroner. A men's self-care and fashion blog, founded by Joel Johnson, of the tweedy kind that became wildly and effortlessly successful not long after he gave up on it.

↬ MocoLoco. This long-running design blog morphed visually into a magazine in 2015. I have no idea why I liked it then, but indie photoblogs' golden age ended long ago and it's good to see some are thriving.

↬ SciFi Scanner. Long-dead AMC channel blog, very likely the work of one or two editors and likely lost to tidal corporate forces rather than any specific failure or event.

↬ Cult of Mac. Apple news site from another Wired News colleague of mine, Leander Kahney, and surely one of the longest-running at this point. Charlie Sorrel, who I hired at Wired to help me write the Gadget blog, still pens articles there.

↬ Ectoplasmosis. After Wired canned its bizarre, brilliant and unacceptably weird Table of Malcontents blog, its editor John Brownlee (who later joined Joel and I in editing Boing Boing Gadgets) and contributor Eliza Gauger founded Ectoplasmosis: the same thing but with no hysterical calls from Conde Nast wondering what the fuck is going on. It was glorious, too: a high-point of baroque indie blogging in the age before Facebook (and I made the original site design). Both editors later moved onto other projects (Magenta, Problem Glyphs); Gauger maintains the site's archives at tumblr. It was last updated in 2014.

↬ Penny Arcade. Then a webcomic; now a webcomic and a media and events empire.

↬ Paul Boutin. While working at Wired News, I'd heard a rumor that he was my supervisor. But I never spoke to him and only ever received a couple of odd emails, so I just got on with the job until Tweney was hired. His site and its feed are long-dead.

↬ Yanko Design. Classic blockquote chum for gadget bloggers.

↬ City Home News. A offbeat Pittburgh News blog, still online but lying fallow since 2009.

↬ Watchismo. Once a key site for wristwatch fans, Watchismo was folded into watches.com a few years ago. A couple of things were posted to the feed in 2017, but its time has obviously passed.

↬ Gizmodo. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Engadget. Much has changed, but it's still one of the best tech blogs.

↬ Boing Boing Gadgets. Site's dead, though the feed is technically live as it redirects to our "gadgets" tag. Thousands of URLs there succumbed to bit-rot at some point, but we have plans to merge its database into Boing Boing's and revive them.

↬ Gear Factor. This was the gadget review column at Wired Magazine, separate from the gadget blog I edited because of the longtime corporate divorce between Wired's print and online divisions. This separation had just been resolved at the time I began working there, and the two "sides" -- literally facing offices in the same building -- were slowly being integrated. The feed's dead, but with an obvious successor, Gear.

↬ The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Required reading at the time, and very much a thing of its time. Now vaguely repulsive.

↬ i09. This brilliant sci-fi and culture blog deserved more than to end up a tag at Gizmodo.

↬ Science Daily: bland but exhaustive torrent of research news, still cranking along.

The "Essentials" Folder was material I wanted to stay on top of, but with work clearly in mind: the background material for systematically belching out content at a particular point in 2007.

↬ Still alive are The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, UMPC Portal (the tiny laptop beat!), PC Watch, Techblog, TechCrunch, UberGizmo, Coolest Gadgets, EFF Breaking News, Retro Thing, CNET Reviews, New Scientist, CNET Crave, and MAKE Magazine.

↬ Dead or quiescent: GigaOm (at least for news), Digg/Apple, Akihabara News, Tokyomango, Inside Comcast, Linux Devices (Update: reincarnated at linuxgizmos.com), and Uneasy Silence.

Of the 23 feeds in the "press releases" folder, 17 are dead. Most of the RSS no-shows are for companies like AMD and Intel, however, who surely still offer feeds at new addresses. Feeds for Palm, Nokia and pre-Dell Alienware are genuine dodos. These were interesting enough companies, 10 years ago.

PR Newswire functions as a veneering service so anyone can pretend to have a big PR department, but it is (was?) also legitimately used by the big players as a platform so I monitored the feeds there. They're still populated, but duplicate one another, and it's all complete garbage now. (It was mostly garbage then.)

My "Gadgets and Tech" folder contained the army of late-2000s blogs capitalizing on the success of Gizmodo, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, et al. Back in the day, these were mostly one (or two) young white men furiously extruding commentary on (or snarky rewrites of) press releases, with lots of duplication and an inchoate but seriously-honored unspoken language of mutual respect and first-mover credit. Those sites that survived oftentimes moved to listicles and such: notionally superior and more original content and certainly more sharable on Facebook, but unreadably boring. However, a few old-timey gadget bloggers are still cranking 'em out' in web 1.5 style. And a few were so specialized they actually had readers who loved them.

Still alive: DailyTech, technabob, CdrInfo.com, EverythingUSB, Extremetech, GearFuse, Gizmag, Gizmodiva, Hacked Gadgets, How to Spot A Psychopath/Dans' Data, MobileBurn, NewLaunches, OhGizmo!, ShinyShiny, Stuff.tv, TechDigest, TechDirt, Boy Genius Report, The Red Ferret Journal, Trusted Reviews, Xataca, DigiTimes, MedGadget, Geekologie, Tom's Hardware, Trendhunter, Japan Today, Digital Trends, All About Symbian (Yes, Symbian!), textually, cellular-news, TreeHugger, dezeen.

Dead: jkkmobile.com, Business Week Online, About PC (why), Afrigadget (unique blog about inventors in Africa, still active on FaceBook), DefenseTech, FosFor (died 2013), Gearlog, Mobile-Review.com (but apparently reborn as a Russian language tech blog!), Robot's Dreams, The Gadgets Weblog, Wireless Watch Japan, Accelerating Future, Techopolis, Mobile Magazine, eHome Upgrade, camcorderinfo.com (Update: it became http://Reviewed.com), Digital Home Thoughts (farewell), WiFi Network News (farewell), Salon: Machinist, Near Future Lab, BotJunkie (twitter), and CNN Gizmos.

I followed 18 categories at Free Patents Online, and the site's still alive, though the RSS feeds haven't had any new items since 2016.

In the "news" folder, my picks were fairly standard stuff: BBC, CNET, digg/technology, PC World, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, and a bunch of Yahoo News feeds. The Digg feed's dead; they died and were reborn.

The "Wired" feed folder comprised all the Wired News blogs of the mid-2000s. All are dead. 27B Stroke 6, Autopia, Danger Room, Epicenter, Gadget Lab, Game|Life, Geekdad, Listening Post, Monkey Bites, Table of Malcontents, Underwire, Wired Science.

These were each basically one writer or two and were generally folded into the established mazagine-side arrangements as the Age of Everyone Emulating Gawker came to an end. The feed for former EIC Chris Anderson's personal blog survives, but hasn't been updated since his era. Still going strong is Bruce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond, albeit rigged as a CMS tag rather than a bona fide site of its own.

Still alive from my 2007 "Science" folder are Bad Astronomy (Phil Plait), Bad Science (Ben Goldacre), Pharyngula (PZ Myers) New Urban Legends, NASA Breaking News, and The Panda's Thumb.

Finally, there's a dedicated "iPhone" folder. This was not just the hottest toy of 2007. It was all that was holy in consumer electronics for half a decade. Gadget blogging never really had a golden age, but the iPhone ended any pretense that there were numerous horses in a race of equal potential. Apple won.

Still alive are 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors, MacSlash, AppleInsider and Daring Fireball. Dead are TUAW, iPhoneCentral, and the iPhone Dev Wiki.

Of all the sites listed here, I couldn't now be paid but to read a few. So long, 2007.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/my-rss-feeds-from-a-decade-ago.html

[sunlit-helix]

learning how computers work again. Very long post about CPU research for a workstation.

since im rambling about computers im typing out my thought process and maybe ill link it to a few nerds to see if my conclusions make sense or not.

Purposes for building my computer as a workstation:

Primary Goals: Efficiency at 3D rendering. Primarily using C4D, but in the long run, probably Blender. 4K footage processing.

Secondary Goals: Efficient in Adobe suite. Primarily After effects, Premiere, Media encoder.

Tertiary goals: Gaming.

My first question was: Should I render using my CPU or my GPU? Several quick google searches told me the choice did not matter much, it was mostly project dependent. Well I already have a decent GPU in my gtx 970, so let’s put off buying a new video card for now, and get a really good processor

Second question is:Single-Core or Multi-Core focus?

I read two articles. this one and this one

They both give CPU recommendations based on different factors. I learned something important, some processors are better at editing and gaming, and others are better at rendering and exporting. Basically, some processors are better at doing one thing really well(single-core speed), while others are better at doing lots of things somewhat well (multi-core speed).

I compared CPU’s by cinebench score. I use Cinema 4D for most of my rendering, so using a benchmark for telling me how fast something is in the program I use? pretty good. These are the charts I stared at for 27 years.

The articles I read suggested getting processors that are high end in both single core and multicore, so they’re just generally good at both things. Well, trouble is, those are really expensive. Processors that prioritize just one or the other are a bit cheaper, funny enough.

So for options under $1,000 I was deciding between the i9-9900k and the Threadripper 2950x, along with the other threadrippers. This took a long time to decide. the i9 is about $500 while the threadripper is $800. on paper the cinebench score is about 1,000 points higher, which about 38% higher. It took me some research to find out if that actually means it’s 38% faster at rendering and it turns out that’s true. But the ‘proof’ is a little shaky, I watched this video (x) with very few views, but actually watching the benchmark as it’s happening is convincing enough. If I’m going to be rendering videos in 4K I like, 40% is big. that’s the difference between a project taking 10 hours and 14 hours. 20 hours and 28 hours.

Here’s where things get a little more subjective.

The stats didn’t totally convince me. I mean, i can render 3D images out as PNG sequences, meaning that I can render a bunch of images overnight, and if it’s not done, I can use the computer during the day, and start rendering where I left off the night before. Having a computer that’s fast at rendering isn’t *Super* important for just rendering.

Likewise, Having a desktop that’s super good at single core either isn’t the most important thing ever. every 3d modelling program has ‘subdivision surfaces’ meaning that you can preview and edit models at lower resolution and render them at higher ones than the ones you’re editing. I could see having a good single core processing being good at sculpting and certain simulations, but... I hate sculpting. I hate character design in 3D in general. rotopology fucking sucks.

But one thing I remembered is that you are constantly rendering things as you’re editing them, while adjusting lighting and shaders. Having a better processor for rendering is going to massively speed up the workflow, not just the exporting and rendering process. 

Also, I’ve been... pretty content with the speed of editing -not rendering- in general with my 3D programs. Sometimes my scenes get too complicated but I can usually tell you why and adjust my viewport, and hide objects to compensate. So let me think, if I’m pretty content with the speed already, what’s the point of getting something spectacularly good?

Let’s compare single core Speed, AKA speed of editing, not rendering, using Cinebench scores.

The average score of the processor I’m currently using for editing, the  i5-6300HQ, is 131

The speed of the threadripper 179

The score of the I9 is 218

So whatever I pick, It’s going to be faster. And not constrained to a shitty laptop.

Meanwhile, Let’s compare the scores for multi-core processing.

the i5, my laptop, is about 466 

the i9 is about 2,000

the threadripper 2950x is about 3,200.

no matter what I get it’s a HUGE leap, but the threadripper is an even bigger leap over the i9. So if my issue is rendering, then this solves that issue. Still funny though, the I9 is far from a bad choice, it is after all, 4x faster than my current renderer. But it’s also not 6x faster. It is $300 cheaper though.

And for single core rendering, the difference between 179 and 218 isn’t huge. It’s not minor either, but it’s not nearly as big as the difference in rendering.

So I go back to my original goals. I want a computer to render out 4K footage so I don’t have to rent a render farm, or at least don’t have to do it that much. I don’t want to skimp out on computer parts, but I want things to be within a decent budget to. Waiting till I have the money to get the thread ripper makes the most sense.

BUT WAIT, I JUST SAW A REDDIT COMMENT. it says that it makes more sense to get a good video card than a processor. Well, I thought I solved that problem but I couldn’t find a good benchmark, so let’s research it again. I searched around a bit and finally found a benchmark that can compare CPU’s to GPU’s for rendering. Let’s figure this out once and for all. (article here)

VRAY PROCESSOR SCORES

Vray Video card scores.

I wish that these had prices listed next to them but basically heres my interpretation.

The threadripper 2950x is $800, and renders the benchmark in 40 seconds

the the cards that come close are the 2080TI and the TITAN XP which are both well over $1000.

The cards that beat it are 2 1080 TI’s which together will be over $1,500 and the titan V which is like over $2,000.

So my conclusion is, then, this processor about as good as all these cards but at a significantly cheaper price. This allows me to skip buying a good video card, and instead I’ll just put the 970 thats in my current laptop into my new computer. And in terms of gaming? This thing has been bottle necked by my decade-old processor the AMD phenom 2 x4 black edition that’s even worse than my laptop processor. I’m going to get a performance boost just by having my GPU free from a shitty processor.

Also while researching I just found out there is a benchmark site for blender, and it lists two gtx 970′s as having a time of 39 seconds which is really close to the thread ripper. So I suppose, then, an option would be to get a worse processor and another 970, but running two GPU’s has it’s own problems isn’t significantly cheaper than just getting one processor to handle the problems. Most games don’t take advantage of two video cards, many rendering programs only use the CPU and not the GPU. I haven’t done much research but I’m fairly sure having two video cards wouldn’t help render anything in media encoder/after effects any better. Having a better processor has more versatility than having two video cards, if they have the same speed. At least, that’s my conclusion for now, I haven’t found anything to prove otherwise.

Lastly, I’ve some research told me that adobe doesn’t support AMD processors as well as intel. this could be an issue since I’ll be putting everything through after effects and then exporting in media encoder, and maybe using premiere. So I looked up some benchmarks on that.

Seems fine to me.

Perhaps this amount of research has been overkill but It’s what I need to do to justify spending this much money on something. It’s worth researching because your individual needs might not be the same as everyone elses. I think the 2950x is my best option for rendering right now while still being good at single core stuff even if it’s not the “best” it’s still good.

It does mean the build will be more expensive though, so I’m still expecting to wait at least 4 more months savings before I build this machine.

I still have to research motherboards, Psu’s, ram, those PCI storage cards that are apparently faster than SSD’s and cheaper. I have a case picked out but since those are largely subjective I don’t like, have to decide on one yet either.

If you bothered to read this, thanks for reading and let me know if my reasoning is alright or bad!

[azuleif]

11 Questions!

I was tagged by @gardenoftulip, @nessajjewell and @rueitae to answer some questions. Thank you all, you made me feel special! 💚💙

Rules:

1.always post the rules

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you

3. Write 11 questions of your own

4. Tag 11 people you want to get to know better

Sorry this got a bit long!

Questions from @gardenoftulip

1. Name 3 things in nature you find the most beautiful? The sky, stars and animals.

2. What's the funniest way you've been injured? I'm clumsy. I could fill an entire post with stupid and funny ways I've gotten hurt! The most recent though, was probably trying to walk across a clear living room floor with a dead leg. I tripped over literally nothing and managed to sprain pretty much everything possible in my ankle! I spent 12 weeks in a walking cast... 

3. If you could ask your pet 3 questions, what would they be? Can you please exist? 😂 I don't have a pet, sadly. I would LOVE a cat though.

4. What are your pet peeves? Hmm, tough one. Maybe when people interrupt me for no reason when I'm watching or listening to something. Especially if I have headphones in. Can't you see I'm busy??? I'm 100% the kind of person that aggressively pauses my show until they're done.

5. What's the first thing you ate today? Toast! With marmite on.

6. What makes you laugh? A lot. It's not hard. But puns and bad jokes are especially a huge weakness of mine.

7. Do you have a hidden talent? If so, what? If I do, it must be really well hidden...

8. What's your zodiac sign? Does it fit your personality? I'll be honest, I have no idea about zodiac stuff. It's not something that interests me So I'm afraid I can't answer.

9. What is your favourite holiday? Any holiday that means I can stay home and not interact.... 😂

10. If you have one, who is your celebrity crush? Yoo Kihyun, the main vocalist from the Kpop group Monsta x. I think Jeremy Shada might be getting there too...

11. If you could be a genius at something, what would it be? Anything? Please? Okay seriously though, I'd have to say music. I love music, but I just don't have the skill for it myself.

Questions from @nessajjewell

1. What is your favourite food? My favourite food changes a lot. I guess the only consistent thing is fresh seasonal fruit?

2. place you've always wanted to go? A tour of Asia would be cool. Or France.

3. Favourite show? J-just one??! Voltron Legendary defender has to be my all time favourite, at the moment at least. But I also love shows like Scorpion, marvel's Gifted, miraculous ladybug, full metal alchemist and Teen titans.

4. Single or nah? Single!

5. Video game you last played? Monster Hunter.

6. Can you do a weird talent? Not that I can think of. What would even class as weird?

7. Tennis shoes or sneakers? Uh oh. I uh... what's the difference??

8. Soda or pop? As in fizzy drinks? I don't tend to drink any.

9. Favourite drink? Coffee! I live off the stuff!

10. What is your favourite hobby? Gaming. As much as I love drawing, it does sometimes get stressful, especially if it isn't working out how I want it too. Gaming is my stress relief and always fun~

11. Is there a store you go to frequently? I'm very introverted, and shops are sooooo stressful for me. I do all shopping online if I can! But I make exceptions for certain comic book, game and merch shops.

And finally, questions from @rueitae

1. Movies that had a great impact on you as a child - you know the ones you vividly remember watching as a kid? There are so many! Eldorado, Sinbad, Osmosis Jones and all the pokémon films really come to mind though.

2. What is your occupation? Or what do you want to do as a career? Tell me about it! My actual job is pretty boring, so I'll talk about my dream job instead! I've always wanted to be in game design. I love designing characters, and I would LOVE to be on a team that creates concept art for games.

3. Spinning rides or up and down rides? I get motion sickness really easily... But having said that, I love spinning rides for as long as I can enjoy them without feeling ill.

4. What is the most neat place you've ever visited? Would you live there? I haven't really travelled much, even within my own country. But I've been to Newcastle a few times to visit family, and I do love it there. I don't think I'd live there though, I'm a country girl and I think the city would overwhelm me too much after the novelty wore off.

5. How did you find your current fandom? My uncle watched Voltron before I did, when it first came out. We're really close and have similar tastes so when he got excited about it, I was definetly interested! I  kept putting it off though, and it wasn't until I kept seeing it on Tumblr through miraculous blogs I follow that I eventually watched it, only a month or two after my uncle did.

6. What's the hottest wing sauce you've ever eaten? I don't really know, sorry! But I do like spicy food.

7. What's the fic/art you've always wanted to write/draw but haven't gotten to for any reason. Oc? Original story? Tell me all about it! Oooh boy. I am ALWAYS coming up with story ideas. I have an entire universe of stories that I've wanted to write and draw since I was 13! I've got entire timelines and realities planned out, and even every single side character has concept art!

My favourite story of mine at the moment is probably Thieves Heart. It's so much fun to draw! And I love coming up with new ideas for it. I even love the designs I have for my main characters, Kyrad and Chiel, which is a rarity.

Kyrad is a thief because it's his family business.

Chiel is a thief because she loves the thrill of it all.

They keep crossing paths, and while Chiel adores the competition and might have a growing crush on her newfound rival, Kyrad isn't so keen. He'd much rather steal in peace.

He does have his eye on a cute but sassy civilian though, and has no idea she's actually the very same thief stealing all his hauls!

There's so much more I could say, amd although I really want to enthuse about all of my stories, its kind of nerve wracking and I also know that once I start, you literally can't shut me up. I get carried away easily...

I do keep toying with the idea of starting a webtoon, but my own lack of confidence holds me back I think.

8. Comfort food. if there is one snack/meal that is your go to- what is it? Maybe it's a drink? Any kind of hot food including rice, noodles or soup works for me. It could be my mum's chicken soup, it could be instant ramen. It depends a lot on my mood.

9. One person you really look up to as a role model. It's... really hard choosing just one person. I can't choose only one from my family, so I'll have to go for a friend of mine instead. She's a good 10 years older then me, but age doesn't matter. She's such a dear friend and I don't know what I'd do without her! She's helped me through so much. She has a lot of the same issues I have, and seeing how strong and amazing she is really inspires me. She's helped me with my anxiety in such a huge way, and if I could be a fraction of the person she is I'd be so happy. I want to help people like she's helped me through my problems. ❤

10. Favourite colour combination? Maybe pastel blue and silver?

11. What is your favourite outfit? That one clothing combination that makes you feel hip or comfortable or both. Just jeans and my Star Labs hoodie. My hoodie especially is my favourite piece of clothing and is so comfortable, it's baggy, it's soft and warm. I miss it every time it goes in the wash!

Again, thank you so much for this, it's been fun! I'm sorry it got so long.

I'd love to tag some people to answer some of my questions but not only have I spent a little too long on this already, but I'm a nervous wreck when it comes to tagging people So... oh well?

[shirlleycoyle]

What Makes a GPU a GPU, and When Did We Start Calling it That?

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Names change. Perhaps the most jarring element of the recent, widely reported “alien” activity isn’t so much descriptions of sonic boomless sonic flight but that UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are now called UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).

Companies rebrand; Google became Alphabet and the Washington Football Team decided that was a good idea. With technology, terminology tends to become antiquated as industries progress beyond understanding their own achievements.

With that in mind, let’s consider how changes to the GPU (now the graphics processing unit) acronym and how it harkened a new era of computing applications, while frustrating an obvious customer base.

An ad from Tektronix Interactive Graphics, an alleged forebearer of GPU technology. Or were they?

Most of the history of GPUs doesn’t really count

How mainstream consumers came to expect graphic interfaces to work with computers is a long, fascinating history covered by many books and at least one excellent made-for-TV movie.

While Windows and Apple were gaining acceptance for their point-and-click interface, hardcore computer users, i.e. gamers, needed those points and clicks to register a lot faster. They also wanted the graphics to look more realistic. Then they started asking for features like online multiplayer, instant chat, and a slew of other features we expect nowadays, but seemed like a lot in the early to mid-1990s.

One could contribute the increase in technically demanding games to the 1993 classic Doom, as well as its successor Quake, which drove consumer interest in dedicated graphics cards. However, after talking with an expert that’s watched the field develop from the beginning, the history of GPUs just isn’t that simple.

Dr. Jon Peddie first got involved in the computer graphics industry in the 1960s when he was part of a team that made 3D topographic maps from aerial photography, leading to the creation of his company, Data Graphics. By the early 1980s, he was considering retirement and a career writing sci-fi (sounds nice) when he noticed an explosion in the field that was hard to ignore. Practical applications for high performance graphics were initially driven by CAD (computer-aided design) and GIS (geographic information system)  companies, though the video game explosion of the 80s would change that.

“Gaming was (and still is) the driver because of the volume of the customers,” Peddie said in an email. “The other users of 3D and GPUs were engineering (CAD, and molecular modeling), and the movies. But that market had (in the 80s and 90s) maybe 100,000 users total. Consumer 3D had millions. But, the pro market would pay more—thousands to tens of thousands, whereas the consumer would pay a few hundred. So the trick was to build enough power into a chip that could, in a final product, be sold for a few hundred.”

At this point in computing history, the acronym GPU had been introduced into the tech lexicon. This blast-from-the-past article from a 1983 edition of Computerworld details the Tektronix line of graphics terminals. But if you look a little closer, GPU didn’t yet stand for “graphic processing unit”. Instead, this iteration stood for “graphic processor unit”. Is there even a difference?

“None,” Peddie explains. “Tense at best case. English is not the first language for a lot of people who write for (on) the web.”

Okay, fair enough. But this isn’t actually the problem or even the interesting element of GPU history to consider, Peddie points out. It’s the fact that before 1997, the GPU didn’t actually exist, even if the acronym was being used. A proper GPU, it turns out, requires a transform and lighting (T&L) engine.

“Why shouldn’t, couldn’t, a graphics chip or board developed before 1997 be called a GPU?” Peddie asks. “It does graphics (albeit only in 2D space). Does it process the graphics? Sure, in a manner of speaking. It draws lines and circles—that’s processing. It repositions polygons on the screen—that’s processing. So the big distinction, that is a GPU must do full 3D (and that requires a T&L).”

Ultimately, like much of tech history, the story quickly becomes about competing claims between an industry leader and a forgotten innovator.

The Glint 3D graphics chip by 3Dlabs, arguably the first company to produce a true GPU. Largely used for “high-end 3D CAD applications”, it was released in November 1994 (still not the first “real” GPU but still a cool graphics chip). Though first to market, 3Dlabs would not enjoy the economies of scale available to their competitors, like Nvidia. Image: Jon Peddie

Bragging rights are claimed by the winners

Let’s get this out of the way since it’s a common mistake. The first PlayStation was not the first mass market GPU. That belief comes from the powerful marketing efforts of Sony and Toshiba. As Peddie explains, “The original PlayStation [had] a geometry transformation engine (GTE), which was a co-processor to a 2D chip that was incorrectly labeled (by marketing) as a GPU.”

Marketing is a big element in this era of GPUs, which is just before they actually came out. The breakthrough for a true 3D GPU was on the horizon and plenty of companies wanted to get there first. But the honor would go to a little outfit from the UK imaginitely called 3Dlabs. The specific innovation that gave 3Dlabs the title of first accurately named GPU was their development of a two-chip graphics processor that included a geometry processor known as a transform and lighting (T&L) engine. Compared with their competitors, 3Dlabs focused on the CAD market though it was trying to make inroads with the larger consumer market by partnering with Creative Labs.

The smaller size and professional focus of 3Dlabs meant there were still plenty of “firsts” to be had in the consumer GPU market.

The graphics-card sector was incredibly busy during this period, with one-time big names such as Matrox, S3, and 3Dfx competing for mindshare among Quake players.

But the winners write the history books, and a dominant player emerged during this period. By late 1999, Nvidia was ready to release the first mass consumer GPU with integrated T&L, known as the GeForce 256.

“That, by Nvidia’s mythology, was the introduction of the GPU, and they claim the invention [of it],” Peddie explains. “So you can slice and dice history as you like. Nvidia is at $10 billion on its way to $50 billion, and no one remembers 3Dlabs.”

(Side note: Nvidia is and always will be a noun and not an acronym despite the wide belief it is one.)

Pretty soon, the market would be loaded with competing GPUs each aiming at their own particular market niche. Canadian manufacturer ATI Technologies, which was later purchased by Nvidia’s biggest competitor AMD, attempted to differentiate their entry into the market by calling their GPU a VPU, or video processor unit, even though they were the same thing. This effort didn’t last.

“ATI gave up, they couldn’t stand up to Nvidia’s superior (and I mean that) marketing skills, volume, sexiness, and relentless push,” Peddie says.

By the early 2000s, major players like Nvidia had dominated the consumer market, quickly becoming villains to gamers everywhere. Interestingly enough, this exact market consolidation helps explain exactly why high-end graphics cards are so hard to find nowadays.

Behold! One of the most coveted items in the world. And it’s not even the top of the line.

So who do we blame for that GPU shortage, anyway?

If you’ve gotten this far into an article on GPU history and naming convention, I bet you’re wondering when I’m going to get to the Great GPU Shortage of 2020 (and probably beyond).

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the gist is this: the price of higher-end GPUs has exploded in recent months, if you can even find them.

For example, the folks over at Nvidia have three models of graphics cards that are generally sought after by gamers:

RTX 3090: MSRP $1,499

RTX 3080: MSRP $699

RTX 3070: MSRP $499

The individual merits of these models can be (and very much are) debated relative to their given price points and performance. However, scarcity has made the resale markets for these GPUs shoot through the roof as supply becomes scarce. Current listings price the middle-tier RTX 3080 at $1,499, while the 3090 and 3070 are nearly impossible to find. One listing for a 3090 on eBay is over $3,000 at time of writing.

The AMD line of graphics cards also deserve a mention here. Though not as highly sought after because, traditionally, they haven’t been as powerful, AMD has nonetheless been affected by the supply chain limitations for GPU manufacturing. Like the Nvidia line, the AMD RX 6700, 6800, and 6900 models have seen similar price spikes in the secondary market with most models fetching more than twice their original values in resale markets.

(One extreme example of this: Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, bought a refurbished AMD RX 570 for slightly more than $100 in mid-2019, which he used in a piece about reusing old workstations. That same card, which is basically a budget model and was already a little old at the time I purchased it, currently sells for $599 on Newegg’s website.)

Clearly there is heavy demand and capitalism is usually pretty good at filling that gap. Like many things wrong with 2020, a good bit of the blame is being placed on COVID-19. Manufacturing hubs in China and Taiwan, along with most of the world, had to shut down. While much of the work in hardware manufacturing can be automated, the delicate nature of GPUs requires some degree of human interaction.

A flow chart describing the current shape of the GPU industry. Image: Jon Peddie

Still, this explanation oversimplifies processes that have been trending in the graphics industry long before COVID-19 hit. Again, I’ll let Peddie explain:

About 15 [plus] years ago, the manufacturing pipeline was established for GPU manufacturing (which includes sourcing the raw silicon ingots), slicing and dicing the wafers, testing, packaging, testing again and finally shipping to a customer. All the companies in the pipeline and downstream (the OEM customers who have a similar pipeline) were seeking ways to respond faster, and at the same time minimize their inventory. So, the JIT (just in time) manufacturing model was developed. This relied on everyone in the chain providing accurate forecasts and therefore orders. If one link in the chain broke everyone downstream would suffer … When governments shut down their countries all production ground to a halt – no parts shipped—the pipeline was broken. And, when and if production could be restarted, it would take months to get everyone in sync again.

At the same time people were being sent home to work, and they didn’t have the tools needed to do that. That created a demand for PCs, notebooks especially. [Thirty to forty percent] of PCs have two GPUs in them, so the demand for GPUs increased even more.

And then [crypto] coins started to inflate … Now the miners (people who use GPUs to monitor and report …) were after every and any GPU they could get their hands on. That caused speculators to buy all the graphics boards and offer them at much higher prices. 

So, the supply line got hit with a 1-2-3 punch and was down for the count.

And that was him keeping a long story short. To put it plainly, companies that make GPUs were operating on a thin margin of error without the ability to predict the future. And this applies more to the general market for GPUs while tangentially addressing the higher-end customers.

Another point of frustration to add here was the unfortunate timing of the latest generation of video game consoles in 2020, which also meant a new generation of video games. The highly anticipated PlayStation 5 along with Cyberpunk 2077 was met with numerous supply and technical issues upon launch. Cyberpunk players reported inconsistent experiences largely dependent on hardware the game was being played on. On the differences between the game on a PS4 and a PS5, one YouTuber commented, “At least it’s playable on PS5.”

While Peddie expects the shortage to self-correct by the first quarter of 2022 (hooray …), he is not optimistic about the industry avoiding such missteps in the future.

“The [next] problem will be double-ordering that is going on now and so we have the prospect of a giant slump in the semi market due to excess inventory,” he concludes. “Yin-yang—repeat.”

There is a lot to learn from history even if it’s fairly recent. While it might be tempting to lean into market failures to meet demand, obviously the story is more complicated. Though GPUs have become required for billions on a daily basis, higher performance is left to a few with niche interests.

Still, the larger market should pay attention to frustrated gamers, at least on this point. Their needs push the industry into innovation that becomes standard in more common devices. With each iteration, devices gain a little more of those advanced graphics as they drip down to people who hadn’t noticed them before but now expect it.

After all, if it doesn’t have painstakingly realistic 3D graphics, can we even call it a phone anymore?

What Makes a GPU a GPU, and When Did We Start Calling it That? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/