#when you could get xp versions of everything for years

[songofwizardry]

i miss backwards compatibility so much.

a larger-than-you'd-expect part of my life is spent discovering that i can't access a website/product/feature/what have you because 1 it requires a smartphone app, 2 there won't always be an older version of the app you can download, and 3 my phone is old and can't be updated and can't get the newer OS

[logosbot-tm-fics]

Grumbo people come get some food✨️

One shot that takes place around the time of Mumbo's return to Hermitcraft s9, hope yall enjoy!

Feel free to read here or on Ao3

Thought About You Way Too Much

To say that Grian had missed Mumbo would be an understatement.

In his absence, Grian had found himself struggling to sleep, staying up far past midnight most nights planning or building. As if it would let him avoid the morning when he'd have to face the fact that Mumbo still wasn't there. Each day he’d wake up and stare at the empty base across from him, feeling a stab of pain at the emptiness.

It got so bad that he spent most of his time down by Grumbot, talking to their son from a different universe and longing for the life that other version of them spent together. He felt himself needing Mumbo more and more as time passed, a heavy weight pressing down on him until something eventually cracked. Before he knew it, Grian was creating a summoning circle in hopes that it would bring back the mustached man.

All it did was make him feel hollow, spending another sleepless night sitting between flickering candles and sobbing into his knees.

It wasn't that he didn't understand why Mumbo had taken a break. Mumbo had been on Hermitcraft for years, constantly creating and working hard – it would've honestly been weirder if he never felt the need to take a break. So Grian was happy for him, truly he was, he knew how overwhelming Hermitcraft could become, how burnt out you ended up at times. He was glad that Mumbo had realized that he needed a break, and from the updates he did get, it seemed as if Mumbo was having fun.

He just wished that Mumbo would have brought him along.

Each second without him was painful, and the server just didn't feel the same. He needed his best friend, needed their silly pranks, needed to annoy him. He needed Mumbo.

It should've been startling for Grian to realize that he wasn't just missing Mumbo, that he was longing for him. Somewhere, deep down, Grian knew that he'd always loved him.

So, when Mumbo had discovered the surprise Grian had set up for him, Grian didn’t waste a single second immediately pulling the lever for the XP, and tackled the taller man into a hug, screaming, “YOU’RE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!” as loud as he could.

He felt ecstatic.

Never before had Grian felt as happy as he did, when Mumbo wrapped his arms around him, and whispered, “God, I've missed you.”

Grian could've died right then and there, and that would've been fine. He didn't want to be anywhere else than in Mumbo's arms.

~

The week after, Grian and Mumbo found themselves sitting together under the starry sky. They'd been mucking around, pointing out constellations to each other and making up a few when they couldn't remember more.

At some point, as the coldness of the night truly began to set in, they had inched closer to each other until their shoulders brushed together. It was just for the warmth, they claimed. It was only so that they could hang out for a little longer.

They both knew that it was a lie. They just couldn't stand being apart again.

Then, Grian opened his mouth to speak. "Mumbo, I…" he trailed off, biting his thumb. The moonlight cast long shadows on the ground, making everything feel like a weird dream.

"Yeah?" Mumbo answered. They were so incredibly close, and he could only focus on Grian's leg pressing against his.

Grian looked away, his hair falling over his face. He was grateful for the cover, allowing the layer of curls to hide his blushing cheeks.

"Okay, I just- I think- you really… we should–” He cut himself off with a thick breath, either anxious or frustrated. Maybe it was both. His leg was bouncing, his fingers were threading together. “Why the hell is this so difficult to say, fuck-"

Mumbo simply tilted his head, knocking their shoulders together a little more intentionally this time. A silent show of support.

He smiled, closing his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts. "So, you know how I didn't have the best time when you were gone?" He asked.

Mumbo nodded in reply. "Yeah, I know."

"Well, when you were gone I kinda- realised a few things.” He ran his hand through his hair nervously.

"Like what?"

"Like…how I don't know how to function without you close by, it's almost like I completely stop working." He explained. "Or, how I hate being away from you for a long periods of time, it feels like my heart is getting ripped to pieces." He winced, as if he was feeling that pain in the moment.

Mumbo wanted to wrap his arms around him, to hold him together, to undo the pain. He wanted so badly to protect Grian, even if he wouldn't be particularly good at that. Grian was the better fighter of the two of them, but still…he wanted-

"I also realised how I feel about you," Grian’s words tugged Mumbo from his thoughts with a jolt.

He stared at Grian like he had grown a second head, or like he was hearing the beginnings of a conversation that he had fantasised about so many times in the past few months.

Mumbo had realized a lot of things whilst being away from Grian. Such as, he was so used to having him right there, that it was difficult to understand that he had no one to talk to. That he didn't have Grian to talk to. That he had missed Grian so strongly that it felt as if a piece of his soul had disappeared. (Technically he didn't have a soul, he had half of Grian's, but that was another discussion.)

He’d realised that friends didn’t normally crave each other so deeply and completely. He’d realised that friends didn’t normally want to spend every moment together, for the rest of their lives.

But, putting those words to it? Putting a name to that feeling?

Saying the reason why he missed Grian so badly?

That was something that he hadn’t been able to do for a long time. Not until he saw the surprise party that Grian had set up for his return, so elated by his presence, and even then- he had never been able to say it out loud.

He’d never been able to that word, the one that Grian surely couldn’t mean, even if Mumbo wanted him to so badly–

"I think I've fallen for you, Mumbo."

Oh. Oh… OH! No, this had to be a joke, Grian couldn’t be serious. He-

Mumbo looked over at him with wide eyes. He couldn’t see much of the other man’s face, but the tips of his ears were flushed as he bashfully avoided eye contact. His shoulders were tense, his posture nervous, and their thighs were pressed together so tightly. It was so warm, and Mumbo never wanted to be without that. The way that Grian touched him, it was as if…

...he actually felt the same?

Mumbo had practically short-circuited at the realisation, staring at Grian like a bumbling fool, gaping like a complete and utter idiot. He was in disbelief, wanting to say something. Anything! But…he didn't, his brain couldn’t comprehend what Grian had said, at all.

"Mumbo?" Grian said cautiously. Mumbo hadn't even realized that he was looking at him, directly at him.

He looked regretful, hurt and embarrassed. Like he wanted to take it back immediately.

Like he was being rejected.

Of course he did. He thought Mumbo was rejecting him. He didn’t want that, he didn’t mean that! Why couldn't Mumbo just speak? He needed to, he was ruining everything!

"I- we can forget about this. I understand if you don't feel the same, it's completely fine. I'll get over it eventually-" Grian rambled, fidgeting with some of the feathers in his wings, curling in on himself.

He pulled back, their bodies parting and cold seeping between them.

The shiver that went down his spine was all that Mumbo needed to kick back into gear.

"Grian, w-wait," Mumbo shuffled awkwardly until they were touching again, gently prying Grian's hands off his wings. "Wait, please. Just- you're being completely serious?"

Grian nodded. Nothing more, he just nodded, looking rather embarrassed.

"Like, one hundred percent? There's no prank going on, there's no joke at all, you're being serious?" Mumbo asked, needing confirmation.

Grian nodded yet again, his eyebrows furrowing confusedly. "Yes, of course why would I- Mumbo?!"

He was cut off by Mumbo hugging him tightly, holding him as close as he possibly could. Grian didn't know what to do, his hands hovering over Mumbo’s back. For once, he wasn’t sure how to react. "Are- are you okay?" Grian asked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine…I just-" Mumbo’s voice was shaking. He pulled back to look at Grian, his eyes shiny from tears. "I never thought I'd hear you say that."

"You-" Grian was in disbelief. "You like me back?"

Mumbo smiled. "Yeah."

And with that Grian began to cry.

"Grian!?" Mumbo said, looking surprised. "Don't cry, because if you cry, then I’ll cry!"

Grian laughed at Mumbo's shock, he just felt so relieved. The mixed-signals from before had frightened him badly. "I'm sorry- I just-" His voice broke into a sob and he laughed silently. "You just scared me."

Mumbo was crying as well. "I'm sorry. My brain stopped working completely, I honestly thought you were pulling my leg."

Grian laughed in reply.

"Anyway, why are we crying? Isn't this meant to be happy, what are we doing?" Mumbo said, laughing as well. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and Grian gently wiped them away.

"I am happy, that's why I'm crying." Grian replied.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I've never been happier." Grian's voice was filled with fondness, as he leaned forward to kiss Mumbo, and Mumbo let him.

Mumbo melted into the kiss. Sure, it was wet and unpracticed and not the best kiss by a long shot, but…

It was Grian.

And that was all that mattered.

~

If the hermits had to be honest, they had thought Mumbo and Grian would figure everything out sooner. Some of them had betted on when they'd finally confess, gambling away precious diamonds as the pair in question danced around the subject. It was only Joe that somehow was right.

They had started the bet back in season six, with Iskall establishing the pool as soon as Grian decided to dress up as Ariana Griande and began writing a song for Mumbo.

Iskall had thought they'd confess during season six, and so had Stress, Cub and Cleo.

Some had betted on season seven, one of those being Scar, who was being extremely smug when Grian had signed up Mumbo as a potential mayoral candidate.

A handful had betted on season eight, one of those being Pearl who joined the bet as soon as she heard about it.

But somehow, Joe had been the only one who had been right. Somehow Joe had predicted that they'd confess whilst sitting on the bridge that went between their bases, and that they'd confess in the middle of the night. This he said after saying that they'd confess in season nine.

How he knew that their bases would be connected in season nine was something every hermit had questioned.

Not that anyone would ever know.

And when Grian and Mumbo finally announced their relationship, most hermits muttered as they had to pay diamonds to Joe.

Grian and Mumbo had just looked on in disbelief. Shaking their heads, as they wondered just how they had ended up with the hermits as their friends.

Even so neither could lie, they were thankful for Hermitcraft.

[gamebunny-advance]

Overlays + Logo Experiments 2023 (Kuneho sa Kahon)

This is some old work that I did last year.

I'm not gonna call this stuff "scrapped," because I may still use them someday, it's just that I don't know if or when I'm gonna start streaming again.

I forgot how long ago I actually made these, but I do know that it was during a time when I actually sucked it up and sat down with Inkscape for a while. I've probably forgotten everything I learned since then, but I remember it not being as difficult as I thought it was going to be, so picking it back up again probably won't take too long.

Anyway, the actual notes...

I made 2 versions of the "Game" overlay, 16:9 and 4:3 to accommodate more gaming eras (the games shown are just placeholders). I'd like to have a dual screen overlay too, but it might have to be less "showy" to give the game enough room to actually be seen.~

It's mostly inspired by things like the Windows XP music player, just pinkified to match Kun3h0's aesthetic.

The message box is of course lightly tamagotchi inspired and is supposed to match with Kun3h0's GAB. (Well actually, I designed these overlays first, so it's the GAB that takes after the overlay, even using the same background image for her tummy screen).

There isn't a proper overlay for art streams yet. I'm always accidentally grabbing the edges of my workspace and resizing it, so I don't think a boxed overlay would work that well for it. Maybe just a border and a place to put the alerts would be fine, but I don't really have any ideas for it~

They aren't quite "finished" yet. There are supposed to be icons in the trio of hot pink buttons, but my placeholder ideas for them didn't look great.

(Icons originally from Icons8)

The idea was to bring in some more of that tamagotchi influence by having "care icons" that would allude to some of the features of Kun3h0's game, but I just don't think the icons I chose really work. Plus, I think they're just busy. I should probably just throw some hearts in there and call it a day~

Next are the logos. I actually really like the first one, but it's a little hard to work with.

All the empty space above the title next to the ears creates, well, an empty space when the logo is at the top edge of anything. It's just very ugly to me, but there's not much I could think to do about it.

So, I made the next iteration. It's a lot more rectangular, so it's easier to place in scenes, but I think the layering of the letters is a little off. I love the idea for it, but it's just short of being great. With a few more tweaks, I think it could really work.

But you know, I feel like the problem that almost all my logos have is that they're all bulky. There are just a lot of words in there since I include the English translation, but I figure that maybe I might be able to just condense everything into a single icon: like maybe the GAB Micro is enough of a symbol on its own to work? Maybe throw a couple of K's onto the screen, but otherwise I don't think I actually need much more than that. So, maybe I'll work on something like that soon.

The last thing is just some vector art tests I did. I tried remaking this faux vector art from a while ago. It was just a way to try and get used to the program. I also tried to remake my pictogram 1010s, to varying success.

[tjbanni]

Guess who just remembered that best girl GUM exists?!

(boring sort-of related story below)

Holy hell this one. I don't usually get into this kind of personal stuff online, but I originally posted this picture yesterday, but took it down because I really didn't like it. Chalk it up to insecurities and PTSD of people actually harassing me over my bad art in the past (which itself is worth an entire post on its own). Since yesterday, I've made a lot of minor adjustments and I'm much happier with how this looks now.

You'd think these fixes would be easy -- and you'd be right, except that my computer completely screwed up last night. As a result, I had to make the last updates to Gum on my MacBook.

Lesson to Linux users: DON'T OPEN KRITA DURING AN UPDATE. This choice may have singlehandedly wasted my weekend, as I'm currently in the process of backing EVERYTHING up to my external HDD so that I can upgrade to the newest Manjaro and fix my GRUB, because even the GRUB settings aren't working anymore. I don't know for sure how I'm going to fix this other than reinstalling, but I'm just glad to be savvy enough to get all my files back before something else could happen. Best-case scenario now is I'll have to reinstall Manjaro and also reinstall GRUB, after which GRUB will be able to determine which disks on my system are bootable.

So when it comes to kernel-related updates, you should do what Windows XP users did when installing anything: turn off all other programs until the update is done. I could blame the fact that my PC is 7 years old (custom built, received several upgrades since), but the only way I can justify this entire conundrum is by saying that I was on Linux kernel 5.15 when the newest is version 6.2 or something. But that's less of a justification and more of a cope.

[beaubambabey]

Before I flew out to Japan I lost the pen for my tablet PC. This absolutely sucked. So hard. It was maybe three days before my flight. I was planning on doing some (not a lot but some) digital art during my down time just to get back into the swing of things. So I did some research and found that Yes, I can buy just about any Windows Ink compatible stylus and have it work for my Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, No, it doesn't have to be the Dell Premium Active XP Pen I'd been using since I got this laptop. This is the story of my quest to replace my tablet pen.

So I had my dad drive me to Best Buy to get my hands on a Wacom Bamboo Ink stylus. Tried it out in the car, worked fine, thought that would be enough for me.

I was wrong. About me, at least. Since I'm kind of a picky bastard.

The thing that I liked and got used to with the Dell Premium Active XP Pen was the rubber tipped nib. Pen pressure? That's variable and I can work around fewer levels or whatever. The nib though? I loved the slight drag and resistance of it. It helped make my lines smooth and I developed most of my current art style around the way I could make waves and curves work in my lines.

The Wacom Bamboo Ink stylus has a plastic tipped nib. It feels too slippery for me. I could mitigate this by getting a screen protector for my laptop, but that's a whole other story and not even the biggest problem I have with this. The biggest problem is consistent functionality. I often have to press buttons just to get it to stay working in the correct mode. Considering how it only draws on my tablet in one single mode, this gets kind of inconvenient. That on top of not feeling *juuuust right*? Guess it's getting relegated to a backup.

During my research on replacement pens, however, I learned that there's a rechargeable version of the Wacom Bamboo Ink called the Ink Plus. The Wacom Bamboo Ink Plus was not available anywhere that wasn't online prior to my trip. When I was in Japan, I decided "Hey, you're here, in Wacom's home country, during a time where the currency is weaker than the currency of your own country. Let's go to an electronics store!"

Big mistake. Because Japanese electronics stores are very different from American ones. They are terrifying.

Yodobashi Camera is a Japanese electronics chain store that is several stories tall and has many floors to get lost in. The walls are stark white and the lights are blinding as the speakers sing of the best deals possible while everything beeps around you. It probably didn't help that I went to the one in Akihabara but y'know. I went in, got help from like three separate employees trying to buy it, and spent 2/3 of what I would've to get it shipped to me in the states. Showing my passport off to get it tax-free probably helped too. Either way, it was twice the price of what I paid for the non-rechargable cousin of this stylus and the few Reddit posts I found about comparable alternatives to the Dell Premium Active XP Pen said that this one with the blue pen nib was the better alternative.

There's a very frustrating quirk about this one. Similar to its non-rechargable cousin, it also struggles with consistent functionality in a way that is even more unique. Specifically in that it wiggles. It makes my straight lines wavy. On top of how it will sometimes forget that I'm trying to draw with pen pressure and automatically pretend like I'm not pushing hard at all, which compels me to push harder on my screen. Which tends to put undue stress on a glass surface and can lead to cracking. I tried all three nibs and they all have the same issue. I even figured out how to connect it to Bluetooth which supposedly helps and it still did it.

Absolute pain in the ass. I miss my old pen. Yeah, the exterior was peeling and I had to tape it up just to keep the body of it protected, but at least it only stopped working once a year when I needed to change the AAAA battery.

[siaanme]

So in 2023 I gave myself the goal of beating 52 video games (aka roughly one a week), and that was maybe too much, so in 2024 I instead decided to focus on a single genre (RPGs) and get through 12 of them. Here's what I played (there are more than 12)

Final Fantasy V - Really good. To paraphrase Dan Floyd, any Final Fantasy with a job system is a good Final Fantasy. Glad to have finally beaten this one, considering I poached two of my TTRPG character names from it

Chrono Cross - A fascinating game as a follow up to Chrono Trigger, and individually. Interesting combat system, an incredible soundtrack, way too many party member options

Xenoblade Chronicles - A NG+ replay. Still a fantastic game, even if mechanically it's my least favourite of the Xenoblades.

NEO The World Ends With You - Another replay. It was nice to experience the story while knowing where everything was going this time. Original TWEWY has a special place in my heart, so I'm still glad it finally has a sequel

Xenoblade Chronicles X - So this was the first Xenoblade game I tried to play, though I originally bounced off it. Now that I have more experience with the series it seemed like a good time to revisit it (I can't tell if that's good or bad timing on my part considering the Switch version coming this year). The world exploration in this is great, I wish that you had a bit more team comp freedom for main story missions, and also that your non-active party members still earned XP, but oh well. Glad to have finally played it, maybe I'll play it again this year.

Bravely Default - I had planned on playing all the Bravely games, but this was the only one I got around to. NG+ again, though I didn't carry over too much. A fantastic job system, but the path to the true ending is still such a slog.

Final Fantasy XII - I can see why people really like this one. Great story, the job system introduced in the Zodiac version is great, and the gambit system is a really cool idea.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - So I did some prep work before this playthrough, specifically making sure I had all the rare Blades available to me so I wouldn't have to do any gacha pulls (which I still think is the worst mechanic in this game). Because of that, I could get wild with my party set-up, which was a lot of fun (see prior comment about job systems). I also played the Torna DLC, which to me confirms my thoughts about ditching the gacha system,

Trials of Mana (remake) - Another replay, still very fun mechanically, though requiring specific items to get to level 3 classes is a bit frustrating, and the extra dungeon added in the remake is also a slog

In Stars and Time - I love me a good time loop, and this game delivered. I also took great delight in actually writing down notes for things to do and remember between loops.

Casette Beasts - I also love me some pokémon, but I've not dipped into a lot of other monster collector/battlers. This was a great one to start with, despite some performance issues on Switch.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - I think this is the game I spent longest on this year. A great job system, and coming off all the other Xenoblade games meant it was easier to pick out the connections, especially the landscapes. Plus its story really benefits from the hindsight of knowing what's going on from the get go

Sea of Stars - I still love this game, and the changes made with the recentish Dawn of Equinox update made it even better. I'll admit, I technically didn't beat this, owing to the game crashing when I was most of the way done with the final boss, but I was beating him so I'm claiming victory here.

Visions of Mana - Okay I still haven't beaten this one but I'm enjoying it as an evolution of the Trials of Mana remake. I especially love the class system here, since unlocking a new elemental vessel unlocks a different class per player character, not all the same one. I don't think I've played any other games that take a similar approach, it makes it really interesting trying to distribute roles.

Unicorn Overlord - I also haven't quite beaten this (I'm like 90% through the penultimate mission rn), but I've enjoyed a lot of it. My quibbles with it are still fresh in my mind though, chiefly I wish you could either have more than ten battlions at once (stored if not deployed), or you could save your favourite layouts. The game encourages you early to experiment and remake battalions, but this is honestly more of a pain than its worth, and as such it meant I ended up with a bunch of units sitting by the wayside, unused. But the build-crafting is still very good, even if it does exacerbate my frustrations of having limited slots.

And that's the RPGs I played last year. With one I left out, but I'll get to that discussion another day. Moving forward, this year I'm planning on a similar goal, but with Metroidvanias. Hopefully that'll be fun.

[yakdeculture]

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Rongs Forgotten Review

before finishing: I’m up to chapter 7 I think so I’m probably 60~70 percent through the game I’m like level 40 or something honestly I think I overleveled because its like kind of easy to do it’s pretty easy when the world first opens up and you have to go to the forrest you can basically explore the entire first section of the map because the enemies are all around the same level so if you kind of just wander around looking for stuff because you play the game absentmindedly because the story is like nothing at that point you get to the point where when you attack an enemy on the feild you autokill them and it comes pretty easy to just kill everything you see like that and farm way more xp than the game expects you to for pretty much the whole game I feel like I’ve been 5 levels ahead of what it thinks you will be like the sidequests give recommended levels and I’m pretty much always over it by at least 3. Anyways I think this game is very up and down tha main story is pretty interesting but there are multiple times when it kind of just comes to a halt. I mean I guess this is pretty normal for Utawarerumono in Prelude the middle part of the game is basically just fighting jobbers, Mask of Deception is basically just Haku chilling for a while, and then in this one its like okay the gang needs to become stronger so you can’t really advance the plot but also half the stuff you do is like you don’t really feel like you’re getting stronger you go train under Dikotoma and that’s cool but also I don’t think you ever do any actually on screen training with him. In general I think this game is very hit or miss with its presentation it feels like it doesn’t always know how to take advantage of having actual character models they can use to show things and they also don’t take advantage of the more ADV text sections because the CGs are pretty scarce and also there aren't that many expressions the characters do so its just like. Kind of clear they probably didn’t have the budget or experience to make this kind of game I’m making it sound like it sucks ass and it doesn’t its fine but I started playing this again because there’s going to be a new one and I hope they learned something from this one and make it better because it looks like we have older versions of some of the characters and if we waste beautiful 30 year old Kuon I’m probably going to end it all. There are a lot of scenes in the middle of this game where it’s like Hey remember Mask of Deception? Remember when this happened? And it’s like wait I do. That’s crazy. But the game is pretty good I will finish it.

after finishing: I immediately went back to playing this after like 2 years of no progress because as soon as Uta 4: Morbius 2 was announced I was like OH FUCK and I had to beat this and I’m glad I did holy fuck the story was, much like 1 and 2, kind of nothing for half the game and but the other half, especially towards the end, holy fuck peak blast dude. I really didnt know anything about what happened in this game and I think thats because its a mix of like basic stuff some general winks and nods and references that are like hey remember these bits from 2? Lets start them here! But like i had no concept of what this game would do for the overall lore of the series and i definitely had no idea that this had like some of the most insane sequel bait of all time. I am genuinely really excited to see where this series goes and what Uta 4 can do to build on the stuff this game has and sets up. Like its gonna be absolutely crazy unfortunately I dont think I have anyone to talk about what the implications of any of this stuff could mean and what could be in store so basically what I’m saying is i need my uta fan friends to play this game. Yes the gameplay is pretty mid not bad but definitely rough definitely their first crack at this but trust me bro. At the very least watch the Full Game Cutscene + extras youtube video wherever that may be

[mcrmadness]

I need to build myself a new PC, so I have been looking at PC components a lot, and I've made a list of things I'm probably gonna buy. I still need to do a bit more research over somethings, but I was already aware that it's gonna be an expensive project. BUT if I invest on this properly now, then I might not need to upgrade the PC that soon and it might last for the next 10 years, and I could just replace some components if I e.g. get a motherboard that won't go old in just the next two years.

I built my current PC in 2016, and iirc the CPU is from the high-end of the CPUs that fit the current motherboard, so updating just the CPU is not possible with this computer. Plus I still have Windows 7, and I think this motherboard might support Win10, but not Win11, and at this point they are starting to stop the support for even Win10 so there's no point in updating to that if it will anyway be too old for everything in a couple of years.

And this is actually what my main point is: I don't mind spending a bit more money on a PC if it means it will run my video games and will fit my video editing career plans, because I know that what comes to computers, with money you get quality. The sum I'm looking at right now is somewhere around 600-700€ which in itself is a lot, but it's still half the price of a ready-made computer that you don't need to build yourself.

But what gets on my nerves is that I should get the OS. And I looked Win11 up and it can cost up to 150€??? More if it's the pro version. And like... why the fuck are these so expensive??? I'm also wondering whether I could pirate Win11 and get a working version somewhere, because know that in my family we have had Windows OS's since the 90s and I don't think a single one of them was actually bought to the household. Maybe Win95 or Win98 was original, but anything from XP up was pirated for sure. My Win7 is also a pirated copy my dad downloaded and installed to my PC (in general he taught me to pirate and use torrents back in the day when torrents were still a thing).

My laptop came with a pre-installed Win10 so I don't have a key or anything for it but it's still registered; and my previous laptop came with the installation CD for Windows Vista. That's probably the only time I've had a computer with an original installation disc for a Windows.

But yeah, the point of this post? Looking at the cheapest CPU options and them being 200€ at the cheapest makes me go "yeah that makes sense, it's a reasonable price for a brand-new CPU that comes with a fan", and then I look at Win11 that is basically just a random activation code on paper and perhaps a link (unless you buy the DVD version which may or may not cost more than a digital one), and it comes with a price tag of 150€ or more. Insane. That's the only product that makes me feel like in no way am I gonna pay THAT MUCH for just an OS!

(And no, Linux and such are not an option for me who likes to play video games a lot and do things that should work without emulators or all kinds of extra work. I've got ADHD stuff already requires some extra work from me to get even normal things started, so I don't need any extra steps there...)

[ns-games]

Computing on a Budget

I wanted to talk about the story of my old computer.

On July 23, 2008 I acquired a Dell Vostro 200 from the Dell Outlet website. This computer cost around $800 (with an extended warranty) at the time. I was looking for something low cost that I thought was capable of running games, and could be used for future projects

The computer came with the following specs: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 GPU: Intel GMA RAM: 4x 1GB DDR2 Storage: 80GB Western Digital Black HDD OS: Windows XP Professional

And at first, this computer turned out to be a pretty good powerhouse for my needs. I knew it wasn't the best computer by any means. But with the budget I was on, it would get the job done. Plus my mom helped out with around half the cost as a high school graduation present.

Later on, I decided to purchase The Orange Box as I wanted to look into playing games like Portal and Team Fortress 2. And while I was able to get Portal to work, when I tried to join a game in Team Fortress 2, the game would simply crash on me. It turned out that to run 3D graphics like that, the built-in Intel GMA card was not going to cut it.

So, I took a trip to my local Best Buy. Taking a look at the graphics cards they had on sale, I found one I could afford for around $60. The Galaxy NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS.

And it worked... but just barely. Later on I started to expand my Steam library. And there was on game in particular that gave me some trouble with this card. Left 4 Dead 2. It turned out that the 8400GS isn't great a drawing hundreds of zombies on screen at once. And my system would lag any time a horde would start chasing my party. But I still kept this card going for as long as I could, cause I couldn't really afford to upgrade. That and any money I did have for upgrades went to other accessories like drawing tablets, and a desk to house everything in.

Don't let that picture fool you though. Everything here was done on the cheap.

On January 18, 2013, I installed a 1TB Western Digital Green HDD into this computer and installed Windows 8 as a secondary operating system. And yes, I know that the WD Green drive was not the best option as it only ran at 5400RPM. But again, this was on a budget. And plus my dad offered to buy it for me for Christmas the previous month. I also managed to get Windows 8 for a low price, as Microsoft was offering the Pro version for only $75 at the time. I managed to pickup the license from Target using some gift cards I acquired over Christmas as well. I later performed the free upgrade to Windows 8 on October 18, 2013.

Around Memorial Day weekend that year, I ended up getting hired by an electronics retailer, and a bit more money started coming in as a result.

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft officially discontinued security updates on Windows XP. A month or so prior, after fiddling around with rebuilding the Master Boot Record on the drive I had Windows 8 installed on. I retired the WD Black drive that had run Windows XP for me since 2008.

Some time around July 4th of 2014, I woke the computer up from sleep mode and heard this really nasty grinding noise. It turns out, that little fan running the 8400GS finally gave out after years of trying to run games it couldn't handle very well. So I knew it was time to not only replace that, but to start thinking about replacing the whole computer, now that I had a bit more money in the budget.

Looking at my options for cards. I didn't want to go with the "latest and greatest" since I knew the computer was starting to age. So, I went with an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. On the box it recommended that it be run with a 500W or greater power supply. The one that the Vostro came with was only 300W. So, I also ended up swapping out the power supply with a Thermaltake TR2-600W power supply unit.

Finally, on April 30, 2015, I retired the Vostro 200 after I decided to build my own computer.

So, why do I bring up this story?

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I know there are a lot of people out there that are computing on a budget. Something I constantly run into during my career as a computer technician are people telling me they can't afford the latest and greatest. That upgrades don't typically happen until they become absolutely necessary. And that's something I can understand and sympathize with.

And while I've stressed the importance of upgrades as time goes on in the world of computing. I also understand that there's times when we need to keep the current technology in front of us working for as long as possible. So when people come to me saying "I can't afford a big upgrade right now" I always try to do my best to let them know "what can we fix", "what can't we fix", "what parts can be saved", and "what parts need to be replaced."

And if you're finding yourself in this situation right now. The one thing I want to say is, don't worry. At the end of the day, acquiring computers parts can be very simple and inexpensive if you know where to look.

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

The Fixes of Kings

Kings Call - no apostrophe because the game's horribly ported from Chinese - has some problems. Let's dig in:

Porting: Considering the kind of problem it is in Kings Call (a small pool of cards and effects that are simply overlooked and left in Chinese) I might attach a "visible text" tag to everything that shows text to the player, so that I can run a loop that captures all of that for the localization folks.

Monetization: The monetization is old. I'm not opposed to f2p titles that earn money for their developers, but there's a level of finesse required and frankly the standards for that level of finesse have risen since the 12ish years ago when Rise of Mythos (what has been rereleased as Kings Call) came out. You need to make it feel like everyone can get to the level of power that the whales reach eventually, like that number is reasonable, and like those methods are reliable. This is a tough balance, especially if you are selling in-game power outright. It requires you provide a period during which the whales can lord their purchased power over other players, but also a place where the f2players can compete on a more even footing.

I like the idea of a pvp option where f2players can take on the whales as if they were a raid boss, using something like the army value system from Warhammer et al. Even without that level of sophistication, you can handle things with rewards: Give something everyone wants as a reward for the "even footing" game mode, but give something that's more specifically precious to the f2player - such as ~50 cents worth of the real-money currency - for going into the arena with the monster players on a random queue. Sometimes the monsters will find each other (and a proper ladder system would help that too), but if I get trounced and I get a card pack out of it I'll generally consider that a good deal, you know?

Levels: There is, weirdly, a shortage of content. They ask you to do a lot of either waiting for the passive xp gain to unlock content for you or that you replay levels you already beat several times in order to speed the process along. It really needs a procedural generation system. And it has the framework that could make such a thing happen! It has values for the cards, so it can make a deck of ~X total power out of random cards. If they kept record of various decks' win/loss ratios internally, they could adjust the deck's total score in a way that functionally accounted for internal synergy - I guess this would be a little like an online version of KeyForge's modified difficulty?

Cleanup: Attached to the idea of the monetization is that there's a bunch of visual clutter. I get the idea of making sure people consistently see how cool things would be if they were spending money on the game, but this process of slapping billboards on practically everything makes the game feel trashy. Also, some of them are bad links, flashing at you and then leading you to an event you've already received the rewards for. This may be a matter of the game's age; Maybe one of these tabs was added every couple months of the game's original life cycle and that's why there are like twelve of them now...but it's a huge turn-off for new players. Keeping that new-player experience clean and snappy is important, whether you're unscrupulous and want to get them hooked or plenty scrupulous and just want them to have a good time.

[piggybankstomfoolery]

I'm still getting caught up on everything new with Youtube since 2015, but these stats are really interesting. These are from only the past month, yet Spike the Marvel Dog is still an unstoppable beast of terror, his thirst unable to be quenched.

I think I'm starting to wrap my head around the fact that views are no longer important on Youtube: it's instead about how long people are watching the video, hence why super long videos are so prevalent now. And I think I can also see why I've been having so much trouble trying to get my watch hour count up: most of my videos are super short. honestly some of those like SLW Parkour Engine might be served better in the Shorts section if they were touched up with portrait in mind.

(also a memory was unlocked when I noticed Keev hit 301 views yesterday, I forgot that's where youtube's view counter would normally sit at for most of my uploads back in the day as the system would try to catch up. you were in the "301 club" if you caught a video while it was there. XD )

I wasn't planning on coming back to MLP videos (Hasbro has either taken most of mine down over the years or Youtube has marked them as made for kids) but I kinda wonder about more Equestria Girls videos as Spike the Marvel Dog is one of the only outliers on the MLP front for me. my take on EqG certainly doesn''t look like most MLP fan fare, and I've got a feeling I'd have a lot of fun drawing the girls today compared to back in 2013. xP

maybe if I can pull the channel out of this rut it's in first, that's something I could consider. i really hate to pull the "I'll give you what you actually want later" card though lol, but it really is much easier for me to post a bunch of Sonic stuff for now.

also wow people still love the Wile E. Sonic parody, that's not even the most updated version of that video. the Sonic compilation will have the full version, and in HD to boot!

[fizzingwizard]

you know that thing where you reanimate scenes in your head... and sometimes completely forget what they’re actually like? yeah i do that a lot xP

most recently I was losing my mind because I remembered a certain car chase scene in a lupin thing but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was convinced it was recent because the animation was that style. But after scouring everything I could, I couldn’t find the scene. It was a very brief moment of entering the car and lupin asking jigen for a cigarette - the sort of thing which happens so commonly in this show that it wouldn’t have stood out to me at all, except when I rewatched the part I thought it was in (the beginning of part 5) I was so shocked when it didn’t happen how I remembered. Then I realized maybe I’d reanimated it in my head, so I poked around some of the old stuff... but lupin is such a huuuge series that it was just impossible and I thought.... maybe i just completely made this up lol!

but I just found it. by complete coincidence. thanks, youtube algorithm xD it’s this itty bitty scene from mystery of mamo afghflhth how on earth did i think this was from part 5??? lmao.

(altho I’ll add that, even though I think this must be the scene I remembered, it is a slight bit different. I recalled the cigarette exchange being totally quiet except for Lupin asking for one. But I also watched in Japanese, whereas this version is an English dub, so I suspect that’s why it feels slightly different to me.)

the number one thing I tend to reanimate in my memory though is lighting. I’m always remembering scenes with awesome contrasting lighting. like the rescue from the police at the end of part 5, I always remember it happening under a drab, appropriately gunmetal gray sky, when really it’s bright and sunny out. basically i just edit the scene so I like it better and then mistake it for reality ;_; and of course am then disappointed by the real thing haha

also when I was a kid, I wrote a whole scene in my head in the SkullGreymon episode of Digimon Adventure, where after bossing the others around and getting on everyone’s nerves, Taichi kicks the soccer ball away - which he does, but then I imagined he also went after it, and it rolled all the way down some stairs into the ruins. Sora followed him, and stood at the top of the stairs, backlit by the sun, and questioned him about his behavior. He brushed her off, insisted he was fine and just wanted everyone to take things seriously, and then ran off, leaving her on the stairs. The rest of the episode was the same. But obvs that scene is not in the show. It’s completely just in my head. But I remembered it so vividly that when I rewatched that episode when I was older, I thought it had been cut out! I was like, where’s the scene on the stairs x’D I think 11-year-old me just really wanted Sora to get on him about being such a jerk lol

[cyberloops]

Some quick studio updates:

My spouse was having a hard time at their new job, so when my boss mentioned that he was looking for another person to do the same sort of tech helpdesk work that I was doing, my spouse decided to go for the opportunity. On the one hand, it means less stress. On the other hand... less money. Our income is going to be cut by about 1/3. So we really need to find some way to work from home to earn money to make up for that. So this week, while my spouse had a few days off before the new job starts, we buckled down and worked on getting our home office/studio situation set up in a way that will work for us.

Originally we had planned on keeping all the computers in the office (not the room in the picture here) and dividing the studio (the room in this picture) into halves. The half now taken up by the giant desk on the left would be where I’d set up my studio, the area where the other 2 desks are would be a workbench for crafting type stuff, and the drafting table would be where it is. But between the plague causing us to switch jobs and work from home and everything else that’s happened... well... plans change. We couldn’t both work from home in the office, so my spouse had to get a desk and set it up in the studio. And the little corner desk my spouse had gotten for the office way far too small for all of the paperwork that their new job entailed. So we had to get the giant desk.

Since we’d like to get back into the habit of streaming, we decided that we needed to once again change the plans we had for our studio. But with less income, that meant no more buying furniture. We need to work with what we have. So the giant desk that takes up half the room will stay, and will become the graphics powerhouse of the studio, with my spouse’s new computer in the middle, a big monitor on the left, and the graphics tablet monitor on the right. Unfortunately the USB C port is on the left side of the computer and the right side of the graphics tablet... which means we need a longer USB C to USB C cable if we want to use all three monitors. (We can use an HDMI cable instead, but then we wouldn’t be able to use the other big monitor.)

I moved the smaller corner desk from the office into the space between my studio and my spouse’s, and got rid of the little wooden table that was kind of in my way on the right side of my studio. Now we have an entire wall of nothing but desk. The drafting table is still just out of camera view on the right, so my spouse still has a space for traditional drawing.

You can also see in this picture that I was able to finally rig up a top down view of my studio, the camcorder is attached to a little microphone handle instead of a stand. The little handle came with a different mic, the one that I’ve currently got hooked up to my desktop computer in the office. I’m using a boom mic stand that I had packed away that was a birthday present to me like fifteen years ago. (I’m glad it’s finally getting decent use, I used to have it set up next to my old Windows XP desktop computer that had an M-Audio 10/10 soundcard that had XLR inputs so I could actually record a microphone directly into the computer. But that desktop died about 9 years ago, and I haven’t used that stand since then. I don’t even think they have drivers for the 10/10 for modern versions of Windows anymore.) Ironically, the microphone that came with the boom mic stand is in a little tripod that came with a DIFFERENT mic that crapped out on me and I’m not using anymore, it’s somewhere on that desk studio setup. I don’t know if it’s in camera view, it’s not currently plugged into the mixer, but it’s there if I want to record any vocals. However, that setup means that the camera is also about six feet away from where the computer will be... which means we need a longer USB A to Micro USB cable if I want to stream.

... and after moving all that furniture, getting sweaty and gross, and stressing out my bad knees... I didn’t wanna go to Best Buy to get cables. So we ordered them online, and maybe once we’ve gotten them, we’ll be able to get back to streaming again.

Also, since my spouse got a new, better computer, I’m going to see if their old computer is powerful enough to do basic streaming with just my sound and video setup. It’s (I think) about 9 years old, just like my laptop... but mine was bottom of the line at the time of purchase, and this one was midrange. They have the same amount of RAM and hard drive space, but my spouse’s old computer has about 3 or 4 times the processing power of my dinky little old laptop. So maybe it can handle it. We’ll find out once I get that new cable. If not, well, we’ll see what I can do. Now that we’re past the first few weeks of classes, my job is slowing down a bit, so I’ll have a little more free time and energy. I’d really like to spend some time working on more fun, creative stuff. I suppose I could just say screw it and move my desktop into that room, that’s definitely powerful enough to stream. And if I don’t feel like doing music, I can work on 3d modeling/sculpting instead. Or, hell, I could even go back to doing game streaming when we’re not streaming art or music.

I would love to also get a better chair. Unfortunately, all of the comfortable chairs we have right now are too wide to work with that setup, unless I can figure out a way to move my keyboards to the right side of my studio instead of the left. Which honestly, I could probably do if I just got some longer cables. I went cheap and just got 3 and 4 foot audio and MIDI cables when I first set up the studio, since I was jammed in the corner there. So maybe my last investment in the studio will be to buy a couple of longer audio and MIDI cables just for those two synths.

... and after all that, months and months of setup, investing my pandemic bonus money into setting up the whole studio... I still am finding myself kinda obsessing over the fact that the ONE kind of synth I wanted and still don’t have is one that can do more than 2 operator FM synthesis. I was really debating between the Modal Skulpt or the Korg Volca FM at the time, and the Skulpt only won out for me because it had 4 note polyphony, and I like complex chords. But with our sudden cut in income, I really can’t justify buying another synth anytime soon. So I really should buckle down and work with what I have.

[steelycunt]

hello!! sorry this is very random but lately while reading wolfstar fics ive noticed so many of them say that remus loves sirius more than sirius loves him and well, i was curious about your thoughts on this topic. is it just remus being self-deprecating or can it be rather true? my hc was always sirius loves him more or they love each other equally xp just what makes sense to me

hi babs!! thank for you this ask!! i feel like there's loads of different conclusions you can come to here so apologies if i start rambling!!

obviously in r/s fic, it'll often heavily depend on the pov--in remus pov fics you're going to get his internal thoughts, you're going to get his view of sirius and you aren't going to hear a thing about what's going on in sirius' head, so you'll almost always end up with it coming across as remus loving sirius more than remus, and the opposite will be true in sirius pov fics. from a writing perspective, i prefer to write from sirius' pov, and the sirius i like writing most is one who completely adores remus from...day dot, really, so i guess i gravitate towards sirius loving remus more. but really i've read sirius pov fics that convince me that sirius would love remus more, and i've read remus pov fics that would convince me of the opposite, so both hcs work for me!

talking about a more canon r/s though - and you'll have to bear in mind that a) i havent read the books properly in years and b) r/s arent actually canon - and off the top of my head i'd say that fitting r/s into the bits we get of them in canon works better if remus loves sirius more (and might possibly never even confess his feelings until llal/ootp years). there's a bigger emphasis in canon on sirius' relationship with james anyway (i also think sirius was undeniably a little in love with james however you read it, but thats a whole different conversation), and although ive read so many versions of the prank that really make sense of it in the context of r/s, the carelessness towards remus on sirius' part lends itself to the view this view. i definitely think r/s works in canon, but there is a clear 'sirius and james [+ remus, + peter]' sort of dynamic that fanon has done a lot to alter.

but then! the whole reason young r/s still works despite the prank is that they're two characters who undeniably love in different ways, so it's going to look different. remus is always going to be self-deprecating, as you say. i think he'd die for sirius and i think sirius would kill for him, and i also think remus loves cautiously while sirius loves recklessly. drifting back to fanon here, but the sirius who lives in my head could easily love remus without showing the appropriate care/concern/respect for him that would prevent something like the prank happening. i imagine sirius as loving remus (and everything) more deeply and almost subconsciously, so he isn't always going to act as rationally as remus, who would be almost painfully aware of his own feelings and would probably let it dictate his every action. i also don't think you can draw conclusions about adult r/s from a prank occurring when they're teens - it totally depends on which era ur talking about and how you decide they get together.

i've talked for ages to say very little but to summarise: in fan works i like a sirius who loves remus more, but when thinking of a r/s that could exist in canon, perhaps a remus who loves more makes more sense. i think it'd be near impossible for them to love each other exactly equally.

[writingithink]

Improbable Multiversal Transcending Temporal Spacetime Event Pairing: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Rated: T Word Count: 7,101 Summary: The best way to show someone you care is to blow up their job ... right? Notes: I'm back! And it's not a Tangled Timelines update (sorry!) But it is something? I've had this in my WIPs for awHILE now, and when I was cleaning my studio the other night I found a planning page for it in a random tote bag and was like ... oh yeah. And the ending just came to me and I love it when that happens. Hopefully there will be another chapter up for Tangled Timelines soon, though!

As always, infinite thanks to my wonderful beta, @hey-there-juliet​ who is fine with me randomly sending her fics at all hours and with no warning XP

All mistakes are mine, as always.

<<READ IT ON AO3>>

If the other him in the other universe had taken the time to imagine their human life together in a parallel universe, the Doctor doubted he would have pictured this. His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was always quite whimsical. Happiness had made him impractical, really. Because despite all of the drawbacks, all of the reasons he currently loathed himself, the Doctor knew every single reason why the other truly felt like this was the best possible option.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Sometimes, despite it not occurring too often, he was wrong.

They had spent five and a half hours on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay.

(I create myself.)

She had been so upset; said that after everything they’d went through, everything she did to get back, the other him owed her a proper goodbye. She had stopped speaking to him when he told her that, actually, he would never give her a proper goodbye.

And she didn’t let him explain why. Now that he finally could.

Now it had been 57 days since she’d last spoken to him. Since he’d gotten more than a brief glimpse of her with his own eyes. That he’d spent piecing together a picture of what her life had been like here, without him. Such a short time, really, now that it was over (almost over), but yet also some of the worst moments of his entire existence.

It seemed fair that the multiverse would demand just that extra sequence of pain, considering everything he could potentially get in return. What another version of himself could only hope for, bitterly gambling eternities, following their timeline through all of it’s complicated swirls and turns, names weaving around each other, stamping themselves on the structure of creation.

Forever isn’t something that ends.

(How long are you going to stay with me?)

Quite the opposite, actually. And he knew, eventually, she would remember that. Knew it, but didn’t feel it.

The Doctor finally understood what all of the human writers meant about falling in love. Not just the terrifying sensation of the unstoppable freefall, but also the immense pain of crashing into the immovable object at the end of the journey.

They had sat on opposite ends of a Zeppelin. He had gone back to the Tyler Manor with Jackie, and Rose had gone back to her flat. Hoping to see her, talk to her, he had immediately joined Torchwood (once they agreed to his very detailed, highly specific, entirely ironclad contract). Their paths rarely crossed, and when they did it was just tiny, insubstantial moments.

A flash of her at the far end of a hall. Her name in a report (a lot of reports). Snatches of her voice, there one moment and gone the next.

It all made everything hurt so much more, somehow, having her so close but yet further than he could have possibly imagined.

But yet …

His imagination, when it came to Rose Tyler, was still quite whimsical. So when he tried to think of the bigger picture, waxing poetic, alone on his office couch, the Doctor tried to look at the last few years as the impact, and this as the aftershock. Still, philosophical jaunts weren’t exactly a solution to his problem. A temporary solution was moving his office even further away, so that’s what he did. 

Plus, he found it kind of fitting, commandeering the inside of Big Ben. UNIT may have it in the prime universe, but in this universe he had the fancy landmark office. Well, office-slash-home (without Rose Tyler, a proper house with doors and things was absolutely unthinkable). Not that it was just about having a private laugh. The gears soothed him, the sound of ticking helped the gnawing emptiness that had filled his mind ever since the TARDIS dematerialized without him in it. The Doctor had thought it was kind of fitting - the closest he could possibly be right now to time.

Not that he wasn’t spending every possible spare moment working on the baby TARDIS, just a tiny piece of coral still, currently sitting in the extended electro-percussive environment chamber. He wondered if, in three years (his best-possible projected timetable), when the new TARDIS would be ready for flight, she would still not be speaking to him.

Incidentally, the emergence of that thought and the start of his supposed ‘self-isolation’ coincided to an alarming degree for how coincidental the two really were. The fact of the matter was, he was busy. Tons of experiments to run, alien equipment to identify, classify (and more often than not remove from Torchwood entirely), a baby TARDIS to tend to, and a backlog of Rose’s mission reports to hack into made spending slightly over three weeks in his tower easy.

The problem was the fact that during that time the Doctor avoided sleeping, barely remembered to eat, and existed on overly sugared tea alone. Not sleeping didn’t put the demons at bay, but at least when he was awake he wasn’t forced to confront the man he never wanted to remember being.

It had been 57 days since Rose Tyler had last spoken to him, and the Doctor detonated a bomb in the abandoned annex Torchwood had scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt.

Then the counter reset to zero.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled, barging into the top floor lab where he had been checking the readings on the EEPEC.

Everything that he wanted to say to her, and the Doctor was struck mute.

“Whatever plans you think you have, however good of an idea it is, for the good of the planet or, or the galaxy or what, you don’t just go blowing up buildings without a word to anyone! Do you know that everyone else was too scared to come up here and have a word with you, because that highly confidential ridiculous contract you drew up made its way through the gossips and isn’t so classified anymore. Now no one wants to go toe to toe with the man who ‘speaks for the planet’,” Rose growled through the air quotes. “So tell me, Doctor, what genius reason you’ve got for blowing up the Records Annex?”

A slow smile spread across his face.

“It worked.”

“What?”

“Remember ‘run’?” he asked, bouncing away from the baby TARDIS and circling her, picking up his new sonic screwdriver as he did and deadlock sealing the only door off the floor.

“Run?” she frowned as he circled back.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear as he passed, running up a small set of stairs to flip a giant switch that activated the clock-lights outside of their automated timer. Likely no one noticed outside with the sun still out, but it lit up the lab. “Henrik’s basement, Nestene Consciousness, shop window dummies, you and me. How did that night end?” he asked, with a manic grin as he skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Oh, that ‘run’,” Rose breathed, trying to fight back a smile. “You blew up my job.”

“I blew up your job.”

She huffed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and crossed her arms. His shoulders fell, exhaustion pressing down onto each and every bone of his new, much more fragile body.

“I just want to talk,” he told her, only a moment away from begging.

“Alright then. Talk.”

Everything he wanted to say to her, and all of it felt disjointed in his overtired mind. Yet she was here now, and if she left he didn’t have a new idea for getting her back again. So he talked.

“I’m sorry. That I made this choice for you, even if it was technically a different me who did it. I’m sorry that this is the best option, the safest option. I’m sorry I never got the chance to explain everything to you before. But I am never going to say goodbye to you, Rose. Never. And I know that the power of words doesn’t translate as well for you, the science of psycho-kinetic-telepathic influence on the elements of creation. But there are some things I can never risk saying aloud. There are some beings that exist, at least in our original universe, that could easily- … still, no matter what universe we’re in, I’m never going to say it. Forever, Rose Tyler. It’s longer than you can comprehend. An eternal silence stretching infinitely ahead, timelines swirling in every direction. This one is ours, if you’ll- if you could just- if you could see in twenty-odd dimensions and focused on individual temporal waveforms, the quantum reality of specific-”

“Doctor!” she shouted when his legs gave out, immediately grabbing hold of him, joining him on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but when he moved to get back up she easily held him down. Rose gently manipulated his face, giving him a basic medical check. He couldn’t help but smile a little at how much she had learned while they were away, only to then frown at how hard he imagined it all must have been for her. Floundering, he tried to make a joke. “So, I’m still the Doctor?”

Which went ignored.

“You look like a wreck,” she told him, and it wasn’t new information. The Doctor now made much more frequent trips to the restroom and was well aware of how pale he was, of the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He had at least been making a disjointed effort to shave, which was another activity that had increased with his meta crisis, and admittedly it had slipped his mind for a couple days.

“It’s not easy, doing this without you,” he admitted. “But if you need more time, I want you to take it. I really am alright. There’s just so much I need to tell you, now that I can.”

“What do you mean, ‘now that you can’?”

“Different universe, firm walls in between. I don’t have to worry about using the wrong words at the wrong time and having cosmic consequences … for a lot of things, not all things. With our timeline in a different dimension and reality back as it should be, at least for the moment, I can tell you all sorts of things. Though the most important one, the one I’m never going to miss an opportunity to say, is that I love you, Rose Tyler. Forever.”

“I love you, too,” she sighed, caressing his cheek for a moment before helping him up. “But I’m still mad at you. Now you need sleep.”

“But I’m not done talking,” the Doctor complained, dragging his feet as she led him over to the sofa in the corner.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve gotten some rest, okay? I promise.”

“Thank you,” he sighed, more horizontal than he remembered being just a moment ago. Something soft and warm ensconced his body. He hadn’t realized how cold he had been until just then.

Another breath and black oblivion overtook him. Peaceful until it suddenly very much wasn’t. 

A shockwave. A rift in time and space. A breached void. A crack in reality. A big red button. No more. Howling, howling, howling.

“Wake up!”

His eyes snapped open.

He didn’t know where he was. Nothing felt right; not the air, not time, not even his own body. The Doctor tried to do a quick systems check, and the results were all wrong. His hand flew to his chest, where only one heart was beating.

A choking scream echoed through the space, which seemed to be tick tick ticking, and he didn’t realize that it was him who shouted until soothing hands were brushing through his hair. Vision focusing, he saw Rose Tyler kneeling next to him, or at least it was something that looked like Rose Tyler. She felt too cool. Or maybe he was too warm.

“Are you real?” he asked, hoping that she wouldn’t lie to him.

Just one heart working, and it was beating too fast, refusing to slow down. The air was too thick, he couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah.” A sad smile. “I’m real.”

The Doctor didn’t know if he believed her, closing his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see the moment she inevitably vanished. “I’m dying,” he told the being-who-might-be-Rose as he shuddered and collapsed back onto some sort of sofa.

“You’re fine,” she lied, but it was a lie she seemed to believe.

“Only got one heart beating,” he admitted, trying to get his breathing under control as his malfunctioning body began to sweat. The room ticked away, and he wondered if all of this was about to explode, if he should be running, if he even could run. His legs felt like lead. So did his arms. The air was too thick, dragging him down.

“That’s-”

The Doctor shut his eyes tighter, tears escaping that he hadn’t even realized were there. She must have vanished, just like he knew she would. And if she was never real to begin with, why did it have to hurt so much for her to go?

A weight rested on top of him, and he would never forget the feel of her. He vaguely wondered what it meant for him, to be having tactile hallucinations. Olfactory hallucinations. Even the buzz of time that had never left her skin after she took in the vortex was present.

“You’ve still got two beating,” Rose whispered as his arms wrapped around her in a tight hold that didn’t feel nearly strong enough to keep her. He wasn’t strong enough to keep her.

Her heart beat steadily over where his right heart had failed.

“I’m scared,” the Doctor admitted, eyes still closed though it was oddly easier to breathe.

“I’ve got you.”

“Please be real,” he whimpered, even as his mind grew foggier.

She said something, but he didn’t know what. Everything was fading away, darkness becoming darker, becoming void.

Nothing.

The Doctor awoke alone on the couch in his office. According to his time sense, he had slept for eighteen hours and twenty-one minutes. He felt better than he had in weeks, but also so much worse. He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it.

“What’s wrong now?”

The pillow dropped from his hands and his eyes locked with Rose’s as she raced up the slight stair onto the platform that separated his primary workspace from the rest of the top floor.

“What?” His voice cracked.

Rose Tyler sat next to him on the couch, hand immediately resting on his forehead, primitively gauging his temperature. The Doctor cleared his throat before trying again.

“Rose, what are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad, I’m so very, very glad you’ve come.” Her hand dropped away and he was able to get a good look at her, dressed in a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts (Jackie had bought him a ridiculous amount of clothes before he left the manor, all of which he sent out to be cleaned). He swallowed audibly. “W-why are you wearing my clothes?”

“‘M locked in here. Door’s deadlock sealed.”

Flashes of memories began to speed through him. Attaching a re-calibrated Tziklian implosion grenade to a newly-repaired retroreflective Clishtahrr drone. Obsessively trying to circumvent his vision in order to peer at his own timeline, making himself sick. A contained rift event in the lower levels of the tower that made him feel like he had looked into the untempered schism again.

(Run, run, run!)

“I’m sorry. I don’t … I’ll just …”

He pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, found his sonic screwdriver and unsealed the door. And he wished he hadn’t trapped her with him, even if he was starting to remember why (inky black terror crawling up his spine, wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe).

“Do you remember what happened yesterday?” she asked, following him as he went to check the TARDIS on autopilot, looking as if she was worried he would collapse (again).

“It’s coming back to me,” the Doctor admitted. Still had a good four hours to go before the shatterfry process would be complete. He straightened his shoulders, trying to stand tall as he turned to face her. “Things got a little, uhm, unpleasant. I’ll do better.”

“Unpleasant,” Rose scoffed. “I’m pretty sure you had a bleedin’ breakdown!”

“It’s been a difficult regeneration,” he deflected, turning away, leaving the platform and making a beeline to the tiny kitchenette tucked off to the side. Tea. He just needed more tea.

“So, this how it’s gonna be, then? All that stuff about wanting to talk, but now you’re just done?”

He nearly spilled the kettle with the speed of his turn, brows furrowed and mouth falling open. “What? Of course I want to talk!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Just, er, what did I say? Before?”

Memory was still a bit of a blur. Successful energy funnel for the TARDIS’ growth tank. Vodka tasting different in a universe without potatoes. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. No contact.

“You don’t remember?”

“I said it was coming back to me, it’s just not coming in the right order.” he sighed, refocusing on the tea.

“Well, what’s the last thing that you vividly remember?” Rose asked, moving around him, easily finding mugs and sugar and milk.

“Thirteen days ago, creating a temporal disruption chrono-field manipulator. Needed to siphon rift energy for our TARDIS. She needs a very specific growth environment.”

“Thirteen days?! Wait, siphoning the-” She leaned against the tiny countertop and covered her face with her hands. The only sound for a few moments was of the electric kettle quickly boiling the water. “Our TARDIS?”

“If you want,” the Doctor muttered, lifting a hand, wanting to touch her, but then thinking better of it. He clenched his fist as it dropped to his side.

Rose groaned as she turned back to him. “Of course I want that, you daft alien git! But you don’t exactly make things easy, do ya? I spent years getting back to you, and then suddenly there’s two of you and one of you abandons me just like I was always afraid of, but one of you stays and I’m expected to be able to process any of it? And then for weeks it’s an effort just to give myself space, knowing that wherever I go you’re so close, part of me wondering why I’m even trying to stay away when all I wanted for ages was to be back with you. Then suddenly you’re gone! I still know where you are, but there isn’t a chance that I’d actually run into you. And I still don’t know what to feel, but coming here yesterday, seeing you … I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so broken.” There were tears in her eyes. His nails dug into his palms with the effort it took not to wrap his arms around her, to wipe them away. “I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault.”

“It’s not. It’s my own fault. You haven’t done a single thing wrong,” he assured her.

“That’s not true and you know it,” she tried to laugh, but it came out watery. “I’ve been an absolute cow. And I still haven’t answered your question. You’d said some things about words being a type of science, and that you could say things here that you couldn’t in the other universe. Like you were paranoid, under surveillance or something? I think you tried to describe how your time sense stuff works, but you almost fainted.”

“Fifty-seven days without you and that’s what I was talking about?” The Doctor grimaced.

The kettle clicked off.

“If it makes you feel better, it was kinda romantic. The stuff about not saying goodbye and forever and blowing up my job.”

“Blowing up your what?!”

“That’s why I had to come here. You blew up the old Records Annex.”

“Riiiiight. That explains the drone bomb. It’s not like they weren’t going to blow it up anyway. Didn’t I help?”

Rose rolled her eyes before moving to fix both their teas. “We’ll get into that later. Right now I don’t even want to talk about us. I wanna know about you, what you’ve been doing these past two months. Because I didn’t even stop to think what this all must be like for you.”

Cuppa in hand, the Doctor led her back to the couch as he tried to think of how best to explain something that he barely understood himself.

“I was created in a two-way human-Time Lord instant biological meta crisis. Hundreds of years as one being, then suddenly two. Exact same mind, almost the exact same body, but different enough that I can barely comprehend existing in it. If you remember, the first forty-eight hours of the regeneration cycle are complicated and dangerous. Barely a few hours into mine I was dropped outside of the prime universe that all Gallifreyans are meant to exist in, cut off from all telepathic contact as the walls of reality continued to sway, slowly falling back into place. It’s been … an adjustment. Sometimes things don’t feel real, even when they are. Sometimes things feel incredibly real, even when they aren’t.”

“You had a nightmare,” Rose told him, placing a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing soothing circles through his layers. “I woke you up, tried to help. You didn’t think I was real. You thought you were dying, because you only had one heart.”

He tried to smile, and the action felt painful. “Sounds about right.”

“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so selfish-”

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for. I want you to put yourself first.”

“But I can’t stand seeing you in pain like this. What can I do to help?” she asked, a desperation in her eyes that he couldn’t bear.

“You’re already helping,” the Doctor sighed, finally giving in and leaning into her touch, lying his head on her shoulder. It was the closest he’d felt to time since they’d been left on that bloody beach.

Memories were still racing through his head. Energy coils radiating artron energy into a centrifuge. The smell of burnt flesh against the remains of a Bverni navigational system. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. No contact.

“The other Doctor said that you needed me.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yes, because he needs you. He also said that I was dangerous. I am. He is. We are. But you already knew that. It’s easy, you know, to yell at yourself. Not often that there’s actually a separate you there to yell at. I destroyed the Daleks, but we’d already done that before we met. In fact, so did you. The other me was lashing out, knowing what he would have to do but not wanting to do it.”

“That’s another thing,” Rose said, moving to face him, dislodging his head, “you said that us being here, in this universe, was the best, safest option. What was that about?”

“Something’s coming. Has come. Ended and began. There’s a massive paradox surrounding me in the other universe. Incredibly dangerous, potentially catastrophic. All I know is that it has something to do with a woman named River Song who claims to be my wife.”

“Your wife?!”

“I said claims. And she did seem to be telling the truth, besides the fact that what she was saying was entirely preposterous. My soul is entirely bound to yours.” The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it. “So I think I have an idea of the kind of man I’ll have to become in order to keep the universe intact.”

“What’s that?”

“A liar. If she is going to believe that I could possibly join myself to someone else, someone who isn’t you, I’m going to have to lie. I’m going to have to forget. I’m going to have to lie so well and for so long that even I believe the fiction I’ve created for myself.”

He wondered what the other him in the other universe would think, then, whenever he caught a rare glimpse at their timeline surrounded in gold, bound with Rose’s for all eternity. What kind of explanation he would craft. The Doctor shuddered.

“But that sounds horrible!” she cried.

“It’s the sacrifice he’s making for the sake of the universe. My timeline is dangerous and someone, something is tampering with it. You and I made one tiny little paradox and it almost destroyed everything. This one is circular, might be able to be maintained, but the scale of it, Rose. And who knows if it will even work. River seems great and all, at least I hope so, but I don’t think she has much of a handle on time travel. That, or she’s a manipulative psychopath. Suppose that’s a surprise for the other me to find out.”

Rose sniffled and he pulled her into a hug.

“He’s going to be all alone.” The words were muffled into his shoulder, his shirt growing damp with her tears. He cringed and tried to think rationally, that of course she would feel this way, that it had nothing to do with how she felt about him him. But then again, maybe it did.

“He won’t be alone. He’ll find someone. I always do, eventually.”

“B-but I-”

“We’ll figure it out. How to get you back there, once it’s safe,” he whispered into the top of her head. Maybe that would be it- what she needed this him for. And if so, it would be enough. It would have to be enough.

“Really?”

The Doctor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“So it’s not- you really weren’t abandoning me here?” Rose lifted her head, eyes brimming with a hope that had been missing before.

“Never.” The word felt as if it was torn out of his very being.

She cupped his cheek, stubble beginning to smooth out into the beginnings of a beard. He really needed to shave.

“I thought you said to never say never ever?”

“That was before.”

It occurred to him that he had tea, so he took a sip - it had gone cold.

“Oh, right, all the, uhm, psychic-kinetic-telepathy science stuff.”

He opened his mouth to correct her - she was very close, though - but was interrupted by the ringing of the giant clock. It was heavily muffled by the sound proofing adjustments he had made while setting up the office, but still audible enough.

“It’s eight now, yeah?” Rose asked, even as she moved away.

“Yes.”

She walked over to his desk, where the Doctor now noticed a pile of her folded clothes sat. He frowned when she brought them over to him.

“Do you think you could sonic these clean for me? I’m gonna quick hop into your decontamination shower.”

“Th- there’s a proper shower, it’s two floors down. First left, third right, door marked ‘Security Level Alpha’.”

“What, really?”

“Didn’t want random lab techs using it. Has a retina scan. It’ll let you in.”

Rose laughed, ruffled his hair, and gave him a kiss on the cheek before disappearing to get ready for work. The whole thing left him confused. He went through his list again, checking and double checking to make sure that this all was real . It was, just as it had been all morning.

More memories. Recalibrating the tower’s new sub-basement weapon’s vault. Burnt toast and no more jam left. Reports saying: Correct universe. Wrong time - future. Contact made.

It wasn’t fair that she had spent almost an entire day with him yet he had missed most of it. Still, he sonicked her clothes, as well as his tea. Finished his cuppa, and then had a second before Rose came back from her shower.

“Why’s there no one around?”

“Dangerous radiation leak,” the Doctor shrugged. “I fixed it almost as soon as it happened, but apparently there’s ‘procedures’. How’d you get in?”

She bit her lip, fighting a smile. “Mighta shot a few of your doors,” Rose admitted, picking up an electro-pulse blaster off of a nearby cart. Non-lethal on organic matter. Very effective on fancy doors. “Nobody told me anything about a radiation leak, though.”

“Classified radiation leak.”

“And why’s that?” she scowled, hands on her hips.

“Everything to do with time travel is classified to this office. Bethany is not being very cooperative about putting you down as a liaison-whatever. Please believe me, I wasn’t trying to keep anything a secret.”

“Oh.” Rose glanced over at the EEPEC, absently biting her thumbnail.

The Doctor didn’t know what she was thinking, didn’t know if he should ask. After a moment she disappeared into the loo to change, promising to be back in a tick.

It was a funny multiverse, really, that his reunion with Rose Tyler would be such a stilted thing. That it would be about him and her, but not this him. Acknowledged with a few questions after his health, sure, but that was just polite. She’d always been compassionate, caring for others. Rose didn’t see him as the Doctor. Not the proper one. Sure, she used his name, but it would be easier for her to do that this time around.

He looked just like him.

He was him.

But he wasn’t.

Memories were still coming. Adjustments to Torchwood’s alien tech retrieval protocols. Nutrition shots. Reports reading: Correct universe. Wrong time - past. Contact made.

He went through the list again. Still real.

Unless it wasn’t.

Unless he wasn’t.

What would have stopped the other Doctor from knocking him out and uploading him into a matrix? Giving him a half-life with a programmed Rose Tyler?

The air here felt wrong.

(Wrong universe. Wrong universe. Wrong universe.)

“Doctor!”

(Daleks exploding. “What have you done?!”)

Pressure against his hands. Why was it so dark?

The Doctor opened his eyes to see Rose in front of him, pulling his fingers away from his palms. Oh. He was bleeding. Hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry, sorry.” He spun away from her in order to grab the first aid kit from his desk.

“What happened?” she asked, vibrating with barely contained panic.

“Nothing, nothing. Things just got jumbled for a second,” he assured her, efficiently cleaning his palms and wrapping them in gauze in a practiced motion.

“How often do you-”

“Hard to say. I’ve been graphing them. Seems to be stress contingent, but generally decreasing. My senses are gradually acclimating to this universe, so I have to hope that once they do, I’ll be fine. Perfect. Molto bene. No inconvenient lapses.”

“Stress? What h- oh.”

He didn’t like the sound of that ‘oh’. The Doctor clenched his jaw before facing her.

“We still haven’t talked about us,” Rose pointed out, approaching him slowly. Like he was a wild animal. Like he would hurt her. “And you … you don’t really remember yesterday still, do you?”

“Not really.”

His hands hurt. His body ached. One heart, and it was beating so quickly that he was sure it would give out.

Rose wrapped her arms around him and he automatically returned the embrace.

“Maybe I should just call in,” she suggested as she pulled away. “We can just take the day?”

“Or don’t and stay anyway,” the Doctor couldn’t help pointing out. “Some bits have come back, and didn’t they send you here?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my god, they did!”

And it was beyond words, how great it was to hear her laughing again. To see her smiling.

But …

That was wrong.

Rose was upset with him.

Time didn’t feel right.

The air tasted off.

Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe. Wrong Universe.

The Doctor staggered backwards.

His respiratory bypass was malfunctioning. It was like it wasn’t even there. He couldn’t get air into his lungs.

Everything went black.

There was a shot of gold, and then a different kind of black.

“Doctor,” said a whisper in the dark. “The timer went off for the TARDIS. ‘M I supposed to take her out of that thing?”

A TARDIS timer?

TARDIS … timer …

The timer for the extended electro-percussive environment chamber!!!

The Doctor shot up from where he had apparently been lying on the couch and ran over to the EEPEC, swiftly shut it off, removed the tank housing their baby TARDIS, and then poured in the pre-prepared aqueous nutrient solution before inserting the tank into the quasi-dimensional artron chamber (currently set to it’s highest opacity setting). 

“Hah!” he exclaimed, punching his fist in the air and itching to switch the chamber’s outside view settings to transparent. He turned to Rose, opened his mouth to ask her, and then paused.

It all came back to him, all of it, not just the jumbled recollections he had been getting earlier. Apparently he had fallen into a healing coma, and it seems to have been just what he needed … but it all truly hadn’t been fair to Rose. Though, to be fair, she was currently smiling like it was Christmas, so-

Christmas. Healing comas. 

Huh.

“Shall we switch it to transparent?” the Doctor asked, unable to reign himself in any longer. “It was clear when Benny - quite the coincidence, right? - helped me set it up. This is a quasi-dimensional artron chamber. It’s funnelling in rift energy and centrifuging artron particles, and the end result in that chamber is the specific environment needed to properly grow a TARDIS. Well, along with the chrono-nutritio aqueous habitat. Benny describes looking into it as being similar to taking DMT, which, by the way, is completely inaccurate. It’s exactly like looking into an Eye of Harmony. If it’s malfunctioning, it’s like looking into the untempered schism, which I don’t recommend. But everything’s stable now, we could-”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to look into the vortex?” Rose interrupted, and …

“Right … erm, well ,” he hedged, scratching the back of his neck, “I mean, it isn’t actually the vortex, but you’re probably not completely wrong. Best not risk it.”

Excitement abating, the Doctor slumped against the chamber and at that moment realized that he had been changed into jim jams.

Jim jams. Healing comas.

Huh.

At least these were his own pajamas, and not some ‘friend’ of Jackie’s, though how strange was it that he owned his own pajamas in the first place?

“C’mere,” Rose said, beckoning him back toward the couch, which she was sitting next to, but not on. Not your typical decision, but he had likely taken up all of the space earlier. “I made you some tea.”

It really wasn’t worth it, cataloguing the similarities between this and when he had first regenerated into this body … even though the list did seem to be growing.

“Perfect! Just what I need!” the Doctor smiled as he walked over, taking a seat next to Rose on the floor.

Silence fell as he sipped his tea, and he found himself unsure of what to do or say next. There was too much to say, and he’d certainly done a piss poor job of organizing his thoughts earlier. 

“Feeling better?” she asked, after another moment. 

Small talk. He could definitely do small talk.

“Mmm yes, very much so.”

“Better enough to talk?”

The Doctor coughed, having swallowed his tea incorrectly (bloody hybrid body, still acting up), before nodding. Rose moved onto the couch and he scrambled to join her. 

“So,” she began and paused, face scrunching up in concentration (it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who found this whole business incredibly awkward), “I guess … what is it that you actually want? Aside from a working TARDIS, that is.”

His brows furrowed.

Sure, there were plenty of ways he could answer that question and have all of them be true, but he had a feeling that she was looking for a specific type of ‘want’. 

Problem was, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure what that was .

“What?” he asked, in lieu of any better things to say (as the runner up response was to ask for some jam, or maybe a banana, or some of the takeaway from the shop down the corner and blimey, he was hungry). 

“This whole time, all of it, since you c- since you were- since you stopped just bein’ a hand- ” the Doctor had a list of complaints and corrections that he barely held in “- nobody’s asked what you wanted. The D- the other Doctor chose for both of us, really, and I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. An’ I wanna know. What do you want?”

Removed from the actual experience itself (and therefore not feeling incredibly, deathly ill), visions of the slight peek he’d gotten four days ago of his own timeline played in his head.

The Doctor grabbed Rose’s hand, weaving their fingers together.

“I want this.”

She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze.

“Care to elaborate?” she asked with a slight laugh.

“Nope,” he replied, popping the ‘p’. “Because as long as you’re happy, everything else is just- just semantics. I mean, obviously it’s going to be a bit dull until the TARDIS has grown enough for proper travel, but I think we can make do?” At least, he really hoped so. It hadn’t been going swimmingly so far, but the Doctor sincerely hoped that he could chalk all that up to the initial side effects of the meta crisis, compounded by all of the, er … technical difficulties he had run into while constructing the TARDIS’ growth tank. Also, his new hybrid body needed much more maintenance than he was used to, including sleep. Really was rubbish without regular sleep. Such a waste of time.

“So, if I were to suggest you moving into the flat?”

He opened his mouth, intending to immediately agree, but then frowned. The TARDIS was here, after all. And he absolutely could not move her. Not at this stage. Not until she could connect to other dimensions on her own. The Doctor looked over at the quasi-dimensional artron chamber, once again wishing that he could switch it to transparent and watch the process unfold.

“How moved in is moved in?” he asked once he forced himself to turn back toward Rose.

“You’d sleep there, shower there, eat some of your meals. Most of your clothes an’ stuff would be there. Y’know. It’d be where you live. With me. If you want.”

“And that’s what you want?” he double checked, trying not to telegraph his surprise - he must have missed a lot while in a coma, as last he knew they were teetering on the edge of a row.

Rose rolled her eyes, and that was much more in line with where he thought they were at, er, relationship-wise.

“Well, I don’t fancy living in a clocktower office. When I’m done working, I’d like to not still be at work, ta.”

She did make some excellent points … but still, it all implied that they would be staying together. And that was what he wanted, of course it was, but the Doctor still couldn’t help but feel he had missed something crucial despite the fact that he could now remember everything clearly.

“You blew up my job. ”

“I love you, too. But I’m still mad at you.”

“You’ve still got two beating.”

Maybe there wasn’t something to have missed. Human emotions were relatively complex, after all, and there was no rule requiring them to happen in isolation.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked, realizing as he did that to Rose it was coming from seemingly out of nowhere.

This was confirmed as she blinked, brows furrowing.

“I don’t know. Maybe a little, but …”

“But?” the Doctor repeated, unable to stand the suspense.

“It’s hardly the first time we’ve had a fight, yeah?”

He nodded, unsure of where she was planning on going with this and hoping that he wouldn’t need to begin apologizing for every insensitive thing he’d said or done since they first met. It would take ages.

“Well, we always end up workin’ it out. And we did live together, travelin’ on the TARDIS, whether we had a row or not, so …” Rose shrugged, now examining her fingernails.

Speaking of the TARDIS, though …

“First things first,” the Doctor began, rubbing the back of his neck as he stood up and began pacing, “I want it on record that I would absolutely love to live in a flat with you, with carpets and doors and things. Assuming we’d spend much of our time traveling about, that is.” He turned back toward her, having paced his way back over to the TARDIS’ QDA chamber. “The thing is, it’s … I don’t want you to think that- the TARDIS. She needs me here. This is a critical development period. For the next three to six months, the TARDIS will be growing in the chamber, learning how to connect to and create dimensions. Until she can manage it, I can’t move her and she requires near-constant monitoring. Every hour or two.” 

“She’s like a newborn baby,” Rose commented, getting up and joining him at the chamber, where she stroked the side.

“Exactly.”

“Well, I suppose this’ll have to do then,” she reluctantly … agreed? “As long as we’re living in the flat as soon as she’s moveable, mind. The bathroom here is two floors away.”

“It’s a clocktower, Rose! There’s only so much space.” The Doctor scrunched up his face as he said the word. 

“Then why’d you pick this place? I know because of the Rift, but doesn’t it stretch further than just the tower?”

“Nope,” he shrugged.

It’s not as though he hadn’t checked. 

“Really?”

“Small rift.”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed, “a small rift right under Big Ben.”

The Doctor laughed with her, amazed that he finally could.

Then he frowned.

It was all a little too good to be true.

Was this real?

“Hey.”

He refocused. Rose was right in front of him, their eyes locked.

“You were getting that look in your eyes,” she informed him.

“Look? What look?” the Doctor asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew. Some sort of dazed tell, some sort of glaringly obvious indicator that his grasp on reality was failing him.

“This look you get when you start thinkin’ you’re in the wrong universe.”

Wrong universe, wrong universe, wrong universe.

“Well, I am in the wrong universe,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Yeah, I know. Me too. But y’know what?”

Rose wrapped her arms around him, and it was almost as if she were his tether, grounding him to this new reality they’d found themselves in.

“It’s better with two.”

[ask-the-riders]

@isnt-that-something dude look, you're part of my year in review thing (in the added tags section)

I posted 4,296 times in 2021

4007 posts created (93%)

289 posts reblogged (7%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.1 posts.

I added 12,219 tags in 2021

#asks - 2493 posts

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#undertale au - 1464 posts

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Longest Tag: 119 characters

#listening to a song like that while writing a letter that could determine whether or not war forgives death feels wrong

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

When you're working on a ref sheet and accidentally create a new Bonely Hearts character

((click for better quality))

73 notes • Posted 2021-05-08 04:31:05 GMT

#4

Ok,, so

I'm actually hella proud of this, for a change

Anyways though,, yeah. War with both her threads and her blaster

She's not messing around anymore

((Alt. versions under the cut XP))

See the full post

78 notes • Posted 2021-01-12 10:22:52 GMT

#3

"Is this your way of telling me you want cuddles, Sweetheart?"

"...No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous, Pest!"

79 notes • Posted 2021-01-10 09:11:15 GMT

#2

Finally got the ref sheet for this diva done, so here it is X3

There's some extra miscellaneous stuff and definitions/explanations under the cut, pertaining to some of his abilities

Amoscience:

Knowing everything about and sensing feelings of love/lust/other emotions and seeing potential relationships

Anchored deity soul:

He's not necessarily a god in a monster's body, but rather, his soul and/or spiritual essence is divine in origin, which grants him supernatural abilities on an almost god-like level. Because his deity soul is anchored, he'll be able to keep all his new powers, even if someone attempted to manipulate or alter his soul somehow

Mind/emotion reading:

It's unclear whether he's genuinely able to read minds, or if he's simply sensing emotions and connecting them to the context of a situation in order to piece things together

Relationship manipulation:

He can weave a potential love story (for lack of better words) for people, and he can guide them to each other, but he can't force them to be together

Then as far as punishing/cursing people, this is what I've got. I haven't worked anything specific out, but hey, it's a start ^^"

See the full post

90 notes • Posted 2021-10-08 21:31:37 GMT

#1

90 OC Questions For Ya

I tried to make one of those ask game things, and this is how it turned out :P I also tried my best to avoid any boring or bland questions (ex: “what’s their favorite color?”), so if these seem random and/or potentially chaotic, that��s probably why. As my luck goes though, I couldn’t find too many unique ones, so yeah.

**I split the list into separate categories and organized them a little, but unfortunately, the numbering is a little weird ^^” when sending in any of these, please be sure to specify which category your question is from, that way I can be sure that I’m answering the right one**

About Them:

Can they play an instrument?

What is their least favorite chore?

What was their best subject in school?

What is their opinion on naps?

When they want to get away from everyone, where do they go?

What food combination do they eat that makes others cringe?

What do they like but are kind of embarrassed to admit?

What movie trope annoys them the most?

What time do they normally go to bed?

What do they like to do in their free time?

What is the last thing they do before they go to sleep?

What are their turn ons? What about their turn offs?

What’s one thing they miss about being a kid?

In their group of friends, what role do they play?

How often do they check their phone? (From 1-10, with 1 being “Never In A Million Years”, and 10 being “They Never Stop Looking At It”)

What’s their worst habit?

How many children do they want?

Do they like to dance?

Do they currently have any pets?

Do they keep their things organized?

Do they have any siblings?

Do they have nice handwriting?

Do they have any nicknames?

Do they have any pet peeves? If so, what are they?

Do they think that humans will ever be able to live together in harmony? What about humans and monsters?

Do they like horror movies? Why or why not?

See the full post

172 notes • Posted 2021-01-28 05:17:02 GMT

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