#workstation programming

[daily-useful-android-apps]

https://www.instagram.com/dailynewandroidapp/

[heileysoffice]

Health and Wellness Trends in Shared Office Spaces in Kakkanad

Introduction

In recent years, the concept of shared office spaces has gained momentum, particularly in bustling business hubs like Kakkanad. Known as the IT epicenter of Kochi, Kakkanad is home to a vibrant mix of startups, tech companies, and creative enterprises. As more professionals gravitate towards these flexible work environments, there’s a growing emphasis on integrating health and wellness into the workspace. Here's a look at the latest trends shaping the health and wellness landscape in shared office spaces in Kakkanad.

1. Ergonomic Workstations

Ergonomic Design: With a focus on reducing physical strain, ergonomic workstations are becoming a staple in shared offices. These workstations feature adjustable desks, chairs with lumbar support, and monitor stands to promote better posture and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal issues.

Standing Desks: Many shared offices are introducing standing desks to encourage movement and reduce the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Employees can alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day, promoting better circulation and energy levels.

2. Biophilic Design

Natural Elements: Incorporating natural elements like plants, water features, and natural light has been shown to improve mental well-being and productivity. Shared offices in Kakkanad are embracing biophilic design to create a calming and inspiring work environment.

Indoor Gardens: Some spaces are going a step further by creating indoor gardens or green walls, which not only enhance the aesthetic appeal but also improve air quality and provide a serene spot for breaks.

3. Wellness Programs

Fitness Facilities: On-site gyms and yoga studios are becoming popular in shared office spaces. These facilities offer convenient access to physical exercise, helping professionals integrate fitness into their daily routines without leaving the office premises.

Wellness Workshops: Regular workshops on topics like stress management, nutrition, and mental health are being offered. These sessions provide valuable information and practical tips to help employees maintain a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

4. Healthy Eating Options

Nutritious Cafeterias: Shared offices are revamping their cafeterias to include more healthy and nutritious food options. Salad bars, fresh fruit, and whole grain snacks are replacing traditional fast food offerings, catering to the health-conscious workforce.

Hydration Stations: Providing filtered water stations and encouraging hydration is a simple yet effective way to boost employee wellness. Some offices are also offering infused water with natural flavors like lemon, mint, and cucumber.

5. Mental Health Support

Quiet Zones: Recognizing the need for mental breaks, shared offices are creating designated quiet zones where employees can retreat to relax, meditate, or simply take a break from the hustle and bustle of the workday.

Counseling Services: Access to mental health professionals or counseling services is becoming more common. These services provide support for employees dealing with stress, anxiety, or other mental health concerns.

6. Flexible Work Arrangements

Remote Work Options: Many shared office spaces are supporting remote work policies, allowing employees the flexibility to work from home or other locations when needed. This flexibility helps maintain work-life balance and reduces burnout.

Hot Desking: The concept of hot desking, where employees do not have assigned desks, is gaining traction. This arrangement promotes a dynamic work environment and can be particularly beneficial for companies with fluctuating team sizes.

Conclusion

As shared office spaces continue to evolve, the integration of health and wellness practices is becoming a key differentiator. In Kakkanad, a region known for its dynamic business ecosystem, these trends are enhancing the overall work experience, fostering a healthier, happier, and more productive workforce. Whether through ergonomic design, wellness programs, or nutritious food options, shared offices are setting new standards for a balanced and fulfilling work life.

By embracing these health and wellness trends, shared office spaces in Kakkanad are not just meeting the needs of modern professionals but also paving the way for a more sustainable and employee-centric future.

[sagharmax]

Clean Code Rules: 31. Always have in mind that you are writing code for humans Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. #software_development #programming #dotnet #csharp #dotnetdevelopment #webdevelopment #coding #workstation #workdesk #clean_code #uncle_bob #robert_c_martin #sagharmax (at Urmia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp74V0MIqcy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[princesssmars]

victoria with lab tech reader…nsfw.

when you were approached at your basic post-grad biomedical science research program with the opportunity to "study and develop a potentially groundbreaking medication", you immediately, but politely, called bullshit. but your boss and coworkers encouraged you once they heard the pay, so you accepted.

it was…challenging to say the least.

the lab and the workers were shady as hell, not telling you any details about the company you were working for, if you were even working for a company, what exactly this medication was for, etc etc. but the pay really was good, enough to help you splurge on yourself while also saving and paying off your student loans, so you couldn’t really complain.

after about two months of great work and progress on your tasks, the leads of your team told you that one of the head donors would like to “talk about utilizing your full potential”. you were expecting further praise for your work and maybe a pay boost, not to walk into an office with the super attractive congresswoman you’d seen on tv sitting at the desk.

she has just as much mysterious charisma as she had then, keeping eye contact as she pulls out your chair, waiting for you to sit before she places herself on top of the desk, pantsuit-covered leg only a few inches from yours. she gives you a mini rundown of why she personally picked you out from your university and she's been keeping a close eye on your personal progress to develop a cure for an unknown but deadly disease you had been keeping track of.

"so that's why im here? we're working on a disease?"

"yeah, you could say that."

her smile unnerves you but you don't mention it. nor do you bring up how weird it feels that a congresswoman would be following your manic studies over a disease that only ten thousand people in the world had. you do have to reel in your ego slightly, figuring this meant that your theories were legitimate.

things are weird after that. now that you have some more hints about what you are actually doing your work starts to move along slowly, even impressing your lead with the progress you started to make.

ok, maybe a tiny little part of it was so that when victoria came in on her weekly walk-throughs she'd observe your work and give you that pretty smile of hers, maybe even a 'great job, hun' if you were lucky.

as the weeks went by and the medication came along her affection only grew in intensity, from leaving coffee at your workstation to inviting you to take lunch breaks with her. it was odd and completely unprofessional, but when those slender fingers would move one of your stray hairs back in place while telling a story you couldn't find it in yourself to care.

but then it happens - that dreaded period in any medical science where just one stupid little thing stumps you for a week. you should be used to it at this point, having been through this process since you bought your first microscope in middle school. it doesn't make it any easier to power through though, especially when you know everyone on your team is depending on you to finish up your labs.

so now you've resorted to this, three red bulls and a heap of paperwork around you while you frantically rework the math on some of the work you need to turn in. you're a few minutes away from slumping over when a loud door slam forces you upright, looking to the entryway to make eye contact with victoria.

you dont know how it happens but you go from hunched over in your chair to lying on the comfy couch in her office, a short blanket draped over your body as you drowsily explain your conundrum to the older woman. she nods along the entire time, a soft hand rubbing up and down the bare expanse of your arm while she listens to your rambling.

'what on earth are you doing?' your brain asks yourself when you shift closer to her body that's sitting next to you, head delicately resting in her lap. 'are you really going to jeopardize your career like this?' when your eyes flutter when she runs her hand over your cheek and down your neck. she leans her head down ever so slowly until her lips are just barely pressing into yours, corners pulling up when she sees you arch your back in wait for her neck action.

"but you'll figure it out for me, won't you smart girl?"

you solved the problem the next morning.

i dont even wanna write for her GIVE HER BACK TO ME

[totesnothere04]

The Silence Didn't End, Until It Did

Tonowari x Deaf!Avatar!Reader x Ronal

Disclaimer: I don't own any fanart, screenshots, or gifs.

Warnings: Uh Idfk imagine going from hearing absolutely nothing your entire life to hearing everything.

Masterlist

As soon as you're pulled out of your cryo-pod, you're greeted by a nurse signing to you.

"We're here." He signs and you sigh.

"Thank you." You sign back and he helps you out of your pod and you float over to your locker. You sadly set a hand on Tommy's locker since it was right next to yours, and you open your locker grabbing your things. Your eyes are caught by someone coming over and opening Tommy's locker and you have to do a double-take. He looked exactly like Tommy, but his legs had no muscle mass. This must be Jake. You sigh again, close your locker, and push off to get where you need to go.

Later after your shuttle landed you sit there watching what the interpreter is saying from the Colonel. You were bored, but you knew that this place wasn't a cakewalk. You were invaders so you knew the indigenous wouldn't be particularly accepting of humans.

But you were one of the lucky few who didn't have to be stationed at Hell's Gate. You were lucky enough to be stationed further away in the forest close to the ocean. You were a marine zoologist, and you couldn't pass up the opportunity to beable to come here and be out there.

The moment the interpreter signed to you that the safety briefing was over your bag was in your hand and you were out of the mess hall. Basically jogging over to the link room to meet THE Grace Augustine. A man greeted you when you entered the link room.

"Hello, I'm Max. I'll be helping you connect to your avatar tomorrow, and then you'll be sent to your station afterwards." Max signs to you and you smile excitedly.

"I'm so excited, I'm sure you understand just how excited I am." You sign to him and based off of the exhale of breathing and the movement of his shoulders he chuckled.

"I get it. I really do, but as beautiful as this planet can be it can be very dangerous. Just keep that in mind." Max signs and leads you over to a link pod. "Any minute now, Grace Augustine is going to be coming out of this pod. But I'll have you standing with us in the center of the room so that you don't crowd her when she first comes out." You nod along and move with him over to the center of the room and look at all of their monitors in awe. After a moment her link pod opens and she walks over to meet two men. Both of which you know will be joining the avatar program. Norm takes notice of you and waves.

"Hey (Y/n). I didn't see you in the mess hall." Norm signs and wave off his words.

"I sat in the back with my interpreter. I'm just ready to be at my station." You sign to him and he smiles and nods. Grace looks at you and smiles.

"You must be (Y/n). I'm excited to beable to read your reports. From your grades and your simulation hours, I can tell that you will be an amazing addition to the avatar program." Grace signs and you smile bashfully.

"I'm just ready to be at my workstation and learn everything I can about the marine life here." You sign to her and she smiles.

"Be here bright and early and be ready, because this is going to be an experience." Grace signs to you and you give her two excited thumbs up and grab your bag to go to your temporary bunk. As you pass the lab the blue glow catches your eye and you go inside. The first avatar is Tommy's, the next is Norm's avatar... Then yours. You smile wide and go over to yours and watch her twitch occasionally.

The teal blue of her skin contrasts with Norm and Tommy's avatars, and her hair is a different consistency. Longer, thicker, and softer looking and you already start thinking of the different ways you could style her hair so it doesn't get in your eyes. Her wide limbs were there to make gliding through the water much easier, and her thicker tail for better propulsion. You leave the lab feeling way too excited for tomorrow.

The next morning you were up early and dressed ready to go. You leave your temporary bunk to go grab breakfast and after you finish eating you're in the link room.

Max greets you and leads you over to a link pod. You calibrate it and take a deep breath as you sit down in it and lie down. Max puts everything in place and you reach up and pull down the lid. A moment later your eyes close and you wake up slowly, but something is off.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Your brows furrow in confusion and suddenly they're above you shining a bright light in your eyes.

"Pupilary reflex is good." The woman says and your eyes blow wide. The man notices and snaps in your ears and you flinch at the noise.

"(Y/n) can you hear us?" The man asks and through your shock, you start reading their lips to associate words with the way they sound, you manage to nod.

"I can hear..." You sign to them and they both smile widely. Approximately 5 minutes later you're sat up on the bed when Norm's avatar stirs and your ears perk toward the noise of his shuffling. When he sits up he looks over at you and smiles.

"This is awesome." Norm signs and you nod.

"I can hear." You sign to him and his face drops in shock.

"Really?" Norm asks outloud and you nod.

"Now I just need to learn to speak." You sign to him and he waves a hand.

"You're smart. It's easy to talk, you'll get it in no time." Norm says and you giggle, but your eyes widened after you did.

"That's what my laugh sounds like?" You sign and Norm nods.

"Yeah. Tommy and I always thought it was cute." Norm says with a chuckle. Your conversation ended abruptly when To-Jake started to stir and you watched with curiosity. After only being linked to his avatar body for a few moments he starts to get up and your eyes go wide as you watch him detach all the IV's and monitoring equipment and run out of the airlock. Norm follows behind Jake, but you remain seated with a raised brow.

The two scientists close the airlock when they return from trying to keep up with Jake and they return to you.

"Alright (Y/n). Let's get you up and ready." The woman says and the man takes that as his cue to leave. She pushes a cart over to you and you gladly get dressed and ready to go and soon enough you're out of the airlock too. You're met by an older ocean avatar and he smiles at you.

"(Y/n), I'm so excited to get to know you." He signs happily.

"I'm excited too! But I wanted to let you know I can hear you... I can hear everything." You sign to him and his eyes go wide and he smiles.

"Even better. I'll teach you to speak Na'vi first." He says with a laugh. "Come on let's get you used to these legs." He says as he leads you off to an obstacle course.

The next day you step off the Samson with your mentor and you look around you in awe. The ocean a few miles away was a beautiful blue, the sand a pure light tan nearly white, and the grass around you was green. You smile brightly at the scene around you, but your admiring is cut short by a hand waving in your face.

"Sorry... Forgot you were in your human body and not your avatar." Your mentor signed and he had a sheepish look on his face.

"I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention... It so much more beautiful than I thought it would be." You sign to him and he smiles and nods.

"And to think.... At one point Earth looked like this." Your mentor signed as he looked out over the scenery sadly. "Anyway... Let's get you set up." He signs as he leads you into the mobile units. Three small portable buildings clustered together and when you walked in there was only one other scientist there. She jumped up quickly and waved excitedly.

"Hello! I'm Kira a marine biologist." Kira signs excitedly.

"Hello, Kira. I'm (Y/n) and I can't wait to get started." You sign to her and she nods.

"You'll love it here, trust me. I never want to leave." Kira signs and as quickly as she appeared to you she disappears into the buildings.

As you settled into your new surroundings and got used to the schedule for studying, Kira and your mentor, Steve, taught you to speak Na'vi. You picked up on it so fast that soon enough you were having full conversations with them fluently.

Currently, however, you are enjoying some free time. The sounds of the waves crashing on the shore and the animals in the nearby forest were relaxing. You took a deep breath and got up from your seated position on the sand. You waded into the water and dove in being careful of the possible dangers within.

Even under the water, you could hear everything. The chitter of the animals under the water, the flowing of the water, and the sound of rocks shifting with the tides. Everyday you became more enraptured with the world around you, and you started to dread when your 6 years were up. You couldn't stand the thought of leaving such a beautiful lively planet to return to one filled with so much ugly. The tall buildings you once thought were beautiful and strong, now seemed disgusting in your memories compared to what you were seeing everyday now.

In your deep state of thinking you didn't notice a Tsurak, or Skimwings, as humans call them, swimming toward you. You turned startled slightly when you felt something nudge your back. You came face-to-face with the Tsurak and you felt your blood run cold. When claimed by a rider they don't attack Na'vi unless prompted to, but this one didn't have a saddle. You freeze in place waiting for it to make its move, but it never moves to attack you. It only nuzzles the end of its nose into your stomach, so you bring your hands up to pet its muzzle. It starts pushing you back to shore and you have to suppress the giggles since it was tickling you. You finally stood up when you reached an area where you were still in the ocean up to your waist.

"(Y/n)!" Steve calls out as he comes out of the mobile unit. You turn to look at him and your new Tsurak friend floats up to the surface of the water.

"Yes, Steve?" You ask him in Na'vi and he freezes after taking a step when he sees the Tsurak.

"(Y/n)... very slowly walk out of the water." Steve says and you chuckle and shake your head.

"Steve this is my new friend." You tell Steve with a smile and pet the Tsurak's head.

"Okay..." Steve says slowly. "I got a status update from Max... They're attacking the Omatikaya Hometree today." Steve says sadly and your expression drops as well. You go to open your mouth to speak when something wet and slightly slippery smacks you in the face. Confused and slightly annoyed you look down to see that the Tsurak has its tswin sticking out of the water expectantly. Steve becomes amazed, moves a little closer, and crouches.

"Oh my god..." Steve says quietly as he watches the two infront of him. You slowly reach behind you and pull your tswin forward, and bring it to meet the Tsurak's. When the small pink nerve endings meet they bind together and suddenly everything feels different. You got the sudden urge to hang on for dear life and did so. Which proved to be a good idea since the Tsurak took off swimming quickly in what felt like a familiar direction to it. When your lungs start to burn in protest for air the Tsurak changes its direction to go for the surface. When it breaks the surface its wings spread and it flies above the water. You take a deep breath letting the scent of the ocean air flow into your lungs and you laugh happily as you watch the ocean fly by.

Hours later the Tsurak dives into the water for probably the 15th time when you get close to an island, but after a minute it pops back up above the water. When you get to the shallows he stops and you slide off of him and disconnect your tswins. He swims off quickly and you sigh, unsure of where you are or why he brought you here. You turn to go inland to try to find somewhere to safely stash your avatar, but quickly put your hands up in surrender. Behind you are several clan members with their weapons drawn and pointed at you. The tallest Na'vi man you had ever seen walks through the crowd shortly followed by a shorter female Na'vi.

"Why have you come to us, tawtute?" The female asks and you nervously gulp.

"I didn't mean to... The Tsurak approached me while I was swimming, offered to bond with me, and brought me here." You say honestly and she slowly walks around you. She picks up your arm and lets it fall to your side. Then she tugs on your tail and hums quietly. Then she picks up your tswin, twirls it in her hand once, then drops it. She returns to the man's side and the two have a silent conversation. Occasionally their eyes would wander back to you and they almost seemed... Intrigued?

"Come." The woman says and comes back over to you wrapping an arm around your back, guiding you.

"Everyone, return to your duties." The man says and follows behind the two of you. They lead you to a shelter and tell you what each thing inside is for.

"Why... are you treating me nicely?" You ask confused. "I'm human, my race hasn't exactly been good to yours."

"Just as not all Na'vi are bad, not all humans can be." The man says.

"There is a reason your Tsurak approached you. A gifted one that was given to us by the Great Mother." The woman says and you suddenly remember what Steve told you before you were whisked away, so to speak.

"Wait... I need to go help Max." You say hurriedly and the two seem confused. "Right before I bonded with my Tsurak, my mentor, Steve, told me that the RDA was about to attack the Omatikaya Hometree. I need to go help stop it."

"What?" The woman asks angrily.

"The people that brought me here to Pandora, they were about to attack the Omatikaya People's Hometree." You say hurriedly and she shakes her head.

"I sense that you are not a fighter. There is not much that you would beable to do to help." The woman says and you sigh sadly and your ears droop. You know what she's saying is true, you're not a fighter, you study things you learn about them. In no way had you ever been taught to fight or even shoot a gun.

"Here, you are safe and you do not have to fight." The man says and you shake your head.

"Maybe my avatar is, but my human body is still back in the mainland." You tell them, they look at eachother and sigh.

"We will start training you tomorrow." The man says and the woman agrees.

"Wait... what are your names?" You ask them.

"I am Tonowari, Olo'eyktan of the Metkayina." 'Tonowari' introduces himself.

"And I am Ronal, Tsahík." 'Ronal' introduces herself as well.

"I'm (Y/n)." You introduce yourself to them. Ronal and Tonowari share a small smile and they leave you alone in the hut they took you to.

A few days later you link with your avatar with a heavy heart. Knowing you will most likely be sent back to Earth with some of the other scientists and humans. When you link you got up and stretched then made your way to find Tonowari or Ronal or both. It really depended on who you would find first. When you spot them they are in deep conversation, speaking quietly to one another.

"Good morning Tonowari, good morning Ronal." You greet them and they immediately cease their conversation and look up to you.

"(Y/n), good morning. Come join us for breakfast." Tonowari says and you take a seat across from them and Ronal hands you a leaf with breakfast in it.

"We were just discussing if we wanted to have you train with Ronal today or if I would continue training you to hunt." Tonowari says and you sigh sadly.

"I'm sorry, but I'm most likely going to be sent back to Earth soon." You say sadly.

"Why?" Ronal asks her voice angry.

"The humans have waged war against the Omatikaya... The last I heard anything was earlier when one of the scientists at the main base told us that the military leader was preparing for an attack on the Tree of Souls." You tell them with a frown. Tonowari immediately stands and shakes his head.

"No... You are Metkayina. You stay on Eywa'eveng." Tonowari says and you shake your head.

"I won't have a choice." You tell him quietly, but he doesn't respond. He simply grabs his spear and walks out of his marui, a few of his best warriors falling to his side as he walks away. You look at Ronal in confusion and she just gives you a reassuring smile.

"Then it is decided... You will train with me today. I'm going to start with the easy part of healing, making bandages." Ronal says with a smile and after you both finish breakfast, she leads you to the healer's marui.

Hours later you're learning to make a salve to help calm down the effects of Stinging Coral when you feel your consciousness being pulled back to your human body. You have enough time to feel your body start to collapse, but you're back in your human body before you make contact with the ground.

You sigh sadly and get out of the linkpod. Nothing. That's all you could hear, it's all you could feel. Suddenly a hand is shoved in your face and waved to catch your attention. You look up with an angry expression, hating it when people get your attention that way.

"(Y/n), you and Kira are leaving." Steve signs and you feel your spirits fall once more. "Tonowari and a few of his warriors are here to take you with them." Steve sign quickly when he realizes you thought you were being sent back to Earth.

"Kira is going too?" You ask him and he nods.

"One of the warriors took a liking to her so she's going too." Steve explains and you nod. You feel a smile creep across your lips and you quickly go over, grab an oxygen mask, and take off running out of the airlock. Kira is already outside talking to Tonowari and the others when you get out there. Kira sees you and quickly turns and says something to Tonowari and his men. When you get close enough Tonowari turns to Kira and says something to her.

"Tonowari says that he couldn't stand the thought of you being forced to go back, when he feels that you belong with him and his people." Kira says and you smile wide and look at Tonowari.

"I will admit I have not been with them for long but I feel like Awa'atlu is where I belong." You tell Kira and she turns and talks to Tonowari. He offers you his hand and leads you to the water where their Tsuraks are all waiting. And soon enough you're riding off in the direction of Awa'atlu... Your home.

15 Years Later

The horns blared signaling visitors to Awa'atlu and Ronal looked at you worriedly. Ever since it was confirmed you were pregnant both she and Tonowari had been overprotective.

"You should stay here." Ronal says as she gets up but you roll your eyes and standup as well.

"It will be alright Ronal. I can protect myself and both you and Tonowari will be there." You say and move to leave the healers marui.

"Yawne, this is your first child with us. I want you to be safe." Ronal argues softly.

"As I said I will be safe. You and Tonowari will be here." You say in return again and nearly bounce your way down the walkways, Ronal begrudgingly following behind you.

When you get to where your clan is gathered around 5 ikrans. Your ears perk forward as the crowd splits for you and Ronal. Your head cocks to the side as you recognize Jake.

"Jake Sully." You say in surprise and you approach him, Ronal quietly protesting.

"(Y/n)?" Jake asks in surprise. "What- How-" Jake stammers and you shrug.

"We both chose our people." You say casually and you feel a large muscular arm wrap around your shoulders. You turn to find Tonowari and a smile comes across your features at seeing your other mate.

"Jake Sully. I take it you already know of my second mate?" Tonowari questions and Jake's jaw nearly falls off him.

"I met her once a long time ago, but I didn't know she was your second mate." Jake admits.

"I was there the first time he connected to his avatar." You tell Tonowari and snicker at Jake's embarrassed expression.

"Why have you come to us?" Ronal finally asks, obviously done with dancing around the subject.

"We've come seeking uturu." Jake says and you feel Tonowari's muscles in his back tighten.

"Uturu?" Ronal says astonished by the request.

[smallmariofindings]

The Conkdor Canyon theme from Super Mario 3D World uses a preset drum loop found in the Logic Pro digital audio workstation, called "Turkish Morning Drum 01". The audio first features the loop as heard in the program before playing the beginning of the Mario track.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: Renefoetsie

[ralfmaximus]

Want to keep using Windows 10 after 2025?

It'll cost you $61 the first year. Per machine.

And $122 in year two and $244 in year three, doubling every year after that until by 2038 it hits $499,712 bucks.

Just kidding. But not about that first part. Seriously, they really do plan to double the annual fee for the first few years. Yikes.

Assuming you want security updates. Honestly, I wouldn't mind a break from Windows Update doing secret shit to my workstation without asking.

It remains unclear what happens to Windows 10 users who opt out of the Extended Security Updates program. Nag screens? Windows goes into a throttled Limp Home mode?

I doubt they'd brick your machine, but based on Microsoft's recent disdain for its own customers anything is possible.

Honestly, if you avoid clicking on suspicious links and email phishing scams you're pretty safe even if you never update Windows. I've still got perfectly fine XP and Windows 7 machines in my network that have never been compromised by evildoers or malware.

All of this is engineered fear from Microsoft trying to move people off Windows 10.

[kingshovelbug]

im sorry but i need to geek out somewhere and screaming into the void on tumblr is less likely to get me flayed than on twitter, especially if i get terms wrong. plus i can do a read more and yall can click into the tech talk if you want to verse it bombarding your twitter timelines

so idk if i only liked it or if i actually put it in my queue but i saw a post that talked about a few pieces of tech that focus on user repairs and being sustainable (fairphone and frameworks laptop) and after doing some more research into what they have to offer i actually really excited that these products are finely hitting the us market and that people are moving away from the belief that super smooth streamlined glassy = the future. being able to reliably repair and keep what you have alive verse throwing the whole thing away when maybe all you needed to do is add more ram to your current laptop (something that i would do with my laptop to keep using it for a few more years if it wasnt glued shut and i was at risk of cracking the screen) or swap out a fuse.

i know big corporations dont like it but i truly do believe with how much tech we use on a daily basis that the way that we are going to be more environmentally friendly is to move back to tech that we can hang onto for as long as we can and to recycle and then reuse what we cant. like with the frameworks laptop. i saw that they just partnered with coolermaster to create a case specifically so that you can reuse you motherboard, cpu, etc and make a portable workstation. you could dual wield with the laptop you just upgraded if you want to dedicate specific tasks to one or the other. they also specifically mentioned that you could screw it into the back of a monitor and create your own all in one. guys thats cool as shit??? if you had a 3d printer and some time you could even create that yourself

on top of the actual hardware part moving to open source programs when your able. when i update my desktop i plan on running linux. it might have a learning curve compared to windows but in terms of performance??? ive heard that it runs smoother even on older machines, that its more efficient because isnt running stuff in the background that tracks your data and shit. now i understand that not everyone can do that because there are some programs that dont play nice with linux but for my needs at least it does everything i would need it to. and maybe a couple years down the road we do figure out how to run these programs on certain flavors of linux since its open source and people fiddle with it so much. (still looking for alternatives to like word and excel though, i use google docs since its free but i want to move away from them as much as i can too since they laid of their youtube music team (i believe?? it might of been a different branch) for trying to unionize)

if anyone knows of any other smaller companies that actually focus on sustainability and user repairability please let me know. theres certain pieces of tech that i think are now unfortunately behind a software repair paywall, things that used to be just machines and are gaining more bells and whistles like cars and refrigerators if that makes sense. but the more we push for these things to be repairable by us the consumers id hope that would change, or there would at least be options that dont need specific companies to repair them or else they blow up

[plurpaws]

Are there any tutorials you'd reccomend etc for someone who wants to start making music but is like, 1000000% new to it? I usually get overwhelmed and just delete the program...

it depends on what DAW (digital audio workstation) you're using– you can almost always find a good one by searching on YouTube "(DAW name) beginner tutorial". It's (usually) gonna be long and boring, but learning your way around the software is the most crucial part of this whole process , and you won't get anywhere without it!!

As for actually MAKING music, there are various tutorials for certain genres also on Youtube, and often you can narrow down your search by adding the name of your DAW. e.g. "happy hardcore fl studio tutorial". unfortunately this part - the actual making music process - is still something a little difficult for me to describe

also, a lot of the tutorials like that go REALLY fast, so don't be afraid to pause or rewind as often as you need.

ive also found that copying other people's music is like unironically one of the best ways to learn music, similar to art. Making cover songs will let you become more familiar with the program, WITHOUT the stress of coming up with a whole new song on your own.

speaking of "a whole song", remember that you DONT have to be churning out entire completed songs at the very beginning. it rarely ever goes this way. AND ALSO don't rush yourself to complete a project in one sitting. You'll later regret not taking the time to tweak it to perfection!!!!

so TLDR watch a long boring tutorial or a few, start *small* with short loops or cover songs, and don't rush yourself. this sorta thing takes a lot of time and practice to get down. if you aren't perfect at first remember that's Ok and it's just part of the learning process

i have a page on my website where I go into a little more detail about this topic , but keep in mind it is a WIP It is Unfinished so its missing a lot of stuff

[barbatusart]

PEOPLE INTERESTED IN MUSIC LISTEN UP: go to reaper.fm right now & get yourself a trial copy of Reaper, the trial period is indefinite & functions like winrar where once it’s up it just pings you on startup to suggest purchasing & then let’s you continue using it in full. Reaper is a DAW (digital audio workstation) which is a type of program that lets you manipulate sound the same way that sai CSP & photoshop are programs to manipulate images. Audacity is technically a DAW but an extremely basic one, you want something powerful to really get in there ie you want Reaper. also if you eventually wanna purchase it & support the guys behind it it’s extremely reasonably priced, it’s like $60 bucks or something

SECOND you need VSTs (virtual studio technology), these are the audio equivalent of your brushes, or more like they’re both your guitar and your guitar pedals. there are some for pay but infinitely more excellent ones that are free & make all sorts of wacky noises, check out labs.spitfire.audio for the LABS virtual instruments, some completely gorgeous stuff there. you can tweak the shape of the sound in each & chain VSTs on top of each other to infinity to mangle your sound to your liking & you’re really only limited by your computer’s ability to handle it lol. also check out what’s going on at freakshowindustries.com cus they’re doing demented stuff, their VSTs are pay but all give you the option to “steal” them ie get the license for them in full for completely free

im planning on eventually doing a stream getting more in-depth on the little i know about Reaper functionality, so i highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the super basics! the learning curve is a bit rough compared to other DAWs but once you have the AHAH! moment it gets significantly easy to handle

[oldguydoesstuff]

Bare CPU Printed Circuit Board for the Alpha NT XL366 workstation I designed back in 1995 or so. This was an obscure model of an obscure product line, made by a company (Digital Equipment Corp.) that is now itself obscure. To be honest I don't even remember much about this machine now.

What I do remember is the HUUUUGE fight I got into with our Signal Integrity team while I was designing this, over decoupling capacitors.

Decoupling caps are small components that hold a charge to help even out power when a circuit is active. This board featured hundreds of them, smaller than a grain of rice (see photo comparison of mounting pads vs rice grain below).

Our Signal Integrity team was tasked with making sure everything was electrically stable, so they required many hundreds of these to be added to the board, based on power simulations they did. Trouble was, they wanted so many, we couldn't even build the board.

My job as the Systems Engineer here was to meet the requirements from the SI team, but also from manufacturing, and the requirement that my PCB layout techs don't go insane trying to place and route the board. SI really only cared about signal quality, so they would not relent, and I ended up getting shouted at at one point by a junior SI engineer who was also under a lot of stress, when I said "There are different schools of thought on this.." and he screamed THERE ARE NOT DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT ON THIS!!

It got to the point where the product was not going to get built, because we just couldn't fit like a thousand of these tiny caps on the board, we needed to ditch at least 25% of them to have a hope. The models were the models though, and you couldn't argue against them.

But then my boss got a genius idea. What if we could prove the simulation models were too conservative? We came up with an experiment where we would remove caps from an older system and measure the power supply noise, to see how many caps could be taken off before the system became unstable.

Me and the junior SI engineer were tasked with doing this experiment (later deemed The Decapitation Project), so we grabbed a Tektronix scope and Metcal soldering station and headed over to this abandoned lab we had in our old Maynard headquarters, a now creepy attic space on the 6th floor of an old mill building. Here were a few older Alphastation 3000 workstations we built years earlier, working but waiting to be recycled.

We had this special program that would thrash the CPU within an inch of its life, to put a big demand on the power supply system. While this was running, the SI engineer measured the power quality, while I proceeded to (very carefully to avoid short-circuiting the system) actually desolder caps from the board while the workstation was running.

We managed to get about 1/3 of them off before there was any noticeable effect, and we found one specific type of cap was not doing much of anything at all. We took the data back to the head of the SI team, and he finally relented and let us remove several hundred capacitors. (He also buried the report and data I had, because he didn't want the bad publicity - I remember being mad about that)

The system got built after that, and worked just fine. We did try to enact a small bit of petty revenge on the SI team manager though - there was a recognition event for people involved on the project, and me and our PCB procurement guy decided to give the SI team manager a special "Faraday Award" for achievement in capacitance (Farads are a measure of capacitance - geeky eng joke). We took an old bowling trophy with a giant, beer-can sized electrolytic capacitor strapped to the top of it as the award. He was a no-show so we didn't get to present it. Those SI guys never did have much of a sense of humor.

Anyway, long story sorry. Just thinking of it recently because I was helping someone at work with an analog simulation and I remembered this..

[homeofthelonelywriter]

Drawn to you | Pt. 4

(A/N) This one's a bit shorter, but I hope you like it! Also, thank you so much for 2500 Followers!!! Aaaahhhh I love all of you so much!

Pairing: Alastor x bunny demon!Reader (no Y/N)

Warnings: flashback to life on earth, sexism

Synopsis: Your life back on Earth.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Earth - 1920

“You’re late.”

You raised your head to look into the glaring eyes of your boss. The fat, old man regarded you with a scowl before turning around and stomping towards his office.

“I-I’m sorry Sir. The bus was full, so I had to wait for the next one, and-”

He turned to face you again, his face red with anger.

“I don’t care! You are paid to be here on time! The next time you’re late, I’ll cut it from your paycheck, understood?”

You frantically nodded while holding your breath. Pointing out that you were actually twenty minutes early and just ten minutes late from your usual thirty minutes early, would just enrage the man even more.

With another huff, the man walked into his office and slammed the door, making you jump at the sudden, loud noise. You sighed and quietly made your way to your workstation, where you sat up for the day. You smiled at your colleagues that passed and led pleasant small talk with the ones that stopped for a chat. But the whole day went by without you seeing your favorite person even once.

Not that he had to stop by or anything, but he sometimes did and those were always the best moments of the day. He held such a passion for this job, it always infected you, made you hold on to the dream of one day being a host yourself.

But in your heart, you knew that that dream was foolish. A woman? A radio host? That would never happen. If you were lucky, maybe you could become the secretary, but your voice would never be aired live. At least not in this century.

With a sigh, you got to work. You quickly wrote up the weather report for the day, before handing it over to your boss, who would give the final go. After that you filed through letters and parcels, delivering them to where they needed to go.

You were basically done with your day’s work and it wasn’t even time for lunch. So, you decided to work on your dream some more. Whenever you had free time, you’d type out what you would do if you were the host. Corny jokes and funny advertisements. You’d make a list of the songs you’d play and what you’d be talking about.

Your shoulders slumped as you finished your dream program, the realization that that would never happen, catching up to you. Sometimes you wondered if playing into the dream made reality harder to bear. You still continued your wishful thinking, lost in a dream where you were calling the shots and where you would yell at fat, old men.

Two hands suddenly covering your eyes pulled you back to reality and a grin took over your lips.

“Guess who?”

You chuckled, trying to think of a witty response.

“Oh, Samantha, is that you?”

The laugh that escaped the man behind you made your heart race and butterflies erupt in your belly.

“Would you prefer it being Samantha?”

You shook your head with a smile and the hands lowered until they rested on your shoulders. With a wide grin, you spun in your chair, to come face to face with your favorite person.

“Now, how is my favorite lady doing?”

You rolled your eyes as he guided your right hand to his lips, before pressing a chaste kiss to your knuckles.

“Ah, you know, same old, same old. Got my work done within two hours, wrote down my concept for the day and it’s not even lunchtime, got yelled at by boss-man once again,-”

The usually smiling host’s expression hardened when you mentioned the fat, old man. He glared in the direction of his office. If looks could kill, that man would be dead.

“Someone ought to take care of that bastard.”

With wide eyes, you raised your hands against the man’s mouth to shush him.

“You can’t just say stuff like that. You’ll get fired.”

He turned back to you with his signature smile.

“If I were to get fired for protecting you, it would be worth it.”

You felt your cheeks heat up at his words and quickly lowered your head, a coy smile playing on your lips. Your reaction caused the man to chuckle, before carefully ruffling through your hair. A complaint crossed your lips at his action and he stopped with a playful laugh, before helping you to fix your hair.

“So, what’s on your agenda today?”

You grabbed the pieces of paper and went through the different points you had written up, ending on the big story you’d talk about, were you in any kind of position to.

“Congress is supposed to vote on the 19th amendment in a few days. I really hope it gets signed.”

The man nodded thoughtfully, taking notes in his head. He was about to say something when his name was called from the other end of the office space.

“Gotta run, will you tune in tonight?”

He was already walking away, still facing you.

“I always do.”

He grinned, before turning around and running to where he was being summoned, leaving you with a soft smile and a racing heart.

By the time you had to clock out, you were sure you were dying of boredom. It was bad enough that you had considered asking for more work, but thankfully you made it through the day without. You quickly put on your gloves and hat, before you left the radio station and made your way home.

As soon as you entered your apartment, you hurried to the old radio in your kitchen and turned it on, just in time to hear him introducing himself.

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the evening show. I’m your host, as usual, Alastor!”

Hell - now

“Why don’t you remember me?”

@impulsivethoughtsat2am @dasimp777 @fanficwriter5 @wonderlandangelsposts

Please consider reblogging and following me! It helps a lot!

Hazbin Hotel - Masterlist

Master-Masterlist

[sagharmax]

Clean Code Rules: 30. Get used to refactoring It can be a scary word for some developers. It sounds like you’re changing code, which can be dangerous, right? Wrong. Refactoring makes your code better and is essential for writing clean code. When you have some experience developing C# code, you notice that you can do things better. The problem is that changing existing code is more complex than writing new code. Luckily, refactoring is a skill you can learn. Very quickly. #software_development #programming #dotnet #csharp #dotnetdevelopment #webdevelopment #coding #workstation #workdesk #clean_code #uncle_bob #robert_c_martin #sagharmax (at Urmia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp5T08so3Vh/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 7.6k ❧ warnings: cursing, mm and that’s really it! i mean like they fight and stuff but just read the genre tags lmao ❧ genre: exes to lovers, angst with a happy ending (look at what blog ur on rn), christmas-themed (if the title wasn’t apparent enough), getting snowed in trope, cuddling to share warmth trope, just a fun, cheesy, time ❧ extra info: i wrote this in a 24-ish hour fever. it’s moderately proof-read. beware. ❧ author’s note: a starlightkun fic under 10k! it’s a christmas miracle!

“I just said, it’s not that simple!” You yelled, your hands curling into fists at your side. Kun let out a huff, walking away from his armchair to pace in front of the Christmas tree across the room from you. You weren’t going to let him off that easily, though. “Why did you stop loving me?”

“Any big holiday plans, Y/N?” Your boss asked as you handed her some documents to sign.

“Oh, staying in town,” you answered nonchalantly. “What about you, ma’am?”

She told you about her own Christmas and New Year plans with her wife, kids, and parents with a bright smile on her face as she flipped through the pages. After giving you the signatures you needed, she handed the papers back to you.

“Can you run those over to Dr. Oh’s office for me? The undergrads all went back home for break.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“After that, you can head out for the day. My Christmas present to you.”

“Oh, thank you, ma’am.”

“That, and also this.” She handed you a red envelope before standing up from her desk and closing her laptop. “Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, Y/N.”

“Thank you, you too,” you flashed her a genuine smile. “Happy Holidays to your family as well. See you in a week.”

“See you.”

Tucking the envelope into your bag, you quickly tidied up your workstation before heading out of the research lab to do your final task. You were a research fellow at a rather prestigious university, and while running papers would typically be asked of the interns and undergraduate students who helped out in the lab, as your boss—the head of the lab—had already pointed out, classes let out for their Winter Break two weeks ago, so you were fresh out of fresh meat.

You pulled your scarf tight around your nose and lower half of your face as you stepped out into the chilly winter air. Dr. Oh was the Dean of Graduate Studies at the university, and you’d been to his office a couple of times before, so your feet followed a familiar path as you hurried through the cold and into the building. The air was almost oppressively hot inside, and you tore off your scarf as you ran up the stairs.

There was light pouring out from Dr. Oh’s office at the end of the hall, the only one on. You poked your head in through the open door, greeted by the sight of a seemingly empty office. Must have stepped out.

Just as you had dropped the papers into his inbox on his desk, you heard footsteps at the doorway and whipped around to greet the older man, breathless smile already on your face.

Except it wasn’t Dr. Oh standing there. Your greeting died in your throat as you stared at the newcomer with blatant shock.

“Oh, Y/N,” Qian Kun rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. His hair was a bit longer than before, a shaggy length that covered most of his ears and neck, and he’d forgone his contacts in favor of a pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses, but there was nothing that time could do to conceal his identity from you. The way your heart dropped to your stomach as soon as he said your name was undeniable. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” You sputtered back harshly. His PhD program was at a completely different university in the area and should have ended in the spring. What business did he have here of all places?

“I started assisting Dr. Oh last month. Uhm, sorry, I sort of thought you graduated already, or I wouldn’t have interviewed for the job.”

“I did graduate.” You crossed your arms over your chest. “Two years ago. I’m a research fellow now.”

“Of course. Well, congrats.”

You let out a small noise of acknowledgement that could’ve also been interpreted as a cynical chuckle.

“So, did you need to see Dr. Oh? He’s left the office for the year, I’m just finishing up a couple things here.”

“Oh, no,” you shook your head, vaguely gesturing to the inbox over your shoulder. “My research head asked me to drop something off.”

Kun nodded. “Right. I’ll make sure he looks it over first thing when he gets back.”

“Thank you.” There was a pause of tense silence, and you looked around the office uncomfortably. “So, can I go, or…?”

“Yeah, of course, sorry.” He moved out of the doorway, stepping aside to clear the exit for you. “It uhm, it was nice to see you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, sure.”

You’d just brushed past him when he called your name out again. Against your better judgment, you stopped just short of leaving the office and turned to look at him.

“What, Kun?”

“What uh, what are you doing for the holidays? Are you going back home? Or, celebrating here with… someone?”

You weren’t sure what compelled you to answer other than basic social niceties. “No. Airline tickets were crazy, couldn’t find anything that would get me back in the lab in time that wasn’t ridiculously expensive. All my friends are traveling, so I’ll be eating ramen by myself on the couch, presumably.”

You had answered his half-asked question. No, you didn’t have a significant other to spend the holiday with. Just your family back home that you couldn’t afford to go see, and friends who had all left town.

“Oh…” He looked down at his feet.

“What about you?” You asked pettily, fully expecting him to be visiting a significant other’s family in town, flying home to see his family, something much merrier than the picture you had just painted.

“Same for me,” he admitted quietly. “Plane tickets back home were so expensive… and I just left my old job and haven’t really made new friends here yet. At least not ones that are on the level of them inviting me to their family Christmas.”

While you wanted to be bitterly vindicated by Kun making himself as alone on Christmas as he had made you, it somehow just weighed twice as heavy on your heart. All that came out of this was two lonely people, far away from home.

“Do you… maybe want to come over? For Christmas?” Kun’s hesitant proposition knocked the wind out of you.

“Why?”

“Well, neither of us have any other plans. And, I don’t know, I thought it might be nice… to be with someone you know. Better than being alone on Christmas eating instant ramen, maybe?”

You took a couple deep breaths, gnawing on your bottom lip as you thought over his offer. “Fine. Christmas dinner. No presents.”

He grabbed a pen and pad of sticky notes off the desk, scribbling something down. “Here’s… my address. Let’s say six?”

You plucked the yellow square from his fingers delicately. “Six.”

“See you then.”

You reached into your bag to affix the sticky note to the red envelope from your research head, then pulled your scarf back out. “See you then, Kun.”

For the next three days, that sticky note sat on your coffee table and stared at you. Even as you went about your day trying not to think about it, busying yourself with jigsaw puzzles, books, and whatever cheesy Christmas movie was on at the time. That yellow square was stuck to your forebrain, plaguing your every waking moment.

Every night you were kept up with memories. You hadn’t seen Kun in three years, since you’d picked up the last of your possessions from your old apartment. The apartment the two of you had lived in together. A brief flash of picking up your things, cut by the first time you’d opened the door to your new place together, hand-in-hand, absolutely bursting with excitement and hope for the future.

As you started getting ready to go over to Kun’s place, your body moved by itself, despite the sinking pit in your stomach threatening to swallow you whole.

Rooting through your spare closet, you finally got a small blue box out of the back. You opened it up, a bittersweet sigh leaving your mouth. Nestled in among some tissue and spare ornament hooks was a three-dimensional figure of a sea turtle, covered in glitter and with a navy blue loop of string for hanging coming from its back, but otherwise pretty realistic. You placed it in your bag, carefully cushioned by a scarf.

Before you left, you finally opened your card from your boss. She had written you a very nice note about how much she appreciated your work at the lab, and wishing you all the best in your future endeavors. There was also a gift card loaded up with a considerable amount of money, which you pocketed for later.

Kun’s place wasn’t terribly far from yours, about a fifteen-minute walk, but the heavy snow that was starting to fall slowed you down a bit more. You’d probably have to get a taxi on your way back at this rate. Hopefully your awkward, polite Christmas dinner would be very short.

Knocking on the evergreen-painted door, which sported an elegantly beautiful wreath, you checked the time on your phone. So you were a few minutes late. Oh well.

Kun opened the door with a bright smile, dressed nicely but casual enough in a dark brown knitted sweater, loose-fitting dark pants, and socks with cartoon reindeer on them. “Hey, you made it. Come on in.”

“Thanks.” You stepped into the warmth of the apartment, and he closed the door behind you.

“When I saw how hard it was snowing out there, I started getting worried.” He helped you out of your thick overcoat, hanging it up on a hook by the front door for you. “I hope you didn’t walk.”

“I did. It wasn’t too bad.” You peeled off your gloves, moving to put them in your purse at the same time that you grabbed something from the bag.

“Did you see they’re forecasting 30 to 90 cm of snow by tomorrow morning? We’ll have to get you a cab home tonight before it gets too bad.” He was still talking as he started leading the way from the narrow hallway entry into the rest of the apartment.

His living room was cozy, especially with the crackling fireplace, delicious smells emanating from the kitchen, and festive decorations put up everywhere. One corner was taken up by a modest-sized Christmas tree, covered in colorful lights and an eclectic mix of ornaments.

“Is that a real tree?” You asked curiously.

“Yeah,” he admitted almost sheepishly. “Your uh—your Christmas tree purism rubbed off on me... Doesn’t feel like Christmas unless I’m sweeping up pine needles.”

You chuckled lightly at that, remembering that your first fight as a couple was around your first Christmas together, specifically about whether to get a plastic tree or a real one for his apartment, which you were practically living in at that point. Your family had always gotten real ones when you were growing up, and you could never get behind the fake ones. Kun, on the other hand, didn’t really care either way, but got frustrated when he couldn’t convince you on the cost-saving aspect of being able to reuse your tree every year. The spat fizzled out the very same day, and you ended up having a very cute date when you went to go pick out your first (real) tree together.

“I know I said no gifts, but I don’t think this really counts, since I’m just giving you something back that was yours in the first place.” You brought the sea turtle ornament out, holding it out to him by the loop of string. “It ended up in my stuff and I couldn’t... see you again. Sorry for holding onto it for so long.”

Kun accepted the glittery marine creature in his hand, a fond smile coming to his features. “I thought I’d lost it. Thank you for not uh, throwing it out or something.”

“I paid good money for that, I wasn’t going to be the one to put it in the trash,” you joked half-heartedly, watching as he turned to hang it up on the tree. In the branches among his other ornaments, it looked at home.

Your first date had been to the aquarium, and your first kiss that same day by the sea turtle exhibit, which was why you had picked that specific ornament to give him for your second Christmas together. It was actually from the very same aquarium’s gift shop— meaning that it was wildly overpriced, but cute nevertheless.

“You have a working fireplace, too?” You gestured to the very real fire nearby.

“I do!” He beamed proudly, going to readjust some of the logs, the flames growing to a steadier burn. “I got really lucky with this place.”

“Yeah, it’s nice,” you nodded in agreement.

A couple of beats of silence passed, then Kun gestured towards the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

You followed him into the kitchen, where there was a small square table with four chairs around it, and two places already set across from each other. A few full dishes were already on the table as well, and you wondered how much more food he could be making, as it looked like there was already enough to feed a family of eight at least.

“Smells good,” you commented.

Kun gave you another small smile, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he leaned against the closed oven. “Thanks. I uh—got excited to cook for someone else again, and sort of went overboard. So you’re welcome to take a bunch of leftovers, too.”

“Cool, thanks.” No fucking way would you be doing that. Taking leftovers home in one of his containers, that you would then have to wash and bring back to him? Absolutely not.

The beeping of a timer went off then, and he spun around to turn off the numbers flashing at him from the stovetop. He opened the oven, putting on oven mitts before taking out the last dish.

After putting it down at the table, he announced, “Alright, dinner’s served!”

You took a seat, watching as Kun continued to bustle around the kitchen. Putting the oven mitts away, turning the oven off, grabbing a wine bottle, corkscrew, and two wine glasses from the cabinets.

“Oh, I don’t drink anymore,” you informed him casually.

“Oh, sorry.” As he went to go put everything away again, you interrupted him.

“You can drink around me, it’s not... anything like that. I’ll be fine. Just sort of lost the taste for it.”

Kun poured a glass for himself over at the counter before putting the bottle away. “So, what can I get you? I have some sparkling water, sodas, eggnog...”

“Just regular water is fine.”

He rushed to do that, and as he set your glass down in front of you, you noted, “You remembered how much ice...”

“You did give me a ten-minute lecture on the proper ratio of ice to water, if you’ll recall.” He took his seat across from you.

“Alright, lecture is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I was simply explaining myself thoroughly so as to not be misunderstood.”

“I understood you crystal clear afterwards,” Kun chuckled, lifting his glass of red wine. “Merry Christmas, Y/N. Thank you for agreeing to do this kind of weird thing I asked you.”

“Merry Christmas, Kun,” you clinked your glass to his in a toast. “That’s what I do, remember?”

Dinner continued with civil, even sometimes amicable conversation. Mostly catching up on what had happened in both your lives in the past three years, how your families were, your jobs, fairly neutral topics.

Kun had just finished his doctorate program in the spring, and had taken the position with Dr. Oh at your university while he looked for something more aligned with his studies. You wanted to do some research before possibly going back to pursue a doctorate in your own field.

Kun’s family was doing well, his baby brother Chenle was graduating high school in the spring, his middle brother Dejun was now in his fourth year of undergrad at your own alma mater back home, and his parents were going to be celebrating their 30th anniversary next year on a cruise— which they were both very excited about, as it would be their first one.

You had to belatedly break the news to him that your grandmother passed two years ago— she had always loved Kun and you never did have the heart to tell her that the two of you broke up when she would ask where he was on your visits, since her dementia just meant that you would’ve had to re-explain it to her again the next time you saw her. You elected not to mention any of that to Kun in the moment. Other than her passing, your family was alright. Your parents had just gotten a new old cat from the shelter a few months ago, your older sister welcomed her second child, a baby girl, and you happily showed off pictures of your niece, and now five-year-old nephew to Kun.

“Wow... I can’t believe Little Bear is so big,” he gushed at the photo of your nephew on your shoulders.

“Oh, he’s an absolute menace now,” you laughed and shook your head. “That little docile baby you knew who would just fall asleep in anybody’s arms is nowhere to be found.”

“And his sister?”

“Oh, she’s going to be even worse than her brother, I just know it.” You swiped to another photo of the baby, fond grin on your lips.

Kun’s eyes lingered on you for a moment, then he cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. “Are you finished?”

“Oh, yeah,” you looked down at your empty plate, having completely forgotten about it in the moment. “It was all really delicious, thanks, Kun.”

“Better than the instant ramen you had planned?”

“By far. You’re a great cook, as always.”

He stood up to grab your plates. “I’m glad you liked it.”

Realizing that this was the end of dinner, of your commitment for the night, you felt simultaneously disappointed and relieved. On one hand, it was kind of nice seeing Kun again and being able to catch up—you especially loved hearing about how his little brothers were doing, you had adored doting on them while you were dating, since you were the youngest sibling yourself. But on the other hand, it was all a façade. Neither of you were addressing the elephant in the room, and it was getting exhausting trying to keep up the friendly chatter and not veer into anything serious, to only put your best foot forward in representing yourself and your life.

“Thank you for inviting me, I don’t think I said that before,” you said indicatively, standing from your seat. “You were right, it was nice being with someone you know, someone who’s from the same place as you, on Christmas.”

Kun gave a half-smile, taking his phone from the table. “We should order you that taxi, huh?”

“Right.”

As you started putting all your layers back on in the hallway, you could hear Kun’s end of the phone call with the cab company.

“What do you mean you’re not dispatching? I know it’s Christmas but— How much?! Seriously?!”

You poked your head out to look at him with concern, but he wasn’t facing you. Instead, he was at the window of the living room, throwing the curtains aside to look out.

“Alright, well, you can’t help that, no, sir. Thank you. Yep, Merry Christmas.”

After he’d hung up without giving his address, you knew something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” You asked cautiously, still slowly pulling on your gloves one finger at a time.

He looked at you over his shoulder, now leaning one forearm against the window. He jerked his head for you to come over. “Come see for yourself.”

You walked over hesitantly, and saw nothing but white. “Oh my God.”

“Forecasts were off a bit. Apparently there’s already been 100cm of snow, and they’re projecting at least another 50 before tomorrow.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Your jaw dropped. “So we’re...”

“Snowed in. Yeah,” he confirmed bluntly. “Guy at the taxi company says they’re not expecting the roads to start being cleared until New Year’s, and they’ll start with businesses and shopping districts first.”

You continued staring at the snow piling up against the window in shock, and Kun took a step back.

“So, you want some eggnog?”

After you had once more removed your coats, scarf, gloves, and boots, you sat down on Kun’s couch, fervently texting all your family. They had apparently seen on the news about the crazy snowstorm hitting your area, and were checking in on you. You reassured them that you were just fine, and were staying at a friend’s place until the storm blew over and the roads cleared. You deigned not to tell them who exactly this ‘friend’ was. You hadn’t told anybody who knew Kun that you were going to his place today, actually. While your family and friends had been supportive of you during the breakup, you could tell how disappointed they were that you two hadn’t worked out—and a couple outright said so. You knew it was in the ‘we’ve never seen you so happy’ sort of way, but that didn’t make it feel any better at the time.

A mug dipped into the top of your vision, accompanied by Kun’s voice. “Here.”

“Oh, thanks,” you flashed him a smile as you accepted it, and set your phone down on his coffee table. “Just letting the brigade back home know I’m not dead under a hundred meters of snow.”

He sat down in the armchair caddy corner to the end of the couch you were at. “My family has been blowing up my phone, too. For some reason my parents aren’t very amused about Chenle and Dejun daring me to go build the world’s largest snowman right now.”

“Probably have enough snow for it,” you mused. “What is the record for the biggest snowman, do you think?”

“Got to be at least ten meters, right?”

“Oh, definitely way more than that.”

“Really? You think?”

“For sure,” you snorted, picking your phone back up and quickly searching online. “It looks like the official Guinness World Record is 37.21 meters, in Bethel, Maine. But Donnersbachwald, Austria made a snowman that was reportedly 38.04 meters, named Riesi.”

Kun whistled lowly. “Well goddamn.”

“And look!” You turned your phone to show Kun the photo of Riesi. “It’s so cute!”

“Is that a top hat?”

“I think?”

As you looked at the picture one more time and put your phone to the side, you reclined back in your seat, lifting your mug up to your lips to take your first sip of the eggnog. The fire continued crackling in the background, and you hummed a Christmas carol to yourself. So you couldn’t make your great escape exactly how you’d planned. But you and Kun had tolerated each other pretty well so far, you could probably make it out of here in a few days relatively unscathed.

“Hey, uhm, what did you mean earlier?” Kun quietly shattered all of your hopes and dreams for peace with just one vague question.

“Huh? When?”

“When I thanked you for going along with my weird idea to get together for Christmas despite… everything. And you said: ‘It’s what I do, remember?’ What did you mean by that?”

“Oh… just… you know— You’d have some weird, or crazy, or slightly irresponsible, or fun idea and I always said yes,” you kept your tone conversational and nostalgic. “Blowing your whole paycheck on a LEGO set that you’d always wanted but your parents would never buy you as a kid, skipping classes in undergrad to laze about your apartment, taking the long way back to your car after Sicheng’s film festival even though it was pouring rain because you remembered I had said on our first date that I’d always wanted to dance in the rain, submitting my paper to the undergraduate research panel…”

“Moving out here,” he filled in for you flatly.

You pressed your lips together in a thin line before nodding. “Moving here…”

“Is that really how you feel? That I was always dragging you around places, making you do stuff that you didn’t want to do?”

“Kun, we’re going to be stuck in here together for who knows how long, can we not do this?”

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “I mean, I knew you were bitter about coming here, but apparently I was holding you hostage the entire four years before that too and had no idea.”

“That is not what I said,” you said through gritted teeth, narrowing your eyes.

“What else am I supposed to think about what you said?”

“You don’t!” You snapped. “You don’t think about it, you don’t read into it, they’re just words! Not everything has a deeper meaning, sometimes people just say stuff, you know.”

“Well you never actually say what you mean, so I have to try to read between the lines.”

“Or maybe I’m saying plenty, and you’re too far up your own ass trying to decipher me like some cosmic puzzle instead of listening to the actual words I’m saying!”

“So I don’t have to ask if you’re still bitter about it, then,” he scoffed.

The final shred of decency and civility left in you burned up right then, and you got to your feet as you exploded, “You convinced me to leave my family, my friends, my home, everything and everyone I knew, to come here for your dreams! And then you told me you didn’t love me anymore! Of course I’m fucking bitter!”

Kun got to his feet too, staring you down intensely. “Then why didn’t you go back home? After you graduated, you stuck around. Why?”

“I was offered the position at the lab—”

“There’s other labs.”

“The studies we’re doing—”

“There’s other studies.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“If you hated it here so much and hated me for dragging you here, why didn’t you take the first chance you had to leave?”

“I just said, it’s not that simple!” You yelled, your hands curling into fists at your side. Kun let out a huff, walking away from his armchair to pace in front of the Christmas tree across the room from you. You weren’t going to let him off that easily, though. “Why did you stop loving me?”

His features turned apologetic for a moment. “Y/N—”

“You knew how much I loved you, that I’d follow you anywhere. I chose to study here even though it was my second choice because your top pick had already accepted you. I thought we were planning our life together, but then you dropped me like it was nothing. So why? Why did you stop loving me?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Just answer the question, Kun,” you demanded. “Why? You had to have an inkling before you took me from everyone I loved—”

“I didn’t take you anywhere, you’re not some helpless waif! We were grown-ups and we made grown-up decisions!” He raised his voice again, face red with anger and veins bulging in his neck and forehead. “If I remember correctly, I suggested being long-distance while we did our graduate studies.”

“I loved you, Kun! I loved you, and I wanted to see you thriving and to support you from right next to you, not be in the sidelines of your life.”

“I never stopped loving you.”

“What?”

“The answer to your question is that I never stopped loving you, actually. I just told you I did.”

You stared at him, dumbfounded, slack-jawed, before you were filled with even more white-hot rage than ever, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Y/N, we were fighting every other day, we never saw each other because we were working so much and when we did we just fought—Like this!” He gestured between the two of you zealously as he defended himself. “—about the stupidest stuff. I could see how much you hated being here, and I knew you resented me for bringing you here, but you wouldn’t ever talk to me about it. I thought that if I was the only thing keeping you here, then I needed to stop being so selfish and let you go back home where you would actually be happy again.”

“And you didn’t think to consult me on any of that?”

His jaw clenched as he took a deep inhale through his nose before answering, voice absolutely incensed, “I couldn’t get you to talk about it! Whenever I tried to ask you how you were doing settling in here, how you liked your program, anything, you just gave me these- these hollow smiles and placated me with the same ‘oh, it’s great, I really like it’ over and over again! It was like being in love with a brick wall!”

“Because I didn’t want youto blame yourself! Because it wasn’t your fault!” Your chest heaved as you caught your breath from so much shouting. The white-hot anger was gone, leaving only a cold sorrow inside you as you were confronted with your own admission. You hugged yourself as you followed it up with a much quieter, “It wasn’t your fault, Kun… It’s just been so much easier to blame you this whole time.”

“Y/N…” Kun sighed, running a hand through his hair as his tone changed from anger to remorse, his face softening. “I should’ve made sure our focus was on your career as much as it was on mine. I let my ambitions become the priority for both of us instead of seriously considering yours as well. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry for blaming you the whole time. You’re right, I was a grown-up, and I made a grown-up decision.” You shook your head at yourself, staring into the dynamic flames of the fireplace. “It was so much easier to hate you for dragging me here than to hate myself for following you here.”

“I’m sorry for lying, too. When I told you I stopped loving you. I really thought that would get you to leave, to go back home where you could be happy again. But it was just needlessly cruel. I’m so, so sorry.” His voice was shaking, and when you looked back at him again, you could see that the whites of his eyes were pink.

“I didn’t go back home because it wouldn’t have meant anything to go back without you,” you finally answered his question, swallowing the lump in your throat. “When we first moved here, and I’d imagine going back home, I would always imagine us going back together. Because it wouldn’t have been home without you, for me. That’s why I stayed. Not because you were here—I really never wanted to see you again. But because you—the you that I wanted, that still loved me—weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry…” He blinked and the first of his tears slipped slowly down his cheek. “I know I said that a lot the first time we did this but… I wasn’t apologizing for the right thing.”

The corners of your lips twitched with a bittersweet, cynical smile. “You didn’t know any of this stuff the first go around.”

“I did know that you loved me. And I really thought that if you could just get over that one little thing then you could be happy again. I underestimated you and what it meant for you to love me.”

“It wasn’t that simple…” You repeated feebly. “You made me happy too, Kun. I should’ve told you that, all of this, everything, instead of pushing it down and letting myself resent you just because that’s what seemed easier at the time. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“None of this was fair on either of us.”

“But saving our relationship wasn’t your sole responsibility, Kun. We were partners, it was on both of us, and I didn’t try.”

“It was everybody’s fault and nobody’s fault,” Kun declared with another sigh, dropping his body back down in the armchair.

“Yeah…” You sat down in the corner of the couch. “It was…”

The apartment was silent as you took another sip of your eggnog, and Kun wiped his damp cheeks.

“So… now what?” You prompted as you met his gaze.

“You still like jigsaw puzzles?”

Kun and you worked together on a puzzle on the floor of his living room. Once put together, it would show a full Winter Wonderland scene. He had put on Christmas music in the background, and your assembly was interspersed with sing-alongs, easygoing conversation, and long, comfortable stretches of silence.

When the puzzle was about halfway done, you let out a big yawn, briefly checking the time on your phone. “Oh, jeez, it’s after midnight already.”

“I think that’s plenty for tonight,” Kun declared, slowly getting to his feet. “We can finish up the rest tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” You twisted around in place to crack your back.

“I’ll go get you some pajamas.” He gave your head a gentle pat before walking off, taking both of your now-empty eggnog mugs with him.

He returned just a couple minutes later in a pair of lounge pants and simple longsleeve shirt, holding out a stack of clothes to you. “Here.”

“Thanks, Kun,” you accepted them gratefully. “But you really didn’t have to—”

“Y/N, were you seriously going to wear the same clothes for like a week straight?” He raised an eyebrow doubtfully.

“I mean, you have a washing machine, presumably.”

“And you would’ve… stood by the washing machine naked? Until they were done?”

You covered your face with one hand as you laughed. “Good point, good point.”

“Seriously, it’s fine.”

“Thanks.”

In the bathroom, you fully appraised the clothes as you changed, a funny sort of tug in your chest when you recognized the sweatshirt he’d given you. It was a plain black crewneck sweatshirt, save for a small rose embroidered on the left wrist, just above the cuff. It had always been your favorite of his to take and wear for yourself before.

The sweatshirt was as soft as you’d remembered, and when you put it on, you were awash not only in Kun’s scent, but warm, happy memories of being held, loved, treasured, safe. You folded up your clothes and left them on the bathroom countertop.

The fire had been put out when you returned to the living room, and the lights on the tree unplugged.

“I uhm, I’m not sure where you wanted me to put my clothes, so they’re on the—” You cut yourself off when you looked up from where you’d been fiddling with the hem of the sweatshirt to see Kun looking at you with an off-putting, oddly mournful look of tenderness. “What? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved off your concerns, his voice tight. “That’s fine, I’ll throw them in the wash with mine tomorrow.”

“Do you have some extra bedding I can use out here?”

“What?”

“I mean, your couch already looks super comfy, but a real pillow would sort of be nice…”

“No, no, you can take my bed,” he shook his head. “I’ll take the couch.”

“Kun, I’ll be fine out here for a few nights,” you pushed back. With humor in your tone, you added, “You’ve done enough sleeping on the couch to last the rest of your life, okay? I think it’s my turn.”

He seemed to understand your joke, but also the sincere intent behind it, and held up his hands in surrender as a smile cracked across his face. “Alright, I know when I’m beat. I’ll get you some pillows and blankets.”

Kun set up your makeshift bed on the couch for you, with a couple of real pillows, a very fluffy blanket, and heavy quilt to go over that. He refilled your water glass from dinner, and set that down on the coffee table for you.

“Oh, phone charger—”

“I have one.” You stopped him with a hand on his arm, going to grab your purse and root through it. “I keep an extra on me. Never know when your phone is going to die reviewing notes in a random café.”

“Right. Cool.” He watched you plug it into the outlet closest to the pillow end of the couch, then stand back up.

“Well, goodnight, Kun. Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“Goodnight, Y/N. Thanks again for coming, and uh, sorry for getting you stuck out here…”

You sat down on the couch, smiling up at him. “Hasn’t been all bad.”

“Yeah, it hasn’t,” he agreed with a chuckle.

When he still hadn’t moved, you realized the both of you must have been debating the same thing. Should you hug goodnight?

To save yourselves, you opened your arms in a half-invitation, and Kun bent over to give you a one-armed hug, briefly rubbing your back before standing back up. He gave you a final hesitant smile and nod. “Night.”

“Night.”

As you laid down, you could hear him walking across the room, and pause at the threshold. Just as you’d finished readjusting your covers and getting cozy with your head on the pillow, the lights were turned off, and you listened to Kun walk all the way into his room and the door creak closed behind him.

You watched the last of the dying embers in the fireplace as you started trying to sort through your muddied thoughts. You and Kun no longer had the awkwardness of bitter exes, but it had just been replaced with a new kind of awkwardness. Now that you didn’t hate each other, what was left? How did you feel about each other?

You still hadn’t figured it out by the time you fell asleep.

Full-body shivers woke you up, and you blinked rapidly trying to readjust to your surroundings. You pulled the blankets tighter around you, but that did practically nothing. Every inch of you from your fingers to your toes felt like a block of ice, and your muscles were shaking to try to generate some kind of heat. Your teeth even chattered a couple of times.

A hasty look at your phone showed you that it was only two and a half hours after you’d fallen asleep. You turned on your phone flashlight, looking around the walls for the thermostat. Having spotted it at the start of the hallway, you made the hasty decision to throw your blankets off you and run over to it as quick as possible, fumbling to look at the controls. But as best you could tell, the heat was definitely turned on, and it was set to a perfectly comfortable temperature.

You felt terrible for what you were about to do, but you were going to get hypothermia sooner than you would get back to sleep at this rate. Lightly knocking on Kun’s bedroom door, you paid attention for any signs of life. After a moment of no response, you knocked again, a bit louder.

There was a groan from inside, followed by a half-intelligible, confused mumble of your name.

“Yeah, Kun, it’s me,” you responded through the wood.

You heard the sounds of him rolling out of bed, then lumbering over to the door. He opened it, rubbing one of his eyes.

“Y/N, what are you— Shit, it’s a fucking meatlocker out there!” He exclaimed, grabbing at his own arms.

“Yeah, I know. I’m really sorry to wake you up, but I can’t seem to figure out your thermostat and it’s freezing out here.”

Kun pushed past you, shutting his door tight behind him before going to inspect the thermostat himself. “Doesn’t make sense… The heat should be working fine…”

“Oh.”

“God, of course it’s fucking broken,” he grumbled. “I’m sorry about this, Y/N. I’ll go call the maintenance line right now.”

Just a moment later, and you heard more swearing from his room. He came back out with his phone in hand. “Got a text from the management company… Heat in the whole complex is busted, but they can’t get anybody out here until the roads are clear.”

“Shit…”

He spun on his heel back towards the bedroom. “Come on, it’s at least a little warmer in my room. You’ll freeze to death out here.”

You followed him in without complaint, and he shut the door firmly behind you. He grabbed a towel from his attached bathroom and stuffed it under the crack of the door.

You couldn’t see much about his bedroom in the dark except for a few vague shapes, but the air felt noticeably warmer in here than it had been in the living room. Kun opened up a couple of drawers on what you were now realizing was a dresser, and grabbed a hoodie for himself, then handed you a zip-up hoodie. It was big enough to fit the sleeves of your sweatshirt through, and you could feel the chattering of your teeth dying down.

Kun sat down on one side of the bed, and indicated to the other side for you. You obliged, following his lead to slip under the covers. The sheet, blankets, and heavy quilt were still pleasantly warm, and you rubbed your frozen feet together in contentment. You accidentally bumped Kun’s leg, a flash of accidental heat.

“Oh! Sorry, sorry!” You jerked your limbs as far back as you dared without leaving the security of the blankets.

“Fuck, Y/N, you’re an icicle,” Kun said disapprovingly.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“Come here,” he sighed and lifted the blankets in between you two.

“Wh—”

“I’m not going to let you freeze to death literally right next to me. Either you come here or I go over there.”

You shuffled a couple inches closer to him, but either he was impatient, or wasn’t sure that you’d follow through, because he moved to close the gap himself, meeting you in the middle and wrapping an arm around you to pull you closer to him.

You gulped, and hoped he couldn’t hear it. “That’s a lot better, actually.”

“I was always much warmer than you,” he pointed out.

Readjusting to lay on your side facing the same direction as him, your hand brushed against his that was slung over your middle.

“God, you feel like you’re about to lose your fingers to frostbite, too.” He covered your hand with his.

You instinctively spread your fingers so his would slot together with them, and it felt so familiar and comfortable that you almost burst into tears again on the spot.

“Y/N?”

“Y-Yeah?” You tried and failed to keep your voice casual.

“I think you’re cutting off my circulation now.”

“Oh God, sorry!” You loosened the death grip you didn’t even realized you’d had on his appendages.

“It’s alright,” he reassured you. “Are you warming up?”

You nodded hastily. “For sure. Thank you, again.”

“I was thinking… about earlier.”

“Kun, for real, if there was ever a time not to fight.”

“No, it’s not— Well it is about that, but I’m not looking for a round two, promise.”

“Okay…”

“I was thinking… about how I didn’t really accept your apologies, and you didn’t accept mine.”

“That’s fine, Kun. Not every apology is made to be accepted.”

“I know, I know. And I’m not fishing for your forgiveness right now. I was just thinking, about how I’m kind of relieved, that we still haven’t you know, finally gotten our closure or whatever.” His breath was getting quicker. “Because I don’t want this to be over, actually. And closure feels like it’d really be the end.”

You squeezed your eyes shut tight and opened them back up again, staring into the inky darkness. “What do you mean by that, Kun?”

“I mean… When I said I never stopped loving you, I didn’t just mean when we broke up. I still do.”

“So you… What? Want to get back together?” Your voice was a hoarse whisper.

“At least talk about it,” he confirmed. “I’ll do anything you want, lovey. Complete restart, take you on a new first date, or we can even just try to be friends first. I’m not saying we have to jump right back in where we left off. I think we need to leave space for the people we’ve become since then but… I know I want to try again.”

You swallowed down your sniffles as you turned over to finally face him. Despite the lack of light, you could find every feature on Kun’s face, holding a caged hopefulness in them. You gently caressed his cheek with the back of your knuckles.

“Okay…” You murmured. “We can try again. I-I want that too.”

You caught just a flicker of Kun’s bright grin before you were tangling your fingers in his shaggy locks and pulling his mouth to yours. It was somehow even better than you remembered, than you had imagined, because it felt like coming home all at once. Like all of you, body, mind, soul, heart, had come home.

Kun kissed you back just as ardently, tangling his legs with yours and pulling you even closer—if it were even possible. One of his hands cupped your cheek while the other wrapped around your waist, bunching in the fabric at the small of your back.

When your lungs were screaming for air and you were light-headed for more than one reason, you broke away, resting your forehead against his.

“Looks like neither of us followed the no gift rule,” Kun said in the negligible space between your mouths, the tip of his nose bumping yours for a moment. “I think I had my heart gift-wrapped for you from the moment I saw you again.”

You chuckled as you stole one, two more kisses from him. “You’re as cheesy as ever, pooks.”

“I have three years’ worth of lines like that stocked up,” he teased, giving you another peck. “And you’re stuck in here with me until next year, lovey.”

sequel :･ﾟ✧｡･:･*

⤷ 2023 hallmark movie marathon | blog masterlist

[witchpassing]

The technician’s workstation washes the windowless room in sleep-deprived blue. On one monitor, an editing program grinds through the encoding process; on the other, a gaming stream, the volume turned down low. A bright cartoon figure undulates in the corner of the screen, jellyfish-like. 

In the center of the basement is a plastic sheet. A camcorder here, two-thirds of a lighting setup there, a set of tools laid out on tarp. Pliers, drill, nailgun. Hammer, sledgehammer, bat. A clothing rack is pushed against the wall, mass-produced bodies hung in vacuum sacs, pale toes grazing the concrete. Somewhere in the dark, a server tower blinks and hums. 

“Did good today,” the technician says. The back of her beat-up swivel chair creaks as she puts her weight on it. “The begging. I mean. People like that stuff. Could, y’know. Get you something? For playing nice?” 

Something moves between the body rack and the servers, a silhouette folded into a dog crate, contours of a body traced through the bars in barcode-pattern light. A trailing mess of cables twists between the slats of the crate and into the back of a human-enough neck, shifting, dragging as the head rises. Two glass eyes catch the square highlight of the technician’s workstation. 

The android opens its mouth. No sound comes out.

“Oh. Right.” The tech digs an universal remote from among the cans on her desk, a wedge of cheap grey plastic with the buttons taped over, and angles it into the cage. The doll’s vocal speaker flicks on with a muted little vbt. 

“Don’t understand,” it says.  

“Y’know,” the encoding process throws an error. The woman hisses to herself, fuck, and the doll presses itself into the back wall of its cage, as if the fetal curve of its spine can possibly get smaller, more placatory. Clicks. Keystrokes. The jellyfish pulses, swishing physics-simulated tendrils of ribbon and hair, diaphanous about a fuckable bell. 

“A reward,” the technician says, once she’s coaxed the process back into line.

“Oh.” The android is silent for a moment. “Could I have. A pillow? Please. Or, or. A blanket.”  

“But you’re not cold. That body doesn’t even, like. Have temperature sensors.”

“Sorry. S-sorry. It’s fine, I don’t want anything, I’m sorry–”

“Fuckin’, sure, whatever. I’ll find you some bedding.” The technician shunts her chair back, yawns, rubs at salt-crusted eyes. Her glasses settle crooked. “Be a really good girl for the next shoot, and I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll get you a stuffie or something.” 

“You mean it?”

The technician glances over, finds the android staring back at her, lawn-deer eyes big and wide. 

“Sure. I mean it.”