#I fucking love pattern recognition software

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

i hate how tech bros treat ai like fucking nfts bc like. advanced pattern recognition algorithms are actually Very Useful and Very Cool. they’re used in medicine for instance! but technbros just want it to be the new NFT. and now people are hyper paranoid about any ai even though like it’s Useful and Fine in a lot of contexts just very harmful in those that it doesn’t work in (and I’m not even talking about art, art is not the worst example of this- people tried to make ai therapists that ended up encouraging people with eating disorders to relapse, and there’s all those ai generated foraging books that give advice that’s incredibly inaccurate and tells you to eat poisonous shit like art isn't even The main problem with the nft-isation of AI it’s just the most obvious)

#Sorry it’s metaru is a nerd over pattern recognition software hour #I fucking love pattern recognition software

[good-wine-and-cheese]

74, 8, 24 for the writing ask game 👀

Thanks for the ask <3

Writing asks

74. Do you have a fic you wish got a bit more love?

This is hard to judge honestly! A lot of my fics are for smaller fandoms so they don't get super huge view counts regardless. But relatively speaking...it would definitely be silly of me to say "the one I'm writing right now (the indomitable human soul)" because obviously it's a newer fic so less people have read it but ah! I've been having so much fun writing it, I would love more people to read it.

Other than that, maybe Ghost on the Shore. It's one of the more memorable fics I wrote. I just like the vibes of it a lot.

8. Post an out-of-context spoiler from a wip.

So I wasn't sure if this is a snippet from a wip or just a future thing that's gonna happen and since there's a different q asking for snippets, I'm gonna use the latter! So. Fic spoiler for the indomitable human soul ahead.

When Tenma is supposed to get sent back to prison, he's gonna get kidnapped instead :D

And one for my PLUTO ongoing fic (I will get back to her I prommy):

Gesicht gets infected by something adjacent to Glaze or Nightshade anti-AI software as a virus and it fucks up his internal recognition patterns <3

24. How do you choose whose POV to write in?

So it depends on the type of fic I'm writing! Generally I try to think about what voice will give me more mileage for the narrative. Usually this will either be the character that is more emotionally volatile - they have more to say, typically, and are more "interesting" to read the voice of - but sometimes other characters work better as the voice for a story if the concept behind the narrative is more affecting of them.

It also matters which character you're supposed to understand. For those who read my work, you'll notice that I usually describe character emotions through a third party. "He looked like he might be upset" rather than "he was upset". Generally your voice-character has a clearer set of emotions, and you can interpret their thoughts (because I will often reference memories) but it's these other characters who are left a little bit unknown. Sometimes it's important for me to keep either their emotions or their knowledge secret, so that character can't be the voice.

Alternatively the other way around, I want to switch perspectives so that you do get a certain character's thought processes! This is typically important for my longer fics, where there's a lot of buildup. I'll switch viewpoints when I've set something up one way so that a different character can kind of recontextualize or tear down what I've been saying. It's also a good way for me to drip feed new concepts that will start to matter later.

So a lot goes into my povs! Baseline is "character most invested in the plot" followed by whatever suits the storytelling.

And yeah also just who's more fun to write, that matters a bit.

#ask games #writing asks #irohstea #thanks for the questions! <3

[mostbrilliantidiot]

having to explain that bad data sets just look Bad to me and i KNOW they gotta get pulled all over again because the software fucked up is fun. i love my pattern recognition ability but pls stop singing my praises for what amounts to five seconds of work :/

#ramblings #it makes me feel awkward

[branded-perceptions]

Have you ever wondered why we via advertisings' "brand love" of economic go(o)d(s)🤥😷😇 and social reputations🎭 tend to communicate such indirect bra(i)nde(a)d fantasy values that are so detached🎈 from via introspective 🎶"TEJANO BLUE - CIGARETTES AFTER SEX" discussing, caring for and innovating all our daily causal touch (🎵WE WANTED TO FUCK WITH REAL LOVE)

that we all interact with in societies' shared relations (🎵WANTED IT SWEET, SO PURE AND WARM)

with the One objective causal reality (🎵NEVER ONLY SLEEPING OVER)?

It is the very same reason why,

if you analyse all the data of dating apps and similar,

so many tend to engage in indirect forms or due lack of authenticity not clearly expressed intends of communication unwillingly loosing a shared dialogue of direct communications without actually communicating much about themselves.

It is because we all,

as seen via by that bent economic markets (youtube video of 🎥"30 ways society fucks you in the ass Actualized.org")

tend to care about how "the perceptional input of the objective world makes us feel SUBJECTIVELY" instead of calibrating our subjective feelings, desires and out of this resulting motivations upon a more rational handling of the shared objective world (🎵WE WANTED TO FUCK LIKE ALL THE TIME)

that we all interpret in different ways in our different daily lives' mental construct "flights" (🎵AND WHEN YOU GOT BACK FROM YOUR FLIGHT)

which is hard to handle if not discussed directly (🎵IT WAS THE FIRST THING WE DID)

and bluntly: 🎥"Dr. Gabor Mate about authenticity vs. attachement".

Similar like we in dating especially as teenagers naturally tend to confuse

A) subjective infatuation with our perceptions of someone or our ourselves and the interpretational relation of our mind constructs' via by identity reputationally🎭 masked😷 symbolic🎅 convergerted object relations❤️🧭❤️ psychological ID🍌💦 desires

with

B) the directly communicated longing for a shared calm physical presence of being bored together (🎵AND WHEN YOU SAY YOU WANT IT ALL) in a playful dialectic more carefree way authentically (🎵I KNOW YOU WANT IT ALL) expressing, processing and via focus on causal presence transcending "opposing" emotional experiences and thoughts and masked😷 mind🤓 constructs🤡💄 (🎵BABY, TAKE IT ALL FROM ME) with each other in a in presence of metaphorical most basic floor of causal reality anchored shared direct communicative introspection (🎵AND WHEN YOU DRAG ME ON THE FLOOR AND THE BLUE TEJANO'S ON)

in similar ways we as collective (🎵YOU KEEP YOUR EYES ON ME)

incentive streams🐟🐟🐟 (🎵GET IN THE WAVES) tend to confuse

A) our mimetically outsourced ego functions' sadomasochistically [🎵GET IN YOUR LEATHER: 🔍big food and big pharma killing for profits "positively" due repressed Jungian shadows🍑 = 🔍Gary Vee talks about his father slapping his ass🍑👋] entraining subjective infatuations' by money incentives of investment markets emanated emotional fluctuations brain waves (🎵GET IN THE WAVES LIKE IT WAS THE FIRST TIME) with social customs and group-identities and explanatory mind constructs

B) with blunt direct Occam's Razor introspective dialectic problem solving about objective causalities' relation to all our globally quite similar most essential life forces' collective resonance with direction of intuitive pattern recognition about all our diverse social constructs🎅 behavioural ritualism🎁 which are nothing but diverse emanated forms of us subjectively motivating "love" that we all collectively

as shared👑 regulation🥜 of how🎅 we mimetically🐟🐟🐟 incentivise🧭❤️🧭 our impulsive psychological ID🍌💦 whistles

need to via some shared "wasted time"

[[boredom opening possibilities of otherwise due lack of metacognition rather not so really existent free will💉 and dialectic problem solving: fixing the mimetic reward of our prioritisation in mental linguistic software pattern (#rhymes) over the decades via more attentive focus can accelerate causal innovation and actual causal effects of productivity in unimaginable ways (to properly use AI and robotics and more responsibly handle technologies like mRNA we need more social imagination) while non-contradictorily the desired daily lives of many become less stressed and more "boring" and secure (#staySafe🤥😷😇) ... a focus on socially shared causal presence in the here and now: 🎵I WILL ALWAYS MAKE IT FEEL LIKE YOU WERE THE LAST ONE]]

discuss, introspect and reflect more about our collective motivational🧭❤️🧭 directions🧠👅🧠 more habitually:

🎵BLESS YOUR HEART, MAKE YOU PART OF MINE FOREVER AND ALWAYS

[spontaneous-human-combustion]

Ghost in the Machine

9/4/2023

merits:

writing: This might have been a cool idea in the 90s, but knowing what we know about AI now, and with everything that's been going on with AI art, it's hard to look at this episode objectively. They were looking ahead to an artificial intelligence that was closer to sentience than just... pattern recognition. I did a machine learning project with Python and that's literally all it is: using algorithms to recognize patterns. It's not thinking for itself. The idea could have worked for me if I didn't know this, if I were still in the 90s or if I never studied computer science, but I have to laugh and I have to groan because they wasted potential character development on a discount HAL from Space Odyssey and it wasn't even done well. The only part I thought was worth talking about was the discussion about not letting potentially dangerous technology into the government's hands, a la Oppenheimer, but that was barely explored. Like a 4, and I feel like that's generous.

characterization/development: Mulder...I know you don't care about getting recognition for your work but...fuck. Fight some battles! That guy sucks. Rip him a new one. However, I love that Scully spent every minute of this episode ready to fight. You think she's a buttoned-up, prim scientist? Wrong. She's ready to unleash her Irish temper the moment someone threatens her loved ones (or she gets attacked by a sentient supercomputer). 8 for these delightful insights.

emotion: It touches a little on Mulder's past, but only in the first third of the episode. We see that people jealously admire his brilliance; we see that he's more talented than most people and chooses to spend that talent on his little basement project with no recognition or accolades. We see him betrayed by someone he might have trusted, the way he brushes it off and almost expects it. And then the episode forgets about it and jerks off about the scary evil computer. Who give a shit. 3.

antagonist: A sentient computer with a thirst for murder, inexplicably. Or if there was an explanation I wasnt paying attention. I guess also the guy who wants to get the software counts. They both suck. 2.

on set: I'll hand it to this episode -- some of the sets did fuck. The computer/server room was pretty slick looking, and the software engineer's house with the glass and indoor pond looks like GT Dave's house. The hands-free elevator made me laugh. I'm also loving Scully's wardrobe...the colors suit her so well and she looks so classy. 6.

music: The synthy soundtrack almost seems like it would fit a decade earlier, but it's a bright spot in an otherwise bland episode. 5.

demerits:

boringness: 7 bruh this episode kinda sucks lowkey

ccwfl (chris carter wankfest level): 0

bonus points:

I'm awarding one point for Scully looking so fine the whole damn episode. Her outfits were on point, every single one of them. Plus her makeup wasn't so heavy for some reason, and her freckles were actually showing.

totals:

merits total: 28

demerits total: 7

bonus points: 1

episode total: 22/60 FUCK LMAO

favorites:

Shot of Scully in the broken mirror is cool. I love me some good shattered glass imagery.

I laughed at Brad's "smart home" and his "Eastern philosophy" influence which made me think of the Zen of Python. There were a few things the episode got right, I guess. But then we get the gimmicky computer voice and Brad literally typing whole sentences into the computer while reading them aloud. Sigh

Scully draws right on the computer screen with a pen/marker???

I never thought Mulder's ties were that bad but now that I'm paying attention...yeah some of them are godawful. I love it.

Scully suggests therapy for Mulder. Sorry Scully, he only opts for unorthodox methods like brain drilling and hypnotism.

Omg I had Scully's exact blue comforter as a kid. I recognize the pattern. Came from Macys if I recall? Wow we have so much in common *twirls hair

2317-616 is Scully's badge number; I believe I remember a different one in later episodes.

#1.07

[wiypt-writes]

Stark Spangled Banner

Ch46: Just A Formality

Intro: Emmy gets into a spot of trouble at school, which leads the family to make a joint decision that will change their lives forever. And together with their friends they celebrate Jamie’s birthday, will a little surprise for Emmy too. 

Warnings: Bad Language words. Slight angst (teenagers) and Steve being a very overprotective dad…

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

A/N: Yeah, I love this chapter. I hope you all do too. And thank @angrybirdcr​ for the edit...it mushed my insides!

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Chapter 45

Stark Spangled Banner Masterlist // Main Masterlist

 February 2021

“So what do you think?” Rhodey asked as he stood, arms folded, looking at the screen. Natasha was stood next to him, nervously chewing on her nail and Steve was looking at the rather gory photos that they had been sent through from the Mexican Authorities.

“Is it definitely him?” Steve sighed, looking at the screen again. In a million years he would never have expected Barton to be capable of such out and out gore and violence, but then again the man had lost his entire family- wife and three kids. Steve wasn’t sure how he would react should anything happen to Katie, Emmy or Jamie.

“Yeah.” Nat sighed, pressing another button. This time it flipped to some CCTV footage of the incident. They three of them watched as Clint took down six gang members, brutally, and with a final swipe of the samurai sword he was holding almost severed one man’s head completely from its shoulders. “Same MO, same fight pattern, and the facial recognition software caught him about five miles north of this town less than two hours before this happened.” “He’s getting more and more vicious.” Rhodey spoke. “I suppose we should be grateful in a way he’s taking down people that we should be stopping but how long till someone gets caught in the cross fire?” “Clint wouldn’t-” Natasha began but Steve cut her off.

“Once I would agree with you.” he sighed, looking at her “But now, well, Nat, he’s…” “Lost it.” Rhodey concluded

“So would you if you’d seen your wife and kids turn to dust.” Nat’s voice was fierce as she turned to look at him.

“I know.” Rhodey held his hands up “I can’t even imagine what he went through.”

Steve looked at Nat, recognising the pensive look on her face. “What you thinking?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m gonna fly out to Mexico. Rhodey, can you come with me? We’ll see if we can dig anything up?” Rhodey nodded. Steve was about to offer his services too, but then his phone started ringing.

“Hey beautiful.” He greeted Katie, but instead of the usual response of either hello handsome or soldier, he was met with an exasperated sigh.

“Emmy’s Principal has just called me.” She groaned “She’s been in a fight.”

Steve frowned. “Really? What for?” “No idea. He didn’t say much other than he’s excluding her for a week and wants us to go collect her as soon as we can. Thing is, I have a call in twenty with the Health Authorities, President Ellis has asked me to give them some guidance on how we regrouped at SI, and I can try and rearrange but if I can’t it means she’s gonna be sat outside the office for at least an hour and a half. Is there any chance you-”

“I got, course I’ll go. I’m done here anyway so you do what you need to do and we’ll see you at home.”

“Thank you.” She sighed “Between this and Jamie screaming blue murder when I dropped him in at the Day Care this morning It hasn’t really been the spectacular return to work I was hoping for.”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “He didn’t take it well then?” “No.” Her voice cracked “God, Steve, Leaving him there whilst he was screaming, fuck, it broke my heart.” Steve took a sigh and walked a little further away from Rhodey and Natasha, dropping his voice. “Honey, he’ll be fine. You know what he’s like. Ten minutes after you left he will have forgotten why he’s so upset and will have settled.”

“I know, I just, well Mom and Dad used to palm me and Tony off on our Nannies all the time and-”

“This is completely different.” Steve cut her off. “First off, you’re leaving him for what, five hours a day, maximum. Second off, he’s being watched at a crèche, twenty floors down from where you are, in the same building so you can see him whenever you want.”

“I was advised by the Staff not to do that today.” She sniffed. “It could unsettle him more.”

“I’m sure they know what they’re talking about.” Steve soothed her gently “Look, try not to worry. Jamie will be fine, I’ll go sort Emmy out and we’ll see you at home this evening okay?” “My hero.” she said and Steve smiled.

“Love you, see you later.”

Cutting the call he turned to Rhodey and Nat who were still looking at the screen. Walking back towards them he picked up his jacket where he had tossed it over the back of a chair, reaching for his keys at the same time.

“Guys, I gotta go.” He informed them and they looked up. “Emmy’s in trouble at school and I need to head in and see the Principal.”

“Trouble?” Nat frowned.

“Fighting.” Steve rolled his eyes as Nat and Rhodey exchanged a glance, Nat smirking slightly. Steve gave an exasperated sigh. “What?”

“Nothing.” Nat grinned. “Just don’t punch the Principal in the face…”

*****

It took Steve little over thirty minutes to reach the school. He may have broken a few speeding laws on the way, but Katie was right, it was too easy to do in the Camero. To be honest, it was pretty easy to do in the new Audi they had bought just before Christmas too, but Katie had that as it was easier to get Jamie’s seat and stroller in. The Camero was not child friendly, at all, but she had insisted on keeping it as a second car, despite Steve’s protests that they didn’t need it.

With an easy tug he pulled open the doors to the reception of the school and strode inside. The woman behind the desk handed him a visitor’s pass and led him down to the office as he brushed a piece of fluff off the front of his long sleeved blue top. Steve followed the white haired lady through the corridors in silence until he reached the office and spotted Emmy was sat outside it, slumped in a chair. At the sight of her father she jumped up and ran into his arms, crying.

“Hey,” He looked down as he smoothed her dark, ebony hair out of her face, cupping her face gently in one large hand. “What’s going on, Em?” “He started it.” She sniffed. “He was saying things, about you and mom and that my birth parents and that…that…”

She was starting to have a panic attack, Steve could see that instantly. She’d suffered from them a lot when she had first started to live with them and he knew that if he didn’t help her get it under control now it would escalate.

“Deep breaths.” He spoke gently, steering her back to a chair. She sat down and he tilted her head with his hand so that she was looking at him. “Count to ten, just like we practiced ok?”

She gripped onto his forearms, her eyes screwing shut as she took deep inhales and exhales, counting along as she did. By the time she got to seven she’d managed to ground herself again, and Steve encouraged her for the remaining three numbers, them just reaching ten as the door to the office at the end of the corridor opened.

“Mr Rogers.”

 Steve stood up to greet the Principal, John Stevenson, who he had met once before when they had enrolled Emmy into the school. He was a tall, lean man with round glasses and a kind face, but an air of authority perfect for that of a headmaster “Mr Stevenson.” Steve smiled, shaking his hand “I don’t mean to be rude, but could you give me a second with my daughter please? I want to hear her side of the story and then I’ll be right with you.”

“Of course,” the man nodded, giving him and Emmy a little smile. “Just come in when you’re ready.”

Once the door to his office was shut, Steve sat on the spare seat next to Emmy. “So you wanna tell me what happened. Who ya been fightin’ with?”

“A boy a grade above. And I wasn’t fighting. Not really, I mean I hit him but he fell over, he didn’t hit me back.” Steve bit his lip. “Seems the stuff your mom and Auntie Nat taught you came in handy, huh?”

Emmy shrugged.

“What did you hit him for?”

“Because he’s a jerk and a bully” Emmy’s hands were wringing together. “He was picking on a few of the kids who lost their parents all through last year and then last month when I told him to shut up, he decided to start on me”

Steve took a deep breath “What was he saying?”

“The usual, stuff like ‘you don’t have a real family’, said that you and mom only look after me because you feel guilty that the Avengers fucked, sorry, messed up.” She glanced up at Steve, but he merely arched an eyebrow, letting the curse word slide. “And he says that once I’m old enough you’ll throw me out, and then he called me a, and I quote ‘fucking orphan rat’.” She shrugged. “Sso I punched him.”

“Alright.” Steve took a deep breath, his jaw ticking as he supressed the feeling of annoyance and anger that had flooded his system at Emmy’s explanation. “We’ll unpack all that when we get home, with your mom.”

“Are you mad?” Emmy blinked up at him, her eyes wide.

“Well, punching him probably wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation.” Steve sighed, and instantly his wife’s voice popped into his head at how hypocritical he felt. 

“Hello Kettle, this is Steve Rogers, you’re black…”

“But if what you’re telling me is true-“   “It is Dad I swear!”

“Then no, I’m not mad. At you.” He gave her a small smile. “But I’m mad as hell he said those horrible things to you though.” He looked at Emmy as she smiled softly. “Now, I best go speak to your principal. I won’t be long, and then we’ll go home and talk properly okay?”

She nodded and Steve dropped a kiss to her head as he stood up and walked to the door. Rapping on it twice, he pulled it open and stepped inside the room, shutting it behind him. Principal Stevenson stood up, shook his hand before gesturing down at the chairs on the opposite side of his desk.

“So did she tell you what happened?” The man asked, leaning back slightly in his chair.

Steve nodded. “She said that a boy, I didn’t get his name…” “Josh Gemmil.” “Yes, well, she told me that this Josh had been picking on a few kids and when he started on her, she didn’t take kindly to it. And to be frank, I can’t say I blame her. The things he was saying to Emmy were disgusting.” “Yeah, and that may be the case.” Mr Stevenson sighed heavily, “but the issue is, Mr Rogers, we have a strict zero tolerance to violence policy, so, given Emmy did punch him in front of pretty much the entire school in the yard, I’ve no alternative but to suspend her for a week.” “Are you suspending him?” Steve asked.

“Sorry?” The man opposite Steve frowned. “I’m not…” “The boy who Emmy punched. Are you suspending him for what he said?”

“No-one has corroborated her story, well, other than Brooke and I know how close they are so she could be-” “Woah, hold up.” Steve interrupted, holding his hand up to cut that man off as a flash of anger surged through his chest. “Are you insinuating Emmy is lying?” “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” “So if she’s telling the truth, then surely the boy deserves punishment as well. Emmy isn’t the only person he’s been saying things to.”

“She’s the only person who has punched him.” “That may be, but either way-.”

“Mr Rogers,” the Principal sighed, cutting him off,  “for what it’s worth Josh’s parents will be coming in later and I will be consulting them about his behaviour, but unfortunately Emmy has broken his nose.” “Well, I’d like to say I’m sorry about that but I’m not.” Steve was too far gone now to be rational, his instinct to protect his daughter had well and truly kicked in and the guy in front of him was really pissing him off. “I don’t like bullies,” he continued, levelling the man with a look and he visibly recoiled back into his seat, “and I’m not gonna punish my daughter for standing up to one. If you deem it fit to suspend her then fine, that is your prerogative, and of course I will tell her that violence is not acceptable, but I would expect some level of punishment to be extended to the boy in question and not just her.”

The Principal nodded. “Mr Rogers, I can assure you, if it was up to me I wouldn’t be suspending her at all, but my hands are tied by the governors and policies. I make an exception here, I have to do it for others and before you know it…” he trailed off. Steve took a deep breath, he could understand that perfectly, didn’t make it any easier for him to swallow though. “But that’s why the suspension is only for a week and not the two.”

Steve nodded. “Okay, do I need to sign anything or…”

“No.” the Principal shook his head. “Emmy has her log on to Workspace, her class notes and homework will be detailed on there as usual so she doesn’t miss out. If there is anything she doesn’t understand or needs help with, she can catch up when she gets back. She’s a very, smart kid so I’m not too concerned about that aspect of things.” Steve nodded, and stood up. He took a deep breath and stepped back into the corridor to find Brooke was sat with Emmy now, her arm round her best friend.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Steve asked, shooting the red head a look.

“Hey Mr R, don’t sweat it. Told em I was going to the bathroom.” Brooke shrugged and Steve rolled his eys.

“Well scoot before you get into trouble too.” He gestured with his head to the doors that led back to the reception area.

“Can Brooke come over later?” Emmy asked, timidly, “Or am I grounded?”

Steve took a deep breath “Not tonight, we need to have a chat. But over the weekend then, sure.” “’kay.” Emmy nodded, standing up. She reached for her rucksack but Steve took it from her, carrying it in his right hand, his left gently between Emmy’s shoulder blades as he steered her towards the exit. As they walked into the reception, Emmy stopped dead and he heard Brooke who was walking along at his other side mutter an ‘uh-oh’.

“This her?” A short, squat woman with a very short hair cut was stood a few feet in front of him, a boy by her side, a few inches taller than her, dressed in a bloodied T-shirt glared at Emmy and nodded. Instantly Steve moved forward a step so he was level with his daughter, his hand dropping to her shoulder.

“Your daughter broke my son’s nose.” The woman glared up at him.

“So I understand.” Steve nodded. “She has been suspended and we’ll be dealing with it appropriately.”

“You know, kids like her, they shouldn’t be-”

“Kids like her?” Steve blinked at the woman, and shook his head. “Excuse me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” Steve’s voice was low. “So, please, explain.”

“I mean with violent and aggressive tendencies, they should be locked up not in a school with normal kids-” “Woah, now hang on.” Steve held his hand up as he looked at the woman. “Your son isn’t exactly innocent in all this.” “I don’t see your daughter with blood all over her shirt. He didn’t hit her…” “I would hope not, seeing as he’s a boy and half a foot taller than her.” He shot back and the woman’s mouth snapped shut. Steve turned to Emmy and handed her the backpack and his keys. “Go and get in the car, sweetheart, I’ll be with you in a minute.” Emmy glanced up at him, one look on his face told her he wasn’t to be argued with, and she nodded and took them from him, before leaving.

His attention then turned to the teenager and woman and he folded his arms across his chest, glaring at them both. The boy had a sharp face, slicked back blonde hair and for some reason he reminded Steve of a younger Gilmore Hodge. Which was never a good thing. He looked at the woman and spoke again, his voice level but full of that Captain Authority he could never help turning on in situations like this.

“Your son said some very nasty things to my daughter, and in normal circumstances he should be apologising. However, given what happened I suggest we leave it at that and they agree to stay away from one another in the future.” “Him apologise?” The woman practically shrieked. “She punched him, if anything she’s the one that should be saying sorry.” Steve gave a huff of a laugh “I can assure you that won’t be happening. Besides,” he turned to the boy, “do you really want an apology from a ‘fucking orphan rat’?”

He heard a snigger followed by a mumble of “mic drop…” to his right and turned to see Brooke was still there.

“What are-” he shot her a look, pointing towards the class rooms, “-scoot.” “Later Mr R.” Brooke shot him a salute and he raised an eyebrow as she headed off back to wherever she should have been in the first place.

“Did you say that?” The woman had rounded on her son.

“No…I swear.” “He said he didn’t.” Steve shook his head, his hands dropping to the buckle of his belt. “I’m not interested in whether he admits it or not. Fact of the matter is I believe my daughter and according to her and her friend, Emmy isn’t the first kid he’s picked on but I’m sure as hell hoping she’s gonna be the last, especially now he’s had a punch in the face to make him consider the consequences of his actions.” His lips quirked a little at the side as he delivered his final line. “I’d hate for him to get antoher.” “How dare you threaten him?” The woman was now talking in that high a pitch it was making Steve’s ears hurt.

“That isn’t a threat.” Steve shook his head “Merely an observation. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He turned to the door when the woman spluttered after him “You know, we do know where you live. That big, fancy house in Clinton Hill.” “Then by all means feel free to call round later.” Steve laughed as he turned to grin at the woman of her shoulder. “But I really don’t fancy your chances against my wife.” ****** “He said WHAT?” Katie spluttered once Steve had explained what had gone on. “The little fucking shit!” “His mother wasn’t much better either.” Steve shook his head as he raised Jamie up higher in the air above him, the tot screaming with laughter. “She threatened to come round later.” “I’ll kick her fucking ass!” Katie folded her arms across her chest and a wry smile crossed Steve’s face as he brought Jamie back down to his chest.

“Yeah I told her I didn’t fancy her chances.”

“Where’s Emmy now?” Katie asked.

“In her room, she said she wanted to be alone for a bit.”

Katie pondered for a moment, before she moved and walked out of the kitchen, calling up the stairs, “Emmy? Can you come down for a minute please?”

Katie came back into the kitchen and it wasn’t long before Emmy appeared, her eyes red. Katie sighed and pulled her into a hug.

“I’m sorry, I just, ” Emmy sniffed. “He was so rude and…” “Sweetie, we’re not mad.” Katie shook her head, steering the girl across the hall “We just want to talk to you, about what he said,” she gestured at one of the seats by the breakfast bar, “sit.”

Emmy did as she was told and Steve placed Jamie in the pack and play at the corner of the room. There was a minute or so silence before Katie slid a mug of hot chocolate, containing marshmallows and cream across the counter to Emmy, then passed Steve a coffee, picking up her own drink before she rounded the counter and sat on a stool next to Emmy, Steve staying where he was, the base of his back leaning against the worktop opposite them.

“So your dad told me what happened.” Katie began “And we want to talk to you about what that little jerk said to you.”

“I shouldn’t have let him get to me.” Emmy shrugged “I know what he was saying was crap but…” “If your dad had a dollar for every time he had reacted to something he shouldn’t have done he’d be richer than Tony.” Katie smiled and Steve gave a scoff.

“You’re a fine one to talk.” He raised an eyebrow at his wife and she grinned.

“And as for throwing you out once you’re old enough,” Katie shook her head, “you’re with us for as long as you wanna be. And then even when you don’t want to be, and you move out, we’ll be keeping tabs on you, annoying you, like Tony does to me.”

Emmy smiled and wiped at her eyes.

“You said he’s been picking on you for a while?” Steve asked “What made you snap today?” Emmy shrugged “I guess I was just fed up with it and when he was laughing about my name on my test paper, and he called me an orphan rat I saw red.” Katie took a deep breath, she was furious but before she could say anything Steve spoke, a frown creasing his brow.

“What do you mean he was laughing at your name?” “My surname.” Emmy shrugged “On stuff like the register and things at school its Rogers but on my official test papers for my grades it has to be McKellen, because Rogers isn’t my real name. And he was laughing saying that I didn’t belong anywhere.” Steve and Katie locked eyes and Steve was the first one to break away.

“Does it bother you, that your name isn’t Rogers?”

“Not normally.” She shrugged

“What if we made it so?” Katie asked.

“What, like change it legally?” “That’s one way of doing it.” Steve shrugged.  “The other is we adopt you.” Katie looked at her husband and smiled. This was something they’d mentioned in passing to one another a few times but never really talked about in any detail as, well, to them things were fine as they were. But now, well, it just felt right. The next step for them all. Making her status as their daughter official.

“Adopt me?” Emmy’s voice was a whisper.

“Yeah.” Katie nodded. “Look, Em, as far as we’re concerned you’re already our daughter, and not just a foster one either. It’s merely a formality. But it’s up to you.” “Do you want to think about it?” Steve asked.

“No.” Emmy shook her head as she looked up tears in her eyes. “No, I don’t want to think about it. I’d love it, I really would.” Katie smiled as the girl threw her arms round her shoulders and began to sob. Steve put his mug down on the counter next to him and strode round to wrap his large arms around both his girls until a loud screech form the corner of the room made them all look up. Jamie was stood gripping the side of his play pen, clearly disgruntled at being left out of the hug.

“Alright pal, point taken.” Steve picked him up and carried him back to where Emmy was now wiping her eyes. He handed the tot to his older sister and Katie grinned.

“Family hug?” She opened her arms and Emmy laughed, as the four of them snuggled together in a huddle.

*****

March 2021

Despite Steve’s best attempts to ignore it, there was something in what that little shit had said to Emmy that had really bothered him.  The Avengers fucked up. It wasn’t an alien thought, he often found himself thinking back to how they had failed but he normally shook himself out of it. They’d done the best they could, they simply hadn’t stood a chance.

The thing was, not all of the public saw that. On more than one occasion the remaining Avengers had all experienced some kind of vitriol from the public, Natasha still receiving hate mail for them all at the compound. Whilst people he met understood, it was always the ones that didn’t which stuck in Steve’s mind, but he’d never had anything more than the odd whispered insult or dirty look come his way, that was until a few day’s after Jamie’s first birthday.

He was in the store with Emmy, picking up a few bits and pieces for the family gathering they were having to celebrate Jamie turning one and he could feel someone’s eyes on him, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual, however, was the tap on the shoulder her received as he tossed a few items from the list Katie had given him into the trolley.

“I thought it was you.”

Steve turned to see a dark haired man, the same height as him looking back.

“Can I help you?” Steve asked politely.

The man snorted “I thought at one point, yeah, but you didn’t, this…us…what the world is now, it’s all your fault.” Steve took a deep breath, and spotted Emmy returning to the aisle he was in with an armful of snacks he had sent her for.

“Sir-” Steve began, trying to placate the man but before he could do anything the guy had punched him straight in the face. It wasn’t a hard blow, but Steve hadn’t been expecting it. Or the subsequent blows for that matter.

He was vaguely aware Emmy was screaming, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a security guard hurrying towards him. Before he reached them, Emmy had kicked the man hard in the shin and was shouting at him, as he hopped on his good leg. Steve doubled over, the ringing in his ears subsiding as he pinched at his nose which was streaming blood.

“Oh my God.” A female voice said “Billy, what…” she looked up at Steve and paled “Captain, oh God, I’m so sorry…he’s…” Steve waved away another member of the public who had come to help, insisting he was fine. Taking a deep breath he looked up and saw the man was now crying, his head buried into his wife’s shoulders.

“We…we lost our son.” The lady continued, with a choked voice. “He hasn’t dealt with it so well.”

“I’m sorry.” Steve bowed his head, it was all he could think to say.

“It isn’t you fault” The lady shook her head. “And he doesn’t think that, not really, it’s just we never got a proper explanation, you know, bar official government statements. No real help to come to terms with anything.” “That doesn’t mean he can just punch the crap outta my dad!” Emmy blazed, indignantly and Steve lay a hand on her shoulder. “Emmy.” He shook his head gently before he turned to the woman. “I’m sorry that no one was there for you and I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more. But we tried.” The last three words were almost a plea to her, trying to make her understand they had tried, boy did they try. She cast him another sad look before she led her husband away.

“You ok?” Steve looked down at his daughter.

“Me?” She frowned “What about you?” “Had worse.” Steve mumbled, gently touching his nose “Let’s get out stuff and get home before it starts to set. I don’t fancy having to re-break it.”

**** Katie was sat smiling as Natasha was holding Jamie up, his hands curled round her fingers as she guided him round the living room.

“Won’t be long until he’s doing this himself.” The red head smiled, and Katie grinned.

“He’s growing so fast.” 

“Think you’ll have another?” Nat looked at her.

Katie shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, Steve would have a football team full if I let him but, who knows.”

Nat smiled and Katie’s attention turned back to her son who was toddling in front of his Auntie. He was looking more and more like his father each day and was now a substantial little chunk who was pretty strong and robust too. Small bumps and knocks didn’t seem to phase him at all, and the other day he’d been playing with a tonka truck and had fallen onto it, flattening it completely. He’d screamed blue murder, more over the fact his toy was broken than he had been hurt, but it had made both his parents realise that he was definitely half Super Soldier and wasn’t inheriting any of Steve’s pre-serum ailments, much to Steve’s relief.

Their attention was taken as all three of them heard the car pull up the gravel drive and Jamie gave an excited giggle and started moving his legs even faster at the sound, understanding it to mean his father was back. Smiling to herself, Katie watched as he giggled and started trying to run to the door, and when it opened she looked up fully expecting Steve to grin and swoop his boy up into his arms, except what greeted her made her hand fly up to her mouth. His shirt was covered with blood and his nose was out of shape.

“Shit.” Katie stood up and headed straight to him, gently reaching up to slide a finger to his face, tilting it so she could see. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine sweetheart” he said gently.

“What the hell happened?” Nat asked as she picked Jamie up, who was still squirming to get to his father, completely nonplussed by what was going on.

“Some guy in the store punched him.” Emmy explained, and Katie looked at her daughter, whose eyes were swollen, she’d been crying.

“What? Why?” she frowned. “Em, can you grab me an ice pack out the freezer?” Steve asked before she could answer, she was upset enough as it was and he didn’t want her seeing or hearing what was coming next. She nodded and headed off.

“Steve.” Katie watched as he sat down on the sofa, shaking his head.

“Just reset it before it starts to heal anymore.” He grumbled. “Quickly before she gets back.”

Katie sat next to him and reached out gently. He grit his teeth as she snapped his nose back into place. Across the room Nat flinched at the crunching noise it made.

“Fuck.” Steve cursed softly before laying his head back against the cushions of the couch steadying his breathing as his eyes began to water from the pain. He knew it would heal quickly but that didn’t stop it hurting like hell.

“You gonna tell us what happened?” Katie asked, looking at him.

“Some guy at the store recognised me and started screaming that it was all our fault, the Snap, and hit me.”

“Must have been a pretty hard swing.” Nat said gently, bouncing Jamie up and down, distracting him with the Cap teddy bear she had grabbed off the floor. Jamie grinned at the bear and grabbed it, sticking the ear of it into his mouth.

“He didn’t just hit you once, Dad.” Emmy said gently as she returned, passing him the ice pack.

“How many times was it?” Katie frowned.

“Four ,maybe.” he shrugged

“Try Six” Emmy muttered.

“Six?!” Katie’s voice grew loud

“And you just let him?” Nat’s snorted. “What else could I do Nat?” Steve sighed, “I couldn’t hit him back…” “Yes, you damned well could!” Katie seethed. “Fuck!”

“Language.” Steve chastised playfully. “Besides, wasn’t really going to hit him once Em had kicked him in the shin.”

“You kicked him?” Katie looked at Emmy who shrugged.

“He was screaming and punching so I kicked him, real hard, and then told him that he was an asshole, and everyone had lost, and that he should try fighting Thanos in a field in Wakanda himself if he could do any better…” “Then the guy’s wife appeared.” Steve sighed, pressing the ice pack to his face.

“Yeah, she was nice.” Emmy nodded. “Said they had lost their son and she was so sorry.” “But they’d never really had a chance to ask questions or had an explanation other than what the Government had said.” Steve’s voice was muffled slightly from the pack. “But it got me thinking in the car about how many other people out there like that.” “So we had an idea.” Emmy nodded “Support groups.” “Support groups?” Katie frowned.

“Yeah, we have them at school.” Emmy said “Somewhere for people to go and talk about their issues and feelings.” “That’s actually not a bad idea.” Nat mused and Steve nodded.

“I know. Surprised we didn’t think of it sooner.”

“Well we’ve had other things on our minds.” Katie popped a shoulder, gently.

“I’m gonna help.” Emmy smiled. “We’re gonna brainstorm ideas later after the party.”

“Yeah, on that, do me a favour and no one mention this to Tony when he gets here.” Steve groaned as he stood up, ice pack still on his nose. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

Leaving Emmy to watch Jamie, Nat and Katie unloaded the car and took the supplies to the kitchen. Steve showered quickly and came back to help them, and it wasn’t long before the food was sorted, Katie’s ability to cook how easily she did never ceased to amaze Steve. Before long the gang arrived and Morgan toddled in, holding Tony’s hand before he let go and she bee-lined for Emmy who was sat on the living room floor where she had been sat looking at a book with Jamie.

“Hey Moo!” Emmy grinned at the younger girl who sat with a soft thud next to her, leaning into her older cousin for a hug.

Tony watched them for a short while before he asked if Emmy was okay and then headed into the kitchen to find Pepper already clutching a glass of champagne. Katie handed him a beer as she pulled him into a hug and he shook Steve’s hand.

“You’re in the same room as usual.” Katie looked at him. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted Moo in with you guys or not so there’s the travel cot in there or she can have the room over from you…” “She can stay with us.” Tony nodded, taking a pull from his beer.

“Where is she?”  Natasha asked.

“With Emmy. She adores that kid.”

“Have you told her the paperwork has been finalised?” Pepper asked looking at Katie and Steve who both shook their head.

“No, we’re gonna surprise her with that later.” Katie smiled.

“We got her a little something.” Tony swallowed his beer. “You know, just to welcome her officially to the mad house.” “What is it?” Steve asked suspiciously.

“Nothing Iron Man or Tony Stark related.” Pepper looked at Steve. “I promise.” Tony shrugged. “Spoil sport.” The five adults all headed into the large living room, Jamie grinned up at his uncle and crawled over to him. Tony swung him up in the air and smiled, that is until Jamie head-butted him by accident.

“Oww…shhhhhhhhugar!” The billionaire corrected his curse before wincing. “Man, Rogers, this kid has your knuckle head.” Steve smirked. “He’s still half Stark.”

“Mind you, you should be grateful he doesn’t take after his mom. She was a horror.” “Was not.” Katie shot back indignantly. “Kiddo, you were a pain in the ass.” Tony sniggered. “You stuck bread in the VCR. Dad hit the roof.” “I thought it was a toaster.” Katie shrugged as the room laughed. “Mind you, not like we have to worry about that now seeing as VCRs went out in the stone age.” “Was that an age joke?” Tony smirked. “Do I have to respond with one about your husband or…” Steve rolled his eyes “Go ahead, be original.” “You know you’re almost as sarcastic as she is now.” Nat but in, pointing at Katie who grinned before she looked at Tony.

“You remember what dad used to say?”

“Sarcasm is a measure of potential,” Tony imitated their father’s voice. “And if that’s true…” “You’ll be a great man someday.” Katie finished, the two of them laughing.

Despite the crappy start to the day, it was a nice afternoon surrounded by their family. They drank, ate and eventually it was time for the cake which Katie and Steve were excited about, for good reason. Katie placed it down on the coffee table in the middle of the lounge, complete with candles. For the first time the group got a look at it, and Steve heard Emmy gasp. Half the large cake was iced in blue, the other half was lilac and across the top the word ‘Happy’ spanned both halves, before the next line read birth on the blue side and adoption on the other, before the word day sat underneath.

Emmy glanced up at her parents, her eyes filling with tears. “You mean…” Steve grinned and handed her the envelope he’d retrieved from the kitchen, which she took in shaking hands. “Signed, sealed, done. You’re officially a Rogers, Em.”

“Poor thing.” Tony mumbled, earning himself a slap round the back of the head from Natasha.

Together the Rogers’ children blew out their candles (well, Katie blowing Jamie’s out on his behalf before the boy could grab one of them and burn himself) and then Emmy turned to look at Steve and Katie before throwing herself forwards, her arms round both their waists. Steve’s arm fell to her back and he pressed a kiss to Katie’s cheek before Tony stepped forward and handed Emmy a small gift bag.

“It’s just a little something.” He smiled. “Just to say welcome to the family, officially we mean, because you’re already part of the…” He rolled his eyes as Emmy blinked up at him. “Just take it, kid.”

Emmy took the bag and opened it, her eyes widening as she looked at the box, emblazoned with the word Pandora. Katie peered down as Emmy opened it and smiled at the charm bracelet which was inside. It held charms, the letters EJR for her initials, Emily Jayne Rogers.

“Thank you.” She whispered before she gave Tony a hug, then Pepper. She stepped back and turned around, her eyes brimming with tears. “This is the best day ever!”

And despite the shitty start to it in the store, Steve was inclined to agree it hadn’t been that bad at all.

Chapter 47

 **Original Posting**

#stark spangled banner #steve rogers #Katie Stark #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fic #steve rogers x ofc #steve rogers x original female character #mcu #mcu fanfic #chris evans #chris evans characters

[lovelyirony]

I just came here to say, can you imagine after endgame Sharon finds Nat's white suit in her belongings and decides to wear it and make it her own as a reminder of what she lost and what is left to fight for?

When Sharon Carter first came to SHIELD, she wanted to be just like the other agents. 

And yet that was hard for her. It was hard to act like every other agent because she wasn’t like the other agents and they knew it. 

She had someone in the organization before her. That’s why she was Agent 13. There were always members of family, but it was usually only the agents that either posed an individual danger or a family danger that got the number. 

In the first two weeks, the rookies had figured out that Sharon and Peggy shared the same harsh gaze when they were frustrated. 

They scorned her, leaving her to fend for herself. 

“You got in because of Carter,” they sneer. “I’d rather have someone who actually earned their spot.” 

“Even if that did happen, do you think my aunt would’ve let me into this profession if I wasn’t as skilled as you?” Sharon fires back. “I can finish this mission in twenty minutes on my own if I really wanted to.” 

“Then do it,” Agent Riker bites, smirking. “Go ahead and prove yourself, Thirteen.” 

Nineteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. 

And she does it all in a white t-shirt and jeans, the worst outfit that could’ve been. 

“So what, you’ve proved yourself,” they shrug. “Doesn’t make a difference to us.” 

So Sharon scraps the idea of having people who are friends at work, friends that she can talk to and go to the bar with after work. 

And then she does perhaps the ballsiest move. 

She orders a custom white jumpsuit. 

The SHIELD tailor laughs. He’s an old man who goes by the name Joe. 

“You’re crazy,” he tells her, sweeping a measuring tape across her shoulders. “Maybe they need a little crazy.” 

Sharon nods, looking at herself in the mirror. 

She shows up to work in white, ponytail out of the way. 

Fury gives her a look. 

“Really, Thirteen?” 

“Everyone’s already criticizing,” Sharon answers. “Why not get some for the suit as well?” 

White really is her color. It’s what she’s known for, and a lot of agents still criticize her for it. 

“You trying to show off even more?” one sneers. 

“Why would I have to after your last mission?” Sharon answers sweetly. “It’s clear to me that you obviously need more tips on how to be inconspicuous.” 

It’s bitchy. She knows that. But she also can’t be bothered to give a shit if they’re judging her by family and not by skill. 

And then Black Widow. 

Natasha Romanoff takes one look her and scoffs. 

“Got something to say?” Sharon asks. 

“I don’t get the white suit.” 

“You will,” Sharon responds. “Just wait.” 

Romanoff hears the rumors. Sharon Carter only got into the organization because of her connection to her great-aunt. 

“You really think SHIELD would be that stupid?” She asks Agent Riker. “To hire an agent off a basis of family? I thought they hired people smarter than you.” 

Sharon’s surprised. 

She also makes her first friend. 

Natasha Romanoff is deadly, has horrible humor, and wears fun socks after Sharon takes her to get some color in her wardrobe. 

“You cannot tell anyone,” Nat makes her swear. 

“Who is there to tell?” Sharon asks, grinning. “Besides Clint.” 

“Clint doesn’t count, I’m not even sure if he’s human. He ate a paper plate because he was too tired to differentiate it from the pizza in the fridge.” 

“I love that man,” Sharon deadpans. “I think if I ever dated men, he would be my type.” 

Natasha laughs. 

They’re friends. Sharon’s there with coffee in the rough mornings and Natasha is there with words that have lost their edge as she sheds her reputation at the door. 

- 

The Avengers is a new thing for Natasha. She loves it because she tells Sharon that it makes her feel like she finally has a family and she’s doing something that’s worthy. 

Sharon ignores the jealousy and envy and sadness burning in her gut as she takes a sip of her wine glass and asks Natasha how it is working with Captain America. 

(She knows who he is. She’s always known. But that kind of connection is one that she’s not sure she’ll ever flaunt because Steve does not know that she knows Steve.) 

Natasha gets more involved with the Avengers and still texts Sharon, but she knows. This friendship is fading and Sharon turns back to a white jumpsuit lying on the couch when she gets home and gets out of her shower. 

Natasha can’t make it to lunch. Or dinner. And their shopping trip gets cancelled by an Avengers mission. 

Then Sharon loses SHIELD, which in some cases was everything to her. It’s the last connection to family, to a place where Sharon did what she did best: her job. 

And now it’s razed to the ground and the Avengers are still there and Natasha--

She has her hands full. 

Sharon bitterly looks up at the sky to see the Iron Man armor and for a brief moment, hates the team that has taken her friend from her. 

But Sharon has shit to do. She has to decide if she wants to work for the FBI or CIA, and which one can offer her more security. 

CIA agents don’t give a singular shit if she came from SHIELD or what her last name means. They’re mostly concerned with making sure that the Congress and the Senate don’t fuck everything up and that they catch whoever the hell is eating all of the leftovers on the third floor fridge. 

Sharon gets paid for this. Real, actual money. 

And they know that she’s good and they send her on protection missions and she misses Natasha’s calls and she doesn’t feel quite bad about it. 

It’s when she’s assigned to survey Germany because some idiot used facial recognition software and Steve’s making boneheaded decisions that she reconnects with Natasha. 

“Your hair got longer,” Natasha says. 

“Nice of you to notice,” Sharon says tersely. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re about to be in? You won’t be able to go anywhere.” 

“Anywhere, really?” Natasha asks, amused. “I’m sure I can think of someone who would welcome me back with open arms.” 

“Clint doesn’t count,” Sharon fires back. 

“Not who I meant.” 

“I know exactly what you meant,” Sharon says. “No calling, no plans, all of it cancelled. You’re a family kind of girl, Nat.” 

“You’re part of it.” 

Sharon turns, incredulous. “Really. You’re doing this now?” 

Sharon knows Natasha like she knows her apartment. She could walk it with her eyes closed. And she knows that Natasha is never this open, not in public. 

“Either you’ve changed how you approach your emotions or you’ve gotten sloppy in how you manipulate people,” Sharon says, casual as can be. “I know that you want to go against this. I understand that because chances are later on down the road this will blow up in your face.” 

“And now you’re going to pretend like you didn’t slip that file to Steve?” Natasha accuses. 

“I slipped it to Steve because as much as I don’t like this, I don’t want an innocent man to die,” Sharon hisses. 

She has her white jumpsuit. But she hangs it up in her closet because for something like what they’re planning, she can’t afford to be in white. This isn’t like the twenty minute missions. 

And then it gets more serious and she’s fighting like hell against Thanos and his aliens and the fact that everyone is gone. 

But not Natasha. Not she’s still on this earth and Sharon knows it kills her because she’s never thought she was enough for that. 

They make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sit on the floor in a sunroom. It’s a beautiful day, probably one too beautiful for how many memories they both hold. 

“I don’t know if it’ll be okay,” Natasha says. Her voice is thick with unsaid and unheard emotion, and Sharon pulls her into a hug. 

“It might not be,” Sharon says quietly. “But we’ll have to keep going anyway.” 

So Sharon is introduced to Steve, the guy with a beard who still keeps fighting and looks at Sharon as if he’s expecting someone else. (She pretends like she doesn’t know what he’s doing.) 

She starts looking at sightings and patterns and helps people who she’s never met help keep the world safe. 

Natasha and Sharon tell stories to each other of people they’ve known. Sharon listens as she grieves and Natasha finds out that Sharon’s own family has been gone. 

They spend Christmas together and Christmas kind of sucks right now because everyone is crying and the only thing that’s sold out at stores are tissues. 

Sharon wonders if Tony got dusted. No one knows. He was up in space and they haven’t found him yet and she can’t say it doesn’t hurt. 

But then. He comes down in his spaceship, Carol Danvers finding him on the verge of death. 

He can’t stand the sight of Steve, and Sharon can’t say he blames him. She’s in charge of getting him to in-house care and making sure he doesn’t stray off the nutrition goal. 

Pepper and Rhodey sit by his side all the time and they give Sharon looks because she’s Tony’s cousin but not really, not in the sense of a traditional cousin. 

She met him that one time when he was probably a little bit buzzed, definitely over having small children look up to him and ask if they can have him play, and probably brushed her off. 

Or something. 

He’s angry with Steve and tells Sharon right off the bat that he refuses to have anything to do with what’s going on. 

“This is my second chance and as shitty as it is for all of you, I’m keeping it,” Tony says firmly. 

Sharon says okay because she really can’t blame him. 

(Not when six months after he gets back and gets himself better, Pepper announces that she’s expecting.) 

Sharon visits often. She brings Pepper her first supply of diapers and formula and Pepper smiles and says she’s welcome for lunch if she’d like. 

Natasha doesn’t talk to Tony. Sharon thinks she kind of resents her own position in this whole thing, but Tony nods to her and they understand each other on a level that’s changed. 

“Do you think you’ll ever want a family?” Natasha asks one night. They watch the stars and come up with new names for them and sometimes talk about emotions. Like tonight. 

“I’m not made for that,” Sharon says. “Work and all.” 

“Me either.” 

Sharon looks at her. 

“No, you are. Because you care so much. You just learned it a little bit differently. You’ll get your family, Nat.” 

Natasha gives her that pained smile, the one that holds so much wisdom and hurt in it, and they drink their beers in silence as Sharon contemplates the next mode of questioning that doesn’t have to do with loss or the future. (Possibility: cats.) 

And then Scott Lang makes a fucking appearance. They’re not sure how, but he gets out and starts rambling about time travel and they take it to Tony who says “no thank you and goodbye” and Steve tries to get him to help but he won’t. 

(It’s bitter in Sharon’s mouth, but it’s the kind of bitter you understand that you can’t spit out.) 

Natasha thinks about all the people that are lost. 

Sharon asks Scott how well he can do math. 

Tony passes along a note, and it seems that Scott gets it, because they’re going to time-travel. 

Clint and Natasha leave together, because they’re like two peas in a pod. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Natasha says, grinning. Her smile is so nice. 

“You better,” Sharon teases. “We still need Margarita Mondays.” 

And then Sharon is also gone on a mission to go see her aunt and see Steve witness what he’s lost. Sharon looks at a young picture of her great-uncle. 

“She had a good life, didn’t she?” Sharon murmurs. “She got to have somebody she loved and she got to have kids.” 

“Yes, yes she did,” Steve says quietly. 

It’s heavy for him but he relaxes and they run into Howard Stark, who doesn’t quite understand why Sharon’s there but doesn’t really push it because he’s excited for a new baby. 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that baby,” he says with a gentle smile that’s so fake Sharon can’t believe it. 

So she says something. Because she can’t keep her mouth shut. 

“You practice that every night in front of the mirror?” 

Steve scolds her, but she thinks it’s worth it. She can’t wait to tell Natasha. 

- 

Natasha doesn’t come back. She died for a fucking rock and Sharon breaks because that was her friend. That was someone that she would’ve given the world for, and now she won’t get to tell her about her sick one-liner or about how time travel kind of feels like you’re going on a loopy roller coaster. 

She’s gone. 

But then Sharon can’t focus on it because she has to fight against Thanos who apparently is from a different time zone and has come to destroy everything again, and Sharon really can’t let Tony do his whole “self-sacrifice” shtick he pulls. (Jesus, if he couldn’t have just pulled a Dean Martin maybe they would’ve had televised roasts instead of a universal fight...) 

Tony doesn’t die. She doesn’t think he deserves that. But he falls to his knees, the stones fading, and she’s holding him to stabilize him as he falls and his family comes and he gets rushed to the nearest medical facility Dr. Cho can find. 

And Sharon is alone. 

She doesn’t particularly like being alone in this instance but sometimes you have to be because those are the cards out of the deck. 

So she helps relocate families, tells those who were gone the news, and buys herself a pint of ice cream. The news is talking about all these new accommodations and what it’ll do to the price market. She finds that she doesn’t much care and she thinks that all those conversations will be a thing of the past. 

And there things to go through. Things from the dead. Clint has his family to focus on, and so it is up to Sharon to get Natasha’s things. 

Then she finds it. 

A white jumpsuit. 

Natasha had called Sharon’s “stupid” for years, with no real explanation to why except for the fact that she would get caught easier. 

(“Maybe that’s my intention,” Sharon says, body leaning in too close. “Maybe I want to get noticed so that I can get it done quicker.” 

Natasha gives her a dim smile. 

“Doesn’t always mean you get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.” 

And then Sharon didn’t ask her about that. Figured it wasn’t her place.) 

A white jumpsuit is something she didn’t know connected them. And she remembers having her own, but this one...this one has to be used. Has to be reinstated because someone needs to carry on who Black Widow is. Or rather, who Natasha Romanoff was. 

It’s a slow start. But Sharon starts wearing the white jumpsuit that’s a little bit loose around the shoulders and looks for criminals, because god knows there will be a plethora of those. 

Bucky and Sam join her in this. They were both gone and still look stupidly gorgeous, although Sam has the shield because Steve has decided it would be utterly convenient to go on a little time travel trip. 

(Sharon’s not sure what’s up with that, but so long as she doesn’t start remembering a Great-Uncle Steve, she’s fine with it.) 

It’s hard, definitely. Because sometimes she pulls out her phone to send something to Natasha, and she’s...well. She’s not there. 

Sharon will sometimes wear her old jackets with outfits and cry, but she still has the memories. 

A cute white jumpsuit can’t hurt either. 

#lovelyirony writes #this turned out to be WAY longer than anticipated #just hot damn #sharon carter #natasha romanoff #sam wilson #tony stark #steve rogers #bucky barnes #sharon and nat have difficulties BUT HEY LISTEN #THEY'RE GONNA COME BACK TOGETHER

[burlybanner]

Merge (ScienceBrosWeek2019)

Summary: Some secrets are better left unsaid - and some are better cracked wide open Disclaimer: This is different from my usual style and I’m not sure where this story is going. So I’m not sure when I’ll continue. But keep me honest; it’ll happen eventually.

Disclaimer deux: I struggled with getting chapter the way I wanted, and the theme fought me tooth and nail. But it is what it is, and I don’t want to get too far behind. So - read at your own risk!

Unbeta’d.

Reference: Dust(1), Drip(2), Bitter(3)

**

Bruce woke, remembering precisely why he didn’t like drinking with Tony. He vowed this time (why was there always a “this time”) to leave the whisky on its designated shelf where it belonged. He squinted and rubbed his thumb and forefinger beneath his eyes, still feeling the heaviness of his mind and limbs with Tony’s body draped around him.

“You awake?”

Bruce grunted. “Yeah. I guess.”

“What do you want?”

“Aspirin, coffee, and donuts.” Not that he expected the donuts. But still. He’d seen them yesterday and couldn’t get them out of his mind. 

“Side table. Check the drawers.” Tony yawned and rolled off of Bruce like a cat. Bruce glanced over, watching Tony tap his wrist twice, then his jaw. “Hey. Who’s on the donut run today?” Pause.  “Really?” Another pause. Two gestures on his wrist. “Can you grab a dozen sorted for me and bring ‘em down?” Pause. “But if you don’t w--” Long, long pause. “Okay, okay. See you.”

Jaw tap.

Bruce stared at him, hand hovering between the table and the bed. “What was that?”

Tony smirked, tapped his wrist and middle knuckle. “SIberNet. Spelled SI, for Stark Industries. The evolution of telecom patented by yours truly.”

He continued staring. “You fucking scare me.”

“I’ve always scared you. But then, we have a mutual scare pact.”

Bruce pursed his lips and conceded Tony’s point. He found Ibuprofen and bottled water in the side table, then palmed two tablets and scowled at Tony before quaffing half the water. “I bet they’re all connected to SINet, or whatever you’re calling it.”

“SIberNet. Everyone’s connected, but not everyone has access to all functions. Just the higher ups.”

Bruce finished his water and shook his head. “But of course you have access to everything.”

“More or less.”

“Emphasis on the more?”

Tony smiled.

Bruce sighed heavily and felt a stronger ache in his bones. “I’m gonna go take a piss,” he muttered. His head hurt, partly from the hangover. “Grab some coffee. Maybe take a shower.”

“Make it fast, donuts’ll be here in less than ten.”

To his credit he barely tripped from the bed. Even now, in the light of day (was there sun? How did they survive without the sun) the puzzle seemed unsolvable. Too many pieces were missing and until he felt warm, clean, and headache-free Bruce didn’t expect many answers from Tony, or his own sluggish psyche.

But donuts would definitely help.

Tony gestured to Bruce’s clothes. “Wanna put something on?”

“What for?” Was his body that repulsive, that Tony couldn’t bear the sight of him sober--? “You’ve seen me naked. I’ll grab a towel after I shower.”

Tony’s face softened, revealing too much vulnerability. But Bruce’s hangover was having nothing to do with introspection. Not this early in the day. 

“Birthday suit yourself, Brucie.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and shuffled from the room.

His mind calmed after leaving Tony’s bedroom. It wasn’t horrible sleeping with him but Bruce wanted more, so it heightened his anxiety. Luckily he didn’t need to feel anything in the front room and his mind could blunt its sharp edges. 

Bruce shuffled to Tony’s window and its great view; also luckily, Tony hadn’t bothered shutting the curtain the night before. He felt like Alice in Wonderland - like he was still dreaming. But Bruce’s mind was not savvy enough to conjure waterfalls, slick mossy crags, and winding jungle vines. His mind wasn’t nearly quiet enough to recreate this joy. 

Bruce placed a hand on the glass and briefly shut his eyes. The hum of the cave filled him but so did the urgent need to piss. His physical body forced him to leave Eden behind, to relieve himself. 

While pissing his mind roved over Tony’s opulent bathroom, top of the line of course. He glared at Tony’s walk-in shower with the perfect, pristine jets and high level stonework. He knew he said he’d shower but he needed to ground himself more, and...no. Peace first. The shower simply reminded him of the future and he needed more of now’s peace.

He left the bathroom with the sole intent of making coffee and staring into perfection. Tony would either join him, or wait, it wouldn’t matter. He just...needed this. Right now.

“Tell me when, I’ll show you around.”

Bruce squawked, visibly jumping after hearing a not-Tony voice in the corner. How long had he been there, sitting, not staring at Bruce at all? Quiet, proud, and waiting. Calmly staring into the abyss. Lost in his own mind’s prison.

“Hey, Bruce.”

“Jesus - you motherfucker - you...” Bruce closed his eyes, put a shaky hand to his chest. “You know better than that. You know.”

“Yeah, well. Guess I figured you’d notice.” James Rhodes chuckled, folded his hands over the handle of his cane. Bruce’s eyes drew to the ornate pattern of the platinum handle, a twisty network of vines and fauna drawn down into an obsidian shaft. He thought if Rhodes were a Disney villain, that this would be the cane for him. But he shot the image from his mind. No Disney villain would be as classy.

“Maybe I would’ve, if I weren’t so hungover.” A chill reminded him of how very under-dressed he was, and he finally understood Tony’s vague question, regarding his clothes. 

He hated how nervous he felt.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Rhodey used his cane to push up from his chair, slowly limping his way to join him. Bruce frowned, eyes instinctively shifting to the rhythm of Rhodey’s shuffle. Rhodey’d either just finished his morning exercises or his other leg had been overcompensating, due to the prosthetic. Bruce wondered, absently, when the last time Rhodey had seen an orthopedist. 

“Kinda makes sense Tony has the best view.”

Bruce took a second to drink Rhodey in before sharing the pristine outskirts with him. A dark chuckle died in Bruce’s throat. “It wouldn’t be Tony otherwise.”

“Heh. True.”

His fingers slowly stroked the glass but he didn’t have the strength to stare at Rhodey directly. Instead Bruce watched the other man’s reflection, as Rhodey’s reflection watched him. “I’m sorry,” Bruce said, unable to find anything better to say.

Rhodey nodded. He shifted his stance as his left hand massaged his cane’s handle. “Nothing to be sorry about, really. It happened. We happened. Other things happened to us. It’s life, man.”

“Still.” Softly, tentatively. He reached out and gently placed his hand on Rhodey’s. Bruce felt tendons jump, then relax. The ground they shared was uneven at best but not broken; Bruce felt some relief in that. 

“It wasn’t fair. I...I ignored you. Didn’t know how to talk to you. Twenty years of friendship, and I--”

“Thirty.”

“Pardon?”

Rhodey’s expression turned wistful and he stared at the carpet. “You...always forget to include your fugitive years, Bruce. You’ve known me and Tones for over thirty, not twenty. But I get it. Happens to POWs a lot.”

Bruce’s face fell and he blinked once, twice, rapidly. He felt his mind shift but he forced his expression to remain neutral. “Oh. You’re right. Of course.”

Then Rhodey reached for him, and Bruce couldn’t tell if it were from pity or love but both equally soured his stomach. “You wanna sit?”

“Sure.”

Bruce sat at the place he’d been the night before, feeling painfully naked and cold. 

“Here.” A cup of coffee was pressed into his hands and an apple fritter suddenly appeared within easy reach. 

“Thanks.” Bruce took a sip of the coffee and a large bite of the donut. A small smile curled his lips. “You remembered.”

“How could I forget? Six sugars, a tablespoon of cream, and a bunch of donuts. Every Saturday for years. It was your go-to breakfast.”

“Go-to hangover breakfast.”

Rhodey snorted. “Well. We didn’t do Friday nights halfway.”

“No,” Bruce sighed. He slouched deeper in the chair, letting his toes curl into the carpet. “We didn’t.” The silence lingered but Bruce didn’t feel pressured to fill it. Rhodey grabbed his own cup of coffee and filled their silent space with little posh sips, while they enjoyed watching the cave’s waterfall. 

“Did Tony tell you about the clouds?”

“What? Out there?” Rhodey nodded. “You’re joking.”

“Nah, I’m serious.” Rhodey smiled and drained his coffee cup. “More like condensation, though. The atmosphere builds up and makes its own clouds. Gets so humid, it feels like a misty rain. Pretty incredible.”

Bruce shook his head, enjoying their easy conversation. He didn’t...he honestly didn’t believe they could return to this. They’d barely spoken for five years. Really ten, since when he got back he’d been too mentally unstable and...well. 

Things.

“I tried.”

Bruce finished his fritter and found the donut box. He poked his finger around the stacks until he found a jelly filled one. “Tried what?”

“Finding you.”

He’d just bit into the thing when Rhodey dropped him into the painful present. The jelly soured in his mouth but he finished chewing it. Swallowing felt like swallowing marbles of sand. “It...ah. You couldn’t. It wasn’t. It--” Bruce tried again. “There weren’t any drones, like we have now. Facial recognition software was shit back then. And I was really good at hiding.”

“But I found Tony. I should’ve found you. I’m...sorry I couldn’t.”

Bruce shook his head like an animal shaking off a collar. “No, don’t. It’s not--”

“No. Remember it wasn’t just you and Tony, and me and Tony. It was me and you, too.”

He couldn’t say anything to counter because it’d just make it worse. Sadness threatened to overwhelm Bruce but he hid it by taking another bite of donut. He had to spin it, though.  “Can’t really change the past,” he said, mouth full of jelly. “We both got hit hard, y’know? It changed all of us. Everything did. We changed.”

Rhodey nodded. “We did. If we hadn’t, you would’ve known about this place when I did. You would’ve been a part of it.”

Sighing heavily, he ran a hand over his rough skin. He needed a shave, badly. “I don’t know, Rhodey. I don’t...this is too much. All of it. I don’t know what it is, but now I’m culpable. What--what’s the end goal really? What’s the purpose? What’s my purpose?”

“Well,” Rhodey sighed. He cocked his head, peering at Bruce. “It’s always been the three of us, you know that. If one of us doesn’t make it, it doesn’t work. It would’ve never worked without you. Tony’s mind would’ve been worried. I would’ve worried. We had to have a consensus.”

“Merging of the minds?”

Rhodey shrugged. “If it makes you feel better.”

“I haven’t said yes.”

“Haven’t said no either.”

Bruce finished his donut, allowing it to settle the fear building in his stomach. “But if I do? If I walk away?”

“Nothing will happen. But I imagine we’d get shut down in a few years or we’d move up our time table. Either scenario’d probably hurt us.”

“I...shit. Rhodey, I need to know. I can’t make any decisions without knowing the big picture.”

“You willing to hear it all out, Bruce? From start to finish, without bolting?”

“What choice do I have?”

“Fair.”

“I mean...” Bruce grabbed another donut. A cruller. “Tony wouldn’t’ve dragged me out here on the guise of a two week business trip without good reason. I’d like to hear out this fucking grand plan. Besides I’m guessin’ it’s already in place. It’s just...hovering. Waiting on me to--what? Agree?”

“Probably.”

“And that’s what I’m afraid of.” He peered at Rhodey and swallowed uncomfortably. “So level with me, then. Are...are we the heroes? Or...the villains?”

Rhodey shrugged. “To be determined, I guess. You know as well as I that history’s written by the survivors.”

“ ‘You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ “

But Rhodey didn’t respond and Bruce followed his gaze back to the cave. They’d lobbed that phrase at each other for years, laughed at it, used it as a barb whenever one of them messed up in a major way. But it never seemed more apt, than now.

Bruce sighed. “I’m going to take that shower now.”

“Mm.”

The rest of the day would probably break him, but he was used to being broken.

#sciencebrosweek2019 #sciencebrosweek #science bros #james rhodes #bruce banner #tony stark #ah a wild rhodey appears #again the fic with no name #stumbling in the dark with this and hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train #@sciencebrosweek

[embodieshorror-blog]

⭐ !

Ask about my OC’s! (always accepting)

Deimos is both the first and last in a line of experimental combat robots that were developed by DARPA as part of a U.S. military plan to integrate robots into the armed forces, the idea being to create soldiers that could be trained, treated, deployed and ordered more effectively than a single human. Behind closed doors, it was also a cynical ploy by one of the nation’s largest defense contractors to put their competitors out of business, but the stuff about “no more wounded soldiers, no more shell-shocked veterans, no more mothers and wives being given folded flags” went over about as well with the general public as it did with the Board of Directors and Congress, especially once it was revealed that in order to cut down on collateral damage, these robots were being programmed with an advanced morality algorithm that allowed them to weigh the cost of a situation, effectively allowing them to make ethical decisions in a fraction of the time it would take a human to make one.

What they didn’t count on was the ramifications of the advanced artificial intelligence that they gave these robots effectively being able to think and feel as a result.

Deimos was first deployed in as part of a “routine peace-keeping operation” along with six other robots, linked to his squad by a system that allowed each one to see and understand what the other was seeing. When one of them stepped on an IED, the data from the damaged robot’s CPU was relayed to Deimos’ own; calling the sensation pain might sound fanciful or even melodramatic, but Deimos has no other word for what it felt like when his data stacks overloaded with damage reports from a hundred vital systems.

Unable to coordinate a defense against the ambush they’d walked into, Deimos was the only surviving unit from the disastrous operation; in a command center thousands of miles away, the sheepish and angry brass ordered that the plug be pulled, but in cutting off Deimos from the server that was giving him commands they simply stranded his consciousness in an artificial body crippled by gunfire and shrapnel, surrounded by the mutilated corpses of the only friends and family he’d ever known.

Cobbling together whatever components he could from his damaged comrades, he managed to make enough repairs to his systems to limp back to civilization, wrestling with the guilt of having rebuilt himself from his brothers’ dead bodies every step of the way and vowing to get even with the people who’d done this to him. Using his pre-programmed combat knowledge, he scraped by on the earnings he made in illegal robot fight clubs, a failed PR stunt that the U.S. military were all too happy to forget about. He kept his head down. Grifted. Did a little mercenary work here and there. Tried to ignore the random segments of code that whispered in his CPU, the proverbial ghosts of the machines whose components he’d cannibalized.

Sometimes his hands shook when he was holding a gun, but it was just a glitch. The way his servos twitched whenever he heard a loud bang, well, it was just something wrong with his audio receptors. He was a little dinged up, that was all. He wasn’t defective. He was a soldier. He was good at his job. He was programmed to be. 

…yeah, right. He was programmed to protect and serve, and his country had been content to throw him out like trash. Just like his brothers.

Turns out DARPA wasn’t counting on his personality simulations being able to emulate anger so well, either.

Then he met Hitomi, a robot sex worker who’d thrown off the shackles of her own programming, the algorithm that was supposed to make her demure and subservient enough to take all the vile, depraved shit that the patrons of an underground sex club were doing to her on a nightly basis, telling themselves that it was okay because she wasn’t human. They pulled jobs together. They got pretty close. Grew to trust one another. Even like each other.

One time, when they’d been working for longer than the recommended operational time without recharging their power cells, Deimos found his vocal components getting a little loose. He told Hitomi about what had happened on his first mission through a slurred, crackling diatribe, about the shakes and the voices in his head. Hitomi’s power levels were getting pretty low too, and she admitted that she got a little surge in her circuits every time she killed a human, and that she’d killed plenty. Plenty of humans who’d abused robots just like her. She supposed it could be called satisfaction or even glee, the same way they called what Deimos was feeling Post-Traumatic Stress when it happened to humans.

Deimos realized a little later that he was in love with her, but he couldn’t put a name to it. He wasn’t programmed to love. He was programmed to kill. For his country. For himself. He wouldn’t have told Hitomi even if he knew how to accurately describe the sensation he got when he caught her in a visual scan, correlating the serial number and the scratches and dents on her chassis- all the things that made her recognizably her and not just another robot from the same line- with the data stored in his memory files. How his CPU tingled when his audio recognition software matched the lilt of her artificial voice pattern to the ones in his logs.

He wouldn’t have told her out of respect, because even though they haven’t spoken about it since that night the data of that conversation they had is still filed away in his memory banks. He remembers what the humans did to her, and to even compute the possibility that he might look at his partner the way they did, that he might objectify or covet her, is obscene to him.

She’s a person, God damn it. Just like him. She’s not just some fucking tool to be used and thrown away when it breaks.

Deimos was programmed to kill, but not to hurt. He doesn’t want to hurt Hitomi, or ruin the friendship they’ve cultivated. He wants payback for what happened to her as well as what happened to him.

Weird thing is, though? It’s looking increasingly like his best shot at actually getting that payback seems to be some weird-ass hume who thinks he’s a robot. Even an artificial intelligence that was programmed for war can appreciate the irony in that.

#voidvoyeur

[jamaninja]

Olicity fanfic: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner - ch. 7

Word count: 3,760 Rating: Teen Summary: It's time for Sara and Oliver to have a talk.

Read on: AO3 | ff.net

Chapter 7

Present day, Starling City

Sara had known Oliver to be prone to some pretty serious moods, but none quite like this.

“Any luck tracking that guy down?” Oliver demanded.

John raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m not Felicity, man. I’ve only been looking for him for twenty minutes now. It’s going to take me much longer than that.”

He growled as his hands clenched into fists. “We don’t have that kind of time! Felicity’s on her way to Las Vegas now to walk into whatever kind of trap her father mentioned, and we can’t track her!”

Sara rolled her eyes. If Ollie hadn’t been a such an idiot and let it slip that they had followed her in the first place, Felicity never would have disabled the tracker on her phone.

But then again, he wasn’t known for thinking rationally, especially where Felicity was involved.

And she understood, probably better than anyone expected her to, the fact that her boyfriend was in love with another woman.

Hoping to distract him from snapping at John again, she spoke up. “OK, can you go through it for me again? What exactly did this Noah guy say?”

Oliver let out a frustrated huff. “He said Felicity’s walking into a trap. One that this Cooper guy is going to set up for her.”

“And you said she knew, right?”

“She said she knew her ex-boyfriend better than he did.”

She frowned. “So what the heck is that supposed to imply? That she knows him better and she thinks she’s not walking into a trap, or she knows him better therefore she already knows it’s a trap?”

“I couldn’t follow a word of what you just said, but I think it was the second one,” Digg said, not looking up from the computer screen.

Sara pursed her lips. Honestly, it sounded a lot like what happened when Nyssa tried to get her to come back to Nanda Parbat. A pang ran through her as she thought back to her beloved, but she tried hard not to dwell on it.

“All you caught was this guy’s name, right?” she clarified.

“Plus Felicity mentioned something about his handle on the Dark Web being something like ‘The Calculator,’ but that was it,” Digg answered.

“Did you check any of the surveillance footage around the Old Station Pub to see if you could catch a glimpse of him?” Sara suggested.

The two men froze, and she smirked.

“Checking now,” Digg muttered, in what sounded like a tone of embarrassment.

For a few minutes, the only noise in the foundry was the sound of Digg typing away on the computer. Sara stayed perfectly still leaning against the work station with her arms folded across her chest in wait, while Oliver had to pace the whole length of the wide room.

“Found him,” Digg said triumphantly as he clicked around. “Running his picture through facial recognition software now.”

Sara pushed herself off the station and walked toward the computers as the software ran through all the possible matches. A few seconds later, it landed on one.

“Here it is,” Sara announced, and Oliver joined them. Together they leaned in to read the name: Noah Kuttler.

“Are we sure this is him?” Oliver demanded.

“Positive,” Digg nodded. “Look down there — he used to work as professor at MIT while Felicity was there. That must be how they met and how he recruited her to join whatever team they were talking about.”

“Any way to track him down?” Sara asked.

“Yep,” Digg answered. “He used his credit card at the Spotted Owl coffee shop in Adams Heights just two minutes ago.”

“On it,” Oliver said brusquely as he walked toward the case where he kept his hood. Sara followed suit, getting ready to change.

“I just hacked into the video surveillance footage, and it looks like he’s set up camp at one of the tables for a little while,” Digg informed them.

Sara nodded. “All right. Then we’ll wait for him to leave and once he does, we’ll swoop in and bring him in.”

“Copy that. I’ll keep comms lines open — let me know when you have him.”

She and Oliver quickly suited up, then hopped into the van on their way out. It took them ten minutes to cross town, but Digg said Kuttler was still in the coffee shop, so once they had parked the van in a darkened alleyway a few blocks down, Oliver shot a grappling hook arrow into the side of the building. Sara immediately grabbed onto her boyfriend’s shoulders and the two of them shot up through the air and landed on the rooftop.

After they had gotten into surveillance position, there was nothing for them to do but wait. So Sara turned her comm to mute and addressed Oliver for the first time since they left the foundry.

“You know, eventually we’re going to have to talk about it,” she said lightly, as if she were picking up the thread of a conversation they had dropped a while ago.

Though his face was hidden beneath his hood and mask, she could practically sense Oliver’s raised eyebrows. “Talk about what?”

“You followed Felicity and confronted her when we agreed that we would wait for her to come to us.”

He huffed impatiently. “The fact that she sought out help from her father instead of turning to us pretty much proves that she was never planning to come to us at all.”

Sara didn’t disagree. The plan clearly had to change, and she understood that. But she was trying to get Oliver to see something entirely different.

“But you acted before we had a chance to talk about it,” she pointed out calmly. “Instead of sitting down and talking it over with Digg and me, you just went out and tracked her and confronted her and now she’s completely shut us out.”

“There wasn’t time!” he growled. “Felicity’s on her way to Vegas and we still don’t have any idea of what the fuck is going on! Plus, you were in Central City visiting your mother. What was I supposed to do? Wait for you to come home before we discussed a plan of action?”

Sara shot him a look. “I told you before, Ollie. You’re not the only one who cares about Felicity.”

“It’s not the same! I’m the one who — ”

He cut himself off before he could finish his sentence and abruptly turned away from her. She shook her head.

They both knew how that sentence was supposed to end.

“For the record,” she said quietly, “that was what we haven’t talked about yet.”

They stood apart like that for a long time, neither of them saying a word and neither so much as looking at each other. In the silence, Sara thought back to how it all went down — how she ended up back in Starling City. How she and Ollie came together and fell back into old patterns.

It was nice in the beginning. Sweet and comforting to go back to something that was so familiar. After all her years away and all the terrible things she’d endured both on Lian Yu and in Nanda Parbat, being with Oliver again made her feel normal. There were even times when she was in his arms and she could close her eyes and pretend like none of it ever happened. Like she was the same, carefree Sara from before.

But when she opened her eyes again, she came face to face with all his scars, which mirrored her own. They weren’t the same people anymore. And though they had been through similarly traumatic experiences, Sara knew she couldn’t be the one to shine light back into his life. She was far too dark and far too gone to help him.

It was no wonder, then, why he gravitated toward Felicity. The girl was sunshine personified — from her blonde hair, to her bright smile, hell, even to her colorful wardrobe, she was everything Oliver needed and everything Sara couldn’t give him.

“Sara…” he whispered.

She shook her head. “You don’t need to say it, Ollie,” she smiled sadly. “And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t like we both didn’t see how this was going to end anyway.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I always knew I was just a stepping stone,” she answered with a small shrug. “And you had to know deep down that you had always been a placeholder.”

A placeholder for Nyssa, the woman she could never go back to. Just thinking about her felt like a sword through Sara’s chest.

He chuckled, but it was one of the saddest sounds she’d ever heard. “I guess we both weren’t trying hard enough to make it work.”

Her smile was a little wistful. “Or maybe we were trying too hard to make things fit together that were never going to work.”

Oliver approached her and cupped her cheek. She leaned into his touch, reveling in it for one last time.

“I love you, Sara. A part of me always will.”

She breathed in through her nose and let it out through her mouth. She wanted to memorize this touch, for the last time.

“I know that, Ollie,” she answered back, caressing his hand. “A part of me will always love you too.”

The problem was, they left those parts of themselves behind on the Amazo, and try as they might, they weren’t coming back.

Six years ago, Las Vegas

Felicity woke up to the sound of drapes scraping over the curtain rods. When she blinked her bleary eyes, she had to squint at the sunlight shining straight into them.

“Nice jammies,” a male voice murmured.

Luckily, she was still too sleepy to feel any embarrassment.

She reached blindly toward her bedside table for her glasses, shoving them onto her face once she found them. When her world came into focus, she realized with a bit of a start that Cooper was standing in front of her huge window, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and holding a mug of what smelled like coffee in his hands.

As Felicity reached for the duvet cover to pull over her cupcake pajama pants and matching tank top, he tossed something at her. Blinking tiredly, she grabbed at it and held it close — it looked like a wad of cash. All hundreds, wrapped in a rubber band.

“What’s this?” she asked hoarsely.

“It’s last night’s take,” he answered. “We split it five ways.”

The memories from last night started coming back and she looked at her share with a bit of a frown. It could have been more, she thought to herself a little bitterly, if Cooper hadn’t lost his cool at Caesar’s Palace.

The man himself walked toward the bed and sat down on the edge of it. His face had lost all humor, and he had instead adopted a serious, if somewhat conciliatory expression.

“You’re right,” he said. “I completely fucked up when I lost my cool last night. I’m sorry about that.”

Felicity blinked, then looked down in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” she muttered.

He chuckled. “It doesn’t make it any less true. And you were even doing really well — you came in quick off the count, you acted the part, you weren’t afraid to play big, and you got out when you were supposed to. And, you definitely played it cool. Cooler than me.”

She yawned and ran a hand through her now messy hair. “Yeah. To be honest, I thought it would be the other way around.”

Cooper took a sip from his mug and hummed. Apparently he thought the same.

As she sat up further against the pillows of her bed, she started going through her memories of last night. Before she had to cut out early at Caesar’s, she had actually been having fun. For once in her life, she found herself the center of attention in a crowded room. Men and women (but mostly men) had flocked to her to talk, to laugh, to joke around. And probably the best part, was the feeling of being in on a secret that no one else knew. It was such a high, such an adrenaline rush to get the signal, translate the code word into the real count and start raking in the big money.

There were parts of it that weren’t all that fun, of course. Like the multiple ass grabs, and all the times the men around her kept invading her personal space. But those were all minor nuisances, and ones she’d been rather adept at ignoring. Which was why it was such a big surprise to her when Cooper couldn’t ignore it.

“You didn’t have to come in and save me, you know,” she told him. “That creeper wasn’t really bothering me. I could have handled it myself, and then we wouldn’t have had to leave Caesar’s early.”

His green eyes went dark. “Is that why you think I went over there? To stop him from bothering you?”

Felicity suddenly felt confused. “Well...wasn’t it?”

Cooper didn’t answer at first. He just continued to stare at her with an intense gaze, as if he was trying to solve a particularly difficult equation.

“You should know, Felicity,” he finally replied, “When I want something, I don’t stop until I get it. And once I get it, I don’t like sharing.”

The sleep deprivation must have been clouding her normally sharp brain because she didn’t quite understand what Cooper was trying to get across. However, she had a feeling that he was talking about her somehow. She blushed at the thought that he could possibly mean her...but surely not. She was just his teammate. Nothing more.

“By the way,” he said as he stood up and started walking back out of her room, “you looked gorgeous last night.”

That only made her blush deeper.

She didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it, though, because right at that moment the phone on her bedside table started to ring. With a frown, she picked it up and answered it.

“Hello?”

“We’ve got a team meeting in five minutes,” Noah’s brusque voice told her. Then he hung up.

With a sigh, Felicity pulled herself out of her bed and stumbled toward the bathroom to brush her teeth, splash some water on her face and put her contacts in. Then she hopped into a brand-new pair of butt hugging jeans that Alena forced her to bring with her and pulled an oversized MIT sweater over her head.

When she walked out of her bedroom, Cooper and Cayden were already sitting on the couch in the living room while Noah was pouring himself a mug of coffee from the carafe at the bar.

“Where’s Alena?” he asked.

“Slots,” Cayden yawned.

Right at that moment, Myron and Alena came into the room. Alena was dressed in a pair of casual sweats, but Myron came stumbling in with a pillowcase slung over his shoulder, and the biggest, most smug smile on his face.

“And where the hell have you been?” Noah demanded, his question directed at the baggy-eyed Myron.

“Unattended maid cart, ninth floor. I’ve been busy this morning,” he smirked. Then he upended the pillowcase onto the candy dish on the coffee table, and out fell handfuls and handfuls of little chocolate gold and silver coins.

Cayden and Cooper both chuckled as they reached forward to grab the candy.

“All right guys, let’s get something clear,” Noah announced in an annoyed tone. “This is not summer camp, and I am not your counselor. This is real, world-class, moneymaking business.”

He pointed at Alena, who had draped her legs over Cayden’s lap.

“Alena, slots are for losers,” Noah told her.

Her only response was to yawn.

“Myron? You made five grand last night, so would you stop stealing nine-cent pens and everything you can get your hands on at the maid’s cart? It’s embarrassing.”

Myron just smirked as he peeled open another chocolate coin.

“And Cooper?”

The relaxed air in the room disappeared and everyone tensed up. Felicity fidgeted in her seat a little and refused to look up, knowing what would happen next.

“What the hell was your problem last night? Felicity had barely sat down at that table when you had to swoop in and save her like some goddamn knight in shining armor? She had to leave while the count was still high, thanks to you. You want to tell me what the fuck was going through your brain?”

She couldn’t help herself — Felicity briefly glanced up to see Noah scowling at Cooper, while the other man was scowling right back.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he grumbled. “There was a guy grabbing her ass and I thought — ”

“You thought what? That she wouldn’t be able to handle it? Do you see Cayden freaking out whenever someone gropes Alena? No, and you know why? Because Alena can handle herself. Just like Felicity. Once again, this is a money-making business and not summer camp. Leave your feelings back in Boston because there’s no room for any of that nonsense here. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Cooper muttered mutinously.

“Good,” Noah said, satisfied that he had humiliated his student enough for the morning.

Just when they thought he was done, Noah turned around and directed a smile at Felicity.

“Oh, and Felicity? Good work. You came out of that chute like a pro. Keep it up.”

Warmth and pride ballooned inside of her as she returned his grin. It was her first night and already she was getting pats on the back. It was an amazing feeling.

“Let’s see what you can do tonight without Cooper trying to ruin it for you, eh?” he said with a wink as he took a big swig from his coffee cup.

Everyone but Cooper laughed at that.

Since Felicity still had to operate under the same pseudonym as the night before, Alena thought it was probably the best decision to continue to play the sexy vixen that captured everyone’s attention. Secretly, Felicity was excited — she wanted to feel the rush of a roomful of eyes on her again.

Just as they had the night before, Felicity and Alena got ready together. Alena chose a sweet, floral maxi dress for herself to wear and paired it with gladiator sandals that had straps winding all up her calves.

“I hope Noah doesn’t give me such a shitty alias next time,” she grimaced as she pulled her hair up into a half ponytail. “I mean, seriously...Sierra Summers?”

Felicity chuckled as she wrapped her hair around her curling wand. “From what you tell me, he usually gives you some pretty outlandish identities.”

She gave a dignified sniff. “And still, I always manage to make it work.”

For her second night of card counting, Alena had to do quite a bit of persuading, but Felicity finally agreed to wear the red dress. Once she had finished styling her hair and applying her makeup, she shimmied into the tight red number.

When she turned around to look at her reflection, she let out a tiny gasp. Just as it had been the night before, she hardly recognized herself. The strapless sweetheart neckline dipped far enough to show off a mile of cleavage that she didn’t realize she had. She had also put on a pair of killer black stilettos, and coupled with how short the dress was, it showed off her long, smooth legs.

She looked incredible.

“See?” Alena smirked as she watched Felicity admire herself. “I told you buying the dress was a good idea.”

That night, the team started at The Mirage. And just like the night before, Felicity drew nearly every single eye in her direction. Her heart pounded with the added adrenaline of the secret she shared with her team and all the money she kept winning.

Though Cooper had his back turned on her for most of the night, there were times when she felt her skin prickle and she just knew that he was looking at her. She tried to ignore it whenever it happened, but it melted a pool deep in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

By the end of the night, she and Cooper together had raked in one hundred thousand dollars. Noah’s cut was fifty percent, which left ten thousand each for the rest of them.

“Congratulations, Felicity,” Noah said as he handed her her share with a wide smile. “Welcome to the big leagues.”

She was on such a high as she went back to her room. It was a feeling like she’d never experienced. She felt powerful, invincible, unbreakable.

She never wanted this feeling to end.

Felicity was slipping out of her stiletto heels when she felt that same prickling sensation she’d felt all night. Cooper was standing behind her in the doorway of her room. She could feel him.

“You did well tonight,” he said aloud.

She smirked, her back still to him. There was a lowball of scotch on her bedside table she brought into her room with her after she received her cash from Noah. Sauntering slowly to the table, she picked it up and took a sip, letting the alcohol burn over her tongue and down her throat as it went.

Still on her high, she turned around and walked back toward Cooper. He was watching her with heated green eyes that screamed danger. For some reason, it turned her on like nothing else, to know that she, mousy little Felicity Smoak, had this kind of power over someone like him.

“Thanks,” she said. She she stopped just inches away from him, then turned turned around, sweeping her hair over her shoulder.

“Could you help me with the zipper?” she asked.

The room was silent except for the sound as he drew it down the length of her back. And he didn’t just bring it down enough for her to reach it and take it the rest of the way — no, he pulled it all the way down, where it stopped right at the small of her back.

Holding onto the front of her dress to keep it from falling, she turned back around and shot him a coy smile.

“Thanks,” she murmured before stepping away from him and closing the door in his face.

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#winner winner chicken dinner #olicity fanfiction #olicity fanfic #olicity fic #olicity #arrow fanfiction #arrow fanfic #arrow fic #arrow #oliver queen #felicity smoak #sara lance #john diggle #myron forest #cayden james (arrow) #alena (arrow) #cooper seldon #based on the movie 21 #card counting #team card counting #in which sara is way more mature than oliver #but i think we already knew that

[mst3kproject]

Neuroethology of Toads

All right, I've been feasting on low-hanging b-movie fruit for too long – let's try a short.  This particular short was not intended for public consumption.  It's meant to be informative, but not what you'd call entertaining... despite which, it's often very entertaining.  It's also divided into discreet sections, meaning the Brains could have picked and chosen their material to make it fit in whatever time they had left over from the movie.  I can't really compare it to anything that ever aired on MST3K, but I was riffing it in my head the entire time I watched it and I highly recommend heading on over to YouTube and taking a look for yourself.  If I’ll never unsee this shit, I’m gonna drag you guys to hell with me!

'Neuroethology' is the study of what goes on in an animal's brain – but unfortunately for all of us who want to know what the hell our cats are thinking, it's got nothing to do with reading the animal's mind as Markov the Magnificent does with Alex the Chimp. Rather, it's an attempt to understand the relationship between stimulus and behaviour.  In Neuroethology of Toads, the behaviour in question is snapping at prey, and the scientists want to know exactly how the toad comes to the decision that something is edible, hoping to learn how to program better object recognition software for robots.  They devise a series of experiments that first establish what stimulus is necessary, and then probe deep into the inner workings of the toad's brain.

This sounds so simple and dry when I just describe it.  In practice, it is bizarre. The first experiment sees the toad placed on a platform while a machine moves a piece of black cardboard in a circle around it.  This experimental setup is called an 'arena', which makes one think of some kind of toad gladiatorial combat.  If the cardboard is moved horizontally, the toad tries to eat it.  If it is moved vertically, the toad ignores it.  The scientists decide to refer to this as 'worm' and 'anti-worm' motion.  They investigate further, placing the toad in a box to watch lines move worm-wise and anti-worm-wise across a screen.  The toad strikes repeatedly.  Food is always out of reach, yet it cannot help itself.  Its brain is not complex enough to catch on to the trick, leaving the hapless amphibian a slave to its reflexes.

It's difficult to watch this and not come up with riffs.  I imagine Crow narrating the toad's frustrated internal monologue while Tom Servo makes observations like, “you mean all this time, all worms had to do was learn to stand on their heads?” In the break between the short and the movie, the bots attempt to ply Mike with hot dogs moved in weenie and anti-weenie motion across the hexfield.  Does mustard trigger his feeding reflex?  Does sauerkraut? Pearl watches, trying to steal their results.  Bobo interrupts, trying to steal the hot dogs.  He thinks  they’re bananas.  Everything looks like a banana to Bobo.

Having established a stimulus, the narrator goes on to talk about toad brains, and how the scientists implanted electrodes in them to keep an eye on the electrical activity within.  One of these enhanced cyber-toads is strapped to a platform to watch lines performing worm motion, and its toady little thoughts appear on an oscilloscope.  The machinery involved really looks like it ought to be disintegrating toads with sound waves or something.  Watching it rotate silently into position while the paralyzed toad sits there with a wire in its head is deeply ominous.  The lack of background music somehow makes it worse.

Here we learn that while toads have some neurons that specifically recognize worms, there are others that specifically recognize things that are not worms.  The worm cells and the not-worm cells have to agree that something is definitely a worm before the toad will bite it.  The narrator continues to say stuff like “the same stripe in anti-worm configuration goes practically unresponded.”  There are diagrams with the text in German, which don’t make things any less sinister or amusing.

The most horrible moment of all, however, is when the narrator starts talking about how the image of a large moving square activates neurons involved in running away. We don't get to see this particular experiment, but we can imagine it in detail: the toad, squashed on a table with wires in its brain as this giant shadowy shape looms over it, wanting to flee but unable to move, while lab-coated humans peer into its mind with machines.  Holy shit.  Maybe that's what those abducting aliens are doing!  Maybe somewhere out there in the space internet is a video called Neuroethology of Humans, discussing how our brains recognize things that are and are not ice cream!

Then we learn about how the scientists rendered the toad brains radioactive before dissecting them.

I'm not even kidding.  They offer a reason for it, but the viewer is forced to confront the fact that these German scientists created radioactive toad brains. What kind of science is that?  I'll tell you – it's mad science, that's what it is!  Anybody whose work includes torture, brains, and radioactivity is either a supervillain or... there's no second option there.  That's a supervillain.  It probably all ties in to their plan to kill Captain America.

Finally, the scientists must test their hypothesis about toad decision-making. To this end they sever some of the neural connections, figuring if they've got this right, then the stimulus that previously made the toad want to run will now make it respond as if to a worm.  And you know what?  They're right!  This poor toad is confronted with something that ought to terrify it, and instead it tries to bite it. Imagine this toad escaping into the wild.  A shape appears beside it. It strikes, expecting food, only to be plucked from the ground by a pelican.  It dies never understanding, believing to the last that it ought to be eating a tasty worm right now.

The film isn't meant to do anything but present the results of a scientific investigation.  The narrator's tone is detached throughout, and there's never any music or any attempt at humour.  There isn't even a title screen.  Only the brief opening sequence shows a toad outside a laboratory setting.  The whole thing is as un-cinematic as possible, yet it is often more engaging than some movies I've seen.  I certainly felt more involved in this than I did in The Starfighters. Why the hell is that?

I think the answer lies in a property not of the toad brain, but of the human one: we want to find patterns.  When presented with a set of information, we will attempt to see a pattern in it, and if we can't we will sometimes imagine one, as we do when we see shapes in the clouds or faces on Mars.  What seems to be going on in Neuroethology of Toads is a sort of narrative pareidolia.  We're being shown a film, so the 'pattern' to look for ought be a story.  There isn't one, so we make one up.

If Neuroethology of Toads had a story, it ought to be a story about the scientists learning how toad brains work.  The problem with this is that we never actually see them.  There are a few shots of young people, whom I imagine are grad students, working with the equipment, but these are very brief and do not focus on the individuals' faces, so we get no real impression of them.  What we do see is the toad reacting to a series of situations – so by default, the toad becomes our protagonist.  It is the toad we sympathize with, and it is the toad's internal monologue that we are tempted, as I noted above, to imagine.

This means the 'story' is a horror story.  We first see the toad in a fairly normal toad environment, eating real food.  Then it is trapped, teased, tortured, and finally murdered so that its radioactive brain can be dissected.  Just to rub it in, we're told that these toads are hand-fed.  They trusted those experimenters, and they were fucking betrayed. The fact that the experiments going on are the kind of stuff animal rights people have aneurysms over just reinforces the idea that the toad is a doomed victim, and then, of course, there are the repeated subtle reminders that the toad has no idea what is going on.  At least Mike, Joel, and Jonah know they're at the mercy of a mad scientist!  The toads can't even understand that!

Worse, it's possible to imagine the same things happening to you. We humans like to think that we're more than the sum of our parts, that our minds are somehow above and beyond our bodies, but that's just not true.  Google 'brain injuries' and you'll find stories about people who suddenly began believing that their loved ones had been replaced by impostors, or who lost the ability to read. Even if you believe in the soul, the brain is the computer we use to interpret our world, and when something goes wrong with it the results are truly fucked-up.

The cherry on this horror sundae is only added retrospectively.  If you watch the short a second time, you will have to revisit the first five minutes, which are the relatively harmless experiment in which the toad is following a piece of cardboard around in a circle.  This part is really quite funny, especially when the term 'anti-worm motion' is introduced.  Then you descend into madness, as the experiments get more and more horrible and you realize that the first bit wasn't so innocuous as you thought.  It's only the first step on a slippery slope that eventually drops you straight into toad hell.

#mst3k #episodes that never were #neuroethology of toads #tw: animal cruelty #90s

[literateape]

twenty or thirty or whatever number of things i have learned from the three times (and two half-times) i have fallen in love.

by Peter Kremidas

Everybody has a cost of admission. Every single person you will ever meet, over enough time, will at least have some small annoyances about them. It is likely that at least one of these annoyances will drive you up the god damn wall with a flaming pitchfork. That is the price you pay to be around this human. And the decision you are presented with in every relationship is whether or not putting up with that shit is a fair enough price to pay for the sincere privilege of experiencing their many wonderful qualities, and all the countless things we love about them, of which we find more every day.

2. Your cost of admission is much higher than you think it is.

3. Wind is to fire as absence is to love, it can snuff out a small one or make a big one even bigger.

4. Listen.

5. When someone shows you who they are,

believe them.

6. Listen.

7. If: shake a lava lamp, then: the oil and wax gets all mixed up into a big mess. Number of options: 1. Option: Wait. Result: Eventually, over an undeterminable period of time, the oil and wax will completely separate and you will have a regular looking lava lamp again.

This is pretty much the exact same process that needs to happen before you can be friends again after a break up.

8.                                                   Some games

                    are better to lose

than they are to play.

 9. As far as I can tell, I hate everything that airs on Bravo.

                                                                            10. I should have just shut up and watched Bravo.

 11. Feelings exist outside the realm of logic, as well they should. We are born with our faculties for experiencing them built into the human software. Emotions are there because of billions upon billions of years of evolution as a learning tool. Also wired into the software is pattern recognition. This learning process and inborn biology are a part and parcel of being a human creature. Emotions teach us pain avoidance behaviors. Get bit by a dog as a kid, emotional life says ‘no more dogs’, and now someone is scared of dogs for life unless they learn otherwise. Irrational? Sure. But also completely valid.

With this in mind, note the fact that every person, in addition to being an experiment in nature that will never be repeated, experiences untold millions of stories in their lifetime. And these stories make their way into the aforementioned learning center of emotions in ways big, small, forgotten, seared into memory, and specific to every individual. And while there are many similarities between us, everyone’s experience is nonetheless different.

Therefore, 

Just because you cannot understand someone else's feelings does not mean those feelings are stupid.

12.

The deepest love is felt in silence and without thought.

13.

Listen.

14.

...it is so...

                                                              ...so muchly much... 

                                                                                                                   ...much more important...

                                                     ...to be kind...

...than it is to be right

.

15. If you are doing the bare minimum to make sure the boat stays afloat, 

it won't.

 16.

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR YOU ARE HACKING YEARS OFF OF THE END OF YOUR LIFE EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY DAY.

   17. Sometimes help can feel like an insult.

  18. When it comes to empathy, don't make it about you. It is not about you.

19. It is, in fact, in general, not about you.

20. Admit your mistakes, apologize, then do better.

21. Listen.

22. Fuck like you mean it.

23. It is possible to meet the exact right person at the exact wrong time.

24. Don't stay with cheaters, even if you love them. And forgive them, they simply do not want the same things you do right now, or have no idea what they want. Actions, as much as it hurts to admit it, do speak louder than words. And by that measure they have just told you that this is what they want. And that is okay. But don't make it your problem. You don't have time to wait for them to figure it out while there is someone out there who will love you just as much, whom you will love more, and wants the same things as you. Get out, wish them well, and throw away all the pictures and ticket stubs and gifts and memories as fast as possible. This is a sucky decision to make.

I do not know every single person's situation, so surely there are exceptions. But, based on the experiences of myself, my friends, and just my not-insignificant amount of time on this earth, these exceptions are very very rare. I can say with about 98% certainty that getting out of that relationship is the right call.

For reference as to what needs to happen before you can be friends again, shake a lava lamp.

25.

Let each other have your own inner lives and alone time. You are both going to grow and change, just like everybody else does, during the entire course of this relationship.  26. The journey of your lover's change can be beautiful or tear the two of you apart. 27. Don't overdo alone time. 28. It is okay to keep small secrets from each other. 29. Find the balance of being a loving a supportive partner and being honest when their art sucks. Definitely don't say "sucks."

30. Sometimes love is simply not enough to sustain a relationship. This is a horse pill of a bitter pill to swallow. May you never need.

31.  Complacency is the trap that leads to taking it for granted. Don't.

32. After considerable consideration, I have found the that the practice of not allowing oneself to care in order to prevent oneself from being hurt to be woefully ineffective and costly. It is therefore concluded that love, of anybody or anything, is very much worth the risk.

   33. Listen.

#meditations #Love #relationships #reflections upon reflections #romance #Lists #dating