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artsekey · 9 months

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I'm not super into Lackadaisy, but I am super into animation, and...

How are they planning to finance an entire season with just 1,000,000?

(Everything below assumes that they're aiming for episodes that are comparable to the pilot & that they plan on fully financing the season with solely the donations on Backerkit. It's likely they have additional financing through merchandising, the pilot, and/or Iron Circus's other projects, but since that information is not available, I'll go off of what I know. Additionally, production management and budgeting are extremely project dependent, so the "averages" listed below may be far off what the PM on Lackadaisy's got quoted.)

[EDIT: It’s been brought to my attention that the episodes are 10-12 minutes long, which means it’s MUCH more doable than I was expecting! They budgeted for a lean (but doable!!!) production. Thank you to those who clarified! I’ll leave this post as-is for those interested, but read it knowing they’re considering roughly half the time I used to calculate everything below!]

Quick preface as to why I wanted to talk about this and Why I Feel I May Have Valuable Things To Say: I'm an indie filmmaker and professor of animation, production management, and VFX. I'm not trying to call out the company or the production because-- and I cannot say this enough-- I truly do not know what's happening on the back end. Every production is wildly different. Their original goal was 125,000, with 45% going to animation-- that includes rough, cleanup, & color. That means that for a ~27 minute animated episode, they've got $56,250. If we collect all facets of production together-- story, layout, animation, compositing, and editing-- we wind up with a grand total of $82,500. Even if we estimate at the lowest average production cost of $8,000 a minute, this budget would account for ~11 minutes of animation.

An animator's average hourly rate is ~$36. With the outlined budget, the Lackadaisy production would be able to afford ~1562 hours of animator manpower. Let's assume (for the sake of this discussion) they'll split that over at least four animators, leaving us with about 10 weeks of full-time work (~390 hrs per person) for four people.

Now this may seem like a lot of time, but as far as I can tell, the pilot was largely animated frame-by-frame without the use of 2D rigging. This means every frame needs to go through roughs, then cleanup, then color, then composite. Every frame you see on-screen has been worked over at least four times-- six if you count layout and story. Ten weeks is simply not enough time to finish 27 minutes of 2D animation.

Now, I know what you might be thinking; Artsekey, they never said their production period was ten weeks! And you're right! However, that's how much production time they can afford. Whether it's split over 20 weeks or a year, they only have enough money to pay their animators for 1562 hours of labor.... if they're paying them a competitive hourly wage. To be completely clear, I am not insinuating that they're low-balling their animators; there're a dozen unknown factors that play into this, such as:

The level of animator they're hiring (an apprentice animator may make ~$17-$23 an hour whereas an experienced pro may make ~$43-$45.)

Whether they're actually hiring animators as opposed to contracting animators (I assume their model is likely relying on the latter based on the fact that I'm seeing a lot of animators that worked on 1-3 shots). They may be doing single-sum deliverable based contracts rather than hourly.

The use of tools like EBsynth (which is listed among the programs they're using) and smart frame management (which they're definitely doing!). This can, if used properly, cut down on the number of in-betweens animators need to get done.

The amount of money the studio is planning to re-invest on their end. The goal on backerkit may just account for the additional funds the studio needs to enter production, meaning their budget may be far larger than what's listed. However, if this were the case, I'd hope they'd disclose it! If I were considering backing the project, knowing that the studio was going to be buying in would increase my faith in the fundraiser.

Obviously, the team loves animation. It shows through in the pilot, and I think that it's clear in their mission statement that they stand against the exploitation of animators. But... I also know that indie production is like trying to wring water out of a log. I'd personally like a more comprehensive breakdown of their expenditures not because I think there's anything suspicious happening behind the scenes, but because as someone who teaches production management for animation and who has an interest in indie production specifically, I'm wondering what choices they're making to stretch their funds.

And what about sound?

While I'm not an expert in audio design, I do live with a professional voice actress/audio engineer, and she had a few thoughts I'd like to share.

At their original goal, roughly ~12500 was set aside for:

Sound Design

Music Composition

Voice Acting

Now, I can only refer to my own experiences as an indie filmmaker regarding price, but the rate I received-- from friends-- for sound design was roughly ~325 per minute, and this was a very, very good deal for what I personally needed. The audio engineer can be responsible for collecting and/or recording foley, or the sound effects you hear in film. This can be expensive and time consuming. They're also responsible for editing all the foley, music, and voice acting together in a way that feels seamless. If we were going off the rate I was given (which was very reasonable given the amount of work that needed to be done), ~27 minutes of full foley, complex sound design, and mixing would run about ~8,000. This number could fluctuate significantly depending on whether they need the sound designers to create the foley, get some ADR in, or just mix the audio, but let's assume that Lackadaisy has a pre-existing foley library and that the price falls in a lower range of ~5,000.

Music's a complete wild-card. In my experience, most composers charge per-minute, and most of the indie composers I've worked with were at a rate of ~$100 per minute of music. That'll land at a nice $2,700.

Now where my friend got particularly heated was the rate for the voice actors. As a voice actress herself, she was floored that the budget for voice was so low-- particularly because the project's pilot pulled industry voices like ProZD. Obviously, the price for voice can vary wildly based on how many lines an actor has, their experience as a voice actor, their personal terms, ect. The cast for the pilot included 11 credited actors. I can't assume their rates or whether they charge a fee to even get in the booth (my roomate charges $100 flat at the start of a session), but if my other estimates are in the right ballpark, their goal budget accounts for roughly ~500 per VA (and it's extremely unlikely that it's divided equally for obvious (and logical) reasons). Honestly, for a full episode of animation, that's... about average. But average in the voice-acting community doesn't necessarily mean good. Voice actors are notoriously underpaid, and-- as previously mentioned-- bigger names with more lines are going to be taking in more of that pay-pool.

And, of course, the Production Managers.

I'm not going to speak on this for too long, but the original budget held 8750 for the admin team. I assume admin includes their PMs, director, and leads (if they have enough specialization to need leads). Assuming it's just one PM and one director, they're pulling in ~4375 a person. For the duration of the project. There's no way that prepro, production, and post would take less than 8 months. Of everyone involved in a production, these roles are on-board from start to end, and it's simply not enough! PM's are absolutely critical to success!

Not to mention the editor!

In animation, the editor is the director's right-hand man, and is working to edit the storyboards, reels, scratch music, and the final cut. This role is also on the production from pre-to-post, and their original budget allows for.... $2,500. What? If I go extremely low on the hourly for the editor, you maybe get one part-time weeks' worth of work for several edits of a 27 minute episode. With most everything else I've talked about, I've mentioned there's a lot of wiggle room because of all the factors I simply don't know, but in no universe is $2,500 enough for this editing job. (Even at the current budget of 1,000,000, $4,000 an episode is super low.)

But, hey! They've got more money now!

Of course, all of these concerns go out the window when you consider that the team's already raised a whopping $953,000 (as of 7/31/23) with the fundraiser only up for five days... right?

Well... It certainly alleviates some of the strain, but their stretch goals were scope increases! This means that once they reach their 1,000,000 stretch goal, they're adding on four additional ~27 minute episodes. This increases the budget-per-episode to 200,000 (yay!), but that still leaves the project with about $7,400 to spend per-minute... which, in the world of animation, isn't much!

All in all, I think that the original goal of 125,000 -- if there was going to be minimal investment from the company-- was completely insufficient, and it would have been irresponsible to try to produce a 27 minute long pilot with that budget. At the same time, I imagine the PM/Admin team could reasonably expect a strong outpouring of support from the fans based on past success and low-balled the original goal. Now that they're near 1,000,000, I think- and hope - they'll be able to swing it.

If anyone has any insight into the production of the pilot (either because you worked on it or know someone who does), please feel free to add context to this post! Again, I am not trying to call out Iron Circus. I'm fascinated by indie production and have been following the successes and failures of crowdfunded animation since it started picking up, and while the goal for Lackadaisy raised some concerns for me up-front, I think they're making strategic choices based on hard data (that we the public are not privvy to). They've already done it once, so they should be able to do it again!

#lackadaisy #animation #indie animatio #long post #production management

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omniblades-and-stars · 6 months

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Tipping Point

Got Your Six: Part 4

“I want to activate the Project.”

"Warning: Activating the Project will result in an estimated three hundred and five thousand casualties. Do you wish to continue?"

Fuck, this can't be the only way, can it? I can't do this.

Even as she was thinking that she couldn't, she pressed the big, red button. It was a decision she could not undo, and the cost had been so high as to be nigh unfathomable. How can you measure the costs when the whole universe is at stake? What kind of person does something like this?

War criminal.

Terrorist.

… Hero?

Commander Shepard didn't know anymore. Who was she to make the call to destroy a mass relay? She wasn't actually even a commander in the Alliance military anymore, everyone just kept on calling her that. It felt like a cruel joke. Everything had been taken from her, even her core identity. Helen was a shadow of who she used to be. She felt like a walking parody.

Only, parodies didn't kill masses of innocents, did they?

You're not supposed to come back from dying. I should have just stayed dead.

Her thoughts had been growing darker and darker the closer her team drew to going through the Omega-4 Relay. Guilt gnawed at her bones with teeth like wolves. It was a constant itch, just in the spot between her shoulder blades that she couldn't reach to scratch.

I deserve whatever is coming to me.

This isn't who I am!

It wasn't, right?

"Liara, now!" Shepard shouted, and her biotic friend sent a dining table crashing into Tela Vasir, and freeing the woman she was holding hostage. The Commander was relieved that her bluff had not needed to be tested. Would she have shot a hostage to stop the Spectre agent?

The fact that she was not certain that she wouldn't was deeply alarming, and she didn't want to find out the answer. So much had already changed for her, since her resurrection. Helen did not want even more confirmation that she could never go back to how she was before her death.

And definitely not the kind of woman who would harm a hostage to reach her goals.

Confident.

Principled.

Just.

Merciful.

Not the kind of woman who would destroy an entire star system …

What is happening to me? Who am I? I wasn't like this before.

Thoughts were already tearing her up in a storm.

The Spectre didn't give her enough time to contemplate the matter. There was no room for ruminating on the nature of death, the consequences of being brought back from the hereafter, or if that was even why Shepard felt the cracks forming around her personality. Tela Vasir began to glow a vibrant, neon blue and Commander Shepard did the same, disappearing in a second and reappearing down clear on the other end of the hotel patio.

"I'm going to end you, Vasir!" Commander Shepard shouted as she sent forth a ground-shaking shockwave that went barreling into the asari agent, knocking her backwards. She was so fucking angry at the woman, for setting off a bomb and harming innocents, for threatening Liara's life … for mirroring Shepard's own very recent behavior.

The fight was tough. Actually, tough was an understatement. Tela was an insanely powerful biotic soldier, and she had back up from the Shadow Broker's agents. She gave as good as she got, but she didn't have what Shepard did: Liara T'Soni, now brimming with power, confidence and a hard edge that Helen felt was all too familiar, and Tali'Zorah, who could hack just about anything and bring an enemy down using only her omni-tool and a paperclip. The battle turned quickly, and Commander Shepard's squad pressed their advantage until they had the boastful Spectre agent cornered and dying.

Even as she bled out, Tela Vasir managed to argue with Shepard about her methods. The asari Spectre had blown up an entire building to get information! She was working with the Shadow Broker, who was working for the Collectors, who were working for the Reapers and were harvesting humans with the goal to take all of Earth.

Tela Vasir was bad, and Commander Shepard was good, right?

Fuck! I don't know.

“Besides, you’re with Cerberus. You have any idea what your terrorist friends have done?” Vasir’s question sent a spike straight through the Commander’s core. It tore away the thin veil she so carefully crafted to hide away all of her doubts, her fear … her anger.

“I know who they are and what they’ve done. It doesn’t matter.” The words sounded hollow, meaningless even as Helen said them. She was lying; it did matter. Shepard cared so much about what Cerberus had done, and was almost certainly still doing, that it kept her awake at night. Gave her ulcers. Kept her from eating. She agonized about it constantly. The Illusive Man's constant refrain about old operations and rogue agents was about as true and comforting as her own lie. Not at all.

“I think it does. You want to judge me? Look in the mirror. Kidnapping kids for biotic death camps! Hell, your own unit on Akuze! And you’re with them. Don't you dare judge me! Don't … you … dare." Vasir's dying accusations whipped around inside her mind, ricocheting like dangerous little bullets. They pulled at the fraying threads of doubt with spidering fingers. The ride back to the docking bay was one spent in stony silence as Shepard replayed those words over and over again.

The guilt and self-hatred sank its gnarled claws into her lungs. "You're no better than her," it whispered in her ear. "No, you're much worse," the voice told her, words slithering through the grooves in her mind, spreading and taking root like an invasive weed. It sounded like her own voice, but darker, seductive. It laid a shadow of gloom over her thoughts, and simultaneously ignited the fury that she was barely keeping at bay. “It would have been better for the galaxy if you’d stayed dead.”

Maybe the voice was right.

I shouldn't be alive.

He barely noticed the EDI node activate behind him as he recalibrated the forward gun battery's firing algorithm. Helen recently installed the Thanix Cannon upgrade, and now it needed to be readjusted.

And readjusted again.

And again.

He definitely was not checking and rechecking the calibrations to deal with his mounting anxiety about the suicide mission, and his plans with Helen before they head through the Omega-4 Relay into the dark unknown beyond it. They were going to get the Reaper IFF after they helped T’Soni, and who wouldn’t worry about getting on a derelict Reaper?

No, it was simply very important that the gun battery was working well beyond standard operating parameters.

"Garrus, Commander Shepard has returned to the Normandy," the AI chimed suddenly, breaking Garrus' concentration with a start.

"Thanks, EDI," Garrus intoned without looking up from his console. He would give Helen some time to get herself together, or drop by his little hidey-hole on her own. He just liked to know when she made it back aboard. He wouldn't be a very good boyfriend if he didn't worry about her, even if she was by far the most capable person he had ever met, human or otherwise. And he was including himself in that calculation.

But still, he did worry. A lot.

"Garrus, there is a problem, you are needed in the cargo bay," EDI continued, its synthetic feminine voice sounding worried.

Shit.

"What happened? Get Dr. Chakwas, I'm on my way!" He turned rapidly and made for the door.

The strange globe of light that served as EDI's interface pulsated, "I apologize, I have not made myself clear. The problem is Commander Shepard. Tali'Zorah asked me to send you to the cargo bay. She said you would know what to do."

"Shit! I'll be right down."

"Yeah, you better walk fast lover boy, before she puts a hole in my baby," Joker added over the intercom. The door to the gun battery was already closing behind Garrus before the pilot finished his sentence. He ran through the mess hall to the elevator, nearly knocking Thane to his ass in his mad rush.

"Sorry, Krios, no time to explain!" He apologized vaguely as the elevator door slid shut. It always seemed like the elevator took forever, but now it felt like an eternity. Imagining what in the galaxy Helen was doing in the cargo bay that required his intervention only made the ride stretch on into infinity. What happened on Illium? The last update he received was that he needed to be ready to drop in several hours.

It's happening again. I need to get there faster. Should have crawled through the maintenance shaft.

The last week or two had been very stressful for Helen, he knew. First, there was that whole mess with Zaeed. Garrus had seen Shepard angry before, but her response to the man's absolute disregard for the lives of innocent blue collar workers had been incandescent. It was the first time she'd ever cold-clocked a squadmate in anger (he was not counting the time on the SR-1 where she swung at him, she never actually punched him). He had been certain that she was going to put a bullet in the man's other eye at the end of it. Her pistol was right there, so close, the barrel was almost touching the mercenary’s skin. But instead, she offered Zaeed a hand and pulled him from the wreckage, effectively zipping up her anger into a neat little pocket, somewhere nice and deep where it would fester.

Then there was the business in the Bahak system. Or what was left of it anyhow. How a personal favor for Admiral Hackett turned into something the batarians were calling a war crime (and maybe rightly so) was far beyond him. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of her decisions there, and she had made them alone, with no input from her friends or any back up whatsoever. And now she was going to have to stand trial in front of the Alliance for it.

She's already given too much of herself. And now they want to take what's left.

How kind of them to let her finish her extremely deadly mission to save humanity before they hauled her away.

Helen was not sleeping again, he found her more and more often sitting on the observation deck drinking too much coffee and staring into the endless expanse of stars during the night cycle. She was falling apart, and they were so close to being ready to go through the relay and destroy the Collectors. If Commander Shepard couldn't handle the strain of it, there was literally no one else in the galaxy who could.

Before the elevator even came to a complete stop, Garrus could hear the sound of something enormous crashing into the bulkhead. The door slid open to reveal a massacre of storage crates, cargo straps, loose pieces of Cerberus armor, and a few standard issue Avenger assault rifles scattered across the deck. Commander Shepard would never let her ship look like this.

Except that Commander Shepard was the one who wreaked this particular havoc, was still wreaking actually. She was standing dead center of the cargo deck, bathed in violet energy so intense it had pulled her hair free, it floated up around her as if she were underwater. She was wreathed by a glowing halo of her own power. It was terrible and it was beautiful all the same.

Oh, shit.

He was just about to call her name when she lifted another crate into the air, the same purple blue glow around her glowed around the large box. "Who am I?" she screamed as she hefted the crate into the wall she was facing. It crashed with incredible violence, the sturdy metal of the crate crumpled against the hull with a terrible scraping sound.

"Helen," Garrus started quietly, taking a tentative step toward her. This was far beyond the last time she tipped over the edge. "You're Helen." His heart rate increased, she was going to hurt herself, was already hurting herself. He was afraid for her.

She turned to face him, bright electric light flashed and played over her skin, almost like she was covered in a strange azure fire. Helen's nose was bleeding, her eyes were bloodshot, and tears streamed down her cheeks. "Commander Helen Shepard died! How can I be her?" She shouted and sent a shockwave rocking across the deck, away from Garrus. Detritus went scattering and crashing out as the intense and loud waves of energy pulsed down the cargo bay. Fresh blood dribbled down to her lips.

"I don't know how it works, Commander. But you are Helen," he moved in closer, he was only a few feet away now, but he knew she wouldn't hurt him.

Please hear me, Helen.

Shepard lifted one of the assault rifles with her biotics and crumpled it into a ball, "Would the real Commander Shepard join Cerberus? Knowing what they did to Admiral Kahoku, what they did to her unit? To Toombs?" The sad little gun ball fell to the ground at her feet, and she threw a blast into the side of the Kodiak. It fizzled out against the side of the shuttle transport without damaging it. Which was good, because they needed that thing in just a few hours. She was getting tired. "Would Helen have doomed an entire fucking colony to die because of fucking visions? She was a hero! I can't be her, I'm a goddamned terrorist! A fucking lunatic!"

I have to do something. She's going to have a hemorrhage!

In his panic to subdue her, Garrus did something that was probably very inadvisable, and wrapped his arms around her. He could feel the power roiling just over his hide, prickling and hot. It fucking hurt. "You're Helen," he began again, pulling her in close, "and I know that you wouldn't have done any of those things unless you knew there was no other way. The scale of this is too big. There were always going to be casualties. Sometimes, all of the choices are the wrong one."

Something seemed to break through, finally. Helen blinked, the biotic power around her fluctuated. "The dead aren't supposed to come back," she cried out and pressed her forehead against his armored chest. The light around her went out very suddenly, the painful needles playing on Garrus' skin faded away. Her voice cracked, and her hands hung limply at her sides, "Why did it have to be me?" Commander Helen Shepard began to weep. Her chest heaved, and the sobs came out of her so hard, it felt like they were crashing against her chest before clawing their way up her throat.

Garrus tightened his grip around her, and threaded his fingers into her hair to press her cheek against his armor. Her own armor scraped against his with an uncomfortable grating noise, but he ignored it. "The galaxy needs you, Shepard," he started to say, and he felt her tense. She was balling her fists up, preparing to have another go at the innocent supplies already turned into flotsam and jetsam. "I need you, Helen."

Helen went limp against him, depending entirely on him to keep her standing. She wrapped her arms around him. "It's too much, Garrus. It's too much for one person to bear. I shouldn't even be here," she whispered, suddenly sounding very weak.

No, Helen, please.

"It's not fair what you're expected to do. But you're not alone. You don't need to shoulder it all, I'm here with you," Garrus assured her and rested his chin on her head. It wasn't enough, but what else could he say? There was almost nothing available to prepare him for supporting someone who was trying to save the galaxy. There was absolutely nothing to prepare him for supporting someone who had been brought back to life. He felt adrift, grasping at useless words to try to soothe the storm raging inside of her.

Once he could feel her breathing return to something close to normal, he turned her and slid one of her arms over his shoulder, preparing to lead her to the elevator. "Let's get you up to your room."

"I need to clean this mess up, Garrus." She tried to resist, but she was so exhausted, he led her away from the disaster. Even with her top of the line, experimental cybernetics and bio-amps, extended use of biotic power on this threshold was sapping. It was some wonder that she was still conscious.

Garrus laughed softly, feeling much more sure of himself in this thread of conversation. Reminding the Commander to take physical care of herself was something he excelled at now, "Commander, you have a full crew on this ship. Let them clean it. You're going to sleep until we reach Hagalaz, and that is an order."

"Cocky, insubordinate asshole," Shepard grumbled as she stumbled along with him to the elevator. She leaned heavily against Garrus, but he didn't move to pick her up. If there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that one did not pick up Commander Shepard unless she was unconscious. She hated it.

“EDI, make sure this elevator doesn’t stop for anyone else until the Commander is in her cabin,” Garrus requested to the open air.

“Of course, Garrus,” the AI confirmed the command, and it was silent in the elevator again. Helen’s sobs had now turned to occasional hiccups, and she stared at her feet.

Helen hissed through her teeth as they walked into her cabin. The intense blue light coming from the aquarium wall sent strands of painful colors scattering through her vision. She closed her eyes as hard as she could stand, and fought the wave of nausea that washed over her from the photophobic sensation. “Garrus, please, turn off that light. Too bright.”

“On it, Helen,” Garrus said, barely above a whisper. He walked with her still hanging on to his side over to the aquarium controls. He turned off the lights … and fed her fish. Spirits only knew that they were only alive because of his steadfast reminders, or just coming up and doing it himself. She didn’t have this problem feeding the hamster.

Garrus didn’t mind taking care of the fish for her. It was a silent way to help her, one small task that she didn’t even need to remember that she was forgetting to do. Quite frankly, he didn’t know why Cerberus had even put a fish tank on the ship. Certainly, this wasn’t a military vessel, but it was absolutely not a cruise ship. The gun that he spent most of his free time tinkering with was top of the line combat hardware, the ship’s engines were some of the most advanced engines one could find in a ship, military or not. Every single member of the crew carried a gun. There was a krogan down on the engineering deck who would eat anything you gave to him. This was no place for pet fish.

He led the poor woman to her bed and helped her sit down. She sunk down into the mattress, leaning over her knees, and still staring at her feet. Helen was still wearing her armor, and her hair was all tangled up in her tactical visor. An enormous and defeated sigh rolled out of her, and impossibly, she slumped even more. “Garrus, can you help me get out of this shit? My arms weigh a million pounds right now.” She was trying to mask her embarrassment with hyperbole and humor. Helen hated asking for help.

Garrus silently set about undoing all of the clasps and seals holding her armor pieces together over the combat suit beneath. He placed each piece gently on the floor, careful to be respectful of her very well maintained (and very expensive) armor. As he looked up to help her free the visor from the depths of her hopelessly mussed hair, he saw that she was crying again. His brow plates furrowed, and his mandibles fluttered before clamping down against his mouth. “Helen?” he asked as he wiped a tear away with his curled talon, careful to be as gentle as possible.

It took Helen several seconds and a deep and trembling inhale before she was able to expel anything close to coherent words. “They’re going to take me away from you,” she finally managed to gasp over a truly ugly sounding sob.

He pressed his forehead to hers, and took a deep breath of his own. His chest ached, it was a truth they both knew, but they had not yet crossed the bridge of discussing it. “I know. I know, Helen … but we can worry about that later. If we survive the Collectors, we can worry about it then,” he tried to reassure her, to reassure them both. He took her hand and held it tight. “One big worry at a time, right?”

Helen leaned forward pressing her forehead into his as deeply as she could manage, as though any space between them was intolerable. She basked in the tenderness. It was one of her favorite turian gestures, it suited her perfectly. “If it were that easy to just stop worrying, I wouldn’t have torn apart the cargo bay.”

“Sounded good when I said it though, right?”

She weakly pushed his shoulder back with her free hand, a small smile turned the corner of her mouth, “You’re lucky I need you around. Cocky-”

“Insubordinate asshole,” he finished for her with a smile. “Now, come on, I wasn’t joking when I ordered you to sleep. You can’t stop the Collectors if you eat a bullet in the Shadow Broker’s base because you fell asleep behind cover.”

“It’ll take more than one bullet to do me in, Vakarian,” Helen pouted but allowed herself to be tucked in, still wearing her combat suit. Garrus even pulled the cover up to her chin, and pressed his mouth plates to her forehead. He turned to leave. “Garrus, where are you going?”

“I was in the middle of some calibrations when EDI called me down to the cargo bay,” he offered dumbly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Please, don’t leave me alone. I need you here,” Shepard said sleepily. “The gun can wait. There’s no way you can get it working even better than it already is.”

Garrus laughed, happy for the distraction from his sudden awkwardness. “Well, now it’s a challenge. I will get it firing better.”

“Garrus, please? I can’t sleep by myself anymore. I need you here. I know that armor comes off somehow, you weren’t born in it.”

Garrus shifted uncomfortably, before turning back to approach her bed. He hesitated for a moment. This was a boundary they had not crossed yet, even innocent as it was.

Fuck it.

She was asking, and she wouldn’t ask if she didn’t mean it. That’s not the kind of woman Helen was. Still, he answered with a quip, to sooth the brewing anxiety, “I thought you knew, all turians just look like this. I’ve been nude the entire time you’ve known me.”

“Is that why you haven’t replaced that blown up piece of shit yet? And here I thought it was just because you must have lost all of your money in an arm wrestling competition against Grunt,” Helen joked from somewhere within her pillow. Her eyes were closed, it was hard to keep them open with the pain running rampant through her brain. She heard the giant hunk of metal that covered his chest hit the ground, and the mattress tilt back away from her.

“Not all of us like to buy every piece of armor that someone tries to sell us, like you do,” he said, suddenly right up against her ear. His breath was warm, the dual tones of his alien voice were reassuring, and deeply pleasing. Perhaps if she hadn't worn herself out so thoroughly, it might have invoked altogether different feelings. No less pleasant ones, but far less relaxing.

It took a few very awkward moments for them to figure out exactly how their bodies would fit around each other. They were very briefly a tangle of limbs, elbows, and knees. Helen even giggled while they tried to figure it out.

Helen tucked herself in with her cheek pressed against his chest. She could hear his heart beat, it was strong and fast. She smiled because she knew he was nervous. It was deeply amusing, in her lighter moods, that she made a seven foot tall alien with literal bone and metal plates covering his body so anxious. His awkward stumbling when they were alone together was something to look forward to. A bright spot in the ever darkening and hopeless tapestry of the galaxy around her. "Thank you, for being a reason for me to be thankful that I got a second chance," she whispered.

With his arms wrapped around her, and her body tucked against him, her brain finally started to cycle down. She yawned and rubbed her cheek against his chest. The sound of his gentle breathing carried her off into blessedly dreamless sleep, something she had not had since the beacon on Eden Prime.

If only they could have stayed there like that forever. But they only had a few precious hours. The universe waited for no one.

And apparently, neither did Dr. Liara T'Soni on a revenge fueled rescue mission.

#mass effect #fanfic #garrus vakarian #femshep #shakarian #got your six #helen shepard is going through it #reposting my earlier work because i can and it's free #daisy screaming into the void

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months

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By: Benjamin Radford

Published: Jan 19, 2024

A few years ago I was asked by an author to review his book, and it contained a discussion of the pyramids at Ghiza. I gave him the following feedback:

“You have a big red herring argument at the bottom of p. 36: ‘not a single group has been able to successfully erect even a scaled-down’ pyramid…. ‘even the skeptical community should be able to build an exact replica…’ This is seriously flawed reasoning, and you repeat this error four or five times. The burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim (‘aliens did it’) not the ordinary claim (‘ancient Egyptians did it).’ By your logic, geologists who counter creationist claims about the Grand Canyon would have to spend billions of dollars divert a river over a plain to prove that it was created over millennia by water erosion instead of created that way by God some 4,000 years ago.”

I added that researchers in fact have a pretty good idea of how the pyramids were built. The fact that none of them have (or have tried to) build a replica of the Great Pyramids doesn’t logically mean they are wrong.

[ The author deciding whether or not to build a full-scale replica of the Great Pyramids. ]

The idea of replicating a controversial event or project to test its validity sounds simple in theory. For example some people claim that the Egyptian pyramids were made (or designed) by aliens or ancient astronauts. The (ahistorical) assumption is that people at the time didn’t have the intelligence or technology to move the stones and build a pyramid shape.

Since the pyramids were built around 2560 BC there are no photographs or depictions of them being created, though in 2015 papyrus records were found of pyramid construction tools, and legions of pyramid builders’ graves were found in 2010, for example. Egyptologists have a pretty good idea of where the rocks were quarried and how they were cut and moved, but doubters are fond of noting that scientists have never actually replicated the pyramids. They claim that skeptics or scientists must build an entire pyramid to prove how it could have been done, using materials and tools of that era.

This seems like a reasonable challenge until you realize why such an effort would never be done—not because it can’t be done but because it would be impractical. Duplicating the great Ghiza pyramid would take many years and cost tens of millions of dollars. Who’s going to pay for it? It would also be pointless, since such a replication experiment would not be valid unless you used tens of thousands of workers (estimate range from 15,000 to 40,000) and spent a decade or more building it (as the original did). If some eccentric billionaire wants to fund it he or she should feel free, but scientists recognize it as an enormous cost and effort just to disprove some wild theories about aliens—which it wouldn’t do anyway.

Replicating 9/11

A similarly misguided idea got notoriety in May 2015 when a man named Paul Salo launched a crowdfunding project which, he claimed, would prove once and for all whether the conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are true or not. On his Indiegogo campaign Salo wrote: “Many people want to know more about 9-11. We are like a Mythbusters for September 11th. It’s an important project for many reasons. Many people doubt various details of 9-11. As the world has changed our trust in government and media has declined significantly. We want to see for ourselves. We don’t need people to guide our thinking. In this project we will recreate 9-11 to the best of our ability given the funds raised. Our ultimate goal is a fully loaded 767 and a similar structure to the WTC. We will crash the fully loaded (with fuel) plane (complete with black box) into the building using autopilot at 500 MPH.”

Salo aimed to test the widely-challenged (in conspiracy circles anyway) claim that jet fuel can burn hot enough to sufficiently weaken a building’s steel structure that it collapses—instead of, for example, the Twin Towers coming down due to hidden explosives. While Salo’s scheme to duplicate the Twin Towers attack had a simple and populist appeal, actually pulling it off as a valid scientific experiment would be incredibly difficult and expensive, if not impossible. For a real science experiment you need to control for variables that could affect the results; in this case there are many variables including size and weight of the plane, the building type, and so on.

Salo promised that “You will be able to see for yourself what happens under these extreme circumstances. I’m not sure which country we will purchase the aircraft and building but it doesn’t really matter much.” Actually Salo would find when talking to engineers that it matters greatly where the building is, since building codes vary wildly by country and region. Buildings in earthquake-prone regions are built differently (and able to sustain greater structural damage without collapsing) than those built elsewhere. Variations in construction materials will also complicate comparisons. Each building’s architecture is different, and will not necessarily react the same way to the same structural damage. In order for the experiment to be valid, he would need to build an exact replica of the Twin Towers; not just any tall building will do, since the load-bearing structures vary from building to building.

He planned to “recreate as best as we can” the circumstances of the World Trade Center attacks. The problem is that “as best as we [that is, he] can” would leave an enormous margin of error, one so big as to make any results invalid and pointless. His results, should he have pulled it off, would be dramatic and sensational but hold no evidentiary value at all.

As with many such replications, Salo’s experiment would in fact be pointless and inconclusive no matter its outcome: If the building collapsed exactly as happened on September 11, conspiracy theorists would argue—correctly—that the conditions weren’t exactly the same as in the original building collapse. If the building collapses differently, that won’t prove anything either, for the same reason. Neither anyone questioning or defending the “official story” will accept his conclusions and admit they were wrong. Salo’s grand scheme went nowhere.

Bigfoot’s Famous Film

I’ve heard some version of this question dozens of times during my career as a monster investigator. Though I’ve investigated the best photographic evidence for several mysterious creatures—most prominently the 1977 photograph of the Champ lake monster, as seen in the articles Joe Nickell and I wrote in the July/August 2003 issue of Skeptical Inquirer and in our book Lake Monster Mysteries—I hadn’t done an in-depth investigation into the famous 1967 footage taken in Bluff Creek, California, by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin (P/G). The film is said to show a female Bigfoot (dubbed Patty) walking across a riverbed.

The film has been the subject of controversy and debate for half a century, and is routinely cited as the gold standard for Bigfoot footage (even some fifty-five years later, which is deeply suspicious given the ubiquity of high-quality smartphone cameras since then). Though the footage is blurry, one thing is clear: it’s either a hoax or a Bigfoot. Skeptics have offered damning analyses, both of Patterson and the murky circumstances under which the film was created and developed; see for example Greg Long’s The Making of Bigfoot and Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero’s Abominable Science. Bigfoot believers offer a variety of responses, many of which wrongly place the burden of proof on skeptics, such as “If it’s a guy in a suit, where is the suit?” and “If it’s faked, why can’t anyone re-create the film using materials available in 1967?”

The alleged failure of the film to be recreated by researchers has long been a popular talking point among Bigfoot believers. A few examples will suffice; a fellow named Scott Renchin, in replying to a Skeptoid YouTube video about the P/G film, wrote in January 2022 that “A real skeptic would prove the film is a hoax by recreating the film using techniques and materials used to create the alleged hoax footage… the BBC did this already and failed miserably.” This same BBC show was also directed to me by noted cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard and others.

Film Replication Claims

The literature on this just-under-one minute film is both voluminous and contentious and there’s a lot to unpack. I’ll begin by noting that my focus is not on Bigfoot’s existence generally, nor even on the authenticity of the film specifically. Over and over when seeking information on this topic, respondents invariably went off topic and dove into why the film is obviously a hoax—or just as obviously authentic. Instead my topic is very specific, and simple: Who, specifically, has actually tried to replicate the film itself, using what equipment, and when? What documentation do we have of sincere, dedicated efforts by knowledgeable experts to create footage that matches the P/G image?

Researchers have tried to recreate the movement of the subject in the film. My colleague Dave Daegling, for example conducted a detailed analysis of the P/G film in his book Bigfoot Exposed and explored the question of whether a human could walk like the creature in the film. He determined that—like the creature’s size and speed which are well within human limitations—it is certainly possible for a person to walk the way it does using what’s called a compliant gait. It’s not the most comfortable method of locomotion for a human, but it’s easy to adopt with a bit of practice and doesn’t rule out a person in a suit.

It was certainly possible to create a realistic costume like that seen in the film in 1967. Planet of the Apes, for example, was released the following year, albeit with the help of professional makeup and costumers.

Those resources would not have been available to Patterson and Gimlin, though Planet of the Apes required close-ups of the actors including faces in sharp focus, whereas the P/G footage is at a great distance, out of focus, blurry, and unstable—all factors that (intentionally or otherwise) obscure details, thwart analysis, and facilitate fakery. The out of focus background actors in ape costumes are a very close match for “Patty.” Hollywood special effects experts including Stan Winston, when asked about the footage, have declared the footage bogus and said that what’s seen in the film would certainly have been possible in the 1960s. In fact a fairly realistic gorilla costume appeared in the film Are You With It?—from 1948, nearly two decades before Patterson and Gimlin set out to film a Bigfoot.

[ Film still from 1948’s “Are You With It?” ]

Instead the question is about replication of the film itself, which is a far more challenging and expensive task, and would require not only the original equipment but a reasonably similar costume, gait, location, environment, and so on.

Where’s Bigfoot (Recreations)?

Alleged films trying to replicate the P/G footage turned out to be nearly as elusive as Bigfoot itself. I found a handful of videos of television shows attempting (usually lightheartedly) to make their own Bigfoot films, while not making any serious attempt to replicate the P/G film per se. For example one show, Evening Magazine, described their half-baked, tongue-in-cheek stab at it in 2005: “We wondered what it would look like if we tried to make a Bigfoot film of our own… We picked up a gorilla suit at Champion Party Supply and made no modifications to it. We used a 16 mm film camera, roughly like the one Patterson used.”

In my questioning of Bigfoot proponents I was often assured that many (or at least “several”) attempts had been made to replicate the film, but when pressed to name one, the BBC show was prominently mentioned (often accompanied by chiding about how I should do better research). Searching for something more substantive and scientific, I reached out to Daniel Perez, a respected Bigfoot researcher and publisher of Bigfoot Times newsletter, to ask if he was aware of any attempts to replicate the film. He kindly provided a list of references to material about the film. Of those, about a half dozen were television shows, and of those only two mentioned any replication or recreation. The first was a 2007 Discovery Channel show titled Best Evidence: Bigfoot which Perez notes “covers the attempted replication of the movements seen in the P-G film” (emphasis added). As noted, this is not the question at hand and in any event if anything casts doubt on the film’s authenticity.

The second was to a 1998 BBC show titled The X-Creatures: Shooting The Bigfoot (available on YouTube under the title The X Creatures Bigfoot and Yeti); see stills below. Of this episode, Perez notes that “The show attempts to recreate the P-G film but certainly appears to fail miserably.” I reviewed the episode a dozen times, and here’s exactly how the narrator describes the attempt (at the 20 minute mark): “Using the same distances recorded at Bluff Creek, the same camera and lens, and an amateur operator, it’s possible to exactly recreate the action of 1967.”

To be clear: The show at no point claims to recreate the Patterson/Gimlin film itself; instead it’s an attempt at recreating the action depicted in the film, which is a very different matter. Accident and crime reconstruction analysts recreate actions all the time, using anything from toy cars to computer animation. It’s a fairly straightforward process that does not require replicating all the relevant conditions at play when an event occurred. Even when an accident or crime is recorded on video, the investigators need not recreate the video itself, just the actions of people and objects seen in the video.

The goal of the X-Creatures show was to determine how plausible Patterson and Gimlin’s claims are using only two criteria: the reported distance, and the original camera and lens. That’s it. The show makes this crystal clear: “The most important revelation… is how close Roger and Bob were to the creature; they were right on top of it, which makes the behavior even less natural. It walked away, utterly unconcerned… At this distance, with this lens, you’re certain to get the creature in the frame—unless you artificially wobble the camera.”

There was no attempt at replicating the original film. Nor, for that matter, was there any attempt at duplicating the costume, which would be necessary for recreating the film. We can plainly see that the hair color is wrong, the hair length is wrong, the size is wrong, the musculature is wrong, and the feet they used looks nothing like what could possibly have made the tracks allegedly found at the site. The angle to the creature is wrong, the terrain is wrong, and so on.

I still have not found a single film or video attempt at recreating the Patterson/Gimlin film using period equipment, the correct location, a credible costume, and other important criteria. Defenders of the P/G film can’t have it both ways, disingenuously arguing on one hand that this BBC show was the best filmmaking expertise made to replicate the film while smugly noting that it was an obvious failure because it looks nothing like the original.

With Bigfoot proponents unable to identify a single attempted film recreation, I tried a different approach and asked Craig Scott Lamb, a filmmaker, film historian, and administrator of the Ape Suit Cinema, a Facebook group dedicated to filmed ape costumes. Lamb replied, “I know of no actual attempts by special FX professionals to replicate what was seen in the Patterson film. However considering the cost of a pro ape suit I can certainly understand the lack of motivation… In other words who’s going to foot the bill?”

Lamb’s question is as enlightening as his answer: No special effects experts he’s aware of have even tried to replicate the P/G costume—much less in service of a failed attempt to replicate the film itself— but he’s exactly correct about one of the key impediments to replication. Whether the Patterson/Gimlin film is real or not, the fact that no one has tried to replicate it is irrelevant to its authenticity.

More importantly, the Bigfoot community has the logic exactly backwards: the question is not why no one has replicated the film if it’s a hoax, but instead why no one has replicated the film if it’s real. In other words (regardless of the film’s authenticity) why does the best Bigfoot footage date back to the Lyndon Johnson administration and the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

This poses a serious blow to the film’s credibility: these Bigfoot creatures are really out there wandering in front of eyewitnesses with cameras, why haven’t better films and videos emerged in the past fifty-six years? Both still and video cameras have become much higher quality and much cheaper over the past decades. It used to be that quality cameras were needed to take high-quality photographs; anyone could take a blurry Disneyland vacation photo with a pocket camera, but to get clear, sharp shots you often needed a more expensive camera and lens.

These days most people have a twelve megapixel high-definition camera in their pocket smartphones, which provide stabilizing, zoom, and other features that would have been the envy of Hollywood only a decade ago. At no time in history have so many people had high-quality cameras on them virtually all the time. If Bigfoot, Nessie, and the chupacabra exist, logically the photographic evidence for them should improve significantly over the years. Yet it hasn’t. Photographs of people, cars, mountains, flowers, sunsets, deer, and literally everything else in the world have gotten sharper and clearer over the years. The only exceptions are things never proven real, such Bigfoot, ghosts, and UFOs.

It’s true that replicating the P/G film would be difficult and expensive, but this has nothing to do with the content of the film. To use a simple analogy, period Hollywood films are notoriously expensive for the simple reason that to make them look authentic the production designers must locate era-appropriate props, costumes, and more. A film set in the early 1900s, for example, may need vintage vehicles, clothing, telephones, and so on. These can be rented from prop shops, but still require much more effort and cost to secure than would ordinary objects of today.

If someone did spend considerable time and effort to create a convincing costume and setting, that would not serve to silence the critics but bolster them; the response would not be, “Yes, you’re right, it can be credibly duplicated” but instead, “Yes, but see how much money you had to spend! Patterson and Gimlin didn’t have these resources, so it couldn’t have been faked!”

Replication in Investigation

Replication can certainly play an important role in skeptical investigation, though recreating the circumstances surrounding an “unexplained” event is far more crucial than necessarily duplicating or replicating a given sighting, photograph, or video.

It’s actually quite easy to capture a photographic image that cannot be replicated in every detail. A photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a split-second moment in time (depending, of course, on how long the exposure is) in a constantly changing environment. Replicating some photos is easy—a close-up of a shiny penny in fixed studio lighting, for example. But outdoor photographs, or those of urban settings, can be difficult or impossible to exactly replicate in every detail—which is the standard often demanded. Clouds come and go by the hour (sometimes by the minute); leaves move position in even a slight wind.

Keep in mind that a full and true replication may require the original people or objects, under the exact same conditions. Depending on what part of the image is under scrutiny (a dark manlike patch in shady wooded area, a face seen in a ghost image, or an odd light in the sky) the image may look different. Sunlight reflection off a gleaming polished fender of a 1958 Corvette, for example, might potentially help explain a mysterious light or image. Substituting a 1984 Honda or a 2012 Ford in a replication photograph may not get the same results.

A close-up photograph of an egg taken in 1950 might look identical to one taken with the same camera and lighting as one taken a century later in 2050. But in most cases a landscape photo will be difficult or impossible to exactly replicate 100 years later. But more importantly, the task of recreating the film, as a practical matter, is enormously difficult under the best of circumstances. We can begin with the terrain, which like all other natural habitats, has of course changed significantly in the past fifty-five years. Consider all the environmental factors at play: Trees die and fall, rivers and streams move, and so on.

I’ve done replication in some of my investigations, including for the Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost, Sandra Mansi’s photograph of the Lake Champlain monster, and so on. But I’m always careful to include qualifiers and not claim to have duplicated anything exactly, but merely as best I can under the circumstances. Claims about how skeptics can’t (or won’t) duplicate things such as the Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot film, or the pyramids, or anything else are spurious red herrings.

The question has broader implications for investigative skepticism. In many cases, using the principle of Occam’s Razor, replication should be enough to demonstrate that an extraordinary claim is indeed unlikely to be true. For example self-described psychic-turned-“entertainment artist” Uri Geller rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s performing various acts which could be—and have been—duplicated by professional magicians, perhaps most notably the late Amazing Randi. This does not of course provide conclusive proof that Geller was simply a skilled magician instead of a psychic, which is after all impossible to prove. It does, however, give critical thinkers a logical, rational, science-based reason to doubt the claims.

Science is based on comparisons—between control groups and experimental groups, for example. By controlling variables and comparing two groups of people or situations, scientists can tease out what factors are at play. The key here is the variables under control. A photograph, film, or video represents a fixed—and usually very short—moment in time. With the exception of long exposures, most photos are a two-dimensional representation of what was in front of a lens for a fraction of a second. We can’t see what happened just before or after the shutter opened. The P/G film, which is after all just a series of photographs when speeded up give the illusion of movement, is just under a minute long, and one reason it’s suspect is that we don’t see the figure coming into or exiting the frame.

For more on the topic of science and replication see my Skeptical Inquirer article “Skepticism and Pseudoexperiments” in the September/October 2020 issue.

Data Replication

Though I’ve focused here mostly on photographic replication, there are other aspects worth mentioning. The issue of replication in science is pretty straightforward: It’s essential for establishing the validity on an experiment. Because well-controlled studies are difficult to design and carry out, there is always the chance that a given outcome will be the result of random chance, experimenter bias, or any number of other factors. If a result is true and valid, then any other researchers following identical procedures should, in theory, get similar result—though, it should be noted, they may not necessarily interpret the results in the same way.

Replication is such an issue in science that the inability to replicate results has garnered significant attention. BBC News reported that “Concern over the reliability of the results published in scientific literature has been growing for some time. According to a survey published in the journal Nature more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments.” Skeptical investigation sometimes involves designing experiments and scientific protocols, for example when testing dowsers, psychics, and others (see, for example, “Testing Natasha” by Ray Hyman in the May/June 2005 SI and Jim Underdown’s work with the Los Angeles-based Independent Investigations Group).

Depending on what’s being measured, replication can be difficult under the best of circumstances. If you’re trying to replicate a population study it’s important to look at the statistical methodology to be sure a representative sample was used; slight variations in the underlying populations can introduce confounders and thus create spurious (Type I and Type II) errors, suggesting that an experiment has not been replicated when in fact it has, or vice-versa.

Whether the topic is a famous Bigfoot film, 9/11 attacks, pyramids in Egypt, psychic powers, or anything else, the oft-heard complaint that something can’t be—or hasn’t been—duplicated or replicated is often a red herring. Despite its strong anti-elitist and populist appeal, the claim demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge about control groups and science in general.

#skepticism #scepticism #science #replication #Benjamin Radford #skeptic #sceptic #sceptical investigation #skeptical investigation #bigfood #pyramids of giza #pyramids of ghiza #9/11 #September 11 #world trade center #9/11 attacks #science experiments #what science is #religion is a mental illness

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curatoroffiction · 2 years

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Ramshackle's New Student

Summary:

Yuu/The Main Character of the Twisted Wonderland series gains a new student while setting the groundwork for some major renovations on the Ramshackle Dorm. Based on a great concept written by fairytaleliving over on Tumblr. I was so inspired I had to write it. Sunny, the new student, is their concept, I just took it and ran with it.

Notes:

For @fairytaleliving

Inspired by "au where yuu gets a freshman" by fairytaleliving.

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This was one of the first pieces I’d written in a really long time. It actually revitalized my passion for writing! This is just to explain that this is one of my older pieces, so the writing might be a little different than my usual stuff. I recently re-vamped it and am starting to add more chapters. It’ll come out a lot slower than my other stuff, because I wanna base it off of the series, and I’m an English player. As of posting this, the series has only released up to Book 4.

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Warnings: Spoilers for Twisted Wonderland series Tags: Reader-Insert, Ungendered MC, OC Characters, Overblot, Twisted Wonderland, Ramshackle

Chapter 1 of ?: Rough First Day

"Hey, ___, You've been disappearing after classes lately. What's been up with that?" Ace asks as you and Grim come to sit down with your food at the table.

"___'s been working hard on our dorm!" Grim pipes up excitedly. This piques the interest of the lunch table.

"Working on your dorm? What does that mean?" Cater asks, curious.

"Oh yeah, I've got a system worked out with Crowley. I took over the expense reports and expenses for the Ramshackle dorms, he gives me a stipend every month to do so, and any money I can save from the month's budget will become mine. It also means I can save money for larger projects that I can't do myself, which would be a headache and a half for Crowley to oversee, which means the dorm property gets faster upgrades, so, it's a win all around."

Deuce's eyes sparkle at the idea. "So wait, you've been working on the property yourself?? How?"

"Oh, I used to do woodworking back in my own world. Re-upholstering isn't actually all that hard to learn, it's just the working with wood part that's a fancier problem. Even then, I'm pretty well trained in it."

"Can we come and see? That sounds really cool."

"Sure, but I warn you; The front yard's a bit of a warzone. I've started a personal fight with the chairs and couches of the dorm. They need some TLC. I'm gonna have to figure out a way to handle the waste from the projects, but that's a small price to pay to be able to have some pocket change in the near future." Nearby, a certain fiscal Hyena's ears perk up.

"How much is the budget anywho?" Trey asks, curious himself. The school has always typically managed these types of matters, so this is new information to him.

"Oh man, it's like 5000 Thaumarks. It's an insane budget. I figured the school was used to paying cost AND labor, but I didn't realize labor was such a high markup around here. Makes me wonder if they actually know how things cost when you take the time to take care of it yourself."

"Oh wow. How much are you saving on the budget?"

"Well, Instead of blowing the whole month's budget on replacing only a fraction of the chairs in the dorm, I've spent about... $500 Thaumarks on getting myself some necessary tools, and $500 more Thaumarks on tangible supplies for refurbishing the existing furniture. I estimate on that, I can get about half the chairs done on that alone, and the only stuff I'll really need to replenish is the wood and fabric for the next round of furniture. So, I'm using about 1/5th, maybe 1/4th of a month's budget to achieve what would have taken multiple month's budgets to achieve. I'm saving up the rest for the floors, which severely need to be replaced. It's gonna be a tall order, and I've still gotta shop around to see how much it'll take to replace the wooden floors we've already got."

Trey looks earnestly surprised. You're taking on quite a lot of responsibility for this project, but you've never looked more in your element than this moment. Everyone at the table is a little in awe of how readily you've taken to the management of the dorm's expenses. Nearby, a certain Hyena can't stop listening in on your conversation. At his table, Leona raises an eyebrow, glancing to him.

"Yo, Ruggie. I still need that drink."

"Gimme a sec, I've just tuned into a very interesting station." Leona looks around. Interesting? Well, he doesn't often butt his head into other folks' business, so he can't seem to make out what's so interesting that his drink has to wait. He watches the flicker of Ruggie's ears as he listens in on your conversation, and uses that to pinpoint that he's listening in on your conversation specifically.

"Oh wow! So you're gonna be making bank pretty soon, eh?" Ace grins widely.

"Tuna! We'll be able to buy tuna!" Grim dances in his spot at the table. You laugh, gently petting his head, lightly scritching behind his ears.

"It'll take a bit of time, but I estimate I'll be in the green sometime around... 5 months from now? After that point, it'll mostly be small-fry projects that the monthly budget will be more than enough to cover, and the bulk of the budget will just be saved up on the side for if there's an emergency. Like if a certain small monster chooses to set something ablaze. And if I spend a chunk of the budget on nicer tools, I can get even more done on the property. The externals are last, though the walkway's gonna need some serious repairs or replacement before then. I estimate I'll have to do some stonework if I really wanna make the property shine." You scratch your chin thinking on that last part. "If that ends up being the case, then I'll probably see some bigger expenditures after the bulk of the dorm is in good shape, just because landscaping isn't really one of my strongsuits either."

"Wow, where did you learn how to do all of this?"

"Eh, it's just stuff I picked up in my old world. My dad was a carpenter, so woodworkin' was easy to learn. The rest I learned to make money here and there. People would pay through the nose for the pretty kinds of things. Luxury has a cost, and I could be it's source."

Deuce grins excitedly. You've got a goal in mind and you won't settle for anything less than achieving it. It's admirable. "I'm excited to come take a look at it. Maybe today after our classes?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a good plan." The conversation shifts to talking more about school projects, and Ruggie tunes out. Leona sighs, having already laid his head on the table to nap. Ruggie stands up, grinning to himself with his newfound little nugget of info. It's never a bad thing to know who has skills, and who has money coming in on the horizon. He pockets this information and goes to grab Leona his drink.

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"Oh wow!" Cater's eyes widen as he sees the before and after of the furniture. "This is amazing! This would be so perfect to capture for magicam. People love DIY nowadays! May I?"

You laugh. "Sure. Thank you for the compliment."

"No but seriously, this chair looks like brand new." Ace looks it up and down. "And it looked like THIS before??" He points to the one next to it. It's a dingy old piece. The cloth has been worn through, sun-bleached, and the wood has lost its luster.

"Yeah. You just yoink out the seat, re-upholster it, and then tend to the wood frame of the chair. The chair legs have been the biggest hurdle, since some of them have gotten broken. Some of the chairs have a weave in the back that's also taken a rough beating, so I have to manually re-weave the strips of wood or re-make a chair leg from scratch, which is where most of the time on this project gets eaten up. But after that, I just sand down the old stain, re-stain the whole piece and let it sit in the sun while I'm working, and take turns wiping and reapplying until I get the desired color. Let it sit for a day, and then I can go over it with a lacquer to keep it scratch-safe. Then I just plug the cushion back in, and BAM- Good as new." You're proud of your work. It's hard not to gush about everything you've been doing.

The guys don't mind though. They're earnestly infatuated with your work. "It's like the work of a master craftsman." Trey comments, touching the finished product. "Well, you have my respect. This is amazing work you're doing."

You smile warmly, grinning sheepishly as you lightly scratch the back of your head. "Ahh, you're very kind. I appreciate it."

"No seriously, this is top-tier. I couldn't do this even in my dreams." Ace grins, moving to sit in the completed chair. "It's even comfy to sit in!"

"Y'know, we've been looking to get some personalized chairs for the Heartslabyul dorm.." Trey grins.

You laugh and shake your head. "Maybe we can figure out an order once my dorm's in good shape. Who knows how long I'll be here."

---

It's been a few months since you started working on the dorm house. Most of the furniture has been repaired in all the main rooms, and you've even been able to start repairing and refurbishing the bedrooms. Even if you don't live in them, it'd be weird to leave them in the sorry state they were in before.

Tonight is the first New Student ceremony since you got here. It's hard to think it's been a year. A lot has happened in that time, even amidst your dorm repairs. You were told by Crowley that as a Dorm Prefect, you'll need to attend the ceremony, even if it's only for ceremony's sake. He even sent you some robes for the occasion. You feel strange in the robes, considering that you weren't really keen on the pomp and circumstance of it all. What if they had another 'fluke' like you? Someone ripped from their world with nowhere to go? You've never believed in flukes. If anything, you almost expect it. Something's up with that mirror. You couldn't have been the only one. Still, arriving in the Hall of Mirrors, you find yourself a little shy.

There's a spot for all of the prefects to sit in, and everyone's already seated. Well, everyone except Leona.

As you move to your seat, you hear Riddle murmur to you "Prefects should always be 15 minutes early to the start of any occasion."

You glance to the empty seat next to yours with five minutes left to the time when students are meant to be piling in.

You raise an eyebrow and Riddle sighs, his eyebrow twitching. "Leona isn't someone to model yourself after."

You laugh quietly, sitting down.

The event seemed pretty normal. Everyone was getting sorted into their dorms, it seemed pretty evenly split amongst them. No new students for your dorm, which was expected, you suppose. It's not like your dorm was a real one anyway. You didn't have one of the great seven associated with your dorm, your halls were filled with ghosts, and the only active students who lived there were a monster and a magic-less human.

That is... Until the mirror calls out the unexpected, causing the entire room to quiet down. "Ah yes... You have the spirit of Ramshackle inside of you." Everyone in the room is quiet. So quiet, your new student turns around cautiously. No one else had been added to Ramshackle. Was.. Was it dangerous? Scary? Bad? Even Crowley is surprised. It even takes the headmage a moment to compose himself.

Your new student finds himself intimidated by this.

"Please continue to your seat, so others may be sorted." Ever the face of the school, Crowley doesn't want to let the student body realize he's just been shaken. No one's been sorted into Ramshackle in about ninety years. He knows this has to be because of the work you've been doing, but you have no magic. What have you been doing?

The other prefects are looking at you, but as Crowley tries to gloss over this strange occurrence, they begin to compose themselves as well, looking back to the mirror. The bewildered look on your face was already soaked in by all of the other dorm leaders though.

A student? Are you a real prefect now?

---

As the other students pile away after their dorm leaders, people keep giving you looks. You haven't moved from your spot. You're waiting until everyone's gone. Your lone student sits in their chair, looking around at all of the other students as they pass. Once the room is cleared out, you stand up and walk over. Crowley accompanies you.

"Ah.. hello. You're the Ramshackle student, right?" You ask, looking to him. He seems almost relieved that someone actually came to retrieve him. Though, looking you over, you seem so... Ordinary. One of the other prefects had horns. He was so sure that a dorm as exclusive as this one would be something wild and scary, but you seem so... normal.

"Yes. Are you my dorm prefect...?" He looks between you and Crowley.

You look to Crowley. "Am I?"

He muses, scratching his chin lightly. "Hmm.. I suppose you are."

You look back to your new student. "I suppose I am."

"Why.. why is it only me?" He asks, looking between you two. Isn't that the headmage? What's he doing weighing in on this matter?

"Honestly? We didn't expect my dorm to get any new students." You say, scratching the side of your head.

"Huh? Why's that?"

"See, we're not really a dorm. I mean, I suppose we are on paper.. But.. ahh.. Hmm."

Crowley sets a hand on your shoulder, pausing your explanation. "Ramshackle is a unique dorm. You're the first student who has been sorted into it for about ninety years." The student's eyes widen in surprise.

He points to you. "Then.. How does it have a Prefect..?"

"Well, your amazing prefect ___ has taken up residence in the Ramshackle dorms due to reasons that the universe has yet to enlighten us on. Even the mirror didn't know where to sort them."

You grin sheepishly. "I.. ah.. I'm not a typical student. I have no magic, and I didn't really come here of my own volition. I was scooped up from my world and taken here. I've been trying to get back ever since. That's why it's a surprise to have you, a student, now living in my dorm."

No magic? The student before you's eyes widen with more than just surprise now. "Wait, you don't have magic? And you're from another world? You can't even go back..?"

Crowley weighs in. "No, the world that ___ came from appears to be missing from even the mirror's eyes, which does beg the question of how it was able to collect them in the first place... But I assure you, ___ is more than capable to handle everything this school has to throw at you. You're quite lucky to be in their hands."

The compliments surprise you, though, it's probably just fluff to make the new kid feel more comfortable. You decide to speak your mind.

"Look, I know it's.. Not the most desirable arrangement. The other dorms probably still have room if you wanted to transfer. That mirror is all kinds of wonky as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to be trapped in this if you'd like to change dorms."

Your student furrows their brow. Everything they'd known about the mirror and this school tells them that if they were sent to your dorm, then that's where they're supposed to be. Just because it's strange doesn't mean it's wrong.. "Well, the mirror chooses the dorm that would best benefit our journey in learning, yeah?"

Crowley nods. "Yes, it listens to the heart of your magic and what dorm would best be tuned to helping you to succeed."

"Then, I guess I belong to Ramshackle. I'd like to at least give it a chance before I go throwing myself into something else."

Crowley grins. "Wonderful! Yes! Ramshackle has officially flourished under your tutilage, ___. Breathe in the rewards of your labor!"

You laugh quietly, shaking your head. Yeah, okay. "Alright then, come on. Let's head on over to our dorm. I'll show you the way." Your student looks around at all of the mirrors around. Which one could be yours? You motion for him to follow you out the door of the building. "C'mon. We don't have a mirror yet."

---

"When we get there, you're gonna meet everyone else who lives there."

"I thought it was just the two of us though."

You sigh with a chuckle, shaking your head. "Far from it. Grim is a monster that is a fellow student." A monster? Wait. As a student?? "Also, there's a few ghosts that live on the premises." Ghosts?? "Don't worry about them though. Everyone's pretty chill. Grim's a handful, but he's pretty relaxed if you get him some tuna or pet his belly. The ghosts just like to play tricks, but if it ever bothers you, lemme know." Just what exactly did he just get himself into, accepting this dorm as his own..?

As you reach the gate at the foot of the hill leading up to your dorm, he peers up at the abandoned looking building. "Oh god, please tell me you're hazing me."

"I promise, it looks a lot nicer on the inside." You laugh, opening the gate leading up. He follows after you, looking around. Cobwebs, dead plants, overgrown foliage as far as the eye can see. There appears to be a.. workshop..? Set up outside?

"What's that area right there?"

"Well, when I got here, it was a decrepit old shack of a building. I've been breathing life into it by using the dorm's upkeep budget to fix it up. Made a little arrangement with Crowley to be able to control the upkeep budget. I finally got to replacing the floors this last month, so things are lookin' real nice if I do say so myself."

When you go to open the door, your student is shocked to see how beautiful the interior is compared to the outside. "Wait... You did this? All of this? All on your own?? With no magic??" He stares at you, then back to the floors. To the furniture. If the nearby wall didn't have visible tears in the wallpaper, he'd almost not believe it. The majority of the room looks pretty brand new. The floors even sparkle from fresh oiling.

"Yeah. I mean, Grim helped a little here and there, and so did the ghosts, but they can only do so much. Their help was mostly just grabbing me tools and stuff from inside the house while I was outside because I couldn't be assed to clamber all the way inside to grab a screwdriver. I'm the one with woodworking training and the knowhow of shopping for contractors."

Your student is immediately enthralled by your handiwork, admiring the furniture. "You didn't buy this?"

"Nah. Just cleaned up and refurbished the furniture that existed here beforehand. Wanna see what they looked like before I got my hands on 'em?" You grin.

"Yeah!"

You tug out your phone, pulling up a picture of the couch that sits in the main hall. "Check it. That used to be this." Your student looks bewilderedly between your phone and the couch.

There's no way you did that.

"You're like an artificer!!"

"Hmn?"

"A craftsman of magic artifacts!"

"Oh yeah, I've heard of those. I've been looking into that kinda stuff recently, actually. Turns out, you can perform a lot of magic through crafting objects. Magestones are the magic-less person's magic craft. You just gotta charge the stones correctly and know how to build something out to allow it to best use the magestone's magic. It's a lot easier to research crafting magical objects, and I've been wondering if the path home is through crafting my own mirror to go home. I do have objects from my home that could act as a catalyst.." You get lost in your own thoughts, which your student can't really follow. But he can't argue with the results. Your work is amazing.

He's beginning to get the idea of why he was put into your dorm.

---

"This room here is mine and Grim's. All the other rooms on this floor have been cleaned out. The floors on this floor haven't been replaced yet, but we're working up to it. The ones downstairs have been replaced, but they're also pretty barren since I had to move all the furniture out. At some point this month, we'll probably have to move downstairs for a week while some guys come in and replace this floor's floors. So don't get too attached to how things are right now. Lots of changing in the works."

"Why do the floors have to be replaced?" He asks, looking around. Sure, the floors aren't new and pretty like the ones downstairs, but some TLC would probably do them some good. You kick the long hallway carpet aside to show him a massive hole in the floor where a chandlier was dropped by the ghosts when you first got here.

"We uh, don't go past this point in the hallway all that often. I'd like for new students to be able to walk anywhere in the building without worrying about their safety. The floors are pretty old anyway. I'm pretty sure they were old a few centuries ago. They're pretty overdo for replacement."

Sunny blinks. It looks like an impact. Did something happen here? Actually, now that he thinks about it, why is this dorm practically abandoned and filled with ghosts? Is there a story here they haven't told him yet..?

---

"Sunny, huh? My name's ___. It's good to have you around." You had to fill Sunny in on so much when he got here, that you've only JUST gotten to a formal introduction. He doesn't mind the informality though. You've definitely got a lot on your plate already with the renovations of the dorm. Though, it surprises him when you get up early enough to make him some breakfast the next morning. He shyly sits at the breakfast table, not really sure what to do. You give him a glance over as you start putting some food on his plate.

Setting the pan aside on a potholder, you reach over and fix up his tie. "We've only got three students who go on campus, so we've gotta try to be presentable. Let me know if you've got any problems adjusting. I know it can be pretty hard." Pretty hard is an understatement. You've probably gone through hell as a non-magical student. Sunny has been in awe of you since he saw the foyer. "Wash your dishes by hand and leave them to dry on the rack. We don't have a working dishwasher." You motion to a rack on the counter by the sink with a towel underneath it. You don't even bother to sit down, you scarf down your food while standing by the stove. Grim happily munches away at his tuna in a seat nearby Sunny as he looks around, beginning to eat his own food. It's all still pretty new to him, so you're not surprised he's taking a minute to adjust.

Still, you can't slow down much to help him. "I'm going to be solving a problem at the library today, so if you need me, I'll be there."

"Wait, what kind of problem?"

"Ahh, I think they have an infestation in one of the back rooms. Whatever the cause, Crowley was insistent that it was 'too much for him to handle' so he dropped it on my plate."

"You address the headmage so informally..?"

You laugh for a second, pausing for the first time since you got up. "Oh, yeah, dude, our dorm's unofficial name is 'Crowley's Bitches'. Every time he has a problem, he'll show up at our door and tell us to solve it. Grim, we've gotta go soon if we wanna get there in time to get to our classes afterwards."

"Our dorm acts as the Headmage's personal assistant??" Sunny's eyes widen again. That's a lot of responsibility.

"Yeah. Though, that's more of a me problem. It's because I'm staying here on his dime while I'm trapped in this world. You don't get things for free here, so, while my life incurs expenses, I pay them off by doing odd jobs. You don't have to worry about that. I mean, unless you'd like to help. I'll never say no to help."

Sunny wonders on that. With how much praise the headmage gave you upon his arrival here, being in his good graces would definitely be a positive. And, if you've got your thumb on all kinds of things in this school, he could push himself ahead by involving himself too. And no greater way to do it than to learn under someone so experienced. "Yeah, actually, I think I'd like to help out. Just consider me part of the team." He grins, flexing one arm and grabbing it with his other hand.

---

Upon arriving at the library, the librarian knows you and opens the doors, locking them shortly after you and your entourage come in. Sunny looks over the vast library in awe. It's his first time seeing it.

"Alright, so where's this.. infestation? That Crowley mentioned?" You ask, looking to the librarian getting straight to business.

"Follow me." He sighs, motioning for you three to follow him into the back. Grim glances around as you're led behind the desk. You keep your eye on him, but now you've got another person to watch. You don't know how Sunny will handle the pressure of these odd jobs, but it's nice to have someone willing to try. Did the mirror fuck up again? Or is he planning something? You catch yourself wondering on Sunny's motives, and you quietly laugh to yourself. It's funny. With how long you've lived here, you really have become accustomed to the way this world operates. Whatever the case, you're in charge, so you're sure you'll figure it out if something goes awry.

The librarian opens one of the doors in the back and you're greeted by a prompt book being jettisoned from it. You quickly dodge the projectile, seeing the dent it leaves on the wall behind you. Everyone looks to the Librarian, who stands off to the side of the room, avoiding looking in. Glancing inside, you see the disfigured face of.. A ghost. Suddenly, the headmage's request for you to get involved makes a lot more sense. The ghost screams and dives into the storage stacks of the room. You look over to Sunny to see he's frozen. Yeah, that tracks. Stepping forward, you start to walk into the room and Sunny grabs you by your sleeve. "Wait- You've got no magic-"

"Magic can only do so much anywho. C'mon. Unless... you're scared?" You give him a small, challenging grin. He's shocked. You're so relaxed. Whatever's in there is aggressive and doesn't want to be bothered, and will likely lash out at anyone that tries to get it to leave. Ghosts are one thing, but angry ghosts are another thing entirely. He's studied on them before, fascinated by the ghosts of the school. This is a bit more... exciting than he anticipated though.

You see the look in his eyes and you sigh, gently patting his shoulder. "Hey, just stay here, alright? No hard feelings if you can't go in there. Just watch." You look to Grim and he grins to you, putting on a fierce expression as you two step into the room. "Remember, no fire Grim."

"I know!!"

"I really mean it. These books are priceless."

"I'm not gonna burn anything!" The librarian watches from the doorway next to Sunny, and Sunny finds himself.. fascinated by the expression on the librarian's face. He almost looks... guilty. Books fly at you as you step into the room. Trinkets you can only presume are valuable for studying are tossed against the walls and shattered. The floor itself begins to move as the wallpaper of the room begins to tear. The ghost splatters ink against the wall that screams the word "LEAVE" in the dripping stain.

You prepare yourself for the violence, batting away books with the bat you brought as you call out to the ghost; "Look!! You're a person! So let's talk person to person, eh!?" The ghost screams audibly as it flitters through the bookshelves. One of them begins to tumble towards you off of the wall and you scoop up Grim, jumping back. "You weren't always like this, right?!" You shout amidst the chaos. "Something happened, so talk to me!"

As you speak, the librarian seems to be fiddling with something in his pocket, his eyes glued to the scene in front of him. Sunny, however, can't seem to take his eyes off of the librarian. Sunny knows when someone's hiding something, and this guy's definitely holding back some vital information. It's when the ghost begins to scream again that it clicks to Sunny's mind. Every scream is accompanied by movement in the librarian's pocket. Almost as though he's got his hand on something that's causing the ghost to lash out. Without even thinking about it, Sunny snatches at the librarian's pocket, causing the librarian to jump back.

"What do you think you're doi-" The librarian snaps, interrupted by Sunny.

"What're you doing that's pissing off the ghost?" He calls out, garnering your attention. You glance over to see the librarian yank his hand away, the glint of something shiny in his hand unmistakable.

You call out to Sunny; "Grab the artifact in his hand!" And he jumps into action without even thinking about it. "Grim, help him." Grim, glad to escape the wrath of the pissed off ghost, rushes to Sunny's side to help him. After a tussle with the librarian that takes them out of your line of sight, Sunny and Grim manage to get an artifact out of his hands, and the ghost begins to calm down. The room falls silent, telling you that Sunny's hunch was right on the nose. The question is, though.. Why? After talking it out with the ghost, you learn that the ghost is one of the ones that helps in the library sometimes, but 'help' is the key word there. He wanted to leave, and the librarian tried to tether him to the library as a permanent captive.

Out in the main area of the library, the librarian begins lashing out at Sunny and Grim. His body begins changing in a familiar way, and Sunny can't believe his eyes. You can already tell from the ghost's story where this is going.

"Holdup, I'll be right back. Please, don't cause anymore damage while I'm gone."

"I just want to go home..."

"I'll need your testimony for the headmage so that the librarian is brought to justice." The ghost is sad, but resigns to it. Maybe after this, he can finally go home. You run out to the main area of the library, where Sunny and Grim went with the librarian, and you see the librarian finish his transformation. Overblot. That certainly seems to be a reoccurring problem in this school.

You immediately begin to bark orders. "Sunny, go get help. Grim and I will keep the librarian busy. This is WAY over your head." He can't help but be amazed by how quickly you step up to the plate, unfazed by things that he was sure would haunt him in his nightmares.

The librarian begins to scream about how he has too much work on his shoulders. How it all falls to him. How he can't handle it anymore. He lashes out, sending a blast of cutting air in your direction.

Grim is about to burst into action when you grab him and hoist Sunny out of the way of the blast. "GRIM. NO FIRE."

"HE'S GONNA KILL US, ___!"

"THE BOOKS STILL MATTER, AND I'M NOT INCURRING DEBT TO THIS SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU BURNED THEM ALL." Even in the midst of this chaos, you're aware enough of your surroundings to see your effect on the world around you.

Sunny stands slowly, stepping between you and the librarian's overblotted form. "Maybe my magic is better suited for this." He says, hovering his hands outward, pen in hand. You don't even take the time to ask if that's true or not, you just switch tracks. If the kid is willing to fight, and he's not about to set the library on fire, you say let him fight.

"Change of plans then. Grim! Get help! We'll handle this as best as we can!"

"No need to tell me twice!" Grim rushes for the door. The librarian lashes out at you three with another blast of air, to which you kick over a heavy table as a barricade to give Grim a cover to escape from.

Behind your makeshift barricade, you look to Sunny. "Okay. What type of magic can you perform?" You ask, glancing over the edge of the tipped table to keep an eye on the librarian between blasts of cutting air.

"Uh.. Mm.." He raises his pen, "You're alone, and you are scared, but the banquet's all prepared- Be Our Guest!" Books and debris around you begin to dance, moving around. The table itself begins to move, surprising you. You reflexively bark orders to the table to hold its place, and it.. Salutes.. you..? But it stands firm in its position, even moving its own legs to better leverage against the blasts.

You look to Sunny in earnest surprise. This is a powerful spell.

You can't help but let a large grin spread across your lips as an "Oh hell yeah" escapes your lips. "I can work with this."

Using guerrilla tactics and dancing book ends and library ladders, you two are able to lure the overblotted librarian deeper into the stacks, catching him offgaurd from multiple angles as you take control of the field. Finally, he gets so fed up that he just begins using his personal magic to try to hurt everything that comes near him. You couldn't catch the spell, but it looked like sand is engulfing everything. Where did the sand even come from..? Is this what higher level magic looks like..?

It isn't until Grim returns with Ace, Deuce and.. Rook? That the tide of the fight shifts.

Everyone working together, you're able to wear down the librarian enough that he's burnt out his emotions before his magic has been burnt out.

He passes out and you look around at the massive mess. Ace and Deuce are high-fiving and laughing as Rook is commenting on how dastardly the beast you just hunted was, and how beautiful and impeccable your teamwork was. Sunny is exhausted. He's spent more magic in just this morning than he has in most of the exercises he's ever had before this school.

You look to his pen and can see the cloudiness in it, and you rest a hand on his shoulder. "Stand down, Sunny. You did great. Relax and rest. I'll handle the rest." He watches you in awe as.. even though you've already spent so much energy running around in warfare amidst the bookshelves, you stand tall to thank the help that came along. Deuce and Ace both grin and demand you buy them lunch and you happily agree. Rook on the other hand is now more interested than ever in your prowess in the field, and keeps suggesting you'd make a great hunt. Sunny isn't sure what that means, but it doesn't seem to be a favor you're keen on giving him.

Grim cries out that he worked hard and deserves tuna, and you agree as you start moving tables back to where they belong. Sunny is exhausted, but he knows his spell would help a lot with the cleanup. Still.. he finds himself drifting off to sleep before he can swing his pen in any way to help.

---

Sunny eventually wakes up, this time in the infirmary. You're sitting next to him. Crowley is standing nearby as well. He can tell you both were talking about something before he stirred awake. Crowley cries out in joyous lament from the state of Sunny's awakening, saddened that such a student fell so exhausted and was put in such danger under his watch. You figure he's putting on a show to try to make Sunny feel responsible for getting involved in one of your little 'odd jobs'.

"How're you doing, Kid?" You ask him, nudging his shoulder.

Sunny tiredly looks to you, then to Crowley, rubbing his eye. "Nngh.. I'm beat.."

"It was really kind of you to help out with that odd job, but, the headmage here says it'd probably be best if you didn't help on those in the future." You grin sheepishly, but are startled as Sunny shoots up, gripping your forearm.

"But, I wanted to help!"

This surprises Crowley too. He figured you had pressured Sunny into it, but it seems he was a bit more boisterous than you BOTH expected. "I.. I liked being able to be useful. I learned a lot, and, and.." Sunny tries to explain himself and Crowley smiles. From your story, this kid is the primary reason that the school even still HAS a library. Maybe the mirror seems to know what it's doing afterall.

"Alright. Okay. I involved myself because I was worried that your first day was a little TOO rough, but it sounds like you're more tenacious than I expected. Your teachers have been made aware of the situation, so please, Sunny, take the rest of the day off." Crowley's less concerned about the backlash of the kid's parents, and more concerned about the darkness clouding his magestone. He doesn't really know how to hold himself back. He's a little too eager, and that concerns him. "Your magestone is quite clouded, so you need to rest more than anything."

You immediately step up to the plate, giving Crowley a silent confirmation that you'll help your student recover from this incident; "I'll go by all your classes to get the classwork for you, so, just consider today your day off. We'll start again tomorrow, fresh as a daisy." You grin, patting Sunny's shoulder. He tiredly nods, resting back in the bed. You get up. "If you feel ready, let the nurse know, and I'll come return to walk you back to the dorm. Alright?"

Today it was just exhaustion, but, you make a note in your mind that Sunny doesn't really know how to stop himself from pushing himself too hard. You'll have to keep an eye on that.

---

"What ever happened with the librarian?" It's been a few days, and the library's been inaccessible due to repairs. Sunny asks the question over breakfast.

"Ah.. yeah, Crowley was not psyched to find out what he'd been doing to the ghost that was helping in the stacks, but he also felt responsible for all of the problems that'd fallen on the librarian's shoulders. Still, given the level of damage he did, and the fact that he endangered multiple students, it's not likely we'll see that librarian again for a while, if ever. They're probably gonna get a new one, and give them more help than they did the last one. Can't have a teacher who overblots like that instead of communicating to the headmage about their struggles."

"You seemed.. so used to it. Like nothing about any of that surprised you. Is that.. Is it common for you to deal with that kind of stuff?" Sunny's voice is slow, almost not sure how to phrase the question.

You laugh. "Yeah, you could say that. A lot of people have overblotted at the school, and I keep landing in the center of those fights. It's never my fault, it just seems that a good chunk of the things Crowley doesn't have time for are things that need the most tending to."

Sunny blinks. "The more I learn about this headmage, the more I'm surprised he's allowed to run a school. He seems incredibly irresponsible."

"Hey now, Crowley bankrolls that breakfast you're eating, so you gotta play nice. But.. I getcha. It's exhausting. I figure he's doing the best he can, but it is awfully suspicious that he is always conveniently gone when overblotting starts happening. I've had my thoughts on the matter, but, eh, I've got enough to worry about. 'Sides, it's in the job description."

"Job description?"

You grin. "Y'know. Crowley's Bitches." Sunny laughs. He gets it now. ——– Chapter End. ——– You can read the rest of this series, and other works, here!:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37540159/chapters/93698119

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