#because apparently they had a crunch week deadline

[zeke-in-devildom]

Dissonance - Chapter 23: E. J. Novak

How had it already been six months? Time was slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. Zeke had settled into his new routine so completely, that it felt strange to think that it was already half over. He never wanted this to end. Although time moving so quickly had him stressed for more reasons than his eventual return to the human world. It was getting harder to keep up with everything that he currently had to juggle. 

He was so wrapped up in studying, homework, plotting and enacting his revenge, cooking and chore duties, club activities, his reading sessions and coffee dates with Satan, gaming sessions with Levi, and spa treatments with Asmo, that his looming deadlines for his publisher had caught up to him before he had time to even catch his breath.

If all of that wasn’t enough, mid-terms were looming. It was true that he enjoyed most of his classes because the subjects were interesting and engaging - for the most part. That didn’t stop it from being stressful. No matter how much he liked learning, these were all entirely new subjects and he had started off behind all of the demon students. With Satan’s help his grades had all far exceeded the expectations laid out for him, but that had been both a blessing and curse. Lord Diavolo had decided he was doing well enough that the grading curve they had originally planned to give him was revoked.

Zeke had not been a fan of receiving a handicap in the first place, but it had been a certain safety net of sorts that he was sorely missing now that it was gone. There was a lot more pressure for him to perform well on the midterms. His success or failure would reflect upon the entire exchange program. At least the other exchange students were also under the same sort of pressure, as none of the others were being given a grading curve either. Of course they were all far more familiar with magic than he was. The only reason he wasn’t freaking out worse was because both Satan and Solomon had been spending exorbitant amounts of time tutoring him the past week as they all crunched for these exams. Even when they weren’t busy tutoring him, he was self-studying or writing well into the early morning. 

Zeke hadn’t slept in four days.

At least the clubs had been easy enough to deal with. Going with a literary club had been the correct choice. He had been introduced to a wide selection of Devildom literature and he got to spend a lot of reading time peacefully with Satan. He had learned, much to his amusement and Satan’s annoyance that he was actually a faster reader than the demon. Although Zeke envied the Avatar of Wrath’s ability to never need a bookmark.

As for the fan club, other than lots of envious looks when Levi had told them about his autographed first edition copy of The Cohen Files, that one hadn’t raised any issues. Nobody suspected him in the slightest, all he had to do was lazily analyze each book with the other members of the club. They liked to speculate about him unknowingly. It was both amusing and weird to listen to fan theories about his books and himself in person, while they were all clueless that the author was actually sitting right there with them. 

It was especially entertaining when Levi and Satan riled them all up into heated debates about such insignificant things like the gender of E. J. Novak. The fan club was torn on whether the author was male or female. Apparently he wrote the female protagonist too well, with none of the typical trappings male authors make when writing strong female characters. So clearly E. J. Novak was female. Satan was in this camp, he liked to point out that many female authors used initials in their pen names because statistically speaking male authors sold more books, so not making it obvious that it was a female writer was a strategy to get their books into more hands. In Satan’s defense, this was all true. 

Levi was of the opinion that E. J. Novak was definitely a guy. He insisted that he could tell by the writing style and pointed out that not every male writer objectified their female characters. Then there was the complete lack of romantic subplots, apparently Levi considered this one of the core pieces of evidence to support the idea that E. J. Novak was a man. Zeke had to shake his head at it, because while Levi got it right, he felt like his reasoning was awful. Just because he hadn’t wrote romance into the books that ruled out him being a woman? Levi acted like female authors only write books with romantic elements involved. What a load of shit.

It was almost enough for him to side with Satan on this trivial issue on principle, but he already felt bad deceiving them about his identity. Lying outright when he knew the answer felt a bit too wrong, so he had to be on Levi’s team of E. J. Novak being a man. He knew it irritated Satan that he wasn’t on his side, even if it was such a stupid, silly little thing. Besides, he got to to side with Satan on a lot of his other observations about his work, the demon was almost scarily good at literary analysis.

What really had shocked Zeke was all the fanfiction discussion that went on in the club. He hadn’t even realized that was a thing! Some of the stories he’d read regarding his characters - especially Sadie - had turned him several shades of red. It felt a bit strange seeing his characters in such wildly different settings and behaving in ways he’d never even considered. He didn’t begrudge the fans their fantasies, but never in his life had he been exposed to that much smut. It blew his mind. Everyone else in the club had been more surprised that he didn’t read fanfiction. Apparently even Satan read fanfiction. Levi even got pressured to show some of the fanfiction that he had written. That was eye-opening, to put it mildly.

He was getting wildly off track. The static fuzzy quality to his thoughts told Zeke that he was starting to crash, and hard. He had been trying to finish up the last few chapters of his latest book, but his mind was so sluggish that he had drifted away from writing into rambling tangles of thoughts that did nothing to help the creative process. For the first time in a very long time, his life was actually more appealing than his stories. He didn’t feel the need for the distraction into the fantastical, imaginary world he had created for himself years ago. Zeke’s real life had become a fantastical world.

It had been a long time since he had such a bout of writer’s block. Zeke couldn’t keep his mind focused on the screen in front of him. He knew that what he needed more than anything was sleep, but he couldn’t neglect this any longer if he wanted to meet his deadlines. If he didn’t get this to his editor in the next few days they might miss the projected publishing date.

It was a pity that Devildom energy drinks weren’t safe for human consumption, but he could still get coffee. Zeke wandered into the kitchen in a bit of a daze. It was early enough in the morning that he thought that the coast would be clear, everyone should still be asleep - or gaming in Levi’s case - at this hour. The kitchen wasn’t as deserted as he’d thought however. Really it was no surprise to find Beel there, raiding the fridge before breakfast. He must be awake for his morning workout.

“Morning Beel.” He greeted with a yawn as he shuffled over to the coffee maker. 

“You should be sleeping.” Zeke waved off the gentle giant’s concern, he must have been zoned out longer than he thought if it was already time for Beel to be up. Rather than feeling a sense of urgency to get back to writing he started a pot of coffee.

Lucifer would be awake soon enough to start herding them all to get ready for school, might as well make him a cup of hell coffee while he was at it. The firstborn always insisted that he preferred hell coffee when Zeke made it, and he knew about the bitterness being worse the more fond the maker was of who they were making it for. It was probably pretty bitter. He couldn’t deny he was very fond of the Avatar of Pride. Of all his demons, really.

While the coffee finished brewing he started making breakfast. It wasn’t his turn, but he was already up and needed the break from sitting hunched in front of his laptop. You couldn’t wring blood from a stone. If he wasn’t able to write, then staring at the screen wasn’t going to help. Refocusing on a new task for a little bit would probably help far more than anything else.

Beel seemed content to help too. Zeke had to keep him from eating the entire contents of the fridge anyway. Partway through cooking Asmo sauntered into the kitchen, apparently he was on breakfast duty this morning. They sent Beel off to work on getting Belphie up, while Asmo and he worked together to finish preparing the meal and setting the table before everyone began trickling in. Everyone else started showing up just as they finished laying out all the platters piled high with eggs, sausages, pancakes, and toast. He smiled at Beel carrying Belphie in.

He noticed that Satan was not there yet, but figured the bookworm had probably stayed up late reading so was running late this morning. Zeke headed back to his room, ignoring breakfast in favor of getting ready for school first. When he opened his bedroom door he froze when he saw a figure standing next to his desk, staring intently at his still open laptop.

 Even while his brain was trying to process the situation Zeke knew who it was because they smelled like old books and leather, plus he could recognize Satan’s aura anywhere. It was warm and comforting, with that biting undercurrent of anger that he couldn’t fully suppress no matter how hard he tried. Finally his mind caught up, realizing the gravity of the situation as he rushed forward and slammed the laptop closed. Zeke knew deep down that it was already too late. His heart was racing, there was no way that Satan wouldn’t have figured it out. He wasn’t sure just how long the demon had been in his room, but the Avatar of Wrath was too clever not to have put the pieces together.

Satan had startled slightly when Zeke had rushed in and closed the laptop so abruptly, the demon staring at him with wide eyes for a few moments. Zeke imagined his expression was much the same, surprised and uncertain, as they both simply stared at each other for a few moments. Green eyes broke contact first, darting to the side.

“I didn’t mean to snoop. I finished this week’s book for the literary club and I wanted to talk about it with you before anyone else. You weren’t here and the laptop was open.” Satan looked both embarrassed and guilty for a few moments, but then Zeke saw the gears turning in the demon’s head before he snapped his attention back to him. “That…that was the next book in The Cohen Files series, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Now it was Zeke’s turn to look a bit guilty. He couldn’t lie to Satan’s face with the evidence right there in front of them. “You weren’t supposed to see it.”

“I can’t believe it.” Satan still had that expression, the one where he was concentrating, deep in thought. The expression that Zeke always felt a little flustered over, because the demon was so distractingly handsome.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want anyone to know.” He knew that Levi and Satan were big fans, and he’d felt bad about deceiving them this whole time, but he had his reasons.

“It’s so obvious now. E. J. Novak. Ezekiel Jada Pendergast, you took your first two initials, and the last name?” That did have Satan looking a bit stumped, like he was fitting a puzzle together but didn’t have all the pieces.

“Novak is my mother’s maiden name.” There was no reason to try to hide it now. Satan nodded as he seemed satisfied with this new answer.

“Oh.” A look of realization, then annoyance came over Satan’s face. “Levi was right. Curses.”

Zeke stared in confusion for a moment, before snickering as he realized the same thing that Satan did.

“Yeah, sorry. You lost that one. I’m definitely a guy.” He couldn’t believe that was the first thing Satan was worried about, then again, he knew Satan really liked being right.

“I was so sure.” It was adorable when Satan pouted, he didn’t do it often, but Zeke considered it a real treat when it did happen.

“I’m sorry.” Zeke couldn’t hide that he was amused at Satan’s reaction. He was worried that the demon would have been upset at him not telling him about being the author, but instead he was more worried about being wrong about his gender. 

The amusement was short-lived, because other presences were suddenly brought to Zeke’s attention. Levi and Mammon were both standing in the doorway, watching them with wildly different expressions. 

“Woooooah!” Levi cried out finally, rushing in to grab Zeke by the shoulders and shake him a little in his excitement. “You’re really E. J. Novak?! All this time I’ve been living in the same house as a legend. This is so cool! The games based on your books are some of the hardest, best written mystery and puzzle games ever!”

“Shh! Levi, not so loud!” Zeke tried frantically to shush the otaku’s fanboy moment, but it was too late, his room was right next to the kitchen. 

The rest of the brothers had come to see what the commotion was, because they had sent Mammon to fetch Zeke for breakfast and suddenly Levi was screeching. Lucifer sighed heavily as he realized what was going on almost immediately.

“Oooh~, our darling is a celebrity and nobody told me?” Asmo practically squealed. “I can’t wait to -“

“No! No telling your followers, no tagging me, no nothing!” Zeke felt panic welling up in his chest. If everyone knew about his identity he’d have a very difficult time having any kind of private life. The whole reason he used a pen name to begin with was to keep his privacy intact. Not to mention human fans could get obsessive and crazy enough, he didn’t want to find out how bad demon ones might get.

“This is private, privileged information, and I expect you all to keep it that way. For Zeke’s privacy and safety Lord Diavolo and I have kept this hidden, even from you lot. No one breathes a word of this to anyone outside this house, am I clear?” Lucifer had been quick to try to take charge of the situation and do damage control. 

Zeke could feel Satan’s arms wrap comfortingly around him and he turned to press his face against his school jacket as he tried to take deep, calming breaths. All the brothers began trying to reassure Zeke that they would keep his secret safe after seeing him so distressed about the situation.

“Uh, where’s Mammon?” Belphie asked suddenly, and looking around they all realized very quickly that the greed demon had already bolted with his secret. Nobody had to say it. Mammon would sell that information in a heartbeat without thinking of the consequences.

#obey me #obey me oc #obey me mc #obey me zeke #obey me ezekiel jada pendergast #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me dissonance

[kisujiart]

Dev Diary: Stranded in the Stars 8: Programming, Testing and Balancing/Polishing

Programming

As our team was nearing the submission deadline for our project... there was a lot still to be done. Fortunately I have a passing knowledge of Unity and C# and started helping out our programmer.

First off, I fixed an error preventing us from making a build of the game and implemented a credit szene which would automatically switch to the main menu after a certain amount of time. Now that we could finally export the game, we officially began with player testing.

Testing

For testing, I first conducted a private testing session with a few close friends who are experienced gamers. It was a bit sobering. It took them about an hour each to complete our game which has an expected runtime of about 15 minutes. Our game was clearly too difficult and apparently quite rage-inducing. In about two days, we rushed to make some adjustments too fix the most egregious of issues before the official playtesting session. Using the initial feedback of the private testing session as a basis, we handed out a feedback sheet as well as printouts of the level so that testers could mark problem areas. This testing session had players of all skill levels and went a bit better - though the game was still too difficult overall and still a tiny bit rage-inducing. We will go into the specific feedback and the fixes further below.

Balancing/Polishing

Unfortunately at this point, a few things went wrong. The person responsible for game design and balancing went on vacation and our lead programmer stopped doing any work. Meaning that most of the bugfixing/balancing/polishing work fell on me, the only other person who was familiar with Unity. For some reason I was terrified of telling our programmer that he wasn't doing enough work, but after a few days of working on my own, I bit the bullet and asked what the heck was up. It turns out that he thought we had one more week before the submission deadline and was taking it easy. Cue a week of late nights fueled by caffeine and crunching together on Discord. On the upside, it was the best teamwork we ever had.

As per the feedback from the players I implemented the following fixes:

Some jumps seemed impossible because of the placement of the damaging spikes. Some spikes were damaging players even though they touch them. Changed the placement of certain spikes and adjusted the hit boxes of the spikes to be pixel-perfect.

If you died, you had to start from the beginning - which was very frustrating if you were already trying for an hour. Checkpoints were requested. I implemented checkpoints where player would respawn once they passed them.

The difficulty jumped too much from the 2nd to the last level. The boss enemy was too fast and almost impossible to outrun. I lowered the speed of the boss. Still challenging, but not punishing to the point of failing one single jump.

The small enemies were stationary and almost completely non-threatening. I created a behaviour script for the small enemies so that they would patrol and follow the player if close. I also tripled the damage that the player would take so that they would die after touching the small enemies three times. This encouraged players to outmaneuver the enemies using timing and to use the wall jump strategically.

The level design had some entirely useless paths. Fixed by a more strategic placement of the enemies, collectables and respawn points.

Testers found the level change by collecting the key item "sudden" and didn't understand how it narratively related to the level change. While picking up the item was still a requirement to finish the level, I implemented "teleporters" to explain the level change itself.

The text on the screen was too slow and disappeared too fast to read. I increased the text speed and let it remain on screen for longer.

The jump sound was too loud I lowered the volume of the jump.

The boss enemy was missing sound I created trigger zones so that the boss would play certain sounds when passing them.

That was how much we were able to fix just before the submission deadline.

Remaining Bugs

At this point, our game felt a lot more like a "game". Awesome!

Unfortunately, as I wasn't nearly as experienced in programming as our lead programmer, there remained a few bugs that I couldn't solve before publishing. Moreover, some of the new features introduced bugs of their own.

First of all, as it turned out, adjusting the hit boxes of the spikes to be pixel perfect didn't entirely fix the problem of players "getting caught" on them. Part of the problem was the player's square hitbox itself, which I didn't know how to fix at the time.

Also, if you revisited previous checkpoints, it would overwrite your "newer" checkpoint and it wouldn't correctly respawn the collectibles.

Further, enemies could get "stuck" between following their patrol path and following the player and just remain in place.

And these are just the big bugs that I am aware of. There are probably loads more. Looking back, a lot of those bugs were mostly due to my inexperience. I have grown a lot as a programmer since then and it's funny how much I struggled with such simple problems.

This post became entirely too long. If you made it this far, why not read the last part of the series below:

Part 9: Cover Art and Conclusion

#strandedinthestars #gamedev #unity3d #indie

[thedistantdusk]

Arcadia, Chapter 2

Here we gooooo :) Thanks again to @secretkeeper13, @accio-broom, @ginisbetterthanfirewhiskey, @remedialpotions, @not-steve42, @jamezbot, @gryffindorhealer, and the majority of the HG server for their help <3

If you’ve just arriving, here is Chapter 1. :)

_____________________

D A Y  +  T W O 

He’s driving her mad. Absolutely fucking mad.

Ginny grips the hose in an attempt to water the rose bush outside their window, but her eyes are unfocused, unseeing.

This entire thing was such a terrible idea.

She should’ve insisted on another Auror as backup on her first solo mission. Someone less attractive. Someone she hadn’t shagged up one side of the Burrow and down the next.

But the request was difficult to grant in the first place. It took Ginny a full year of documentation to prove this was a necessary use of resources. Attica (and Unspeakables in general) don’t tend to be well-liked by the older Aurors, which made Harry the best fit. The only fit. Everyone— from Kingsley to Attica to even Hermione— agreed. And even aside from the sheer convenience of it all, Ginny’s years of experience with the Thought Chamber and Harry’s ability to sniff out trouble like a niffler after gold made them a brilliant combination to tackle… this.

It’s just a pity, then, that she still finds him so bloody attractive. Even though he’s become a bit of a brooding, sarcastic mess.

Ginny blinks down at the bright pink petals, their leathery flesh beaded with water droplets. Maybe the problem’s that she hasn’t spent much time around him since then. He still comes around for Sunday roast, of course, when his work schedule permits. In spite of what Mum went through, she’d never allow Harry to feel unwelcome. It’s his house as much as theirs— and yes, Ginny still lives at home. It’s the least she can do to maintain a degree of normalcy, even though everything irrevocably changed when It happened.

Ginny’s hands begin to shake around the hose; her brain starts to spiral. The Burrow is less welcoming now. Their hugs are more forced. Their family more distant. And although everyone functions on a basic human level, Ginny knows in her gut that the remaining Weasley siblings — Harry most certainly included — are still going through the motions to cope.

And maybe it’s because she really hadn’t had a libido in nearly five years, but fuck, it hasn’t taken much to come rushing back. Her thighs press together as her head fills with another series of intrusive thoughts instead. But she can’t suppress the memory of Harry emerging from the shower this morning, his top-half dripping, his bottom-half toweled. Not that it matters much, not when she knows every fucking inch of—

“I think that bush is good now!”

Ginny jumps, a string of swears springing to her lips. “I— fuck.” She turns to the unexpected voice. “Sorry! Let me—”

But Oliver from last night merely leans over to turn off the hose. “You’ll quickly learn that sort of language isn’t great for Arcadia, Jen,” he intones, finger wagging.

Years of training allow Ginny to blush in chagrin. To shove aside the telling-off she’d have provided a long, long time ago. “Sorry.” She winces. “It’s just a habit, leftover from—”

“—London, right,” he finishes, his eyes never leaving hers. “Anyway. Listen. Sharon and I would be honored if you joined us for dinner tonight.”

“Did I hear something about dinner?” Harry strolls out of the house, the door shutting behind him with a satisfying thump. “Goodie! As my wife knows, dinner is my favorite word.” He rests his chin on her head, sliding his thumbs through the belt loops of her jeans. Ginny’s heart clenches in familiarity even as her face remains placid. They agreed to all of these terms beforehand… to feign public affection. To seem utterly smitten. It’s just funny how they’ve both relied on old habits.

Ginny reckons that makes sense, though. After all, it worked for them once.

She turns towards Harry with a pout. “But Pookie Pie, I thought your favorite word was snuggles! We certainly did enough of that last night.”

Harry’s chuckle rings out with false bravado as he tucks her hair behind her ears. “We did something, all right. Not sure if snuggling is the right word for it. What do you think, Oliver?” Harry whips around to face him. “What’s your favorite word for… marital relations?” His eyebrows waggle suggestively above his glasses; Ginny stomps on his foot to keep herself from laughing.

Oliver, however, does not find them delightful. “I think this is for you. From Mike.” He points to a box that he apparently rested on the ground while Ginny was drowning the roses.

Harry bends over to pick it up. This does nothing to distract her.

“Couldn’t Mike erm…” Ginny shakes her head to clear it. “Sorry. Couldn’t he bring it over himself? He lives just—”

“Out of town on business, I’m afraid.” Oliver’s voice turns cold as he peers at Ginny again. “He won’t be back for weeks. Months, maybe.”

Ginny makes a noise of concern and rests a fist on her hip. “Huh! That’s funny. What out-of-town business could a primary school teacher possibly have?”

Oliver’s eyes narrow, but his grin remains. “Teacher business, I guess.”

“When can we speak to someone about the trampoline?” Harry blurts, slicing the tension. “I’m missing my exercise, Ollie. It’s how I stay fit. You won’t like me when I’m not exercising!”

With that, Oliver’s grin finally fades. “Well, you can ask Mr. Gogolak, but I don’t think anything will come of it. He’s available tonight from 5 o’clock to 6:13, on the dot. He lives just up there, on the corner. Anyway, I’ll be off.” He gives a parting wave and turns to walk up the drive, but Harry isn’t done.

“Not sure how we’ll manage to make that and dinner, though,” he calls. “Don’t we have to be indoors by six?”

But it seems Oliver is absolutely intent on being elsewhere, because he opts to walk backwards and yell from the street. “Of course not!” he shouts. “Six is only the move-in deadline.” Then he barks out a cruel laugh, throwing his hands in the air. “Any idiot knows that dinner starts at 7!” With that, he sends them a final glare before lumbering away, his brown loafers crunching on the pavement.

Harry and Ginny snort in unison; if Oliver hears them, he doesn’t engage.

“See you later!” Ginny confirms, ensuring it’s loud enough for him to hear. Then she drops her voice to a stage-whisper and cups her hand into a regal wave. “Hope Sharon removes that stick from your arse before dinner tonight, you miserable sack of shit. Suck my dick!”

Harry laughs. “As much as I appreciate the support, Muffin Cakes, that’s one insult that just doesn’t work when you say it.”

And Ginny doesn’t know what comes over her next… she really, really doesn’t.

Because in the blink of an eye, she’s pushed Harry against the front door with a petulant pout. The pulsing between her legs returns with humiliating swiftness; it’s a blessing, really, that Harry’s dreadful at flirting and picking up on cues. They’re in public, but this is the furthest thing from acting.

Nonetheless, Harry’s Adam’s apple bobs as her arms drape around his neck. She watches, rapt, as his eyes darken. Apart from that one slip-up last night, he’s excelled at his job… and as she leans into his hard chest, she realizes how she really feels: she's jealous. Dreadfully jealous.

How dare he be better at this? What in hell gave him the right to soak her knickers with a single look? She’s had years of professional training and a lifetime of practice, but it comes naturally to him— this pretending shit.

And for fuck’s sake… he’s a lot better at it.

“But it’s been ages since you’ve been in my knickers, Baby Bear,” she croons, batting her eyelashes. “How would you know?”

She intends it playfully. A gentle way to put him in his place. But to her surprise, something stinging and sober crosses Harry’s face.

The moment’s over… absolutely over.

In a flash, he pushes her away and gestures at the door. After you. She nods, still turned on but now confused. The whole thing reminds her of ancient history, where she waited for him after each quidditch practice and thought, wished, prayed that he’d touch her… all while hoping to God he wouldn’t.

It takes until they’re inside for her to figure out why he’s upset.

He locks the door behind them with a wave of his wand— and when he whips around, his face is twisted into such a brooding scowl that it pins her on the spot. Shit.

“It goes without saying,” Harry mutters, voice dangerously low, “that there are some things a bloke just doesn’t forget.” He lets out a deep breath, his eyelashes fluttering. “Ok?”

Oh.

Ginny’s cheeks flush as it all comes rushing back. She’s honestly forgotten how… attached he was to that ability. How much he prided himself on being able to please her. How he worshipped her body with such respectful, hushed reverence that it still features in her fantasies.

It seems there’s a limit to his acting skills, after all. A line that he just won’t cross. She should be chuffed that she got what she wanted. Instead, her stomach throbs with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, biting her lip. “I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it.” He waves his hand over his shoulder and trudges upstairs, leaving her in hollow silence.

Right.

_________________________________

Mr. Gogolak crosses his left leg over his right and swirls his brandy tumbler. Between the ruddy patches on his cheeks and the way his words slip over each other, it’s not his first of the evening. Harry’s reminded of Slughorn. In the worst possible way.

“Anyway.” Gogolak waves at the massive tabbed binder to his left. “As the rules clearly stipulate, a trampoline would lead to other things. Unsavory things.” He raises his eyebrows and takes a sip.

Harry’s eyes flit around the room, trying to take it all in. The decor is… nice, he supposes, if you want every guest to be aware — beyond a shadow of a doubt— that You’ve Been Abroad, thanks. Multi-colored felt flower vases dot the floating shelves above Gogolak’s head, each a pop of color in a room that’s otherwise painfully beige. Scrolls hand-painted with renditions of Buddha and Lokta hang on the far wall. And above them… Harry cocks his head, puzzled, and tries to place where he’s seen that particular mask before.

“Of course,” Ginny agrees with a fervent nod. “We understand the need for decorum and cooperation, don’t we, Hen?”

“Where‘s that mask from?” Harry blurts, nudging his chin up.

Ginny rubs her temples in frustration, but if anything, Gogolak seems flattered.

“Oh! That.” His face flushes with pride as he takes another drink. “That’s a wrathful Mahakala mask. From Tibet! I bought it cheap off a street orphan during my last trip. Can’t say he had much need for it, what with being starving and living in the street.” His laugh booms over the sitting room.

Harry tries to focus. He’s there for Ginny. He’s there for Ginny. He’s only backup. But ah, bugger, after the other shit today it’s too much, and—

“Ha!” Harry returns his humorless laugh. “Isn’t poverty hilarious, Jen?”

There’s an anxious pause.

Ginny ends it with a fake giggle of her own. “As you can see, Mr. Gogolak, my husband is growing a bit testy without his exercise!” She nudges Harry in the ribs— hard enough to make her point, but not hard enough to hurt. “So if we could only have the trampoline, then—”

“‘Fraid not,” Gogolak slurs, peering down at his brandy again. “See, there’s a reason Arcadia has been named Best Village for so long: People simply love to live here!”

“Oh?” Ginny returns her teacup to the table. “Everyone loves to live here?” She rests her elbows on her knees, her voice dropping to a discreet whisper. “What about the people who’ve gone missing, then?”

At first, Gogolak is unperturbed. Then his smile deepens, his eyes traveling from Ginny’s face down to her chest. For fuck’s sake. This arsehole can’t be serious! Harry’s gut swirls with something visceral and protective. He wraps his arm around her shoulders as his hand inches for the wand in his back pocket. Ginny catches his hand on the way and interlaces their fingers with an almost imperceptible, “Shh.”

“Well, well, well,” Gogolak drawls, leaning back to full-on leer at her. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you? Should’ve known. You’re a ginger, after all.”

Wrong answer.

“Not sure what the color of her hair has to do with her question,” Harry says stiffly. It’s the politest thing he can manage. Ginny squeezes his thigh.

Gogolak faces Harry instead, his face a mask of delighted malice. “Your wife is very beautiful, Mr. Petri,” he drawls. “You must forgive an old man for noticing.”

“Pee-tri,” Harry grouses.

Is it possible to accidentally Avada Kedavra someone with your eyes? Surely he’d be forgiven for that, yeah? He counts five deep breaths, his face burning, as he waits for Ginny to take the lead.

He’s still a bit taken aback at how quickly things changed. He thought he was irritated with her earlier, but now he realizes that frustrated is a better word. They haven’t been together in ages, but she has to know what she still does to him. It wasn’t like she’d grown less beautiful. And while he’s not proud of how things ended, he’s spent the last five years taking pride in knowing her. In being her first, as primitive and knuckle-dragging as that sounds. Because no matter how bad things were, he was always able to make her…

Yeah.

He bites the inside of his cheek. Had he deluded himself into thinking it was as good for her as it was for him?

Ginny clears her throat again. “But what of the people?” she prompts. “The missing people? Like Eric Highland, who lived in our house until last August, when—”

“Oh, him!” Gogolak booms out another uncomfortable laugh and drains the rest of his tumbler. “Well, don’t tell anyone I told you this, but—” He makes a slitting motion across his throat and pours himself another drink. “Committed suicide. Quite a mess.”

Then Gogolak stills, his eyes widening; for the first time this evening, he looks vaguely embarrassed. “Oh, but not in your home, of course!” He waves his hand dismissively. “We’d never, you know, let someone move in after that. Would affect property values, you see.”

Harry’s heart pounds in his ears as Ginny clenches his hand, for once. He wonders if he’s ever given less of a shit about property values.

Another span of uncomfortable silence stretches between them… but this one grows more furious and heated with every second. The version of her he knew before would have Bat Bogeyed this wanker before she took a breath. But everything’s different now.

“That’s… not the preferred term,” Ginny finally manages, her voice strained. Harry grips her hand more tightly; that odd rush of pride returns. He knew she’d say something. There’s not a single version of her that would let that go.

Gogolak’s brow furrows. “What do you—”

“—Took his life,” Ginny interjects, her voice ringing with the righteousness Harry only dimly recognizes from the woman he knew before. “Or died by suicide. Or had terminal depression.”

He holds her hand even tighter as she draws a deep breath, shifting in her seat. Get him, Gin. Get the bastard. Whatever you need, I’m there.

“Committed is a word that… implies a crime,” Ginny finishes. But her words sound careful now. “It just adds to the stigma that people with mental illness are problematic. Words mean things. So.”

Gogolak presses his lips into a thin line. “Forget I brought it up.”

“I will,” Ginny says coolly.

Ginny hadn’t thought much could be worse than the meeting with Mr. Gogolak. Unfortunately, dinner with Sharon and Oliver is proving her wrong.

“This is free-range chicken, of course,” Oliver drawls, gesturing towards their plates. “Got them at the organic market. Anything for health!”

They’d already been treated to iceberg lettuce salads and glasses of generic Merlot. Perhaps she should have anticipated chicken breast and rice as the thrilling main course.

Harry cuts his chicken breast with a sigh. “That’s a pity, Oliver. We all know that caged chickens are tastier!”

Ginny muffles a snort with a cough and reaches for her glass of wine.

Sharon pauses, fork mid-way to her mouth, to peer at Harry, bleary-eyed and confused. Oh, for fuck’s sake; what was it about suburbia that removed one’s ability to recognize a joke?

Oliver changes the subject before Ginny gets the chance. “Where did you two meet, anyway?” he grunts. “And how long have you been married?”

Ginny smiles, preparing the canned response they practiced for months. They met in uni through mutual friends. They both work in computers, and last year, they finally realized it was time to leave the big city.

Harry shatters all of that with three words.

“Magic camp, actually!” he announces, throwing an arm around Ginny’s shoulders.

Fuck. She analyzes her chicken with newfound intensity and tries to imagine something sad.

“Huh,” Oliver says flatly. “Wouldn’t have taken either of you for magicians.”

Sharon has the grace to act embarrassed. “Now now, love,” she chides, reaching for the breadbasket, “I’m sure people have loads of hobbies that aren’t always obvious to everyone!”

“Exactly!” Harry grins and reaches for a piece of baguette. “Besides, it’s mostly Jenny who’s mad for it. Card tricks, pulling bunnies from hats, sawing women in half. Even—” he pauses for a dramatic gasp— “magic wands! You name it, she loves it.”

“Well!” Sharon raises her eyebrows; it’s clear she’s feigning being impressed. “If I’m ever in need of disappearing something, I’ll know who to call!”

Aha! The perfect opening!

“Speaking of disappearing,” Ginny starts, as casually as possible, “we checked with Saint Julian’s Primary. It’s not true Mike left on business.”

Sharon’s smile freezes and melts with such speed that Ginny feels a pang of sympathy. Poor Sharon. She’s really just doing her best to be a pleasant hostess. It’s Oliver who has the clear ulterior motive.

The man in question takes another sip of wine, unfazed. “And why did you have interest in contacting a primary school in the first place? Bit weird for a grown adult, that.”

Harry releases another fake chuckle. “Oh, Oliver, you’re such a prankster!” He bites off some bread. “Surely you’re not turning the tables on my wife and accusing her of being the weird one. After all, all she did was ask about the whereabouts of a lovely member of our community. Right?”

He gives Oliver such an exaggerated wink that even Ginny almost believes him. “And besides…” Harry’s hand wraps around her shoulder again. “Do you reckon we should tell them?” he murmurs, voice laden with his expectation.

Ginny rolls her eyes, fully intent on a thin-lipped, silent warning about making shit up… but Harry’s earnest expression stops her. His green eyes blink behind his glasses, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned. Before she knows what’s happening, one of his warm hands cups her chin while the other comes to rest on her stomach.

Oh. She sucks in a breath, her heart pounding— because for a moment, she forgets where she is. She forgets they’re faking. She forgets they split up and chose separate paths, that they weren’t looking through a portal of what could have been, should have been, before their lives turned to shit.

“Not yet, of course,” Harry murmurs, appearing for all the world like he’s drinking her in as his fingers tap at her stomach. “But soon. We hope.”

And with that, he abruptly clears his throat and turns back to the Skinners. “Anyway, that’s why we called Saint Julian’s,” Harry adds, nonchalantly as you please. “Always good to be prepared, eh?”

“Oh, how exciting!” Sharon cries, clasping her hands together. “And yes, I agree— preparedness is key.”

“Knew you’d be happy for us,” Harry says with another wink. “Quite an exciting time, I’m sure you understand.”

It’s then that Ginny finds her voice. “So. Erm,” she starts, trying to focus. “They hadn’t heard from him. Mike. The school, I mean.” She takes another sip of wine to get her bearings back. “Any idea where he could’ve gone? You understand why we’re a bit worried, especially if we’re planning to—”

“No,” Oliver snaps, nostrils flaring. Sharon’s fork clatters to her plate; if swearing were allowed in this house, Ginny’s confident she would’ve let one slip. “I don’t understand, and you’ll find that snooping isn’t a past-time I appreciate,” Oliver finishes, drawing himself up taller to puff out his chest.

Ginny lets out an incredulous chuckle. “But Oliver… this is a matter of safety. We’re worried about our neighbor.”

“Yeah, Ollie-O!” Harry clucks his tongue, relaxing further into his chair. “Perhaps Arcadia isn’t as perfect as we were led to believe.”

Oliver just fixes them both with a stern glare. “Nope,” he says flatly. The p pops. “You’re wrong. Per usual.”

For six seconds, the four of them sit in painful, frigid silence. Ginny feels Harry’s hand reach behind him… inching closer to his wand...

“Jenny!” Sharon finally chirps, her voice a falsetto. Oh, thank fuck. “I need to walk the dog. Would you join me?”

___________________________

Captain Bone’s toenails tick on the pavement as Sharon holds his lead. Ginny peers at him with unexpected affection as he prances beneath the street lights. Dogs are too high-maintenance for her to even consider, but something about this one is undeniably appealing. As if he hears her, Captain Bone turns to Ginny with a slobbery grin.

Sharon laughs. “He likes you. He’s a sucker for a pretty girl.”

Ginny scratches beneath the thick leather collar with Captain Bone emblazoned on a bronze plate. He throws his head back for more access. Poor Captain Bone. The whole collar looked horribly uncomfortable. “I like him too,” Ginny agrees as he flounces away. “I’m afraid work keeps me too busy for a dog, though.”

Sharon waves this away. “Nah. I’ve seen the way Henry stares at you.” She flashes a knowing smile as they continue strolling, side-by-side. “I reckon if you really wanted a dog, he’d oblige.”

Captain Bone halts, mid-step, and picks up his leg. Sharon removes a waste bag from her pocket.

“You’re probably right,” Ginny mutters. She’s not sure why that feels like admitting to a scandal.

Sharon sighs. “The way he looks at you. The way he touches you. Like he’s holding the whole world in his hands.” Her voice grows wistful, distant; Ginny has a feeling she’s not actually talking about Harry at all.

“Well, we are newlyweds.” Ginny mashes her kitten heel — a clothing acquisition specific to this assignment — into the pavement. “I’m erm. Sure that’ll change.”

But Sharon just stares at Captain Bone as he does his business. “Maybe,” she says softly. “But I don’t reckon Oliver ever looked at me quite like that.”

Ginny blinks at Sharon beneath the streetlight, the fluorescent throwing her features into sharp relief. Wrinkles fold the corners of her eyes. Bits of gray sprout at her scalp beneath the warm chestnut color. Her smile may have been natural once, but now it’s forced. Uneasy. Ginny grimaces. This poor woman… imagine thinking you couldn’t do better than a wanker like Oliver.

“Shit!” Sharon swears, ripping Ginny from her reverie— and soon, she sees why. Captain Bone charges down the street, his lead scraping the ground like a limp noodle. “I wasn’t holding him tightly enough,” she whispers, horrified. “I’ll have to—”

“No,” Ginny says, taking off her heels and thrusting them into Sharon’s arms. “Let me!” And with that, she’s off, bare feet slapping the pavement.

“Don’t blame you for trying to get away,” Ginny mutters, rounding a corner. “The place is bloody creepy. But next time, Captain Bone, could you do this in broad daylight? Nighttime ‘round here is—”

Wait.

Ginny stops, dead in her tracks. A weird sensation creeps over her, crawling against her skin. All the street noise vanishes. Crickets stop chirping; wind stops whistling. She looks around, panic rising in her throat, but nothing looks amiss. She can’t shake it, though… their eerie, numb ringing that fills her head, and—

Like a thunderclap, it all comes back. The faint wind returns. Bugs resume their buzzing. The electric lamppost makes a dull crackling just above her.

Weird. Very fucking weird.

Luckily, Ginny specializes in weird; in the aftermath of whatever the hell that was, she’s more confused than frightened. She takes a few more shaky steps, making every observation she can (temperature, cloud pattern, weather conditions, insect movement)... and that’s when she spies something glinting to her left. Something golden and stuffed in a storm drain.

No. Ginny’s heart pounds as she rushes over, sinking to her knees. It can’t be…

But the closer she gets, the clearer it is: Mike’s chain necklace… the medallion of Saint Julian. Right beside Captain Bone’s pretentious leather collar. For the first time, fear floods her stomach. She surreptitiously reaches for the wand tucked into her waistband. “Accio necklace.” It soars through the gate and into her hand just as Sharon’s footsteps round the corner.

Ginny shoves the necklace into her bra— and it’s only then she realizes that there must’ve been something strange and slimy hanging from it, because whatever the fuck that was is now pressed to her right nipple.

Blech. It takes every bit of her willpower not to shudder and gag. She manages to school her features into innocent concern as Sharon finally catches up.

“Well,” pants Sharon, hands on her thighs, “did you find him?”

“No,” Ginny laments, genuinely upset. She gestures towards the storm drain. “But for some reason, his collar’s down there.”

Even beneath the streetlamps, Sharon’s face turns white.

______________________________

Harry’s back muscles contract in agony as he hunches over the laptop. This whole assignment is a painful reminder that he’s not as young as he used to be. How many hours did he spend snoozing on the lawn at Hogwarts without so much as an ache? But a single bloody night on these shit couches, and he’s popping Paracetamol like sweets. He shifts in place; must be time for another dose.

“Hear anything?” Ginny emerges from the walk-in closet in a towel turban and fluffy white dressing gown, two evidence bags in her hands.

Harry glares at the laptop screen and tries very hard not to remember that one of those bags contains a lacy black bra— one he definitely hasn’t seen before. For the past hour, he’s been in an envious haze of wondering if she bought it for the mission or bought it to wear for someone else.

Either way, it consoles him that deep down, she’s still Ginny; she took this necklace and shoved it into her bra without letting on that something vile and gross was pressed to her ti—

He shakes his head to clear it, but that hurts his neck. For once, though, he embraces the pain. Anything to shift his focus.

“From the props department? No.” Harry sighs and retrieves the medicine bottle from his luggage. “I swear, I have no idea who they got to make the moving boxes and pick the couches, but I’m fairly sure Victoire could do better.”

Ginny scoffs at this. “Well, of course Vic could do better. She’s the most perfect, adorable human alive,” she says fondly, tossing the evidence bags in the transporter box.

It’s plain cardboard, easily disguised as a standard moving box. But with three taps of her wand, the bags evaporate, presumably materializing in a Ministry lab somewhere. Not that Harry cares about the specifics. This is a key example of the sort of detail that’s less and less intriguing the longer he holds this job.

“But I was actually asking if you’d heard anything about Mike and — hey, what are you doing?”

“Paracetamol,” Harry mutters, popping open the bottle. “I’m getting old, Ginny,” he warns, rising to his feet with an exaggerated grimace. “Dunno why you thought it would be a good idea to go on a mission with an old man.”

She rolls her eyes and walks into the bathroom. “You don’t need to be so bloody noble. Please join me on the bed. We could make it longer, even, if you—”

He clears his throat to cut her off. That would be a terrible idea on all counts. Silence on the other side of the door tells him that Ginny either realizes this or chooses not to press the issue. Good...

“Erm. There’s no hits on Mike,” Harry calls into the bathroom. “I reckon he’s dead, Ginny. Credit cards and car haven’t been touched.”

The tap turned on behind the door. “Can’t say I’m shocked,” Ginny admits, voice muffled, “but— holy hell, who taught you how to squeeze toothpaste?”

Harry smirks and returns to the computer. “Myself, probably.”

Ginny lets out another irritated groan. “And the toilet seat’s up!” She strides out of the bathroom. “Strike two!”

Harry hears the distinctive sound of clothing hitting the floor beside her bed but wills himself not to turn around, not to turn around, not to—

“Well.” Ginny sucks her teeth as the bedding rustles. “I suppose I should take all of that as a good sign, really. You clearly don’t have girls in and out of your flat.”

Oh?

Harry’s heart thunders in his ears, his stomach flipping in hope. She takes that as a good sign? Really? He glimpses over his shoulder before remembering he’s not supposed to look.

And just as quickly, he regrets it.

Because Ginny’s sprawled back against the bed, her face so white that she nearly blends into the linens, but his eyes aren’t too focused on her face. They’re drawn down, down, down… down to her creamy chest, dotted with chocolate freckles. Down to her breasts, which he definitely still knows every inch of, even as they rest beneath a black lace vest he hasn’t seen before. Down to the shorts that hug her hips and graze the tips of her thighs… the same thighs he spread open and dipped his head between as she tugged on his hair, her cries breathy and panting in the garden’s evening mist.

Ah, fuck. That one does it. Harry adjusts his basketball shorts as discreetly as possible, but another glimpse at her face tells him he didn’t need to worry.

“I can’t believe I said that,” she whispers, eyes filled with horror.

Harry clears his throat. He honestly forgot she said anything. Now he just feels guilty for eyeing her up while she spiraled.

“I’m so… fuck. This is so unprofessional.” She sinks her head into her hands. “Please, Harry, forget that I said anything. I’m so sorry. That was—”

“It’s forgotten,” he rumbles, his voice deeper than he realized. “Legitimately. I’ve already forgotten it.”

She shoots him a weak smile through the slits of her hands. “I know you haven’t. But thanks for saying it.”

Harry offers his best expression of bafflement as he picks up a pillow from the end of her bed. “Haven’t a clue what you mean, Unspeakable GW. See you at 0-700 hours.” He stops halfway out the door and gives her a military salute. “Unless, of course, you decide to start a bit later,” he adds seriously, “in which case I’ll see you… erm. 0-whenever-the-hell-you-wake-up-hours.”

Ginny giggles, settling against the pillows again.

“Thanks,” she says after a moment, peering at her cuticles. “For… everything. And especially for forgetting—” She makes a vague hand gesture as her cheeks flush the most fascinating shade of pink.

Harry stills, one hand on the doorknob.

He wants to make her feel better… but really, it’s more than that. He wants to tell her that his heart still jumps into his throat when he hears about an Unspeakable being injured on the job. He wants to admit that he avoids Sundays at the Burrow not because he stopped caring, but because he cares too much. He wants to confess, in a rush of passion, that she wasn’t just his first: she’s his only. That he reckons she’ll always be his only. That exchanging work for Them was the stupidest thing he ever agreed to, regardless of the circumstances.

Oh, and of course, that he still fucking loves her. Harry rubs his forehead, frustration gnawing at his stomach. Why in hell did he admit that to himself? You never admit that to yourself. What an idiot.

Still, they have a mission… a moronic, suburban mission filled with every literal and metaphorical breed of Karen imaginable. But as worthless as Harry considers this whole assignment, her neck is on the line if they come up empty-handed. And she values her assignment— and her neck, he reckons— quite a bit.

So he makes the choice to both reassure her. And to be foolishly honest.

“Erm… for what it’s worth?” Harry croaks, staring down the dark corridor to avoid meeting her eyes. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted in my bedroom, anyway.”

Before she can reply, he closes the door and walks away. His cheeks burn as he pads downstairs, but Harry knows it’s best to leave it, really. To save them both the awkwardness.

Even if it means sleeping on this shit couch forever.

#harry/ginny fanfiction #harry potter fanfic #x-files #canon compliant #au

[lunalovvvess]

I JUST mopped

Summary: based off of this ask/answer from @christhebish​ and @himbohargreeves​

Warnings: mentions of blood, cops, guns, and knives

•••

You really didn’t mind being the night shift manager. Really. Sure, the cafe was in a sketchy part of town, and yeah, the odd drunk person threw up on the floor, but you and your crew could handle it.

After all, you handled Rex’s stalker situation, Lisa breaking her water mid-shift, AND the Espresso Machine Fire of ‘17. You could handle a lot, but apparently your mother couldn’t handle going to your cousin’s wedding alone, and insisted you go as her plus one to the wedding. That was in the Appalachian Mountains.

You lost a week of work (thankfully, Rex kept the place running but still), and when you finally trudged back to the cafe, you were just hoping that the floors had been recently mopped. You did not expect to see Rex leaning over the counter, making heart eyes at the guy in the corner booth. You bump shoulders with him in your way past.

“Where’s Kendra?”

Rex finally looks at you.

“Hello to you too. She’s making out with her girlfriend. Don’t worry, she still has like, 10 minutes of her break left. How was the wedding?”

You tie your apron around your waist, double checking to make sure all your stuff was still in the pockets.

“Glad to see things haven’t changed. And the cake was made of fondant.”

Rex scrunches his face as he grabs a spray bottle.

“Gross. And there has been a new change around here.”

You don’t look up from the clipboard in your hands, skimming the supply lists.

“Oh?”

There’s no answer from Rex, but the sound of footsteps approaching the register makes you look up.

The guy from the corner booth is standing at the counter, and he’s, well, you understand Rex’s heart eyes. He also has a nasty looking black eye, but it’s nothing you’ve never seen before. Rex has noticed him by now, and practically skips to take his order.

“What can I get you handsome?”

The guy clears his throat awkwardly.

“Can I, uh, get a coffee?”

You tune out the rest of the conversation, trying to figure out how your crew used a month’s supply of caffeine shots in a week. Did the university have surprise exams again?

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by Kendra’s voice.

“Welcome back. You’ve already seen Rex drooling over the new regular?”

She’s washing her hands as you turn to her.

“Yeah, now mind explaining to me how we’re down a months supply caffeine shots?”

Kendra grins, tightening her apron.

“Okay so remember that robotics contest? Well they suddenly moved their deadline back a week, so we had...”

•••

Things settled back into a routine pretty quickly. You poured coffee, served danishes, kicked out influencers, and generally just tried to make sure the place couldn’t be shut down by the health department. The only addition was the new regular.

Every night, without fail, the guy showed up, usually with a new cut, bruise, or bloodstain, and ordered a coffee. Then, he sat in the corner both, while Rex made lovesick sighs in his direction.

Two days in, you asked him why he didn’t talk to the guy. Rex takes the opportunity to drape himself dramatically over the display case.

“I did! I’ve flirted with him, did the Elle Woods bend n’ snap, I even offered him my number! Do you know what he did?”

You don’t even get to answer before Rex barrels on.

“He didn’t even notice! He told me his phone was broken!”

“And you believed him?”

“Lisa saw him toss a broken phone in the trash in his way in. She didn’t tell me until afterwards and now I’m too embarrassed to face him. Do you think I should transfer to the day shift?”

You roll your eyes, and hand Rex a mop.

“Don’t you dare. If you leave me by myself, I’ll throw away your comic books.”

Rex whines, but he takes the mop.

•••

Thankfully, the crush only lasts another week. Rex gets a glimpse of the new delivery man and has his number three days later.

The regular (no longer new) still comes in, battered and bloodied. But he never got any on the floor so you didn’t mind too much. You were curious, sure, but not enough to be creating theories like Kendra was.

Speaking of Kendra, her break was over 15 minutes ago. You step away from the counter to find her when the regular walks in. Well, limps in.

He looks surprised to see you at the register which is... fair. Usually it’s a fight between Rex and Kendra to take his order. Rex, so he could ogle on the clock, and Kendra, so she could try and confirm whatever theory she’s come up with this week. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice.

You’re staring, specifically at the growing bloodstain on his leg. It’s okay, he’s also staring at you. A beat passes before he clears his throat.

“Can I get a coffee?”

You nod.

“Yeah. That’ll be 3.50.”

He hands you a crumbled up five.

“Keep the change.”

“Thanks.”

Your voice is sarcastic, but his money is genuine, so he gets his coffee and settles himself into his usual booth with a pained grunt.

You, very kindly, ignore it, and go about hunting down your wayward crew member.

•••

You had JUST mopped the floors.

Which is not the best thought to be running through your head during a robbery but there it is. The people holding you and your crew at gunpoint had tracked crud all over the floor. The floor that you literally JUST mopped.

“Eyes on me!”

The gunman in front of you shouts for your attention. You stand in front of your crew, and straighten up. Gently, you move your hand out of Rex’s and untangle Kendra’s hand from your apron ties. They’re scared, and you are too, but this is your place, and you’re not about to let a guy wearing pantyhose over his face tell you what to do.

“Give me all the money in the register!”

You were expecting that, and move towards the register. The guy watches you, but his hands are shaking. His partner is no better, but he still has a gun pointed at your crew.

It’s still early in the shift, so the stack of cash you have for them is... tiny. When you place it on the counter, their jaws drop.

“That’s it?”

You nod.

“Day shift clears out their profits before we get here. This is all we’ve made.”

They don’t like that, and the guy closest to you levels his gun to your face. Your eyes cross trying to look at the barrel.

“Where’s the safe.”

Rex barks out a laugh, but quickly smothers it behind his hands. The gun, and the person holding it, comes closer, pressing against your forehead.

“Why’s he laughing?”

You ignore the cold metal, and focus on keeping the shakes you feel in your hands out of your voice.

“We don’t have a safe.”

You feel the gun press harder against your forehead when the sound of breaking glass draws everyone’s attention.

Before you can see who it was, a knife whizzes past and jabs itself into the arm that’s holding a gun to your forehead. The guy barely has time to scream before another one lands itself in his leg. He drops, and you take the opportunity to duck behind the counter with the rest of your crew.

There’s more screaming, and the sound of punches being thrown, but no gunshots. You peek above the counter, ignoring Kendra’s whispered protests.

A figure in black is grappling with one of two gunmen. The other is yelling and holding his leg... which is bleeding on your floor. Damn it. A grunt draws your attention and you see the person in black take an elbow to the gut. You wince in sympathy.

The other gunmen is attempting to get up now, and you see that your savior(?) has their back turned. You quickly reach for the tip jar, heavy with coins and made of hard plastic , and push it as hard as you can across the counter. Luckily, it rockets across and falls on the gunmen’s head, knocking him out. Even better, it doesn’t break.

The noise catches the attention of the person in black, and when you get a glimpse of his face you have to hold back a yelp. Because you recognize him. You frantically reach behind you and tap your crew.

“Come look, quickly!”

Lisa, the reasonable one, shakes her head and you notice that she’s typing frantically on her phone. Good.

Rex and Kendra squish up beside you, and peek over the counter with caution. Their eyes widen when they see what you’re talking about. There, in a tiny domino mask that does NOTHING to hide his identity, is the regular.

Rex groans, while Kendra cackles (quietly).

“You owe me ten bucks and a frappe!”

You pull them back behind the counter, and Lisa rolls her eyes at the three of you.

“I talked to the owner, and he said that we don’t have health insurance so we should try not to get shot.”

The whoop of a siren interrupts Lisa, and you all groan in unison. There’s the sound of glass crunching, and you peek over the counter and come face to face with the regular. He stares awkwardly, and the police lights shine over his face. You have to stop yourself from asking if he wants his usual. Instead, you smile at him.

“Thanks.”

The regular nods, and looks around. The way he came in now has cops, so you helpfully point to the back entrance.

Lisa taps you to get your attention, and when you look back, he’s gone.

•••

You’re back in business the next day, with plywood over the window and a floor cleaned by the day-shift.

The regular walks in, as usual, and comes up to the register. You’re glad Rex and Kendra took their breaks at the same time, because the regular looks like he’s trying super hard to be casual.

“Can I get a coffee?”

You nod. He pays, gets his coffee, and walks to his normal booth. It’s business as usual, except for the fact that you now know he runs around at night with knives.

You’re so lost in thought that you don’t notice that another person is at the register. They clear their throat and you look up to see them flashing a badge.

“Can I speak to the manager?”

You raise an eyebrow and look down at your name tag that clearly states ‘manager’.

“Speaking. Is this about last night?”

The cop?detective? nods and whips out photo from his pocket.

“We’ve apprehended the suspects but there’s evidence that there was a person of interest on the scene last night.”

You stare at him blankly, until he gives a frustrated huff and practically shoves the photo in your face.

“Have you seen this man?”

You look at the photo. It’s definitely the regular. Rex and Kendra come in while you’re looking, and you turn to them.

“He wants to know if we’ve seen this guy.”

They both look at the photo, and shake their heads. You turn back to him.

“No one’s seen that guy. But we were behind the counter for a bit.”

The man shoved the photo back in his pocket with his badge, red in the face.

“Someone from the station will be in touch.”

He storms out without a glance. Rex and Kendra go to wash their hands and clock back in. You make a cup of coffee, and walk towards the corner booth.

The regular looks up as you get closer. You set the coffee down in front of him.

“I didn’t pay for this.”

Shrugging, you turn to go back to the counter.

“I know. Consider it a thank you.”

You don’t see his reaction, but when you get back to the counter he’s still staring at the coffee in shock.

Heading to the back for your break, you bump shoulders with Rex.

“I told you, the night shift isn’t so bad.”

#diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves/reader #diego hargreeves x reader #diego hargreeves/you #diego hargreeves x you #the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy fic #i am clawing my way out of hiatus lads

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Symmetry Magazine The problem-solver: Cosmic inflation By Sarah Wells Just over 40 years ago, a new theory about the early universe provided a way to tackle multiple cosmological conundrums at once. For Alan Guth, insight into the origins of the universe started in a Cornell University lecture hall in the fall of 1978. It was that semester that Guth, then a postdoc, attended a series of talks by astronomer and physicist Robert Dicke. In his lectures, Dicke introduced a critical cosmological question that was eating away at the theory of the Big Bang: the flatness problem. The flatness problem asks why the universe looks the way it does. The density of matter and energy around just after the Big Bang should have determined the universe’s future shape, and the parameters that would produce a flat universe—as opposed to a curved one—were extremely narrow. And yet, as far as we can measure using several different methods, our universe is almost perfectly flat. Just dialing the density slightly up or down, at very early times, would have resulted in a universe very strongly curved in one direction or another. Also, perhaps troublingly, either of these options could have precluded our existence. In the first second after the Big Bang, if the universe had been less dense “by just one digit in the 14th decimal place,” Guth says, it would have been largely empty. This is because there would have been less mass to put the brakes on its expansion. On the other hand, a slightly denser universe would have expanded too slowly, leading it to collapse on itself in a “Big Crunch.” This kind of precise fine-tuning seemed peculiar, Guth says. Nevertheless, he initially brushed the problem aside to pursue work on a different one: magnetic monopoles. Popular theories posited that the early universe should have produced an enormous number of heavy particles, including magnetic monopoles. Unlike the dipole magnets we know today—which have “north” and “south” charges on opposite ends—a monopole can have just one, either a “north” or a “south” charge, but not both. These distinctive particles should have both proliferated and stuck around; we should still be able to find them today. But physicists have yet to encounter even one. Guth, along with then fellow Cornell postdoc Henry Tye, explored why this might be. Tye and Guth thought extreme supercooling could explain the universe’s apparent lack of magnetic monopoles. As Guth explains, the monopoles would have formed when twists in a chaotic quantum field became frozen at a phase transition. However, if the phase transition were delayed by extreme supercooling, the twists could have smoothed out before they were frozen, resulting in the absence of monopoles. It was only when rushing toward a deadline on the project, more than a year later, that Guth says he suddenly saw a crucial connection between this idea and the flatness problem. “Henry was preparing to leave for a six-week trip to China, so we were hurrying to finish the paper before he left,” says Guth, who by then had moved on to a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (then called the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). “But before he left an important thing happened, which is that he said we should look at what effect the extreme supercooling would have on the expansion rate in the universe. “So I went home one night at the beginning of December to work out the equations that describe how the expansion rate in the universe would be affected by the supercooling of the matter,” Guth says. “And it was immediately obvious that it would affect the expansion of the universe tremendously. It would drive the universe into a period of exponential expansion, which is what we now call inflation. And the same night that I realized that this exponential expansion would also give a solution to the flatness problem.” According to the theory of inflation, the expansion rate of the universe exploded in its earliest moments and then slowed. This happened as a quantum field called the inflaton field underwent a transition that pushed things apart before settling into a phase of normal gravity. The first part, the rapid expansion, would have diluted any matter and energy already present when inflation started. The second part would have released a new batch. Luckily for those of us who appreciate the universe as it is today, the energy released was just the right amount to drive the universe toward flatness, Guth says. In addition to offering plausible solutions to the flatness and monopole problems, inflation also helped explain a third problem: the horizon problem. The horizon problem comes from our observations of the cosmic microwave background, or CMB: the afterglow left by the early universe’s first freed particles of light, explains Nobuchika Okada, a professor of physics at the University of Alabama. Essentially, scientists have observed that the CMB is very nearly the exact same temperature in all directions. This was considered strange because the parts of the universe at opposite edges of our “horizon”—as far as we can detect from our vantage point on Earth—were too many lightyears apart to ever have communicated with one another. They should not have been able to settle into an average, uniform temperature. Inflation suggests that the entire visible universe once existed as a single, contained region before the inflaton field drove it into expansion. This shared proximity of origin would explain how now disparate parts of the universe could have once mingled, Okada says. In January 1981, Guth published a paper titled “Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems.” It has since been cited about 13,000 times. In 2002, Guth shared the Dirac Prize for the development of the concept of inflation with physicists Andrei Linde and Paul Steinhardt. In 2012, Guth and Linde received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the innovation, and in 2014, they, along with Alexei Starobinsky, were awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. Guth is now the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at MIT. The theory of inflation has been widely celebrated, but a theory alone isn’t enough to close the case on the mystery of the early universe. That’s where research like that of Eva Silverstein, a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, comes in. She works to come up with ways to test inflation theory. Silverstein uses ancient data sources—like the CMB—to try to uncover the mechanisms behind inflation. In particular, Silverstein’s work uncovers how the mechanisms of inflation may be consistent with the tenets of quantum gravity. This quantum gravity framework can help explain observational data of inflation’s energy plateau, she says. The CMB is of great interest to scientists investigating the theory of inflation. The rapid expansion should have produced gravitational waves, which would have left a unique pattern in the CMB called B-mode polarization. In 2014, the BICEP2 experiment announced that it had observed this pattern, but scientists later walked back their confidence in the result. Experiments are still searching for B-mode polarization in the CMB. For his part, Okada looks for ways to discover the inflaton field at particle accelerators. Guth says he isn’t sure we’ll ever be able to find inflatons, which might have decayed entirely during inflation. But, Silverstein says, if peering back to the very moment of inflation does turn out to be forever off limits, that’s okay. “There is a limit to the data and a causal limit to what we can see in the universe consistent with the finite speed of light,” Silverstein says. But “it is amazing how much we can see and deduce, so this remaining uncertainty is not the end of the world.” In fact, it’s only just the beginning. Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Tara Kennedy

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #news

[cuddlepilefics]

Sprinkles and Cream

Fandom: Stray Kids

Sickie: Jisung

Caregiver: Hyunjin

 Noone’s POV.:

To say Jisung had a bad day would have been an understatement. He was the only member who had been called into the studio on their off day and not for something good. The producer had reviewed the rap lyrics Jisung had written and there wasn’t a single line he didn’t tear apart. With each passing minute the young rapper became more frustrated. Apparently, the hours of work and the effort he had put into writing his lyrics were all for nothing. Not only was he frustrated, he was also hurt. The words had all come from heart and having them dismissed that harshly broke the boy’s heart. He’d have to start all over again, with a lot more pressure too because the deadlines were much closer now. Besides having an already packed schedule, he’d also have to come up with new lyrics. He didn’t even know if he could think of different lines after he had already spilled his heart over the pages but he nodded along with the producer and bowed politely, taking the papers covered in red marker and promising he’d do better. Being the professional he was, Jisung held it together as long as he was in the studio but the second he was dismissed, he hurried to the bathroom, shoving the crumpled up lyric sheets into his back-pocket.

Hiding in one of the stalls for the fear of someone witnessing him cry, he took out his phone texting their leader, who had helped him with the lyrics, revising and rephrasing. He didn’t want to make a phone call, not trusting his voice not to break and give away the fact that he was crying. Chan was understandably stunned that the other’s entire lyrics got rejected. He had read over them multiple times and was satisfied with the way they fit into the entirety of their song. Being a composer and songwriter himself, the older boy knew that his dongsaeng’s word came from heart and held a strong meaning for the other. Knowing just how much Jisung had to be hurting at the harsh words of their producer but not being able to help him where he was at, all the leader could do was to tell Jisung to come home. They’d go over the lyrics together and see what changes the producer wanted after the younger boy had calmed down a bit. Yes, it would be stressful starting all over again while following their schedule but they’d manage. Especially because the leader knew Changbin would be helping too. 3racha never left each other hanging, as all of them had been in similar situations before.

Bang Chan himself wasn’t at the dorm this particular moment. He had taken most of his dongsaengs out on a shopping trip only leaving behind Jisung who had gone to the studio and Hyunjin who had already gone shopping twice this week and preferred to stay at the dorm watching dramas. The leader knew he wouldn’t be home before Jisung got there, so he told the younger to make himself some hot chocolate and maybe listen to some music to relax. He shouldn’t look at the lyrics yet but instead clear his mind, so they can work on it together later. Chan also texted Hyunjin, warning him to go easy with his teasing since the younger rapper was having a rather shitty day. Hyunjin agreed and continued watching his drama till he heard the front door open, revealing a slightly rough looking squirrel. The boy’s eyes were still reddened a bit and his lips formed a small frown.

After kicking off his shoes, the rapper made his way to Chan’s room, placing the dismissed lyrics on the desk for them to work on later, and then went to his own room to put on a more comfortable outfit. He walked past the living room, weakly greeting Hyunjin. “Sungie, come join hyung. The protagonist is soon going to find out that his girlfriend is cheating on him and I need my emotional support squirrel when that happens”, the dancer whined dramatically. “One minute, I’ll make some hot chocolate. You want some?”, the younger called from the kitchen to which his hyung only replied with an impatient ‘no but hurry’. Jisung didn’t hurry all that much. He took the time to add a good amount of whipped cream from a spray-bottle in their fridge, creating a small mountain on top of his hot chocolate and covering it in a ton of sprinkles afterwards. When he was done preparing his cup of diabetes, he joined his friend on the couch.

“Yah! Would you like some hot cocoa with your mountain of sprinkles? Seriously Sung, are you trying to put yourself in a sugar coma?”, Hyunjin laughed taking a glace at the younger’s cup. Smiling innocently, Jisung scooped up some cream and sprinkles with a spoon, letting them crunch between his teeth before answering: “None of your business, stocky-boy. You know, having some sugar here and there wouldn’t hurt you.” The dancer then remembered to keep the teasing light and only chuckled, letting the other have his way, as they continued to watch a few more episodes together. Jisung had basically decided to just drown his hurt in sugar, preparing himself another cup of cocoa somewhere along the third episode, covering it with at least the same amount of sprinkles and fully ignoring his hyung’s frown. Hyunjin was determined to distract Jisung from everything work related, having noticed the younger’s tear-stained cheeks although he didn’t comment on it. There was only one thing the dancer was a bit critical about and that was the younger having a second cup of his sweet beverage. He knew chocolate was comforting, so he had no issue with the first cup but how was the rapper going to stomach two of them? The older could only speak for himself but he would feel really sick after only having half of the cup Jisung had devoured and now the younger was having another one? Knowing he’d only upset the younger but not stop him if he commented on it, Hyunjin stayed silent and observed curiously whether Jisung would actually finish his drink or not.

It had been half an hour since the rapper had finished his second cup of hot chocolate, surprising both Hyunjin and himself, when Hyunjin heard a small moan coming from the other side of the couch. “I’m never eating anything ever again”, the younger pouted palming his stuffed belly, which let out an audible gurgle in return, making Hyunjin flinch: “You ok over there?” Jisung nodded quickly before shaking his head in defeat. “Stomachache?”, the dancer guessed but the other only frowned: “Kind of but I also kind of feel like I’m going to be sick.” Hyunjin gave a small laugh, he wasn’t too worried since the younger’s voice held no hint of urgency. “I guess that was about a ton of sprinkles too much. Just let it settle and don’t move too much. You’ll be fine”, the dancer chuckled and patted his donsaeng’s shoulder comfortingly. “I’m serio-“, the younger started, cutting himself off with a gag. Cursing, Hyunjin jumped up from the couch and grabbed Jisung’s arm, dragging the younger to the bathroom. They made it just in time for the rapper to bring up a small wave of his stomach contents, colorful sprinkles comically decorating the toilet bowl before getting washed away by another larger wave. Feeling his own stomach twist, the dancer told myself ‘Come on Hyunjin, get it together and be a good hyung!’ before sitting down on the bathtub to comfort his dongsaeng.

Hyunjin had pulled out a few hairclips out of his own hair and pinned the younger’s hair out of his face, just in time to watch his squirrel-cheeks puff out. The dancer quickly looked away, rubbing Jisung’s back as he tried to ignore the sound of liquid hitting liquid, only glancing back at the other when he heard soft sniffling sounds. To Jisung this was just the cherry on top, after already having had a bad day and he couldn’t help the tears flowing from his eyes. All he had wanted to do was have a fun off day with his friends and what did he get instead? “Hey shh, you’ll be ok, squirrel”, Hyunjin hushed, wiping away some of the tears. “Hyung”, the younger whined, startling his hyung. The older was rarely referred to as ‘hyung’ by the rapper because he often acted younger than the rapper himself despite being physically older. Hyunjin knew for Jisung to use honorifics with him, the younger would have to feel really vulnerable and it was a way of giving in to being weak. “It’s ok, hyung is here. You’ll be ok. You just need to get rid of everything that’s making you feel bad and everything will be fine”, he promised his dongsaeng after getting over the shock of being called ‘hyung’.

Hyunjin knew Jisung was fighting the urge to get sick, struggling hard to keep his rebelling stomach in place but soon he lost the battle, heaving up two larger waves almost back to back, scaring himself and grabbing onto his hyung’s hand for support and reassurance. “That’s it, Sungie. Almost there. Just get it all up. You’ll feel so much better afterwards”, the dancer encouraged. Jisung wanted to believe him, he really did but he freaked out when he started to choke on some of the sprinkles he coughed up. Hyunjin was quick to grasp the situation however, patting forcefully between the rapper’s shoulderblades till he heard the younger draw a shaky breath in. “Do you think you’re done”, he asked when Jisung hadn’t thrown up anything else in the last few minutes. The dancer was almost certain there was nothing left, having witnessed just how was the boy’s tiny body could eject. To his surprised, the younger shook his head, palming his sore middle with a pout before scrambling back over the toilet with an unproductive retch. Sighing, Hyunjin traced the whimpering boy’s spine and cringed when another, harsher retch managed to bring up a small trickle of bile, indicating that Jisung was indeed empty. The dancer had really been able to feel the effort it took to bring that up by the way his spine rippled under his hand. Spitting weakly, the rapper tore of a piece of toilet paper to clean himself up before flushing the toilet and announcing: “Now I’m done.”

He let his friend pull him to his feet and sat down on the closed toilet lid, accepting the toothbrush Hyunjin pressed into his hand. “I’ll get you some water and maybe tea to settle that upset stomach of yours”, the dancer smiled, “if you want we can take a nap and cuddle a bit till you feel better.” – “That’d be nice, hyung. I’m exhausted”, Jisung rasped with his voice strained from getting sick. His head had started hurting from the strain somewhere along the way too and he wanted nothing more than to lay down. Feeling unusually protective of his dongsaeng, the older gave him a quick hug before disappearing with the words: “Alright, finish up and I’ll meet you in your room.”

Of course, the dancer stuck to his promise, holding the other, who was knocked out almost as soon as he got under the covers, tight for almost two hours. No, it wasn’t usual for the pair to show how fond they were of each other, spending most of the time insulting the other but they both knew, should times get hard they’d have each other’s back.

#sick #sickfic #skz #stray kids #fanfic #whump #emeto #angst #han jisung #hwang hyunjin #fluff #comfort

[pinencurls]

Kiss In The Kitchen

hiii okay so I have a couple one shots hidden away in drafts that I’m not 100% in love with but i enjoyed writing at the time so I thought I might as well share them :)  Here’s the first...

You couldn’t be prouder of Fine Line and all you want to do is support and congratulate him, even if it means ignoring the insecurities one song strikes in you. 

4k Words 

At first, you listened to it (almost) alone, Harry's large headphones covering your ears as his new album played for you - you'd heard bits and pieces of it over the last year but never every song in it's finalised form. The second time you listened to the album you quickly adored was at its release party; a contrast setting to the quiet of the Saturday sun sneaking into your bedroom with Harry's earnest gaze set on you as you spoil yourself in his words - you could almost forget the album was written entirely about the woman Harry devoted all his love to before you'd met, it felt so private between the two of you. You'd visited the studio several times, lending your own advice when Harry met droughts of no inspiration and begged for your musical experience; You'd been in several small bands in your formative years, playing bass or drums, but had paused that particular pastime to focus on the reality of your career - writing took time in this industry, supporting yourself whilst avoiding the well of tabloid work was tricky, so far you'd managed to find little nuggets of gold in genuine, thought-provoking magazines and had begun to make a name for yourself, something you'd doubted possible in the harder of times.

You'd chosen to keep your lyrical advice to yourself when Harry called to you for help, however. You knew who this album was about, it was clear it wasn't you and that was fine. You didn't expect Harry to dedicate a whole album about you after 11 months together, all of which dating after he began writing it.

In private, sat on your bed and grinning up at him as his music played to you and you only - you were proud. You'd accepted the difficulties that might come with listening to your partner's rawest emotions for a past lover and had come to the conclusion that you'd appreciate his work simply because of how much he'd put into it and how well it'd all come together.

That was easy in private. It's slightly harder to remind yourself to separate the songs playing loudly all around you in the busy L.A club from all the not so hidden meanings behind them. Everyone Harry had met within the last few years of his solo career and long before that had come to celebrate with him. Busting bodies filled the large room, many already taking advantage of the bar. Almost everyone found themselves, slightly slurring, by Harry's side at one point of the night to tell him how beautiful Fine Line was, and the topics of each song didn't seem to go unnoticed either.

As you made your own rounds, you overheard the loud discussions about the mix of provocative, solemn and affectionate themes. Some of the group were apparently too drunk to see Harry's current girlfriend standing by as they cheered on his yearning and passion for his previous one.

It only got worse with press. You were still unbelievably proud of course, but Harry had to do a lot of press. Each interviewer cut straight to the elephant in the album. Camille was discussed, if not named by Harry, at length. You adored hearing Harry speak about his own personal growth and becoming comfortable in himself - but for every question about identity and fashion, came three about the clear sexual undertones and soulmate ideologies.

You were rational in your discomfort. You listened to Adore You and your other stand out favourites when you wrote, you understood and trusted that Harry had moved on, you'd been together for almost a year and he's told you weeks before then when you were just new friends that he knew he was ready again after months of working on himself.

You just couldn't deal with one song.

Breaking up and having sex you could deal with, you could enjoy the final work. They were normal things that people went through and wrote about. But the first sign of love? The sweet, endearing start of a relationship that he was so clearly ardent about - as if his feeling were a lot fresher than you'd imagine for a relationship that started and ended months ago.

Sunflower Vol.6 was beautiful, but as hard as you tried, you couldn't just see it objectively. You felt it so concentrated, and it hurt like fucking hell.

- - -

"Do we have any mango?" Harry calls from the kitchen, the click of the fridge opening quietly behind him. "Never mind found it!"

You smile at his domestic charm as you work on you most recent piece; it's been taking up a lot of time, creeping into your weekend which hadn't gone unnoticed by Harry as he had returned from the morning run you usually went on as a couple. A few moments later, after the loud whirring of the blender stopped, a pinky-orange smoothie is placed beside you and kiss pressed to the side of your head.

"When're you gon'a be done?" He murmurs against your ear, curls flopping down onto your own.

He's just finished his last week of press, ending with Howard Stern who seemed eager to remind Harry, constantly, of all the women he could have. You weren't particularly public yet so you couldn't really blame him for assuming Harry would be starting a new relationship soon. It just added to the frustration you'd been careful not to disclose over the long period of promo for the album.

"I wanna finish this today so we're both free after we fly back, I'jus need a little time alone, yeah?" A low grumble and a "yeah" was the only response he gave and he removes himself to the other side of the big living room to lay down on the sofa and slurp his breakfast.

Your deadline is Monday but tomorrow morning you're flying back to London and driving up to Holmes Chapel to spend time with Harry's family before he was away on tour for months so you were eager to be free from work.

Hours tick by, you're stuck in the spiral of the final edit. There were a few words that you couldn't quite tweak how you wanted them, as always. You got up to make lunch.

As you pass through the living room you expect to see Harry's body sprawled across the sofa napping, but only a bundle of throw blankets lay where he had been. His journal sits abandoned on the side table, propped open by a loose pen. You can see the scribbling of new song ideas and the beginnings of a poem, smiling to yourself you walk through to the kitchen - still no Harry.

Humming to yourself you open the fridge door, moving your hips slightly as you retrieve all the ingredients of a sandwich for you and Harry. Domestic moments like these were hard to come by in the midst of album releases and pre-tour prep, but you're looking forwards to the month ahead of you. No doubt you'll need some alone time after a week at his mother's house so you're being careful not to take any assignments for the rest of the month to make room for as many simple moments like this as possible once you're back in your London home.

Over the rustle of the bread packet and the crunch the lettuce made as you slice it, you can hear Harry's voice approaching from down the hall.

"Well thanks, mate-yeah..yeah we've gotta get drinks sometime it's been too long." He has the smile on his face that tells you it was another old friend calling to congratulate him on his album, probably a fellow musician from the early days.

Harry makes his way to your side, watching as you layer food into your sandwiches and steals a shred of lettuce. You can hear the other voice now - a clear English drawl you recognise as Ed. You've met a couple times and he's one of the most genuine men you've met, you much prefer him over some of the industry people Harry has to mingle with.

"Oh, dude and the mushrooms!" You giggle as you hear Ed laugh down the line at Harry. "I can't say I didn't guess something was up."

"Thanks, man - like what?" Harry chuckles back, sneaking more sandwich scraps as you slice a knife through them and dish them up.

"Um, the whole end of sunflower - are you really gonna do that live?" At the mention of the song, you feel your shoulders tense slightly. You're really trying to be a good girlfriend and support Harry - but that song just hits different, you trust Harry's love but you can't help but wonder if he has any feelings left over for Camille...

"If I have to!" Harry continues to joke, not noticing your discomfort or at least not mentioning it."Look, Ed, I gotta go but it was great talking to you"...

Harry's voice drones into the background as you take your plate and make your way back to your laptop, huffing as you're reminded of your own frustrations with yourself; he told you months ago that he's moved on, why can't you just believe him?

You can hear a quiet goodbye from Harry as he sets his phone down on the sofa and sits across from you at the table. Your laptop is still acting as a barrier between the two of you. You type at the keys, trying to look busy as you write and rewrite the same line over and over, sighing - you save and close the file and set your laptop aside.

"Not going how you want?" Harry asks.

"No, it is just...there's a bit I can't get to work. I just want to get this over with already." Harry thinks about what you've said for a moment before getting up and leaving the room - he comes back a moment later, setting a glass of water bedside your lunch and kissing your temple.

"Take a break love, you've been working all week you deserve it." He hums against your hair. "And thank you for lunch."

He's so sweet and chipper, smiling at you as he takes his plate out to the kitchen and returns to perch across the table from you, hand wavering over his journal as you finish your lunch.

He worries about you a lot. Normally over you working too much and not taking time for yourself or the amount of pressure, you put on yourself being overwhelming. It was in his nature to worry you remind yourself, you're trying hard to push past the hurt you can't quite let go of and the last thing you'd ever want was for him to feel bad about what he'd written so you'd managed to keep it under wraps. There was no need for him to be suspicious.

- - -

Your alarm goes off at 5am. Your flight is in 3 hours.

"Turn it off." You grumble, burying your head deeper into your pillow. The mattress dips underneath you when Harry turns, the duvet shifts as he slips his hand under and wraps his arms around you. "S'too early."

"I know." You love how Harry's voice sounds in the morning - rough with a soft edge. It's one of the first things you fell in love with; the extra degree or two the morning adds to his embrace, he's always quick to loop his arms around your middle if they've come undone in the night. His untamed and often tangled curls bristle against the back of your neck and there'll be a few moments of warm even breaths against your ear before he bounces up. He's very much a morning person.

"I'm getting in the shower y/n, I'll be out in a sec - get up yeah?" You mumble a slightly coherent response as he leaves the room, a towel draped over his bare shoulder.

Following a few moments of deliberation, you sit up. Unplugging your phone from where it lay on your bedside table, you check your notifications. Sure you'll be up in time, you open twitter.

Unsurprisingly, nothing much is happening. You scroll through a few messages from the day before until you come across a video of Harry being interviewed, he's wearing the thick red cardigan he recently bought so it must've been from this week.

You click play to see him smiling tiredly at the interviewer - you remember this day, you'd stayed up later than planned watching old toy story reruns then he'd been running around frantically getting ready the next morning. You lazily watch him answer a few frequently repeated questions until he's asked about the stages of romantic relationships that inspired certain songs. You expect the usual questions about songs like Adore You and Watermelon Sugar but instead, the interviewer takes a turn and seemingly voices all the concerns floating around your head;

"And one of my personal favourites: Sunflower vol.6, really captures the first realisation of love in a relationship, what lead you to write that song in particular, did you write from experience?"

"Thank you, yeah..I think that first really overpowering part of a relationship when two people are just starting to have these intimate, lovestruck moments together stuck with me and I-" You turn your phone off sharply. Your mind is spiralling with insecurities enough on its own without Harry himself describing how he first felt about his ex-girlfriend.

You sit against the headboard, mulling over the topic that has clouded your mind the past few days. You don't hear the shower turn off down the hall as you let out an angry grumble - it feels so shit and mean of you to be this way and you just want the clarity you had before this all happened.

"What's wrong love?" You look up to see Harry standing at the end of the bed. His hair is dripping onto his shoulders and he's wrapped a light pink towel around his waist loosely, concern contoured his face as he peers down at your huddled form.

"Jus' tired." You crawl forwards to climb out of bed, kissing Harry's cheek lightly as he stood unconvinced before heading to your wardrobe. "Honestly, I'm good."

"Okay..what's the time?"

"Uhhum-" You mutter as you riffle through a pile of sweaters. "5.30ish I think..check my phone"

You slip on a comfy pair of jeans and socks before you walk into the hall on your way to make you both coffee, there's a long pause from the bedroom before Harry calls down to you - 5.42am.

- - -

By the time the plane takes off, you're almost asleep again.

- - -

It's 7pm LA time when you step out the taxi delivering you home to your London house. It's almost 2 am here so despite your lack of tiredness you shuffle through the door behind Harry.

All your heavy luggage is left in the entryway as you climb the stairs up to your bedroom, eager to be done with jet lag and normal again by the morning.

You've made the mistake of sleeping the first 3 hours of the flight and now find yourself wide awake under the soft covers of you and Harry's bed. He always falls asleep as soon as he hits the pillow, and with how quiet he's been all day you assume he's already tired. Between your early napping and him being engrossed in the book he was currently reading - there hadn't been much conversation between you on the flight over. As you snuggle further into the covers you realise things have been a little different these past few days, maybe being so caught up in your own head with work and worries of your own you haven't noticed but there's definitely been a...distance. You're just not sure which of it is creating it.

The next morning you wake to the radio playing from a few rooms away. Sitting up you look around the room; your suitcases are still downstairs by the look of it and Harry's side of the bed has been slept in and now deserted.

"Harry?" You call out. There's some kind of foggy sadness seeping around you as you hear no reply. Maybe you're just tired but you feel you might start sobbing any minute - it's a desperate feeling that you're not quite sure how to quench.

"Harry.." You call again as you climb out the bed, slipping a large jumper on over your head, pulling the braids you'd plaited for the flight that had come undone and frizzy with sleep, over your shoulders. "Love?"

There's still no response and you're now on the final step of the long staircase. You walk quickly through the house towards a quiet humming you can just about make out. You must have gathered speed in your anxious mission to find Harry because as you enter the kitchen you slam hard into the doorway as you reach out to balance yourself.

The movement in his peripheral makes Harry turn his head, slipping the bulky headphones off his ears and slipping his phone into his pocket. He'd previously been slumped against the kitchen counter, lost in thought as he skimmed through his phone, forgetting the kettle as it boiled beside him.

"Love- oh, careful." He chuckles slightly before he takes in your expression. You must have started crying by now because he rushes quickly towards you. "Woah- woah what's wrong? Did you hurt yourself?"

The arm that had taken the full brunt of the doorway was now being carefully examined by Harry as his eyes scan you, searching for any harm. His hand comes to wipe at the few glossy tears on your cheek before he gently asks his question again.

"No I-I was calling for you..." You reply, equally confused as him by the whole situation.

"I didn't hear you love I'm sorry, what happened?" He's placed your arm back by your side now although his hands lingers around yours.

"...Nothing."

"Y/n, please just tell me. What's wrong?" He persists.

"No, I mean - nothing happened I just..." You mumble, how were you supposed to explain that when you woke up you felt terrifyingly alone and just needed to find him...to remind yourself that everything you'd let conspire in your head wasn't really happening.

"Y/n, I know something's up..the last week has been really busy I know but if something's wrong please just tell me, okay?" You think about it for a second before blurting out-

"Would you tell me if you still loved her?"

This doesn't seem to be at he was expecting, or you for that matter. The situation was uncomfortable - hearing your boyfriend sing about how intensely he loved Camille and how badly losing her broke him, but it was just music. You don't realise until you ask him the awkward question, just how much it had been bothering, or scaring you.

"What?"

"I just mean...Okay shit I don't mean that at all I'm just tired and I woke up and you weren't there and I just needed to find you I-"

"Is this what's been upsetting you?" His words aren't spoken forcefully, more...sadly. "T-this is what the phone call and the yesterday morning and...oh God the whole fucking flight! That's what you were thinking?"

"What phone call, what do you mean?" You don't know if he's angry at you or not, his hands are in his hair and he's got the mad look in his eyes that tells you he's either about to shout or cry.

"With Ed. As soon as he mentioned the album you left the room and, and! Yesterday, you were angry about something and then I checked the time and your phone opened on some video about the album and come on...you can't say everything was okay on the flight...we barely talked...we've barely talked at all this week." You're decided that the crying is a lot worse than the shouting. There's something cathartic that comes from shouting back at someone who's just as angry as you - but crying back at someone who's just as confused and upset? It makes you feel all twisted and uncomfortable.

"No..no Harry that's not it-"

"Y/n don't lie I-"

"It's not. I love your album and I'm so, so proud of you, and of everything you did to make it and I understand the importance of your relationship with Camille," Harry's huffing now, his fingers are tangled further in his hair and he's leaned up against the door frame close opposite you. "-This album is all about that time in your life and that's fine...Harry I love it, honestly, the album isn't anything to do with anything-"

"You just asked me if I still loved her!" He exclaims, staring wide-eyed back at you. "I don't give a shit about the album right now, you can hate it, okay? That's okay? But you asked me if I still love her...Y/n look at me."

Your eyes, tightly fixed on the kitchen tiles, tilt up to see his face. His eyes are red and splotchy and his hands reach out to hold you as he speaks again.

"I don't love her, I haven't in a long, long time. I had the ideas for all the songs about her before I even met you, you okay..you're the person I love and...I thought you knew that?" He sighs, hesitant before he starts again. "I thought you trusted me."

There's another pause between you as you mull your next thoughts over.

"I do."

He shakes his head, teary and angry.

"No you don't, if you did you wouldn't have asked-"

"It's just that fucking song!" You snap, you take a sharp breath in and swallow the lump in your throat - "I know that you don't love her, I know it but, when I listen to you sing - and talk, telling people about this wonderful honeymoon romance that even after years you remember so vividly and, and that means so much to you,I..."

"Track 9?" Harry questions, seemingly understanding everything you've just rambled. "Sun- oh baby no it's not..."

"I'm sorry I...It's a great song I just, whenever I hear it I'm reminded of how much you must have felt for her and, and remembered all this time to write about...what?" Harry's smiling now, he seems to be relived for some reason. His eyes are brighter, clearing slightly and he chuckles slightly.

"It's all my fault, I'm so sorry lovie I should have told you.." He scrambles. "I, I was embarrassed when I wrote it because we'd only just started dating and then you heard it a couple weeks later and it was too soon to tell you and then I just...didn't. I thought maybe you'd figured it out."

"What do you mean?"

"It's about...us."

"You told me you didn't write any about me though..."

"No, I said I hadn't written any you were going to see anytime soon...and that was, awhile ago." He smiles slightly, squeezing your hand in his. "There's another one about you actually too,"

"Harry you, you wrote it about us.." Harry hums a confirmation, bowing his head to press a kiss to your cheek. "I thought...what else did you write!"

Harry laughs now, catching your lips with his as you both feel each other relax - the tension and discomfort seeping away as you realise the reality of everything you'd worried yourself over in the last week.

You pull away, one hand on his chest and the other fiddling with the curls at the back of his head.

"Seriously what else did you write-"

"I'm not telling." He beams, leaning down against the firm push you send to his chest.

"I swear if you wrote a song about our sex life I-"

"Shhhh!" He presses a mocking finger to your lips to quiet you. "We better be going, don't wanna be late."

With that, he leaves the kitchen, you can hear his heavy steps rushing up the stairs and soon the house is quiet and the air around you is settled again.

There's a subtle hum of the shower upstairs that intrudes but nonetheless, the clarity's back.

#harry styles one shot #harry styles fic #harry styles fine line #fine line fic #harry styles #harry styles sunflower vol.6 #harry styles writing #idk what to tag i haven't been on here in YEARS #oop #well i guess that's it

[lemonz-and-limez]

The Breach Implosion Complication

A/N: Ok, to say I am nervous to post this is an understatement. I think it's safe to say I am downright terrified. This is the first time I will be posting a crossover and I just don't know what to expect. But I have really been enjoying writing this and I hope you all love reading it just as much!

Just for some timeline references, this is set after Big Bang Theory 9x09 and Flash 2x09. And, yes, we've got some major dubious science in here lol.

Sheldon stared at his whiteboard with disappointment. His work was suffering; he knew this, but, now that the university had him on a time crunch for some work that was substantial… he was starting to see the scope of his work's downgrade. But he couldn't help that he was distracted by personal matters, by the loss of his most important relationship. Sheldon wanted to blame Amy for his professional downfall, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. Despite everything, he still loved her and wanted her to be happy. It wasn't her fault that he was an inadequate boyfriend.

Glancing over at the clock on his desk, Sheldon sighed when he realized it was almost noon. He had wasted half the day staring at this godforsaken whiteboard and still coming up with nothing. He was running out of time. The university was going to pull his funding if he didn't come up with something soon.

Suddenly there was a knock on his office door, and Leonard peeked his head inside. "Hey, buddy, we're off to lunch. You coming?"

Sheldon shook his head in the negative. "No," he replied. "I can't afford to waste any more time. I need to come up with something."

"Sheldon," Leonard sighed and fully stepped into the room. "Maybe it will help if you get out of this room for a while. You're working yourself to death."

He wanted to yell, throw, lash out at his best friend still standing in the doorway. He was *not* working himself to death. After all, he hadn't come up with anything of value in months. If he was working himself to death, he would have made progress by now. "Leonard, really, I'm fine," he tried reassuring the shorter man. "I just need to focus."

Leonard held his hands up in surrender. "All right, suit yourself. But I heard something pretty cool happened in Central City a couple of days ago. I know how you love a good discussion about that."

Without further ado, Leonard left him alone. Sheldon sighed once again. He loved talking about the latest metahuman news with his friends. Two years ago, when the Flash made his first appearances as the Streak in Central City, Sheldon and his friends spent almost all their time reading about him. Consuming the limited information that there was on this mystery man in red. Like the vigilante of Starling City, or the Green Arrow as he would later be known, nobody knew who the Flash really was. It wasn't that he was hellbent on finding out who this new hero was, but it made for an interesting hobby. Even if Amy told him it was a tad creepy.

Sheldon deflated again the moment his ex's name came into his mind. He couldn't let that hinder him, though. He needed to focus. Friday… he just needed to get to Friday. Then he could talk to his friends about exciting topics. He would either still have a job or be fired by the end of the week, no matter what.

Sheldon was about to turn away from his board to sit down, but a sudden woosh and jolt stopped him. And before he could even process what was happening, Sheldon was in an entirely different room altogether.

He knew he had just moved insanely fast, but the sudden stop was the thing that was truly disorienting. He held his arms out in front of him as if to make sure he had his balance. Sheldon looked around the room almost frantically, taking in his new surroundings, trying to deduce where he was. There were screens everywhere, each displaying some kind of data or logo. But Sheldon was so out of sorts he couldn't comprehend what it was. There was a hole in the wall, almost like a closet, but it was empty. There was nothing in it.

When Sheldon turned around, he was met with three pairs of eyes. Two of which were standing behind a large console with even more screens with even more data. A man and a woman both look shell shocked to see him standing there. But they were not who interested Sheldon the most. No, that award went to the man who stood next to the long desk. Clad in all red leather, a white emblem with a lightning bolt on his chest.

"You-you're," Sheldon sputtered and pointed at the man. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off of him. "You're the Flash."

With a nod, Flash validated Sheldon's last statement. "I am. And you're Dr. Sheldon Cooper."

"You know who I am?" he asked, shocked to hear his name come from the person he had admired for so long.

"I do. Child progeny, who graduated at eleven, had his first Ph.D. by the time he was sixteen and now works at CalTech."

Sheldon looked at the other two people in the room, wondering how in the world these people knew this information. What else did they know? "How- how do you know all of that."

The Flash smiled under his cowl. "Your biography on your university's website is very detailed."

One of the other two people in the room finally spoke up. The man... who had long dark hair and some kind of graphic t-shirt. "We also kind of ran a background check on you."

"Cisco!" Both the woman and the Flash whispered harshly.

Cisco, apparently, held his hands up. "Excuse me, but he asked!" He defended himself before sitting in front of the console to work on one of the screens.

There was an awkward silence for a moment as the remaining two people and Sheldon stared at each other. "As amazing as it is to meet you," Sheldon said, gesturing to the man decked out in all red. "Why did you bring me here? Also, where is here?" He asked, gesturing at all the surroundings.

"You're at STAR Labs in Central City, and we brought you here because we need your help."

"Wow, ok, STAR Labs as in particle accelerator explosion STAR Labs?" Sheldon had heard of what had happened here over two years ago. It was tragic, really, how wrong the accelerator being turned on had gone. Its success could have meant leaps and bounds for the scientific community. But instead, it only seemed to have brought tragedy.

The Flash sighed. "The very one. Look, I know our reputation here is less than stellar, but we really could use your help."

Sheldon looked at the woman, who at this point had still said nothing, and saw that she was nodding in agreement. He really wanted to help, but he had a deadline he had to meet. A very hard deadline that could cost him his job. "Look, Flash, I would love to help, but I have a lot of work back home that I need to take care of."

The Flash made eye contact with Cisco, who took a renewed interest in the conversation. "Dr. Cooper," Cisco started, standing again. "We know your work has taken a hit recently; if you help us, we may be able to help you too."

Sheldon narrowed his eyes at the shorter man and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Do I want to know how you know that?"

"Probably not, no," Cisco rushed out, shaking his head. "But if we work together, I think we could be of great use to each other." Suddenly, he smirked. "And besides, I think you'll be more than happy to help us," he said, pointing at Sheldon's chest.

Looking down, confused, Sheldon was embarrassed when he remembered what shirt he had put on that morning. His signature red Flash shirt. Suddenly his cheeks were just as red as his clothing, and he kept his head down to hide that fact.

"Hey," Cisco called, bringing Sheldon's attention back to him. "It's alright, we of all people understand."

Sheldon shot the man a tight-lipped smile that was gone as quickly as it came. "I want to help, I really do. But I don't know how much help I'll be right now. I've been going through some stuff lately."

"Believe me when I say that everyone in this room has been through some stuff," The woman next to Cisco finally spoke. "Maybe a change of scenery will be good for you."

Looking back at the Flash, he saw that the scarlet speedster was questioning him with his eyes. "What do you say?"

"Alright," he nodded. "I'll help you. But I think it's only fair if I know why."

The Flash nodded. "I agree, Dr. Cooper. And it is only fair that you know who you're working with." He gestured over at his colleagues. "These are my friends," He spoke again, gesturing to the other two people in the room. "Cisco Ramon and Dr. Caitlin Snow."

Caitlin… or Dr. Snow… smiled genuinely at him. "It's nice to meet you, Dr. Cooper."

Sheldon nodded back at her. "So, what do you need me to do?"

Flash looked to his friends, and it was as if they were having a silent conversation simply through facial expressions. It was when Cisco and Caitlin both nodded that he turned back to Sheldon. "Maybe it would be easier if we showed you."

"Ok," he whispered, following all three people as they led the way.

STAR Labs was state of the art with all the latest technology, even though only half a dozen people were employed there. Sheldon had heard bits and pieces about what really happened here when the particle accelerator exploded. Still, like everything else that came out of this lab, it was a mystery. Maybe he would be able to get the full story before he went back home.

Flash led him and his friends through the winding halls and down an elevator. When they arrived at the heavy metal door, Sheldon went in ahead of them, cautiously curious. His eyes winded as soon as he saw it, though. A large mass of light that appeared to be stable but was whirling with energy.

"This," Sheldon pointed at the elephant in the room. "Is this a wormhole?"

"You could say that," Cisco said as he came to stand next to him. "We're calling them breaches."

Sheldon's brow furrowed in confusion. "Breeches? To what?"

It was the scarlet speedster who answered. "To another Earth."

"Another Earth?" Sheldon repeated. "The multiverse theory… it's true?"

"Definitely, and we have a giant problem to prove it." Cisco went further into the room to stand next to the breach.

"What's the problem?"

"He goes by the name Zoom," Cisco started, an edge to his voice that was telling of how serious the situation must be. "And he's from Earth-2. Zoom has an insane need for speed and will do anything to make sure he gets what he wants. He's already broken Flash's back once."

Sheldon's eyes shot to the man in question, who only nodded his confirmation. He remembered seeing that story on the news, how the Flash was nearly beaten to death by a new dangerous villain. "That was Zoom?"

Flash continued for Cisco. "Yes, and he won't hold back again if we let him, which is why we need your help. We need to close the breaches to the other Earth."

Cisco pulled up a map of Central City on one of the computer screens. He gestured for Sheldon to come over to him. "These are all the breaches that are scattered throughout the city. We need to close all of them except for this one," he said, pointing at the large wormhole in front of them.

"Exactly how many are there?"

"Including this one, there are fifty-two breaches in Central City," Cisco told him. Sheldon must have looked shocked because he quickly continued. "This is the largest one though, it's giving off the most transdimensional energy."

Sheldon studied the breach in front of him. He was fascinated with it. The way it flowed, to and fro, almost like water. But it wasn't a liquid, no, not at all. It was the gateway to a parallel universe. A door. He began nodding his head, understanding a little bit more of what they needed to do. Nothing was certain; he needed to write a formula, breakdown the math. But after months of getting nowhere with his research, he finally felt a renewed love for science.

"So, basically, we need to close the door from this side, ultimately locking anyone on the other side out. The event horizon on this side of the breach needs to collapse." Sheldon thought out loud, pacing back and forth. "Which means that the breach would need to be unstable…"

Flash and Cisco seemed to be catching on to what he was saying, and both of them came closer to the breach where Sheldon was now standing. With both men in close proximity to him and all three of them staring at the wonder in front of them, Sheldon continued. "It's going to take a lot of energy to do this, though."

Cisco snapped his fingers. "You'd need a detonation of some kind. Something that would destroy it but not create…" He sighed and paused heavily. "Not create a singularity."

The mood in the room suddenly turned somber, and Sheldon watched as the other three people simultaneously look down. He had a feeling he knew what this was about. "I take it you're referencing the mysterious singularity that happened here last year?"

All three people scoffed, but Flash was the one who ultimately spoke up. "Not mysterious, but yes, we don't want another repeat of that event."

Even though he was challenged with everyday social interaction, Sheldon knew better than to probe further on the subject. He had a feeling it was a sore spot for them, and as of late, he was also too familiar with sore spots. He wouldn't like them asking about Amy. Which was not outside the realm of possibility, seeing as how they knew a little too much about him. But regardless, he didn't want to cause any undue pain to people that he barely knew. Especially since one of these people was the Flash, a man who he'd admired for years.

A man who he now wanted to help.

"I'll need some time," Sheldon told the team. "But I think I can figure this out."

His entire academic career and Sheldon had never seen someone react with such gratitude for his assistance. Back in California, people only came to him begrudgingly. They knew he was the best for the job, but his lack of social graces gave him an infamous reputation. Sheldon always told himself that he didn't care, and maybe for years, he honestly didn't. But there was a strange feeling in his chest, looking at these people who didn't really know him and seeing them be thankful for his help—people who all seemed so genuine and caring and only wanted to do good in the world. Sheldon had to do this for them; he needed to do right by them.

Suddenly there was a beeping sound coming from one of the computers. The Flash looked at it for a moment. "I have to go," he informed them. "Look, Dr. Cooper, thank you for helping us."

Even if he was in a rush, Sheldon could tell that the man was genuinely grateful. He smiled slightly. "My pleasure."

And in the blink of an eye, the Flash sped off, leaving a gust of wind behind him. Papers flew off the tables, and his hair was messed up, but Sheldon was too mesmerized to care. So transfixed that he almost didn't hear Cisco when he said he would show Sheldon to a lab.

"So, why do you want to keep the breach downstairs open but not all the others?" Sheldon asked as he and Cisco walked the halls once again.

"One way in, one way out," Cisco stated simply. "Right now, Zoom could breach to almost anywhere in the city. But if he could only access this Earth one way, we could know he's coming and be prepared."

"You want to set up a trap," Sheldon affirmed. He had to admit, "That's smart."

They turned a corner and came to a stop in front of an open door. "It is, and get ready to meet the jerk who came up with that idea." Cisco's facial expression was somewhere between scared and annoyed.

And Sheldon was about to ask why he looked so apprehensive when a loud crash from inside the lab stopped him. And he could now add anger to the list of emotions so blatantly written across Cisco's face.

"Yo! Harry, what have I told you about throwing my stuff?!" The shorter man yelled as he stomped into the room. Sheldon cautiously followed behind him.

Inside there was another, taller, man dressed in all black. With hair sticking up in almost every direction, fingers through it, agitating it more. But when he angrily turned around to face Cisco, Sheldon had to take a step back. The man was older, late forties maybe even early fifties. But this man's face had been all over the news right after the particle accelerator exploded. And after his mysterious *death* which occurred last year. A death he was sure Team Flash knew more about than they were letting on.

Harrison Wells… the CEO of STAR Labs and the man who kept far too many secrets for the liking of the scientific community. But he was well respected, and he fascinated Sheldon anyway. Most of his research was leaps and bounds ahead of the times. Sheldon often read through his papers with interest instead of disdain like he did most other scientists. He had, honestly, hoped to meet the infamous Dr. Wells one day… but he died.

"Dr. Cooper?" Cisco questioned, pulling Sheldon out of his musings. "Are you ok?"

Sheldon couldn't look away from Dr. Wells… Harrison… whoever he was standing awkwardly in the back of the room. "You're dead," he stated outright, confusion seeping from his voice.

"On this Earth, yes," Dr. Wells answered, his voice rough.

Cisco explained it in layman's terms. "He's from Earth-2." He paused with a heavy sigh. "As for the Dr. Wells of this Earth, that's part of another really long story."

Well, that was one way to pique his curiosity, Sheldon thought. Obviously, there was more to the story of STAR Labs than the media was covering. And these new people that he had been introduced to obviously knew everything.

"Ramon," Dr. Wells whispered, the gruff in his voice stronger when his voice was quieter. "Who is this? And why is he here?" He asked, crossing his arms.

"This is Dr. Sheldon Cooper," Cisco beamed a stark contrast to the other man who only continued to frown. "He's going to help with our breach problem."

Dr. Well's brow furrowed with confusion. "How is a Geologist going to help close the breaches?"

Sheldon didn't think the other man could have hurt him more even if he physically punched him. He staggered back with a hand to his chest in offense. "Geologist- why would you? Who said I was a geologist?" He asked frantically, looking between Cisco and this hooligan who had the audacity to insinuate he was one of the 'dirt boys'.

"I take it you're not a geologist on this earth?" Dr. Wells' presumed.

"Wha- NO!" Sheldon shouted, and Cisco flinched but giggled beside him. Sheldon looked at him sharply, shooting fire at him with his eyes. How was this funny?

All the humor left the shorter man's face. "It's not funny," he said seriously.

"No, it's not!" Sheldon seethed. "Why would you think I'm a geologist?"

"On my Earth, you're a world-renowned geologist—best of the best. I pulled a lot of strings to get you to come work at STAR Labs with me," Dr. Wells explained.

Never in a million years did Sheldon think he was a rock monkey in any universe. He almost didn't want to believe it, just tell himself that Dr. Wells was just messing with him. That was until said scientist pulled up a picture on whatever fancy watch he was wearing and confirmed what he had told Sheldon.

Sheldon walked further into the room as a holographic picture of his doppelgänger standing with Dr. Wells appeared. It was a part of a news article from their world.

STAR Labs Revolutionizing the World of Geology!

The headline read. Sheldon didn't bother reading the article. After all, he wasn't this other Dr. Cooper. Sheldon didn't waste his time on rocks. He did, however, waste his time studying this picture from another Earth. Looking into the eyes of the man who was him but at the same time not. The man who stood by Dr. Wells' side, donning a wide grin. They were identical; of course, they would be genetically indistinguishable. But there was something lighter about the Sheldon Cooper of Earth-2; more at ease. Sheldon figured one would have to be if they decided to go into a field like geology.

But no, there was something else. Perhaps it was the fact that he was working in a multibillion-dollar facility with cutting edge tech and an excellent paycheck, no doubt. Or maybe it was that golden band on the fourth finger of his left hand—the gold glinting like a star in the night sky to the camera lens.

"He's married," Sheldon whispered in fascination, still examining the picture.

Would he look like that if he hadn't been so stupid? Would he have a dopey grin on his face if he had acted on their fifth anniversary instead of ruining it? Even though he was all the way in Central City, over fifteen-hundred miles away from Los Angeles, that wretched ring in his desk drawer was screaming at him like a banshee.

"He is married," Dr. Wells said, pulling him from his musings. He closed his watch with simultaneously made the picture disappear. "Quite the woman he found too. She's a force to be reckoned with."

Sheldon was too curious not to ask. "Who is she?"

With Dr. Wells poised to answer, Cisco's voice rang from the doorway of the lab. "Okay!" He yelled in a sing-song manner. Sheldon looked back at him incredulously. "Look, feel free to talk about your doppelgangers all you want, but I have some work I need to go take care of."

"Be my guest, Ramon," Dr. Wells snipped.

"I don't need your permission, Harry," Cisco snarked back. The tension between these two was insane, and Sheldon wasn't sure how he felt about it. "Listen, Dr. Cooper, everything you need should be in this room, but if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask. Oh! Before I forget," he reached into his pocket and handed him a flash drive of some kind. "This will give you access to a STAR Labs computer. Just plug it in, and you should be good to go."

Sheldon took the tiny device from his hand. Just an ordinary flash drive, it appeared. "Thank you," he told Cisco.

And with that, he was gone, but not before telling Dr. Wells… Harry… to behave himself.

Sheldon took a moment to really get used to his new surroundings. This had to be one of the smaller labs in the building, and yet, it was already more extensive than Leonard's. Tools everywhere, tech that any geek like himself would love to get their hands on. Their whiteboards weren't white; instead, they were like glass. You could see right through them. The white marker that was provided created enough of a contrast, though. Sheldon could tell by the plethora of calculations that Dr. Wells had on a couple of them.

As awkward as it was just standing in the room like an intruder while the man from Earth-2 got back to work on whatever it was he was working on, Sheldon found a spot and dove into the work he was brought in to do. A large table all to himself, almost twice the size of his desk back home. A board and white marker for him to brainstorm on. And a computer that sat idle with the STAR Labs logo.

When he plugged the drive into the monitor, a browser opened up and a long list of files. One of which was conveniently named, Breaches. Curiously he clicked on the folder and found that Cisco had complied all the information that they currently had on these portals to another dimension. In detail, it was explained to him how they stabilized a breach using quark matter. It was rather helpful, and Sheldon began to calculate on the "whiteboard".

He worked faster and more eager than he had in months. The formulas and equations flowed from him like blood did to the heart. That was until he hit a roadblock. Confused, he stepped back and observed his work, studying every last detail, every last decimal. Until he found the slight miscalculation that threw off most of his work. To say Sheldon was upset was an understatement. He couldn't even solve something he was inspired by, something he was excited about. His mind, once his most prized possession, was worthless now. In an uncharacteristic display of anger, he chucked the marker he held in his hand at the wall in an unbridled fit of rage.

Dr. Wells, who had barely made a sound since Cisco left well over an hour ago, looked up at him with wide eyes. His hands stilled over whatever piece of technology he was tinkering with and continued to stare at Sheldon with obvious shock.

Sheldon interlaced his fingers behind his head and took a few deep breaths. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I'm just frustrated."

Dr. Wells laughed slightly as he wiped his hands with a nearby cloth. "Don't worry about it, believe me, I understand." He twisted on his stool to face him fully. "I even know what that look on your face is about."

"What look?"

"The 'someone I love is gone, and now my work is suffering because of it' look," Dr. Wells asserted.

Sheldon sat back down on the stool of his own and scoffed. "She's not gone, she just…" he couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.

"She broke up with you," the other man supplied. "Yeah, I figured."

For what seemed like the millionth time that day, Sheldon looked confused. "How?"

"When I showed you the picture of your doppelgänger," Dr. Wells explained. "There was a glint in your eye when you realized he was married. Like a yearning almost."

Sheldon hadn't realized that his emotions were that obvious. Or maybe the other man was just smart enough to pick up on nonverbal cues like that. There was no point in trying to lie to Dr. Wells, though, because he was right. There was a yearning—jealousy.

"We've been broken up for almost six months," he started, letting down barriers that even his friends couldn't break down. But for some reason, he was trusting a complete stranger. "She's the only woman that I've ever loved like that, and now she's trying to move on, and I…" his voice began to break the more he spoke, but he shook his head. Even though he was willing to talk, he was not willing to break.

There was a rolling sound, and Sheldon looked up to see that Dr. Wells had moved closer. "Sheldon… can I call you Sheldon?"

He nodded.

"My wife died when my daughter was four. I had to learn very quickly and very suddenly how to raise a child on my own while simultaneously grieve for the woman that I loved. And, yes, for a while, I was not good at it. Because losing someone who is your whole world, who is essentially your other half, it's unnerving. Like a part of you has been yanked away, and you have to find a way to live with that. It's one of the hardest things to do, but only the toughest of people come out of it stronger than they did before. And if you're anything like the Sheldon Cooper on my Earth, I know you're capable."

Sheldon studied the man in front of him. He appreciated what he was trying to say, but Sheldon didn't feel like he deserved it. "How is this even comparable, though? Your wife died, my girlfriend just broke up with me."

"Pain is pain," Dr. Wells said. "There's no comparison because everyone feels it differently. I don't know your situation, and I am not going to assume anything either. But ignoring the problem won't get you anywhere. Believe me, I am speaking from experience."

Sheldon scoffed. "Well then, what am I supposed to do? Just be a brooding mess all the time?"

"No… don't let it control you, let it drive you." Dr. Wells smiled slightly as if he was thinking about something. Or someone, Sheldon couldn't be sure. "Who knows, you just might surprise yourself."

With that, Dr. Wells rolled back over to his own workstation and left Sheldon sitting in thought. The last time he had seen Amy was on thanksgiving, the day they went to the aquarium together. As friends. In the car, Amy had asked him if he was doing ok. Of course, Sheldon knew what she was asking him, but he didn't want to tell her the truth. He didn't want her to see him vulnerable and hurt. And later that night, when he laid in bed unable to sleep, he wished he had just opened up to her. Because everything inside of him was coming to a head, ready to explode. Maybe talking to Amy would have been freeing.

Perhaps he would do something about it when he got home. But first, he had a job to do, and he wasn't about to blow it for the Flash.

Just as he turned back to start working on the equations again, an alarm sounded throughout the building. The other scientist in the room leaped from his seat and moved around the room frantically.

"What is that?" he asked as Dr. Wells grabbed what looked like a futuristic rifle.

Dr. Wells slung the strap of the weapon over his shoulder. "That is a proximity alarm; we need to move," he informed Sheldon, taking him by the arm and leading him out of the room.

Sheldon ran alongside the other man down the long winding corridors of STAR Labs. "What is going on?" he asked. He struggled to breathe as they came to a stop in front of a random concrete panel.

With a quick survey of their surroundings, Dr. Wells said nothing as he raised his hand to the wall like he was pushing a button. Sheldon watched as a specific part of the wall split in the middle creating an opening to a hidden room. But it wasn't like a door, no, the two halves disappeared into the adjoining two panels of concrete.

"Get in," Dr. Wells nudged him.

Sheldon stubbled into the all-white room that was, for the most part, empty. Except for, what looked like, a plinth in the deepest part of the space. He ran his hand over the white tiles that had random bumps everywhere, like brail.

"What is this place?" Sheldon asked, turning back to Dr. Wells.

The mechanism that let them in, activated again, but this time closed the "door" instead. It was like it wasn't even there. There was a mechanical clicking noise that sounded like when Sheldon's father cocked a shotgun. Sure enough, that's almost exactly what it was. Dr. Wells was now standing with his gun aimed towards the closed door.

"This is the only place I could think of to hide," Dr. Wells spoke shakenly.

"Hide? From what?"

Dr. Wells looked him dead in the eye, and Sheldon could see the fear there. "From Zoom… he's in the building."

A/N: Thank you so much for reading :)

I have about two and half chapters written already and will try to update on Fridays.

#writing #fanfcition #shamy fanfic #eventually #I promise #Harrison Wells is amazing #and I love him

[evoqliving19]

Free Move Apartment Locating Companies - Know the Truth!

55+ apartments johns creek

Many of us are attracted to the term "free", as well as the proven fact that we have been getting something absolutely free. There are many legitimate free offerings available to consumers inside a wide selection of settings. For example, Apartment Locators truly offer a valuable want to all renters that are looking for a flat, and also the services are free on the renter, saving them a lot of time driving around visiting a large number of properties, and intensely probably passing up on the best deals and also the best apartments.

55+ living johns creek

However, there's also many companies who use the word "free" to entice customers, and then they might actually provide you with the service or product that they can initially promised. They get past this deception by writing countless loopholes in to the fine print of these advertisement that they can always excuse the absence of delivery. So caution is obviously as a way when you find yourself trusting service repair shop who plans to give you something important for free.

Moving is a very stressful here we are at many. Often you can find deadlines to get from your current apartment by a certain time. You can find what to sort and boxes to pack it, also to pack carefully in order to avoid anything from being broken. Then there is the careful loading and also the careful unloading and also the unpacking and placing and sorting. You need to allow time and energy to clean the previous apartment before you submit the keys, and you've got to make sure you happen to be stopping by the new apartment during business hours to help you receive the keys to your brand-new home. You've utilities to disconnect and new utilities for connecting. A whole lot is taking place at once, high always is the concern that you might have forgotten something important. You already arranged your schedule to offer the day free for moving. You have all your affairs so as, so you are just looking forward to the movers to come. The LAST thing that you'll require is really a glitch over some small detail in terms and conditions that causes your moving company never to arrive and deliver that "free" move which you were depending on and getting yourself ready.

That is just what became of a buddy of mine very recently. She used some of those apartment locating companies from the Dallas, TX area that supposedly offered a "free" move. I wont mention names here, but it's a common company. Anyway, she gets home from work and it has all of her items packed capable to go. It is a Friday evening, and he or she has had the move scheduled using the movers for weeks. She has to become Away from her apartment by midnight THAT night. They may be suppose in the future at 7:00 pm, so there is a little a period crunch but that's the sole time the movers had available. They finally arrive, take a look at her small 1 bedroom apartment and tell her "The free move only covers 2 hours price of free moving. It appears as though you've more items than we are able to move around in 2 hours" (fine print), and so they leave!!!! My buddy is panicking. Jane is one particular lady who lives through herself and it has to become from her apartment in just a few hours. If she resides in a small 1 bedroom and had too many items so they can move, it can make me wonder just who they COULD move?? Anyway, my good friend calls me at 8:00 desperate and crying. I rally up our other friends and that we manage to find a U Haul place that's still open and rent a truck. All of us go over and move her that very same evening. She got out of her apartment in time, and she got a free move alright, nevertheless it wasn't from the company who promised her the move. She did everything she was suppose to do, wrote their name for the Leasing Application because Locating Company who referred her on the new apartments, plus they GOT Taken care of THE REFERRAL, yet they didn't provide you with the move that they can promised.

Apparently a number of these "free move" companies have small print that limits just how long they are going to offer you to the move. And just what happens in the event the move goes wrong with go over that point. Can they just leave? Evidently. Or, when they look over your items and feel the job will take beyond the allowed time, they could not START the move. One more thing to watch out for within the small print....not merely may there be limits to the time they will allow, but they often limit like items and the amount of items they'll move. For instance, when you have a 1 bedroom, they often have a very specific report on the only real items they are going to move. For example: 1 couch, 1 table, one dinning table, 4 dining chairs, a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, 2 lamps, a few boxes (they frequently will still only accept move a small amount of boxes) and a lot of times that is certainly it!! In case you have a couple bedroom, they may increase the list with the help of another bed and dresser. But what if however, you have an item that's not on the list.....like a desk, or possibly a curio cabinet, or even a piano, or perhaps an aquarium, or a dresser or an extra table or a loveseat, or a recliner, or even a number of boxes compared to they allow? Don't be surprised whenever they leave all items behind that aren't on the restrictive list, and you really are just stuck determining how to deal with them yourself. If it is enough items, or things that are just right, you might end up needing to rent a truck or UHaul anyway, or call friends who are able to come help you.

Another friend recently told me that something similar became of him that happened to my first friend. He was using one of people apartment locating firms that provide a "free" move. He said they were calling him daily when he was ready for the apartment, trying difficult to convince him to maneuver into one of the few places that they recommended. Each day they called to find out if he picked a place yet if he placed their name about the Leasing Using any apartments yet. Finally he did choose a place, anf the husband did put there name there because Locator who referred him. And then, a fascinating thing happened. He could never get ahold of anyone in the apartment locating company again! Once they found he picked a spot and wrote them down (their check was guaranteed), they never called him after that. They would not return his calls anf the husband couldn't discover a real live human from the company to talk with as a way to schedule his free move. He finished up the need to hire another mover in the long run. The "free" move locating company got paid their cash and they never delivered the disposable move.

How would be the "free move" locating companies not the same as all the other Apartment Locating Companies? Well, there are several definite differences that you should know about. First of all, let's establish the fact that most Apartment Locating companies do not need to give you a "free move" to entice customers. Many experts have shown their superb customer satisfaction along with the expertise they offer will save you the average renter $500-$700.....which is considerably more valuable as opposed to price of a couple hour move. Plus, they truly be useful for finding the top and quite a few awesome apartment home. Another clear difference is that this: Not all of the apartment communities out there work with the "free move" locating companies. In fact, some of them won't. This is because of a combination of reasons.

For one, some "free move" companies do not have the most effective reputation. Secondly, many of the apartments tend not to believe that they actually earned the commission that they are wanting the apartments to spend them. Among those free move companies just have an online site where you sign on and check on your own. They only will show you information on the small selection of of properties which will actually work using them and pay them back. Once you look for a place, you go online again on the website and inform them which you picked and therefore the computer is suppose to schedule the move. Not every nokia's are similar, however this is the process for some. A true human isn't even actively involved in assisting you using your search in many cases. Many of the apartments believe just putting a website online alone does not merit earning a commission. Now you may have an online prescence. The truth is, the apartments already have their own website. While there is no problem using a Locating Company creating a website (in fact, every one of them do), the challenge arises if the locator ONLY communicates through the website and therefore are predominantly a dot.com business.

The apartment complexes don't wish to pay a dot.com for establishing a website and then only delivering what you promises the main time. They would like to pay Apartment Locators that have a brick and mortar office, who've actual live Agents who work there and who deal one-on-one together with the potential renters, assisting them to find their new rental home with customized, individual lists of apartment information. Often times these Locators even escort their customers to the properties. In the event the client carries a unique situation, the Locator can identify them which properties are in all likelihood to be effective their their own circumstances. They know who may have the very best specials on the market, or who may have the particular amenities how the renter is seeking. The renter can actually call their Locator and meet with them and get questions and create a working relationship.

What is the disadvantage for you personally, the objective renter, when they are not all of the apartments works using the "move free" locating companies? The situation arises in that the "move free" information mill only planning to recommend for you the particular apartments that occur to utilize them. Which means that you may not find out about the property that's actually the the one which matches precisely what you would like and possesses the top special. They are going to only display information for the properties who covers the cost them. Once you make use of a traditional Apartment Locator who works with All of the properties within the City, you can depend on that you will be receiving the whole picture and can honestly be known about every one of the properties that have the most effective specials. This is the distinct advantage that real local Apartment Locators have on the so-called "free move" locators. Most traditional Apartment Locators work with All the reputable apartment and townhome communities. No matter to them what one you pick in the end as long as you are satisfied, because These pays the Locator and assist the Agent. They have no need to try to steer that you one particular property over another. Their job is usually to recommend who has the best selection and appears to be the best match for you.

[qqueenofhades]

So dare I ask what the nightmare in detail is regarding Brexit right now?

@tollers-and-jack said: I’m asking for the rant…

@rhymeswithtessa said: I’m a big fan of your rants gimme your thoughts on brexit

@onlymorelove said: Ahem. I am interested in your rant. If you feel like sharing. 💗

Ahaha wow. Apparently this is something the people really want to hear about. Disclaimer, just remember that you asked for this, and that this is, as Captain Holt would say, a trigger for me. So if this periodically devolves into incoherent screaming/application of capital letters and exclamation marks, and what have you, just know that.

So… I wrote these posts soon after Brexit in 2016 explaining what a spectacularly stupid idea it was even then. If I said anything optimistic in those posts, in a sort of grasping-at-straws-maybe-this-will-work sort of flailing way, please disregard it. We have had empirical evidence of how this played out. Spoiler alert: it failed. It failed so comprehensively on every possible level that it seems almost ludicrous for a supposedly modern political system, but this is 2019, the world is dogshit, and we are all retreating into our little late-capitalism xenophobia bubbles with our right-wing strongmen and our populist rhetoric and the UK is now a global laughingstock. Which believe me, the ex-British Empire richly deserves, especially given the part that anti-immigration paranoia played in this whole debacle, but also, I live here and really would Rather Not.

I do not even know how to sum up the ridiculousness of the past few months, where – almost at the end of the two-year period of triggering Article 50, with just a very short amount of time to the original exit date (29 March 2019) – the UK finally managed to secure a withdrawal deal. Mind you, it was a shit deal that both sides hated, but by golly, It Made Brexit Happen, and since the Theresa May-bot has only been able to repeat over and over that she will Make Brexit Happen, there you have it. Not surprisingly, it proceeded to be comprehensively defeated in Parliament by the largest majority ever seen since World War II. It then was subject to surface-level makeovers and cosmetic tinkering about the backstop in Northern Ireland (since among many other things, the ardent Brexiteers forget that oh yeah we share a land border with an EU country and peace in Ireland is kind of a thing that should be paid attention to). The DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) of Northern Ireland, whose 10 MPs prop up the minority Tory government, absolutely hated it and would not support it, since it would effectively introduce different regulations for NI than the rest of the UK and thus jeopardise the, you know, United Kingdom. Plus it would require the EU’s assent to end the arrangement, and also we can’t have that. Because reasons.

The deal was then thumpingly defeated for a second time, people got worried because uhhhh aren’t we supposed to leave the EU in like a week, Parliament had to institute emergency measures and hold a series of votes on Brexit alternatives, those also got defeated and May would not even commit to honouring the will of the House, 6 million people signed a petition asking for Article 50 to be revoked and the Brexit process cancelled (the biggest in parliamentary history) and got ignored. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage led a pathetic procession of 200 diehard Leavers against literally 1 million people in London calling for a new referendum, the deal got defeated for a third time after they had to do all kinds of fancy-dancing to get it back for yet another vote, they got the EU to agree to a crunch extension to 12 April, and now that that is three days away with absolutely no consensus in sight, have sent May back to Europe to beg Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to extend the deadline to 30 June. They actually had to pass a bill (by one vote) forcing her to do this in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The EU is justifiably exasperated with this utter, unbelievable incompetence, the fact that the hard right wing of the Tory party pulled this absurdly irresponsible jackshit without any clue how to do it, and the way the UK still thinks it can just pick an a la carte deal where we’re great and the EU sucks and blue passports and blah blah Great Britain is Great!!! And there has been absolutely no collective awareness from either major party that maybe, just maybe, trying to undo a legal and political and cultural alignment that has existed since at least 1973 when we were a founding member of this project, in two years, with no idea how, to please a xenophobic lying campaign, WAS A STUPID FUCKING GODDAMN IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!

(we pause while the blogger breathes and drinks heavily)

Anyway, that is the short version of Nobody Still Knows What The Fuck Is Going to Happen. Technically if we stayed in the bloc past 22 May, we’d have to hold elections to the European Parliament, which bitch bitch whine whine, the Brexiteers don’t want to do. Maybe we think we’re entitled to more special treatment (no scratch that, we definitely do) because we can’t sort our heads from our asses and have been so wildly and bogglingly arrogant and incompetent that it would almost be funny if people’s lives and livelihoods and futures weren’t at stake. And we have the goddamn European Research Group (aka the hard Brexit wing) yapping about how no deal wouldn’t be that bad and we should just take it on the chin because Blah Blah Blitz Spirit, Nationalism Patriotism Our Freedom From The Tyrannical EU. (Sidenote, if someone just punches Jacob Rees-Mogg in the elitist Little Britain face, you don’t know where I was, God I hate him so much.) Every single business, manufacturer, industry, finance, medicine, food, education, you name it outfit has been warning that no, actually, no deal would be catastrophic and the UK is not remotely prepared for it. To the point we have the military on standby to deliver basic goods if it happens??! How. How is this acceptable??!?!? I don’t understand??!?!

(And the Brexiteers who are like “this is Britain let’s all just hunt hares and grow food in our back gardens,” which, yes, is something I heard actually said, are out of touch to a truly stupendous degree. Yes I’m sure that a modern first-world country wants to resort to subsistence farming to feed its 66 million people. Do they. Even. Hear Themselves. Racism is a hell of a drug, my friends! And if you want to be like “oh no it’s not about racism/anti-immigrant sentiment, it’s about the economy,” let’s just say that the newsreader covering a Brexit march said that he’d never seen so many white people in one place and was forced to apologize, because racist white people don’t like it being pointed out to them that they are racist white people. That tells you a lot. And the Leave campaign has been convicted multiple times for breaking electoral law and just flat-out Lying to the public, so the people who voted Leave thinking they were in fact getting a better economic deal were deceived outright and have indeed often expressed regret that they were so wildly and deliberately deluded. So anyway. Fun!)

I cannot emphasise enough the sheer, staggering arrogance and delusion of the people who proposed this project and then forced it through, because the British public has believed throughout its entire history that it’s better than the whole world (see again: imperial nostalgia and Oh No The Foreigners Are Coming and etc) and has been fed for a good 25 years on this point on a lot of bullshit stories about how terrible and Liberal and Anti-British the EU is, because the British popular press is a flaming dumpster fire (you think Fox News is bad, and it is, but so many of the tabloids are basically Fox News UK). So the Brits feel as if they’ve been so unfairly repressed by the EU and need to Take Back Control (once again, there is a very long history of this  rhetoric of the English being supposedly attacked and repressed by foreigners, dating back to the idea of the “Norman Yoke” resulting from the Conquest, which became a big deal in the 19th century – I am a historian, I can pull receipts for days on this). Once again, they think they can just do whatever they want, the EU is the bad guy for not giving it to them, that we should set ourselves on fire and jump out the window rather than sit at the table like grownups with the rest of Europe, and just take our ball and go home and yet still think we are entitled to preferential treatment.

I just…. I don’t even. I DO NOT EVEN. I seriously lack the words. 

So we may get another rolling series of short-term extensions, we may not, nobody can come to any agreement on what should be done, May promised to resign to get the deal through, the deal did not get through, the whole setup is so unsustainable that it feels like a general election is an inevitability, and the obvious solution would be another referendum to see if the people even still goddamn want this. But the Brexiteers, for all they bluster about upholding the will of the people to leave, resist this with all their might (what are you fucking afraid of? If you’re so confident that you’re still the majority, you should WANT another referendum to confirm it, but you’re cowards and you know you’d lose and you’re tied to this stick of dynamite for Ideology Reasons, god damn it). The message has been always that We Must Deliver Brexit and This Is What The People Want, while the people are breaking records saying that no, actually, we’d like another say, because everyone has now seen that this is an absurd shitshow that cannot be accomplished (and ONCE AGAIN WAS NEVER! FEASIBLE! IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE!!!!) and it hey, actually was not a bad idea to be in the EU. 

This is again, the alignment of the entire post-WWII political and legal world. It confers countless benefits, freedom from tariffs, the single market, a customs union, visa-free travel, no roaming charges, the right to live and work in 27 other countries, etc. But because the ex-British Empire (which really wishes it was still the British Empire) has its fragile racist panties in a bunch about other people coming to live here (when as ever, the problem isn’t immigrants, it’s austerity budgets and the Tories absolutely gutting government and NHS funding and social programmes and thinking that the solution to knife crime is to punish teachers for not noticing their students getting into it), they have decided this is actually the best course of action. Because we don’t want those Non British People telling us what to do. Ew gross.

As people have said, it’s like trading a gourmet three course meal for a bag of crisps and feeling self-satisfied about it, because boy we sure showed them. It has been bungled to a degree truly stupefying to everyone who isn’t a marching Brexiteer ideologue, Labour have…. really not inspired any confidence whatsoever that they’d be able to handle it better (since they have wildly see-sawed between what they will and won’t support, if they’d revoke Article 50 or support a new people’s vote or so on) and the Prime Minister has failed on an utterly fundamental degree to build cross-party consensus or engage with other European leaders or display any ability to consider alternatives. The Tories have truly felt that they can ram this through without any reference to anyone or anything else, and fuck consequences, I guess. The British economy has already lost approximately £66 billion as a result of Brexit uncertainty and loses more every day, every major firm is moving its headquarters to somewhere they can take advantage of EU law, this will leave us poorer, more isolated, less secure, with fewer options, and generally a worse deal in every imaginable way, and yet, because again, racism and xenophobia is a hell of a drug, there are still some factions who feel like yes, this is absolutely what we should do. 

It is truly a slow motion car crash of nightmares, it’s completely avoidable and yet nobody has the backbone to do that, Parliament and the PM have completely broken down, nobody is listening to the British people for whom they are supposedly doing this, and once again, the British Empire absolutely 100% deserves this. But as someone who lives here and would actually kind of like to get a job here, Jesus Christ. Jesus. Christ. JESUS. CHRIST.

#politics for ts #brexit for ts #did i say everything #i'm not even sure i did #god #long post #romancelvr #ask

[theartofmedia]

Kotaku and the Art of Game Leaks

(Full disclosure: this piece was commissioned by a friend. The topic has changed from the initial pitch, but still. I don’t know how that may or may not affect your view on this piece, but I still feel it’s important for me to be transparent about this.) On May 30th, 2019, Laura Kate Dale announced her departure from Kotaku UK. Dale is a controversial figure among the games journalist community for... multiple reasons (please note the latter link lacks any actual evidence and how she apparently didn’t report this Uber driver for ‘nearly kidnapping her’ despite posting it publicly on Twitter, hence the controversy around it), but that’s not what we’re talking about today. What we’re going to be discussing is what she is known for the most: video game leaks.

LKD is most known for leaking video game information prior to their release, from information about Dark Souls Remastered, to unboxing a PS4 Slim before Sony itself even announced its existence, to Switch software. It got to the point where LKD was blacklisted by Nintendo UK, most likely for leaking so much information.

Now as I was researching LKD, there was something I noticed. A lot of people supported LKD’s leaks, calling it “real journalism,” and commending her for doing her job so well. As shown by the link above, many people mocked Nintendo UK for blacklisting her for “doing her job too well.” People are always scrambling for new leaks, new information, though in many cases, this can lead to fake leaks, misinformation, and confusion among players.

And it got me to think: how do leaks really affect both the devs and the consumers of games?

The conclusion I’ve come to about it is: it does more harm than good on both sides, but especially to the devs.

Here we will be defining four categories of leaks (three of which are explained here by Griffin Vacheron of Game Revolution), though our main focus will be on two.

Accidental leaks are just like they sound: they’re accidents. Something happened, something went wrong, and people got a hold of information before they were supposed to. Like when Capcom put all the pictures of the roster of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on their website when a good portion of the roster hadn’t yet been announced, and the unannounced characters could be found via a small URL change. Or when Walmart’s Canadian site revealed around 40 unannounced titles due to a(n alleged) glitch in their system just weeks before E3 2018. Or when Bethesda accidentally streamed their E3 2015 rehearsal which ended up confirming the existence of Dishonored 2. Yeah.

The main component of accidental leaks is just that--accidental. Someone did something wrong, something in a system went wrong, someone didn’t think through the consequences of what probably seemed like a good idea at the time--it happens! Nothing is perfect, people included, and shit happens. But the key part is that it’s not intentional. Someone may (or, really, will) be reprimanded, punished, or even fired depending on the leak, but there was never any intention to reveal this information.

Company leaks are... not entirely proven, from my research. This is the idea that the developers themselves leak information in order to draw attention to their game and hype it up. Often, this will be the other determination of certain leaks--was it an accident, or a PR stunt? There’s no real definitive proof and seems to simply be rumor, but the possibility still exists, as there’s no real way to disprove it, either.

Ethic leaks are generally the exception, not the rule. These are leaks of working conditions, such as an employee from NetherRealm talking about the toxic work environment, or Rockstar employees opening up about how they were mistreated and underpaid and burned to ashes, or Blizzard’s layoff of 800 employees. (Further reading here on the abuse of game devs, as well as what can be done about it.) These are things that need to be talked about, because these relate to the treatment of actual, real people. These aren’t issues then of game content or development, it’s an issue of ethics in the workplace. Same with the leak of this document that details how AI can be used to encourage microtransactions, though that is an issue related to the consumer rather than the workers. Shady tactics and the maltreatment of workers is something that needs to be shown and discussed and talked about, because these things affect the actual workers, as well as the quality of a product and the company’s integrity in relation to the consumer. (Basically, if you intentionally make your game in such a way that players have to use microtransactions to make any significant progress, you’ve ruined your integrity as a company by trying to drain your player base of more money, regardless of the base price they paid for the game anyway. It’s a scummy business practice, and that kind of thing should be revealed to the public that you’re going to try to bleed dry.)

Intentional leaks are just as they sound: they’re the intentional leak of information. This is when people outside the company hack in and reveal secrets, or when people inside the company reveal information (whether directly or indirectly via being sources for journalists) before they are to be officially announced. The information given is given with the knowledge that yes, someone is going to reveal it to the public.

So let’s talk about the ramifications of intentional leaks on game devs.

Remember Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle? The cover image had been leaked before the team had a chance to actually showcase the game. Nobody knew anything about the game other than the cover, and universal reception at the time was: “This is going to be terrible.” Because of a leaked image, the public already had a strong negative opinion about it. However, the showcase that showed off actual gameplay was well-received, and the Metacritic score is 85. So the game itself was pretty damn good, according to the critics. An unlikely crossover turned out well! But the initial reaction was incredibly demoralizing to the team. It’s one thing to have criticism given to a game based on a trailer or gameplay showcase; it’s another to get criticism based on a single image and the concept alone with no other information given. As the director and music composer explain, the dev team was very worried and stressed not just about the game reception but about the showcase, as they were afraid that the reception to the showcase was going to be bad due to the already-negative opinion on the game.

Let’s also talk about how CD Projekt Red had demo gameplay and audio of Cyberpunk 2077 leaked by a journalist (who later complained about not being credited, about how his relationship with CD Projekt Red and the PR person he was friends with) after being asked not to. The company had their trust in the journalists--someone who they had a fifteen year relationship with--used and abused, leading to secrets being leaked. The devs had politely asked the journalists not to do so, but one did, and apparently saw nothing wrong with leaking private information and posting it to the public.

Or let’s talk about how, way back in the day, the entire source code for Half-Life 2 was revealed to the public and Valve (allegedly) lost $250 million dollars. The article actually states some of the effects of the leaked source code: “Meanwhile, the team at Valve, which had been in crunch mode for months, was left reeling by the leak. The game was costing the company $1 million a month to build and the end was still far from sight. The leak had not only caused financial damage but had demotivated a tired team. One young designer asked Newell, "Is this going to destroy the company?" (found under the heading “A Red Letter Day”).

Or we can talk about the Sm4sh leaks back in 2014 and how it led to an employee (allegedly) being fired and sued due to leaking this information. Now, this can very easily be viewed as justice being served to the leaker, and I would agree. But what is the issue here can be summed up by PlatinumGames producer JP Kellams:

The people working for years and years on a project suddenly have parts of their project--that they wanted to surprise players with, this particular instance being the Sm4sh roster--given out to the public before they wanted it to be. Imagine working for years on your life on a project, and then having someone reveal your work to the internet without your knowledge or permission. I know I would feel dejected, exhausted, hopeless, hurt, regardless of any positive reception to what was revealed. You, as someone who has worked so incredibly hard--and, in many cases in the game industry, been thoroughly abused--apparently don’t have the right to reveal the thing you’ve been working on the way you want.

I want to make this clear: I am not talking about “the Big Corporation” here. I don’t care about the higher-ups who put the pressure on the workers. I care about the workers, the little people that are being trampled on and forced to work in abusive, toxic conditions in order to meet a deadline and the outrageous demands of the higher-ups. They are the ones suffering.

Case in point: the Blufever leaks for Final Fantasy XIV. The details are a bit murky, as is with most leaks, but the story as I understand it is: user Blufever is/was an employee at Square Enix who leaked massive amounts of information on upcoming expansions/patches for FFXIV. Then, their account went dark, as they apparently feared for being found out by Square Enix. Vergeben, a known reputable leaker within the Smash community, had this to say about the situation:

Now, of course, there is no way to truly verify these claims. However, due to Vergeben’s reputation as an accurate leaker (and the fact that he was right about one of the upcoming DLC characters being from Square Enix) leads me to believe him. Assuming that his claims are true, someone leaking all of this information to the public put a lot of innocent people in the line of fire--and it’s very possible that these

So, what does this have to do with Kotaku?

Here’s something interesting.

When known E3 leaker WabiSabi was given a cease & desist warning from Nintendo for leaking information, take a look at some of the top replies. (Note that a lot of them are ninja gifs, here’s a sample so I don’t have to do it for every one.)

Not all of the replies are against WabiSabi, however, though a majority seem to be:

(About the above: I can’t really find anything suggesting that LKD was leaking things for “customer advocacy,” other than confirming that the next gen console (now known as the Switch) was not using the Wii branding like its predecessor did, thus easing some fears because of the bombing of the Wii U. Other tweets about that are here, but don’t really sway me in terms of “consumer advocacy.”)

As shown, the replies seem to be pretty divisive on whether or not it was a good or bad thing that WabiSabi got hit with a cease & desist.

However, let’s have a look at some of the replies to LKD’s tweet about how she was blacklisted by Nintendo.

And again, not all are supportive of her:

I actually had to look quite a bit to find any negative comments. Many were supportive of her.

(I would like to take this moment to get unprofessional for a second and unleash my full opinion of this: NO FUCKING SHIT YOU GOT BLACKLISTED, SHERLOCK. THEY TRUST YOU WITH THEIR SECRETS AND THEN YOU DISRESPECT THEM BY REVEALING THEM BEFORE THEY DID. I DO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WOULD SAY IT’S A COMPANY BEING “SHADY” WHEN IT’S JUST INFORMATION ABOUT UPCOMING PRODUCTS. NOTHING ABOUT ETHICS OR CONSUMER TRUST OR PRODUCT QUALITY. anyway,)

Now, you can say, “But Sakra! That’s a three-year difference!” And I rebuke with: people still support her to this day in spite of this. Kotaku UK kept her on though all of this and then some. It wasn’t until a kerfuffle happened in April with the “Persona 5 OST Has A Disability Slur” thing happened, and soon after, LKD left. It seems that the immense backlash with that was what fully pushed her off. (Now whether she was forced to resign or legitimately wanted to leave, that’s something only Kotaku UK and she know for sure.) The point is, her departure from Kotaku UK seems to have been completely unrelated to her leaks.

And why would it when Kotaku themselves--not just the UK chapter--are clearly very supportive of video game leaks of this nature?

Just have a look at their recent posts. All I did was put “leaks” in the search box. You may say “they’re just reporting the news of leaks!” But they put some of the leaked information IN the articles. The one on Watch Dogs Legion even confirmed the leaks. “Kotaku can confirm that this one’s real, as we’ve heard the name from several sources plugged into the company.”

Oh, and let’s not forget this lovely fucking article from 2015 where a Kotaku writer apparently speaks for the site and basically victimizes themselves for being blacklisted by Ubisoft and Bethesda. In fact, we’re going to dissect it, just because there is so much bullshit in here from the author, who is clearly speaking for Kotaku as a whole!

Buckle up, kids, your local Sakra is about to get fucking pissed.

The author describes how the Bethesda blackout came after “we reported insiders’ accounts of the troubled development of the still unreleased fourth major Doom game. In May of that year, we reported that Arkane Austin, the Bethesda-owned studio behind Dishonored, would be working on a new version of the long missing-in-action Prey 2 and that some at the studio were not pleased about that. When top people at Bethesda started making statements casting doubt on our reporting, we published a leaked internal e-mail confirming that those statements had misled gamers and that Arkane had indeed been working on a version of Prey 2.”

However, Kotaku at that time had also posted “our December 2013 report detailing the existence of the then-secret Fallout 4.” Reporting on troubled development isn’t an issue. Leaking emails just to confirm a game when Bethesda was desperately trying to preserve their secrecy that you had broken (probably not first, but Kotaku has a lot of mainstream reach) is an issue. I don’t like Bethesda, don’t get me wrong, but they were trying to salvage the secrecy of a project. Do I think trying to lie to the audience in order to keep the existence of a project secret is okay? No, not really. But I understand what they were trying to do. And whether you agree with their choices or not--no shit you would be blacklisted, especially if you have insiders as described here! You can’t go crying victim and martyr yourselves when you do this kind of shit. Especially if you were reporting on Fallout 4, a major fucking entry in a popular franchise!

As for the Ubisoft blackout...

“The current Ubisoft blackout is actually the second in as many years. The company tried a similar approach in the spring of 2014 after we published early images of the then-unannounced Assassin’s Creed Unity—images that had been leaked to us by an independent source. That article confirmed news about the company’s extraordinary plans to release two entirely different AC games in the fall of that year, one for new consoles and one for old. Ubisoft had warmed back to Kotaku by the summer of 2014, several months after the Unity report, but has cold-shouldered us since the Victory story one year ago. It’s possible other articles angered them, too. But that Victory piece is a safe bet.”

Ubisoft actually gave Kotaku another chance after leaking Unity, and the Victory (now Syndicate) story was, guess what, more leaks. You broke Ubisoft’s trust once, then you broke it again. Frankly, it’s fucking disgusting, knowing about how these leaks really affect devs, that Kotaku would dare to turn itself into a “journalism martyr,” as it were, because they were ignored by the devs whose trust they broke.

Now, you can say that maybe they didn’t know the information of how it affects devs--but a) the Sm4sh leaks and the fallout had already happened by then (it was 2014) and the Half-Life 2 source code fiasco had happened in the previous decade. Also, if they had insiders, wouldn’t they know just how serious leaking this information was and how it puts their sources and other devs at risk? Maybe Ubisoft and Bethesda aren’t as strict on their leak policies as Square Enix and Nintendo are--we don’t know. But I can’t imagine that they like it at all.

“I’m sure some people will sympathize with Bethesda and Ubisoft. Some will cheer these companies and hope others follow suit. They will see this kind of reporting as upsetting, as ruining surprises and frustrating creative people. They will claim we are “hurting video games,” and, as so many do, mistake the job of entertainment reporting for the mandate to hype entertainment products.

“We serve our readers, not game companies, and will always do so to the best of our ability, no matter who in the gaming world is or isn’t angry with us at the moment. In some ways, the blacklist has even been instructive—cut off from press access and pre-release review copies, we have doubled down on our post-release “embedding” approach to games coverage. We’ve experienced some of the year’s biggest games from street level, at the same time and in the same way as our readers.”

No.

It isn’t just about “spoilers” and “ruining the surprise.” In some cases, yes, a lot of people don’t like or actively avoid leaks because they do want to be surprised. But that’s not the only thing.

By “serving your readers” and trying to dig for this information, you’re putting devs at risk. You’re putting your “sources” at risk. Now, if you were reporting on development or shady tactics or awful work environments or specific negative incidents behind the scenes or things that should be talked about, I would absolutely agree with you that you should continue digging deeper. But that’s not it. The companies trust you not to reveal something until a certain time, and you go and do it anyway.

By claiming victim and demonizing the “big bad corporation” for blacklisting you, you minimize the actual stress and hardships it put on the smaller guys in the company that the entire company is built on. You completely brush it aside and paint the entire company as irrational. You completely neglect the plight of the actual people working on it, and disrespect them by revealing their information before they do, when they have worked for SO LONG on whatever project it is. Like JP Kellams said, devs earn the right to talk about their product because they worked on it for so long. You haven’t.

And then... this paragraph.

“Too many big game publishers cling to an irrational expectation of secrecy and are rankled when the press shows them how unrealistic they’re being. There will always be a clash between independent reporters and those seek to control information, but many of these companies appear to believe that it is actually possible in 2015 for hundreds of people to work dozens of months on a video game and for no information about the project to seep out. They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time. They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer. We make our own judgments about what information best serves the news value of a story, and what our readers would prefer not to know—which is why, for example, we omitted key plot details from the Fallout 4 scripts that were leaked to us. We keep covering these companies’ games, of course. Readers expect that. Millions of people still read our stories about them. The companies just leave themselves a little more out of the equation.”

I never thought I’d see the day when video game companies were being victim-blamed.

Frankly, by leaking information, it ruins the relationship between the companies and the journalist, because then the company will start to make generalizations about journalists and not trust them, thinking that they will reveal whatever information they give them, which makes journalists like this press harder for information, and can you see where I’m going with this? It’s a cycle of mistrust, perpetuated by journalists like these who go against the wishes of a company that just wants to keep something a surprise until a certain date.

And then this motherfucker has the audacity to frame companies blacklisting reporters that leak information as bad! “They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer.” Why are companies wrong for trusting journalists? Are you implying that all games journalists are untrustworthy, because they won’t respect the wishes of a company that gives them the information in good faith that they won’t leak it? You do say that “it is nearly unfathomable to me that a reporter would sit on true information about what’s really happening in gaming, that we would refrain from telling our readers something because it would mess with a company’s marketing plan,” so I don’t know, maybe you DO think that all games journalists should immediately report on confidential information that the game companies are going to eventually reveal anyway and while only really receiving clout in return. Oh, whoops, got a little bitter there.

“They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time.”

Maybe because people like YOU are the ones who leak it! You can just as easily, you know, not fucking do that! This feels more like an excuse to not accept responsibility/deflect criticism, because ‘the companies shouldn’t have expected us to stay quiet!!!’ This is just straight-up victim blaming. Like it’s actually kind of scary.

It’s this ideology that Kotaku seems to stand by, as LKD once stated that higher-ups look over the written articles to approve them, and to my knowledge, Kotaku hasn’t redacted any of these statements, so I’m assuming that they still stand by it. Them spreading this ideology is what perpetuates the idea of game leaks (of the non-accidental, non-ethics-related kind) being “good journalism,” and with how much reach Kotaku has, it has the power to be legitimately damaging.

“They have done so in apparent retaliation for the fact that we did our jobs as reporters and as critics. We told the truth about their games, sometimes in ways that disrupted a marketing plan, other times in ways that shone an unflattering light on their products and company practices. Both publishers’ actions demonstrate contempt for us and, by extension, the whole of the gaming press. They would hamper independent reporting in pursuit of a status quo in which video game journalists are little more than malleable, servile arms of a corporate sales apparatus. It is a state of affairs that we reject.”

And here it is: Kotaku was just the humble, underdog reporter just doing their job, and the publishers show off contempt for the entire industry (rather than just Kotaku itself, I guess blacklisting one site means you hate all of games journalism) for Kotaku simply doing their jobs!

No, you ignorant twat, you broke their trust, so they don’t want to talk to you anymore. You don’t get to play victim when YOU were the one who blew the whistle.

Now, I cannot stress this enough: I am only talking about leaks related to game announcements, content details, etc. that are deliberately leaked to the public from an inside source. I am not talking about leaks related to ethical violations or troubled development or other negative things within companies. Those are things that should be reported on. But that kind of thing isn’t primarily what Kotaku is talking about and promoting; they are promoting the reveal of information because it’s “just good journalism.”

Except, as shown above, it has some very dire, very real consequences for the people you don’t see, and maybe that’s why Kotaku is so adamant about defending themselves in this regard. Maybe they don’t see the living, breathing people who get affected by their leaks, and so they think they’re fighting against the Big Bad Corporation when, in reality, it’s much more complicated than that. It doesn’t feel real to them. Or, maybe they do and they just don’t care. I genuinely cannot say so one way or the other.

I really, truly hope that by reading this, you the reader have a new perspective on how leaks of that kind affect the industry, and the little people whose backs the companies are built on.

As for the article and Kotaku as a whole...

“Kotaku readers always deserve the truth. You deserve our best work. It doesn’t matter which company is mad at us today, or which companies get mad at us in the future. You’ll continue to get it.”

Fuck yourselves.

#kotaku #video games #games #games journalism #hooo BOY this one got angry #but!! it's done and i like it

[lhs3020b]

Some notes on the week’s events

Some funny things have happened on the way to the Brexit.

I’d expected the final week before the original deadline was going to be a horror-fest of grinding existential fear. Instead, it’s suddenly no longer the final week (the EU-27 put the deadline back to April the 12th), and also, uh, the whole project appears to be going off the rails. In fact, so far, it’s been unexpectedly-fun. And those are words I never expected to write in a Brexit context.

What on Earth happened?

Well, the key event has been a certain petition, which it’s fair to say absolutely no-one (myself included) saw coming...

It’s been a dizzying few days, and I am having a little trouble keeping the timeline straight in my head. So any errors of chronology are mine and mine alone, and I apologise for them in advance!

I personally became aware of the existence of the petition on the 21st. At that point it was on about 60K signatures. Petitions that get over 100K are eligible for a debate in Parliament, so I figured I may as well sign it. I didn’t really expect anything more - like most people, I think, I assumed it would plateau at something like 100-150K. Basically it would be a place for dead-end Remainers to act out our grief.

I retweeted the links on my Twitter and on here (sorry, non-UK followers - you’re probably quite sick of this now).

And then it turned out that lots of other signatories, independently and unco-ordinated, had gone and done the same thing. The petition went viral. It topped a million signatures within 24 hours. Parliament’s servers crashed - apparently the peak rate was something like 2,000 signatures per minute.

And then it somehow carried on growing.

As of the time of writing, it’s over 4,151,000 people, and it’s still growing. The UK electorate only numbers about 45 million, so it’s already close to 10% of that figure. This is quite extraordinary - I’m not aware of anything quite like that having happened before. (There was the other petition, immediately after the 2016 referendum, but as I recall the growth there was less explosive, and it tailed off quite sharply at 3 million or so.)

What’s interesting about this is two things - one is the wording. “Revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU” - a clear, unambiguous and finite objective. I think in a way, this is more attractive than another referendum (the campaign could go off the rails again, the BBC could drop into “different views on shape of planet” mode again, Facebook could fill up with lies aimed at gullible pensioners, and history might just repeat itself). The second thing is the spontaneity - the Revoke campaign has no organising committee or any figures behind the curtain. It seems to be a genuine, bottom-up social movement. (The lack of organisation may actually be helping Revoke - look at the crap tactics and inept strategy of the Peoples’ Vote group, who have accomplished pretty much nothing in 2.5 years. Many of us privately suspect that PV is more about letting a collection of dead-end Westminster centrists feel relevant, and less about actually averting Brexit.)

The other thing that’s happened is that apparently revocation is now on the political agenda. Even as recently as last week, just calling off Brexit was political badthink. No-one in Westminster was even willing to consider it - and now apparently various MPs are openly talking about it as an option.

And, uh, it hasn’t stopped growing yet (no, Note To Self, absolutely do not tempt fate...)

Another thing is the absence of any effective response. So far, Leave haven’t had any obvious counter to any of this. It turns out that they’ve had their own pro-No Deal petition lurking out there for months, and it’s only attracted about 370,000 signatures. Granted that’s larger for most petitions, but it’s been going for months and it’s still less than 10% the size of the pro-Revoke one. So far, all Leave have done is throw shade about supposed Russian bots - I remember People’s Vote have been trying that same line, on and off, since about November 2016, and it’s gained no traction at all. So it’s not obvious that it will help Leave here either.

It does seem that we’ve managed to catch Leave on the hop with this one.

Meanwhile, Theresa May has had an awful week. Earlier, she gave a bizarre speech outside Downing Street where she insulted MPs as traitors(!!) and claimed that her deal represents the sole will of the people. (By the way, as far as I know, there is no pro-TM Deal petition. Make of that factoid what you will!) I think she thought she could enrage public opinion in her favour. Instead, what seems to have happened is that people were either appalled or confused by her remarks, and she seems to have made Parliament angry at her. (Funnily enough, if you need people’s votes, insulting them doesn’t tend to help.)

Oh also - she turned up half an hour late to her own speech, which is rather Brexit in of itself.

And then the EU-27 threw a curve-ball with their unilateral extension. This will mean chaos in the House on Monday, because the current Withdrawal Act is very specific about the Brexit end-date, and this will need changing - or, come next Saturday, we’ll be both out of and inside of the EU at the same time. (You know all the jokes about Schrodinger’s Brexit? Well they might actually be about to happen.) The Tory Party is in a deep shambles and the whipping operation appears near-ineffective, and they’re struggling to get business through the House, so the odds of Monday going to plan seem low.

Oh but there’s even more.

Yesterday, a sitting Tory MP was found guilty of expenses fraud, relating to the 2015 general election. If he gets a custodial sentence, it might result in a by-election, and apparently the seat in question is (in principle) winnable for the Opposition. Given how slender Theresa May’s working majority is getting (currently about 4 votes, IIRC), this won’t help her!

So in summary, everything’s gone non-linear again, and I’m crunching away on the popcorn.

#UK internal politics #Diary of a disaster #unexpected developments

[jveleno]

Brayden Point & Brett Howden

(Brayden Point during the 2017-2018 Lightning season - source)

(Brett Howden during the 2017 World Junior Summer Showcase - source)

Brayden has been an NHL player since the 2016-2017 season, and he’s currently one of the core players for the Lightning. Brett made his NHL debut this season. They both played major junior on the Moose Jaw Warriors and were both drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning. (Unfortunately for the story but fortunately if you’re a Rangers fan, Brett is now a Ranger. I’m sad.)

In Moose Jaw, they played on the same power play, but were not always on the ice together since they’re both centers. They sat next to each other in the locker room though, a fact they’ve brought up numerous times when talking about how close they are.

(Left: Brayden. Right: Brett. During the 2015-2016 Moose Jaw season)

Timeline

Note: the WHL drafts players the year they turn 15. Most don’t become rookies until they’re 16.

2010-2011: Brayden – drafted to the Moose Jaw Warriors during the 2011 WHL Draft.

2011-2012: Brayden – makes his Warriors debut during the playoffs as an underage player, leads the team in playoff scoring and plays on a line with Quinton Howden, Brett’s then 20-year-old brother.

2012-2013: Brayden – rookie season, already a sensation because of the 2012 playoffs. Brett – drafted to the Warriors during the 2013 WHL Draft.

2013-2014: Brayden – gets an A, drafted to the Lightning during the 2014 NHL Draft. Brett – plays five games with the Warriors but is sent back to midget.

2014-2015: Brayden – gets the C, plays for Team Canada during WJCs and wins gold. Brett – rookie season.

2015-2016: Brayden – captains Team Canada during WJCs and finishes sixth, completes his four years and graduates from the WHL and turns pro. Brett – gets an A, drafted to the Lightning during the 2016 NHL Draft.

2016-2017: Brayden – rookie season with the Lightning, plays for Team Canada during World Championships and wins silver. Brett – gets the C.

2017-2018: Brayden – second season with the Lightning, NHL All-Star. Brett – plays for Team Canada during WJCs and wins gold. At the end of the season, he graduates and turns pro. During the NHL trade deadline in Feb, the Lightning GM trades Brett as part of a package to the Rangers.

2018-2019: Brayden – third season, considered one of the best young centers in the league and one of the Lightning’s best players. Brett – makes the Rangers out of training camp, rookie season.

(2015-2016 leadership group. Brett is furthest on the left, Brayden next to him)

Size

Brayden’s size has always been a sort of “problem area” for people first meeting him. He had the skill to be ranked as high as a late first rounder in the 2014 draft (TSN had him at 17th overall, Central Scouting at 31st for North American skaters), but he was like 5’9” at the time. He ended up surprisingly dropping to the third round 79th overall, with the Lightning trading up one spot to grab him. And it was pretty much all because he’s small.

Sometimes he’s listed as 5’11”, but that is a LIE he’s like, 5’10” at most.

Brett is either 6’2” or 6’3” depending on if you’re looking at EliteProspects or the Warriors roster.

(Brayden at 5’10” hugging Victor Hedman at 6’6”)

(Fun fact: When he joined the Warriors as a 16-year-old, Brayden was 5’8” 125 lb. His then-captain thought he must be a team member’s little brother and tried to kick him out of the locker room. Brett was 6’2” 185 lb when he joined the Warriors, so no problems there.)

(Brett is tallest and Brayden is next to him. That’s 4 inches, right? - source)

The Coveted #21

Brayden wore #19 in Moose Jaw, and Brett wore #21. Those are the numbers they wore throughout their junior careers and on Team Canada in various tournaments.

When Brayden made the opening night roster for the Lightning in 2016, it was announced that he would wear #21 (which he presumably chose). I’m not entirely sure why Brayden didn’t wear #19 in Tampa, because there was no one on the team wearing that number at the time, unless there was a Crunch player wearing it.

But anyway, Brayden stole Brett’s number. Brett was cool with it :) It was cute.

Now they’re both wearing #21, Brayden in Tampa and Brett in New York.

Social Media

We have to do most of this primer without visuals (no cute pictures of them together!), because neither of these boys is big on social media. Neither use Instagram or twitter much, and there’s barely any personal stuff. Private boys.

BUT! I peeked at their twitters anyway, mostly for original tweets (i.e. not retweets).

(Warning: both of these boys are the most boring tweeters ever.)

Brayden first. He doesn’t tweet much about anyone or anything. His most recent original tweet was him golfing. (I’m pretty sure he’s a bad golfer.) His second most recent tweet is:

Thanks Brayden for the once-a-year update. At least he deemed Brett getting drafted to be important enough for his once-a-year original tweet? His third most recent tweet is wishing the Warriors luck in the 2015-2016 season, and then his fourth most recent is:

Which is about the 2015 Ivan Hlinka Canadian team that Brett captained to gold. We’re only four tweets in and Brayden’s already congratulated Brett twice for existing and insulted his singing.

Summary for Brayden: that boy doesn’t tweet at all unless he’s shitposting randomly in 2013 or wishing the Warriors luck. The fact that he tweeted twice about Brett is pretty sweet.

Brett has a few more original tweets. He seems to write original tweets about Brayden more than he does just about anyone else besides his brother Quinton. Brett congratulates Brayden on getting drafted to the NHL, despite only playing with Brayden for 5 games at that point.

Also congratulates Brayden on the 2015 World Juniors. And retweets his goals for Canada.

And then Brett got drafted! More on that later.

Opening night in 2016, Brayden was on the roster wearing 21, and Brett tweeted that thing about Brett wearing the best number. He also retweeted like every fucking announcement about Brayden making opening night. And tweeted Brayden about his first NHL goal.

He then proceeded to retweet multiple gifs of Brayden’s first goal. Cute.

Summary for Brett: He likes to retweet Brayden hype a lot. Brayden scoring in Moose Jaw, Brayden’s first NHL goal, Brayden making the roster for World Championships, etc. Also Brett writes a good number of original tweets about Brayden, making Brayden #2 in his twitter heart after Quinton Howden. Love a boy who supports Brayden Point.

Brett came back seven weeks later to harass Brayden again when he saw that Brayden didn’t post a new pic. Also...Brett sweetie you sit next to him in the locker room just tell him to his face.

We love a boy who complains that Brayden doesn’t post enough pictures on insta. Like. Constantly. He commented on one of Brayden’s pictures SIX times. SIX. And not in a row either, like the comments were spaced several weeks apart. This one is particularly, ah. Hurtful.

Also this. Like I have to laugh.

Leadership

As a rookie, Brayden talked a lot about everything he learned from the older vets, especially from Quinton Howden. Quinton graduated from the WHL before Brayden’s rookie season, but they did play together for those 10 playoff games in 2012 when Brayden was an underager.

After Brayden graduated to the pros, Brett was given the C, and Brett’s spoken multiple times about how he learned how to be a leader from Brayden.

There’s actually…a lot of comparison between Brayden and Brett like, all the time. They did a lot of charity work in Moose Jaw together, and got their jerseys hung on the wall together at one of these places. Their names sort of come up hand-in-hand in Moose Jaw.

Also, when Brayden left, Brett was fucking emo.

(Brett attempting to put a hat on Brayden. He learned from the best - source)

The Draft & Tampa Bay

Heading into the 2016 NHL Draft, the Lightning reached out to Brayden and asked him about Brett. Brayden encouraged the Lightning to consider drafting Brett (he didn’t say it, but we know he was thinking it). Apparently he gave a “glowing” scouting report. The Lightning took his recommendation to heart and drafted Brett using their first round pick.

Bryan Burns wrote a nice article about it. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE. The best parts:

Also this piece, which is. wow.

They hung out together (every day!) during the 2016 Lightning training camp:

It’s kind of cute how Brett says they got closer even though by that point they were already talking about how close they were like how much closer can you get. And then they hung out again during the 2017 Lightning training camp. This is so fucking cute:

I’d like to thank Brett Howden personally for that quote about them smiling at each other.

Misc.

Brayden is a cat person. He has been seen with a siamese cat, which is also presumably the cat on his twitter header. I don’t have any pics of this, sadly, so have a gif of him smiling instead (it’s a very good smile).

(Brayden celebrating his goal with teammate Ondrej Palat - source)

Brett is a dog person. Here he is with his pal Oliver, whom he loves.

Brayden keeps track of how Brett is doing even while he’s busy in the NHL. During one random interview in Tampa during the 2016-2017 season, the interviewer just happened to bring up Brett. I tried to transcribe as much as I could understand.

Interviewer: How fun is it playing with Brett Howden, our first round draft pick this season?

Brayden: Yeah he was—We were pretty close in Moose Jaw. We sat beside each other in our stalls so we got pretty close, but I was pretty happy when he was picked and hopefully…[mumbling something about "our future"].

Interviewer: He had a hat trick recently, didn't he?

Brayden: Yeah, and then last night he had a four-point night, so he's rolling. The Warriors are actually doing really well so [more mumbling].

He keeps tabs! What a Brett Howden stan.

Here’s a little sneak peek of the 2016 prospect camp. You can see Brett first on the bus, sitting one row ahead of Brayden and turned back to talk to him. We love bus buddies! I would give my left arm to anyone who can give me the full video because I suspect they were roommates too.

Okay that’s all. They were so excited to play together. Let’s ignore the tragic end of their story.

(Left to right: Brayden Point, Brett Howden, James Wisniewski)

We Could Have Had This For Years, Fuck.

Oh and Brett’s wearing 21 now btw. I love crying whenever the Rangers twitter posts about him breathing.

(Brett Howden during the 2018-2019 season - source)

#okay i'm done this is so LONG #brayden/brett #i'm like. not even sorry? #like we really could've had this but stevie had to play me #primer

[bensaunderschp-blog]

Ben Saunders Creative Honours Project Critical Diary

For our creative honours project this year, we were tasked with 

I very quickly came to a decision on the form my project would take, that being a concept album based around F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel The Great Gatsby. My band had already started work on a composition inspired by the work entitled Buchanan Street, and when presented with the opportunity to do an ambitious creative project I thought it would be an excellent idea to build upon that to create an entire concept album. This also tied into my dissertation subject of what makes a concept album successful. I chose The Great Gatsby because it is such a rich text full of strong themes and fleshed out characters. Gatsby is about optimism, hope, the American dream, a man who builds an empire and amasses huge wealth in pursuit of his goal, before it is all cut down and destroyed by the reality of life and the underlying theme that nobody is really pure and true, we all have our dark sides, and even Gatsby, the apparent protagonist, is selfish in pursuit of happiness on his own terms, and blind to how his joy would affect others. This provides seemingly endless inspiration for music and lyrics as one can both draw on one’s own experiences regarding unrequited love, loss, disappointed and disillusionment, while also looking at things from the perspective of the characters and events depicted within the book, the two views hopefully working to support one another.

Taking shape

Shortly after deciding what I wanted to do for my creative honours project, I went to the pub with my long-time collaborator, lyric writer and vocalist Mark Shankland in order to outline a general game plan for how we were going to accomplish our task, as well as running the idea by him to make sure he was up for it. He was, and quickly we decided not to attempt to re-tell the book necessarily, but to use it as a springboard for our own ideas and use its structure as a guideline. As the project developed over the coming months, the album actually became much more of an adaptation of the book than we had originally intended, because we found such inspiration from various events and quotes from the story, and our album follows the general curve of the narrative quite closely. Our goal of making sure that the album was enjoyable on its own terms, not requiring pre-knowledge of The Great Gatsby in order to be enjoyed and understood, was however stuck to, as I think the themes in the book and in our music are general enough to be appreciated outwith the context of the novel itself. We tried to keep things general and avoid just quoting large swathes of Fitzgerald’s writing, never referring to anybody by name or giving exact play-by-play retellings of sections of the story. Again, as the project progressed we ended up quoting or paraphrasing directly from the novel more and more, partly because we thought some lines from the book were just stunning, partly because they said what we wanted to say, partly because it seemed the easiest and most logical thing to do. But most of all, we knew that we could stick to our idea of generality and enjoyment sans understanding of the novel, while also having things be more effective and offer deeper appreciation for people who are familiar with the text. To this end, phrases like “young and vulnerable” and “the green light” absolutely had to be included as these are staples of The Great Gatsby, and towards the end of the final track we actually included a line of dialogue from the most recent film adaptation of the story, but again it is kept general enough here that if you don’t know what movie the dialogue is from, it still makes sense and still hits the emotional chord it is going for, you just might appreciate it that little bit more if you have read the book or seen the film.

We knew early on that we wanted five to seven tracks for our album, aiming higher rather than lower, because a mere four tracks would be too short to really be called a concept “album”, and we knew that we really wanted to create something special and to a high standard. We also, however, didn’t want to give ourselves an impossible amount of work to do, and so decided six or seven tracks would be ideal, giving us enough time to work on them and hone them to be as good as they could be, rather than having to rush out ten lower quality compositions. In the end we capped ourselves at six songs as our writing deadline began to approach and we felt our time would be better spent developing what we had rather than trying to come up with something completely new. I would have liked to have done one more upbeat song both to pace the album better and to cover the narrative gap wherein Gatsby et al meet up and have their confrontation following the outing of he and Daisy’s affair, however time did not permit this, and perhaps this gap will be unperceivable by the audience.

Scheduling

We originally gave ourselves the five months from October to February to write, arrange and demo our work, planning to use the final two months of March and April to record, with everything being finished in plenty time before the hand-in on the 3rd of May. However, numerous roadblocks would get in our way and much stress would be laid upon us as our original timeline became harder and harder to stick to, and eventually fell out the window entirely. We were pretty slow to start, having various half-baked ideas here and there, but we didn’t really kick into gear until the new year, thinking we had plenty of time for our ideas to gestate and develop naturally. This was a mistake for which the blame rests entirely on us, but even our idea to really buckle down and get a move on following the Christmas break was not one that would go smoothly, to the degree that I was considering abandoning the collaborative aspect of the project altogether and continuing on myself, creating something that would be of a lower quality but would at least be actually finished in time for the hand-in. Setback after setback caused me to really think about whether or not this collaboration was going to work out, or if I should end it. I decided, though, that in the end our collaborative project would be a thousand times better than anything I could come up with myself, and the terrible stress of an unreliable collaborator was worth it for the end result. We originally planned to meet once a week, going home after each week to listen back to and ponder on what we had done each day. However, Mark fell ill on several occasions, something which could not be avoided unfortunately, so a number of dates fell by the wayside. Then, Mark had to miss two weeks because his uncle died and he had to deal with funeral arrangements and the like as well as his own personal grief, again completely unavoidable. Following this, his family whisked him away on a two-week holiday, and it was at this point I was starting to have serious doubts, and hammered home to Mark just how little time we had to get things done, and just how important this deadline was for me. He agreed to put in extra effort and try to go the extra mile to see our project come to fruition. However, a couple weeks into our accelerated work rate, tragedy struck again as his gran was diagnosed with dementia, and he had to take on a number of duties in order to care for her, missing one week because he was the only persona available to visit her, another because he had to help put the carpet in for her new closer-to-home living space, another because he had to help paint the walls, and another which culminated in a whopping two months of writing we simply could not do on the project. To make up for lost time we began meeting up two or three times every week, alternating three-hour sessions in Glasgow’s Carlton Studios where we would focus on vocal melodies, arrangement and structure, and much longer, up to five-hour sessions in my house where we would focus mainly on analysis and discussion of The Great Gatsby and the writing of lyrics. This immense crunch and the fear of the deadline actually led to us being extremely creative extremely quickly, and perhaps led to us actually generating higher quality work, although this would be very difficult to quantify. We did, however, complete all of the writing in record time, and to a degree we were largely satisfied with. There are a couple of lines here and there which I think could be better, and I would like to add a lot more overdubs and moments of interest and slightly different arrangements to a number of songs, but overall I think we have written something truly special here, and I am immensely proud of our work.

Recording

However, our original plan to finish all of the writing before recruiting a drummer and a bassist as well as a recording engineer and studio time etc in order to record our work to a high standard well in time for the deadline was completely scuppered by this horrific inability to stick to our writing deadline. As a result, we decided to completely eschew the idea of recording in a studio or even getting a live drummer, as recording has to be booked well in advance and takes a very long time, and we simply could not expect a drummer to become familiar enough with all of our material with its changing time signatures and tempos all over the place in the time allotted, to be able to perform it reliably to any degree of consistency or quality. Because of this, I began to look into re-amping guitars and finding higher quality drum VSTs, to enable myself to record, mix and master the album on my own. I had plenty of experience in recording demos and a couple of tracks myself, so was confident that if I found the right re-amping service and drum sample library I could craft a decent sounding, if not completely professional or totally polished sounding album myself. Of course, professionally recording everything would have been better, but I think I have managed to do a pretty serviceable job which is certainly of a high enough quality for the purposes of my hand-in, although we are absolutely intent on re-recording everything with proper musicians and real instruments, professionally, before officially releasing our work. We will also go back and potentially re-draft some of our lyrics, make the arrangements slightly more interesting, and maybe even write that final seventh song before entering the studio for real.

Expo

About a month before the deadline, we were required to do a short little presentation of our plans and what we had so far at an expo. At this point I only had some mostly-MIDI demos I had made in Logic, so I presented those alongside a short write-up of the project’s scope. I played some of these to my lecturers and we discussed my progress and goals. They remarked that they liked the ambition of my project and thought the music was sounding appropriately complex and just about there, but expressed concern at the fact that I had not started the recording process yet, and urged me to get a move one - something I with which I wholeheartedly concurred.

Evaluation

In conclusion, I think that me and my collaborator have produced a quite successful work, one that largely sticks to our goal of being inspired by The Great Gatsby, but not reliant on the listener’s familiarity with the source material in order to be appreciated as an album in itself. We lifted a little more directly from the book in terms of quotations and narrative structure than perhaps we originally intended, but we think this not only improves the work’s quality and cohesiveness from the perspective of a Gatsby fan, but also does not hinder the enjoyment of anybody unfamiliar with the work. Our album tackles the themes of hope, optimism, adventure, a new world, the American dream etc, before taking a slightly biographical stance on Gatsby and Daisy’s thoughts and feelings during certain relevant stages of their relationship, and finally deals the with darkness, foreboding, loneliness, and the shattering of the dream that permeates the story. We talk about how real life gets in the way of our fantasies, how everything falls apart in the end, how human nature is ultimately selfish, and how at the end of it all we feel lost, nowhere to go. Daisy and Gatsby’s yearning for each other and Daisy’s inability to leave her life behind and join him are addressed in Sins of the Father, as Gatsby’s meteoric rise to empty wealth is depicted in Destination, while Nick Carraway’s forward-looking boat journey is what inspires Land of the Free. Behind Dark Glasses touches on the thoughts and feelings of Daisy and Gatsby, or really any two lovers, realising that their relationship is not the bed of roses they expected it to be, with the woman being stand-offish and distant and the man wondering why. Wake Me Up uses the narrative moment of the death of Gatsby to talk more generally about the death of hope, the ultimate hollowness of everything and the erosion of the “American dream”. Buchanan Street acts as an epilogue to everything much in the way that Green Day’s Whatsername tops off their American Idiot album, reflecting on the events and core themes we just went over and looking forward to the next chapter in the story of our lives. In terms of adapting the themes, characters and ideas of The Great Gatsby, I think we did a wonderful job, with perhaps a few lines being a little clunky (any direct references to a “story” or “book”) and perhaps one more track being needed to really address every aspect of the story and round it off. In terms of being an enjoyable product in and of itself, I think we have also succeeded here as many of the themes addressed are universal, and the situations are depicted in ways that knowing what happens in the book isn’t required to understand what is happening in the song. The pacing of the album could be slightly better with one more upbeat track inserted between before or after Behind Dark Glasses, and of course the recording/mixing quality could be better, if we had had time to work with a professional recording engineer. We should have started work much earlier than we did and at a much faster pace initially in order to protect ourselves against inevitable setbacks such as the ones we experienced, although the ones we experienced were of a much larger number and much more inconvenient than we could have realistically planned for, I would say. Still, we have definitely learned to schedule things much better and work at a faster pace further ahead of any deadline we have, and now that we are in the swing of things creatively we hope to continue on, using what we have learned over the course of this project to continue being as creatively successful in the future.

#music

[ratretro]

NaLu Angst Week Prompt 4: Distance

Title: Nights in Crocus

Pairing: NaLu

Prompt: NaLu Angst Week 2018 - Distance

Rating: M;

None of these characters are owned by me, they are all owned by the wonderful Hiro Mashima!

A/N:

I mean I feel like I lost my angst touch near the beginning but now I’ve got it back so hopefully I do myself some sort of justice with these now

I made a whole angst playlist tbh

FF.net

 Nights in Crocus were the worst, in Lucy’s opinion. The hustle and bustle of the city below her never ceased and always continued well into the morning. The hoots and hollers of the drunks, the fireworks during the many festivals held in the capital, and worst off all: her deadlines. The scattered ruins of balled up papers, and several rough drafts littered her wooden floors as she prepped her next article. It wasn’t one of importance, but Jason insisted it was ‘cool!’ and that he thought it held something special for her.

             It didn’t.

 Lucy thought she might be ready to throw another draft to the ground when she decided to stop. She decided to just simply stop. Now, the blonde had never once missed a deadline. Even as her sleep deprived aching body dragged her ass into the office to hand it over to the printers. This time she might really have to let this article go. It would have to be late.

 She stood quickly, her chair legs making a noise similar to nails on a chalkboard before she left the mess that was her desk behind. It wasn’t long before the blonde was running down the streets of Crocus and heading towards the forest surrounding it. She never could see the stars from her apartment in the city. There was too much going on and the lights of the town drowned out the night sky. She was angered by this on nights like the one she was currently experiencing. It had taken her more than a month to discover this special spot in the woods that gave her an entire view of the expanse of the universe above her.

 Most nights it made her feel small, but it also allowed her to be closer with her spirits. It was like she could physically bask in their presence when she sat under the dark blanket of midnight. The bushes rustled, and a branch sliced into her thigh. It stung, but wasn’t anything that caused her to faulter. She had experienced much worse than a cut made by a branch.

 The clearing in front of her had nothing but grass and a single rock in the middle. That was where she sat to let the light of the moon wash over her. Today was no different. It wasn’t hard to focus on the sky but sometimes she hated it.

 It reminded her of the night he left. She’d run the streets of Magnolia just the same as she’d run them tonight in Crocus. She’d even barged into the woods thinking if she was quick enough maybe she’d catch up. But she never found them. She never found Happy, and she’d never found him. She’d made it a point to not say his name, because it always brought the tears that she’d spent months holding back. It wasn’t like he’d be gone for good. He said he’d be back in a year, and she had to trust that. It was just that she wasn’t sure he’d come back. With Fairy Tail broken up, and nothing to tie him to what she’d felt was home she just wasn’t sure if he would.

 She hated thinking like that. She hated doubting him when she knew damn well he’d come home. But it was nights like tonight when she was stuck on her work and stuck in her own mind that those moments hit her like a freight train. That’s why she was never late for a deadline after all. If she worked hard enough she could drown out the anxiety, fear, and worst of all the loneliness.

 She stood slowly, and a stick under her boots crunched. If Aquarius were here she’d tell her to get it together, and to stop being such a crybaby. But Aquarius wasn’t here either.

 They both were gone. She’d lost the two most important people to her in one day, and sometimes that was hard for her to bear. She wondered if the pinkette was looking up at the sky too? Was he thinking of her too? She rubbed her eyes viciously with the back of her hand before turning to head back. She’d force that idiot dragon slayer to make it up to her when he came back. He owed her a dinner or two!

 This time she walked home. There was no nervous scrambling. She wasn’t on the verge of panic. She just walked leisurely all the way home. There were no men in boats on a canal to tell her to be careful, the lights of her apartment were off just as she’d left them, and there was no angry landlady greeting her to ask about rent. It was home, but at the same time it wasn’t.

 Regardless, she entered and the lights flicked on by themselves. It was a nifty feature she’d found tedious to set up and she nearly quit about four times, but some days the hard work paid off. The fruits of her labor still lay in shambles on the ground and she internally groaned at the thought of having to fix them.

 Once again, she hated the nights in Crocus.

 Natsu hated nights like these when the sky was too clear, and he could see the stars above, but at the same time he loved them. It was like a reminder of what was waiting when he went back to Magnolia. He’d never been one to be alone for so long, not that he was truly alone he had Happy, but he was used to the constant activity of the guild. Still, this was something he had to do. He had to get stronger to protect the ones he loved. He couldn’t protect Igneel, and he couldn’t protect Future Lucy. He’d failed them both.

 He couldn’t fail again. There was only one Fairy Tail. But most of all, there was only one Lucy. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel bad. Still, she was in the safe hands of the guild so he wasn’t worried. In fact, Gildarts had given him a gift as proof. Apparently, the mage had destroyed another village, but not before he’d gathered a few Sorcerer’s Weekly magazines. It was the one item Natsu stored carefully in his pack, but on nights like this he’d pull it out, and read it. Tonight, was one of those nights.

 His thumb ran across the name on the page: Lucy Heartfilia. She’d finally done it. She’d gotten published by the magazine she’d admired for years. His smile was fleeting, and quickly replaced by a frown. She would have shown him first. She would have smiled just like when she got her Fairy Tail mark.

 “Natsu! Look!” and she’d have shoved the magazine in his face until he finally took a good look at it.

 While he didn’t understand why she loved to write so much that didn’t mean he didn’t support her. In fact, he wished he could tell her just how proud he was of her. He hated nights like this where the sky was so vast above him, and so open. He wondered if her spirits could see him.

 Surely, she’d be just fine. She had her spirits, and Fairy Tail. She’d be just fine. He delicately placed the article back into his pack. He hated nights like these. He missed her, and he couldn’t wait to go back home to see her again. He wanted to tell her all of his adventures, and all that he’d seen.

 But seeing the stars that reminded him so much of her made him want to racing right back. He couldn’t do that, but temptation always struck on nights like this.

 He hated nights like this, but he loved them too.

#nalu #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #nalu angst week #nalubookclub #im trying guys but angst week just isn't angsty enough on my end #otp: welcome home #my writing

[kingofthewhatpod]

Fanfic Friday #4

Okay, it's time for my fourth attempt to wow people with my spin on One Piece. Welcome to #FanficFriday. Because the podcast is currently mid arc, it makes sense not to consider doing a re-write of the canon arc to try and improve, so you get a 100% new story. Let us begin...

This adventure will be called "The island of old men," and if that doesn't make you raise an eyebrow, I'm not quite doing my job.

The scene: Luffy and crew have just escaped loguetown, heading towards reverse mountain... and they see an island, not on Nami's map. And let me tell you, this island has a giant golden tower rising from the center. It can be seen from quite a distance away, and it has like a crown on it. Nami, obviously, is worried about why it's not on the map Usopp fears it's a "ghost island" Sanji would say something like "What even is a ghost island?" Totally nonplussed, watching the island with a casual eye. Luffy is like "Woa-ho What is that??? Can we go? Can we? Can we?" Nami objects, but did we think that would work? No. Luffy is excited, and so is Zoro by proxy Since Luffy is the captain, they go anyways regardless of objections. 

Before they reach the tower, they come across a single, largish wooden building, the four titular old men outside Guy number one: A huge guy. Sometimes i'm creative with names, some times not, he'll just be "Badger" and when I say huge, I mean he probably did like seven hundred thousand crunches a day in his youth. Guy number two: He's wearing a jacket with pockets of various sizes, each packed with unseen items. He can be "Sparrow." Guy number three: sunglasses, a vest with a cape, he's the most mobile/active of these old men, conveys his moods with movement. Name: "Rabbit"

Final guy: Taking a nap. Bigger than Sparrow and Rabbit, but not as big as Badger. Scars on his arms, and a loooooong beard because this is One Piece. The other old guys introduce him as like Haro. Of course most, if not all, of the Straw Hat's think its weird he's not named after an animal like the other three.

To set the scene Sparrow and Badger are playing a card game, Rabbit is watching and commentating- loudly (which is clearly annoying Badger), and as I said Haro is taking a nap. Now, as Luffy and them approach, they ask about the tower they saw while sailing.  The old guys kind of glance at them, go back to what they're doing, and explain "Young whelps like you shouldn't even ask about the King's Tower, let alone approach it"

Usopp would be the most startled their reaction. Zoro or Sanji (why not both?) would be surprised, but Luffy would be doing that thing where he's unusually quiet and watching the scene, eyes on Haro. Usopp would try to explain “We were just asking what it was, and the island wasn't on the map-”

"The golden spire was built to honor the strong!" Rabbit would declare (again, loudly. Assume everything he does is loud). "And young'uns like you just can't climb it!"

"Best that you don't even try," Badger would grumble. "Go home and have a glass of milk"

Usopp would be about to argue about "How do you know about us", when Zoro would cut him off with a "Wait," eyeing up Badger. "Words are useless against people like this."

Sanji would be looking at the horizon, "All we have to do is climb it then, right?"

"We won't let you!" Rabbit says, stamping his foot on the ground. "Have you no respect for your elders? We forbid it!"

"So what then?" Zoro asks.

"Three days.” Sparrow would say without looking up from the game. Maybe with their free hand he holds up three fingers.  If you can survive three days on the island, we'll let you try the climb"

Luffy calmly walks over to the porch area on which Haro sleeps and sits down. "Fine," is all he says. "But we will climb that tower and see what's at the top." He says this very seriously. Nami sighs and Zoro is just like, "aye captain."

Jump cut to the next morning, Zoro is with Badger in the woods. Badger gestures at the trees around them, and asks Zoro to cut down ten trees by the end of the trial period with his sword. Zoro is like "pfft, yeah, whatever." and schwing schwing schwing! with his blades. His cocky grin fades as he looks back and sees only small scratches on these thick trees. Now Badger is grinning. "The hell kind of trees are these?" Zoro asks.

"Only the sturdiest wood for our cabin, sprout," he'd mock. "Or is it too hard for you?" to Zoro's ire, of course

Sanji is with Rabbit, who is like "Let's gather some jewel mushrooms from the forest, try to keep up!" And here we see why he's called Rabbit. He's very, very fast, which would surprise Sanji doubly so due to his age. Sanji has to run after him shouting "wait!"

Sanji ends up having to scavenge on his own, and he gets a bit lost in the forest. He's certain he can do it, but then... that night he only has maybe 2 in his basket and Rabbit has three full-to-bursting baskets! Sanji is just.... shocked.

Nami and Usopp both get paired with Sparrow. They're down in the basement which has both a room full with complex, twisting pipes in an impossible tangle, and a library. He starts pulling books off the library shelf and Nami has to race to keep up, trying to catch them all. Nami, it seems, will help him decipher some weird encoded message, using historical documents to try and understand the code. Usopp has to help fix the plumbing. Not only are the pipes all twisty, not only are the instructions convoluted, but these pipes are heavy. It shows him detach a nut from around a pipe and he almost drops it on his foot because it’s unexpectedly heavy.

Luffy, who hasn't said a word yet, is sitting beside Haro, just chilling. Haro hasn't woken up yet, and Luffy isn't going to be tested, apparently. Which just makes me chuckle. Am I allowed to admit that about my own dumb story? Whatever.

Back to Zoro. It's night time. He's made a little bit more progress, but he is on his back, panting heavily. Badger is also sitting, grinning. "Still going to win?" he teases.

"Of course," Zoro says, no hint of sarcasm in his voice. No reaction from Badger. "My captain said we would climb the tower," Zoro continues. "So it's not a matter of whether I can. I simply must. But first... a nap." 

Badger would kind of chuckle and head back to the mansion as Zoro closes his eyes.

Naturally, we'd also get some shots of Usopp, Nami, and Sanji hard at work that night. Nami is burning the midnight oil, a huge pile of books next to her. Usopp is studying this crazy, complex room, and Sanji is contemplating these strange mushrooms in the kitchen. I guess I didn't mention, but these mushrooms would obviously be hard to find but they'd also looks super weird close up. They'd almost glitter like jewels, but not bright enough to be seen from a distance. Because what is One Piece without some mystery/magic/unworldly elements?

Next morning, each member (minus Luffy) is hard at work. Zoro has made some progress in the night and is already wielding all three swords by the time Badger finds him

"What if the others can't do it?" Badger would ask.

"They will," Zoro would say simply.

Nami would be talking to Sparrow. "They're all idiots," she'd explain while reading these books. "Especially my captain. If I can't learn to help them out, they'll surely fail."

Usopp would have built some doodad out of spare pieces he had found, something that could slide along the pipes, or maybe marked them in some way with paint. Point is, he's starting to learn this room's layout. Sparrow is rubbing his chin as he looks on, but saying nothing

Sanji has figured out about a weird creature that eats these jewel mushrooms from studying the roots. So this time when Rabbit leaves him in the dust, he looks for one of these boars (but like, big boars with purple fur or something) and lets it lead him to the treasure trove. Of course he's started learning how to cook with them, too. But that’s not relevant to his test.

The third day, Everyone convenes back in the "plaza." The 3 old guys are unchanged. Zoro is exhausted, Nami shows sign of ink all over, Usopp has oil stains, and Sanji's usually immaculate clothes are disheveled. To sell the victory, Sanji also has a plate cooked with these mushrooms, Nami holds a parchment with the decoded message, Zoro is pulling a sled with this special wood, and Usopp stands before a fountain which has begun working once more!

There's a pause... Rabbit, Sparrow, and Badger, in unison, all look to Haro, giving a thumbs up and say "Well, I guess they did alright."

Haro finally awakes (let’s be real though, we all know he wasn’t actually asleep), rising and brushing off his knees. "Let's go kid," is all he says. He leaves, Luffy follows. (AN: at this point I realized the thread was getting really, really long on Twitter. Yes, I have more room here on Tumblr to fill out the details, but I once again am brushng up agaisnt my self-imposed deadline. For now, I’ll leave it largely unedited, hope you can forgive me, and try to do better next week).

Next up: Cave. Big bear monster, like this big beast, two or three stories tall. Haro beats it up easily, maybe even in one punch or maybe he jumps up and grabs its head and flips it on its back. He is very, very strong. Luffy would acknowledge that with a classic "You're strong old man"

"What about you?" Haro asks, looking to Luffy. Luffy puts on his straw hat with a grin. "Just watch me." 

A second monster comes out of the cavern. Luffy is not at this old guy's level. Not a victory in a single punch, but he keeps standing every time he's knocked down. He wears it down & wins. 

Luffy and Haro come back to the manor. The boss old man gives a nod and the Straw Hats continue inward in the island. Haro sits back down and, only after they've left does he smile a big, goofy smile. Maybe, like, 85% as goofy as Luffy. "I like him," he says.

Now, it turns out there isn't much to this tower. Long climb up, but no traps or other gatekeepers. They get to the top, and there’s a spectacular view of the island and ocean beyond. They’re all looking and admiring when their captain comes up with his idea. Luffy takes in a super deep breath, everyone else is grinning as they realize what he’s going to do, and he just yells. "I'M GUNNA BE.... THE KING OF THE PIRATES!!!" Scaring some birds in the nearby forest to show how loud he shouted.

flash back to the old men. Sparrow is rubbing his chin. "King, eh?"

"He just might do it," Haro acknowledges. "He reminds me of that other young'un who came through all those years ago."

"Roger was a good man," Badger agrees.

"Plus," Haro says, as the screen fades to black. "That kid's a 'D'" Haro adds. "Can't wait to see what he gets up to."

To be Continued flashes on the screen, on to the next adventure.

This concludes the fourth #FanficFriday. I really need to find a way to compress these. It'll only get harder as we get more characters to play with. I'm still working on this. But hey, maybe I can just post the original on Tumblr and link to it on twitter, or put it on some third site and link to it on both these accounts. But hey, be sure to let us know what you think. If you leave an insightful comment or have your own tweaks to make (be it an addition or changing something I started in my own what-if scenario), maybe I'll give you a shout out on the pod!

#KotWN #Fanfic Friday #chapter 4 #Haha! I submitted this on time for once! #Sorry for lack of creative images. It's late #One Piece