#once i figure out how to hack my own brain chemistry into doing what i want it to its is so over!!!! im gonna kick so much ass!!!

[lightbulb-warning]

local audhd having idiot has to do something not related to their hyperfixation and fuCKING EXPLODES!!1!!!!!! /j

#/silly #don't mind me im just trying to brainwash myself into being productive #i am capable of focusing on things. i am capable of focusing on things i am capable of focusing on things. #im using my stupid blog to keep my stupid self accountable #i did a page so now i get to bitch and moan!! as a treat!! #this has zero entertainment value #if this is what my emotional regulation is gonna look like then so be it #*crying and throwing up* i love art its my passion #this might b a sign i OFFICIALLY FR need medication but thats gonna b incredibly hard to achieve. groan. ill figure it out. hopefully soon?? #hate my countrys mental health system!!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! ill figure it out!!!!!!! #shut up maiora #fandomNOT #is this liveblogging??? #maiora shitposts #once i figure out how to hack my own brain chemistry into doing what i want it to its is so over!!!! im gonna kick so much ass!!! #im gonna draw silly comics!! im gonna draw platonic affection in many different ways!! i wanna make shit people find interesting!! #i wanna make shit im gonna be proud of!!! i wanna make my corner of the world a lil less lonely!!!! earnest cringe lessgooooooooooooo!! #maybe ill even learn how to write coherent stories?????? that might be too high to aim at rn but its not impossible!!! #ill figure it out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's gonna be okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #ok ok ok what matters right now is i gotta calm down and lower my heart rate lmao #its gonna be okay #thanks for reading have a nice day!! #<3

[currentfandomkick]

Marinette did not sign up for this pt 3

  Part 3 time. part 1 here part two here, ao3 link here     

             Cass had long since taken to eating at Yan Toh Heen when she was in Hong Kong, where head chef Cheng Wang served her favorite soup, Marinette Soup. Given that Cass often came at odd times and remained a regular whenever she was in town, she had come to know of Shifu Cheng’s inspiration, his niece’s daughter. A girl who reminded Cass of Bruce’s usual adoptees when she first saw her picture, and mentioned it was a good ting her father hadn’t begun adopting until the girl was already a toddler. Shifu Cheng had laughed at the time, and mentioned that Cass might be a good influence on her, if she could keep her father from trying to steal his great-niece away that is.

             Now Cass was looking at the girl’s picture a bit more critically, and with Bruce and his parents in mind, she wouldn’t be surprised if this Marinette—a young designer who had managed to have two major figures in the industry recognize her by 16 with an apparent knack for helping her local heroes—was Bruce’s daughter. Her eyes reminded Cass of Thomas Wayne’s from the portraits, and her smile was a lot like Bruce’s when he wasn’t hiding anything.

             With all this in mind, Cass was already on a plane to find the girl and test out her theory—to see if Marinette of the Dupain-Cheng Boulangerie was also Ladybug—Batman and Bruce Wayne’s daughter.

             She did smile when she saw the group chat for “Middle Kids Only—No D’s Allowed” exploded with Jason, Tim and Steph arguing over who would find her first and what the prize would be. It looked like Cass would win at this rate. She was fine with that—and having a no-questions asked favor from each of the three in the future would be the icing on the cake to meeting their new sister first.

---             

             Marinette has to explain to Adrien a bit of her blow up while they were civilians and out of sight in her room. Tikki and Plagg were napping.

             “So, you’re uh…” she couldn’t blame him for the lack of words. She tended to forget (re: ignore) the fact herself most of the time.

             “Yeah,” Marinette shrugged. “Maman and Papa got me in a closed adoption case, the mother was young.”

             “… I’m now picturing a young Batman and can’t wrap my brain around it.”

             Marinette snorted at that. “It was before Batman existed.”

             Adrien frowned at that, thinking it over as… “So did you ever…”

             Marinette shook her head. “My mother warned against it, the note she left for me said it was dangerous to even attempt contacting him.” She ran a hand through her hair as she remembered Maman and Papa letting her read the note not long after her Guardian training began. It was another life entirely. “She said he was an unfit father, and that she never wanted kids so I was better off not looking for them when I grew up. I never planned to—Maman and Papa were all I ever needed or wanted.”

             Adrien smiled at that, grabbing a cookie for himself. “So what happened?”

             Marinette winced. “I, I don’t want to talk about it. Long story short, a wild Murder Robin appeared and told me not to contact his family or else, and I promised to steer clear of affiliates so he wouldn’t try anything.”

             Adrien twitched at that. He knew Marinette and Alya made a few comments about it once upon a time but…

             “Is he the one dropping off the weapons and flower threats?”

             Marinette looked away, keeping her eyes low.

             Adrien tightened his fists. “I see. If he or that family get near you, they’ll have to take on Chat Noir first.”

             Marinette huffed at that. “They’re the normies that took down the world ending metas, I doubt there’s much we could do against them chatton.”

             Adrien shook his head and jabbed a thumb at his chest. “Black Cat wielder, destruction incarnate, and the idiot you share a soul with.” He gave her his Chat Noir smile. “There’s nothing I can’t take on.”

             Marinette snorted at that. “Chemistry.”

             Adrien’s face fell at that. “You cannot tell me chemical reactions are that easy!”

             Marinette smiled at him then. “I can and will say it—Chemistry is easier and superior to physics. Kitchen Chemistry is how we get food.”

             “And physics keeps us from floating off into space.”

             “Not studying it. Studying chemistry I get food, physcics is just a headache of formulas on formulas on formulas.”

             “But the theories!”

             With that, the pair fell into their familiar rhythm of banter for the rest for the night.

             Tim was crossing French designers in Paris aged 14-20 that own or work at a boutique, online or physical, and turned up a large number of candidates for who Ladybug/the missing Wayne could be.

             Babs rolled in on this particular search, and gave him a look. “You know the Justice League wants us to not to contact her, right?”

             Tim made a vague sound of acknowledgement.

             “And that Bruce probably didn’t have a kid at 15, right?”

             “Just covering my bases.”

             Babs looked over his search margins. “Did you check Damian’s search history?”

             Tim scowled at her. “Of course I did, he’s been doing more through wipes, I couldn’t get more than a few scarps of useless code.”

             Babs began to grin then. “So that means I do have a leg-up on you then.”

             He didn’t even want to know how she knew about the competition. But she wasn’t officially in it either (all of the placed their bets down negotiated rules (re: no asking for help from Damian) and agreed the only participants were the four of them). What did Barbra Gordon want out of this?

             Tim paused at that. “What.”

             Babs grinned at him. Tim remembered why Oracle is the queen of hackers everywhere—nothing is safe from her reach.

             “He was particularly taken with a few designers, and one of them happens to be in the range you’re looking for.”

             Tim scowled at her. “What do you want?”

             “You know that picture of me you took a few years back?”

             Tim blinked as that was what she wanted. His ‘Don’t tell The Family’ insurance.

             “Yes.”

             “I want your copies of burned, and any you may have floating around returned to me.”

             Tim weighed the pros and cons to this. The girl should be in his current data pool. And he does know to use Damian’s search again (tracking Bab’s hacks was child’s play now) but she probably deleted most—if not all of—her trail. Decisions, Decisions…

             He could just wait to meet the baby bat. But then he would owe Jason a no-questions asked favor if he found her first… and he didn’t want to know what Jason would use it for. Owing Cass a favor meant family nights with the worst board games or tea parties when he was elbow deep in a mission. A no question favor for Steph was always interesting and usually resulted in Bruce giving them both looks.

             Did he want to lose his leverage on Babs, or did he want to avoid the consequences of the bet more?

--

             Chat and Carapace exchanged a quick look when the pair arrived. A nod from Carapace as he trailed after their paling Ladybug was all Chat needed to begin operation Distract the Justice Leaguer Members.

             He and Rena Rouge were having the time of their lives. Both were genuine in their admiration of the pair and the work they had done. And they were both eager to learn from them—both as individuals and what their people knew of the Miraculous—something Chat and Rena knew there were large gaps in the history of still. And if they could help out Ladybug with gathering information and ensuring she was given space, well, the pair were down for it.

             Chat was asking a confused and mildly frightened Aquaman for combat tips in aquatic situations for future Syren-eqsue akumas.

             “So how do you keep an eye on attacks from all directions? Is it a ‘feel the water movements’ thing? Or is it just something you know how to do from growing up underwater? Could you teach me a few things on it—it’s a weak point that I need to work on.”

             Aquaman was quick to agree to help, eager to avoid angering the Black Cat and given Ladybug’s (apparently continued) evasion of Justice League Members, this may be the best way to both prevent the possible apocalypse and ensure Atlantis’ future safety.

             Wonder Woman was having an interesting conversation with Miss Sting about the uses for her spinning top and potential ways to work on her use of Venom while Rena asked about the Amazons and was there really an amazon who wielded the Ladybug miraculous? There were no confirmations from Ladybug and the Guardian was impossible to find to ask. Was there a Fox and did they have anything on the Miraculous’ history?

             Wonder Woman was quick to supply answers while scanning the area for Ladybug, and noted that the Turtle was missing too.

             “Is Ladybug well?”

             Rena and Miss Sting exchanged a look.

             Miss Sting stepped forward. “Ladybug just needs some space. She isn’t willing to risk breaking her promise since certain people do know where she lives.”

             Rena tensed at that, a scowl quick to her face as she remembered why Ladybug was absent. “She can’t talk to either of you until Murder Robin,”--Wonder Woman winced at the reminder of the current Robin’s past--“makes it clear he won’t keep threatening her if she does.”

             Chat caught enough of the conversation to join in. “Its also not good to stress her out, especially since its going to be open season soon.”

             Miss Sting sighed at the reminder. “Application and testing season.”

             Rena rubbed her forehead. “Don’t remind me. Last time Ladybug was so stressed over her workload that the cure was off for a week.”

             Wonder Woman and Aquaman exchanged a look.

             “Are you stating that stress on Ladybug alters how the Miraculous Cure works?” Aquaman asked cafefully, hoping it wasn’t the case.

             “Yeah,” Chat rubbed the back of his neck. “I figured it always did.”

             Wonder Woman shook her head, mind racing as, “No. Not during Mother’s time—it must be a side effect of something. May I speak to one of the Guardians?”

             Chat didn’t even have time to respond. Both adults noted the way his pupils shrunk and body tensed at the question. He knew something the others didn’t.

             “Uh, there’s only one, and the guy has been radio silent for months now,” Rena explained. “And not to be rude, but given the security breaches in the past, I don’t think it’s the best thing for our Guardian to be in contact, just in case.”

             “I see…”

             Aquaman was the quick to defuse the situation. “Perhaps one of your sisters could reach out to Ladybug? They are not affiliated with the League so that should lessen her stress.”

             Chat nodded along at that. Good. It was better to keep the Destroyer content.

             “I can see who Mother would like to send of the historians given the interest in past miraculous wielders,” Diana conceded. “Could you ask Ladybug if that is acceptable?”

             The teens grabbed their respective weapons and messaged Ladybug. A moment later the trio stated that Ladybug would agree to those terms.

             In the meantime, Chat, Rena and Miss Sting caught the adults up on the Hawkmoth situation and their limitations on investigation. Rena was particularly annoyed by the lack of progress as “Our best suspect was akumatized before Mayura showed up, so he can’t be Hawkmoth. But he lives in the target area, has the funds for a butterfly garden and the ability to keep it underground if LB’s theory about artificial sunlight to keep it secret is right.”

            “But we know he can’t be, so we should drop it and look for other suspects,” Chat added a bit nervously.

             Miss Sting nodded in agreement.

             Rena sighed. “I know, its just, too much adds up on him being Hawkmoth, but then again, that would mean he’d put his own kid in danger just to get the Miraculous. I mean, he’s bad and all but…” Rena shook her head. “LB is right about him making sense but it’s too obvious. I mean, who hides in plain sight, right?”

             Wonder Woman made a mental note to find out who this suspect was and maybe—MAYBE—let the bats do a deep search on this suspect if Rena would name them. He could very well be their villain, but she didn’t know enough on this investigation yet to make a call, nor did she have much knowledge on the Butterfly or Peacock miraculous. She only paid attention to the Ladybug and Black Cat legends—a soul spilt in two, destined to always find one another and willing to do whatever it took to protect the other from self-destructing once they grew close as allies.

--

             In Gotham Jason Todd is on a Mission. That mission happens to be meeting the Baby Bat before Timmers or the Waffle Queen herself beat him to it. Cass hadn’t responded to any of their texts, so he figured she was knee-deep in Black Bat and forfeited for once. He hoped.

             Either way, Red Hood would be tracking a certain Little Lady when he touched down in Paris once his plane took off, and take out whoever this “Hawkmoth” was. Magic terrorism is one thing. Targeting kids? Well, that puts you Hood’s list and high on his priorities real quick. Add threatening his family (estranged, feuding or 'well they're a Bat') to that? Gotham would live without him for a bit.

--

             Ladybug is currently holed up with Carapace in one of their hide-y holes on patrol. She has borrowed (re: snagged and is not returning any time soon) Carapace’s headphones. The music helps her breath. No immediate danger, she didn’t (further) break the rules of engagement, and she didn’t see any sign of Murder Robin in Paris from news reports.

             “So, uh, Murder Robin?”

             Ladybug wanted to groan. She knew this conversation was coming. “Can you send the others the cliff notes?”

             She did not want to do this with each one of them. there are a lot of miraculous users. Besides Chat and Carapace, there was Rena, Miss Sting, Pegasus, Ryuuko, King Monkey, Viperion, and Bunnix. She did not want to have this conversation seven more times.

             “Sure thing Ladybug.”

             Ladybug took a deep breath.

             “Remember Incinerater and Goo-Boy?”

             Carapace paused, face a bit slack as he nodded his head. “The first time Mr. Bug appeared, and the day Rena, Sting and me got our miraculous.”

             Ladybug nodded. “Well, it lasted so long because my transformation timed out. I couldn’t figure out what my lucky charm meant—I didn’t know what the kwami box looked like, and a bigger version of the jewelry box I got Tikki in meant nothing to me.” Ladybug sighed, as once again, she realized how much easier it would have been if Fu contacted her and Chat Noir after the first attack, or even during one on their built-in communicators. Just. Something.

             “So you timed out.”

             Ladybug nodded. “And I got caught in the building that went down.”

             Carapace froze. “Most people were still injured.”

             Ladybug winced. “I was. Still. Chat somehow knew to look for my civilian identity and found out I was Ladybug. I thought…” Marinette shook her head, pushing old fears of losing Tikki away. She’s the Guardian now. Tikki and her are together as long as Marinette remains so. “Nevermind. The point is, even after he cast the cure and helped me get home, Goo-boy showed up and Mr. Bug was needed again.”

             Carapace put the pieces together. “You were still hurt. And he left you alone.”

             Ladybug ran a hand through her pigtails. “He had to. I told him to, I figured I could make it the rest of the way.”

             Carapace frowned at that. “LB…” He put a hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”

             Ladybug swallowed a lump. “Tiny Murder Robin.” She stiffened a bit, fiddling with her yoyo then. “He uh, grabbed me, pulled me into a car and held me a sword-point. Not gun point, sword point.” Marinette bleed through then. “Who does that? What kid goes around and says they’ll kill you with a sword at your neck?”

             Carapace rubbed her back, keeping her grounded. “I managed to get him to leave since I was ‘unworthy of the Bat legacy’ and all, discarded and useless.” Marinette shook her head, reminding herself she’s moved past those feelings, the one that tried to well up in her moments. She was bigger than those thoughts. “He let me go since I wasn’t worth the effort if I didn’t know I was Batman’s daughter.” Marinette kept her eyes on her lap, a nervous hands running through one pigtail vigorously. “I kind of sicced him on the current Robin to save my skin.”

             Carapace pulled her in for a hug. She clung back a bit. she didn’t have to look at him as he explained the deal. “I promised to not contact Batman or the JL and he agreed to leave me alone. And he did.”

             Carapace pulled back. “That’s not all of it, is it?”

             “He uh, started leaving flowers and some weapon for winter holidays, Easter and my birthday in my room….”

             Carapace paled at that. “He’s threatening you.”

             “y, yeah…”

             “So that’s why….”

             Ladybug nodded.

             Carapace hugged her tight. “One sec, I’ll text the team. Then we’re doing that plan of action you made the rest of us do for when we can’t show up.”

             Ladybug nodded.

             She noticed a text from the others, asking if she’d be willing to talk to an Amazonian historian on the history of the Miraculous and learn from her. That… wouldn’t violate the terms of the agreement, in spirit or wording. She sent her agreement on the terms that none of the sent historians were Wonder Woman or the Queen herself. As cool as meeting Hippolyta would be, Marinette does not want to risk the violation in spirit (family members probably counted to Murder Robin.)

             “Done.”

             Ladybug blinked as Carapace turned to her.

             “Now what can we do to help?”

             Ladybug opened and closed her mouth, running over her options. “Just keep non-miraculous heroes from contacting me, especially in battle. I just...” Ladybug struggled for words. “He knows where I live. My family.”

             Carapace nodded, keeping a steady hand on her shoulder. “Can’t risk it, I got you—we got you.”

             After a moment of silence, Carapace spoke. “Keep the team on speeddial—if you don’t want everyone on, then at least me, Pegasus and Rena. Rena can distract without getting hurt, I can protect all of us and Pegasus can send him and anyone he works with packing. Monkey probably would want in on this too—he is the Distraction King after all.”

             Ladybug laughed a little at that. It came out weak. “Sure. Chat, he’s…”

             “Busy.” Carapace shrugged. “We all know his dad has him running through hoops to make it to patrol half the time.”

             “Yeah…”

             (Marinette agreeing to intern with M. Agreste and work on her accessories brand under the Gabriel umbrella did give Adrien more lee-way than he had before, but not by much at first. Ever since her line of scarves based on the miraculous heroes took off last winter, he was given more free reign if it involved Marinette as a designer, not Marinette as his friend and classmate. Adrien was allowed at her house at all hours now without no questions asked on the basis of ‘Marinette’s muses have spoken’. As far as Gabriel was concerned, Adrien was learning more about the designing process and crafting of individual garment and accessories from her, and offering critiques as a model on wear-ability and helping her develop her style as a designer while keeping her ‘on-brand’. The fact they mostly goofed off or worked on miraculous-related things together was another matter for another time.)

             Ladybug and Carapace stayed like that for a while, until after the JL left. She may have trolled the Monkey tab on the Ladyblog and snorted at someone’s short of ‘era 1’ Chat running at an akuma while screaming “this is how I will get Ladybug will love me!” with an ‘era 2’ Chat cringing. “That. That is how I got Ladybug to baby brother me.”

--  

           Dick was wondering where the rest of the bats were during patrol. The night before, it was only him. Something about needing to look into something for the JL on Bruce’s end, and Damian was working on something again—trying to make up for a past wrong was the most Dick ever got out of him. It was the third year in a row this happened, and around the same time. Apparently needles are part of this apology.

             Dick really hopes Damian manages to meet the person face to face this time. He has a feeling the person Damian’s apologizing to might be a civilian by Bat standards, and is probably missing Damian’s message completely. Maybe Dick would check up on him tomorrow—Gotham wait for no one and apparently Nightwing is the only responsible Bat at the moment. Thank god for Oracle’s Birds of Prey and the other vigilantes Gotham’s collected over the years. Dick doesn’t want to think about what would happen if this happened without them all.

--

PART FOUR HERE

Thanks for waiting on the update. Working with burned hand so it will take longer for the next installments. Mostly planned for the next chapter but character will do what they want and highjack my writing constantly. Things are moving forward (somewhat) on the Bats and JL end, while Miraculous Team stands with their leader, Ladybug, and aren’t ready to let Anyone threaten her.

this makes for a set-up for much to go Wrong. Feel free to add to the upcoming chaos or put in things youd like to see happen in the comments or by messaging me. 

@heldtogetherbysafetypins @laurcad123 @raisuke06

#bio!dad bruce #bio!dad bruce waye #maribat #my writing #marinette did not sign up for this #long post #how do i tag

[euphoric-melancholyy]

Manual Override

A/N: Written for the wonderful @blondsak for the irondad fic exchange!! She actually gave me this idea and I like to think I twisted it and made it my own. Angst and fluff ahead friends.

Also on Ao3

“FRIDAY has already scanned the area. There’s no civilians. Give me the mission rundown.” Tony says. He’s hovering above a rooftop with Peter, surrounded by dusty warehouses that look like they haven’t been visited in at least two decades. It’s a low grade mission for Iron Man, but he’s been trying to train Peter more. He’d been tipped off that more of Toomes weapons were being sold here, and Peter has seemed to make it his personal responsibility to keep them off the streets since The Vulture fiasco.

“Okay I swing in while you stand guard out here. The tracker said the computer that we want to hack into is somewhere in the middle of the building. We just have to get to it first. So, we take out the guys, or girls - girls can be super villains too! - guarding it, and then have FRIDAY or Karen download all the info. And then, get out and bust the bad guys. Easy peasy.” Peter smiles, fingers drumming against his leg in anticipation. 

“I think you’ve got it. Let’s go. You’re gonna do great, kid,” he says, trying to encourage Peter in a way he never was as a child. Or even an adult. He really doesn’t want to mess this up, whatever this is. 

Pepper had immediately coined it as co-parenting over dinner one night, much to Tony's denial. 

("So you're co-parenting the kid now?" she’d quipped, her brow raising as she suppressed a laugh. 

"No. I'm not a parent. A co-parent or a co--"

"You spent dinner last night telling me about his chemistry project and academic decathlon meets. The only other person you talk about more is yourself."

"Not true."

Her amused smile turned smug as she cast her gaze to the ceiling. "FRIDAY?"

There was a pause as the A.I. gathered her data. "In the past 5 months, you have talked about Peter 40% more than anyone else. Most of your conversations with Happy Hogan revolve around Peter Parker as well."

"That doesn't prove anything."

"You picked him up from school, Tony. Because he was sick."

"I was being a responsible mentor. "

"Parent."

"Mentor."

"Fine, live in denial. Tell May I said hi at your monthly dinner where you talk about your kid.") 

Tony smiles at the memory. And yes, maybe he had bought back the tower on impulse after Karen called him while Spider-Man was half out of his mind with pain and a knife wedged six inches into his leg. And if he thought the sight of blood seeping profusely from the wound was awful, it was nothing compared to his mentee's muffled cries as he held him against his chest during the flight over. After that, Tony had upped his training. Which brings them here. He’s brought out of his reverie with the sound of said kid quietly singing “Private Eyes” to himself. Under his mask, Tony smiles as he sighs. 

“How stealthy of you, Spider-Man.” 

Peter mutters an apology, but continues to hum the song at a lower volume. A few minutes pass before he speaks up. “I found it! It’s not even guarded. Okay, Karen, just do your thing.” A beat. “Okay, Mr. Stark. It’s downloading. I’ll just...wait here.” 

"Boss. I think -" FRIDAY stops mid sentence, her constant, faint humming silencing completely. He calls out for her, and nothing happens. He calls for Peter and Spider-Man. Nothing. His stomach drops, a panic coiling it’s way up his throat, constricting his airwaves and he has to get out, has to help Peter, Peter --

"Confused, Stark?" A voice taunts into his comm. It’s an older, male voice, raspy and definitely not the voice he was wanting to hear. "Just consider me an old friend.” 

“You’re not FRIDAY,” Tony bites. It’s not, and as he says it he realizes shit, FRIDAY is gone. He racks his brain for anything, any sort of recognition or plan. This voice, it’s not entirely foreign. He’s heard it before somewhere, he knows. He’s had to. He’s --

“I always knew arrogance would be your downfall, Anthony. Thinking no one could ever replicate or hack your tech. Though I gotta admit, this suit is incredibly impressive. Who knew I’d have this much fun watching your vitals? The way your panic is increasing every time I speak, it’s just pure joy. I mean, I didn’t plan to take you out via heart attack, but can you imagine the headlines? Scaring Iron Man to death. Now that’s a feat.” 

“How the fuck did you even hack my suit?” 

“It was easy as soon as you hacked into my system. Getting you here was laughably easy, too. I can’t believe you fell for that whole Toomes weapon bullshit. And now, I own you.”

“Like hell you do,” Tony spits. But as soon as he says it, he realizes he can’t leave the suit. He’s trapped, a powerlessness seeping in that he hasn’t felt since Obie ripped his arc reactor out or since he watched Pepper fall into a fiery explosion. He swallows past the lump in his throat, breathing in and out twice, praying to whatever god or gods that Peter stays hidden. As if mocking him, the voice says.

“It's a pity that Spider nuisance has to suffer too. Seems smart, young. Is that how you like them, Stark?"

Dread pools in his gut, burning hot and wrathful. He tries to move, but the suit remains still. Stuck. Trapped in his own creation.

"You touch him and I'll gut you from the inside out," Tony spits.

"Oh I wouldn't dare. You will though." 

Tony's blood runs cold. Against his will, he flies through the window, shattering it. Spider-Man is a few rooms over. Tony stares, terrified, as his screen outlines his figure in neon red, underlined with the word TARGET.

The Iron Man suit fires, and Spider-Man dodges, the eyes of the mask widening. 

“Woah, Mr. Stark! I know -”

The gauntlet fires again, this time grazing Peter’s arm. Tony can see angry red blisters that rival the color of his suit. The younger hero stumbles and falls back, shooting a web at Iron Man’s extended arm. 

“I’m so sorry I can’t control it!” Tony pleads. He was wrong, and in this moment he knows it more fiercely than he has ever known anything. He cares for Peter, feels it deep in his bones as the metal around his hand makes contact with Peter’s mask. He hears a crack and a curse muffled by red spandex.

Tony’s own nerves are fraying, the earlier panic threatening to spill over into a full blown attack. 

He, the suit he tells himself, not me, the hacker, yanks Peter up, repulsors burning angry through the suit and into his skin. Tony thinks of all the times he’s picked him up to protect and rescue him. He thinks he might puke as he throws him across the room, denting the wall.

It was only a month ago that he gave Peter the-worlds-most-awkward-talk on panic attacks in existence. 

("Pete - you know," he stops, running a hand down his face and pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'm the world's worst example of how to handle emotions and um," he swallows down the urge to divert the conversation. "Trauma. But it unfortunately comes with the job. The wormhole might have looked cool, but it really fucked with my head - sorry I shouldn't say fucked, but - dammit." He sighs, finally directing his gaze to Peter. He's curious, face reddened with embarrassment, but he's hanging on Tony's every word. So he barrels on. "My therapist tells me it's good, to you know, talk about this shit. And it is - I've learned. I was having panic attacks nearly every day, but the last straw was when I nearly killed Pep after waking up from a nightmare. After that, I knew I needed help. Anyway, it's actually been really good and I can set you up with a therapist, which I think you should see because panic attacks suck. You can also talk to me, if you want. You aren't alone and I care about you and all that jazz." Tony claps his hands together before placing one on Peter's shoulder. "Okay, great talk." He pats his shoulder, looking away from the sheen in Peter's eyes.)

A hysterical laugh bubbles to the surface at the memory. Some fucking mentor he is. Parent, he clarifies, Pepper’s accusation ringing more true with each second. Peter’s finally defending himself against Tony’s advances. Still not fighting back, even as he screams at him to. 

Peter himself has been uncharacteristically quiet as he fights, and Tony feels a rush of guilt. He can’t do anything, trapped. Peter, Tony realizes with horrifying clarity, is probably afraid of hurting him.

“I swear to god, kid, if you don’t start fighting back I’m going to-”

The fist to his stomach has him seeing white. It’s the most welcomed pain he’s ever felt in his life. His head falls against the concrete, and Tony smiles, tasting metal. Spider-Man looms over him, head tilted to the side in worry. “I’m so so sorry, Mr. Stark. Are you okay?” 

Tony grunts. The voice comes back. 

“I wonder what electrocution will do to your heart,” it teases. He thinks this is already the worst thing that could happen to his heart, but he protests against the suggestion anyway. 

“Now wait a second!” He hears the suit charge up. 

Everything goes dark. 

Peter watches, as the suit jerks, and then slumps, an unfamiliar voice speaking. “Tony Stark isn’t here anymore.” 

-/-/-/-

“Mr. Stark!” Peter screams. It’s guttural, the crack of his voice echoing off the empty walls. He drops to his knees in front of his mentor, hands and lips trembling. “No, no, no. Mr. Stark. I’m so sorry, please be okay. Please be okay, sir. You’ve gotta - Mr. Stark,”

The air around him tastes stale and his breaths come in short, shallows gasps. There’s a deep, piercing throbbing in his head, like fingernails engraving their crescents into his scalp. He focuses on the pain, on the taste of salt and blood on his lips. His fingers tremble as he reaches for the suit, gently at first. The red metal is smooth and warm from battle. He caresses it, whispering a prayer. 

Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Tony I need you. -

Mr. Stark had told him he was strong once, but he can feel himself crumbling now. He shuts his eyes tight, scrunching his face as the memory resurfaces. 

(Peter sits on the kitchen island at the penthouse, legs dangling back in forth, a bowl of Frosted Flakes in his hands. “So who do you think is the strongest Avenger?” he asked. “And you can’t say Iron Man. That’s cheating.” Tony raises a brow. 

“Well that’s just no fun. But just between you and me? Bruce. If you tell him I said so, I’m stealing your baby pictures from May and sending them to the team.” 

Peter drops his spoon. “You wouldn’t.”

“Is that a bet you wanna take? You know what, actually. There is someone who gives him a run for his money.”

“Thor. Obviously Thor.”

“What is it with you and Point Break, kid? No. It’s you. You - savor this moment Pete. I will deny if asked, but kid? Saving Toomes after he repeatedly tried to kill you? After everything he did...I...That’s strength. Not to mention the whole lifting a building that collapsed on top of you too. In your underoos suit.”

Peter ignores the last bit, lets disbelief and pride mingle together as he considers his response. “Thank you,” he whispers just loud enough for him to hear.)

Peter swallows down the lump in his throat, opens his eyes and looks at the unresponsive suit in front of him. The eyes of the Iron Man mask are black. Peter grips the metal around the suits abdomen and pulls. It rips, pulls crimson from the skin of his finger. Underneath the metal, he sees one of Tony’s workout shirts stretched over his stomach, slightly torn. He pulls more. Again

The offbeat thump thump of Tony’s heartbeat and gasp for air as Peter carefully removes the mask, sends relief flooding Peter so fast he practically falls into Tony. 

“I thought you were -” Peter stops on a sob. “You weren’t responding. Mr. Stark and the voice--” Peter buries his still masked head in Tony’s neck. 

“I’m okay, kid.” Tony’s hand cradles Peter’s head and he melts into the touch. They sit like that for a minute, relishing in the others aliveness. “Hey, Peter? Can you look at me for a sec?"  Reluctantly, Peter sits up, pulls away just enough for Tony to reach out and remove Peter's mask. Tony curses at the sight of his face, blotchy red rimmed eyes. Blood trickles down his temple, cheekbone a mixture of purple and yellow. His nose is crooked, broken.  “Peter, I’m so so sorry--”

“You’re sorry? No, I’m sorry. I had, I had this feeling but I just thought, I don’t know what I thought. I should have known something was wrong sooner-”

“Nope. No we aren’t playing this game. In no universe was this your fault.”

“Well then it wasn’t yours either.”

“Kid…”

“I heard him, the dude who Pod personed you. I know you’d never try to hurt me like that. Besides, I’ve had worse face planting into a brick building while swinging and making a tik tok. It’s fine, Mr. Stark.” They both know the latter part is a lie, but Tony’s lips quirk into an almost smile at the memory. 

“But I-”

“No. Can we just...go home?” Peter’s thumb circles on the pulse point at Tony’s wrist, and he exhales on a deep breath. His whole body aches. 

“Yeah, Pete. I just gotta do something real quick.” 

Tony calls Rhodey, has him track the hacker down. They later find it was a former SI employee, William Riva, whom Obie had fired over not being able to replicate the arc reactor. It only intensifies Tony’s guilt, but he stirs in it quietly. Peter’s enhancement leaves no scars for Tony to ruminate over. And though Tony had expected Peter to distance himself, quite the opposite happens.

A week later, after spending every other afternoon at the Tower, Peter finds himself with a real, official internship with SI. He’s more of Tony’s personal assistant than any of the other interns, but it gives him a chance to work in the labs with Tony. To Doomsday plan suits and run codes to prevent any sort of future hacking. Briefly thinking his mentor might have died, had solidified a scary thought, but when Tony wraps Peter in a hug like it’s the most natural thing in the world, he accepts it. Mr. Stark is a friend and a teammate and a mentor. But more than that, Peter sees him as the closest thing he’s had to a father figure since Ben. He’s pretty sure Tony feels the same, with all of his mother-henning and safety protocols, but he’s not going to be the one to bring it up. When it comes down to it, Peter will do anything to protect that, no matter where it takes him. 

#irondad fic #irondad and spiderson #spiderson fic #iron dad & spiderson #my writing #what are the tags #Iron Man #tony stark #peter parker #I'm actually kind of proud of this one #I worked really hard on it #and owe a bunch of thanks to a bunch of people I pestered with it #and the entirety of my discord group #I love them so much

[itsbenedict]

Rendering the Incomprehensible Comprehensible

I am confused by the state of the art of psychiatric medicine.

Now, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm a guy what makes computers is be do videogames, and I haven't taken a chemistry class since freshman year of college or a biology class since high school. Pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the field is that I read Slate Star Codex a lot. So, the questions I'm asking here are ones I have to assume actual professionals in the area have answers to.

That question being... why is it made of drugs?

I don't mean in an “oh, these are social problems and we must solve society and overthrow [racism/capitalism/millenialism/makesworldwrong] instead of medicating our free spirits” way. I mean in a... how do drugs work at all, kind of way? It makes sense they work for killing pathogens- all you have to do is come up with a poison that works on what you're trying to kill but not on the host. But for fixing the brain? What?

My model of drug discovery works something like this: 

- Scientists poke around at the brain and see a ton of hyper-complicated chemical processes happening in there, and make some educated guesses about what they're doing, based on measurements of levels of certain chemicals in certain places during certain mental states. They've got some vague ideas about what these chemicals are doing, but these are mostly statistical inferences and not detailed causal models. They look at these brain chemicals and how they move around, and infer that if they make some other chemicals that are shaped in specific ways, those chemicals will interfere with these other chemicals and make there be more or less of them under certain conditions. - Armed with these guesses, they go to the lab and synthesize these chemicals, and then spend billions of dollars running gigantic clinical trials to see if, maybe, putting a bunch of these new chemicals in the bloodstream will actually have anything like the desired effect. - Most of the time they don't, because these were just educated guesses based on simplified models, but with enough billions poured into running more trials, they'll eventually find a chemical they can p-hack into looking like it does something, and then exploit FDA regulations to get doctors to prescribe it for a thousand dollars a pill. Sometimes, if they're extremely lucky, they'll find something that has a positive effect that they don't need to statistically mutilate to show, and then we have a groundbreaking discovery.

I may just be super underinformed, but as I understand it... this process weirds me the hell out.

In my current job, I spend a lot of time fixing bugs in old websites. These websites are sometimes large and labyrinthine, full of old uncommented code some contractor wrote years ago before dropping off the face of the earth. This is, ignoring for a moment a completely unignorable difference in degree of complexity, kind of like trying to fix problems with the brain.

When I go in to fix a bug in a website, there's a lot of things I can do. I can look at the page's elements in the browser's dev tools. I can run the debugger and step through the code, looking at all the data and its values at any given point in time. I can go to the git repo and look back through previous versions of the code, to see what changes were made and when, in conjunction with Jira tickets describing what issue those changes were made to fix. And once I've figured out what's happening, I can go into the code, make changes, and see what effect they had.

Now, I can try to imagine what my job would be like if I had to do things like psychopharmacologists did.

First off, no making changes to the code. The code is compiled and minified and obfuscated and still three billion lines long. Even if I did figure out how to make desirable changes, that would be "digital eugenics" and I'd get fired.

Second, commit history only goes like three or four commits back, if I'm lucky. Previous commits have been deleted, since they're set to auto-recycle after a while and nobody knows how to turn that off.

Thirdly, no dev tools. I only have the rendered webpage itself, and when something goes wrong I have to kind of guess at whether it's a styling issue or a data issue or a connectivity issue or what.

What can I do, exactly? Well, I actually do have access to one of the dev tools, kind of: the Network tab. I can see the requests being made to the back-end API. Unfortunately, there is no API documentation, and the requests are just as obfuscated as the code. But I've also got Postman, and what I can kind of do is make my own requests to the API, to see what the output is and how it affects the system.

So, uh... hm, okay, I see a request being made to https://serotonin.presynapticneurone.neural.net. The data payload is gibberish, but I notice that when there's a lot of these requests happening, the webpage renders a little faster, and when there's not as many, it slows down. Maybe if I just copy the gibberish data and fake a bunch of my own requests, it'll go faster? ...Hm, okay, that kind of works on some pages but not others. Still, better than nothing- we have some users complaining about the site being slow, so let's just tell them to-

Oh, shit, wait, users don't know how computers work, I can't just tell them to spam Postman requests to the API endpoint. Um, okay, I'll write a little phone app that automatically spams the requests, and release that to users. Except- oh, for fuck's sake, I need to wait for FDApple to approve it for the app store, and they want us to prove that it works and doesn't contain malware. Except even I don't know if that works, so... okay, it's fine, we'll hire a bunch of testers and do a study that shows that overall it speeds things up, and doesn't kill anyone's machines. Good thing I work for a huge company that can afford to do that.

Aaaaaand here come the results, and- oh, god damn it, the study didn't achieve significance. Let me go get Steve, he can probably fudge the numbers here so the damn app store will let us release the fucking thing, we spent millions on those tests (and the tests of all the other interventions that turned out to do nothing because we didn't have enough information and guessed wrong), and we need to recoup our investment.

Sigh.

So... I'm hearing that the ROI on drug discovery is dropping, and that drug companies have pretty much given up on trying to fix things and have started repackaging the handful of blind hacky API spam tricks that miraculously have a consistent effect. This isn't surprising to me. I would not be surprised if, like, after decades of people banging their heads against a massively overcomplicated system, hitting it with differently-shaped hammers in hopes of getting anything to work... they've found most of the differently-shaped hammers that do anything.

At some point, someone has to invent developer tools, right? Find some way to actually figure out what the hell they're doing?

The big question: given the blatant inadequacy of the existing paradigm, why is the industry still trying to wring blood out of this dried-out stone? At some point, we're going to have to actually figure out what the brain is doing, but it seems like cognitive neuroscience is still in its infancy. "We don't know how this thing works" seems like the big obstacle to getting anything done, but most of the effort in this area still seems to be focused on finding new drugs to throw at the thing-we-don't-know-how-it-works. 

I know I’m not the first person to ask this question. I’m sure everyone who’s ever had to grapple with psychiatry in any detail is lamenting the same issue, and I’m sure there are people who are working very hard to try and solve the problem. It just... doesn’t seem like those people are getting very much done. The most I hear about is pop science articles claiming that Science Has Discovered The Part Of The Brain That Makes You Love Kittens, which inevitably turn out to be irresponsible reporting of extremely modest correlational findings. 

(Maybe AI will help? Maybe the brain is just too complicated to be reduced to something humans can understand on an engineering/problem-solving level, and we need something with a higher understanding-capacity? Except... most of the recent advances in AI are with neural nets that explicitly don't actually understand anything, nor do the researchers growing them.)

Where are we at with this? Are we getting anywhere? Is there encouraging progress in the field of learning-things-about-the-brain? Is the second derivative of that curve non-zero? Metacognitive revolution when?

#i guess i continue to be impatient about science #long post

[truthbeetoldmedia]

iZombie 5x08 "Death of a Car Salesman" Review

As we descend into the final stretch of iZombie, the show takes things back to the beginning. A lot of things have happened over the past few years, but we’ve never figured out how the virus actually occurred. While the flashbacks that kick off the episode don’t answer every question, it’s headed in a pretty interesting direction. We see Martin Roberts (wearing a shirt with the word ‘beanpole’ on it, so I guess that answers that question) messing around with some recipes of utopium — a drug that we know is linked to zombie rage outs. Martin is dipping into his supply with a friend, when we see him rage out and attack — possibly the first rage out to ever happen. 

We are also treated to pre-Zombie Blaine and Don E, who were just nerdy pals back in the day. Talk about a lot of things changing. Now that their business has fallen apart, their relationship has fractured a bit. Blaine is still camping out in Don E’s basement, but his deposit on his new business venture — smuggling Freylich brains — has allowed him to give it a little upgrade. Blaine has assembled a brand new smuggling team, and the only thing they needed in order to be convinced of kidnapping teens was an extra $15,000 a head. Blaine seems to think he’s found a way back on top of his game, but Don E has a few cards that he hasn’t played yet. So has Ravi, for that matter. Charlie has given him a list of kids with Freylich syndrome, so Ravi is right at Blaine’s heels with that information.

Meanwhile, we finally get to meet the love interest that has been hinted at all season! Darcy Bennett, the one Freylich syndrome kid in Seattle, has the skull tattoo, which the murdered matchmaker said Don E’s perfect match would have. Don E has been down because running the bar has been more work than he bargained for, but he and Darcy hit it off. She reminds him they have to “rock out until they clock out” and I love her already. I’m glad the show is paying this off, this kind of love interest for Don E is exactly what I was hoping for. He offers to help her get through her bucket list, like starting a bar fight. I’m not sure we have much time with Darcy, but this looks bad for Blaine. If Darcy dies, Ravi and Don E will both have someone they love pass away from the same disease, and it might be enough to put them on the same side. 

Ravi and Liv are on the same brain in this episode, and it was probably the best one they could have chosen for it. A car salesman named Rick Randall is victim to a hacked self-driving car, and it goes over a bridge. This  brain has been one of my favorites of the season so far. Rahul and Rose always have wonderful scene chemistry, but the suave energy they bring to this was so much fun to watch. The posturing and the winks and the toothpicks are all just too much. While we don’t actually see it happen, it’s actually Ravi’s vision that helps solve the case. An old rival’s daughter vandalized Rick’s car. Liv and Ravi are busy giving firm handshakes and gripping shoulders, but it’s Clive that closes this case. Liv sees the culprit and his daughter embrace, and she immediately runs back to her own father. 

Earlier in the episode, Liv accuses Martin of not being as sober as he said. He tells her she is his reason for finally kicking the habit for good, and she wonders why her birth didn’t make it stick the first time. A bleak conversation with Clive over his time in Vice leads him to admit that he knows people get clean, but he’s never seen it himself. Determined to make it work, Liv arrives with brochures about rehab and addiction recovery. “You’re a good person. And good people can’t help themselves,” Martin tells her. Remember last week when I said that Liv’s identity is going to be important for the rest of the season? Well, from the mouths of dead beat fathers. Liv has a lot going on, she really doesn’t need much more on her plate. Part of me wonders if she wanted to find her dad in hopes she’d find someone who might take care of her, for once. She tells him that she “doesn’t have any more to give,” yet she offers to spend time with Martin and help him get clean. But Martin is not as helpless as he claims. We see him making significant moves this episode, like using his lackeys to infect several key US senators. He ends the episode by watching Patch’s Renegade documentary. Something tells me that he’s not gazing fondly over his daughter’s achievements, but rather, doing research. 

Martin’s meddling is going to make it that much more difficult for Peyton and Major to pull off her plan. General Mills is in town to see New Seattle for himself. Peyton and Major present their solution, relocating all zombies to an island, just like Vivian Stoll wanted. General Mills is unimpressed, especially since Major apparently lost his daughter. (She was just in the last episode! Where did she go?) He tells Major that this is basically a hostage situation, and nothing they say or do can change his mind. Major keeps his cool, but things aren’t looking good. I can’t imagine that any goodwill will be extended to zombies after General Mills finds out that a handful of senators have been compromised by Martin and his army. 

I guess it’s a good thing that Hi Zombie finally dropped, right? Maybe General Mills will change his mind after watching the sitcom. I’m not sure how “good” this TV show actually is, but I really enjoyed watching Liv, Major, Ravi, and Peyton sit down to enjoy and laugh over something together. I’ll never say no to a sweet moment between these four. I have a feeling that things are going to be ramping up soon, and they will be few and far between. Lately, the show has been doing better about the heavy-handedness of themes and metaphors, and I’m crossing my fingers it continues as some of the overarching plots begin to reach their peak. 

Stray Thoughts: 

I loved that the prize for the annual raffle contest was a mountain bike and, as Ravi points out, “The mountains are on the other side of the wall.” 

Ravi’s slicked hair with the skunk stripe. That’s all. 

Liv is an “OZ”, an Original Zombie from the Max Rager Boat Party, and I wish they had taken the opportunity to use that hilarious acronym more. 

“I’ve had a vision.” “That’s it, you call that a vision?” Poor Clive. He usually can’t handle Liv and Ravi on their best days, the two of them on the same brain probably has him close to the edge. 

“Peak TV my ass,” says Blaine, regarding “Hi Zombie.” For once we agree?

“Ralphy Sharkbuddy with a fake British accent” 

“Are you and Major in for dinner with me and Peyton tonight?” Why would Liv know if Major is free and feel comfortable making double dates for them? *Shady eye emoji* 

Have we seen Scott E before? I can’t remember. What happened to him? 

If this zombie island comes to pass, are Peyton and Ravi going to be separated from Liv and Major? 

Haley’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

iZombie airs Thursdays at 9/8c on the CW.

#iZombie #Death of a Car Salesman

[thethotwithoutfear]

Shine Bright Like A Diamond (Part 1)

A/N: Ok so this is like my first fic ever and I’ve been a huge fan of the Spider-Man comics since I was a kid. I absolute loved the vibe of Homecoming so I was completely inspired and decided to try and combine the two using one of my fave characters in the comics but make her less of the “neurotic jealous ex” (yuck) and instead put the reader quite literally in her shoes. It’s going to be spread out into multiple parts (don’t know how many right now but so far I have four done and I can’t wait to share them with you). The first part is a little slow but I promise the rest will only go up from there. Its not completely canonical but I hope you all enjoy it regardless!

Wordcount: 1,935 

Warnings: Not many, just a couple of swear words here and there 

Summary: With her notorious cat burglar of a father sick and held hostage by a former employer, (y/n) must take on the mantle of the Black Cat in order to pay off his debts and regain his freedom. All this whilst navigating high school, new found friendships, a secret identity, and maybe...love? 

                  You stood on the edge of your apartment building, the chill of an Autumn breeze making the already inching goosebumps on your arms worse. You were nervous, anxious, maybe even a little scared...ok maybe a lot scared. This was it, your first time at it alone, and you sure felt alone now, the night air swallowing you up as you scanned the skyline of New York City from your little patch of Queens.

 You reassured yourself one last time before making the big leap, remembering the skills your father had practically ingrained into you over the years: stealth, determination, speed, a quick wit, slight of hand, combat, and charm. Those were the tools your father passed on to you, and now in his greatest time of need you were going to make him proud. Sure, he let you tag along once or twice on a job, sometimes he'd even let you practice down in Time Square with his supervision. Him, charming tourists out of their wallets as you caressed their pockets smooth as silk. Tiny you looking out during heist jobs, him practically being your private professor of computers/tech so you'd better understand vault systems and the tech he'd so ingeniously crafted to get the job done easier, anything it took to survive. The pressure was great but he had always believed in you.

                You secured the night vision goggles of your own making to your face, flicked your fingers twice, the retractable claws of your suit giving way; it was now or never. You took a deep breathe and let yourself fall consumed by the darkness of the Black Cat...

[Student AV Club anchor #1: In other news, last night New York's biggest one man diamond heist in history took place along with another Spidey sighting!]

[Anchor #2: That's right Adam. At around 12 p.m. The NYPD reported that an unknown suspect stole what is believed to have been 400 million dollars worth of diamonds from within the International Gem Tower and the vaults of the Diamond Dealers Club of New York City]

[Anchor#1: The thief managed to go undetected for a majority of the heist until what the authorities believe was a misstep on the last leg of the DDC's security measures: an infrared laser cage. Witnesses outside the Gem Tower reported however, that here was a quick and some would say spectacularly acrobatic altercation between New York's newest and baddest cat burglar and Spider-Man. What a sight, huh Claire!?]

[Anchor #2: No doubt about it Adam! Unfortunately the thief, who authorities and the Daily Bugle are are now dubbing the Black Cat, DID get away. Lets hope if there's a next time, the hero of Queens can put the cat..back in the bag.]

          As much as you wanted to hear the school AV Club's amateur reporters talk about your wild accomplishments for the night and lavish in your victory, you couldn't help but admit to yourself that you were just too damn tired and too sad to do either. Even though the events of last night should have freed your father from his captors, your success in pulling off their supposed one time impossible heist, did not. Instead they decided to give you ONE more extremely vague heist, one even more ridiculous than the last to truly set your father free. And your father's time as it was, was already falling short. For now though, you had to do what any other 16 almost 17 year old kid had to do and that was go to school.

In fact it was the second semester of your Junior year. Your backpack added more weight to your already Atlas-like shoulders, the hoodie over your head masking your dark circles in a cotton shadow and hiding a mess of un-brushed hair. No one would notice of course, hardly anyone talked to you here. You had transferred almost a year ago this year being your second. Your father had fallen sick shortly after being released from prison, leaving the two of you no choice but to move in with your Aunt Dalma. You left everything you knew from your Brooklyn apartment to her slightly bigger one in Queens. You'd never known your mother, and your father's sister was the only family you had left. You needed her help looking after him and your father couldn't really look after you anymore. Not that he ever really did outside of training you in the art of cat burglary.

He'd spend most of his days scoping new targets to heist, getting blueprints, hacking systems, developing strategies, choreographing precise movements to by pass laser security in the comfort of your living room, holed up later in his own room tinkering away perfecting his signature code breakers, wall crawlers, laser cutters, etc., and negotiating new deals with bosses in exchange for a percentage of whatever he'd manage to steal was worth. Although he'd earned pretty hefty cuts, you couldn't lie to yourself or him hide well enough the fact that he had gambled most of, if not all, his earnings leaving you with barely enough to scrape the barrel and have enough for at least a roof over your heads. Despite this, you'd often stay up all night waiting for him to get back at ungodly hours, still loving your father very much even in his absence and with his irresponsibility. Cat burglary was the only thing that truly tied you to him.

The one good thing that came from the move however, was finding out that the tech and science your father had taught and passed down to you and your ever assessing brain was that it made you a virtual robotics, computer, and programming genius; genius enough to be able to attend Midtown. Although it had been a lonely sophomore year, you enjoyed distracting yourself from your personal problems with constant learning. You didn't have to think about how your family would manage to pay for your father's treatments while figuring out a new algorithm for your programming final or learning enough chemistry (even if it wasn’t your strong suit) to perfect your dad's smoke bombs. You didn't have to wonder if you and your Aunt could scrape up enough money to pay for food and rent if you were too busy trying to figure out the faulty mechanics that were ruining the fluid movement of the prosthetic robotic hand you were making for robotics shop.

It had all gotten to be too much however when The Boss who had ratted your dad out to the authorities and had been responsible for his imprisonment came calling. He only spoke through phone calls and he apparently wanted money back that your father had, unbeknownst to you, stolen from him and then some. But there was no way you and your Aunt Dalma could get a measly chunk of that kind of money and your father was in no state to pull off the alternative heist in exchange for settling of his debts, so in a moment of desperation you took your father's debt upon yourself. The Boss had his minions kidnap your father and hold him for ransom in the meantime. His days were numbered without your Aunt and you there to take care of him even if you practically begged them to give him proper care in your absence. When they had allowed you to see him the night of your more than successful diamond heist, he looked much too haggard and tired to bare.

The memory of it was vivid and painful, consuming your mind as you walked down the crowded hall to your locker. The first period warning bell however, snapped you back to earth as you found you had mindlessly arrived at your locker, staring at it's open grates blankly for what probably had been longer than most people would. A small clearing of a throat caught your attention and you turned to look at its source. It was Ned Leeds, the always joyful kid from last year's robotics period, his best friend with the perfectly gelled and curled hair who was almost attached to his hip, beside him as usual.

“Are you alright?” he said, a concerned smile on his face. You gave him one back as convincingly as you could, “Yeah, I-I'm fine. Just...really tired that's all.�� He gave a small nod looking not so convinced but still friendly as you had often observed him to be,“Alright... Hope I see you in robotics class again! Get some sleep soon.” With a small wave and a gentle chuckle he turned to go, his friend exchanging a small sympathetic but sleepy smile with you as he followed along to whatever class they probably shared. You stood there a little surprised, you hadn't thought anyone ever really noticed you. Ned had never really talked to you either, maybe once or twice when he needed to borrow a tool you had sitting idly at your work table. The short exchange brought a strange feeling that you'd never felt before; the idea of someone noticing you, let alone caring, warmed you.

As robotics class rolled around you took your usual spot in the back right corner of the shop, only this time however your neighbors were Ned and his friend. They shot kind familiar smiles your way as they walked in at the final warning bell for last period. You smiled back, the confusion at the attention obvious on your face. Ned turned around to speak across the ways to his pal who sat at the work area next to you. “I'm so hyped! We finally got robotics during the same period dude. Now we can work on all THOSE things we've been talking about! We'll finish so many projects in no time now. That will definitely free up LEGO building time.” His friend gave a strangely warning cough and followed it with a light chuckle. “Yeah man, lets just not talk about THAT right now,” He said as his eyes rolled slightly in your direction, “BUT I did JUST get a new model of the Poe Dameron X-Wing!” You pondered the eye movement suspiciously as Ned caught the suggestion and went along with changing the subject. “NO WAY!? WE HAVE TO HANG OUT SOON AND START IT! I hope the internship this year doesn't take up most of your free time again”, he said. You caught faint babble from time to time over last year about the guy's Stark Internship way too many times. Mostly from people like Flash Thompson who doubted if he really even had one in the first place. Ned's voice suddenly caught your attention after you had managed to tune out their conversation.

“Oh umm btw, we were wondering if maybe you'd like to sit with us at lunch tomorrow? It's totally cool if you cant, I know some people don't have the same lunch period. We just thought you might like to join us, not to sound mean or anything but you don’t seem to have any friends. Nobody should like eat alone so we though why not just bless us with your company!? Our friend MJ usually sits with us too...kinda. You'd probably like her!” He seemed like a nice enough kid, you weren’t offended at all. You were honestly a little shocked, again, that anyone even noticed you. You had kept to yourself most of the time because your life and your father were too hectic, infamous, and quite honestly shameful to let people know you were the daughter of New York’s best cat burglar. 

You looked at his friend to asses the sincerity of the invitation. A very sweet and assuring look was written on his face, the light freckles and the brown of his irises seemed to impossibly smile at you too. “Umm yeah sure. I don't mind. Not eating alone might be nice for a change. I'm (y/n) btw. I don't think we've ever really met or spoken to each other, I’m sorry” you said, extending your hand to Ned and then his friend. Ned gave a happy giggle as he shook your hand and introduced himself, the excitement of making a new friend evident in his bright grin and blushing cheeks. “It's nice to meet you (y/n),” the friend replied, the almost dancingly high tone of his voice taking you by surprise, “I'm Peter, Peter Parker.”  Maybe this year wouldn't be as lonely as the last...

#peter parker x reader #spiderman x black cat!reader #whaaat do i taaagg thhiiss lol heelp #tom holland x reader

[tak4hir0]

以前は英語の記事の読み書きが苦手だったのを、このようにして克服した、という話を書きます。 成果を数値で測ってないですが、RSSフィードに登録している英語メディアの数が大幅に増えました。以前は全体の5%程度に対し、今は50%以上が英語メディアになっています。英語に対する心理的ハードルは大きく下がりました。 また、読む力を付けたことで自作のOSSのREADMEもほぼ自力で書けるようになりました。 https://github.com/goodwithtech/dockle/blob/master/README.md では始めます。 全体像 僕の場合、1000文字以上の英文記事を読む場合、STEP1に含まれる内容は必ず行います。 STEP2に含まれるものは、辞書なしで読めないときだけ行います。 どの段階でもキーボードショートカットで利用できるようにしているので、めんどくさいとは思っていません。 また、今回の記事では、Chromeエクステンションを多用します。PDFファイルの場合、利用できなくなることが多いのですが、記事末尾に｢PDFファイルでもエクステンションを利用する｣ための方法を記載しています。 なお、今回紹介するChromeエクステンションのショートカットキーは chrome://extensions/shortcuts から設定できます。 STEP 1 STEP 1-1. 読みやすくする DOM Distiller Reading Mode ChromiumのOSSを利用して、Reading Modeにしてくれるエクステンションです。以下のような状態になります。 記事の本文だけを表示 (広告/SNSリンク などが非表示) レイアウト/フォント/背景などを指定して読みやすい状態にする Chrome自体でReading Modeを設定することも可能ですが、その場合多くのextensionが利用できなくなってしまいます。(chrome-distill://xxxx というプロトコルでページが開かれてしまうため) STEP 1-2. 文章の流れを最初につかむ 要約ツール(Mac) SMMRY 最初に論旨を把握することで、誤読を防げます。不思議なもので英語の文章を読んでいると、どこか一文の意味を取り違えた結果、文章全体の意味を勘違いして受け取ることがありました。そのため、最初に要約をして論旨を把握するようにしています。 ただし、論文であれば大体最初と最後を読むほうが効率がいい(わかりやすい)です。 詳細 僕自身が使っているのは、Macの要約ツールと、SMMRYというサイトです。 他にもいくつか試したのですが、機能/精度/速度/他ツールとの親和性を考えて、2つを使い分けています。 Macの要約ツールの場合 リーダーモードにすることで、余計な文章はページから消えています。ページを全選択してMacの純正要約ツールで要約します。僕はCmd+Shift+S で呼びだせるように設定しています。 ショートカットキーから呼び出す方法は、別記事にまとめています。 SMMRYを利用する場合 SMMRY(サマリー)は無料の要約生成サイトです。URLを指定すると、コンテンツがある部分だけを対象に要約してくれます。ただアルゴリズムが文中に含まれるTF-IDFを元にされており、Macの要約ツールと比較すると、すこし精度が低いと感じています。 僕は以下のBookmarkletを登録しており、1クリックで要約できるようにしています。 以下のBookmarkletを実行すると、新しいタブを開き10行に要約してくれます。 javascript:window.open('https://smmry.com/'+location.href+'#&SM_LENGTH=10','_blank'); ショートカットキー コマンド Cmd + Shift + S 要約ツールの呼び出し(選択範囲に対して) ※要設定 Locationバーでbookmarklet呼び出し SMMRYを開く(ページのコンテンツは自動で判別) 要約ツールのPros/Cons RESOOMERというサイトも以前利用していました。色々カスタマイズができて便利で、他のツールと違って、文章中の重要な部分だけ抜き出すという点で面白いのですが、文章が途切れると逆に分かりづらいという結果になりました。 基本はSMMRYを利用して、わかりづらければMacの要約ツールを利用するようにしています。 要約ツール(Mac) SMMRY RESOOMER 料金 無料 無料 一部有料 アルゴリズム 不明 TF-IDFの和が高い文章を抽出 不明 文字数制限 なし なし 20,000文字(有料) 他ツールとの親和性 - +++ + 要約形式 一文を抽出 一文を抽出 文中から必要な部分のみ抽出 精度(感覚値) +++ + + 呼び出し方法 サービスから利用 Bookmarklet ChromeExtension 初回起動時間 +++ + - 要約変更時間 +++ + +++ 要約(11行) And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. So instead of doing what they really want to do, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs feel they ought to be writing research papers. All the time I was in graduate school I had an uncomfortable feeling in the back of my mind that I ought to know more theory, and that it was very remiss of me to have forgotten all that stuff within three weeks of the final exam. If I had only looked over at the other makers, the painters or the architects, I would have realized that there was a name for what I was doing: sketching. If universities and research labs keep hackers from doing the kind of work they want to do, perhaps the place for them is in companies. So if you can figure out a way to get in a design war with a company big enough that its software is designed by product managers, they'll never be able to keep up with you. When I say that the answer is for hackers to have day jobs, and work on beautiful software on the side, I'm not proposing this as a new idea. Maybe it would be good for hackers to act more like painters, and regularly start over from scratch, instead of continuing to work for years on one project, and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions. Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs-- not just at what they do, but the source code too. It's hard for such people to design great software [5], because they can't see things from the user's point of view. But so many of the best hackers work on open-source projects now that the main effect of this policy may be to ensure that they won't be able to hire any first-rate programmers. SMMRYで要約(10行) Of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. Then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. Hackers need to understand the theory of computation about as much as painters need to understand paint chemistry. If hackers identified with other makers, like writers and painters, they wouldn't feel tempted to do this. Most hackers don't learn to hack by taking college courses in programming. Maybe it would be good for hackers to act more like painters, and regularly start over from scratch, instead of continuing to work for years on one project, and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it's just very bad. So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original. As far as I know, when painters worked together on a painting, they never worked on the same parts. 文字数により要約不可 要約(8行) To programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not. In the past, a competitor might use patents to prevent you from selling a copy of something they made, but they couldn't prevent you from taking one apart to see how it worked. If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. It is greatly to America's advantage that it is a congenial atmosphere for the right sort of unruliness—that it is a home not just for the smart, but for smart-alecks. IBM was no doubt rather surprised by the consequences of the licensing deal for DOS, just as the hypothetical "adversary" must be when Michael Rabin solves a problem by redefining it as one that's easier to solve. I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people. It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect national security and intellectual property turned out to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful. And if you want to know whether something will nurture or squash this quality, it would be hard to find a better focus group than hackers, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it. 要約(8行) To the popular press, "Hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. To programmers, "Hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants-whether the computer wants to or not. To add to the confusion, the noun "Hack" also has two senses. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. When we were in grad school, a hacker friend of mine who spent too much time around MIT had his own lock picking kit. Sometimes young programmers notice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own in order to seem smarter. Show any hacker a lock and his first thought is how to pick it. To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially ominous. 要約(20%) To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also that is brilliantly imaginative. It is sometimes hard to explain to authorities why one would want to do such things. Another friend of mine once got in trouble with the government for them. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate a certain problem can't be solved. The fake version is not merely can actually slow the process of innovation. They see increasingly aggressive measures to protect freedom they need to do their job. But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went off was a joking reference to Multics: Unix. The latest intellectual property laws impose Ironically, hackers have brought this on themselves. Increasingly, the brains of products is in software. i.e. data. A song on an LP is physically stamped into the If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this and unanimity is very rare in this world. perhaps there is something amiss. will actually harm it? Think about it. STEP 1-3. 1つ1つの単語に集中する Spreed 文章をフラッシュカードのように単語をどんどん表示していくExtensionです。類似ツールもたくさんあります。 本来は速読トレーニングのためのツールですが、この方法だと1単語ずつ解釈でき、流し読みを防ぐことができました。 ショートカットキー コマンド Alt + V 選択範囲をSpreedで開く Alt + Shift + V ページのコンテンツを自動選択してSpreedで開く 調べる ここまでの段階は、単語の意味がある程度わかる前提でのステップでした。 ここからは、そもそも文章自体がわからない場合にどのようにしていくかを書きます。 STEP 2 STEP 2-1. 単語/熟語の意味を調べる Mouse Dictionary 参照 : Chrome拡張の高速な英語辞書ツールをつくりました(Mouse Dictionary) 超高速辞書ツール。マウスホバーで単語/熟語の意味を表示。 追加の辞書として、英辞郎のデータを読み込むことで強化できます。Boothからデータを購入してダウンロード + 設定ページから辞書データの読み込みで対応可能です。 ショートカットキー コマンド Control + z Mouse Dictionaryを有効にする STEP 2-2. 文章の意味を調べる Mate Translate 単語の意味がわかっても、文章の内容が難しそうなら、翻訳ツールを使います。 ツールは色々あるので、何でもいいと思っています。もっといいツールがあれば教えてください。 選択した範囲をまとめて翻訳したいとき。1センテンス読んで、まったくわからないときに利用します。 ショートカットキー コマンド Cmd + Shift + T 選択範囲を翻訳する 補足 : PDFの場合 PDFの場合、基本的にChrome Extensionsが利用できません。 いくつか方法がありますが、私はDropboxに保存してDropboxの画面上で読むようにしています。 Dropboxの画面だとHTML化されて表示されます。 ダウンロードしたファイルを自動でDropboxにアップロードするために、ダウンロードしたpdfファイルの場合は、Dropboxの指定したフォルダに入るように設定しています。指定したフォルダに入ると、自動でDropboxへの同期がされるため、ダウンロードしてDropboxのウェブ版を開けばよい状態になります。 RegExp Download Organizer なお、それ以外のファイルも日付ごとで保存フォルダを分けることもできます。 ダウンロード先の指定はブラウザの保存ディレクトリからの相対パスになるので、事前に chrome://settings でまずChromeのダウンロード先をユーザのルートディレクトリに変更しておくと楽です。 最後に 以上のような手順で、英語の長文を読むようにしています。 このようにすることで、 自分のレベルに合わせて最低限のツールを組み合わせを作ることができます。 Reading Modeで読みやすくし、要約を理解したうえで記事を読みはじめることは効率的に読むための普遍的なテクニックです。 英文を書く時もいろいろ工夫はしてますが、文法は間違えてもまずは書いてみる、というのが一番大事だと思っています。

#Qiita

[incursionofthedamnedrpg]

Ruby Hendrix Accepted! Welcome back, Beatrice. We can’t wait to see what Ruby will do! Hope you remember what to do!

Name: Beatrice

Preferred Pronouns: she/her

Age: 23

Timezone: GMT

State an account where we can message you: Ella please!

How active you’re going to be: 7 (better than I was for definite)

How did you find out about this roleplay? I’m back!

Why do you want to play this character? Honestly since I’ve been gone, this idea has been swirling in my head and I just now feel like I can be active again and the muse is strong with this one!

In the event that you drop the character or leave the roleplay, please select one of the following actions for us to take with your OC: Leave as an open character

Anything else you would like to tell us? I missed this place!

IC:

Preferred Ships: Ruby x Chemistry

Sample para:

RFP

Template must be filled out, please make your character 16+ (we do not accept young ages), and be sure to run a faceclaim by the main first!

Name: Ruby Hendrix Birthday: July 23rd (20) Species: Witch Lookalike: Emma Mackey Availability: Taken

Personality

Ruby used to be a pretty quiet kid to the point where people generally forget she was even in the room but in more recent times, she is an outspoken and rebellious type. She lives the world like she doesn’t really care about all that much but the words that spin in her head are much more than what she claims. Her brain is chaotic which makes her actions chaotic. A lot of her flaws are linked to her emotions and any extreme emotions come out of nowhere it seems because she bottles them up until she can’t hold them in no more. Ruby isn’t the type to stand there and watch things happen that she thinks are wrong which often puts her in difficult situations. She often doesn’t think about her actions much before doing them which leads to mistakes and she has a good few of those. Despite how she used to be, she is now a fire cracker with a hell of a lot of sass but she yearns to be the girl she once was but at this point, she doesn’t have a clue how to get to that point. She figures too much has changed to ever be that girl again. She feels like she has always been let down so she rarely gives her full self to anyone. She feels like everyone has a hidden agenda around her so she fails to trust people. If/When she is proven right about this, she doesn’t tend to get mad because she expects it but sometimes this is all one big self fulfilling prophecy.

Past

Ruby is the youngest child and the only daughter among five boys. Her parents are big names in the business empire of oil which allowed their children to be lavished with riches and they all were pushed to fulfil their dreams. The parents were big fans of rock music so all the boys had classic rock names. Axel after Axl Rose by Guns & Roses. Lennon after John Lennon. Billy after Billy Joel. Jude from the Beatles ‘Hey Jude’. And finally Ruby from ‘Ruby, don’t take your love to town’. Axel was pushed in sport, primarily baseball, where he plays for the New York Mets. Lennon was pushed in to law where he is now a lawyer in Atlanta and often helps his father’s oil company. Billy was pushed in to film where he now helps to produce and direct movies. Jude was pushed in to busniess so he could one day take over the business. Ruby was pushed in to fashion by her mother to take over her mother’s business when she retired. She hated the fashion and just didn’t care about it. That’s when she preferred to be quiet and hide in the shadows. Instead, she found a love for computers and more importantly hacking. At the age of 12, she had hacked in to her father’s business accounts four times as well as other big businesses and never got caught once.

When she started showing signs of magic at the age of 13 when her puberty was hitting her hard and her emotions were the hardest to control, that’s when her mother’s guilt began to show. No one in her family had magic. Not her mother and not her ‘father’ so when questioned about this, her mother confessed that Ruby was the product of an affair with a warlock when she was on a business trip to Milan. Although her father, who once loved his daughter more than the boys, remained loyal to his wife and vowed to keep it secret, he turned very cold with Ruby. He didn’t care what she did with her life as much as he did with the boys and let her get on with it. This was the first let down. She felt like she lost her family that day even if they did allow her to remain a part of the family and have their name, she wasn’t a true Hendrix and she felt like an outcast in her own home. That was the first big shift in her personality. She was still quiet at home that she could hide from everyone but so well that she could start to sneak out since no one really cared much to look for her or check she was still in the house. At the age of 16, she was out partying most nights but would still go to school the next day and ace her exams. Her brain was like a sponge for information so once it was in, it was hard to get out.

She was often forgotten by the media anyway since she was the ghost child of the family. All of her siblings were quite big and famous so she could simply slide under the radar which was perfect for her. When in school, not many people knew who she was which meant she could hide it for the most part. However, she did make the mistake when she met a guy in school that transferred who she liked. He was big in to his sports and his favourite athlete happened to be her brother. She really liked the guy so she got him to a game in New York and let him meet her brother. Then he began to sponge off of her to spend more time with her brother than her and that was the second let down. That’s when she realised people would only use her to get what they really wanted. It wasn’t the first time. Another friend in school wanted to be famous so tried to get close to Ruby to try and get noticed by Billy and cast in one of his films which the friend didn’t succeed in doing.

When it was time to go to college, Ruby rejoiced in the idea of getting away from her current surroundings. No more atmosphere at home. She could start fresh and hope no one knew who she was. Since her parents didn’t care much about pushing her in to a big name college like her brothers, she decided to go to Whitmore college and study Programming since she already had a knack for computers and coding. She vowed not to tell anyone about her past or who she really was. She often told people a fake last night as a precaution for any of this just in case they had seen her name somewhere in the papers. This seemed to add a little bit of mystery to her for most people because she was so private about her life but she intended on making a new one here.

Present

Ruby is just about to graduate from college with fantastic results. When she runs a little low on money, she often hacks in to some form of business and siphons some money from it to keep her afloat with her dangerous habits. Being close to the mysterious town of Mystic Falls, she has found herself drawn to it for a couple of years now. Although she doesn’t entirely trust anyone to teach her magic, she is curious about what she can learn in this little town. Ruby has learnt to better control her magic but by no means is she fully in control. There are often outbursts with it that she can’t control but she is trying to do better. She intends on doing freelance programming once she has her degree so she got herself a small apartment in the little town where she can do that from but other than that, she is just more curious about what the small town can teach her. She knows quite a bit about the supernatural and knows a few spells to protect herself. She still intends on laying low about her true identity which isn’t too hard when no one knows who she is anyway.

Connections

Carson St James

Doesn’t really know him overly other than occasionally smoking weed with him and some other people. He’s more of a friend of a friend type of person to her.

Riley Jace Miller

Since Riley’s shop popped up in town, she only ever goes to him for her tattoos now. She’s had a few drinks with him before and they seem to get along fine with fun banter but she still holds herself back from getting to know him entirely.

Charlotte Fell

She’s been to a few parties with Charlotte in the past and surprisingly would call her the closest thing she had to a friend. She still remains secretive around her but they have a good laugh and fun.

#accepted

[seventeen-scenarios-blog]

[붐붐SERIES] FieldAgent!Wonwoo (PG)

Prompt: It’s your first mission after months, and you’re partnered up with your ex-mentor: the cold, aloof Wonwoo. What could go wrong? Word Count: 3,074 (isweartojisoos, this will be the longest out of the entire series, I PROMISE!) Genre: Angst-ish? Fluff-ish? Warnings: Mild cursing

A/N: I thought I would have an easy time writing out my bias’ installment of the series, but I guess the creative juices aren’t flowing as well as they used to (I blame school). Major, MAJOR thanks to scooped for helping me out with this. COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU!!!

This is kind of a spinoff from my Jeonghan instalment, occurring just months after that incident. 

The next member will be DINO!

wooed <3

See the rest of the 붐붐 (BOOM BOOM) SERIES here:

Biker!Seungcheol | Collector!Jeonghan | UndercoverAgent!Junhui | FieldAgent!Wonwoo | Hacker!Jihoon | RoboticsGenius!Minghao

“No, no no no this can’t be happening,” you groan, slumping against the metal walls.

“It may be a defense mechanism of sorts,” Woozi’s voice crackles through your earpieces. “The shithead mob boss may be smarter than we thought.”  

“Is there any way to breach it?” your only other companion Wonwoo asks, his voice reverberating clandestinely around the enclosed space.

“Of course.” You can hear the irritation in the hacker’s voice. “I just don’t know how long it’d take; I’d have to hack into the central control system at this rate, it could take hours for all I know. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t something I was expecting.”

“Hours?” you echo incredulously. “What do you expect us to do until then?!”

“Closure.” You can picture Woozi’s sarcastic smirk all too well. “If dramas nowadays are anything to go by, elevators are a perfect place for that.” You wince, casting a fleeting glance at the male next to you, but he makes no visible reaction.

Trust things to stay a secret within the group; almost everyone in the organisation knows how sour your relationship with Wonwoo has gotten over the past month. Even Dokyeom, the brains of the operation, had been hesitant pairing the two of you together for this mission. But you’ve worked together for years now, your chemistry couldn’t be denied.

And for a mission as delicate as this, chemistry is critical.

Your task had been simple: infiltrate the penthouse apartment of the notorious mobster, break into his safe, and retrieve the laptop that contained vital information about a powerful company you guys were planning to tear down. It’s your first mission in a while, and you are eager to prove your worth to the organization, but you guess fate had other plans.

“Don’t worry,” Woozi reassures through the intercom again. “Jun and The8 are positioned outside the building and will be ready to break you out if things go too awry. For now, you’ll have to stake it out while I figure things out. Think you can do that?”

“No problem,” Wonwoo replies tersely.

“Have fun, kids. I’ll keep you updated,” says the hacker, and the line falls silent as he disables the communication, leaving the two of you to your fate. Sliding down the wall of the elevator, you sink to a crouch.

“Just my luck…” you mumble through your palms. “First day back as a team, and this happens. What a bad omen.”

“I wonder who’s the bad omen here,” Wonwoo sniffs, checking his Gadgetrio101 watch for the time.

You give him a dirty look, obviously pissed by what he had just hinted to you.

“Jeon, if you’re trying to say that I am the bad omen--”

“Are you not?” Wonwoo questions, cutting you off. “If you had just listened to me and took the stairs, we wouldn’t be trapped here.”

“I’m sorry I stopped us from climbing up fifty flights of steps, Jeon.” Infuriated with rage over Wonwoo’s words, you lash out at him, actually considering the “closure” that Woozi was talking about.

“Bickering like this honestly doesn’t help with this mission at all,” you hiss, “Maybe we could actually try to get along? You know, like have a normal, civilised conversation?”

“How the hell do you expect me to have a normal conversation, with someone who’s spent the last months working in front of a laptop instead of out in a field, and got us stuck here?” Wonwoo snaps, staring at you in the eyes, “You’re not helpful at all you know.”

You get up from your slumped position, and walk straight to Wonwoo, getting dangerously close to him. He isn’t intimidated though, as he just looks down at you, standing at a tall height of 1.82 metres, which beat your 1.65 metre height easily.

Breathing down on you, Wonwoo just smirks, This is the first time in where the both of you are so physically close to each other.

“Stop this childish act, and stop looking down on me. There’s a reason why we are here in this mission together right now. Coups obviously knows I have every skill necessary for the mission.”

He doesn’t reply you, but the cynical snort he shoots you speaks volumes.

You gave a deep sigh, looking up at the flickering lights of the elevator, before looking back at him.

“You know, I liked you a lot better before you were assigned as my mentor,” you huff out.

His eyebrows furrow slightly, and for a moment you thought you saw a shadow of hurt flicker past his raven irises. You regret your words immediately, knowing that it wasn’t what you meant at all.

In truth, Wonwoo wasn’t always a jerk to you. He had been a great friend once, being kind of an older brother to you in some sorts. When you were new to the force, his sister had taken you under her wing as your mentor, showing you the ropes on being a great field agent and together with him, you three were an unstoppable trio.

That was, until the unfortunate accident that ended your beloved mentor’s life. A gas explosion triggered by an enemy troop had left the entire team devastated with the loss of one of their swiftest, lovable but powerful agent. Wonwoo… he had changed since then.

After the death of his sister, he was given a few months off from the force to recover. And when he returned, he was reassigned as your mentor. Rather than being the quirky goofball you liked, he grew increasingly cold, as though he has built an invisible barrier around you, preventing you from ever trying to get close to him again. As a mentor, he was constantly doubting your abilities, dark insults prepped at the tip of his tongue whenever you slip up.

Your leader S.Coups had told you to be patient with him, for he is still grieving, and who can blame him for grieving over a deceased sibling? But after an argument a few months ago that left the both of you on terrible terms, you aren’t sure if you’re able to continue working with him. You are simply sick of his snide remarks, his constant looking down on you, acting as though you’re unable to pull your own weight.

You had been patient by constantly telling yourself that he never means anything he says, but you had your limits.

You had requested to transfer to the research department, away from Wonwoo, to give him the space he clearly needed, but with the organization shorthanded, you didn’t have a choice aside from accepting this one-time mission. And once again, his icy remarks had found their way to pierce your heart, prompting you to retaliate with your equally coldly muttered words.

But looking at how he breaks eye contact with you, you know that you just reopened the wound he had desperately tried to heal.

“Jeon, I--” you begin, but before you can complete your sentence, the elevator gives a violent shudder, pressing you further against the corner, while Wonwoo stumbles towards you. He would have crushed you if he hadn’t braced his weight on the railings on the last second.

“What’s happening?!” your voice is raised a pitch higher in alarm, while Wonwoo throws a panicked glance at the ceiling. “Jihoon,” he hisses into his earpiece. “Something’s happening to the lift. Do you copy?”

You both wait with bated breaths, but the other line stays eerily silent. “Woozi!” you call out, but you get the same response. “The signal must be cut off,” Wonwoo deduces, and you feel yourself stiffening up with dread.

The elevator jerks once again, sending both of you lurching towards the door. The breath drives out of you when you slammed against Wonwoo’s body, and his hands wrap themselves immediately around your waist to steady you.

You both barely have time to recover before you feel yourself plummeting a couple metres, a scream of terror tearing from your throat. When it bounces to a stop, you feel yourself growing dizzy with anxiety, especially when he flips you around, covering your body with his to shield you from the shattered glass when several light bulbs blow up.

“Shit,” you curse, “Are you okay?” In the darkness, you still can see him nod, and you swear Wonwoo can hear how loudly your heart is hammering.

For a moment, you are worried that he would call you out for being scared over a measly fall like that, but you put aside your pride to cater to the mounting panic that threatens to swallow you whole.

“Wonwoo,” you choke out, allowing yourself to call him by his real name for the first time. “Is it going to fall? Are we going to die here?”

His eyes blow wide at your words. You are deep in the heart of enemy territory and are more than thirty storeys above ground level; there’s no way you both would survive the fall. And with Jihoon out of your reach, you don’t know if you’re able to be saved.

“Don’t panic,” Wonwoo assures with none of his usual sarcasm. “I’m going to get us out of here.”

But you can barely hear him over the rush of blood in your ears. It’s just too much for you: the choking blackness, the way your elevator cab is delicately suspended in midair, the mounting fear that renders you completely immobile. You’re only able to break out of your trance when Wonwoo shakes you by your shoulders.

“Stay calm!” he growls, the anger seemingly coming from worry rather than irritation. “I’ll save you, I’ll get you out.”

“But how?” you ask, finding yourself holding on to his matte black jacket. His unreadable eyes linger on the way your fingers dig into the leather, before gently pulling them off to place them on the railing. “Trust me” are the only two words he says to you before standing up and brushing off the glass shards that had rained down on him.

You both crane your neck up towards the ceiling, where an escape hatch is. No way, is he really going to do that? Precariously balancing himself on the railings, he grabs onto a ledge to hoist his body upwards, and inspects the escape hatch.

“Doesn’t seem to be locked from the outside,” he observes before planting his two palms against the metal ceiling. You hold your breath until your lungs ache as he heaves upwards, his four limbs trembling from the effort. Be careful, you want to tell him, but your nerves numb your senses and render you mute.

Until what seemed like forever, the hatch gives way with a metallic ‘clunk’, and unfortunately so did Wonwoo as his footing slips, sending him crashing onto the sheet of broken glass. The impact sends the lift wobbling dangerously, but you completely disregard that at the sight of Wonwoo crumpling in pain before you.

“Wonwoo!” you gasp when he lifts his arm, revealing drops of blood dotting the skin of his palms. “I’m fine,” he grunts. “Now let’s get you out of here.”

With his knees propped up as leverage, you manage to reach up and pull yourself out onto the roof of the cab. Shifting your weight around carefully to not disturb the delicate equilibrium, you turn around to help Wonwoo. He manages to snag his fingers around the edge of the opening with a strong jump, and you quickly grab his forearm to support him. Half his body is still suspending in the empty area that the both of you were in.

As you were about to prop him up onto the ceiling of the elevator, the elevator jerked, and the both of you lost a split second of balance. Wonwoo lost his grip, and fell back into the elevator, except, you were still holding onto his other hand.

“Don’t let go!” you holler, warning your partner to get a grip.

Using a large burst of force, you pull Wonwoo up, before Wonwoo collapses on you. Wonwoo lifts his arms, bringing some space between you and him.

“Are you okay?” Wonwoo asks you, while you were panting heavily, suffering from the aftermath of pulling him up.

“I’m... I’m fine.” you said, looking up to see Wonwoo’s face just inches away from yours.

The both of your eyes locked for a few seconds, and you feel the familiar tinge of love and concern highlighting his irises that you have not seen in so long. Feeling embarrassed, you look away, and so did Wonwoo, as he proceeds to stand up from the tangled position.

“I think the only way is up,” Wonwoo tells you, looking downwards at the messed up debris just below the hanging platform the both of you are standing on.

The both of you climb upwards, to find a possible exit from that upwards corridor. The venture upwards was silent but comforting, with Wonwoo looking back at you from time to time to ensure that you’re fine and that you’re still following him. The both of you didn’t talk, with only the synchronized heavy breathing being heard.

Reaching the 45th storey, the both of you found that the elevator door to this level were jammed, giving the both of you a place to escape to. Wonwoo got up onto the platform area of the lift lobby, before turning around to grab your hand to help pull you up. Once the both of you were safely on concrete, you couldn't have much control of your wobbly legs that have been working non-stop, and your body crumples on top of Wonwoo, completely drained.

You both are busy recovering and gasping for breath that you don’t care about the compromising position you are in, with his body under yours and hands perching protectively across your waist.

His chest rises and falls as he draws in a heavy lungful of oxygen. “I… I saved you,” he breathes, tightening his hold around your body and trapping you in his grasp. Even with your mind dazed from the dizzyingly close call, you feel warmth spreading down from your head to your toes when he gently presses his lips at your temple.

“Finally…”

You know that he is obviously reminiscing about his sister’s death once again, and you lay your hands atop of his. “What I said back there, I didn’t mean it at all, I’m sorry,” you croak. But he shakes his head. “I should be the one telling you that,” he insists.

He sighs. “I was a major jerk to you, you’ve suffered a lot because of me. I just couldn’t find a better way to express myself. I chased you out of our missions, insulted you, all because… I didn’t want you going back into the field and risking your life on these missions, not after that close call two years ago…” His voice trails off and cracks at the end, prompting you to look up at him, concerned.

He meets your gaze with watery eyes. “I already lost my sister, I don’t want to lose you too.”

“Wonwoo…” you gasp when his expression grows guilty, and he looks away, ashamed. “I know I’m beyond forgiving, but I hope that you do understand where I came from. All I ever wanted to do was to protect you.”

But you never truly blamed Wonwoo, a part of you had unconsciously sympathised with his intentions. “Wonwoo,” you call again. “It’s okay. It’s been hard, I’m not going to lie, but I do understand.” You lower your voice to a whisper. “Because I miss her too.”

You fight back the tremble in your lips and you know that Wonwoo’s doing the same. “It hasn’t been the same since she left us, and I think that our relationship will take time to repair again, but it is okay because I’m willing to take things slowly for now. We’ll be okay, Wonwoo. I’ll be okay, I promise you.”

He seems to drink in your words, his eyes fluttering shut when he holds your head between his hands so gently as though he is handling a fragile flower. But all thoughts fly out of your head when he tilts your chin upwards to pull you into a fiery kiss. You completely melt on top of his body and you kiss him back with equal fervour.

You grow warm with the blush that was building up in your cheeks, as his plush lips flush against yours, you feel him smiling into the kiss, and the hand that combs through your locks feels so full of affection, the affection you’ve craved for so long. You pull away, gasping for air, but Wonwoo continues to plant light kisses along your jawline.

“I missed you,” you admit, slightly embarrassed. He hums in agreement, tucking your head under his chin. “I’ll never let you go again, I promise.”

“I’ll count on it,” you respond with a playful nudge on his shoulder, and you both remain in your positions. With neither of you willing to break the peace, someone else had taken that privilege.

“You realise…” a third voice interrupts through your in-ears, causing the both of you to jump apart as though a spark of electricity had exploded between you, “Now that you’re both out of the elevator, the signal’s fine and working again?”

“Woozi!” you try to hide your flustering with a laugh. “H-How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” the hacker intones flatly. “I’m gonna need me a new set of fingers, though. Cringed them clean off of my hands.”

Your body heats up to impossible levels, and you turn to find Wonwoo’s face equally flushed from embarrassment.

“Hey, I’m not complaining, as long as you’re both safe.” says Woozi. “I’m sick of you guys glaring daggers at each other all the damn time anyway.”

At that, you both burst into a simultaneous fit of laughter, and at the sight of his crescent-shaped eyes, his little wrinkles and his thousand-watt smile again, you feel your heart exploding with a multitude of emotions.

“Alright, you lovebirds,” Woozi’s voice crackles again. “I’ve sent Jun and The8 up to you. We’ll be outside with the escape van, good luck.”

The line goes silent again, leaving you alone with Wonwoo’s brilliant, loving grin. Grasping your smaller hand in his, you both resumed your mission as a team once again.

He’s back, you think giddily. The Wonwoo you’ve known and loved is finally back.

#Seventeen #seventeen scenarios #DLS boom boom series #seventeen drabbles #seventeen fic #wonwoo #jeon wonwoo #boom boom #scoups #jeonghan #joshua #jun #hoshi #woozi #dk #mingyu #the8 #seungkwan #vernon #dino #wonwoo drabble #wonwoo fic #wonwoo fluff #diamond life scenarios

[namjoonchronicles]

Handcuffs & Pretty Boys - [EXO] Chanyeol Detective!Au #29

[Part 28]

[A/N] I think’s Baekhyun’s fingers are very pretty. So pretty that sometimes I wish I could take... a zoom up picture of it. /what did u think i was gonna say/

Vengeance; it's a wretched thing to keep. It's an inevitable matter when it comes to dealing with human, among hatred and envy, it's one of the most despicable human emotions that precipitates even in the most kindest soul. It lingers, and manifests, latching themselves on you, that sometimes, it consumes you.

Vengeance of a wife to her husband, a man to his job, a girl whose heart was broken, a young lad with his life ripped apart against his will, a hopeful dreamer with their dreams taken away from them; there's a lot.

"Did you knew what father did, mother? How far did you know?" You asked, manicuring her nails, they've gone darker due to lack of blood from the chemo treatment. "Too much at once, and none at all." She answered weakly. "Were you uncomfortable with the things he did?" You asked, glancing at her from time to time. "...I was. But not at him. At his job. But that wasn't all." When she was diagnosed with cancer, shortly after Sanha's was born, money became short. So father had to do side jobs to cover her treatment. The side job included him to lower his integrity for a flimsy pay. Mother didn't approve that. She refused to watch her husband lower himself before a slothful human called the vice president just to earn more money so she could have treatment.

So she asked father something he never dreamed of doing. To divorce her. She wanted Sanha to only remember her being healthy. She wanted people to remember her in her best and not her crippling self that she is now. "I told him to make you hate me. To forget me."

"I could never really hate you mother, you've gone through a lot. I don't think I could hate you properly." You smiled. "You're the best mother anyone could had." You added. "So kind." She let a tear roll down her cheek. "...The young man, Chanyeol? Are you in love with him?"

You shrugged. "...So he's in love with you." Mom accused. "...Don't let this one go, no matter how horrible he was to you." Mom patted your hand lightly. "How were you able to love someone who was married to two other women before you?" You look up. Mom averts her eyes to the open window, where the trees were dancing in the wind. "...I chose to stay with him for all the things he's done right, not the one thing he's done wrong. I chose to forgive." She smiled weakly. Life was too short to hold vengeance. You know deep in you that Chanyeol was fate.

Vengeance was what led Baekhyun to do what he did to Chanyeol.

The night starless sky mocks the living beings underneath it. Bringing the news to Chanyeol isn't going to be easy, but it has to happen. When Chanyeol was busy arranging the plans to enter Kyungsoo's casino villa, you were busy finding out who put Chanyeol in jail. Even for a brief moment, an innocent man is innocent until proven guilty. The thing was, Chanyeol was never proven guilty, but he spent the night in jail nonetheless. It was unfair. What started as a method to clear Joonmyeon's name ended as a search through old files, back when Baekhyun was arrested.

Like Chanyeol said, Baekhyun was released under police bail, considering he had not done any criminal records, and the arrest was his first felony. But what Chanyeol didn't know was what he did after his release. You met Kim Jongdae and talked. "Why did you do it?" The infamous police one-liner seemed to amuse Jongdae. "I understood Baekhyun's anger." He answered easily, with a drop of his gaze to his lap, where his cuffed hands laid. "It's not like he did it because he wanted to, it was because he can." Baekhyun, was caught red-handed, trying to sell his designer drug he claims to have made himself. He was a chemistry student, eager to test chemicals in their utmost potential.

Baekhyun is working towards a brain boosting drug he called : Limitless.

He was almost there.

But after being caught, he was denied entry to his original lab, expelled from his university due to criminal records and disowned by his family. Baekhyun hits rock bottom. He was homeless, jobless and angry. It was the deadliest combination. "He's young and able, he could have found jobs anywhere." You debated. Jongdae scoffs. He finds what he heard from you was unbelievable. "He wants you to come for him. He is exactly where you think he is. You're the reason why he had so much vengeance." Jongdae's word stayed with you for awhile.

If there's something regretful about having exceptional memories, it will be this. To remember everything. You heard the car door opened and closed from the side of the curb, and a man in a black jacket walks out. He stepped out of the car and looked straight at you who was sitting at the outdoor section of the restaurant, at night and alone. He walks across the street and entered the restaurant with a conflicted face. "This isn't like you to call me out on a work night for a drink." He pulled out a chair and sighed as he sat to receive the menu.

"...Sorry, but I need someone to talk to." You mumbled lazily. "A glass of warm honey lemon please," he said to the waiter and clicked his tongue to you, "What is it that you can't talk to Chanyeol." Joonmyeon looks up. He look rather different from what he usually wore in the office, and it made him look younger than he really is. He appeared casually poised and is approachable. "Before Chanyeol came, all we do is talk. I guess I missed that." You reminisce the days you'll spend with Joonmyeon on top of the building. It could be your recent worries, your troubled relationship with your father, and will to work. Something you know Joonmyeon would be good at.

"You should go for guys your own age, you know that." Joonmyeon straightened up in his seat, looking relaxed. "It's not that. I understand how you feel about me. I just need to talk to you about... things." You paused. And at this Joonmyeon didn't interfere. He averts his eyes outward, to the streets, where passerby would throw a glance at him, once or twice. Probably due to his handsome good looks. From afar, you two looked like a divorced couple, meeting for a negotiation. But most of the time, you both are actually more like siblings than colleagues.

"I'm tired of telling myself everything's going to be okay, everything's going to be okay..." your voice softens, "...and it's not. It's not okay." Joonmyeon took his chair and sat next to you, then he placed his arm over your shoulders and rested your head on him. "I can't keep lying to myself. It hurts." You started to sniff. He rubbed your head gently, patting them. "No matter what I do, I can't seem to forget what people say, or do, or how they say it... You told me I'm kind, but how does a kind person have vengeance as much as I do?"

Joonmyeon is a wolf at work, but he is also a wolf by nature. He leads, and protects. He placed the vulnerable ones before him, and he was the reason why everyone is on their own pace. He is the living example of a leader walking behind everyone. He is the proof that leaders aren't necessarily at the front. They could be behind everybody, keeping them safe. "What is this about." He whispered, leaning back into his seat, crossing his arm at you. "I have to arrest Baekhyun tomorrow." You looked at the view far ahead of you while Joonmyeon studies your side profile with no smile on his face. "He was the one who paid Jongdae to hack the surveillance system, and framed Chanyeol." Joonmyeon looks at you with big eyes, it seems like he's heard of it the first time.

It didn't match. what broke you down earlier, and your plans tomorrow. "...What vengeance do you hide?" Joonmyeon walked you to your car. You smiled sadly. "Remember I told you there's a guy back in college who fuck and bail on me?" You opened the car door, and hung your arms around it. "...I thought I enjoyed seeing him in jail, but I didn't." You shrugged and entered your car. After a brief farewell, Joonmyeon stayed to watch you drove off. "Despite everything you say, you're still kind." And Joonmyeon thought to himself, "If only you knew."

With a signed warrant from the judge, you entered Baekhyun new premises, situated in the abandoned pier along with your team. You found Baekhyun waiting on his desk and a Fedora cap on. "You're late." He said with a cunning smile. He lifts his right wrist, and then he stood up. The policemen were aiming to shoot, should he try to escape. He spun around welcoming you. "I thought I should give one more look to the person who made me loss my hands, and now I figured, that maybe I deserved the punishment." He set each of his hands apart, far left and far right. Then he lifts his left hand, and you could catch something metal. "I can't feel anything on this hand." He wriggles them. To your horror, the metallic thing was his hand. Extending from his wrist to all his five fingers, it was all, prosthetic metal wrist and fingers and thumb.

"See what he did to me? He broke my wrist. Bastard." He cussed to his hand. His tone was oddly calm. And that's when you realized why he couldn't find job although he was young and able. Baekhyun was disabled. By Chanyeol. It explained why he framed Chanyeol, it explained the anger, it explained pretty much everything related to the matter. Chanyeol broke Baekhyun's wrist and ruined his future. Baekhyun some how made enough to purchase Jongdae's work, and Jongdae hacks into the system to help Baekhyun framed Chanyeol. But it didn't last long because you caught the tape before it got to someone else. You wondered, what could have happened if Joonmyeon were to obtained the tape first, and how different this arrest would be. Baekhyun intended the tapes to be in your possession. He wanted you to catch him. He wanted to see the face Chanyeol cared so much for. "That night in the club was too dim that I can't see you properly, and now I did, I understood why he cared so much."

Baekhyun was tasered and brought down to the floor. The whole area was filled with roaring commands from the officers but what Baekhyun said upon his arrest made you shivered with extreme discomfort. He was brought, passing you in cuffs, with a smile. "All the while we're talking here, I wonder how Chanyeol's progressing with Sanha's investigation? How did Sanha end up being in Kyungsoo's lair? I wonder how my good friend Kyungsoo is doing? He is one of my loyal customers. My designer drugs are very useful for his bitches." Baekhyun turns away with lingering smile on his face and when you looked at the time, you knew that Chanyeol has gone somewhere without you.

His phone isn't dialing. Chanyeol knew you will look up his case so when it distracted you, he was going to search for Sanha. He was going to search for Sanha, gambling Minseok's life, and he's going walk in Kyungsoo's villa, without the assurance of ever walking back out, alive.

[Final: Part 30]

[A/N] Where’s my fucking kiss, because same.

#handcuffs & pretty boys #angst #exo #fanfix #fanfic #chanyeol #park chanyeol

[codingathens]

the devil’s in the details

It had never occurred to Clary that she would someday end up on a boat for a longer period of time than a couple hours on a ferry. That didn’t take into account her current situation, however: she was running from the law with a group of other people doing the same. Through some insane miracle, the same heist that she’d had a hand in making happen had worked. They’d walked away and if they managed to make their escape without being caught? They’d also made history, the kind that would see other banks around the world tightening their security, the kind that hit like a shockwave. Clary was still wrapping her head around that part.

The other part that was taking time was waking up every morning and going to sleep at night in Zagreb’s arms. There was no more sneaking around, no more barely acceptable attempts to hide the fact that they were together. It required adjustment, if only because there had been a terrifying number of hours where she’d believed that the police had put an end to all hope of anything together again for good. Neither of them had anything that could be called a true sleep pattern yet either. That was alright; it meant that sometimes they got to wake in each other’s arms, and others they got to be kissed awake. If one of them was too restless to sleep, they had an unspoken agreement that they could wake one another if needed.

More often than not, though, they left each other to sleep, as evidenced by the way that Clary had felt Zagreb slip back into bed sometime during the night. This time, it was her turn, pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips and heading for the deck sometime around 3am. It was dark, and it was cold, left her shivering faintly even with the sweater that she’d blatantly stolen from those available to them. The air smelled like sea salt, wet rope and burning wood, the typical scents that she’d come to associate with being on board ship. What she didn’t expect was company, but maybe she should have. Riga tipped her the ghost of a grin, one very familiar, and in a gesture that felt the same, tapped part of the crate that she was sitting on in an easy drum of fingers. “It’s pretty calm right now,” the other woman said. “So no danger of falling overboard if we sit up here.”

Clary pulled a face, because there had been at least one night that felt very much like that. Nonetheless, she took the offered seat with a smile, pulled the cuffs of the sweater down over her hands and let them drop into her lap. “You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked, leaned against Riga’s shoulder.

Riga sighed, reached out and tapped Clary absently atop her head, shifted a few wild strands of blonde hair out of her face, tangling in the night wind. “Not so much, I was asleep and then I wasn’t. The Mint shifts are kind of hard to shake, you know?”

Clary did know. No more than a couple of hours or so snatched at a time, interrupted if there was something wrong. “Yeah. I doubt we’re the only ones.”

The other woman snorted. “We’re definitely not. I can hear the Professor pacing in her and Warsaw’s cabin when she should be sleeping, and Beirut’s been out here with me one time too many.” Then, suddenly, the sober air faded and Riga grinned, as though she’d remembered something. As it turned out, she had. “Since we’re both awake, does this mean I finally get to grill you about Zagreb?”

Clary smirked a little at her. “Oh, girl talk again, fun. Are we trash-talking our exes this time?”

Riga laughed. “That depends on you. You got away with all of it last time because you just didn’t answer anything. Are you still going to hold out on me?” She accompanied the question with a gesture that indicated a turning motion. Clary, for once, followed instructions and did exactly that, felt it as Riga shifted to sit cross-legged on the crate. There was enough room for it. Apparently hair braiding was a go again, but Clary didn’t really mind. It was probably the gentlest contact she had from most people who weren’t Zagreb in quite a while, and she figured that Riga suspected that much too. If asked directly, though, she’d take her previous approach: neither deny nor confirm. “I’m not going to hold out on you because I have less of a reason to keep him a secret now, and when I did it was to protect us,” she answered softly. “Or did you forget about how cross the Professor was once she figured out there were two people sleeping together?”

Riga’s fingers combed through the waves of Clary’s hair, a motion that was still surprisingly soothing, and Clary felt and heard rather than saw her chuckle. “Oh yeah, I remember. Not entirely sure how she didn’t know. You weren’t subtle.”

Clary voiced her protest, but there was a giggle lacing the words. “Hey.”

Riga was grinning, she was sure of it. “Seriously though, I had nights where I wondered how much the two of you actually ever slept like normal people. What I want to know is how that started. Who made the first move?”

It was strange to reminisce about Toledo, given the fact that they’d probably never go back there again. It made Clary a little wistful, because it was a very different kind of freedom, the freedom to make her own choices, that she’d learned and tasted there. “Oh, he held a loaded gun to my head for breaking the rules, we made out against one of the classroom desks after I kissed him, and I showed up at his room a few hours later. Game over.” And dry though the words were, it had been something incredibly special on a number of levels. She needed time to figure out how to express that rather than shielding it, so she went for blunt deflection instead.

The other woman made a noise then that sounded like a splutter. “I’m not sure whether to slow clap you for daring or tell you that you seem to have been missing brain cells involving self-preservation from birth. How does that even happen?”

Clary shrugged her shoulders. “I knew what I wanted. He kissed me like I was air and he was drowning, and it felt like that for me too. I’d never been kissed like that. It was enough to figure out it wasn’t one-sided and that maybe, this once, I could get a yes.”

Evidently, the choice of words was odd enough to get Riga’s attention, because damn her, she was still too observant. “What do you mean, a yes? You don’t strike me as the type that just goes after a guy because he’s an option.” Her hands had paused, and it wasn’t until Clary tilted her head back as a reminder that she resumed what felt like it was going to be a French braid.

That was when Clary continued talking. “You’re right, I didn’t go after him because he was the best option. It was him specifically. He was smart and he was beautiful, and I was drawn to him every time he opened his mouth.”

“Despite the high concentration of sarcasm?” Riga quipped.

“Sometimes even because of it, and it takes a smartass to know one,” Clary pointed out.

“You’re not wrong. But you still didn’t explain what you meant about him being a yes. I can’t picture anyone exactly turning you down, so that’s confusing.”

This was what Clary both loved and hated about spending time with Riga: either she had to fully commit to not answering, or she had to fully commit to answering. There was no in between with her questions. She let out a slight huff, because she hadn’t admitted this often. “All I ever heard before this heist was no. No, we don’t have enough money to pay for both food and rent at the same time, for example. I grew up hearing that word a lot.” She exhaled a sigh, it was difficult going back through this, because she’d told Riga before she didn’t enjoy teenage flashbacks and it was still true. “Eventually I just stopped listening to all of the no, and I started hacking, and it got money and bought time when it was needed. That turned into no, you can’t hack into a government system, we’ll send you to juvenile detention before you even graduate high school.” Her tone was wry. “As you can see, I definitely learned the lesson they hoped I would learn from that. That’s how the Professor found me. I did it again. Relapsed from being a good citizen, apparently.”

Riga exhaled a sound that was somewhere between a whistle and an amused snort. “You’ve got plenty of nerve, sugar, I’ll give you that.”

It wasn’t the first time that Riga had used that nickname, but Clary let it go, because she was trying to stay focused and not back out of the topic of conversation. “So, all my life I’ve been hearing no and breaking the rules anyway.” Then her tone softened considerably. “Then there was Zagreb, who saw me, and he was yes. It felt right. I’d read all of this rubbish about how you just know when you have chemistry with someone, and I thought it was bullshit. But he made all of that make sense.”

Apparently, the braid was done, because Riga let her hands drop away and Clary turned back around to face her, something that she found difficult. Unusually, Riga was looking very serious. “You love him. Do you know if he feels the same?”

Was that a hint of doubt that Clary detected? She narrowed her eyes at Riga, because she didn’t like it. “I’m here for the reality, not the fairy-tale, but it seems I’ve been lucky enough to get both.”

Riga pushed it. Of course she did. “That’s not a yes or a no.”

Clary took a deep breath then and thought of Zagreb. Almost instinctively, it left her calm, knowing that no matter what else happened from here, they would have each other. “I do know, yes,” she said softly then, curling her fingers together in her lap. “He loves me even though I’m not perfect, even though I’m annoying and sometimes a lot to deal with. He finds ways of saying it that I understand almost better than hearing the words. His hands make me feel safe, and wanted, and they’re the ones I want to be held by.”

The other woman (her friend, Clary realised belatedly, quite definitely and with a sudden burst of warmth) hummed thoughtfully, then seemed to settle. “Maybe I should have given him that shovel talk after all, but seems like it might be a bit late now.”

Clary relaxed slowly, and grinned again impishly. “Months too late. But at least you don’t share a wall with us any more?”

Riga made a disgusted face at her and then laughed. “Now there’s that silver lining I was looking for.” Then, slyly, she added, “So are you ever going to tell me if he’s any good? Inquiring minds want to know, and the devil’s in the details.”

She pretended to consider it. “Hmm, ignoring the fact you just used two clichés in one sentence. In detail? No. But if you haven’t figured out that Zagreb is good at everything he does by now, then I’m not the only one missing important details.” Winking at the other woman, she got up and stretched, chilled from being sat in the cold air on the crate, muscles stiff. “I’m going to go back inside, though, and enjoy some warmth before breakfast. You should do the same.” Reaching up, Clary touched the back of her hair, felt the loose loops of the braid there. “Thanks for the…girl talk. And the braid.”

A head of dark hair with curls tipped in her direction, framing a grin that couldn’t be dimmed by the early dark. “Is that what we were doing, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

It was with an answering smile that Clary replied, “Me neither. Guess it’s nice to have a friend,” before disappearing through the entrance to the lower decks, closing it behind her.

#( self para )

[nazih-fares]

Whether it is the movies, books or games, the task to reboot an established franchise is never an easy thing for any developer or publisher. With some much expectations from the series’ fans, on top of making sure they are not forgotten while trying something new, the new God of War was definitely a gamble. To achieve this reboot of a flagship PlayStation brand, it took over five years of hard work and dedication from the iconic producer Cory Barlog and the team over at Santa Monica, carefully dissecting the franchise and putting everything back into something new, from the gameplay mechanics to the general artistic direction of the game.

However, everything in this “reboot” of  God of War is actually a balance between retaining the essence of the franchise will creating something new. Beyond the obvious technical and the artistic aspect that comes from a switch to next generation, the game still pays a tribute to its legacy in all sorts of ways. While it would have been easier to start from a clean sweep to reboot this franchise, there’s a certain genius behind Santa Monica’s studio to switch to another lost mythology and yet keep Kratos at the center of it. You see, I personally wasn’t a big fan of the original God of War series, even if I admire the lore of ancient Greek myths, but it’s this episode that changed my mind, as we now venture into the Norse realm, with Odin on its throne, paired with other deities and creatures.

Despite his divinity – Kratos is, after all, a demigod and one of Zeus’ many sons – it made sense for the developers to do something similar to other iconic franchise reboots, and be interested in the human side of the character. Like it was the case with the reboot of Tomb Raider, Hitman and many others, the game is focused on Kratos’ inner struggle, as well as the desire to tell a deeper and equally intense story through his quest for redemption as a father, in a journey of initiation with his son Atreus, following the death of his wife. While this sounds a bit like a recipe a la “The Last of Us“, the similarities end here, as the script is done so well that it flows naturally even interspersed with very numerous clashes against ogres, trolls and other legendary Norse creatures.The narrative is intelligent in its structure, swinging back and forth between emotional, brutality and humor, with excellent conversation playing mostly on the Atreus’young innocent and playful reactions, contrasting those more contained a battle and life hardened Kratos.

And so in the rough 20-25 hours of gameplay to reach the end, the story of God of War contrasts with that of the other opus, because it’s all about Kratos finally teaching his son Atreus to not fall in the same mistakes he sadly did. For the rest of you, if you hope to discover a story of vengeance and treachery between gods, like the previous games, then you’re probably be disappointed. While these are present, however, they are not the central element of the story despite the journey of our heroes punctuated by clashes against some of these Norse gods. If you’re coming with the expectation of the previous games, then the sooner you realize God of War is indeed an entire story, the better. This 2018 game is dedicated to the Spartan and his son, his new life and being more human than ever, despite his divinity, and that is not an easy thing to do. Constantly struggling with this rage and anger slumbering in him, Kratos is looking for redemption by teaching Atreus to become a better man than he ever was, hiding his past for a better future. Everything makes sense and you’ll notice how the boy’s reactions remain credible, both in his burst of childish joy or uncontrolled anger, on top of his natural tendency to stand up to his father.

Between Kratos and Atreus, there’s also enough room in the game for some secondary characters, notably the first you’ll meet such as Brok and later on his brother Sindri, both dwarves with quite opposite personalities. The award for best-supporting actor though will probably go to Mimir. An important figure in Norse mythology, this god of knowledge and wisdom will be saved from Odin’s torture by our pair of heroes, forming an interesting trio with perfect chemistry. In addition to becoming the brain of the group, both literally and figuratively, Mimir will constantly give interesting tidbits about the game’s world, and several Nordic legends, helping Atreus – and the player – perfect his knowledge. This whole coherence of the universe is one hell of a blast for a history nerd like myself, as everything in God of War makes sense, or is interconnected for a purpose, including making the game even more fun.

Without presenting fooling anyone of being an open world – in comparison Horizon Zero Dawn, the last Action Adventure game from the publisher – God of War offers a huge map which you’ll truly enjoy. The set is built in a way that urges you to discover every nooks and cranny, revisit areas, and from time to time appreciate the beauty of its digital brush, as you enter a majestic cave or dock on a river bank still acting as a witness to a forgotten war. Although the system of traveling portals could’ve been better thought of, there’s never a feeling of too much backtracking, with even minimal touches of Metroidvania as you’ll end up opening new areas in the map, once you gain new powers and skills.

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Inspired obviously by Norse mythology, the Santa Monica team created one hell of a visual canvas, filled with sumptuous landscapes and confined sets embellished by a neat work on lighting effects. Whether you are in Midgard, Helheim or Muspellheim, the setting will take your breath away, as you cross an icy expanse in front of a giant that has been lying down for centuries. You thus find all the strengths of the saga’s visual strength, now help with a much more contemplative camera angle – behind the shoulder – to travel at your own pace and enjoy the panorama. But I’m a bit annoyed by the lack of variety in terms of the bestiary, which is smaller than those of other games, with barely any major changes or visible upgrades on most creatures, whether it is the trolls or just mere wolves. Thankfully, this lack of variety is completely forgotten when you see how devastating and visually complex Kratos’ attack are on those creatures. Adding the special effects and motion blur, with some subtle use of slow motion, the fights are staged so well that every monster or enemy will in a way feel different.

Remember when I spoke about the new camera angle? If you played the previous God of War games, then you probably are trying to figure out how that old gameplay system works with a behind-the-shoulder angle, correct? Well, the developers have only improved what was already well made, with the new a closer camera angle literally plunging the player into the action. While it’s might seem surprising that it works, playing God of War that way feels almost natural, thanks to Atreus or Mimir’s warning of incoming dangers (a bit like Senua’s inner voices). You’ll then have to fight in a traditional hack and slash – similar to the old games – but with extra mechanics like a switch to hand to hand and shield combo, a parry, and secondary skills. All of this will be confusing for the old veteran of the series, but enjoyable, especially after a few hours of play when we start to unlock more of the skill trees.

You will also need to learn the new weapon and gear system, which are linked to both Kratos and Atreus’ skill tree opening more branches and nodes. To start with, most of your weapons and gear will need to require a key amount of materials and money acquired from chests, completing quests or eliminating enemies. It is regrettable that some materials are sometimes difficult to find because of a lack of guidance, especially when it comes to crafting some legendary loot pieces and unlock more awesome abilities and combos for Kratos, or passive and supportive attacks for Atreus. On that front, I’m actually glad that it wasn’t another “The Last of Us”, as Kratos’ son is not imposed on your, and its usefulness in combat is quite well, especially when he gets the opportunity to bring you back to life with a resurrection stone.

Finally, we got the Rage mode, which builds up with effective combat skills like proper parry or dodge, as well as successfully chaining combos between Kratos and his son. While that mode is recurring from previous games, it was also tweaked for this new game, switching the Spartan into a berserker, with boosted punching attacks. The latter can become quite devastating when unlocking more nodes in its dedicated skill trees, such as a blasting area of attack ground stomp, or even the ability to pick up a large boulder and throw it at enemies. So yes, you get the gist of it, the gameplay has evolved and will be difficult to get used to for hardcore fans, however, it does not deny its true essence: the savage ferocity in each of Kratos hits.

Before we end this, there are two things that might be important for some of you to know. While I tested the game on two different consoles, both the vanilla and original PlayStation 4 (not even second generation slimmer model) and the Pro version, I totally suggest the latter. If you don’t have a PlayStation 4 Pro by now – even without a 4K TV – this game is a totally viable reason to upgrade your console, because you can feel the normal suffering with its intense fan sound. While there might not be damage visually on the screen in terms of performance, the game is visually better looking on the PlayStation 4 Pro. In both cases, the game runs at a locked 30fps, but it’s the HDR that really turns this game into one colorful digital canvas, full of crisp details and rich textures. Sadly, while there’s one thing that I truly like in the original series, it was the soundtrack, but this episode feels a bit hushed or not as epic as the original game music. Don’t get me wrong, It’s not bad, but it’s maybe not as powerful as the first titles.

God of War was reviewed using a PlayStation 4 digital download code of the game provided by PlayStation Middle East. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published (click here for more information about our review policy).

With this new God of War, Santa Monica Studios managed to perfectly refresh the franchise without losing its essence, making it the best entry ever made. While veterans might feel overwhelmed by all the changes, they will easily get used to it, and will play one of the top 5 best looking games on the console. Whether it is the movies, books or games, the task to reboot an established franchise is never an easy thing for any developer or publisher.

#Action Adventure #God of War #PlayStation Exclusive #Santa Monica Studios #Sony Interactive Entertainment

[what-soul]

My life story

I was born November 10, 1995 at 2:03 AM in Baltimore, Maryland. From what I can remember from my dad's "birthday story", nothing too significant happened. My parents were in their early 20s and I'm fairly sure they weren't prepared for the financial responsibility, because I've been told they sold my mom's CD collection and we ate PB&J and other filler staple foods. I'm pretty sure that's why I can't stand the idea of a PB&J sandwich - I had too many as a kid. We lived in Ducketts Lane in Elkridge, soon joined by some of my cousins who I grew up with. I remember a nasty, broken toilet in a basement with wood paneling and willow trees off in the corner. There was only 3-story townhouses there.

Ginny was born, and my dad realized that if he wanted to be in the military, he had to join before he had more than 2 kids. So he was at training camp when Katie was born, doing crazy stuff like swimming with 50 lb backpacks and running through chemical fumes without a mask. We moved around during this time, I think to Tennessee and Kentucky? I have no memories beyond a pre-K daycare (where I made a scarecrow with brads for joints) and the neighbors having those electric kid-sized cars.

In Kindergarten I went to Rockburn Elementary at 4, due to Maryland's strange age cutoff at the time. All I remember was that our class was near the entrance, the room was big and empty in the middle, and a caterpillar once pooped on my hand while I was admiring it on the playground. I don't remember anyone from the class. First grade is a blank, but second grade...

The second grade area was a bunch of dynamic classrooms with vibrantly colored sliding walls and a larger central area where we could buy lunch. They offered either a special that day or pizza, but I usually brought a packed lunch. I remember playing mandala with a tomboy of a black girl who scraped her knee once and showed us how it was getting puss. That's where I met Nicholas Eagles, who was my best friend for the year. I'd go over to his house every week or two where we played the pokemon card game and some Nintendo games. He had a pogo stick, but I couldn't figure out how to use it. At one point, we climbed up the big evergreens in his front yard and I fell, getting caught by branches a couple feet below. He once admitted that he thought I was gross when he first met me, though I don't know why.

Then we moved to Pennsylvania for my third year in school. I don't remember our house but I remember the area. It was next to a small pond with cattails and the backyard led to a huge patch of undeveloped land. We found some kids playing there far away, and I became friends with the older brother who enjoyed hacking together weird electronics. There I got into Yugioh. Ginny's hermit crab died and we had a fancy funeral for it, complete with a coffin made of mud bricks molded from legos. Our parents bought a wooden playground, I think?

I don't remember much from school, just some event snippets. Bits of hallways filled with seasonal candles in bags, monthly school events like a Jim Henson style play about how drugs are bad, an uninviting cafeteria... I know I was called "booger boy" for picking my nose, but I've lost the emotional context. According to my parents, I had problems with my teachers because the Pennsylvania 3rd grade curriculum was the same as the Maryland 2nd grade curriculum, and I liked to be the teacher's pet. I'd raise my hand for every question because I always knew the answer and wanted to say it, which annoyed the teachers because they wanted the other kids to have a chance. School was apparently bad enough that we moved at the end of the year to West Virginia.

I had started the gifted program in 2nd grade, but I remember absolutely nothing from then. For 3rd grade, I remember I was called out of class some days of the week to go to a room for a gifted class, but don't remember anything. For 4th grade, all I remember was the room we went to and that I had a very hard time with math and remembering the names of shapes.

It was Shepherdstown Elementary School, and we mostly did stuff in the 4th-5th grade hallway, which I remember very well. The walls were lined with lockers and there were... 6? classes total. In 4th grade I only remember an older teacher I had for English, in which we read Roald Dahl books. I think she was a hardass but I have no especially bad memories of her.

In 5th grade I had M(r)s. Lawrence at least, and Mr. Ebersol for gifted. I remember my friends better for this time than in 4th, even though they're probably the same. They were all in gifted for some reason. There was Levi Spickler, who was more of a rival than a friend. Sam Yates, a girl with bushy brown hair who hated chocolate and loved zucchini bread. Arlo, he was best friends with Levi and a very funny and sociable kid. His hair was perpetually messy, like a big brown afro almost. The only thing I distinctly remember from him was a joke he started saying "je veux une omelette du fromage", which is French for "I want a cheese omelette". No idea why that was funny, if it was. Then there was Merideth, an athletic girl who was a bit of an early bloomer.

Most of my memories were from the gifted class. We once acted out commercials, including one, "Don't be sad, get GLAD for all your kitchen garbage needs!" We would enact plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or even write our own plays; one Levi wrote included a joke that flew completely over my head about a girl being "rapped on the head", to which everyone started knocking on the table with their knuckles.

In Ms. Lawrence's class we once made our own peanut butter chocolate candies for Halloween... That's all I got.

From 6th to 8th I was in Sheperdstown Middle School, less than a mile away from the Elementary School. I remember the layout of the building fairly well, but there are some fuzzy areas. It was mostly one long hallway going left and right from the entrance with some hallways jutting out from the forward direction. I remember Ms. Carter, a science teacher who adored me. She was a very large red-head who liked to wear excessive make-up and had a Ms. Frizzle vibe to her teaching methods. By this point I loved science, so I relished in raising my hand for every question. She eventually made a running joke out of it, saying she needed to call "1-800 dial a Robert!"

Next to Ms. Carter's room was a ramp down into a secluded area with a few classrooms, one of which was my... history class, and somewhere in that area was my sign language class. Or was it English? Gifted class was in a hallway directly in front of the entrance with Mrs. Wagner across the hall from the touch typing classroom. I mostly remember learning English, particularly the roots of words.

Then there was Mr... Marcin? An older science teacher who had a very dry, even cynical sense of humor but seemed to genuinely care about his job. And Mrs... Tracey? The 8th grade science teacher. I remember the cafeteria very well, as well as the gym - it was burned into my brain by the Pacers, an exercise we did twice a week where we'd run from one side of the gym to the other with increasing frequency.

In the 7th grade, my parents divorced. From what I can gather, my mom had caught my dad cheating multiple times, and then my dad caught her cheating with my stepdad. Of course, these were symptoms and the official explanation. Underlying that were personality incompatibilities, my mom's stress from generalized anxiety disorder without medication and raising 4 kids vs my dad's stress working a billion minimunm wage jobs just to support us. Abandonment issues, personal insecurities, projection, the works.

I know that when they announced it, they sat us all on the couch and told us about it very seriously. I barely remember it, but the memory paints it as feeling like a dream. From there, my mom moved into the basement while she found work (she was laid off) and housing while my dad bought a dog (Zoey) to fill the void. Eventually my mom moved to a rinky-dink apartment and later to a nice townhouse, and we went to each parent's house in shifts over the week.

9th grade... Was at Shepherdstown Highschool. I remember the cafeteria, a taller guy I was friends with, the entrance being near the library. That's all.

At this point my dad was laid off from his job as a professor at some university. In searching for another professor position, he had the option of going to New Mexico or Wyoming; he chose the former. After a few months of convincing, I decided to move out with him over the Summer for the opportunity of going to a good school and good college.

The time I spent from 10-12th grade blurs together. I remember quite a few teachers and classmates, but not when and where I knew them. The teachers I remember are my Spanish teacher (native speaker), Ms. McCoy (art teacher), Mr. B? (Chemistry teacher, very eccentric), Mr. Smith (science and CS teacher), Mr. DeWitt (AP Biology, he had extreme standards), and the dreaded Mr. Evans. Hello, yes? He tried to fail me out of high school by demanding that I not be allowed to take a replacement English class to substitute the grade I got in his.

The people I knew, I knew only some names and the rest were archetypes. Al of course, Ryan Sun (an asian guy who took it upon himself to become my rival, which unintentionally became a kind of bullying as I was too depressed to cope). For some reason I remember Kim Wong, another asian girl who was always near the top of the class. And Stephanie, I think her last name was something like Dijkstra, who I think was even better at programming than I was. Beyond them, the archetypes I remember were * a crazy-fun drug supplier who had some issues with her parents * a larger hispanic guy who had a very negative vibe and introduced me to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac * one girl from art who was like 7 feet tall but had normal proportions, so she looked like a mini-giant

At the same time, I was going to UNM for dual-enrollment, mostly math. My relationship with my dad was deteriorating; teen angst, stress from moving, depression, and lack of mutual understanding. Eventually he relented to getting me a therapist, which ended up being a (late) PhD child psychologist. I stopped seeing her when I turned 18 and went into college. To get away from my dad, I moved into the UNM dorms.

Sometime around here was when I got my first job as a student worker. First a temp job moving boxes, then as an IT admin assistant, and finally data entry and call redirection. Over the Summer I got a job with one of my mom's coworkers helping him research hobby electronics so he could make the most of his free time. All of these were full of shame because I didn't feel like I was working hard enough to justify the pay, and they all ended in ways I took personally. At the time they confirmed to myself all of my personal failings and screamed back that I was a loser who couldn't do anything right.

I think this is around the time my mom married my stepdad, and my dad married Kaya for tax reasons. Eventually they separated and Lindsey came in; they married a couple years later. I liked both stepmoms, and had no problem with remarrying. My stepdad however, I didn't dislike, but I found a very large disconnect with him. He clearly didn't enjoy children, and had a difficult time expressing emotions which made him extremely intimidating. There were even some interactions which unintentionally shattered my confidence, as he was a programmer and I thought I could talk to him about that.

College was a blur. I met up with Al again in a sociology class we shared, and through him and his sister Sarah, I made two more friends: Ariel and Tristan. They were the best friends I remember having, though it was mostly through Al. We shitposted about My Little Pony and Arnold Palmer tea. The first semester I passed, barely. I think I failed the next semester and planned to kill myself at the end because I thought my life was ruined. I exploded and told my dad that I hadn't taken any of my antidepressants. I ended up moving back in with my dad. My sisters had moved in by that time. Our relationship only strained more, and I exploded at him telling him "fuck you", to which he kicked me out. I moved in with Tristan.

There my depression stewed. My eczema got especially bad without my topical steroid, and I isolated more and more. Tristan's dad talked to me often about stoicism, philosophy, and project management. He pursued stoicism as his best virtue, taking on all the burdens of the world. When I talked to him, it always felt like he was a diamond under immense pressure that would shatter if the pressure was relieved. It seemed like he was using my stay as an extra mouth to feed to increase the stress he was under on purpose, so I eventually worked up the courage to go back to college.

I think I did one semester, passing barely again. Then at some point, Al realized I was taking the group's sarcastic jibes personally and was codependent on them. He told me he didn't want to be responsible for giving me pain and that we shouldn't be friends. From there, I avoided everyone from that group, going so far as to make large detours to avoid spotting them. I was too afraid to face them any longer. The next semester, I went to the first few classes, then became a hikikomori for the rest of the semester, only leaving my room for food and the bathroom. I didn't want to live, but I didn't have the will to kill myself either.

That state broke when it was revealed that I had failed all my classes. My dad took me back in, with similar tensions. I visited my mom for the Summer and saw a therapist/psychiatrist named Dr. Goodman. She had my half-sister Marlena.

By sheer luck, I got a job as a administration assistant at a company my cousin Alex worked at, Engage. He presented it in terms of reprogramming their database stack, but I knew I wasn't there for that. Still, I insisted on writing scripts to do the extremely tedious job of pressing buttons in the right sequence to print the mailing labels by the thousands. At some point I accidentally managed to fuck up not once, but twice. The first was caught, but the second made it all the way to the post office where they charged a fee for every incorrectly labeled mail, probably costing thousands of dollars. I was let go soon after for personality conflicts and because I wasn't taking my time, doing things too fast so mistakes were easy to make.

I was offered a replacement job in the data entry department, which I was very reluctant to take because I wanted to run away from the whole thing and forget the wild emotions. I got it, learned the ropes, and did that for a couple months during the 2016 election (which made lots of mail), all the while getting less and less stable as I began to see the job as a symbol of my failure as a person. As I saw it, it was the job I was moved to out of pity because any hobo off the streets could deliver identical work, and yet I was still struggling and felt ashamed because no one else had any problems. I ran out of my medications and that spiral plummeted and I felt the need to quit because what work I did on the clock was terrible and I frequently had to clock out to keep from clawing my eyes out. Every day I went in was sheer agony, which I'd compare to mentally tearing off each fingernail one by one. It was exploding with shame, panic, anxiety, fear, self-hatred, and tedium.

Unfortunately no one in my family saw it that way. Everyone seemed to think I just didn't want to do my job because I "didn't like it". I tried to tell them that I "just couldn't" go in anymore, but all I got back was that I have to. I didn't. More shame. It doubly confirmed the fears I already had, that the job was more important than I was. I suffered this pain every day and yet it was more important that I bear it and lose my mind rather than lose the job. Talk about worthless.

Eventually it came to a point where Goodman seemed to think I wasn't depressed and was manipulating my parents into giving me a free ride. My parents expressed their fear that "if I dropped him off at a shelter, I'd never see him again", which stung. I didn't want to live and everyone around me wanted me to work to live no matter the cost. I would thoughtlessly mention euthanization as a viable option. So, she was right to fear that. More shame from being such a failure as to put such responsibility and pain on my parents. That day I spent an hour seriously thinking about killing myself despite my hesitation, reasoning that I was a parasite on my family and the only way to relieve them of my burden was to relieve them of me. Whatever pain I caused by dying would pale in comparison to the pain I'd cause by living. I wondered if any excuse I had against this plan was a selfish desire to continue living in spite of the pain of others. I never went much farther beyond that, though.

Eventually my parents convinced Goodman to send me to Sierra Tucson. There, I learned about trauma, the distinction between shame and guilt, codependency, and the importance of friendship. I felt awakened, as if from a coma, and first time in my life, I enjoyed living for its own sake. I was transferred to Crownview Co-Occurring Institute for Intensive Out-Patient, where I regressed some due to it being a less supportive environment. Still, I learned how to deal with adversity in reality, particularly overcoming my issues with authority, defensiveness, a need to be right all the time, and how to take criticism without taking it personally.

During recovery, Katie had my niece Aurora. Most of the effect of that was from watching how other people reacted and interpreting the underlying reasons. I believe Katie refused an abortion/adoption because she intended to use Aurora to assert her maturity and capacity to be responsible to my dad and Lindsey, who had a tendency to micromanage her which led to teenage rebellion. What's sad about that is I think she lacks self-care emotionally and mentally, and now she won't ever have an opportunity to work on herself because she'll be working on her kid. In trying to appear more mature, she destroyed any chance of reaching maturity healthily. Now she's still struggling to break free of them, seeing all of their "suggestions" (which, to be fair, are stated more as commands) as personal attacks, saying she isn't capable of taking care of her symbol of adulthood.

And now I'm in R&R. I don't know where I'm going from here.

#life story