#this blog is no longer an anderson blog | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

always-andromeda · 6 months

Text

⋆｡˚୨ 𝒫𝓁𝒶𝓎𝒾𝓃' 𝒱𝒾𝒹𝑒𝑜 𝒢𝒶𝓂𝑒𝓈 ୧˚｡⋆

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 ⟡ Abby Anderson x Fem!Reader

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 ⟡ 1039

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 ⟡ You spend a quiet moment showing Abby your Animal Crossing island; a testament to your love for Sanrio characters and your favorite girl.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡��𝐫’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ⟡ on my old sideblog, my sweet Saia requested that I write something with Abby involving Animal Crossing. buuuut, since I've deleted that blog, I thought I'd repost it here! I've made some little edits so it's a bit longer than before; but here it is in all its glory again! this one is entirely dedicated to you, @abbysdolly; thank you for being so lovely and so supportive, dear. I hope you enjoy this again!! alsoooo, divider credits go to @cafekitsune!!

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ⟡ minor swearing, absolute tooth rotting fluff, nothing else I can think of!

"Fuckin' video games..." Abby spoke under her breath as she fiddled with the controls of her switch. She'd only had it for a few days (thanks to some gentle persuasion from you) but she was already moments away from giving up on it completely.

"What's wrong?" you leaned over from your spot on the couch. Her character now stood blankly in front of her starter tent. You rested your chin on her shoulder, breathing in the pine scent that felt like home to you by now as you tried to see what the problem was.

"There was a scorpion and he just–"

Realizing her plight, you giggled, "Stung you?"

Abby set the console down and reclined back on the couch, taking a deep breath. "How did you get so good at this in the first place?"

"I dunno," you hummed. "You just gotta work on it."

Of course. As much as Abby fancied herself an expert at all things, part of her was alright with taking the loss on this one; especially knowing how happy you got when you finally got to best her at something. You could have this one.

Abby rolled her eyes and continued, "Ah, it's whatever. Show me what you've got on your island, babe."

Your eyes lit up and a smile bloomed across your face. Letting out a chuckle of her own, Abby swore she'd never get sick of that expression. You picked your own console back up and snuggled closer into her side.

Immediately your fingers flew, maneuvering your character around the screen. Abby smirked, catching a glimpse of the pink bunny that decorated the skin of your console. She never had a single clue how she managed to land a delicate thing like you. It always made her a little afraid of breaking you; something she didn’t worry about with most. She was abrasive and proud of it. But not with you. Never with you. She hooked a strong arm around your frame and pulled you closer.

"The first thing I have to show you..." you trailed off as your character disappeared inside of a pastel pink house. The main room of your house was thoroughly decorated with polka dot wallpaper and white wood floors. Pastel couches and a white coffee table with a decorative cake and tea set on top constituted your home’s living room. Underneath it all, a fluffy looking rug tied the whole soft atmosphere. Except…it didn’t look like any old carpet. It was a picture of some sort of cartoon character tucked inside a bright blue teacup.

Abby squinted. "Who's on the rug?"

You looked up at her, "I've told you about the characters, Bee. Guess."

Noticing the long ears on the character, she spitballed, "Isn't that the bunny? MyMelody?"

"Nooo..." you whined and tapped the decal on your switch. "That's MyMelody. The rug is Cinnamoroll. And he's a puppy, not a bunny."

Abby scoffed, "Well, sounds like I've gotta do more studying."

"Yeah," you replied matter of factly with a glint of pride in your eye, "you really do."

As soon as you showed her around your house, you then graduated to running around your island. You'd sunk hundreds of hours into the game and it showed, considering every nook was themed and immaculately adorned with various trees, bushes, and flowers. She couldn’t help but be a little jealous. It wasn’t fair that these little virtual creatures could live in a paradise, entirely hand crafted by you. That sounded like a dream to her.

"So, this is Toby," you introduced her to a yellow rabbit with big eyes and teal hair. "He's part of the Sanrio set of characters. I'm trying to collect them all."

"Now, that is a bunny. It has to be. Geez, how many bunnies does this brand have?" she grumbled.

You giggled again, "Yes, he's a bunny. But he's based off of Keroppi," you added with a pointed glance in her direction, obviously expecting her to fill in the blank.

Now this is one Abby knew. She blurted out, "The frog!"

"Good job, Bee," you smiled proudly.

"Eh, it's no big deal," she brushed you off with a teasing look that told you she was playing her humility up. She had to preserve some respectability.

Then she watched as your character ran over to a secluded piece of land that looked over the ocean. The sun was setting over your island paradise as your character plopped down on an iron bench. Cut off from the rest of the island by a thick layer of trees, this area was quiet. The normally upbeat music subsided so you and her could clearly hear the wind blowing and the waves crashing. It was strangely kind of…calming.

"This spot is nice," Abby mumbled.

"I made it for us,” you replied quietly.

"For us?"

Your gaze was especially sentimental when you answered, "Yeah! So when you finally visit my island, we'll have a place to sit and watch the ocean."

Abby blinked vacantly. "You know...we can totally do that now too...in real life?"

You chewed on your lip as you watched the screen. "I mean, yeah. Of course. But I want to sit with you and watch the sunset virtually too."

Abby was quiet, thinking about all the hours you put into this endeavor. How patient you had been, sharing all of the things you loved with her. God…how had she been lucky enough to find you again?

Finally, she spoke, "Ya know...maybe I won't quit the game just yet. At least not until I get to sit on the bench with you...virtually..."

"You're such a goober," you smiled, laid your head back on her chest, and hopped off the bench in game so you could keep showing her around.

Her emotions weren’t showing up too visibly on her face. But she was undoubtedly and thoroughly impressed. For one, she was amazed at your eye for design and the way you coordinated everything without making it look too uptight and proper. Your island felt comfortable, just like how you made her feel. And more than anything, she was happy that it was a kind of comfort you always wanted her to be involved with.

#˚ʚ meda writes ɞ˚#abby anderson #abby anderson x reader #abby anderson x you #abby anderson x y/n #abby anderson x female reader #abby anderson fluff #abby anderson tlou2 #abby tlou #abby the last of us #the last of us #the last of us part 2

295 notes · View notes

eyestrain-addict · 9 months

Text

I just realized why lestat marked Tom, like the big stupid idiot I am

(I know everyone else probably already figured this out, but this is MY blog and I get to post whatever deranged thought crosses my pea brained mind.)

When I watched that scene in episode 5 where they're at the bar talking to Tom, I was confused as to why exactly. Why does Lestat mark Tom? If he's marked to kill, why does he wait almost 2 decades later? Well I realized, as all realizations come, in the shower.

Lestat has been planning on killing Tom the whole time.

(Warning before you click read more, this post is a lot longer than I first intended holy fuck)

Well not the whole time. Just right when Louis realized that Anderson and Fenwick had screwed him over. Maybe even longer if he knew it was a trick ("ridiculous of you to mix human and vampire business it always ends poorly"). Notice how he's upset with louis when he kills the guy who's microaggressive with him, cus lestat wasn't there (even if he was there I have my doubts Lestat would understand microaggressions, but he would have definitely killed him for touching Louis.) But tells Louis he's proud of him for killing Alderman. I think this has to be because he witnessed the disrespect first hand. He didn't give a fuck about the money, what he DID care about was that those two disrespected not only him, but Louis.

Even with Lestats little understanding of race relations of the time in America, he did understand hierarchys. He's from 1700s France for God's sake. It's no coincidence wanted to be king of mardi gras. Lestat came to New Orleans and saw himself as the king, even if no one knew it. And he wanted Louis to be his queen. Honestly I could make an entire other post about how Lestat almost literally saw himself as if he was a King and Louis his beloved Queen, which is why he thought it was okay for him to sleep with other women (mistresses and playthings of the king should mean nothing compared to the queen in lestats eyes) but that's getting off topic. I only bring that up because I'm trying to paint a picture of how I think Lestat sees disrespect done to Louis. To him that goes beyond disrespect or rudeness, it's irreverence.

You begin to notice if you watch scenes with them together. Because while I wouldn't say lestat is good at controlling his anger, he's definitely great at concealing it until it erupts (props to Sam Reid have to be given here) lestat is always on the verge of fury when talking to Tom. It starts as a distaste then as he begins to fall more in love with Louis and become more protective of him, his anger builds. Claudia was wrong about one thing, it was no petty slight that was the reason Lestat killed Tom first, it was a loooonng time coming.

I could list every detail I think supports this but I'm sure you get the gist by now. My main point is really the layer of complexity this adds to not only the story, the characters, but also lestat and louis' relationship. Consider it for a second, Lestat saw all his violence as justified, everything he did one can see it through the lense of him punishing the disrespectful (take a shot every time I say disrespect in this post jesus christ). "I bring death to those deserving" indeed. Lestat has a god complex out the wazoo, and every attack, torture, and death he caused was righteous to him and thus enjoyable. Louis on the other hand didn't see himself so highly. He may seem confident but if you look through the cracks it's apparent Louis's self worth in near nonexistent and he's horribly insecure. I think lestat thought when Louis was made a vampire he would see himself as Lestat saw himself, and as Lestat saw Louis. But again, another post for another time.

Despite Louis' insecurities (or perhaps because of them) louis revels in the violence lestat commits for his sake. That's probably why louis is so quick to forgive lestat about the priests. For a brief moment Lestat truly said the truth to Louis and Louis could forgive him because of it. As lestat says, he doesn't kill the priests to intimidate Louis, nor does he do it just because he enjoys it. He does it because he sees them as humiliating Louis, charlatans that don't deserve Louis' sorrow. Louis didn't want the priest's to die, but he could understand why lestat killed them, simply because for once in his goddamn life lestat told the truth, and louis loved that truth. That truth being that lestat killed and mutilated and committed such horrors not just because he liked it, but because he did it out of a fucked up sense of protection. Him killing the priests was essentially a knight killing a dragon to earn the princess' hand in marriage.

The worst part is that Lestat doesn't even realize it. Not fully anyway. Let's be honest with ourselves, lestat doesn't understand Louis. Obviously there's the race, background, culture differences that lestat doesn't understand nor seems inclined to try, but there are better posts about that made by smarter people than moi. I'm mostly talking about lestat doesn't understand louis' mind itself (louis' mind in a vacuum I suppose you could say) he understands Louis' desire for violence sure, but he doesn't understand the core of that want. Honestly I'm on the fence of if he ever understood that Louis loved it when lestat was protective in the first place. I guess it can be dumbed down to Louis wants Lestat to kill to protect Louis and to protect the family (and anyone who deeply disrepects them), lestat perhaps understood a little at one point, but since he sees everyone as a threat and everything is a slight to him, he has no trouble and qualms with delighting in the torture of people Louis views as innocent. Louis' heart is a bit dark, but ultimately human, so he's disgusted by lestats violence towards the undeserving. Lestat can no longer read Louis' mind and even if he could, Louis doesn't quite understand the difference himself (that's why he tries to hunt for criminals briefly) so the cracks of miscommunication starts to form, and neither of them even realize there is miscommunication.

Therein lies the importance of Tom Anderson for season 1. Not much of a character, more of a plot device in human skin. Claudia can see that Lestat hates him, but doesn't understand why, nor does she care to get to the depths of that. (*Mr house voice* understandable) I think it's notable that Louis rarely brought him up, he didn't understand the depths of lestats love. Nor did he know about Lestats 3 decade long grudge, all because Tom disrespected Louis.

Now I'm not excusing Lestat's actions, I just think it's interesting how this one throwaway character reveals a whole level of complexity to the relationship between him and Louis, and better sheds light on not only Lestats personal philosophy but louis' as well. Even Claudia to a degree.

Anyway, uh. End of essay. Bye.

283 notes · View notes

hsficrecommendation · 11 months

Text

Hello Everyone! This is masterlist #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, and #8 (April, May, June, July, August, and September of 2022!) for the all fics I have reblogged on this side-blog I hold super close to me. Remember to leave feedback and to reblog all the writings below!

Also, a huge thank you to all the writer's mentioned, I adore you so very much and pleaseeeee keep writing <;33

••• APRIL •••

Unscripted | this wasn't y/n's first time being a PA to a major star on a film set, but this was the first time she'd worked with someone like harry styles. - @moonchildstyles

Keep on Dancing ♡ | you’re a professional dancer on ‘Strictly’ and Harry’s your partner. - @finelinevogue

Home to Me ♡ | Y/N’s a nurse in the army and Harry just wants her back home with him. - @stylesharrys

The Engagement | y/n opens a package she’s not meant to see, and spoils a surprise. - @tobesolonely

••• MAY •••

Y/N is brown working as crew member at HSLOT and Harry finds her lovely. ♡ - @muffindaddystyles

Skating Lessons ♡ | In which Harry is the daddy of a shy-at-meet and greet girl, who has found her new interest in Ice Skating, and Y/n ends up having a favourite pair who attend her classes - @hunflowers

••• JUNE •••

Falling | Six months after your breakup, Harry calls you.

Falling (part2) | a continuation of Falling in which Harry talks about his journey back to you.- @avatar-anna

••• JULY •••

The Meeting ♡ | Y/N meets a very frazzled mom and a very clingy ghost. - @mindofharry

The Unfinished Business (part2) ♡ | Y/N is trying to help but harry has a secret that he just can’t keep in any longer. - @mindofharry

The Fight(part3) ♡ | Harry reveals what he did and Y/N is more than mad. - @mindofharry

The Begging(part4) ♡ | Harry begs and Y/N somewhat forgives him. - @mindofharry

••• AUGUST •••

Rainbow Cardigan ♡ | Harry loses his favorite cardigan. You learn how to knit. (Based on the JW Anderson cardigan knitting trend.) - @stylesberries

The True Encounter Mastelist: (The writer seems to have deleted this post :( ) Y/n accidentally cries wolf in the middle of the woods and Harry shows up, claiming to be her mate. Now she has to choose between her life with humans or a life with wolves. - @mikkomacko

••• SEPTEMBER •••

Three's Company (part2): In which there's some mispercievence and insecurities between Harry, Y/n, and Florence after the interview. - @meetmymouth

Masterlist for more recs! My official writing account in case you'd like to check out my fics too: @0oolookitsme :)

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x fem!reader #harry styles x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles angst #harry styles one shot #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic rec #harry styles fic recommendation

322 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

Text

Async mugwump linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

For 20+ years, I've processed all the information that came over my transom by blogging – mulling on why something I saw in the world caught my attention and trying to summarize it for strangers. This turns out to be a very powerful way to do a lot of different kinds of mental work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

With Pluralistic, the solo blog I founded 4 years ago, I've moved into longer, more synthetic essays that try to connect the things that caught my attention today with all those things I've written about for the past two decades. That's also proven very fruitful:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

But this move to longer works has a downside: sometimes I'll arrive at the week's end and have a list of things that caught my attention without there being any obvious way to connect them, and when that happens, I devote a Saturday edition to a linkdump. There's been 15 of these so far:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Welcome, then, to the 16th Pluralistic linkdump, and a warning, this one starts with an obituary.

Ross Anderson was one of the heroes of the cryptographic revolution, a brilliant scientist and communicator, a fantastic activist, and a scorching curmudgeon. Ross died this week. He was 67, and had chronic heart issues as well as long covid:

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2024/03/29/rip-ross-anderson/

There's so much that's been written about Ross and his legacy already, and there's doubtless more to come, but I've picked out two pieces to point you to. The first is from Danny O'Brien, who was also the guy who talked me down off the ledge the first time Ross flamed me on a public mailing list, leaving me bleeding and furious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868983

As Danny says, Ross was "the model of a politically and socially involved computer scientist," a man whose blazing intellect, fierce moral center and relentless curiosity inspired a generation of technologists to think about politics, and a generation of political activists to think about technology. Few of Ross's eulogizers (thus far) have mentioned how Ross's passion came out as fury, and – as someone who counted Ross as a friend and inspiration – I think this is a serious omission. It's hard to imagine Ross doing all that he did without understanding the anger that – along with his ethics – fueled his passion.

(Compare with @neil-gaiman's classic essay on the anger of Terry Pratchett:)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

The other obit that I want to point you to comes from Bill Buchanan, one of Ross's closest collaborators. Buchanan's memorial for Ross does a superb job of rounding up Ross's technical contributions to the field of security engineering:

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/ross-anderson-rip-59233c75fadf

Buchanan embeds videos for some of Ross's best speeches, links to his key papers (including the classic "Programming Satan's Computer," on "programming a computer which gives answers that are subtly and maliciously wrong at the most inconvenient moment possible), reminiscences of Great Moments In Ross Anderson, and terrific, lay-friendly breakdowns of some of Ross's key mathematical work.

As an unreasonable, angry person, I take great inspiration from people who channel their unreasonable anger to socially beneficial conduct – like whistleblowers. After Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge was totaled by the 95,000-ton cargo ship MV *Dali(, a vast cohort of instant experts in structural engineering, sea freight and shipbuilding has taken to the internet with a slurry of takes on the Meaning Of the Bridge.

Some of these are very stupid indeed, like the idea that somehow "DEI" caused the collision. But you don't have to be an expert in maritime issues or civil engineering to understand the importance of this report from The Lever about shipping giant Maersk's culture of retaliation against whistleblowers:

https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/

Maersk is the company that chartered the MV Dali; Maersk is also a key player in the cartel that controls the world's shipping. Maersk was just sanctioned by the Labor Department for retaliating against a whistleblower who complained of unsafe conditions on the ships that Maersk chartered:

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/Maersk-Sec%20Findings%20-FINAL%20071423_Redacted.pdf

Maersk's policy required employees to bring concerns to their supervisors before alerting the Coast Guard or others. This is not how that stuff is supposed to work. OSHA called this policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”

The whistleblower – chief mate on the Safmarine Mafadi – complained of "unrepaired leaks, unpermitted alcohol consumption onboard, inoperable lifeboats, faulty emergency fire suppression equipment, and other issues." We don't know (yet) what happened on the Dali, but it's obvious that a company that retaliates against whistleblowers, rather than heeding their warnings, is prioritizing covering its ass, not operating safely.

Which brings me (inevitably) to Boeing, and to poor John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who took his own life earlier this month. Barnett's suicide has stirred up similar low-yield online chatter focused on whether Boeing assassinated Barnett, a question that categorically cannot be answered through the method of arguing with internet strangers.

But there is a lot to say about Barnett: in particular, there's the substance of his whistleblowing, the specifics of his complaints about Boeing. For that, we can turn to the always-fantastic Maureen Tkacik, whose American Prospect piece "Suicide Mission" is definitive:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Tkacik does a great job of painting a picture of Swampy as a member of the tribe of unreasonable and angry people who refuse to sideline principle in order to get along. More importantly, Tkacik shows us what made Swampy so angry: a company that was hell-bent on lobotimizing itself by forcing out any technical expert who might point out inconvenient truths about the safety risks of high-profit strategies.

As Tkacik writes, Boeing once thought about "knowledge" in terms of expertise that could be brought to bear on the unimaginably complex task of making reliable, airworthy jets. But under the "value-engineering" financialized culture that arose after the McDonnell-Douglas merger, the company viewed knowledge as "intellectual property, trade secrets, and data." In other words, the point of knowledge was rent-extraction, not safety.

At the root of this transformation was the Jack Welch protege Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, the former 3M CEO who took the helm at Boeing. McNerney was openly contemptuous of the company's senior engineers, branding them "phenomenally talented assholes" and rewarding managers who found ways to force them out of the company. It was McNerney who decided to produce the 787 "Dreamliner" in non-union shops, far from Seattle and its phenomenally talented assholes. Instead of these engineers, McNerney turned to Boeing suppliers to do the major engineering work on the 787 – despite the fact that many of these suppliers "lacked engineering departments."

The 787 was, infamously, a $80b-over-budget boondoggle, haunted by technical failures. Swampy was part of the "cleanup crew" that tried to salvage the 787, and witnessed first-hand how the company purged all the engineers who managed to ship the 787 despite McNerney and his "value engineers" and retaliated against workers who tried to unionize the South Carolina facility.

In particular, it was safety inspector who came in for the most savage punishment. When the FAA decided to let Boeing mark its own homework – hiring in-house safety inspectors to replace government inspectors – they pretended to believe that these Boeing-payrolled inspectors would be able to operate independently of Boeing's leadership. The inspectors tried to operate this way (not least because they were criminally liable for oversights that occurred on their watch) and McNerney's Boeing came down on them like a ton of aviation-grade aluminum.

To further neuter these inspectors, Boeing management ordered the inspectors to outsource their work to the mechanics they were supposed to be supervising – that is, the FAA outsourced safety checks to Boeing inspectors, and the inspectors outsourced those checks to the mechanics themselves. Tkacik: "Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal under the Federal Aviation Administration charter."

Swampy kept careful records of every way in which this system produced unsafe aircraft and an unsafe workplace – including the day he discovered that someone had removed 400+ defective parts from the rejects box and installed them in aircraft in order to meet deadlines. Swampy's reports were key to establishing that the company's much-trumpeted "improvements" in safety reports were down to a culture of "bullying" – not any improvement in safety itself.

When Boeing went to war against Swampy, they barely bothered to pretend that they were playing by the rules. He was told one day that he was four-weeks into a 60-day "corrective action" that no one had told him about. The "corrective action" paperwork had a blank for Swampy's comments. He wrote, "Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability. It is obvious leadership is just looking for items to criticize me on so I stop identifying issues. I will conform!"

Shortly thereafter, he was forced out altogether. Managers who tried to bring him on their teams were told that no one was allowed to hire John Barnett. His name appeared on a secret internal memo entitled "Quality Managers to Fire." Meanwhile, the value of Boeing shares had tripled.

After Boeing's 737 Maxes started falling out of the sky, Swampy's painstaking documentation of the flaws in the 787's production took on a new urgency. A program of random inspections of 787s found major defects in all of them ("Boeing Looked for Flaws in Its Dreamliner and Couldn’t Stop Finding Them" –WSJ). An Aviation Week diagram of problem spots with the 787 marked red arrows over "every single section, from the tip of the nose to the horizontal stabilizers":

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/new-boeing-787-fix-details-reveal-extent-gap-check-challenge

Boeing's war on "brilliance" did its work: after everyone who understood how to make a safe aircraft was forced out of the company, financialized CEOs were able to cut corners on safety, triple the share-price, scoop up billions in government subsidies and bailouts, all without those pesky "phenomenally talented assholes" pointing out that they were going get (lots of) people killed.

Tkacik closes by saying that Swampy's former work colleagues refuse to believe he killed himself. A former executive told her "I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys…It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere." I confess that I don't know what to make of that, but I'll say this: if Boeing killed Swampy, that's just one of hundreds of murders they committed. Whether or not Swampy's death was their fault, the deaths of everyone who went down on the 737 Maxes that crashed is on their hands.

That's what "profits before people" means, after all: sacrificing human lives to make yourself richer. It's the foundational tenet of the conservative movement, though that impulse is often checked by other factors, like human decency. It's only when sociopaths get a sustained run at leadership that you see what they really want.

Which brings me to the UK, which has been governed by the Conservative Party for 14 years. The Tories are tipped to get destroyed in the next election, and a long article in the New Yorker by Sam Knight catalogs the many ways in which Tory rule has devastated the UK:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

The thing is, after 14 years, it's impossible for the Tories to blame anyone else for the state of the UK. With strong Parliamentary majorities, Conservatives were able to govern as they pleased – the only compromises they made were between their own internal factions. The ideological commitment to making the rich richer, privatizing everything, subordinating governance to market forces – that's all them.

It's all them: the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars, on them. The catastrophic traffic, housing, jobs market, and precarity, on them. Plummeting health, on them. The austerity, on them. The withering of the country's courts and prisons and police, its wilderness, its programs for young people and pensioners, its public health, its diplomatic corps, its road maintenance – on them.

A country where the police can't afford to prosecute burglaries – on them (4% of burglaries are prosecuted). The 2.5 year delay between a rape arrest and its trial? On them. Mass closures of schools that are literally crumbling? On them.

43% of the countries courts have closed. On them. Cuts to prison funding, coupled with longer sentences? On them.

And of course, Brexit – on them. Every part of it. The referendum. The referendum question. The failure to negotiate a deal with the EU. All on them. The collapse in British living standards, all on them. The fact that the 20% richest households in the UK have been untouched by all this? Also on them. But you might not notice it in London, where people earn an average of 400% more than people in Nottingham.

The only growth sector outside of London are the Citizens Advice Bureaux, whose client rosters are growing even as their funding is cut. Where the CAB once primarily catered to people who couldn't make ends meet due to disability, unemployment and other reliable predictors of economic distress, today, CAB advisors are seeing homeowners, people working two jobs. Desperation is "like a black hole, dragging more and more people in,"

More Conservative growth: Tories presided over a doubling in the rate of NHS antidepressant prescriptions, and a 20% rise in long-term health conditions. No wonder Tory Britain had the world's worst pandemic outcomes for a wealthy nation – that's on them, too.

Knight's article closes with a Tory MP who believes that "the key thing for the Conservatives now is to be more conservative…Toryism must have its day again."

We can't count on oligarchs to rescue us from oligarchy – not even when oligarchy's failures push society to the breaking point. There's always a rationalization explaining why we just had to lean harder into oligarchy.

You hear echoes of this in the pro-monopoly choir, whose squeals of outrage at the rise of a new anti-monopoly movement grow louder even as monopolism's failures grow clearer. One of the more tangible expressions of monopoly's failures is the Ticketmaster/Livenation octopus, which controls the entire live music industry – key venues, promotions, and ticketing. Ticketmaster fucks over music fans, but it also cheats famous musicians, the kinds of people with big microphones, so we know a lot about how bad it is:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/20/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop/

Of course, the fact that Swifties hate Ticketmaster lets the pro-monopolists dismiss critics as foolish young girls, not Very Serious People Who Understand Economics and thus can see that Ticketmaster's monopoly is Good, Actually.

Last week, Congressman Bill Pascrell dumped a ton of litigation documents related to Ticketmaster's sleaze, and Matt Stoller broke them down:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-unearthed

The docs reveal how Ticketmaster's system of (formerly) secret kickbacks let it choke out any competitor, so that it could charge fans more and pay artists less. The mechanics of the scam are beautifully laid out in Stoller's post – as is the many ways in which it violated both the law and Ticketmaster's numerous consent decrees arising from its previous lawbreaking.

This kind of scam breakdown is essential. It's easy to think that we, as mere normies, can't hope to understand the machinations of the corporations that prey on us. But once you pierce the veil of performative complexity, what's left behind is a set of crude tricks and transparent ruses.

Here's one of those transparent ruses: Discord's terms of service require Discord users to actively opt out of its "binding arbitration" system. Binding arbitration is when you sign a contract saying you can't sue the company no matter how much it harms you – instead, you promise to have your disputes heard by an "arbitrator" (a fake judge paid by the company that screwed you). Unsurprisingly, these fake judges are awfully tolerant of their employers' crimes.

Discord says that once you click through its garbage legalese novella, you have just a few days to opt out of this binding arbitration clause – if you happen to miss that fine print, you have "consented" to giving up your legal rights.

But every time Discord changes its ToS, the clock for opting out starts ticking again, and Discord has just changed (that is, worsened) its ToS again:

https://discord.com/terms

That means that if you send an email right now to [email protected] with "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord" in the body, you can escape this consent theater:

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/112175832989845038

Consent theater is a particularly galling corporate ruse – the idea that we chose to allow them to abuse us. Consent theater gets more outrageous by the day. Take Soofa, who operate streetside digital kiosks that identify you by grabbing your phone's unique wifi and Bluetooth identifiers:

https://gizmodo.com/digital-kiosks-snatch-your-phones-data-when-you-walk-by-1851368948

Soofa sells this data to advertisers – claiming that by walking down a public street, you "consented" to being tracked and sold.

The only reason this flies is that the US hasn't passed a federal consumer privacy law since 1988's Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from telling people which VHS cassettes you took home. Congress keeps on failing to pass a privacy law, despite garbage companies like Soofa.

But that hasn't stopped the administrative agencies from acting to defend your privacy! The FTC just dropped its latest Privacy and Data Security Update, a greatest hits list of the actions the Commission took while Congress failed:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024.03.21-PrivacyandDataSecurityUpdate-508.pdf

One of the best things about the current administration is the number of extremely competent regulators who know exactly how much power they have and aren't afraid to use it to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The new FTC report, which details how the Commission's existing powers let it go after the commercial surveillance industry from smart doorbells to review fraud, from kids' programming to medical data, from lax security to data-breaches, is a bright spot in an otherwise grim week.

One more bright spot, then, before I wind up this linkdump. All week, I've been humming a half-remembered lyric, "come on baby/you're a link in this chain/put your hands together/and get free of the pain." For the life of me, I couldn't place it.

Last night, I searched for it (using Kagi, the post-Google search engine I've been paying for for the past month, and which I'm loving) and discovered that I had somehow completely forgotten a whole-ass band that I once loved: Toronto's Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, whom I saw live on many occasions.

The mystery lyric came from "Death is the Great Awakener," a fucking banger of a post-gospel track that I've been listening to on nonstop repeat as I wrote this. It's a hell of a tune and I'm intensely grateful to have it back in my life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6RUb63Tx3w

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/30/dewey-502/#rip-ross-anderson

Image: Waffleboy https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffleboy/28198395465/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

57 notes · View notes

raaorqtpbpdy · 13 days

Text

Creepy Carl

Danny is not fond of his parents' old ghost hunting friend that's come to pay them a visit for the week.

For the prompts: Jack and Maddie invite an old ghost hunting buddy (not Vlad) to stay in their guest room for the week. Expecting to catch up with their good ole pal, they're a little confused when this ghost hunter just keeps asking questions about their son, Danny [from @ectoblastfromthepast], and After the accident, Danny no longer has a shadow, and he isn't the first person to notice its absence. [from TheSilentBard]

Fair warning, Danny calls the old ghost hunting buddy 'Creepy Carl' for a reason. It may not be sexual in any way, but he is still very much creeping on a child, and I think y'all should be aware of that going in.

Read also on AO3

[Warning for uncanny valley elements, and (non-sexual) inappropriate behavior by an adult toward a minor]

How many 'old ghost hunting buddies' did his parents have? Danny wondered as they introduced them to one Anderson Carl. First Vlad, and now this guy?

Apparently, after college and before Jazz was born, the two of them had gone on many a ghost hunt with Mr. Carl. Now, he had his own paranormal investigation blog with a pretty decent readership, and he had come to Amity Park to do a piece on the town, which of course meant he needed a place to stay in town while he was doing research.

Luckily, he had a couple of old buddies with a guest room who happened to live right where the action was, and when he told them he was coming to town, they eagerly invited him to stay in said guest room for the whole week he was planning to stay. They thought it would be a great chance to catch up with their good ole pal, but Danny was wary the second he laid eyes on the man.

Anderson Carl wasn't as tall as Jack, as hardly anyone was, but he still loomed over Danny at a solid six feet tall, probably a few inches taller than that. He had close-cropped, dirty blond hair, and dark gray eyes like angry storm clouds, they even seemed to light up with electric curiosity as Danny watched the man, and the man also watched him.

"Welcome to Fenton Works," Maddie greeted him cheerfully. "That's our son, Danny. Our daughter Jazz is out tutoring right now, but she'll be back in a few hours."

"Nice to meet you, Danny," Mr. Carl said, and smiled.

The smile was perfectly ordinary, but Danny couldn't help feeling a sinister chill when it was directed at him. Maybe it was to too-white teeth, or the way it stretched his chapped lips so tightly they looked like they might crack, but Danny didn't like it.

"Uh... sure," Danny said cautiously. "Sorry, but I've got homework to do, so I'm gonna go."

He could feel those dark eyes following him all the way up the stairs, and when he closed his bedroom door behind him, he felt like Mr. Carl couldn't be leaving town soon enough. A whole week of this already sounded unbearable.

The next morning, when Danny got dressed and left for school, Mr. Carl was already awake, and sitting at the kitchen table, typing on his laptop. The laptop, too, was a dark grey, but it had a sticker on it that said UncannyCarl.com in bright red letters designed to look like they were partially obscured by smoke.

"Good Morning, Danny," the man greeted, with that same unsettling smile from the day before. "Off to school?"

"Yeah, it's Monday, so..." Danny trailed off. He took an orange out of the bowl on the counter for breakfast, not taking his eyes of the man before him. "Is that your blog, Mr. Carl?" he asked. "Uncanny Carl dot com?"

"That's right," the man confirmed. "Uncanny is something of a synonym for paranormal, but really the name is based on... are you familiar with the uncanny valley effect?"

"Never heard of it," Danny said.

"The uncanny valley effect is when you see something that looks human in most respects, but it's just slightly off enough to make your brain send out warning signals that it's not human, and you shouldn't be fooled by it," Mr. Carl explained. "Often times, you aren't consciously aware of what detail your brain registers as wrong that's causing the uncanny valley effect, whether it's that their arms are just slightly too long, the shape of their face is abnormal, or they don't have a shadow. Your brain notices it, even if you don't."

Danny couldn't help thinking that this guy was a little uncanny valley himself, but he thought it would be rude to say out loud, and he didn't want to piss off his parents' creepy guest.

"That's fascinating Mr. Carl, but I gotta get to school."

"Oh, and you can drop the 'Mr', by the way," he said. "Everyone just calls me Carl, even though it's my last name. In school, people used to joke that my parents must've but my name backwards on my birth certificate."

Danny just furrowed his eyebrows, shook his head, and left the kitchen, along with Creepy Carl, behind him as he headed out the front door to school.

Between classes, he caught Sam and Tucker up on his new house guest.

"Great, because all you need is another ghost hunter living under your roof," Sam said sardonically.

"I know, right?" Danny agreed. "At least this one's only staying until Saturday, but he's already creeping me out. I feel like he's constantly watching me whenever we're both in a room together. It's weird."

"Do you think he noticed something about you?" Tucker asked. "I mean, you don't know anything about this guy. What if he's actually a better ghost hunter than your parents?"

"It's not hard to be," Sam scoffed.

Danny ignored her, choosing instead to answer Tucker's question. "I'm not sure, but... maybe? He was talking about something called the uncanny valley effect, which he explained as being able to recognize when something that looked human wasn't, I guess. Something like that, anyway. He was just explaining the name of his blog, but he might've meant it as a warning that he was onto me.

"If you ask me, he's the uncanny valley one, though."

—

Jack and Maddie had been excited to show their old friend around their (relatively) new lab, especially the Fenton Ghost Portal. Carl seemed suitably interested in all of it, and he listened as they caught him up on their lives since he'd parted ways with the couple, but the whole time he seemed a bit... distracted.

Back when they were fresh college graduates, Carl had been an eager note-taker, his pencil hardly stilling on the pad of yellow lined paper he always carried with him. But now, he was hardly taking any notes at all. Even when he was staring at the portal between this world and the next, he only scribbled down a few sentences before twirling his pencil idly between his fingers.

They asked him about what he'd been up to since they last saw him, and he told them, but he was remarkably brief. He mentioned that he'd gone solo for a bit before deciding to start a blog, and he'd been running that ever since, writing the occasional opinion piece for local newspaper to get some supplemental income.

He'd finished talking about himself in under a minute, and even when asked, he didn't seem keen to elaborate on any particular investigation of his over the last sixteen years. All he said was that they could read about it all on his blog.

That wasn't the end of his strange behavior, because the next thing he asked about was Danny.

Jack and Maddie were of course very eager to brag about their kids, especially Jazz, but when they started to do so, Carl said they were getting off track, and he was really curious about Danny.

He asked them how old Danny was, if he was at all reclusive, or short-tempered, if they'd ever noticed him acting particularly odd or cagey.

They answered of course, seeing no reason not to. Carl was their friend after all, and they trusted that he didn't have any bad intentions when it came to their son—and if he did, they wouldn't hesitate to beat his ass and hand him over to the police—but surely he didn't. They were still confused though. Especially because, since the conversation turned to Danny, Carl's pencil hadn't stopped moving even once.

"What's with all the questions about Danny?" Jack asked. "I thought you came here to investigate ghosts."

"Oh, no real reason," Carl replied with a casual shrug. "Just... a bit of a hunch. I won't bother you with it unless I happen to find proof." Then he asked, "Have you even noticed that the air feels colder around Danny, or that standing next to him gives you an uncomfortable buzzing sensation under your skin?"

It was a odd question... but even odder was that neither Jack nor Maddie were actually sure of the answer. They worked with ghosts all the time so of course they felt sensations like that, but... neither could remember if they'd felt them around Danny... nor could they say for sure that they hadn't.

As Carl continued his line of questioning, a feeling of disquiet settled in on top of their confusion. After a point, they asked if he might want to hear about some of the recent ghost incidents around town, rather than just spending all day talking about their fourteen-year-old son.

Carl looked at them in silence for a moment, his eyes narrowed as if he might challenge them and insist. But then his lips quirked up in a smile, and he agreed to the subject change without resistance.

It wouldn't be the last time he asked about Danny that week though. He would stop, when asked, but by and by, the topic of Danny would always come up again, and when they told him about Danny's accident with the Fenton Portal a few months before, he seemed particularly intrigued.

—

It had been three days since Creepy Carl took up residence in the Fenton guest room, and Danny could confidently say that he hated the guy. He'd suspected as much from day one, but now that it was Wednesday, Danny had confidently confirmed that Creepy Carl almost never looked away from Danny when the two of them were in the same room, and it was seriously freaking Danny out.

At home, Danny was spending almost all his time in his bedroom to avoid running into the guy. Unfortunately, his bedroom shared a wall with the guest room, and just knowing the guy was right on the other side of the wall was causing Danny to lose sleep.

Still, Creepy Carl never did anything more than just watch him. At least, not until very late Friday night, or very early Saturday morning. Danny never did know which was more correct. His discomfort proved to be well founded when, around one in the morning that night, he awoke to a bright light being shined on his face.

Danny put a hand up to block the light and sat up to see what was causing it.

He wasn't sure if she should be surprised or not when he made out the silhouette of Anderson Carl shining a flashlight directly at his face. Danny was pretty sure his bedroom door had been locked. Ever since Carl started staying the room next door, Danny had been making sure to lock it. Obviously that had been a futile endeavor.

"What the hell, Carl?" Danny groaned. "Just... just what the hell?"

"What are you?" Creepy Carl asked creepily.

"What do you mean what am I? I'm a freshman."

"A freshman without a shadow?"

"What?"

"Look behind you?"

Danny was hesitant to take his eyes off the creep in front of him, but curiosity got the better of him and he turned.

On the wall behind him was a circle of light from Carl's flashlight. For a moment, Danny didn't register what he was supposed to be seeing, then as the tiredness in his brain started to lift slightly, he realized. He was supposed to be seeing his shadow behind him.

It wasn't there.

He snapped his head back around to look at Carl, and jumped with a start when he realized that the man had taken several steps closer to Danny's bed when he wasn't looking, in absolute silence, and without any movement of the flashlight in his hand. He was now knelt next to the bed, scrutinizing Danny with wide eyes.

"What are you?" Carl repeated.

He was close enough now that Danny could feel the warmth of his breath and lurched backwards in vague disgust and alarm.

"Uncanny Valley, right?" Danny said. "You would know better than I would. What are you?"

Danny had thought that Carl wasn't moving, but then he suddenly froze, and Danny realized the still he'd been a moment ago had been jittery and trembling, but the still he was no was statuesque and cold. He said nothing, and narrowed his eyes like he wasn't sure if he should, or if he should keep holding his cards close to his chest.

"I'll be honest, I never actually noticed I didn't cast a shadow until you pointed it out," Danny admitted. "But I've noticed plenty of uncanny valley around you."

"Like what?" Carl asked, though his tone didn't carry any doubt, just curiosity.

"Like... your smile is wrong. You teeth are too straight, and too white. Kinda like a TV news anchor, except I'm pretty sure there are too many of them." Danny saw Carl run his tongue over his teeth like he was counting them. Then he added, "And also, your lips are all cracked and gross, which isn't uncanny valley, but it is weird that you'd take such good care of your teeth and not even bother with some lip balm."

"Is that all?"

"Your eyes are weird, too," Danny continued. "Nobody's eyes are that color, and even if they were, they wouldn't spark like yours do, just tiny flashes of light. Human eyes don't do that. And your skin is too thin, I think, because your veins and stuff are all weirdly visible, even though you're not that pale."

Carl nodded slowly.

"And... how many teeth are people supposed to have?" he asked.

"I dunno," Danny said with a shrug. "I think, like, thirty, thirty-two, somewhere around there."

"Thanks for the tip," Carl said. "Your eyes flash, too, you know. Bright green. When your emotions are running high."

"Yeah, I know. I've been working on that."

"You're really not going to tell me, are you?" Carl stood, evidently resigned to not getting an answer. "I know you're not a human, and I know you're no ordinary ghost. You sure you won't even give me a hint?"

Danny gave him a derisive snort. "Will you?"

"No, I suppose not." Carl smiled then, and though it was dark, Danny could almost swear the number of teeth in his mouth had changed. "I guess we'll both just have to suffer in disappointment. Goodnight, Danny."

With that, he turned around and walked out of the room, not waiting for an answer.

Danny got up and went to check his door, to see if Carl had broken the lock to get in or something.

Not only was it not broken, it was still locked. Danny had seen the door open and close. He'd heard the doorknob twist. But it had somehow remained locked the whole time.

"Goodnight, Creepy Carl," Danny whispered.

He went back to bed, but didn't get a wink of sleep.

Creepy Carl left the following afternoon, much to Danny's relief.

He hoped that he would never have to see the man again, but somehow, he had a feeling he would. Someday, somewhere... when he least expected it.

#dp #danny phantom #danny fenton #oc #maddie fenton #jack fenton #uncanny valley #phic phight 24 #phic phight #fic #things i wrote

46 notes · View notes

cottoncandytomu · 9 months

Text

Just a little Abby Anderson Drabble hehe~

This is a fluffy little thing but as always my account is 18+ so no minors or ageless blogs please!!

I do not own these photos! Only edited them :)

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

You couldn’t keep your eyes off of her, the flames from the fire adorned her features making her shine bright in front of you. She stared into the cackling flames as she heated up the fresh rabbit you both just caught.

It didn’t take long for her to catch your eyes lingering on her just a little bit longer than normal. Her brows started to furrow as she questioned your stare.

“What… Is there something on my face?”

“You’re beautiful.” You blurted out.

You laughed loudly, embarrassed at how quickly that came out.

“Yeah, haha no- nothings on your face.” You quickly averted your eyes back to the fire.

Her eyes were wide, she didn’t expect that to come out of your mouth. You two had been close but in a friend way, not a relationship way. Plus you were aware of her past- well current issues with Owen. But it was just a compliment right? One she’s never really heard before…

You looked back up at her, the silence was too much. She looked as if she was deep in thought. You felt concerned, fuck did you say too much?

It came out before you could even think about it, "Has no one ever called you beautiful before?" You ask.

Her wide doe eyes flicked up to yours in an instant. She wasn't expecting you to ask that, yes she was thinking it but she didn't think you were too.

She decided to be honest, "No... never." She replies.

You felt the pinching of anger in your veins. She's been around Owen all this time and he's never said one thing about her beauty? How is that even possible? Every day you're with her all you can think about is how perfect she is in every way.

She feels vulnerable, her eyes cast down to the fire once more.

"People mainly call me anything but that. I'm not exactly the most delicate when it comes to anything really."

You chuckled and she looked back up at you in shock.

"Abby, you don't have to be delicate to be beautiful. Anyone can be beautiful and trust me, you are. A little too much sometimes..." You mumbled the last part hoping she didn't hear it.

But she did, it caused her to slightly smile. Your words affected her in a way she's not entirely used to. It felt good. Too good. She wanted to hear more. She felt a surge of confidence overcome her.

"Well what about me is so beautiful then?" She asks.

As if you couldn't get any hotter and the fire wasn't helping much either. You started to fiddle with your fingers and avoid eye contact as much as possible. She thought it was cute, how nervous you got just by the slightest question.

"Uhm- Uhh, How's that rabbit coming along?"

She roared with laughter at your question and decided to let you get away with it. She definitely planned on asking you again later in the night. For now she'll settle with the compliment you gave her. It wasn't often that she let herself get vulnerable with others but when it came to you she wouldn't mind feeling that way again.

"Almost done, don't worry it's cooking very beautifully~" She teased and you couldn't help the smile that broke out on your face soon after.

Just a little drabble for my Abby sluts while I work on so much more! It's been a minute since I posted something and even though this is short I'm glad I was able to finish it! Anyways thank you Beauties~ for reading! Check out my other work while you're here! I got more gay shit coming so stay tuned!!

⛧~

#i enjoyed this #it was cute hehe #abby anderson drabble #abby anderson #tlou2 #the last of us 2 #abby anderson tlou2 #abby anderson tlou #abby anderson the last of us #abby anderson x f!reader #abby anderson x reader #abby anderson x you #abby anderson fanfic #abby anderson imagine #abby anderson fluff #abby anderson x female reader #my abble #tlou2 fanfic

280 notes · View notes

faefaye · 8 months

Text

Chinese LOTM Fic Recs

(@ihavenobigbrain)

I was asked about this, so here we go! (rubs hands together =D)

A few things to know:

I'll only separate by site (either AO3 or Lofter) and whether it's gen or has a ship. None of these recs have smut as far as I remember, as I rarely if ever read it.

I am not Chinese and know nothing about the Chinese language. I've read these fics through the browser translator. Likely there are errors in the translated English titles provided, please feel free to correct them.

For Lofter fics, I'm using the blog url (x in "x.lofter.com") as the writer's name, though idk if that's how it should be done.

Also for Lofter fics, I've linked the first chapter for multi-chapter stories. The rest can be found by going to the user's archive, or (with a bit more difficulty) by clicking on one of the tags at the bottom and going through that.

Recs under the cut because this became a longer post than I expected. Hope you find something to enjoy from this!

Gen Fics:

->AO3

DEITY MAY CRY, by buerzi: The story of an atheist who becomes a believer of the Fool. (post-Book 1, one of my favourite fics)

【克中心】愚者教会调查实录 / [Ke Center] Investigative Records of the Church of the Fool, by liusheng_A: The state of the Church of the Fool, two hundred years after the apocalypse.

Sing come twilight, by Mirrir_Error: Melissa has a conversation with a mysterious lady and learns the truth about her brother. (post-Book 1)

Fifteen Minutes, by ianto0706: Fors accidentally summons Gehrman's historical projection. (post-Book 1)

在葬礼上 / At the funeral, by Mirrir_Error: During Benson's funeral, Melissa meets a familiar stranger.

【破繭組】為美好的真神獻上祝福 / [Broken Cocoon Group] Offer blessings to the beautiful true god, by Zye_404: The four transmigrators meet up in the Astral Realm and decide to descend to the real world. Klein helps Roselle meet his children, Amanises goes shopping and ASG hunts down Amon.

【诡秘】欢迎加入地球OL保障队 / [Secret] Welcome to the Earth OL Support Team, by abigail_000017: Klein Moretti introduces you to the Earth OL Support Team, the first and last line of defence for Earth, and its various members. Do keep track of what you should and shouldn't do. (alternate universe)

但它不断冒出 / but it keeps popping up, by undertoneaugust: (author's summary) "After being woken up by his little niece for the thousand and eighty-sixth time, Klein Moretti finally agreed to play with her."

隐瞒之事 / concealment, by undertoneaugust: Bernadette in the present, seeking her father, and the past she remembers.

【诡秘】我有一个朋友 / [Secret] I have a friend, by Kuffskein: I suggested going on a walk to Deacon Leonard Mitchell, and so we visited Tingen. (first-person perspective, post-Book 1)

修罗会 / Shura Society*, by ominoushunter: When Klein resurrects from his grave, Azik is there. This leads to several things, but mainly the Tarot Club's utter confusion on the shape of the love polygon between Mr. Death, his many students, Mr. World and Mr. Star. (all ships present are mainly in the minds of the Tarot Club :p)

(*according to this post, "Shura Field" is a phrase used to refer to an intense struggle on a battlefield but also for shows where multiple characters are in love with the same person)

->Lofter

【廷根师生组】新生-随机爆炸鱼干 / [Tingen Students and Teachers Group] Freshmen, by linyuansuyuan: (author's summary) "Klein has three homes in Tingen, for which he needs to pay a low rent every month, a few carefully completed homework and several times of unburdened laughter." (pre-canon, warning for Canonical Character Death, slight hint of Azik/Klein but only as a student's crush) (this is the fic that shaped OG Klein for me, and made me fall in love with the pre-canon possibilities)

［海上组］冰山浮出一角 / [Sea Group] The tip of the iceberg emerges, by wangyouwushang86832: After the journey in Groselle's Travels, Gehrman loses his memory, only retaining the beginning of his time in Tingen. Danitz, Anderson and the rest of the Golden Dream get to see another side of the crazy adventurer. (incomplete, ongoing)

【诡秘之主观影体】我于神明 / [The Lord of Mysteries] I am in the gods, by xiayanzhangxiangyi: Tianzun tries to use the transmigrators to take away Klein's anchors. In order not to lose, Klein is forced to reveal the truth of his life to several people close to him, as well as the transmigrators. (post-Book 1, viewing fic)

【观影体】如果神弃之地的 "游戏" 被围观 / [Movie Watching Body] If the "game" of the Forsaken Land of the Gods is watched, by muleyi62440: While Klein is in the Forsaken Land with Amon, the Tarot Club pray to him. But rather than not getting a response, they are pulled into the gray fog and get to watch the struggles he's going through. (viewing fic)

【唤醒沉睡愚者24h/8:30】天幕之下 / [Wake up the Sleeping Fool 24h/8:30] Under the Canopy, by rizerxx: In the year 1366, the Fool wakes up.

1-【论坛体】论坛新更新的游戏，有人玩了吗？/ 1- [Forum body] Has anyone played the newly updated game in the forum?, by mlikebc: Forum story (ie, it takes place in some kind of online forum). The Church of the Fools has released a gacha dress-up game called Miracle Meimei, about a person waking up without memories and rediscovering the past. As people play it, they too discover the truth about the angels of the Fool and the people connected to them... (post-Book 1, incomplete, ongoing, mentions of stuff from COI, currently a 21-part story)

Leonard/Klein:

->AO3

【克中心】我可能是假的天使 / [Ke Center] I might be a fake angel, by BB_Roin: Canon divergence- if the Evernight Goddess couldn't separate the curtain from Zhou during the transmigration. The focus isn't on the ship and it's pretty slowburn Leoklein. (incomplete, ongoing)

World/Fool:

->AO3

世愚｜倒计时十五分 / World Yu | 15 minute countdown, by suqiansheng: After the betrayal in Utopia, Klein goes to the Historical Void before the First Epoch and summons Gehrman's historical projection. A much-needed moment is had. (note: not romantic in any way imo but it's tagged World/Fool so I'm reccing it here)

世愚｜小团圆 / World Yu | A little reunion, by suqiansheng: Klein and Gehrman are separated brothers, having a reunion dinner... (Major Character Death of sorts? Also, same note as above, ie has no romantic elements)

【愚世】最优解 / [Foolishness] The best solution, by Indigo10: Post-Book 1, Klein crafts a marionette Gehrman and instills him with the humanity Adam once gave him. (Major Character Death, same note as above :p)

世愚｜数到三 / Shi Yu | Count to three, by suqiansheng: Post-Book 1, the avatar of Gehrman Sparrow makes a suggestion to Klein. He is not the first Gehrman Sparrow to do so. (sorta Major Character Death)

世愚 | 雨夜乌托邦 / Shi Yu | Rainy Night Utopia, by suqiansheng: The Fool Klein shares a meal with his Blessed in Utopia. (AU where Klein's identities are separate people)

访谈录【愚世】 / Interview Record [Foolish World], by Fei Yu: Gehrman Sparrow, a heretic, has been captured and awaits execution. Before that, a reporter seeks him out for an interview about his life.

【世愚】妄念 / [Shi Yu] Delusion, by youlancangqiong: The Fool likes equivalent exchange, and asks Gehrman for his wish. (AU where these two are separate people, sorta Major Character Death?)

世愚｜值得 / [Shi Yu] Worthy, by suqiansheng: Before the apocalypse, Klein and Gehrman share a peaceful moment.

Azik/Klein:

->AO3

关于我那个总是陷入危险而不自知的同行 / About my colleague who's always in danger without knowing it, by ominoushunter: Canon divergence where Klein doesn't join the Nighthawks and instead becomes a history lecturer, but is still a Beyonder. Cue a comedy of misunderstandings between Klein and Azik, and their secret identities of "the World" and "the Death Consul".

【诡秘】死神即将回归……吗? [Secret] Reaper is about to return...?, by Kuffskein: Suarez, a descendant of the Eggers family, reports to Salinger about the changes in the present era. It's enough to make even enemies feel pity.

【诡秘】愚者教会内部论坛 / [Secret] Church of the Fool Internal Forum, by Kuffskein: Forum story. While discussing the past of the Angel of Death, people uncover a strange relationship between the Angel, Gehrman Sparrow, the Fool and an ordinary person named Klein.

苍白 / Pale, by ominoushunter: Rather than continuing his life as it is, Azik chooses to complete his soul in the mausoleum, and what follows from that.

【诡秘】谁才是执政官大人的真爱？/ [Secret] Who is the true love of the Consul?, by Kuffskein: For a festival of Bayam, tradition is that the Death Consul must travel the capital in a coffin alongside his partner. This would be all fine and good, if the high priest of Balam didn't have to decide who to invite between the Death Consul's six lovers.

->Lofter

【兹克24H：他的猫与锚-19:00】降灵之舞 / 【Zik 24H: His Cat and the Anchor-19:00】Spiritual Dance, by xiayanzhangxiangyi: After Azik wakes up, he goes to Bayam to introduce himself as the Angel of Death and learn more about the Church his student established.

【兹克520活动||17：20】艾格斯教授是gay还是邪教徒 / [Zik 520 Event||17:20] Is Professor Eggers gay or a cultist, by mosquitoyeah: During an expedition, a pair of brothers wonder about their guide Azik Eggers, and place a bet on whether he's a cultist or gay. (post-Book 1, two-part story)

Dunn/Daly:

->AO3

【索斯特➡戴莉】直至最后一朵玫瑰凋谢之时 / [Soest->Daly] Until the last rose fades, by GetSomeFries (NachtElf): Soest falls in love with Daly, but she keeps rebuffing him and he wonders why. (the arrow denotes one-sided feelings iirc)

邓恩史密斯查了五次水表 / Dunn Smith checked the water meter five times, by 6749: set within In Modern Day. This is the fifth time Dunn has visited Daly's house, citing reports that she's performing suspicious religious activities.

Amanises/Klein:

->AO3

今天世界不对劲 / Something is wrong with the World today, by Mirrir_Error: (author's summary) "Today is a special day, "—" wants to play an interesting game with the Fool."

Sharron/Maric:

->AO3

【沙琪玛】莎伦小姐心直口快 / [Sharron/Maric] Miss Sharron is outspoken, by huangnanjun: The story of how Sharron and Maric met, and how they escaped from the Rose School of Thought.

That's all from me for now!

For those who've read this far, I leave you with a wonderful Reddit post about how to browse for LOTM fics on Lofter.

#lord of the mysteries #lotm #lord of mysteries #fic recs #lotm spoilers #long post

71 notes · View notes

mrdarcygenderenvy · 3 months

Text

Recent Austen adaptations yelling

Ok I DID make this blog to review historical-set Pride & Prejudice adaptations (with an exception made for iconic B&P). But for everyone who was DEFINITELY WONDERING, yes I have also been storing away a lot of opinions about other recent Austen adaptations that I Must Tell Someone.

Fire island (2022)

A modern gay party cheesy rom-com P&P that genuinely made me laugh. Having seen some other (whiter) cheesy gay romcoms that were extreeeemely PG & playing it safe, I was pleasantly surprised.

Also Bowen Yang and his story just came across really earnest in a way I was into - would watch this man cry again, 10/10.

Personally as an extremely disabled british nerd (now tragically unable to travel and/or go to the club...) this gay scene is a long way from my queer scene. But I still had emotions, you know?

Kinda wanted more of the Mary analogue and generally just normal looking people (almost everyone is so ripped) but I appreciate that's how beautiful smooth people often look in mainstream american films, we can't have everything.

DARCY WATCH: I do not want to dress like this adaptation's chinos Mr Darcy. But Conrad Ricamora was generally great and very hot and awkward and understood the assignment. Good ice cream throw.

Emma (2020)

I know I know, it's pretty... but I don't think that's enough!!!!!

Lovely production, beautiful costumes, a candy wes-anderson cinematography that really suits the story, and it's fun to notice references to actual outfits and prints from the time but lads. LADS. UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME: Where is the chemistry???

You can’t make Mr Knightley a nice sweet boy (so funny to have cast a posh folksy singing man) and leave the plot the same and expect it to work!! Also I was personally pissed off that a lot of the promo/ ads for this made it look like ~forbidden love~ when it's the 2 richest white people in town getting together?? ? There's actually not even a class difference in this one, guys.

Basically this romance was nothing to me!!! I felt nothing!!!!!!!! WHERE'S THE DEPTH

I did like the bit where he lies down though. Relatable.

Also why are you drawing so much attention to the servants when you don’t seem to have anything to say about class...? 'Wow look how many servants they had! Anyway, they don't get any speaking lines'... it's 2020 guys!!! like what are we saying here. 'isn't it cool to think about how people were rich'??

kind of the point of Emma (character) is she's pretty superficial, but the story does not, in fact, have to be

Persuasion (2022)

Weeping softly into a pillow........ did you know this version meant a version with Sarah Snook and Joel Fry got cancelled?? we could have had it all

(standing on a table yelling) THE MODERNISATION WAS NOT THE PROBLEM WITH THIS FILM!!!

Honestly I actively liked all the entire secondary cast in this. Louisa and Mary were extremely charming fun takes to watch. ('I'm an empath' IS right for the character if you're doing modern jokes!!!) And nobody can deny this was a correct and powerful use of Richard E Grant.

Henry Golding was naturally great. Apparently he got offered the lead and took the villain instead, which DOES mean the villain is super charming and fun to watch which is... hard to match and.... kind of shows up.... the main man.

It's been said before but the main two were WOEFUL imo. I have no beef with the actors I just question the DIRECTION and whether anyone making this knew (or cared) why people... enjoy things.

Book Anne is the quietest gentlest loser and I LOVE HER and so does basically every Austen nerd. Making her a quirky wine-bath girl who's honestly just cruel sometimes fully stops the main romance chemistry and plot from working.

And it means the main boy is still like 'god I'm so horny for how KIND AND CAPABLE YOU ARE' which is just 100% no longer true. You can't transplant a personality in a romance but leave the plot the exact same and expect it to work. The chemistry IS the plot in a romance..........

you can't act morally superior to your siblings and still rate people out of ten.... also so funny to me that everyone else gets period outfits and hair whereas this protagonist looks like she just glanced at a picture of any time in the past and grabbed a couple shirts from primark. it doen't even look good or build character!!!!!

Anyway, not to be an elderly man like 'ohhh why does nobody care about character these days' but the reason something like Clueless works is because it has the heart of the story right, instead of just copying the surface level stuff.

#making all of these a single post which probably means nobody will reblog it ever. OH WELL #emma 2020 #persuasion 2022 #fire island #austen adaptations #full disclosure yes I was midway through making a queer regency romance GN whose plot is partly based on emma and p&p when i saw 2020 emma #so YES.......... i have strong opinions... possibly UNPOPULAR ONES..........#anyway if you enjoy the things i'm complaining about more power to you. I'M TOO BORING tO ENJOY THEM UNFORTUNATELY

22 notes · View notes

its-steddie-time · 10 months

Text

hi everyone !! this is maya (they/them, 27)! you might know me from my tiktok steddie fic rec videos, but I'm also a steddie fic writer! there's never a time when I'm not thinking about these two lovely idiots.

I have two completed longer fics (the joan flicker project & you were sleeping with your rings on) and a bunch of oneshots featuring all things smut/angst/fluff and beyond! I'm currently working on blue on blue (a blue velvet inspired steddie fic) with @infinite-orangepeel my partner in crime ♡

you can find me on ao3 here

you can find me on tiktok here

you can find me on twitter here

my ko-fi if you'd like to support what I do ♡

on this blog I post/reblog about:

✩ steddie (like 98% of what you'll find here, what can I say, the brainrot is real!)

✩ steddie ficlets + headcanons

✩ joe keery/djo (his face, his music, his everything)

✩ steddie fic recs (I'm always looking for new fics to read and rec!)

✩ general stranger things content

✩ wip excerpts + fic updates

general notes:

✩ I do post NSFW content so this blog is 18+, minors DNI!

✩ feel free to rec your own fic! I can't promise I'll have time to read it (my tbr is out of control), but I will do my best!

other things I'd love to talk about (ask me anything—inbox or dms):

✩ all things poetry and fanfic (book recs, fic writing, fic recs, writing help, etc;)

✩ music: (give me recs, ask for recs—also here are my steddie and steve harrington playlists)

✩ tv shows: stranger things, the magicians, the oa, community, the haunting of hill house/bly manor, etc;)

✩ movies: david lynch, wes anderson, sci-fi/fantasy, rom-coms, etc;

✩ anything else you'd like to know! i love to talk to people and make new steddie/st friends ♡

♡ gorgeous steddie fanart at the top by @bbgirlsteve for my fic "songs for beginners (i used to be a king)" ♡

#welcome #pinned post #steddie #steddie brainrot #steve x eddie #joe keery #stranger things #steddie fanfic #ao3 writer

103 notes · View notes

lexusiswriting · 21 days

Text

A love you deserve (Ricky Olson) - Part 13 of ?

Hi guys!

I know it's been a long time and I'm sorry for that. :( Hope you'll like this part. <3

Warnings: none.

Tags: @multifandomcrackhead, @nicelittlenightmares, @roll-tide-babe89, @skulliecadaver-blog, @21-century-tae, @melissa-anderson, @abiomens, @w743, @insanitywulf, @awkwardalex, @philomenie, @kaite1996, @coc41nn, @xxsparklezzzxx, @shilohrosechicken

Requests: OPEN.

_________________________________

Ricky’s point of view

We had to stay for 4 more hours to work on the song. It was still not done, but we made some changes to it. In the meantime, Lexus told Chris that she was not feeling well and she would go home. Of course, it was a lie, and he knew it had something to do with me. But surprisingly, he did not say anything to me.

While I was driving home, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. There must be something I can do to make her trust me again. At the same time, I hated myself for being another burden on her mind, next to her ex-husband. He did her so wrong, and I hoped I would never see him again because I knew I would regret later what I would do to him.

Suddenly, I took the right exit instead of the left one. My brain made me choose the road to her home instead of mine. I decided that it may be a sign, something I need to do right now, or I’ll never get another chance. 6 years have already passed and I couldn’t wait any longer.

I parked my car and went to the door. For a couple of minutes, I contemplated if I should do it or if it was better to leave. Again, my unconscious moved my hand and knocked on the door. After a couple more minutes, which felt like hours, Lexus was in front of me.

“Ricky, what are you doing here? I thought I made myself very clear when I told you to leave me alone.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that. But I really can’t get you out of my head and my heart. The only thing I am asking is for one more chance to make things clear. After I will explain everything, if you don’t want to have anything to do with me, I promise I will step back.”

She looked at me dead in the eyes and a tired sigh left her lips. Still thinking that it may be wrong, she moved a little so she could let me enter.

“We can talk in the living room, my daughter is with her father. Start explaining.”

“I don’t know how many times I can say it, but I’m really sorry for everything. From the moment we met, I only brought sadness into your life. Now I’m sure, more than ever, that the only thing I want in this life is you.”

“This is not easy at all, Ricky. You can’t expect me to forgive you just like that, jump into your arms, and pretend nothing ever happened.”

“Of course, I know that. But we can take things slowly. Then you’ll see I’m not the man I used to be. You can trust me.”

“How slow do you think would be best?”

“Well, I can assure you, nothing intimate would happen. Not even holding hands if you don’t feel comfortable doing it. We can be friends first. Having dinners together, watching a movie or just talking when we need to get something out of our chest.”

“What if it will make things worse?”

“It can never happen. We can try and when we feel things are going in the wrong direction we can stop. But at least we will know that we tried.”

Lexus stood up from the couch and walked around the room. While she was thinking of an answer, I was feeling like I could faint at any moment. There she was, the woman of my life, deciding our future.

“I guess we can try.”

All I wanted at that moment was to take her in my arms and kiss her with all the passion I had in me. But remembering what we agreed on, I just smiled, knowing this was a win as well. Now I had the opportunity to show her how much she means to me.

After 6 months

Lexus’s point of view

Motionless In White released their album “Scoring the End of the World” and it was a huge success. Their fans loved it so much, the songs did so great on the charts, and I couldn’t be any much happier for them. Now they had to prepare for the world tour, which will start in about 2 months.

At the same time, Ricky and I got to be the most talked about topic. A lot of pictures were released with us from what we thought was going to be a private moment. The speculations started right away, all of them saying that we got back together, which was not the case. There were some not-so-nice ones as well when people would say that I divorced Corey just to be with Ricky, not thinking of my daughter’s feelings. After a few of those, I stopped reading the news when they popped on my phone.

Apart from these things, I was having a really great time with Ricky. We started to get to know each other for a second time, discovering how much we changed through the years. He kept his promise and never tried anything without my consent and after 6 months of being friends, we only got to hold hands. I appreciated how he never complained about it and forced me to do something I would not want.

Even though there was not much happening romantically between us, I took him home to meet my daughter. Corey was not happy about it, especially thinking that Ricky could become one day her stepfather. Regardless of that, my daughter liked him from the beginning. She would show him all of her favourite toys and make him play with her, which was the sweetest thing I ever saw. I knew that in my final decision, I had to include her as well, and I was glad to see how well they got along.

Tonight we decided to have dinner at my place. While we were preparing the food, Blaire was upstairs in her room. The tour will start in 2 months and I knew I wanted to make things straight before he would be gone for 7 months. I knew I would never have this good of an opportunity any time soon, and I wanted to get it out of my chest.

#ricky olson x reader #ricky olson fanfic #ricky horror imagine #ricky olson #ricky horror #justin morrow #miw #motionless in white fanfic #ryan sitkowski #vinny mauro #chris motionless #motionless in white

12 notes · View notes

simptasia · 1 year

Text

ages of LOST characters when we first meet them vs the ages of the actors when they first started playing them. reminder that the starting point of LOST is september 22nd 2004. if a character’s age seems one less than sounds right to you its because their birthday is coming up. if a character is missing from this it’s because we don’t know their age in canon (looking at you, desmond)

jack shephard: 34 matthew fox: 38

kate austen: 27 evangeline lilly: 25

hugo “hurley” reyes: 25 jorge garcia: 31

james “sawyer” ford: 35 josh holloway: 35

sawyer says he’s 35. but lostpedia only has sawyer’s birthyear, 1968, making him 36. however an easy explanation for this is that sawyer has a birthday coming up in the post september to december range (like many other characters here) thus making the birthyear and what sawyer said still right

john locke: 48 terry o’quinn: 52

sayid jarrah: 36 naveen andrews: 35

jin-soo kwon: 29 daniel dae kim: 36

sun-hwa kwon: 24 yunjin kim: 31

claire littleton: 21 emilie de ravin: 23

charlie pace: 27 dominic monaghan: 27

okay so an odd thing happened here. we don’t actually know charlie’s age in canon, except that based on a statement from liam that he’s absolutely less than 30. and basically what happened is there was big debate on lostpedia, the general gist being he’s 25 to 28, until everybody just gave up and they slapped dom’s birthday on charlie’s page. and it’s still there to this day

walt lloyd: 10 malcolm david kelley: 12

walt’s actor was gonna age outta the role anyways due to the nature of lost’s timeline but their first mistake was casting a 12 year old. like, hello, puberty?

shannon rutherford: 20 maggie grace: 21

boone carlyle: 23 ian somerhalder: 26

danielle rousseau: 44 mira furlan: 49

ethan rom: 27 william mapother: 39

the consequences of season 5 are starting to hit

bernard nadler: 56 or 57 sam anderson: 58

ana lucia cortez: 29 michelle rodriguez: 27

eko tunde: 35 adewale akinnuoye-agbaje: 38

alexandra “alex” rousseau/linus: 16 tania raymonde: 17

benjamin “ben” linus: 39 michael emerson: 51

this isn’t even due to later timeline decisions, they just decided to do this

miles straume: 27 ken leung: 38

daniel faraday: 26 jeremy davies: 39

charlotte lewis: 33 rebecca mader: 31

and theeere’s the season 5 whammy. for those who don’t know (you must be new to my blog) dan and miles ages differ so much from their actors because when our guys are in 1977, it suited the story and characters better for miles to be a baby and dan to be an embryo (and char to be 6) at the same time. the writers were set on 1977 being the year everybody got stuck in and that’s how we get daniel faraday being an oxford professor at fucking 18

it’s something that gets funnier and sadder the longer you think about it

anyways. thank you for your time!

#i dunno when exactly lost started filming so the actor's ages are close enoughs #i say this like any of you care that much #anyways i just think lists are neat #this took more effort that it looks. i had to look up every actor's birthdays and i had my calculator open the whole time #this took forever and my computer hated doing it #7 years isn't much of an age difference but because dan's starts with a 2 and char's starts with a 3 it looks like a much bigger gap #miles would jokingly call char a cougar

74 notes · View notes

neonlitlesbians · 9 months

Note

do you have a masterpost or some key posts that help explain the setting/worldbuilding or context for your ocs? or intro posts to learn about them?

oh shit oh shit oh shittttt ok i really need to organize a little better around here BUT i have a little bit i can offer right now! (ive been meaning to make intro posts for my ocs, thank you for the reminder—i will try to get on that soon!)

(LOTS under the cut you have no idea how much i have to say!! thank you SO much for this ask)

The World

Alana and her friends live in a huge, dying cyberpunk city.

Ten years ago, the algorithm governing the city decided that infinite capitalistic growth was no longer sustainable, and went into power saving mode. Those who hid, survived; the vast majority of the city's inhabitants were given a choice between dying and going into stasis. It's not like they could just leave—The Old Internet is chewed up and defunct, existing only in archives; the remains of GPS satellites have long since crashed to earth; and it's not like an old map would be much good, since a city in what was once barren Nevada is now... on the coast.

Understandably, the ones surviving today are still traumatized, as well as lost and more than a little bored.

(The city's name hasn't been established yet—i might just call it The City but i'm not sure yet.)

Characters

Each of these characters is diligently tagged on my blog, so you can search through all of my art that features them!

Alana/The Watcher (she/her) – One of the most capable fighters in town. Angry and quiet, but deeply caring. Died and was brought back to life by Ethlyn, now running on both red and black blood. Literature nerd and occasional writer. Zinnia's lover, Ethlyn's best friend, and Hostility's dueling partner.

Electra (any) – An outsider with a close relationship with Alana. Can suck the charge out of electronics, store it, and release it. One of the two people who can evenly duel Alana (Hostility being the other). Protective and confident.

Zinnia (she/her) – A workaholic journalist who was nearly killed attempting to cover a public massacre. Saved by Alana and given a new body by Ethlyn, she now does basically the same stuff as before, but tails Alana and keeps track of her reputation. Quiet and serious, tending to come off as rather cold. Alana's lover.

Ethlyn Calloway (she/her) – A genius engineer, especially in the field of cybernetics, and kind of a horndog. Made most of her friends' augments and then some. Extremely hyperactive, chronically short of sleep, and prone to mood swings. The cast's leading historian on the old, defunct Internet. Bell's girlfriend and Alana's savior.

Bell Anderson (he/she) – An incredibly skilled medical doctor and surgeon. Helps Ethlyn with installing cybernetics, and was critical to Alana and Zinnia's survival. Also a highly capable chef (a good thing, too—Ethlyn would survive on nuggies alone without him). Amiable, generous, and open. Ethlyn's lover and caretaker, but gets along well with just about anyone.

Hostility (she/her) – A capable engineer and swordsmith. Made all of her own augments, as well as Nico's and some of Darcy's. Makes and maintains Alana's weaponry as well as many others'. Built an entire car out of scraps from the junkyard that she melted down and reforged. Wise and laid-back. Crowe's girlfriend, Alana's friend, and one of Rat's closer friends.

Rat Manchu (she/it) – An informant. The "word on the street." Shrewd, greasy, and much smarter than she looks. Kind of an asshole and hard to get along with, but ultimately means well. (Usually.) Also has a car (but Nico usually takes the keys before she can do anything stupid). Gay and in love with Nico and Darcy.

Nico Lombard (they/them) – A former cop and current encrypted-data-vault-slash-blank-slate. Jailbroken thanks to Hostility and Darcy, and now lives with Darcy and Rat. Still figuring themself out. Gay and in love with Darcy and Rat.

Darcy Relayer (shx/hxr) – A 1337 H4XX0R with some of the juiciest databases on the network at hxr (many) fingertips. A little bit insane. Just as hyperactive as Ethlyn, but more data-driven. Prone to using goofy slang terms from bygone eras. Gay and in love with Rat and Nico.

Crowe Stormwell (she/they) – A dancer and prostitute at the Z-Axis bar. Ethlyn's favorite test subject to try new types and models of cybernetics on. Whimsical and a horndog. Hostility's girlfriend.

Aly (any) – [WIP] The bartender at the Z-Axis. The cast's only fully fledged android.. Crowe's roommate.

The Guitarist (she/her) – A traveler from abroad who plays at the Z-Axis, though sometimes you can hear her music on the wind at the edge of town. Blind and mute, relying mainly on her guitar to communicate. Doesn't really have any strong ties to anyone, past or present. Mysterious, but easy to get along with.

Lizzy (xe/xer) – A reclusive tailor, printer, and artist responsible for a lot of the group's clothing, especially the quality stuff like Alana's outfits and Bell's lab coat. Capable of restoring physical media like books, as well as giving tattoos.

The Keeper (she/her) – The sole occupant of the lighthouse at the edge of town. A little cagey, but ventures into town now and again. Farms her own food, and trades with the rest of the cast on occasion.

#masterpost #tbh #++#ask #my writing #long post #looooooooooooong post #z axis lore

16 notes · View notes

bioticbooty · 1 year

Text

Have a little Crosshairs-the-rewrite snippet preview because the next three days are gonna suck so hard at work, so I'm gonna spread a little joy before I do my work thing and get lost in the weeds of negotiations for the rest of the week. Tumbleweeds are about to blow through my blog till Saturday.

Pre-Eden Prime Normandy scene.

-----

Kaidan’s brow is positively dripping with sweat — he hasn’t trained this hard since basic. Poor Jenkins is still flopped on the floor after the end of the session, staring at the ceiling and catching his breath.

Kaidan’s not sure what’s worse — the fact that they have not one, but two N7s in the gym at the same time, or that Shepard doesn’t appear to have even broken a sweat. The XO seems to pull energy from another realm, just sucking it straight through as fuel. She’s relentless. Kaidan had considered himself to be in shape, but it seems to be Shepard’s personal mission to prove none of them were.

Except for her.

And maybe Anderson. The Captain surreptitiously wipes his brow when he thinks no one is looking, but he’s caught by Shepard. She slaps him bracingly across the shoulder and calls him ‘old man.’

Kaidan wipes his own brow. He’s got nothing to prove the way the Captain does. Jenkins is still on the floor, so Kaidan moves to stand above him. “You alright there, kid?”

Jenkins refocuses his eyes on Kaidan. His breath is still coming fast and quick. The kid had tried to keep pace with Shepard for the first half of the session, unaware of the time that had passed and how much longer they still had to go. That bit him in the ass in the second half when they switched to endurance.

“Think I’d rather you toss me across the gym again,” Jenkins says.

Kaidan barks a laugh, then offers the Corporal his hand and pulls him to his feet.

Throwing Jenkins across the room after being goaded by the Corporal — and Shepard — was hilarious. Kaidan thought for sure he’d overdone it, but then Jenkins popped right up off the mat, shouting, ‘that was awesome!’ and looking for a second round. Kaidan had not obliged him.

“You’re young, Jenkins,” Kaidan says as he guides Jenkins towards the water station, arm around his shoulders, “and if I might give you some advice?”

Jenkins nods fervently.

Kaidan leans in close and says, low, “Don’t try to keep pace with Shepard. She’ll knock you on your ass every time.”

Jenkins jerks his head back in surprise, and Kaidan laughs again.

Oh yeah, he’d seen the way the XO’s eyes had flashed deviously when she realized Jenkins was matching her pace for pace. Ramped up her pace slow enough that Jenkins never realized he was caught dead in her crosshairs.

“Did you keep pace?” Jenkins asks.

Kaidan shakes his head before the question is even finished. “I’m not really one for that kind of masochism.”

“Come now, Alenko,” Shepard appears in front of them and hands Jenkins a towel, “Don’t sell yourself short. You could probably give me a run for my money.”

Jenkins accepts the towel in awe.

Even in PT clothes, lounging against the water cooler, Shepard radiates intensity. Like she’s studying the room without even looking at it. Her eyes pierce everyone she looks at, and right now that gaze is laser focused on Kaidan. He feels naked.

He doesn’t want her to see that. “See, you’re just greasing me up so I’ll take the bait.”

Shepard tilts her head to the side in the lazy manner of a predator examining their prey. “Never said you’d win, Lieutenant.”

Despite himself, Kaidan stands straighter. “The bait’s looking a little shinier now, Commander.”

Shepard grins, fills her bottle with water, and saunters away.

After a moment, Jenkins taps his shoulder. “LT, I thought you said you weren’t a masochist?”

“Shepard more than implied she’d mop the floor with me,” Kaidan says by way of explanation.

“She said you’d give her a run for her money.”

“With the inevitable outcome that she’d win.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

Absolutely she would, he thinks. He’d have no chance in hell of coming out on top, despite his biotics. Before Jenkins had entered the gym, Shepard surprised Kaidan by standing in front of him and started the first move in the biotic-and-non-biotic warm up routine. It was the first time he’d not had to teach that one in all his years of service. It was a warm up meant to engender trust and familiarity, so the squad wouldn’t be caught by surprise. Biotic fields rippled outwards, no matter how refined the manipulation of energy. If the squad was caught by surprise by the static electricity and the minor shifts of gravity, it could blow an entire operation.

Shepard had executed every maneuver perfectly, responding to the subtle shifts in the well he created in a way no other marine he’d ever worked with had done. Even those aboard the Adelaide.

“That’s besides the point.”

Kaidan drains the last of his water.

Jenkins studies him for a moment. “I think you might be a little bit of a masochist, LT.”

Kaidan refills his water bottle and heads towards the showers. “Comes with the commission.”

#crosshairs fic #kaidan alenko #olivia shepard #david anderson #corporal jenkins #just a little PT to get the day going #and a bright-eyed Corporal trying to keep pace with an N #one of the things i'm trying to fix in crosshairs is that i didn't have ebough pre-Eden Prime stuff on the Normandy

23 notes · View notes