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spiltscribbles · 3 years

Note

Miss you and your marvelous writing!!!! Just a prompt if you’re up to it 😊 exes wolfstar staying friends but sirius gets into a new relationship and he brings his new boo to somewhere he took remus and remus gets sad 😭 but they get back together eventually

Notes: OMFG BABEY! this is so SO beyond precious of you! i adore you to bits! thank you for the sweetness and for this scrumptious angst🥺🥺 i really hope you like it😭😘😘💜

SEND ME A PROMPT | A Reblog means SO SO much! I ADORE YOU💜💜

“He can just be so… So” James pauses right then, takes off his cap with the hand that’s still clutching his baseball bat, and ruffles his hair with the other.

“Un-opinionated,” Remus offers half heartedly as they turn the block to the small coffee shop nearest school, both of them freshly showered after the required morning workouts for Tuesday and Thursdays. It’s the first semester in which Remus has actually joined in on the seven minute track, considering the fact that even despite their crazy contradictory schedules with all the sports and extra curriculars they each had, Sirius always made it a point to buy their ice coffees and drop it off to Remus, sometimes leaving them a quarter of an hour late for first period, or as just a quick drop and dash if one of them had an exam.

It was sweet, considerate. It was Sirius showing how much he cared because he’s never been one for words, even if he would frequently print off the little texts Remus would send him about how Sirius made him feel, and hang it up on the wall besides his bed, along with photos of them and Remus by himself and a few of their other friends too.

But yeah… None of that is really a thing anymore, not the coffees or the texts or the promises of being one another’s always. Not after calling it quits in early January because they knew by August they’d be working with thousands of miles between them and a three hour difference on top of that. It just wouldn’t have been feasible in the long run, and sure— Remus was the one to broach the topic and he knows that Sirius was hesitant about the logical side of it, but sometimes Remus wishes Sirius had fought harder, had argued louder, had wanted Remus more. But that’s a ridiculous expectation, and he had only admitted as much to Lily. And at the end of the day, it was the right choice, because it’s only early May now, and Remus can’t imagine how sick he’ll feel once catching his flight to Berkeley, and they’re steadfastly back in the best friends category of things. He can’t fathom how it would’ve been if they spent all these months and the ones after being together in all those intimate ways, knowing that they’ll be so far apart soon enough.

It was the right decision for the both of them and their friendship.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s go with that,” James says, bringing Remus out of his gloomy contemplations while opening the glass door to Three Broomsticks, sporting a thin smile that he always has on when he’s trying to be kind even when he’s irritated as all get out.

Remus snorts at him, elbow checking his side as he walks past. “Well he’s sharing that dorm with you and Sirius in New Haven, so I guess you’ve got that to look forwards to.”

James’s face pulls into a grimace and their typical barista nods their way, already receiving their orders through the app and sparing them having to wait in the queue. “Maybe Pete’ll grow his own personality in university, yeah?”

“Sure Prongsie,” Remus says, noncommittal as he checks his phone and lies against the windowpane, already exhausted by the morning. “And if he doesn’t, I’m sure Sirius is about to blow his lid any day now.”

“It’s going to be funny as fuck, and you won’t even be there to see the debris,” James counters, sounding pleasant enough even though Remus knows that he’s nearly as pissed off as Sirius is about the decision for him to go back to his home state for undergrad.

“You’ll send pictures though.”

“Of course Moony my old friend,” James jokes, tossing him a wink as they straighten once spotting their coffees being rung up. But as Remus takes a step forwards, he notices that a familiarly tan pair of hands are reaching for them, and when Remus looks up he feels like an idiot for not noticing him sooner. Because there Sirius is, dashing as ever in their school’s maroon blazer and tan pants, and his hair is windblown and shining as it falls midway of the nape of his neck. But Remus doesn’t really have the chance to appreciate just how damn good looking his ex-boyfriend is, rather, he’s more distracted by how Sirius doesn’t even notice him or James as he pivots around and hands over the second cup to a beaming Gideon Prewett. Their heads incline while they exchange a few words that are absolutely impossible to pick up in the crowded cafe before they bump their shoulders together and walk out the opposite door.

And it feels like nothing else watching that exchange— like their was a hammer and pick chipping away at his stupid, weeping heart.

“I think they’re just doing a project together,” James says lowly in Remus’s ear, clapping him on the back in reassurance, and Remus loves him, but he’s not in the mood for false platitudes, feels like there is a ugly, burning fire festering deep in his stomach and making Remus want to hurl all over the wooden floors.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replies instead, mild as he discretely picks up his phone again and opens up to the last conversation he had this morning.

R: need intel

L: Say more sexy things to me, lover

R: sirius and Gideon

R: what’s going on there

L: I’ll take a look, dw

Buoyed by Lily’s scary levels of detective skills, Remus returns his phone to his satchel and signals James to follow him to pick up their actual drinks. “C’mon, Flitwick hates it when we’re late.”

“Do you want the good news first, or the bad.” Lily asks Remus later that morning during their shared free period, dropping her bag on the tabletop that they typically commandeer towards the back of Hogwarts’s library, nearest the windows and tucked away by the shelves.

“Is there actually any good news? Or are you just saying that to make me feel better.” Remus asks, single brow cocked as he shuts his history book and tosses it to the side.

“Well your hair looks especially nice today,” she offers with a small smile, sitting besides him and ruffling his curls.

“Thanks, I suppose. But I’d rather just get to it. And don’t sigh at me like that! All long suffering and all.”

Rolling her eyes, Lily gathers her hair into a high pony before turning to Remus fully. “You’re my best friend, I love you more than just about anyone. You know that, right?” Lily asks him, stiff stance relaxing when he nods in turn. “Then understand that I’m saying this from a place of love, but you don’t get to be mad at him, okay. You’re the one who called it off Re, you’re the one who wanted you guys to go back to being friends to avoid that messiness in August. And you know I respect the decision, but also it wasn’t the only one to be had. I mean look at James and I—“

“You’re going to Columbia Lils,” Remus bristles, hates how defensive he’s getting all of a sudden. “That train ride is like two hours and some change at the very most. It’s not the same.”

“You guys could’ve made it work,” she insists, green eyes blazing in the dim light. “He’s crazy about you, and you’re in love with him— Like ass backwards in love. You can’t just cut that off like it’s nothing, damn it, Remus.”

He can feel his own ears reddening and Remus hates it, hates how today had started off so innocuous and now it’s an absolute shit show. Remus hates that Lily is always correct about everything, and hates how Sirius probably is regretting telling Remus he still fully intends to ask him out to prom, and hates how much he loves him— how whenever he looks at Sirius it’s just a deluge of wanting and adoring and regretting and needing to feel his lips against Sirius’s own again like a drug, how he’ll never forget how he tasted like coffee beans and cigarette smoke and the strawberries he ate every morning besides his breakfast. Remus hates it all and he can’t figure out how not to feel like suddenly everything is slipping out of his hands like sand drifting through his fingers.

“He’s probably not that crazy over me anymore considering he’s getting Gideon Prewett coffees now, so maybe it’s the right decision after all.” Is what Remus decides to tell Lily instead of that whirlwind of clashing feelings.

“Oh Christ,” Lily huffs, dropping her head back like she’s asking for strength from the heavens above. “Look, Dorcas tells me that they’ve only been out twice. And Marlene says that it’s nothing intense. Just a movie and then he went to go watch his nephew’s little league game.”

“Oh,” Remus intones, because, no. No he will not start crying like this is some fucking Nicholas Sparks novel, and he’s the wayward lead making all the worst decisions. He’s not going to cry damn it!

He is not a bird, and this is suppose to be happening, and none of this has any real consequence at the end of the day. He and Sirius broke up, and Sirius can go out with whoever he pleases— even if it’s good looking, ginger athletes.

Remus is fine.

“Remus,” Lily gently consoles, lacing her fingers into his own that’s resting on his lap, and squeezing for good measure. “Benjy told Mary, who told me during Calc that Gideon doesn’t expect anything. Sirius told him he’s not looking for anything long term.”

“That’s dumb,” Remus retorts, trying to hold everything in so that Lily doesn’t give him that concerned, doe eyed face of hers, like when he’s spent a week living off of protein bars and double shot espressos preparing for finals. “Gideon’s great, and there on the soccer team together, they would be perfect.”

“Remus, stop.”

“And he’s going to Dartmouth, so he’ll be super close for like weekend excursions and all of that.”

“Remus!”

“The more I think about it, Lils, the more it makes sense. They just fit.”

“Sure, those are all nice attributes,” Lily says, peering up at him disappointedly. “But he’s not you.”

Like a legion of angels singing in the distance, the bell begins to shrill for next period and Remus is spared from giving that statement any mind.

He spends the rest of the week acting as if he hadn’t even seen Sirius that morning whenever around him, and internally analyzing each and every exchange between them, and comparing to them to when he sees Sirius chatting with Gideon. And it’s not fun to say the least. It’s like a flashback to when he was trying to hide his crush on Sirius back in Freshman and most of sophomore year, but somehow worse. It’s worse because Remus had him, had Sirius in all the ways someone could ever want an other. He had Sirius’s languid morning kisses, and Sirius’s bark like laughter. Remus had Sirius being nervous the first time Lyall came for his typical Christmas visit, and Sirius had to try and impress him along with Remus’s mom as more than just the friend he hung around with at school. Remus had Sirius’s gruff voice when they were in bed and getting tangled into one another, and Sirius’s dopey looks in the middle of class when he’d be gazing over at Remus instead of the board. And if Remus is being honest, he knows he still has all those things, but it’s suddenly and searingly clear that some time— sooner rather than later— they’ll all leave, abruptly disappearing and shattering Remus’s world in their wake. Because eventually all of those different facets of Sirius’s won’t be Remus’s anymore— they’ll be Gideon’s or some other boy he meets in New Haven. And Remus can’t even be upset at it, he doesn’t have a claim to any of Sirius anymore, doesn’t get to call any part of him his.

And it’s probably the worst Remus has felt since that first night after their break up, because he’s eating every moment he has with Sirius like he’s famished and Sirius is the last meal he’ll ever know. He wants to memorize every part of him before he can’t have any of it. He wants to unravel every layer of Sirius, and kiss it for the final time, and it’s like saying goodbye a thousand times over, strangling his heart and splintering something desperate deep inside of him.

Like now.

It’s edging on midnight, and they drove up to the lake front near their suburb, with Sirius lying with his head on Remus’s lap and his long, muscled body lying against the tattered blanket beneath them. And his eyes are fluttered shut while the speaker they brought croons out the indie playlist they like most from Spotify.

And Remus can’t help but feel like this is one of their last nights like this, alone and quiet and together without any other specter of some other partner. So he watches him, watches the moonlight pacing over his nose and the high bones of his cheeks and across Sirius’s eyelids too. Remus watches his ink like lashes kissing his skin, and wants to touch the divot of his cupids bow like so many times before while his other hand cards through Sirius’s hair.

And Remus lets himself want Sirius and wonders if he’ll ever stop wanting, craving, loving him.

“I can hear you thinking Moons,” Sirius says, fluttering his eyes open and crunching up before Remus can even respond. “What’s going on?”

“Huh? What do you mean? I’m fine.” Remus all but sputters, folding his knees against his chest and wrapping his arms around them, feeling somehow vulnerable in blistering ways. “Nothing is going on.”

“Pff,” Sirius gives him a pointed look, settles down so that they’re side by side and tries to get Remus to look at him head on. “You’ve been strange all week, Moony.”

“That’s not—“

“And then tonight, you didn’t even tease your ma when she was telling us about that patient who puked all over her shoes.”

“Just tired is all.”

“But had enough energy to smoke half the joint I brought.” Sirius says with a snort, looking frustrated again when Remus didn’t even flinch a smile at the counter. “Remus, talk to me.”

“It’s fine Sirius,” Remus sighs, suddenly remembers how exhausting all their arguments were in the past. How Sirius tries getting him to speak everything in his mind, as if Remus could even put them into words.

“Okay, then tell me why you rejected my offer to go to that Frank Ocean concert. You’re obsessed with him.”

“’S in July,” Remus reminds him lightly, focusses on the way they can see the North star glimmering against the horizon instead.

“And, so?” Sirius asks, sounding more than a bit scathing. “You’re not leaving for another month after that, you trying to cut me off completely by the summer or something?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Don’t be condescending.”

“Sirius, just leave well enough alone. Holy shit.”

“I can leave it alone if you can actually tell me what the fuck is going on with you,” Sirius snaps, standing up now, probably because he always likes using his height advantage on most people whenever he gets all pissy.

“You can be such a prick sometimes, you know that?” Remus snarls at him, following suit and dipping his head back just slightly so that they’re eye to eye. “Not everything is on your schedule, you know that.”

“My schedule!” Sirius’s brows jump to his hairline, and he breaks into that manic laughter that springs up only when he’s so angry he can’t put his thoughts together. “I’m trying to do as much shit with you as possible before you leave, because for some stupid fucking reason I’m going to miss you when your across the fucking country! But yeah, whatever. If you’re actually just sick of me and my presence or what the fuck else, you can just—“

“I would’ve assumed you wanted to go with Gideon,” Remus blurts out, simply unable to hold it back any more, unable to pretend like he’s not suffering a thousand fresh paper cuts every time he even glances Sirius’s way these days. He can’t do this, can’t pretend to just be friends when they were— when they are— so much more than that. “To the concert I mean. I just assumed—“

“No,” Sirius says, seething as he storms up to Remus— close enough that the tips of their noses brush up against each other.

“No? Excuse me?”

“No Remus you don’t get to do this!” Sirius repeats, voice going frayed at the edges as their glances level. “You don’t get to pretend as if I want anyone more than I want— than I’ve always wanted you. And you don’t get to float around for the rest of your life pretending as if this’ll ever change for me. As if you can’t hit me up in fifteen years when I’m married with kids, and ask to get back together, and think that I wouldn’t drop it all for you.”

Remus’s heart begins to thud, loud and painful against his ribcage, and his lungs feel like they might collapse the instant Remus let’s the tears swimming in his eyes sprinkle out. “Sirius, I ca—“

“I’ve been in love with you since before we were suppose to mean what that meant, damn it, Remus! And you’re the one who called it off!”

“It was the right decision.” Remus croaks out, plunging his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, doesn’t want Sirius to see the way they’re shaking.

“”For you. The right decision for you.” Sirius presses, his gray eyes dark underneath the stars. “And you know I’d do anything you wanted of me, but you don’t get to be mad at the ways I cope. And you sure as fuck don’t get to be jealous of fucking Gideon Prewett, as if he can hold a match to you.”

“Oh.” Is all Remus can gather to say, peering back down at his shoes and pressing together his lips, feels the most lost he ever has while around Sirius. “I love you too, you know that. You know I love you so much that it hurts sometimes— That was never the problem.”

Sirius makes a strangled sound deep in his throat, and the next second, Remus can’t feel the warmth of his body besides him because Sirius is darting over to the cusp of the lake and kicking at a rock. “Fuck, Remus. You can’t just say that, all right! You can’t because none of this is fair, or okay. And I fucking hate it and I hate this and—“

“Maybe we can try,” Remus says, quiet but unshaken. And he watches as Sirius slowly turns back around, face scrunched up in utter confusion, but eyes glittering with something like hope. “I love you Sirius, and you love me. And Lily’s right, fucking hell she’s so right. I can’t just turn it off, okay. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I can’t. I can’t be around you and not want every part of you. But I also can’t let myself stay away from you. So let’s try, and it’s probably a stupid difficult decision, and we’re going to be frustrated and we’re going to miss one another but I know there’s going to be no one I want more and I think you migh— Oof.”

Remus can’t continue rattling off any of the reasons why they should get back together, because Sirius is somehow magically popping up in front of him— his large hands cupping against Remus’s jawline and his thin lips crashing against him, and Remus can only wrap his arms around Sirius’s torso and give him back all he’s pushing forwards.

And it might’ve been a minute or an hour that past, but Sirius is pulling back with a face that looks lighter in ways Remus hasn’t seen on him since the breakup all those months ago. “I’d literally agree to anything if it means we can stay together, Moony. Absolutely anything.”

Remus feels the strain against the apples of his cheeks as he beams at him at the sound of the oath. “Yeah, me too Padfoot. Always and forever, it’s you.”

My Other Wolfstar FIC💜

#WOLFSTAR #REMUS LUPIN #SIRIUS BLACK #SIRIUSXREMUS #REMUSXSIRIUS #WOLFSTAR ANGST #WOLFSTAR FLUFF #THE HARRY POTTER SERIES #HARRY POTTER SERIES #MARAUDERS #SPILT INK #I AM A MESS #I HATE ME LMFAO

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merlinfic · 3 years

Text

❄️ Fic Lists for the Holidays! ❄️

Hi y’all! Happy holidays! We hope you all have a fantastic (and safe!) day today!

As a note: obviously, these lists are (and will be) in no way comprehensive of all the fics that the Merlin fandom has to offer, but we hope you enjoy! Be sure to keep a look out for one more list next week!

The fifth theme is of course: Christmas/Yule! Have a great holiday everyone! :D

And This Is How I See You by Emjayelle

Summary: For months now they've been casually meeting in the lobby of their building, and Merlin's been harbouring a (totally not creepy and perfectly normal and not at all pathetic) crush on his neighbour, Arthur. As luck would have it, they both suddenly find themselves on their own for Christmas, and well… They say there's nothing like a bit of holiday cheer to bring people together. (And pancakes. And toys. And no matter what Arthur says peppermint tea is a legitimate thing. Also cake.)

As Long As We Have We by lady_ragnell

Summary: Arthur thinks he's going to have to spend Christmas alone--at least until he somehow acquires a whole house full of strays.

Blue Christmas by SlantedKnitting

Summary: Arthur's alone on Christmas for the first time in his life and he almost can't cope until Merlin steps in to quietly take Arthur home to Ealdor for the holiday.

Fried Chicken For Christmas by BlueSimplicity

Summary: When Vivian makes a comment to their friends, insinuating that Arthur is not the most passionate of people, hurt and embarrassed, Arthur decides to make her a homemade Christmas feast to prove that he can be romantic. After he almost sets the building on fire three times, help comes to him in the form of his neighbour from 514, a tall lanky fellow named Merlin, with two of the worst behaved dogs Arthur has ever encountered, who offers to teach him how to cook.

Except, as their lessons progress, Arthur slowly comes to realise that Vivian may not be the one he really wants to cook for. But only if he has the courage to let go of all of his fears, and reach for the one thing he truly wants for Christmas.

WARNINGS – This story contains an exploded microwave, opaque blob, a blorp, and mentions of inappropriate sexual acts performed on turkeys. But also, a little bit of holiday cheer and a whole lot of love.

gold rush by acciomerlin

Summary: "Did you bring me flowers, Merlin?"

"Uh, no?”

Arthur gestured to a spot on the table behind him.

“What’s that, then?”

Merlin slowly twisted around to see what he was pointing at, dread curling in his gut. Primly placed on the tabletop was a bouquet of red roses.

“Er, someone else must have left them there. I have no idea where they came from,” Merlin lied awkwardly.

As if on cue, a rose fell out of his jacket pocket and Merlin's stomach dropped a thousand feet beneath the ground.

It's Yuletide, the newly appointed Court Sorcerer of Camelot is pining and his magic decides to do something about it.

In for keeps by Anonymous

Summary: Merlin and Prince Arthur have been in a relationship for a while, unbeknownst to others. Arthur is ready to take the next step and make them official, but Merlin isn’t yet. The restrictions on his life and the mere idea of the lack of privacy seem too much for him to bear.

Separated over Christmas, overworked and overwrought, an accident befalls Arthur.

Cue a worried Merlin racing overnight on a trouble-ridden trip to Scotland on Christmas Eve.

Well, the course of true love, never did run smooth...

Let Me Tell You a Story (and show you my heart) by Emrys MK (mk_malfoy)

Summary: Arthur, newly crowned King of Camelot, gets sick at Yule, his favorite holiday of the year. He is disappointed that he will miss the festivities, frustrated because Merlin is telling him what to do, and feels awful because every bone in his body aches. Through it all, Merlin, ever the faithful servant, takes very good care of Arthur.

Maybe this Christmas by Anonymous

Summary: It’s almost Christmas and all the flights at JFK airport in New York have been cancelled due to a storm. Stuck at the airport, Arthur, a young businessman on the verge of burnout, meets Merlin, a yoga teacher from Cardiff. Sparks fly and what starts out as a heated, head-over-heels Christmas romance has the potential to become more - much more.

If it weren’t for the baggage both of them bring with them…

Mistletoe by swiftonthedownside

Summary: At Yuletide celebrations, visitors from the north bring with them a treasured tradition—and with it, a whole heap of trouble.

Basically an AU where less stuff has gone wrong, Morgana isn’t evil, etc. Takes place the year Arthur was crowned Prince of Camelot.

Rarely Plain and Never Simple by Anonymous

Summary: For once, it would be nice if Merlin’s favourite winter festival could pass without having to fend off any deadly magical threats. But something about Yule just seems to bring out the absolute worst in people. Year after year, he enters the season full of hope for an enjoyable party, only for his hopes to be dashed by a deluge of disasters. Still, despite being waylaid by an overly perceptive knight, a curious prince, and a naughty baby dragon, he is cautiously optimistic that this year will be different... until a sorcerer arrives at the citadel who threatens to punch a hole in all his dreams…

To Make The Season Bright by ingberry

Summary: Merlin swaps houses with Morgana Pendragon over Christmas only to end up with a house guest that wasn't part of the deal.

Underneath the Mistletoe by tehfanglyfish

Summary: After Gwen tells Arthur about the custom of kissing under the mistletoe, all he can think about is how it would be a nice way to work up the courage to finally kiss Merlin. It's too bad that Merlin is pining after someone else. And to make matters worse, rogue mistletoe keeps appearing in Arthur's chambers.

Also known as the one where Arthur pines for Merlin, Gwen makes a move, Merlin's magic has a mind of its own, and Percival and Gwaine get a much-needed push.

warm and real and bright by ariadne_odair

Summary: “Did you miss me?” Arthur asks.

“Not in the slightest,” Merlin lies baldly, and laughs when Arthur digs him in the ribs. “Will sends his regards.”

Arthur snorts. “No, he doesn’t.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Merlin agrees. “He had several thoughts on me being courted by a Lord.”

“I just bet he did,” Arthur mutters. “I am more curious to know your thoughts on the matter.”

-In which: Lord Arthur Pendragon is courting one Merlin Emrys, Arthur is absolutely not pining whilst Merlin is away, and Gwaine gives advice that is (very) occasionally useful.

We Could Always Be This Way by idlestories

Summary: Merlin and Arthur are married, Camelot is flourishing, and it's the holidays. It's snowing, and Merlin owes Arthur a dance.

#fic list: christmas & yule #merthur fic rec #merlin fic rec #theme: holidays #merry christmas and happy holidays everyone!!!#hope you all have a great day regardless if you celebrate anything today!#enjoy your day!#mod danielle

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jacksgreysays · 3 years

Note

For fake title: still waters (run deep) character: Shisui and or theme: Uzushio

The fisherman doesn't look surprised when Shisui arrives, not by the suddenness of his appearance or his age or the fact that, excepting the crow on his shoulder, he is entirely alone. No, the fisherman is not surprised, but that doesn't mean he's relaxed either: a large man, nearly two heads taller than Shisui with muscle honed through hard work. But it is a civilian level strength. For all that the fisherman is accustomed to shinobi, he is no match for one.

"You're headed to Uzushio, huh?" the fisherman says, less a question than an accusation without any heat.

"Yes, I am" Shisui answers anyway with a polite sort of cheer; there is a reason why he's the one being sent to Uzushio and not one of his cousins. "Tazuna-san said you're the best at navigating the whirlpools."

The fisherman gives him a skeptical glance which is fair. What Tazuna actually said was that if Shisui was fool enough to go to Uzushio, then this particular fisherman would at least make sure Shisui's fool head didn't get dashed on the rocks of the shore.

But the fisherman shrugs, accepting enough, and tilts his head at a small wooden boat tied to the dock with nets bulging with fish. "That one's mine. Are you in a rush? Because I have to get these to the monger first."

"No, I can wait," Shisui says, because that's the polite thing to do and if this fisherman is his best way to Uzushio then its worth waiting for... except, as Kansoku reminds him with a sharp tug on his hair, he is actually kind of in a rush. Shisui is a shinobi, so of course he's smelled worse, and so he doesn't wrinkle his nose at all when he offers, "Would you like some help? Four hands are faster than two."

"Alright, kid, I'll take you up on that." The fisherman's expression lightens into a wide, friendly smile and Shisui who can't help himself, returns it with one of his own. The fisherman introduces himself, "You can call me Kaiza."

---

A few weeks ago, Hidden Rain broke their decades-long silence with increasingly concerning news:

Hanzo the Salamander long dead.

A heretofore unknown organization leading the village.

Active recruitment and retainment of various S-rank shinobi.

A grudge against one Shimura Danzo, former council member of Hidden Leaf.

One year--maybe even as little as a month or two previous--would have made this the most momentous occasion in international shinobi politics since the last world war.

Unfortunately, it only just barely makes top three in the past year.

---

"So, kid," Kaiza says as they're coasting over the waves at a clip much faster than Shisui would have thought possible for the small wooden boat, "You're from Leaf, right?"

"Yes." It's literally on his forehead and more straightforward than some of the other villages' symbols, but Shisui gives him the benefit of the doubt. Kaiza is a civilian, after all. And to be fair, some of the Uchiha elders were considering changing it to match the new regime, but Fugaku-san--sorry, Hokage-sama, Shisui's still getting use to it--felt it would be best to at least try to maintain a semblance of stability.

He doesn't know if news of Konoha's turmoil has reached this far. Or if the people of Wave even care. They certainly didn't bat an eye at Shisui's questions of their new neighbor--old neighbor? returned neighbor?--all incurious shrugs and silence or entertaining but unhelpful tall tales.

"Have you ever met another shinobi?" Shisui asks conversationally, though he already knows the answer to that question. "Am I your first shinobi passenger?"

"I've seen a few Mist ninja from a distance. A very far distance, thankfully," Kaiza responds, casual and earnest; Shisui sees no reason to doubt him. "Never had a ninja join me sailing on my boat before, though. Not one that helped me unload my haul. You're a good kid."

Shisui has killed more men than there had been fish wriggling in those nets. He appreciates the sentiment anyway. Kaiza is an honest sort of man, Shisui is glad to have met him.

He could use more straightforwardness in his life.

---

The Mist Rebellion overthrew the Yondaime Mizukage after an almost tidy public assassination and thirty six hours of civil war with minimal casualties.

Terumi Mei, newly coronated Godaime Mizukage, only mentions the "grace and goodwill of allies." Neither of those words particularly apply to the surly looking Momochi Zabuza standing two steps back and one step to the right of her, but if there is another ally in the works they're not claiming the limelight.

Hidden Mist has always been a tumultuous village. Tidiness aside, nothing was surprising about it.

---

It's strange.

When Shisui pictured Land of Whirlpools, he had a vague idea mostly cobbled together from the grey, cloudy skies of Mist, or the eternal deluge of Rain, or even the foggy, sepia tones of Wave.

He was not expecting clear skies almost impossibly blue and lush treetops tall enough to rival the forests of Konoha. The beach is pink.

It's vibrant. It's strange. There's a giant chakra turtle monster happily splashing in the shallows, waving tendrils in their direction as a greeting.

The sharp jagged rocks and erratic whirlpools between them and the shore are real, at least, so Shisui hasn't been completely fooled, but from the wry, almost apologetic smile on Kaiza's face, Shisui's not great at hiding his hurt.

Kaiza pulls out a decorative coin--what Shisui had thought was some kind of superstitious fisherman charm that he'd touched before they set sail from Wave--and passes his thumb along the surface. After a moment or two, the swirling slows, the water calms, and the passage is traversable. A small figure appears on the pink beach. The giant chakra turtle monster reaches a gentle tendril out and is metaphorically met half way by an arm absolutely minuscule in comparison.

"Don't worry, kid," Kaiza says reassuringly. It's the kind of statement that would be accompanied with a clap on the shoulder, but whether the fisherman can sense Shisui's betrayal or, more likely, he's been around more shinobi and knows better, he keeps his distance. "Tazuna vouched for you and you didn't even get mad when the monger threw a fish at you and said it was a cultural tradition."

Kansoku had been less than pleased and Shisui's shirt still smells like fish.

"You'll be fine. She'll like you."

---

There is an oasis in Land of Wind. An earthquake in Land of Hot Springs caused the controlled collapse of a temple and new arrangements of the surrounding town's infrastructure. A dilapidated and forgotten shrine in the outskirts of Land of Fire was completely relocated across the ocean. Only the first has any sort of influence on shinobi politics and even that has more to do with the Yondaime Kazekage's sudden attitude adjustment than anything else.

But the revival of a nation thought long dead with the power to back it up?

Well, even if Konoha is still struggling to cobble together a government, it's the sort of occasion to send one of their best and brightest as an ambassador even if there's no firm idea what might be on the other end of the journey.

---

"Hello, Uchiha Shisui of Hidden Leaf," says the girl on the shores of Land of Whirlpools. Somehow, even with the grown man twice his size and the giant chakra turtle monster, she's the scarest thing on the beach.

Which is still bafflingly, vibrantly pink.

"I heard you were asking questions about Uzushio," she says, with a smile as dangerous and beautiful as the land she's made her home. "Let's talk."

A/N: Sometimes, you’re in a writer’s block and a prompt just punches you into the right headspace. Thank you, damnsmartblueboxes. (You know I have so many Uzushio feelings, how dare you! :D)

If anyone wants to ask me questions about this, please do. Please.

Oh, but I should clarify here: this was written intending to be in a post-Split Gardens!verse. But if you’re reading this you probably have already read some of the Gardens!verse stuff so...

Also, yes, Kaiza is the fisherman who would’ve been killed by Gato and now kinda works for Shikako as a more active and less suspicious Sazanami from the Land of Stone Arc. I mean, kinda all of Wave works for Shikako? But in a much more benevolent way than that might imply. They’re fond of their weird neighbor with her giant chakra turtle monster.

(Also, also, yes, Tetsuki Kaiza does get her name from this Kaiza though in the Naruto world she actually never has the name Kaiza. She goes from orphan Tetsuki no-family-name to either Tetsuki Utsugi or Agent Shu. Depending on how fucked her situation is)

Also, also, also: Ask Box Advent Calendar 2020!

#jacksgreyson #damnsmartblueboxes #ask box advent calendar #ask box fake fic titles #writing #fanfiction #dreaming of sunshine #naruto #the many gardens of shikabane-hime #still waters (run deep)#kaiza #shisui uchiha #shikako nara

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thesteadydietofeverything · 4 years

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Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go.

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people.

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again.

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

#outer wilds #death stranding #eliza #anodyne 2 #control #judgment #resident evil 2 #fire emblem: three houses #Ape Out #Amid Evil #games #video games #GOTY

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starshua · 4 years

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c.sc ❥ deluge

seungcheol x reader; 100wtsily

word count; 1.1k

synopsis; a school project on a rainy day with none other than choi seungcheol himself ; drabble, fluff + based on wtsily prompt 35, “after you.”

✎ hello it has been roughly a year and seven months since i’ve posted any seventeen fic at all and i am. ashamed

You’ve probably never been this nervous in your entire life.

You knew taking this class was a mistake. It was going to be nearly impossible for you, what with the workload and the damage it would surely do to your anxiety. But still you pressed on, determined to grow even in the smallest of ways, and so there you were with what might have been the most ludicrous assignment you could have been assigned: write a speech about your classmate.

The document with all of your instructions sat waiting on your laptop screen, mocking you for your cowardice. Your speech was due in three days, and you haven’t even met with your partner to hold an interview, let alone actually constructed the damn thing. To your credit, you did attempt a meeting once before—last Thursday, after class—but he had been busy, or something.

In fact, he always seemed busy. He was involved with the school council somehow, though you weren’t quite sure about the details, and popped up just about everywhere on campus to lend a helping hand or deal with an issue. You didn’t want to blame him for being so unavailable—he was doing good work, after all, and he really was very sweet—but you were not going to sacrifice your grade in this hellish class just because he was nice.

“Hey, y/n!” he called, walking briskly through the double doors of the library. It was raining outside, and he was positively drenched, dripping wildly from head to toe. He took the seat across from you and shed his soaking jacket. You tried not to stare at the damp hair that clung to his forehead.

“Hi, Seungcheol,” you said. He was a little bit late, and though you attributed it to the rain, it still left a bitter taste in your mouth. “Let’s get started.”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” Swiftly, Seungcheol pulled his laptop out and set it down on the table. “D’you wanna go first? Since my speaking day is next week, anyway, and I already got a little on you last class.”

You nodded tersely. Seungcheol’s face didn’t change, but you caught the involuntary twitch of his jaw and knew he was a little peeved by your attitude. You didn’t mean to snub him, really, but something about him set you on edge. He was too kind, too helpful, too attractive, and you had a hard time believing he was so without fault.

“So,” you said, opening a blank document for notes, “tell me about yourself. Life story kind of stuff.”

Seungcheol obliged with little difficulty, and his eagerness shocked you. He was from a small town just a few hours north, he explained, and he came from a family that couldn’t really provide for him as well as they wished they could have. He came to school with an academic scholarship, and he worried a lot about his grades even though he didn’t really need to. He had two close friends his age—Jeonghan and Joshua—that he went on a trip with every summer. Last year they went to a scenic town on the coast and wrote songs on the beach, drunk on cheap wine and moonlit adventure.

You watched the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up as he talked about his friends, describing their shenanigans like they meant the world to him. The fondness on his face when he spoke of his mother was heartwarming, too, and the stony indifference in regard to his father wasn’t lost on you. You were beginning to see the scars, the little bruises he hid behind convincing smiles and a good attitude, and it made him seem a lot more human than he had twenty minutes ago. His passion is what sold it, though; the spark in his laugh as he talked about his loved ones, his dreams, his future. He almost seemed to glow with certainty.

It may have been foolish, but you felt like the two of you were connecting. He was being very personal—much more so than the assignment required, and you were certain he knew that—and he seemed to want the same from you, if the probing in his watchful gaze was anything to go by.

“So, yeah. I’m really into music production and songwriting,” he continued. “My mom helped me get really into it—that’s how my parents met, actually—and I’ve been doing it for about six years now?”

You nodded to encourage him, typing dutifully. You were sure you had gotten enough material, but something in you didn’t want to let the moment slip away. It felt like you’d never see that look in his eyes again if he left now.

Besides, you told yourself, you still had to return the favor.

“Okay, can you tell me a little bit more about—?” you faltered. The lights above you flickered, and with them, the whole library went black. You made alarmed eye contact with Seungcheol in the darkness; he looked as unsettled as you felt. The room went quiet.

A moment passed. Like a stuttering breath, the lights struggled back on. Outside, the wind raged against the trees meant to shield you. Rain fell in heavy waves, and thunder screamed across the sky. You caught sight of something—perhaps an umbrella?—caught in the torrent, rocketing through the air like a lost missile. How had you missed the nasty turn the weather had taken?

“You wanna get out of here?” Seungcheol offered tentatively.

You didn’t, not really, but you also kind of wanted to be able to find your way back to your dorm, and that would only be easy before nightfall. “Sure.”

He stood and grabbed his backpack, slinging a strap over one shoulder. You hurried to put your things away, and after a moment, Seungcheol came to help you. It was honestly more of a hindrance than a help—such a mess of limbs and movement—but it warmed your heart all the same.

“So?” he asked, slipping his jacket on as the two of you edged closer to the library exit, “Where do you wanna go?”

“Huh?”

Seungcheol smiled fondly, almost like he found your reaction cute. Cute. The thought made your head spin. “To continue the interview? And maybe eat a little?”

“O-oh. My dorm?”

“Ooh, bold. Taking me home already?”

You fought a blush in vain. “I meant the study rooms on the first floor!”

He laughed. “I know.” The automatic doors dragged themselves open, and a fresh wave of rainwater smacked Seungcheol right in the face. He flinched but stood otherwise frozen. You coughed out a laugh. He eyed you teasingly and gestured toward the storm, blinking back droplets. “After you.”

You smiled. Adrenaline surging, you grabbed his hand and dashed off into the deluge, Seungcheol trailing raucous laughter behind you. It was freezing, and the two of you were soaked to the bone in seconds, but it was exhilarating all the same. His hand was warm in your grasp, and somewhere in the mess of rain and wind, you felt his fingers encircle yours.

Maybe this class wouldn’t be so bad.

#got a vern scenario on the way hopefully #i pulled this out of my ass #i'm not even rly proud of this bc it's based off of smth i actually had to do !! ah the joys of university #shoutout to my speech partner #seventeen #seventeen scenarios #seventeen drabbles #seventeen fluff #choi seungcheol #seventeen s.coups #s.coups scenarios #s.coups drabble #s.coups fluff #seventeen seungcheol #seungcheol scenarios #seungcheol drabble #seungcheol fluff #t: 100wtsily

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dcnativegal · 4 years

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Day 55 of Pandemic, & I’m sick

Monday, May 4, 2020. Day 55 of the global pandemic (declared by World Health Organization on March 11th.) We as a planet hit 3,500,000 cases today, and 250,000 deaths. There are many more than that, but the planet doesn’t have enough tests. But then, there was this announcement:

So obviously we’re in good hands. [Sarcasm alert.]

The entire planet has slowed down, such that seismologists can detect the quieting of the earth: less shuddering of industry, cars, construction. Check out the drop in electricity usage:

Here’s a bit of perspective from Instagram:

The Lesbians of Paisley have been fertile ground for viruses. Valerie is nearly recovered from the viral pneumonia she was diagnosed with on March 26 at the emergency room at Lake District Hospital. She’d begun to feel feverish and achy, with violent coughing on March 15th, 2 days after what turned into my last day in my office at the hospital’s primary care clinic, and a day and a half after we’d dined with our friends Toni, Al, Bonnie and Bruce in person, sans masks. We began 100% isolation from the outside world the minute she felt sick. She recounted the ER adventure to a friend thusly: We drove in and they have organized a system that resembles getting on a [military] base after 9-11. We sat in the pickup at the checkpoint until a somebody in protective attire had taken my temp and saturation levels and asked a bunch of questions. Then they slapped a red sticker on the dash, told us to park in the ER lot and "don't get out of the pickup." Five hours later I had donated blood and been CAT scanned. I had two pneumonia shots that were current and two flu shots, also current. They checked the blood against 14 different virus strains and came up blank. The chest showed white lungs and my saturation levels were iffy. So they used one of the tests they had been sent, gave me antibiotics (just in case) and sent me home. Took me three days to sleep off all that fun.”

Me and Griffey the poodle waited in the pickup for her. At every sound, he got up from the passenger’s seat and looked at the ER entrance where she’d disappeared. No Valerie? Back to sleep. I walked him 3 times. Hope, her RN daughter, told us that her flow through the ER was great practice in maintaining distance and perfect hygienic process through the CT scan, taking blood, even pushing her food on a tray to her. Lake Health District Hospital is prepared, and still, technically speaking, zero cases in the county.

I was so anxious about her health, her ability to breathe, that I gave up all thought of working from home. I listened to her breathing and coughing, brought her tea, and finally, asked her to write out her last will and testament. She did, and put it away. I figured, her kids are wonderful and won’t fight about stuff but, better for her to express her wishes, even if the paper wouldn’t be legally binding.

Apparently, I get the FrankenDodge (the pickup which has hit one too many deer and who’s grill is sewn together by wire). I’ll take it but I’d much rather have her.

We waited 10 days for the nasal swab results. While we waited, she got better. Never had that cytokine storm, nor that respiratory crash. Storms and crashes; pretty apt words for the medical horror of end stage COVID-19. Once her test came back negative, despite the warning of her PCP who says that nasal swabs miss between 30 and 47% of positive cases, I was able to go to town on the 10th of April, get some software downloaded onto the computer so I could work from home, and hit Safeway while wearing a mask. I also dropped off one of Valerie’s homemade masks to a friend, along with some toilet paper illustrated with Trump’s kissy face. The moment of levity was greatly appreciated.

I started feeling lousy six days after my jaunt to Lakeview (April 16th). Cough and release of gook high up in my chest. Headache. No fever. Who knows if I have COVID-19. We listen to a British gentleman, Dr. Campbell, daily, as he reviews what’s going on globally, and he interviewed a woman who had exactly my illness course, before she moved on to fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. She never got tested. Too much hassle. Which is so ridiculous, criminal really, and in the USA, a direct result of American hubris and incompetence. Fine. Anyone with any symptoms of any illness is isolated until we have a vaccine and treatment, is my prediction. I’m still feeling shitty, though better. Started taking antibiotics just in case and in the hopes of recovering SOMEDAY.

My son Jonah and his girlfriend June escaped just in time the terrible plight of New York’s COVID19 deluge of infections and hospitalizations. They’ve been in Baltimore at June’s mother’s beautiful home. He spent his 26th birthday in the basement because they were still in quarantine. See adorable picture, below. Now they’re allowed upstairs, enjoying the quiet. Apparently, writing and directing music videos is not an essential service during a pandemic, but he’s writing pitches and living off the most recent lucrative gig with Kesha, thank goodness.

One of the most moving things that is happening in the USA during this time is the 7pm clapping ritual for medical workers and first responders in New York City, in all the boroughs:

There’s a firefighter in DC who’s going to hospitals and nursing homes to play the bagpipe.

That’s where my daughter Clara lives, in DC, but right now she’s staying with a friend in Laurel, MD, since her group house dynamics are stressful and had a symptomatic guest at last report. She’s working from home to make sure the Latinx school children are getting the tutoring they need now more than ever. We worry about her husband Jose and his country, Guatemala, since there are COVID-19 cases down there, and refugees seeking asylum are being dumped there, with and without the virus. Over 700 cases in Guatemala as of today. We hope he will get to the USA this year. However, Trump referred to it as a shithole country, which doesn’t bode well.

My sister and her husband are well, thankfully. They work fulltime from home in the company of Pepper the cat and Darcy the chocolate lab. Yuuki, 25, stays there, too, mostly in their room; they are out of work and applying for unemployment. Kohji, age 28, works from home in DC and makes more money as a web designer than I ever will after 34 years as a social worker, but who’s counting. (I remember well the admonition of a field instructor back in 1987: don’t go into social work for Power, Pay or Prestige.) His girlfriend is probably out of work; she works for a nonprofit that plants trees in DC. Probably not essential work right this very minute. Makoto, 23, is out of quarantine and looking for something to do; he’ll be a senior at the University of Delaware this fall. As far as I hear on Facebook and email, the rest of the folks with whom I share DNA are well. So that’s good. I worry about my Aunt Mary Lee who is 87. But she says not to: she’s fine and her ritzy retirement community in McLean, VA is on “lockdown.”

Psychologically, in the experience of quarantine and ‘social distancing’, there’s me, and then there are my clients.

My moods go up and down, but a little further down than usual. The terror that Valerie might die of COVID-19 has passed, but I figure I will always need therapy. I have “Facebook messenger” video chats with my therapist, Darcy of Bend, every other week now, which helps. Having ‘Generalized Anxiety Disorder’ and a tendency toward major depression, I find therapy to be a corrective. A bimonthly tune up. Without it, I naturally veer toward negativity and neurosis, and a hypervigilance that served me well when I was a child, but is exhausting, overwrought and over-thought as an adult.

Psychologically, Valerie is always fine. Seriously. She was once told as a young woman by a therapist who’d tested her with the MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) that she was outrageously and puzzlingly normal. Now that she’s feeling mostly well again from the pneumonia, she’s been tearing up the joint, fixing the sump pump that apparently keeps this little house from drifting down main street on the wetlands it’s built on. Digging out the leaves from our irrigation ditch, chopping and clearing the wood from our front yard.

The BEFORE picture:

The AFTER Picture.

And this happened one morning in March. Just a cattle drive past our front door.

Valerie’s planning a garden at her daughter’s place, which has a deer-proof fence and lots of sun up on the hill above us. A delivery of horse manure is scheduled, and the garden bed has been rototilled. Val’s granddaughter Jessica and her husband Alan are living up there now, working from home for their Portland-based gigs. They’re almost finished the 14-day quarantine since they moved down here. The new normal: anytime anyone leaves one locale for another, they disappear into strictest quarantine, not to leave their abode. Groceries are delivered to the doorstep. A recent day turned out to be Jess’ 25th birthday: I’d bought a canvas bag with a picture of a pug on it, like her dog Archie, and Valerie found something gluten free flour mix with fresh jam to give her. Birthday gatherings are suspect at the moment.

Here’s a lovely idea for quarantined birthday celebrations:

What a kind and generous offer.

Even in isolation, Val and I do socialize, on zoom. The one pictured below is church.

We ‘visit’ with our fellow parishioners from St. Luke’s on Sunday evenings. Then we say Compline together, from the Book of Common Prayer. My favorite prayer of all time is this one from that service.

Yes, shield the joyous. Because joy is fleeting.

Our writers’ group, Easy Writers, ‘meets’ on zoom every Monday now. I wrote this bit about my yarn for the prompt, ‘write something in your home that means a lot to you.’

I am doing a great deal of crochet and a little knitting.

Yarn is my comfort and my joy. It is the raw material I create blankets and scarves and hats with. My tools are hooks and needles made from wood and plastic and metal. My fingers are also my tools.

Some of the yarn is like cotton candy: spun mohair from a goat is said to have a ‘halo’ or ‘aura’ because of the gentle cloud of color you can see an inch or two away from the spun thread. Some yarn is like twine: you can see every string of ply. My favorite is merino wool and single ply. A unity of color that will not split. All for one and one for all, the fuzzy stuff is twisted and bound into a single string of strength…

My clients are stressed out. The pandemic adds a layer to the stress they were already experiencing. I listen and knit, from within the cocoon of the yarn room which my folks can see behind me. One of my clients wanders about with her phone in her hand while I get slightly dizzy. I like this kind of counseling since I get a glimpse of my clients’ homes. Reminds me a little bit of being a geriatric care manager. You can tell a lot about a person from their home. From my home you can tell that I have a lot of yarn, and I work multiple projects at a time because there are piles of them alongside my recliner.

One of the sad weights of being present for my clients is their level of estrangement for most if not all social connections, especially people with whom they share DNA. And every single one has what is called in the mental health world “complex PTSD” from multiple traumatic experiences. I sit with them, on the phone or via video. I hope to model for them what Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard.’ I breathe deeply to release my own distress at their sadness. We explore one tiny step toward reducing their isolation, the sense of trust. All during a pandemic where other people could be carrying a potentially deadly virus.

It’s no wonder I’m pawing mohair out of screen for my own comfort.

Sometimes I email clients links or articles on how to keep their spirits up, or about good things that are happening instead of the dire predictions they’re listening to or watching. There is much to share that is hopeful. I sent one to a client on creative ways to care for everyone and she shot back:

“I believe this is Liberal rhetoric.

Esp the paragraph below:

This current emergency provides the possibility for a new emergence—the birthing of a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people and the living Earth. “

Oh well. We can’t have a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people, now can we?

Sigh.

Brilliant writing is being penned right now, since the entire planet’s human inhabitants are barely one degree of separation away from this virus, which is apparently ‘barely alive’ and therefore hard to kill, as it spreads onward to make millions miserable and hundreds of thousands die.

I’m saving articles from The Atlantic, The NY Times, and the Washington Post, and following a historian named Heather Cox Richardson who writes a daily blog called Letters from an American. In a recent post she writes:

“The big news … has been the ‘protests’ of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus …These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative. The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. …These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s... The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.” [Emphasis mine]

I am so glad someone smarter than me can reveal the interconnections of what’s going on politically.

There is food for thought on Facebook and Instagram: in the guise of a rewrite of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, this poem.

Mary Oliver for Corona Times (after Wild Geese)

by Adrie Kusserow

You do not have to become totally zen, You do not have to use this isolation to make your marriage better, your body slimmer, your children more creative. You do not have to “maximize its benefits” By using this time to work even more, write the bestselling Corona Diaries, Or preach the gospel of ZOOM. You only have to let the soft animal of your body unlearn everything capitalism has taught you, (That you are nothing if not productive, That consumption equals happiness, That the most important unit is the single self. That you are at your best when you resemble an efficient machine). Tell me about your fictions, the ones you’ve been sold, the ones you sheepishly sell others, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world as we know it is crumbling. Meanwhile the virus is moving over the hills, suburbs, cities, farms and trailer parks. Meanwhile The News barks at you, harsh and addicting, Until the push of the remote leaves a dead quiet behind, a loneliness that hums as the heart anchors. Meanwhile a new paradigm is composing itself in our minds, Could birth at any moment if we clear some space From the same tired hegemonies. Remember, you are allowed to be still as the white birch, Stunned by what you see, Uselessly shedding your coils of paper skins Because it gives you something to do. Meanwhile, on top of everything else you are facing, Do not let capitalism coopt this moment, laying its whistles and train tracks across your weary heart. Even if your life looks nothing like the Sabbath, Your stress boa-constricting your chest. Know that your antsy kids, your terror, your shifting moods, are no less sacred than a yoga class. Whoever you are, no matter how broken, the world still has a place for you, calls to you over and over announcing your place as legit, as forgiven, even if you fail and fail and fail again. remind yourself over and over, all the swells and storms that run through your long tired body all have their place here, now in this world. It is your birthright you be held deeply, warmly, in the family of things, not one cell left in the cold.

-Adrie Kusserow

Not one cell left out in the cold. Yes.

There is so much to be grateful for. I have a place to live, and even while paying off my bankruptcy debt, I have plenty. Enough that I can make small donations here and there. Here’s one cause I found: supporting foster children who were in college and now have no place to go. (Terrible visuals for the logo: it’s “Together We Rise.”)

Soon, the nights of below freezing temperatures will pass, and both Lesbians of Paisley will be healthy at the same time. Perhaps I’ll get my Tricycle-for-Grownups serviced and toodle around for exercise. Perhaps the Stitch & Bitch knitting/crochet gatherings will resume, maybe in a park for physical distance and social connection.

And maybe I’ve already had Covid-19, and so has Valerie. Looks like 50-70% of all the people on the planet, not quite 8 billion humans so maybe 4 to 6 billion people, need to catch this thing in order to give our species herd immunity. Or WILL catch it because we have no way to stop it, only to slow the infections so that health care is not overwhelmed. We live and Love in the Time of Coronavirus, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I maybe a libtard, a snowflake, a lily-livered liberal, who’s heart bleeds. But I agree with this sentiment, found on Facebook, our American ‘commons’:

Love absurdly and abundantly, my people. And wash your hands.

#covidー19

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ravenwritesstuff · 5 years

Text

Best Laid Plans (5/?)

Fandom: Frozen (modern AU, no magic) Pairings: Helsa, established Kristanna, lotsa frohana Rating: T for now, M later almost for sure A/N: Take it and go.

[ Part one ] [ Part two ] [ Part Three ] [ Part Four ]

Her alarm goes off after three hours of sleep and she can hardly move enough to turn it off. Sun peeks in around the edges of her curtains. She needs to get up and go about her day and force herself back into a regular rhythm. Normally she is quite good at it but this time it seems impossible.

It isn't that she is unused to this routine. After a thirty hour event she often takes a long nap to reset her mind and push her through to the next night and a normal bedtime. While never easy she is typically able to roll out of bed in her studio apartment and get started on whatever task is at the top of her list, but today….

She swings her feet over the edge and sits up, head swimming, and she can feel every inch of her body. She knows if she stretches her spine will snap, muscles releasing, but she can hardly find the energy. She tilts her head side to side, neck cracking, and there is laundry to do. There is laundry to do and errands to run. There is laundry to do and errands to run and things to return and clean and this is her only day off this week and she has so much to catch up on and -

She can feel it.

When she is more awake, more lucid, she can convince herself that she is making things up. She tells herself that whatever symptoms she thinks she is having is just stress, exhaustion, dehydration…. But here in that funny place between being asleep and awake she knows.

This is not just something she is imagining.

She bends over her bedside trashcan and vomits.

When she is done she wipes her eyes and mouth with a tissue. She takes a deep, shuddering breath.

She has today.

She will take it.

Sleep is for the dead, and she isn't there yet.

She stands up and starts her day by cleaning her mess.

….

Dinner that night is at Anna and Kristoff's modest home. The team gathers around takeout and discusses the event, what went well, what didn't, where improvements can be made, and how they can grow. It is informal, less structured than Elsa likes, but she knows that the community of her team is just as important as the efficiency especially considering this is supposed to be their day off. Also none of them brought up Hans Westergaard for which she would be eternally grateful.

They are past the business point of the evening now. Elsa is in the kitchen putting dishes in the washer as Anna and Kristoff split the leftovers into plastic containers for everyone to take home. Rapunzel and Eugene always take home whatever anyone else doesn't want because Rapunzel will eat anything. The rest goes in the Bjorgman’s fridge to share later. Anna always saves aside a portion of something sweet for her sister, but she doesn’t need much.

She isn’t ever that hungry. Even less so recently.

By the time it is all said and done it is just the three of them: Anna, Kristoff, and Elsa.

She remembers when Kristoff had first come on the scene, how she had been unimpressed but quickly won over by his devotion to her sister. Now she can hardly picture Anna without Kristoff by her side and for that she is thankful. Anna thrives when she has someone steady beside her. Kristoff is definitely steady.

They stand around the kitchen island cleaning up the last of the mess and Kristoff grabs a leash and harness off a hook on a nearby wall.

“You ladies seem to have this under control. Sven needs his walk.” He clasps the contraption onto a mutt big enough to be a horse. “We’ll be back soon.”

He is off before there can be any discussion and Elsa gets that tingling feeling down her spine that this was not a spontaneous idea on Kristoff's part, no matter how much he loves the gigantic Sven. She pauses wiping the counter to see Anna all too diligently avoiding her gaze.

This has happened enough that Elsa knows it is best to just get to the point. It is almost always the same point anyway, but this time she does not feel as prepared.

“All right. What is it?” She pops a hip and lands her hand upon it.

“What is what?” Anna straightens a towel on the oven handle for the thirtieth time.

“Whatever it is you aren't saying. That’s what.” Elsa steels herself, ready to deflect any foolish accusation Anna might throw her way - especially if it had to do with one particular groomsman.

Anna bites her lip, still not meeting her sister's eyes, and Elsa knows now what is coming. She wishes she hadn’t asked, but now:

“It's happening. Isn't it?”

Anna’s voice is small, as if she can hide the question while asking, but it hits Elsa like a freight train. She remembers the look on Anna's face after they had changed yesterday, remembers the look in her eyes as she had tested the waters of this conversation. How long has she suspected…?

Elsa doesn't want to lie but she is also not ready to admit the truth. Anna has bared her fair share of Elsa’s troubles. Elsa does not want to burden her with more than she needs to carry now.

“Anna. If there was something to know - you will be the first to know it.”

Anna looks at her then, blue eyes sharp and clear. “What are your symptoms?”

She thinks of the headaches, the vomit this morning, and tells a bald-faced lie: “I’m not having any.”

Anna's eyes narrow. “Are you sure?”

“It is my body. I am pretty sure I would know. This isn't exactly my first go at this.”

“Yeah, but… this time is different."

Elsa sighs. Her sister sound so bleak and she supposed she understands. The situation is grim at best, but it is all she has known. It is all she will ever know. She supposes it is all Anna will ever know of her sister as well. That thought stings. She will do her best to protect Anna as long as she can.

"What was it that mom said? Today has enough trouble. Don’t take tomorrow’s.”

Anna doesn’t smile, not distracted by Elsa’s attempt.

"But you will tell me, right? You will tell me when it is today?”

Elsa is good at lying. She has to be, but Anna is the hardest one to fool. She puts on her best poker face and meets her sister's eyes.

"I will tell you."

Anna smiles.

Elsa has to decide if it if fake or not and suddenly the tables are turned.

They don’t mention it again when Anna drives her home.

….

She sleeps through her alarm.

In all of her adult life that has only ever happened once and it was from a power failure and the alarm itself didn’t go off.

She pops up ten minutes after she is already supposed to be at work to her phone buzzing with text messages from Anna, Rapunzel, Kristoff, Eugene….

And they probably all think she is dead. She can’t blame them, but she also doesn’t have a single second to waste in replying to their messages.

She also hardly has time to register that today, as opposed to yesterday, she feels fine. She has no nausea, no headache - nothing.

Her symptoms could have just been fatigue and stress from the wedding. There is no way to know for sure, but she really doesn’t have time to think about it.

The days that actually count against her are so far and few between at this point that she just moves forward. Elsa does not like dramatics and she will not indulge in them.

The weather, however, has a different idea.

The world outside her window is a deluge. Everything outside of her window is gray and bleak, but that happens. She has a plan for it. Her umbrella sits in its proper place by her door in its own small stand. She will be fine.

There is no time for breakfast which is fine because she usually skips it anyway. She grabs a granola bar just in case and will get her coffee at the office.

She does her hair and makeup in a flurry (a low braided bun with just enough mascara and blush to pop her features) because there are no meetings today (which is good because if she was late to a meeting with a client - she shudders). All she has to do today is show up and answer questions (hopefully through email) but she would deal with it either way. She opts for a shapeless navy blue dress that hits just below her knee to combat dealing with a wet hem all day and secures her locket in place around her neck.

The beauty of her job and living space is that it is only three blocks from each other.

She always walks.

No matter the weather.

But right now, when she is running late, she sure wishes it was only one block. Or maybe she could convert her office to her bedroom. She is there enough.

She puts on her trusty rain boots as thunder crashes outside.

It will be a soggy walk but she has done it before. She will do it again and again and again for as long as she is able.

When she isn’t so rushed she feels lucky to be able to walk to work since she cannot drive. Whenever she needs to meet a client she catches a cab or (depending on the client) orders a car service. More often than not Anna picks her up and takes her where they need to go. It keeps things simple. She likes the predictability of it all, the reliability. It makes everything else that much more manageable.

She grabs her purse and stuffs a pair of sensible flats in to change into once she reaches the office. Then with her lunchbox and umbrella in tow she dashes out into the hallway. When she gets outside she pops up her black umbrella and starts down the sidewalk at as brisk a pace as her boots will allow.

It is gusty. She hadn’t realized, but about half way in to her walk a strong swoop of wind catches her umbrella and pulls. Elsa does her best to fight it while juggling her purse and lunch and trying to down a granola bar and respond to the distressed texts and calls to let them know she is on her way but it is a losing battle.

The umbrella flips inside out just as the rain picks up from torrential to basically a waterfall. It takes all of five seconds before she is soaked to the bone. Unfortunately it takes about ten seconds to fix her traitorous umbrella so by the time she gets herself sorted it is rather a moot point.

If she wasn't already nearly half an hour late she would turn back around and change, but she will just have to make due at this point. From the outpouring of texts from her family and colleagues she does not have time to do anything but show up.

So with rain dripping down her nose, pooling in her boots, and making her shift dress cling to her skin she finally makes it to the steps of E&A Events. It is a modest brick building that shares a foyer with several other local businesses. In the heart of the city it is a sleek mix of chrome and brick that has been arranged in a way that is both modern and welcoming. She bee lines to the frosted glass door with their logo etched into it and slogs inside soaked and humiliated.

She is met by a frantic, yet enthusiastic, Rapunzel.

“Elsa! Hi! Let me take your umbrella.” The springy brunette grabs the handle right from Elsa’s hand. Elsa blinks - stunned. Even for Rapunzel this greeting is over the top.

She bends to pull off her water-logged boots as Rapunzel shakes her traitorous umbrella onto the hardwood entry hall floor.

“Pascal’s gonna be living in this hall mopping up messes if this rain doesn’t stop.” Rapunzel laughed. “It’s a miracle Mister Westergaard didn’t slip and crack his head open the second he came in. You didn’t update the calendar so I didn’t know he was coming and -”

Elsa nearly loses her balance as she pulls off her second boot, the last shred of her dignity saved only by the thought that there are thirteen possible opportunities for who it could be other than the one she dreads the most.

“Mister Westergaard?” Her stomach flips back and forth, but she manages to keep her tone even. “He was here?”

Rapunzel rolled her eyes. “Not was. Is here. What? Did you forget about your appointment?”

Elsa stares at Rapunzel for a long moment, mind not computing what she is being told. Surely Rapunzel is not telling her that Hans Westergaard is there, in their office, at that very moment except the look on Rapunzel’s face says that is exactly what is being said. Elsa almost runs back out in the rain, but instead she rolls back her shoulders and places her boots neatly by the door. No one needs to know how fast her mind is racing beneath her professional exterior.

“I must have gotten my days mixed up.” She buys herself a bit of time as she presses a soaked tendril behind one ear. “Has he been waiting long?”

Rapunzel looks at her watch. “Twenty two minutes.”

Elsa groans inwardly. “Who is with him?”

“Well it was me and Eugene - but then Anna and Kristoff got here and they took over. Hans is really insistent about talking to you specifically.”

And although Elsa has never breathed a word about anything that happened that night to anyone - not even Anna - she knows that everyone knows at least the bare bones of the situation. Her cheeks heat.

If she had ever suspected he actually would show up at her office she never would have -

“I need to talk to Anna.”

“But she’s with -”

“Yes. I know.” Elsa cuts in. “Could you please go in and tell her she has an urgent call that she needs to take in private?”

A wash of understanding floods Rapunzel’s face. She nods, razored bob slashing across her cheeks at the motion.

“Yes. Yeah. Okay. Got it.” She puts Elsa’s traitorous umbrella in the stand and gives her a thumbs up. “I got this.”

Elsa forces a smile, too distracted to even consider mustering a real one, and watches as Rapunzel goes to the wide frosted double doors that lead to the client meeting room. She tucks herself into the shadowed corner as Rapunzel goes in and waits there until she and Anna return a moment later.

“There you are! I’ve been texting you!” Anna says as she reaches out to hug Elsa but stops when she touches her shoulders. “And you’re soaked. What happened?”

“It’s been a long morning.”

“It’s only 9:30.”

“Still.” She does not need to say more. Elsa knows Anna understands in the way she does not press the matter.

Instead she skips forward. “Hans Westergaard is here.”

“So Rapunzel said.” She keeps her voice even “What does he want?”

“Well…” Anna spreads her hands in front of herself. “I don’t really know? An event of some kind to be sure, but he is not exactly forthcoming. He says he wants to talk to you about it first.”

Elsa’s mind goes a thousand directions.

“But - I don't have a vision board.” She can hardly think over the pounding of her heart. “I - I haven’t had time to put together an intake package and what about the Clemmons wedding? I don’t know how we could possibly take on another project when - he has to go. There is just no way - ”

Anna catches Elsa’s emphatic hands in her and cuts her off with a worried stare.

“Okay. Slow down. Elsa - what exactly is going on here?”

Elsa feels her defenses rising in the midst of her unprofessional behavior. “I just think we should think twice before even considering taking this on. It could be beyond our capability, our scope. And if we can’t meet and exceed expectations then think of the liabilities.”

Anna’s face scrunches. “I think what you meant to say there is that this is the break we have been working for! It could mean the biggest leap of clientele in the history of our lives with one event. Elsa - this is the Westergaards. We may as well plan something for the governor - or the president - but they don’t have nearly as much money.”

Elsa knows Anna is right but she cannot stop the riot rhythm of her heart at the idea of spending any kind of extended period of time working with Hans Westergaard. She thinks of all the meetings, the phone calls, the shopping trips and vendor consults that they would complete side-by-side as she did with all her clients. She thinks of the intimacy that accompanies her role guiding people through the planning process and seeing their tastes and preferences under a magnifying glass. She cannot do that with him. She will not. It will break her.

“Anna.” Her head throbs. She struggles for a way to put what she feels into words without saying too much. “This just isn’t going to work.”

Anna releases Elsa’s hands to grip her shoulders, fabric squelching under her fingers, face softening as she picks up on her sister’s distress. “You’ve gotta help me understand this one sis. Did something happen at the wedding that you aren’t telling me?”

Elsa is in a corner and she knows it. If there is even a chance of getting Anna in that corner with her she is going to have to come clean. She looks down and presses clenched fists to her eyes.

“He asked me out.”

Anna is quiet for a long moment and Elsa is not sure if she heard her, but she will be damned if she repeats herself.

Then, tentatively: “You have been asked out before…?”

Anna phrases it as a question even though she knows the answer. Elsa has been asked out, but it had been a non-issue. She had never had difficulty turning away the attention of men who were often all too happy to move on to the next thing that caught their eye when they realized she was not worth the effort. Never, however, had she been so relentlessly pursued by someone she finds so frustrating and attractive in equal measure. Never has it come at such an inopportune time.

“Not like this.” Elsa replies.

“Oh - oh - !” This time Anna is all too quick to respond and Elsa rips her hands from her eyes and glares at her sister.

“No. Don’t.” She will not have her weakness spoken aloud.

“But Elsa -”

“Stop.”

“Did you say ‘yes’?”

“Anna.”

“Oh crap - you did. Didn’t you? Or you didn’t but you wanted to?”

“What I don’t want to do is talk about it.”

“Elsa.”

“Anna.”

“Elsa. This is Hans Westergaard. Do I need to remind you again what that means?” Anna’s eyebrow quirks.

“I know what it means.”

Anna purses her lips. “Look. I’m going to be you for a second, because I think you need it and I don’t want to seem mean but you’re talking crazy.”

Anna pauses for a second to gather her thoughts, takes a deep breath, and then launches her attack.

“We need this, Elsa. Everyone at E&A Events needs this to happen so you are going to have to suck it up and put on your big girl pants because we need this. Not you, we. This company is more than you and we need you to not screw this one up, okay? We need you to be calm and collected and professional and to do this event no matter how much it twists your personal panties, okay?”

Elsa blinks, mascara smearing into her eyes and stinging but that burn is nothing compared to Anna’s words. She is normally the rational one, her business sense always winning out, and a taste of her own medicine is bitter. Anna is right. If Elsa truly wants to set up E&A Events for long lasting success then she has to approach this the same as she would any other client.

Elsa takes a shaky breath.

Anna rubs the clammy skin on Elsa’s arms, as close to a hug as they can get with Elsa soaked the way she is.

“Remember when we started this business you said you wanted to live a normal life as long as you were able?”

It is an odd question, one Elsa had not anticipated, and she frowns. There had been so many discussions over the years. Each one had hinged on the fact that Elsa was not like the rest of them. Each one had tried to navigate the careful balance of the inevitable and the ignoring of it. The application of these conversations and plans however had never made her heart pound in her chest like she had just sprinted a mile.

Elsa shakes her head.

“You’re right,” she holds her hands up in surrender. “You know you’re right. Of course you’re right. Mister Westergaard is just like any other client.”

Anna casts her sister a knowing look. “That is not what I meant and you know it.”

Except Elsa didn’t. She blinks, wide eyed and confused.

“Elsa. If you want to date the guy, just date him. Dating doesn’t have to mean getting attached. It can just be fun. That is what normal people do. Normal people have fun.” She plants her hands on her hips. “Plus he is loaded so you know he can probably take you on some pretty amazing dates.”

Elsa’s defences fly up. “Not going to happen.”

“But you know it would be okay if it did.” Anna goes soft in almost perfect opposition to Elsa’s rigidity. “All I’m saying is we all only get one shot at this life thing. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow or Kristoff could get struck by lightning. I get that you are trying to protect yourself and whoever else might come along but don’t you think that maybe you’re just hurting yourself more by not even trying?”

The words hit Elsa like a fist to the chest.

She is absolutely dizzy with them.

Of all the ways she thought this Monday would go.

She bears down.

“We’re doing this.”

She pushes past a surprised Anna and heads to the doors to where Hans Westergaard is waiting. If he is going to lay down a challenge she will be damned if she shrinks down from it.

She will meet him just as she is, streaming mascara, skin soaked dress hot mess, and she will not back down.

She cannot.

She pushes past her sister towards those ominous frosted doors knowing that she looks a mess and accepting every bit of it. There may have been objections, but with the way Anna put it she knows that this is something she must face.

This isn’t about dating or a relationship.

This isn’t about love.

Hans Westergaard has the nerve to come to into her territory then it can only be one outcome for this.

This is war.

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#Helsa #Frozen #Hans #Elsa #Kristoff #Anna #Kristanna #Modern AU #Raven Writes Stuff

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thegeneralsnotebook · 5 years

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Adventures in Deck-building Part 126: Rainbow Dash, Flier Extraordinaire (Blue/White Midrange) [Harmony]

Rainbow Dash, Flier Extraordinaire

Who Says You Get a Headstart?

Once upon a time, I might have (and indeed did when I first looked at her) written off a Mane like Rainbow Dash here as a blatant contradiction who was almost entirely unworkable. Like the Crystal Hero that we featured on here a couple of weeks ago, Rainbow Dash asks us to do two things that seem to be going at cross-purposes: play our own Troublemakers, then get an ability that helps us if we’re confronting Problems and starting faceoffs. Where was I to start?

Well, Dash does have one implicit saving grace, which is that unlike Spike her Boosted text is actually generally useful, and will very likely come in handy in any game where we manage to flip her. Also unlike Spike, her flip condition is also totally reasonable, and doesn’t require us to totally overboard in some weird direction just to get our Mane flipped. Those two chief differences bringing her somewhat closer to normalcy, I was able to put something together.

The chief insight that led to the creation of this deck was itself another deck, one that I first put together almost a year ago, and played throughout the SB meta. In fact, I still have a copy of it built in paper, though not a Ponyhead link, so sorry, no links. The deck was Five Stars, a Purple/Yellow control/aggro hybrid built around the idea of playing like a Troublemaker control deck for the first part of a game, and then eventually transitioning into an all-out aggro plan once a comfortable-enough lead had been built. While not always consistently successful, the deck was always very fun to play, and so I wondered if I could maybe do something similar here with Rainbow Dash.

Having a concept to work with also significantly sped up the building phase, since I had something of a rough template to figure out what the major pieces of the deck were going to be. The most important cards to have were cards that could conceivably work well in both styles, a role that was filled well by Traveler Spike and Clever Calculator in Five Stars, and which offered a good variety of Blue and White cards too. Ember is by far the most natural inclusion, helping to protect the Troublemakers and to win us faceoffs later. Indeed almost all of the Blue contributions to this deck fall into this role, providing both a control use and an aggro use.

Again in Five Stars, I had three chief aggro tools that I would want to assemble in my hand before “pulling the trigger” and transitioning: Citizens, Day Shift, and Clever Calculator. Similarly, I left myself only room three for absolute aggro cards in this deck: Citizens, RTO, and Limb Actuator. Saving those three, I knew that the rest of the deck had to be dedicated to either colour infrastructure or else to control elements (although I wrote that, and then by the time that I finished this paragraph I went back and threw in the two Pony Pirates). It was a hard decision to cut value powerhouses like A.K. Yearling and Indifferent Decorator, but I only had room for three, so decisions had to be made. And especially since the transition does tend to be an all-out race for points, I wanted to keep exclusively the cards geared to scoring as many points as possible.

Blue and White did at least offer a good set of Problems to choose from, so we were to build up an expected Problem Bonus of 1.55 (5/9, since the first Problem is always going to be 1). The more important number for RTO though is how power per point our Problem deck is giving us, and that number here is 4.2. What this means is that for each expected Bonus point we get from our Problem deck, on average we need to have supplied 4.2 Power. This number doesn’t mean much because I haven’t calculated it for other decks but I think I’m going to start doing that, because it feels like a reasonable statistic that might say something useful about the available Problems a deck has to work with.

As to this deck and Rainbow Dash, though, it looks and feels very strange, and my experience with Five Stars says that it will feel strange to play too. I never quite worked out when it was best to “pull the trigger”, meaning that often enough my opponent would come back in time for a thrilling conclusion. But I still count those as victories of a sort.

With the Friends Forever release bearing down on us now, it’s more important than ever to keep thinking creatively, to get ready for the deluge of new archetypes that this new set is bringing. Seriously, I’m counting like six or seven new archetypes that I’ve thought of already, and some of the tribes have a lot of development to go too. In any event, next week I’ll be thinking creatively once again with Maud Pie, Rockin’!

#mlpccg #mlp:ccg #adventure

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thehungrykat1 · 6 years

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Tsuta Introduces New Philippine Original Series

Tsuta, the world’s first Michelin-starred ramen restaurant from Tokyo, opened its doors in Bonifacio Global City last December to the delight of local foodies and ramen aficionados. While there are already several ramen brands in the country, this is the first ramen restaurant to open here with the distinguished One Michelin Star from the globally renowned Michelin Guide. I really love eating ramen, but I have yet to visit Tsuta because of my busy schedule. Thankfully, I chose the perfect time to finally try their award-winning Japanese soba noodles because Chef Yuki Onishi, the founder and master chef of Tsuta, is back in the country to launch their new Philippine Original Series.

The first branch of Tsuta in the Philippines is located at the C3 upper ground level of Bonifacio High Street Central in Bonifacio Global City. It was brought to the country by FooDee Global Concepts, the same group that operates Pound by Todd English, Bench Cafe, Tim Ho Wan, and other popular restaurants around the city. Chef Yuki Onishi opened his first restaurant in Tokyo in January 2012 and began receiving awards from 2013 until it became the world’s first Michelin-starred Ramen in 2015. He opened his first international branch in Singapore in 2016 and it has also been franchised to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and finally in the Philippines.

Tsuta BGC occupies a relatively small space, typical of those local ramen eateries in Japan. The setup is casual and informal, giving you the idea that the food is the main highlight of the restaurant. Tsuta offers an authentic yet modern ramen dining experience, driven by his ambitious desire to create truly original flavors using premium and natural ingredients.

The best seats in the house would definitely be at the bar directly in front of the chefs. Chef Yuki Onishi is back in Manila to personally attend to the kitchen and to the launch of his Philippine Original Series which will include a new ramen variant as well as other new appetizers and side dishes.

The name Tsuta originates from Chef Yuki’s family crest which also means “Ivy” in Japanese. While there have been a deluge of ramen restaurants in the city, Tsuta promises to offer something totally different from the very rich and oily ramen Filipinos are used to eating. I’m very excited to get my first taste of this multi-awarded Michelin-star ramen.

Chef Yuki learned the art of making ramen in 1997 at his father’s ramen shop, ‘Nanae no Aji no mise, Mejiro’ after graduating from high school. He then opened his own restaurant, Japanese Soba Noodles Tsuta in Sugamo, Tokyo in 2012. His artistry in combining ingredients lifts his ramen into a higher dimension, although this sometimes brings him in conflict with his father who prefers a more traditional style.

What makes Tsuta special is Chef Yuki’s unique combination of his signature Dashi soup broth, oils, and sauces which come together to create a delicate, multi-layered umami flavor. He left a budding fashion career to pursue his dream, and the result is a Michelin-star for Tsuta for the last three years.

Chef Yuki flew back to Manila this April to personally oversee the launching of the Philippine Original Series. I heard that the opening menu of Tsuta Philippines was limited to only three ramen variants, so this new Filipino-inspired bowl will be a welcome addition.

I started my Michelin-star ramen experience with their Aburi Niku (P130), one of the side dishes offered at Tsuta. These charred and blow-torched pork cubes are drenched in onion sauce then garnished with leeks and watercress. It’s a good way to jumpstart my taste buds before my ramen arrives. They also offer a few rice toppings including rice bowls topped with char siu or pork cubes. The menu really is quite short, so it’s good that they are adding new items.

The soba noodles at Tsuta are made from the mixture of several kinds of wheat flour and whole wheat flour which are produced at the restaurant. Tsuta’s soba are slightly different from other ramen noodles, with the former being a bit thicker and more al dente or hard. This allows more of the ramen broth to be soaked up inside the noodles. Despite the difference in terminology, it’s still okay to just call it a ramen.

The bowl that gave Tsuta the coveted Michelin Star is its signature Shoyu Soba (P390). At first glance, the shoyu soba looks much lighter than the usual ramen variants we see, but that is what makes it so different. Instead of using a tonkotsu broth made with pork bones and pork fat, Tsuta’s unique dashi is a blend made with chicken, asari clams, and seafood which are carefully selected by the Master Chef. The soy-based shoyu soba uses fully-matured two-year old soybeans sourced from the shoyu brewery in Wakayama which are specially produced for the restaurant. A dash of black truffle oil is also added which results in a light and clean-tasting broth that brings out the umami flavors of the ingredients.

While some ramen lovers may prefer the rich and oily versions, I actually found myself enjoying the light but sophisticated flavors from the Shoyu Soba. Other ramen may have an in-your-face explosion of flavors, but Tsuta brings with it a more elegant and refined taste and depth. Sipping the broth actually reminds me of chicken soup lovingly prepared at home, but on a whole new level. I actually feel healthier while eating it. Now I understand how Tsuta got its Michelin Star, not through sheer overpowering flavors, but through finesse and a masterful combination of ingredients. I still like the richer versions, but Tsuta gives a different ramen experience altogether.

The standard Shoyu Soba comes with one slice of pork char siu, bamboo shoot, and leeks, but you can also choose to add more toppings like the Char Siu Ajitama Shoyu Soba (P620) which comes with four slices of char siu and a flavored egg. This is one of the best ajitama or soft-boiled eggs I have encountered as it is perfectly cooked with a runny egg yolk that goes so well with the ramen.

After coming to the Philippines for the grand opening of Tsuta, Chef Yuki Onishi made his return to launch the Philippine Original Series which includes a master creation made specially for the Philippine market. We were lucky to be one of the first to taste this new creation last April 3 so I was really excited to try it.

Chef Yuki personally prepared each of these new soba bowls inspired by Filipino flavors. True to his art and philosophy of exploring and learning foreign cultures, Chef Yuki introduces the new Sang La Tan Tan Soba.

The Sang La Tan Tan Soba is Tsuta’s version of the Tantanmen married with the Philippine’s most popular dish - Sisig! Never in my mind would I think of combining these two national treasures but Chef Yuki has done it masterfully. The Sang La Tan Tan Soba comes with a beautiful blend of the restaurant’s signature Dashi and Shoyu Tare combined with locally sourced ingredients including peanut paste, chili, and white cane vinegar. It is then garnished with leeks and sautéed minced crispy pork, giving it that crunchy texture we all love from the sizzling sisig.

The result is a ramen bowl that is both spicy and slightly sour with just a hint of sweetness. It has an unmistakable flavor that is uniquely Filipino but is also Japanese as well, which is an astounding feat that only a Master Chef like Yuki Onishi can create.

This broth is richer than the Shoyu Soba, so those who are hesitant to try the lighter broths at Tsuta should go and get this variant. It is not as spicy as other tantanmen I have tried, so the heat is just right for the Filipino palate. The Sang La Tan Tan Soba is available starting April 7, but it will be limited to only 50 bowls a day. Since it take 12 hours or more to prepare the stock, once it runs out for the day, the restaurant cannot prepare more even if they wanted to.

Chef Yuki’s Philippine Original Series will be launching for the whole month of April, with other original dishes such as gyoza, karaage, and green tea pudding making its way into the menu week by week. That should give you more reasons to visit Tsuta this month so you can experience this wonderful Filipino master creation. I’ll be back really soon to try the other new appetizers and side dishes, so hopefully then don’t run out of Sang La Tan Tan Soba for me!

Tsuta Philippnes

Upper Ground Level C3, 7th Ave, Bonifacio High Street Central, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

www.tsuta.com

www.facebook.com/tsutaphilippines

#TsutaRamen #TsutaPhilippines #Ramen #Noodles #Soba #Japanese #Tantanmen #Shoyu #YukiOriginals

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robertkstone · 6 years

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2018 CES Tech Roundup: Twelve CES Tech Treasures

This year CES, the trade show in the desert that some feel threatens Detroit’s North American auto show in terms of prestige and automotive news-making, suffered a daylong deluge that leaked through perpetually sunbaked convention-center roofs and forced booth closures and a major power outage (curiously, a day after the rain had stopped). Enjoy the Schadenfreude, NAIAS organizers. In between the chaos, your future-tech hound dog managed to sniff out quite a lot of cool tech, over and above perhaps my favorite announcement of all: That Ford’s Sync 3 will allow Waze interaction on the screen! Here’s the best of the rest.

Sound Ideas

The sound wizards at Bose always trot out the coolest concepts from their sandbox to show the manufacturers at CES, and they were kind enough to share three intriguing ones with Motor Trend, too. CarWear is a cool way to integrate the company’s range of popular Bluetooth-enabled noise-canceling headphones into a vehicle. Today’s vacationing family often finds itself privately listening to different content from multiple tablets and devices. What if each of these devices—which are already capable of connecting to multiple devices (so a phone call could interrupt a tablet video for example)—also connected to the car? Then Mom or Dad in the front row could press a button and pause everyone’s content to draw attention to a roadside attraction or poll the crowd about dining options. Everyone converses at normal volumes using the microphones integrated into the headsets. And individual seating positions can be selected, allowing a front-row and third-row van occupant to chat like motorcyclists using helmet cams without disturbing anyone else. The hardware needed for this concept could be built in or offered as an aftermarket plug-in device.

Volume Zones for Bose Performance Series is an idea where the front and rear of a vehicle can have a sound-level difference as great as 12 dB—ideal for when someone wants to have a private conversation in one row while the other row enjoys content loud enough to cover their chat. This is far more than a fader knob—it preserves the sensation of surround sound for each row, and making the music seem to come from the direction where someone doesn’t want to be heard is pretty crucial. The system demonstrated in a Volvo S90 featured 23 speakers, including four bass woofers—two in each front footwell and two in each rear door. That’s double the usual number because bass is so hard to isolate. The bass speakers in the quiet zone must do noise-cancelation duty to hush the ones in the loud zone. And no, I was unable to learn how a speaker can simultaneously play a tone while canceling that same tone.

ClearVoice is a long-overdue concept in which the Bose system that is playing content, navigation commands, and Bluetooth telephone calls manages to cancel all the known content from a phone call. This means that when you take a call, the radio broadcast can continue to play (perhaps at slightly lower volume) so passengers don’t miss that crucial play that was about to happen on a sports broadcast, and the driver can continue to receive nav prompts. Meanwhile, the party on the other end of the phone call hears nothing at all but your voice. The car’s (often) cloud-connected voice recognition system or Siri/Alexa/Google assistant also gets fed a “clean” voice signal for improved accuracy and no transcription of radio or nav chatter. This system features four microphones to record the driver’s voice with high accuracy, and it requires considerable computing power, but it could be implemented quickly.

Meanwhile, Israeli firm Noveto proposes personal listening without headphones. This system uses a face-recognition camera (like those used for Level 3 autonomous driver-readiness detection) to locate the listener’s ears. A highly focused beam of sound is then sent from the dash or seatbacks directly into each ear. The signal is so directional and accurate that it’s inaudible inches away, even at reasonable volumes. The sound quality didn’t quite match that of great headphones or a killer car audio system, but it keeps the driver’s ears open to hear emergency vehicles and the like, and it allows passengers to consume individual content without their ears getting sweaty. It also allows passengers to still carry on conversations with one another. The system is being developed for computer monitors, game consoles, and other home/office uses, too.

Hi-Res Headlights

Texas Instruments introduced a new digital light processing (DLP) adaptive headlamp system that projects 1 million addressable pixels of light per headlamp onto the roadway ahead (80- to 100 is typical). Interestingly, the light source can be LED, laser, or something else intensely bright. Using digital micromirrors, each of these pixels illuminates 0.012 degree of the road ahead. They can be dimmed or darkened altogether, which makes all sorts of features possible when connected to onboard forward-facing cameras, nav systems, and the like. The lamps can precisely darken the area around an oncoming driver’s head (or the windshield or the entire car), project nav direction arrows onto the pavement, draw new lane-marker lines in tight construction areas, or even signal pedestrians that you’ll wait for them by projecting a cross walk onto the ground in front. Adjusting headlamp patterns to account for heavy loads or when driving in a foreign country using the “other side” of the road is equally possible. No pricing was estimated for this concept.

Not to be outdone, lighting rival Osram showed off its Eviyos concept, which promises much of the same functionality at a much lower price point. It uses a single LED chip per headlamp; each chip is subdivided into 1,024 addressable subsegments that work like Texas Instruments’ pixels. Each of these pixels shines with a maximum of 3 lumens, and the resolution of the nav arrows and crosswalk lines, the beam pattern cutoff, and so forth were not as crisp as TI’s, but if the price brings it to C-Classes instead of S-Classes, good for Osram. Of course, you might as well know that our federal regulations don’t yet fully permit the coolest of these features. Perhaps one day if our government budgets itself more than three weeks in advance, agencies such as NHTSA will be able to do this work.

Presale Automation

Swedish tech company Semcon is teaming with Volvo Bil, a retail subsidiary of Volvo Car Sweden, to investigate the possibility of automating the numerous off-highway movements of a new car between the factory and the customer—around the factory grounds, the logistics lots, dealer property, etc. A pilot program starts this month. Semcon has been involved in development of autonomous/driverless vehicles such as autonomous snowplows and lawnmowers.

Gesture Wheel

ZF demonstrated a capacitive touch steering wheel that doubles as a user interface. Its 11 capacitive sensors accurately detect when the driver is holding the wheel, and they also permit tap and slide operation of a unique user interface. An interactive screen is positioned at the center of the wheel with typical menu functions located at its corners and sides. Double tap the wheel at a corresponding position to activate the menu in that corner of the screen. Then maybe with the temperature or fan control dial showing on the screen, tap the wheel and slide your hand clockwise or counterclockwise to raise or lower the temp or fan speed. Tap the top of the steering column for horn. That’s also the area the airbag now deploys from because the center of the steering wheel is all screen. An LED light strip illuminates the inner ring of the steering wheel rim. Blue lights indicate autonomous mode, white lights connote manual driving, yellow lights indicate turn signaling, and red lights provide driver warning.

Connected Cameras

Valeo’s XtraVue concept leverages vehicle-to-vehicle communication to share one vehicle’s forward-facing camera view with those behind. The following vehicle uses forward-scanning lidar to verify that the car ahead is most likely the one it’s receiving a signal from (GPS coordinate sharing in these vehicle-to-vehicle transmissions lacks accuracy), then its 360-degree surround-view photo-stitching capabilities are put to work integrating the forward car’s image with its own camera images to “phantom” the car ahead.

Biker Concepts

One night I escaped the CES Auto Show in the convention center’s North Hall for a roundup of cool nonautomotive stuff. Cosmo Connected’s helmet light is a magnet-mount USB-rechargeable Bluetooth-connected lighting unit that mounts to the back of the rider’s helmet. It automatically illuminates at night, brightens when the bike slows, and signals a turn when prompted by the rider’s phone-based nav or manually via an app on a handlebar-mounted phone. It also detects when an accident has happened and immediately rings the rider’s phone. If there’s no answer, it texts an emergency contact and prompts them to call the phone twice. If no answer, EMS is contacted with GPS coordinates and medical info on file. Cost is $59 for the light.

A similar concept, the Coros Omni smart helmet, also features Bluetooth connectivity and a light, though the light only provides night illumination, not braking or turn signals. It does, however, use an interesting “speaker” system that excites the rider’s cheekbones to transmit sound, leaving the ears open to hear traffic, emergency vehicles, etc. The sound quality was surprisingly good. This one will also detect a wreck and summon help. The helmet is totally waterproof, weighs 340 grams, and costs $199.

The Velco Wink Bar is described as the world’s first connected handlebar, featuring Bluetooth phone pairing, onboard GPS, and GSM phone connection. It also offers LED forward lighting and lights on top of the bar that flash to indicate which way the phone-based nav wants the rider to turn. The right handle grip contains the rechargeable battery, which can easily be brought inside for recharging. It even includes an anti-theft alarm that texts the owner if the bike is moved without prior authorization via the Bluetooth connection or an RF ID “ignition key” present.

The post 2018 CES Tech Roundup: Twelve CES Tech Treasures appeared first on Motor Trend.

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