More character prompts from this post!

Did Obi Wan’s here

What does your blorbo's phone/laptop/car/backpack look like?

Padmé

Phone:

Ok so Padmé isn’t stupid, Ani, she knows what planned obsolescence is, she knows the tech industry is predatory and stupid and Apple is some of the worst, but living in a capitalist society means you have to participate in capitalism and she likes the convenience of Apple software, so she always has the newest iPhone. She likes to get them in regular silver or white.

Her phone screen has a protector on it and you BET there is no crack to be seen because her phone is very much her baby. The case for the phone is a pretty marble/geometric/metallic design that’s got decent enough ratings online in terms of protection. Maybe it has one of those little built-in slots where you can put a spare credit card or ID, and if it does, she actually uses it lol

Her lockscreen is a screenshot of her weekly schedule because she is a neurotic type-A over planner and she needs that along with her twenty million alarms and reminders of everything all the time 

Her homescreen is actually a cute picture of Anakin/Satine/Sabé/Obi Wan/whoever she’s in a relationship with, or if she has Luke and Leia it’s Luke and Leia. All her apps are meticulously organized into categorized boxes and everything is positioned on the screen so you can actually see the homescreen background and everything is accessible

She has no less than five different email apps. She checks all of them meticulously.

And this is just her personal phone, it’s not even the phone she keeps for work lmao

Laptop:

Pads also has the latest up to date MacBook Pro.

She’s like Obi Wan and she keeps a cleaning cloth for the screen because the dirty screen CONSTANTLY getting schmutz all over it drives her nuts

Her laptop background is some aesthetic floral background, but she actually has a screensaver slideshow of one of her photo albums with people she likes on it

She has a laptop case, it’s also very aesthetic and something with pretty abstract patterns in pastel colors, she has a matching colored rubber keyboard cover to keep yuck out of the keys.

Car:

Akshskdhk Padmé honey I’m so sorry I keep giving you literally every single one of the stereotypes for the rich liberal white women who were in my area growing up, but let’s be real that’s what you are 😂

So yeah Padmé has a new model shiny silver luxury electric sedan. She’s got a good job and rich parents

Not a Tesla because fffffuck Musk but one of those other brands. She feels like a BMW driver to me but idk if they come in electric.

Her license plate is specialized with her initials and has a special plate because she donates to the state wildlife society

She’s a faster driver; there isn’t really any wear and tear on the outside, like not in terms of dents, but there’s stress on the tires

Nice leather seats, seatwarmers, great sound system, the works. She’s always got a vanilla air freshener in it, it smells nice enough and she keeps the front area fairly clean, but do NOT open up the trunk or the glove compartment or pull down the sun visors, she’s got twenty million emergency first aid kits and spare outfits and boxes of pads and apocalypse prep boxes and three knives and four shopping bags of things she needs to return and bags of stuff she’s going to donate to the poor/soup kitchens

One of the check engine lights or something is constantly flickering on and off, Pads ignores it because “eh I need my car, I don’t have much time to get it fixed and nothing seems to be wrong with it, it should be fine”. Anakin’s eye twitches every time he sees it because not only is it something Broken he’s not currently Fixing(TM), he’s honestly not sure he CAN fix it because these new techy digital cars are extremely anti-self repair, and that just gets him and Padmé right back into the planned obsolescence argument again.

Backpack:

Bold of you to assume Padmé Amidala only has one (1) backpack

She has multiple high quality ones that suit her various needs

Two for school/work. They’re the same brand, small and one is plain leather and one is bougie-plaid and they depend on what outfit she’s wearing. They contain her laptop spare electronics and chargers, her emergency kit, umbrellas, and her purse

She’s got like three more for leisure. A bit more slouchy and aesthetic for just carrying random stuff when she doesn’t want a purse, still contain everything you could possibly need

Also one sports backpack

All in top quality shape

part 2 of the cool interview, and some more pics :>

“Pro-file: Nailing a New Look” pt 2

Q&A with Trent Reznor and Rob Shriden about All That Could Have Been

By Mathew Honen for Macworld on February 1st, 2002

This is a continuation of my previous post, the rest of the interview, and some pictures to go along. I enjoyed reading this interview, they talk about something I don’t see a lot, I hope you enjoy.

Q: What was the experience of using DVD Studio Pro like?

Sheridan: At one point during the set, there are these three giant video screens that come down behind the band and project these incredible videos that Bill Viola [did for us]. During that portion of the set on the DVD, it's cutting between wide and tight shots and shots of Trent singing. But because these screens were so amazing looking, we thought it would be great to be able to switch between an angle where you could just watch the screen and then back to the cut showing the band playing.

Reznor: There some extra things in there that we shouldn't get into too much because over time they'll be revealed. But there are a lot of little hacks into the OS of the DVD, menus that you think pop up differently than they did the last time, to try and make the whole experience immersive. It was fun to be able to see what you could do with the medium and actually do it.

Q: Didn't you record Pretty Hate Machine on a Mac?

Reznor: Yeah, I've had a Mac since the very first one. I was also using a Commodore 64 for MIDI. At the time of Pretty Hate Machine, I had a Mac Plus. I did all the sequencing of that record on that. With Broken, Studio Vision had come out. That was the first marriage of MIDI and digital audio, and that forever changed the way I was going to record. Now that it's gone from recording everything on tape with a few things on the computer to recording everything on the computer, it's really changed the roles of a lot of people in the studio. The programmer's job is much more the engineer now. All the engineers now have to know Pro Tools.

Q: After providing the music for Quake, are you scoring any more games?

Reznor: I've been discussing things with Id Software for Doom III. It's not formalized at this point, but it's something I really want to do. When I did Quake, we were still questioning if the audio was going to be streamed off of CD, which if it wasn't was incredibly limiting. But with as interactive as things are now, and as immersive as the engine they've been working on is graphically, and some of the program is so moody; it's like scoring a film. Yet it's much more intense than a film because it doesn't always go the same way, it has to be interactive. Plus the mood of the game is so dark and evil, it's interesting to me.

Q: What kind of rig do you have in your studio?

Reznor: I set this up several years ago to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. It's an SSL analog big console, and we've moved away from two 48-track analog tape to everything being recorded on hard disk. We have 72 tracks of in-and-out ProTools hardware. The main computer in there right now is an 867MHz G4 with 1GB of RAM and several fast SCSI cards. We still use SCSI drives. We have a few of them laying around to always have at least two 36GBs online at all times, and we have a big tape backup system that backs us up every night. We have a secondary Mac in the control room as well that we use for software synthesis and running through plug-ins in real time. I think the coolest thing that's happened in the last few years is with synthesizers going virtual. That's why we have another Mac that's just up to run things in real time, running Reason or Reactor, or a number of software samplers like Battery or Absynth. Reason is from Propellerhead--it's spectacular. There's a lot of gear just being reduced to a PowerBook.

Q: Do you have a Titanium PowerBook?

Reznor: I'm about to as soon as I can get Apple to give me one. In the meantime I've got a gasoline-powered 500MHz G3.

Thess vs IT ‘Upgrades’

I am The Office Nerd. In all the ways. Like, all of them. But for the moment, we focus on the fact that I am the only one in my office who knows shit from dick about computers. And I don’t even know that much - enough to build my own rig if the mood takes me, and some basics about components and what’s good and what’s not, but that’s about it. Seriously, though? WAY more than anyone else in my office knows.

This comes up now because ... well, see, we have two computers - one we don’t really use, and one we do. The one we do use is connected to the hospital’s system, so all hardware and software upgrades are at the mercy of NHS procurement policies and shit. Now, given the current economic climate, and the fact that the NHS is getting it severely in the neck no matter how you look at it, you wouldn’t expect them to be upgrading at all. Except they’ve been putting off upgrading for a very long time now. How long? Well, put it this way - we were running Windows 7. So it’s been at least a decade since we had a software upgrade, and we wouldn’t even be having one now if Microsoft hadn’t declared it would no longer support Windows 7. So we needed to upgrade to Windows 10, and because our machines barely ran Windows 7, we had to have a full hardware upgrade, too. Except we also had to not spend much money.

So here’s what they did. You know those little dinky budget boxes with the integrated graphics card that are incredibly hard to actually replace anything on if you have to? Well, yeah, they bought those. The CPU’s okay for running Windows 10, but it’s not going to survive another software upgrade particularly well. The peripherals are frankly garbage - there’s something wrong with the headphone jack on these models because we’re all struggling to hear the dictation we’re supposed to be typing. So frankly it’s not great. I hate those dinky pieces of garbage, but at least they’ve got RAM worth a shit for now.

What else did they do? Basically jack squat. Licenses for the Microsoft Office suite? Nope - it’s either use Wordpad and potentially lose formatting or end up with a crippled version of Word or whatever that lacks most of the functionality. Updated Outlook? Nope - we’re supposed to use the online version instead. We’re stuck on Chrome or Microsoft Edge because no one’s allowing us to download Firefox. Theoretically I can do my job without this stuff, but it’s way, way more awkward. So I’m a little frustrated and I may have gone off on something of a rant.

Best part? I was told at the end of last week that they’d be doing these so-called ‘upgrades’ soon. Except we didn’t have an exact date, so when I came into work this morning, there was that stupid piece-of-shit mini-box under my monitor, and I had no instructions on how to use the new login system. When I finally located the new dropdown menu and figured out which system I was supposed to have it set to when I entered user ID and password, it turned out that they hadn’t given me remote access to the company’s server, which I needed to do my damn job. The people who’d been doing the upgrades were still in the area but we couldn’t find them so I tried calling IT to see if they could pass on a message to the people working my floor. I got told, “Submit a ticket and they’ll get it”.

I spent an hour doing more or less nothing but getting frustrated with how this whole thing had been handled. Honestly, I wasn’t the only one. Everyone else had that issue either yesterday or earlier this morning and I guess that explains why there were over two hundred bits of typing in the group queue when I could finally access our transcription system - well, that and we’re approaching a four-day weekend because of the fucking platinum jubilee. So basically everything’s a mess.

I’m really hoping that it was just that Scruffman didn’t know the exact date of this upgrade because Head Honcho didn’t tell him, and not Scruffman just not bothering to drop us a fucking email. But honestly, either way? It’s nonsense. I did actually use Word to copy-paste often-repeated bits of dictation and now I have to open it in Wordpad and be grateful that none of it really uses formatting because the crippled, non-licensed version of Word won’t let you copy-paste. They just aren’t even bothering with Outlook, so we have to handle it via a poorly optimised browser.

This is not what I call an upgrade.

So, yeah, basically work was kinda shit. But at least I only have one more day before the long weekend. I’m not that much on the monarchy but I’ll gladly take the two days off. If I’m feeling up to it, I might even go and do things if stuff’s open. That’s if I can be sure of avoiding jubilee galas, or possibly protests. Either way, now that I’ve vented, I can go curl up and rest up to better tackle the unseemly backlog the IT ‘upgrade’ has left us with.

(I don’t blame IT or even the NHS that much, incidentally; I blame the Tory government that has underfunded the NHS so badly that we’re having to ration some software licensing and skip other bits of it altogether no matter how much of a hit productivity takes as a result. This just tortures admins by making their jobs harder, this license stinginess. UGH.)

Mastery Journal Reflection

How has the Business Intelligence Technology course met your Mastery Journal Timeline monthly expectations and goals for this course?

After graduating Full Sail University with my associate degree and going forward to attain my bachelor's degree in in Recording Arts, I considered coming back to the university to study for my master's degree in the same field or cybersecurity because of the IT background that I have also. But as I considered the many other degrees offered, I decided upon Business Intelligence, and I had no expectations of what to expect, but I will say that this course has met every possible timeline that I have come to be familiar with of this degree. In keeping a Master Journal as others before me, seeing where I am coming from and going I believe I am right on schedule to accomplish what this degree has to offer.

What have you learned from the course content?

I have learn what drive decision making in the market and in large corporate settings, and learning to use and implement Microsoft Power BI as a tool has been most interesting and amazing to pick up such a skill and to understand there are many tools like this, that others have used for years is a great thing for me to learn. And then there are principals of the rules of thought to that using the software allows you to see, understand and the analysis of the data that is presented before you. And to place the data in the proper visuals for presentations that the information to be seen and made simple that all will see and understand.

How might you apply what you learned as you proceed through the Business Intelligence program and in your professional career upon graduation?

First and foremost, I did not realize the opportunities in the job market for such a degree, and now that I do, as the opportunity presents itself, I will consider some of positions I have read about and when I took this course and my other degrees, my only goal was to become a teacher at Full sail University if the opportunity id avails itself. To help those like me who started late in life, to go to college and graduate and navigate life.

Reference

Making a format

Last week I indulged in a thought

For my Danganronpa style engine, I need a 3d model format. It’s after all not just flat sprites but actual 3d geometry everywhere. Looking over the collection if formats there.. I mean.. FBX is a mammoth closed source proprietary 3d scene interchange format with all kinds of crazy nonsense packed inside I’d have to learn to deal with by hand. Collada is a complicated xml based format with all kinds of crazy scene and object graph nonsense packed in, and deprecated to boot. glTF2 is a great format but then I’m dealing with parsing complicated hyper-related json structures and reading binary blobs, and my brain just doesn’t want to deal with it. You know I did want to deal with? OBJ.

Oh it’s an excellent simple format, and I got excited about it too… until I watched some more footage and noticed… there’s animation in them thar scenes.. not complicated animation mind you, but everything from the pop-up book style scene-transitions, to background elements like calling fans and even as we saw your 3d avatar.. walking/running/sprinting.. ya.. need animation. And guess what obj doesn’t support?

On top of that, all these formats have a big thing in common… none of them are FOR games. They’re for Scenes. The big engines support them not because they’re popular.. But because their editors are essentially scrpted scene assemblers with many of the same tools packed into an fbx.

So I’m over here.. demanding simplicity. Man oh man why couldn’t there be a format as simple as OBJ, but supports skeletal animation, and designed for single models? What if you didn’t need to download some bloated SDK or spend 50 hours writing a parser that only supports a subset of what the format packs in?

That’s when I had an idea.. What if I simply extended OBJ?

Oh, but if I’m gonna take the time to extend obj, why don’t I fix some of the stuff that indeed bugs me about it, like keeping all things 0-indexed, and providing the whole vertex buffer object for each vertex on the same line, neatly arranged? Because at the end of the day, even obj is more interested in data-exchange between 3d suites.

Ok, so if I’m going to do the whole line prefix denotes data type thing complete with a state machine that dictates how to deal with the data found on each line.. we may as well make each line as useful as possible, right? That’s when I came across the tagline for the format “because I respect your time”. I was going to pay extra special attention to make sure the entire format stays the course and is predictably, and disgustingly, easy to read; without the need for anything else. No you don’t need json reader, pikl sdk, fast toml, or speed yaml. No you don’t need to make some kind of tokenizer or look for brackets or line endings, nor are you going to need to worry about quotes.

There’s two primary ways to read this format:

1. Read a line in, scan character by character; detect the unique line prefix and that prefix will explain all there is to know; or

2. Read line in, split it by space char, match the first element to some parsing mode, and use the rest of the elements as needed by index value

This all sounded great to me… But like I said, obj isn’t designed for use in games, in fact the format has its own annoyances to walk through. There’s got to be a bett- I got it. MD5.

You know, Id Software is known for their engines. And their tech is hyper fixated on performance, even at the cost of flexibility. The MD2 format is frustratingly limited, but it’s a very purpose built format that did the job And did it well for usage in a video game. MD5 is their last model format to be open sourced and with luck it also happens to be an ASCII format. But what it also supports is skeletal animation and in such a way that makes a lot of sense too. But I find the format plagued by a weird C-like syntax that I definitely didn’t come here to try and deal with.

So my idea was simply this: what if obj had a baby with md5?

That’s where I’m at right now.

I have the whole thing specced out and now I’m just learning how to write a blender plug-in…

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

For those who celebrate Christmas I hope you’ve completed your shopping and can enjoy your time reading blogs today or enjoy some other non day job activity. 😃

Dave Nemetz • TVLine

Andre Braugher, Star of Homicide and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dead at 61

This was devastating to me. I’ve liked Andre Braugher since I saw him for the first time on Homicide: Life on the Street. Such a loss.

RIP.

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

The x86 instruction set has an ENTER instruction which builds a stack frame. It is almost always used with a zero as the second parameter.

Raymond Chen is one of the best development reads in the world. He’s so smart and can write to boot. He also has great stories to share. I recommend you point your RSS reader at The Old New Thing at Microsoft and enjoy.

Jose Munoz

I’ve used RSS for news and blogs since Google Reader days. I go through my feeds with Reeder on my iPad mini every morning. It’s my favorite time of day. While I’ve been extremely happy for years with Reeder as my RSS reading app, I’ve faced issues with their Reeder Feeds iCloud service.

iCloud sync is a thorn in the side of almost every developer who uses it. It slow to sync and sometimes requires logging out entirely to get it to work. Little indie companies do a better job running services than Apple. Sure, sure, Apple are doing it at huge scale, but so do Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google and I don’t hear about issues like this as often.

It’s really too bad modern software has an expectation of a backing service to make it work properly because a backing service is super expensive to operate. I can’t provide my own sync because I can’t pay hundreds of dollars a month to run a sync service for Stream. I only make a few bucks a month on Stream. And by a few I mean less than $20/month. That’s OK because I chose to make a simple app that isn’t updated often and chose to give it away. But, I feel for those little undies who spend so much to keep services up and running only to just scrape by or lose money.

Chance Miller, Zac Hall, and Michael Potuck • 9to5Mac

Last week, Beeper Mini debuted as a way to bring iMessage to Android, without having to hand over your Apple ID credentials. A few days later, Apple made a change that stopped Beeper Mini from working – and it promised to continue doing so.

Not surprising.

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Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage, until Apple shut it down. Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor. The post indicates Apple’s move has now caught the attention of legislators, who are in a position to regulate Big Tech through policymaking.

Sorry, Senator. Goodness knows I love you, I really do, but I disagree with you on this. Apple is a publicly traded company who created a secure service for users of their devices. We pay for it with our purchase of Apple hardware and other services. It shouldn’t be seen as a free public utility.

The Beeper folks did an amazing job reverse engineering Messages so they could do what they did but it’s essentially hacking a service. Of course Apple is going to shut that down.

What should Apple do? That’s an easy answer for me. They should staff up an Android team and write a native Android app version of Messages. Then charge a monthly service fee for it. Problem solved! You’re welcome!

Something I often wonder. Are Apple’s services so bad/insecure that they mask it by not opening them up? I kind of doubt that but it always pops into my head when I read something about one of their services.

FeedLand

I am lobbying everyone I know to add great feed support to social media systems, so we can get out of the mode of dominant platforms before Threads becomes the dominant platform.

I must admit I didn’t understand what FeedLand is all about, but know I think I get it, maybe. 😃

Ultimately it’s an RSS aggregator. But I do get what Dave is trying to do beyond FeedLand.

Using RSS to follow a social site like Madtodon, Threads, or Bluesky would be amazing. RSS is mature, extensible, and stable.

I follow a few Mastodon feeds using Mastodon’s incredible RSS support, but it could go even further.

Imagine if all social networks supported RSS publishing. We could then use our reader of choice to casually browse our aggregated feeds. I know of a nice little iOS App that presents feeds as a timeline, check it out. 😃

Sorry, had to get that self plug in there.

What if social networks went the next step? What if I could set up a social network to read an RSS feed? Then I could write in one spot and publish to many/all using just RSS. That would be amazing.

To go one step further the social network could support weblog ping so the social network would know you’ve made an update.

Prior to social networks we had all of this in the blogging world. Dave Winer did all of it. He did RSS as well as weblogs ping. It worked really well. He even had Weblogs.com (don’t go there now, it’s a spammy site) which would display the latest sites with updates. If you’ve ever used Blo.gs you’ve seen weblog ping in action. You can even check out my ancient C++ command line implementation of weblog ping. 😂

Anyway. RSS in and out of social networks + weblog ping could be a nice open API for any social network without the need for someone to write code to call an API.

Alyssa Place • benefitnews.com

Employees' traditional view of retirement is changing. It’s time for employers to embrace that, too.

I asked WillowTree HR. A couple years back if we had any kind of plan for part time work and we don’t. I’d like to see that happen because, quite honestly, I can’t really retire. But I do hope to slow down when I hit 70 to enjoy what time I’ll have left, hopefully I live long enough to see a partial retirement.

I suspect the type of business we’re in doesn’t work well with part-time workers. It’s all about billing those hours, which is the worst possible business to be in.

Product and Services are still king. Anything you can upgrade and make money from while doing the next version is so much better than the hourly hamster wheel. 🐹

Robb Knight

Threads started to test ActivityPub integration this week and the fediverse is losing it’s collective mind going into overdrive to block them in any way possible so they can’t grab all your data. Here’s the fun part: they can already do that and they definitely don’t need ActivityPub to do that.

There has been a lot of fear surrounding Threads integrating ActivityPub. I had my doubts at one time but as long as they remain good citizens I don’t have a problem with it

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Despite delays, the plan to connect Tumblr’s blogging site to the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the “fediverse,” is still on, it seems.

I think this is good news. Overall Tumblr feels like it fits into the Fediverse better than Wordpress and I hope they’re able to get it there.

Leo Laporte • twit.tv

Unfortunately, our medium, podcasting, has suffered economically since the beginning of Covid. As the number of podcasts grew exponentially, the number of advertisers dwindled, and with it, our revenue. At one time, we had as many as 30 people on the TWiT staff, not including show hosts, producing more than 30 unique shows. Today, the staff is half that size, and we produce half the number of shows.

Every indie podcast I listen to seems to be pushing subscriptions a lot harder than before. The entire market is in a downturn for free shows. Seeing TWiT layoff a bunch of longtime staff and cut shows is surprising and sad.

Mustapha Hamoui • platformer.news

Late Monday, the jury deliberating in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google ruled in favor of the Fortnite developer. It found that Google harmed Epic by creating a monopoly in in-app billing and app distribution within the Android ecosystem, illegally tying the app store and its billing system together. A series of revenue-sharing deals with developers and device manufacturers were also found to harm competition.

I admit I don’t know how it is Google is found guilty of having an App Store monopoly and Apple isn’t. The law is strange and understanding eludes me at times.⚖️

Will Shanklin • Engadget

Etsy is the latest company to lay off staff in 2023. CEO Josh Silverman confirmed the marketplace is letting go of 11 percent of its staff (around 225 employees) in its first significant staffing cut in recent years. It’s also reshuffling its leadership, including announcing two executives’ departures at the beginning of 2024.

2023 has been such a crummy year in so many ways but all the tech layoffs scare the crap out of me. I still worry about being laid off and hope the new year doesn’t continue the trend we’ve seen in 2023. 😔

John Scalzi

Abandoning the Former Twitter: A Four-Week Check-In

I’m a fan of John Scalzi’s writing and have many of his book, most unread at the time of this publishing. Not only does he write books he also has a very active blog and social media presence. I loved following him on Twitter and now I love following him on Mastodon. You can too!

2022 Year in Review

The past year has been a whirlwind and yet New Years has also come/landed as a complete surprise. I looked through my blog archive the other day and I realized I never did a year round up last year so this will be 2021 and 2022 in review of sorts.

The biggest change is that I have changed jobs and departments this year at MPOW and moved into a role that is generating reports using SQL as opposed to Oracle’s GUI interface PSQuery tool. I had gotten good about using CASE statements and expressions to work around PSQuery’s limitations though it was great to start working directly with the database.

The concept behind using PSQuery and direct/raw SQL is the same though now I get to use features like CTE tables and also have more control over the join criteria and functions. Still, it has been like taking a drink from a fire hose in terms of learning new skills, and tools (I ask using Dbeaver as my IDE in case you’re wondering; it is great.).

In late-breaking esque news, I have been enjoying my time on Mastadon on the Libraryland Server. It reminds me of the early birdsite where you had interactions with folks and your timeline didn't get bombarded with updates. I also like how it is federated like email so you're not tied to one instance and you can interact with anyone. If you're interested in finding me on Mastadon you can find me at @[email protected].

I have continued my journey in personal knowledge management tools and processes (i.e. PKM) and relatedly was overjoyed to be added to the Documentation working group at MPOW. I still LOVE software and enjoy trying new tools, which means I have used Apple Notes, Agenda, Obsidian, Notion, Craft, and OneNote at various times. I have settled on Agenda for home-related notes, Obsidian for personal writing, and OneNote at work (though I looking forward to Microsoft Loop being more widely available).

I hope the new year brings more skill growth and also more time to write (though I have said that before and made promises to do better before too) I am trying to give myself grace though rather than sticking to a strict schedule or trying to maintain something I can’t manage. I hope everyone has a great day, and a wonderful year.

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Please do go on about Doomslayer and his morals. I'm legit fascinated by him since starting the let's play I'm watching and I'd love to hear your take on him (I know literally nothing about the Doom franchise other than lots of blood and violence against demons and also badass music)

You know, a year ago when my friends asked me 'hey do you wanna play minecraft' and i said 'yeah sure' i would have never thought i would one day have a minecraft sideblog where i get questions about the personality of the main character of a shooter fps game (of all things!) that is known for its incredible violence.

But here you go:

(prepare yourself this has gotten way longer than i thought oh god, and also it has nothing to do with hermits whatsoever. warnings for language and descriptions of violence? and i assume the readmore won’t be working the way i want it to)

Ok so, Doom!

First of all, i know nothing about the old games, and i’ve only seen a minimal amount of Doom Eternal Letsplays. Most of this is based on Doom (2016). 

Ok so we all start out thinking Doomguy! It’s the guy you play in Doom. The hand that hold the gun YOU are shooting demons with. And sure, you can go trough the whole game with that mindset, but that’s boring and we are overthinking fictional characters in this house.

ID software actually managed to give Doomguy/Doomslayer a TON of personality despite him never saying a word, barely any cutscenes to show what he does when you don’t control him (at least in Doom 2016), and not a lot of other characters to interact with despite enemy monsters.

The game just leaves you little hints and snippets and that’s what makes Doomslayer so exciting to think about. Just the right levels between ‘cryptid half-god who never shows emotion and is a player-insert’ and ‘this dude’s got an AGENDA. he has PLACES TO BE’. You are him as you play, but sometimes he makes decisions on his own. But personally, i could never find myself to disagree.

First, you got the intro sequence. 

You got a unknown voice telling you: 

“They are rage. Brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and Tear, until it is done.”

First of all, YO. WOW. HOLY SHIT.

The scene immediately shifts to Doomslayer waking up. He’s naked, he’s chained down somewhere, theresa SHIT TON of scars littering his arms and hands. First thing HE does, on his own behalf, is ripping off the chains by flexing a little (literal iron chains!!!), smashing a zombies head against the sarcophagus he lays in and completely obliterating said head into a bit of blood (mind you, three seconds after he woke up from a thousands of years long coma!! but we only learn that later), and then promptly gets up, picks up a pistol, and now it’s your, the players turn. This takes like 8 seconds in total. This man means BUSINESS. That’s the first thing we learn.

Second thing that strikes me is the interactions with Samuel Hayden. 

Doomslayer is patient when a computer voice tells him the status of the base. He is patient as he looks at the screens to see what is going on. (a demonic invasion, thats what). But then dear Dr. Samuel Hayden calls. 

Dr. Hayden says “Hi, i’m the boss here, i’m sure we can work together in a way that benefits us both uwu”. Doomslayer immediately grabs the PC screen and pushes it aside. His gesture says, i’m done with this. im sick of this dude. this guy is full of shit. And he’s right! And that after barely hearing two sentences from Hayden!

So the second thing we learn is that he has no time for people trying to exploit him. He hears Hayden, he has a gut feeling that this dude is a little fishy, maybe he just plain doesnt like higher ups and heads of facilities. But we learn that he IS. NOT. going to listen to this man, and his body language makes that very clear without being actually violent against the person (he doesnt destroy the Screen either! just pushes it aside very annoyed. He isn’t mindlessly destroying property here.)

This continues. 

Hayden goes ‘hey maybe don’t destroy that energy source!’ in the few seconds you dont control him, Doomslayer listens. He hesitates. He considers. Then he destroys the thing anyways. Hayden keeps telling him to stop, but Doomslayer doesnt listen. He’s got his own mind!

This was mostly about Haydens Company, the UAC, harvesting hell energy, and hurting people in the process. 

There’s a scene where Doomslayer rides an elevator. Hayden, over the comms, tells him that everyone that has died in the demon attack was a nacessary sacrifice that will bring a new future or some shit like that. the camera pans down to show some poor sods corpse at those very words. Doomslayer cracks his knuckles. he is NOT HAPPY about that, so we know he doesnt like it when human lifes are sacrificed. He destroys the communicator, so he doesnt have to listen to Haydens voice telling him lies and trying to sway him anymore. 

(then he takes out his shotgun, the doors open, metal starts playing and the doom logo is shown, but that’s more about making the player feel epic than showing doomslayers personality,,)

Now i would like to talk about VEGA, the AI that controls the mars facility. 

VEGA occasionally talks to us/the Slayer. He is very straightforward, tells us what to do and why to do it, and is generally very polite. In the story, Doomslayer listens to Vega. 

Now why does he listen to VEGA but not Hayden? 

I think it’s because Hayden tries to get him to do things that just benefit him, and Hayden is very manipulative in his words (or tries to be lol), while Vega just says (if you destroy this thing, that door will open. I think Doomslayer appreciates it when people are honest to him.

And in the end, Doomslayer on his own decides to save a backup of VEGA. VEGA didn’t ask him to, Doomslayer did that on his own. It’s not relevant to his mission, he doesnt need VEGA to go to hell to close portals and whatnot. But he does save him. Why? I think it’s because he cares. Because he’s come to like VEGA. Because Vega didn’t try to manipulate him and screw him over. 

Next up is the Slayers Testament. 

These are a bunch of writings/recordings that you find scattered in the hell levels. (i highly recommend listening to them/reading them, they are metal as fuck and give me such an immense feeling of power bc they are talking about me, the doomslayer)

These testaments were written by demons. They were genuinely afraid of the slayer. 

Quote:

Unbreakable, incorruptible, unyielding, the Doom Slayer sought to end the dominion of the dark realm.

As said, i don’t think these are purely talking about his physical strength. They are talking about his... well, mentality. His Codex. They see him as an unstoppable force. He is incorruptible. Let that sink in. Man walks trough hordes of demons and at no point ever thinks ‘yeah maybe this is a bit much’ or ‘they just keep coming this is pointless’. No. He’s unyielding. (Can you tell how much i love the words in these testaments? It’s just got such a nice ring to it.)

In battle, the Doomslayer is BRUTAL. He tears apart demons, rips their eyes out, all that. He stomps on heads like they’re water balloons and isn’t fazed at all. Nothing stops this man. (except players like me who fall off the map 5 consecutive times, but lets just imagine the doomslayer is actually like he would be if someone played the game perfectly. player skill shouldn’t be considered in my headcanons jahdjhgd) One could even argue he has fun at this, because there are some animations like ripping off a zombies arm and beating the Zombie with it, or feeding a demon it’s own heart.

I feel like that says a lot about his personality as well!

He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t doubt himself. He doesn’t question his cause! He fights to get rid of the demons, not just the ones in his way, but every. demon. He will go out of his way to kill more demons. You could either take this as him having fun, or him following his own moral codex to get rid of every demon, or him being a not-quite-human war machine, or wanting to protect humanity from them. 

I would say it’s a healthy mix of all that :D

In older games, there was this whole backstory snippet of him returning to earth, finding that the demons had invaded his planet but also killed his pet rabbit (Daisy), and he then goes onto a 2-game long revenge trip.Take that as you will.

The last thing i would like to mention is this post.

Please watch the video. Doomguy walks trough the rows of random human guards. This is the walk of a man who doesn’t owe them SHIT. Yes, he wants to save humanity. Yes, he cares. But he also knows who he is. He knows what he did, and what he will do. He doesn’t have to justify himself in front of these shady scientists and jerky guards.THEY owe HIM, in fact. This video emits the sheer CONFIDENCE of someone who has walked trough hell multiple times and knows none of these people could even touch him. Yes, he would never kill them. He would not harm humans. But he doesn’t care about making them uncomfortable with his presence, either. He doesnt ask for permission.

(i think by now i am using the exact same words they did in that post. really, its worth the read. i think there’s a lot of repeated things between this post and that post by now but i encourage you to watch that video. its worth it.)

Also, the impact he has on the people in this room! they trip. they walk backwards. they go quiet, stutter. they are intimidated. They know he’s technically here to help and save them, but now, standing in front of them.... just wow. it really puts things into perspective. it tells the player that all the demons that he’s killed, all that the doomslayer has done... its noted. it has an impact. 

I’m not really sure where i’m going with this anymore, but watching those NPCs react to the slayers presence just adds so much more to his character. it tells us how people see him, and boy.... do they see him. 

i think it also ties a lot into how the player is made feel, controlling doomguy. all these head stomping and limp tearing animations, the guns, people being scared, watching doomslayer destroy important equipment from first pirson or pushing open doors or whatever... it just gives me such an immense feeling of power! i can’t even describe it. (...it also has nothing to do anymore with the original question but holy shit did i love playing doom for the sheer atmosphere of it. despite me being horrible at playing.)

(at the end of this i’m realizing that all of this never addressed if doomslayer is happy and content murdering demons, or if he just wants his peace and quiet but can’t help himself every time he sees a demon. i would propose to leave that up to headcanons. mine is a mix of both but in a way that makes it not angsty. like he loves to have his calm moments, but is just as happy to rip some demon’s spine out. probably gets a little itchy and impatient if he hasn’t fought in a while.)

also if you’re interested in game design and way more professional people talking about why doom 2016 is great i reccomend this documentary

...anyways it’s past 1am and this has gotten way out of hand but

tl;dr: the doomslayer is metal as fuck, he has a lot of agenda he is following, and i love him so much

I was thinking about Copley’s Murder Conspirancy Board (mostly to deal with the absolute rage that the scene with Andy Copley and Booker gives me because ‘UGH THESE MEN ARE SO S T U P I D’), and... I may have a Theory about it - which mostly delves into how much Booker and Copley were in actual contact with each other before the events of the movie.

TL;DR: the Murder Conspirancy Board was built with a contribution of Booker’s information, and Copley was Very Confused on the workings of the Guard’s immortality

(the Essay(TM) is under the cut)

This excellent post expounds on how these two Grieving Dumbasses Definitely Did Not Think Their Plan Through, but still what little they did plan was not done in two days. And I would like to think that Booker would have required more than One (1) Persuasive Speech to get him to potentially get his family outed and put in danger for the (tiny) chance of getting a cure for their immortality.

So they’d been in contact for a while, possibly for almost the whole ‘break year’. Copley has lost his wife two years before the movie, so when he and Booker met again he’s one year into mourning. If Andy needed a break from their jobs, I can’t imagine in what mental state Booker must have been.

Copley probably started looking into the Guard because man, that Surabaya mission was a masterpiece, and how come these guys aren’t mercenary superstars? But they’re like ghosts, and the IDs don’t really match their supposed ages... and dealing with his wife’s death made him go into a Nerd Spiral. And then he finds Booker.

So this is how I think it went: they meet again. They talk. Copley is a grieving widower, Booker goes ‘man don’t I relate’. Booker is probably drunk a lot of the time (maybe so is Copley, misery loves company and all that). They enter a positive feedback loop of sharing grief over lost loved ones. Copley probably spills that he knows something, that they’ve done great things and they have a gift obviously. Booker probably answers along the lines of ‘fuck the gift, it sucks. Didn’t save my children when they needed it’. Copley goes ‘well, medicine is much better today. What if you could do it now?’ And the rest is history.

A) Booker ‘helped’ with the Murder Conspirancy Board

We know for a fact that the Conspirancy Board contains information about the Guard ‘from the last 150 years’ which is, approximately, the time photography’s been around. And it makes sense - photos are pretty easily accessible, and Copley knows their faces. He probably scanned them from one of those fake IDs and then used a facial recognition software to find them in historical photographic archives. But we know (and by the end of the movie so does he) that the last 150 years is a nothing in their lifespan. And while going backwards Copley may have found Booker’s original birth and/or marriage records, nothing of the sort would exist for Joe, Nicky and Andy.

Despite how much we joke about the Guard’s faces being Everywhere in museums and art galleries around the world, we can assume that they wouldn’t leave so many traces of them behind. The two known art pieces representing Andy in an obviously recognizable manner, her portrait with Achilles and the Rodin, are in the cave in Val d’Argent. I don’t believe Nicky and Joe wouldn’t have similar storage places, especially for Joe’s own art. Without photographic evidence and before newspapers, trying to pinpoint the three of them across history would be harder than finding a specific needle in a haystack of needles... unless someone tells you where to look. 

When Andy enters Copley’s living room, he calls her ‘Andromache the Scythian, the eternal warrior’. But how could Copley have known that Andy’s “real” name was Andromache? It’s not on her IDs, and it’s not the top choice for a full name that has Andy as a nickname. It’s a literary name, of course it would appear through history in poems or plays or novels. And how could he have associated Nicky and Joe precisely to the Crusades with what he knows of them from the last 150 years alone? For all he knew, they could have been as old as the Punic Wars, or as young as the Battle of Lepanto. Assuming he’d actually caught on on them being together together.

Well, I think Booker told him. Maybe just a thing here or there, while Commiserating on How It Sucks being an Immortal, like ‘Andy’s been around for so long she doesn’t even remember her true age, that’s exhausting’ or ‘Joe and Nicky are ridiculous for two people whose first meeting consisted of killing each other during the fucking Crusades’. And Copley fell into another Nerd Spiral that brought him to understand that holy shit these people are much older than I thought what the fuck.

B) Copley is Very Confused on How Immortality Actually Works

Copley talks to Andy by calling her ‘eternal warrior’ and talking of her immortality as if it was some kind of gift that can somehow be transferred from one body to another (debatable, but... ok). But he’s also flabbergasted by her not healing from Booker’s shot, and later with Nile he says ‘but then why would the immortality leave?’, which is... well, it makes it sound like he thinks the immortals are some sort of Chosen Ones.

Which means that Copley knows nothing about Lykon. He had no idea that at some point the Guard will stop healing.

But why would he not know, since I just conjectured that Booker told him enough about immortality for him to pinpoint the origins of the eldest members of the Guard? Why would Booker not have told him such a central detail of their “power”? (Booker obviously knows about Lykon. We see Andy telling Nile, and you can bet that ‘is this thing permanent?’ is probably the third question Booker ever asked when he met the others. He can’t not know)

I think it’s because despite having bonded over their grief, they are approaching this ‘discovering what the fuck is up with immortality’ from two extremely different sides. 

Copley wants to know if there is some biological aspect to their immortality that may be ‘transferred’ or ‘activated’ in any random human being. He’s gotten into his head that their regenerative powers can end all diseases. Which. I could probably write another entire separate post on how this is far-fetched at best. Point being, Copley never thought his endeavour as taking the immortality from the Guard to give it to someone else. He thinks Andy and the others are going to live forever and ever.

Booker knows their immortality is not forever and ever, theoretically. He knows that at some point, in the future, he’s going to stop healing and die. But he Wants to Talk to the Manager about it, damn it. He wants his death to be a certainty he can quantify, not something that may happen in another five thousand years based on the data he’s got at his disposal. He wants to have the choice to end it tomorrow or in fifty years - if discovering what causes his immortality saves other people, well that’s an undeniable bonus, but it’s not the focus of his motivation.

Just like Booker and Copley didn’t cover all the potential ways in which Their Plan Could Go Wrong (and honestly, has Booker not learned yet just how fast they revive on average? He tells Nile that ‘big wounds take longer’, and still he revived from the grenade in three/four minutes!), I think they also didn’t Delve into their motivations for seeking that knowledge. Booker probably thought that Copley knowing of their immortality being relative was irrelevant, because of course the doctors will find something (the thing that makes them stop healing), and then he’ll die anyway, so who cares? 

And Copley... Copley was probably Convinced that the Guard was a group of superheroes that just needed to be suggested a new investment plan for using their powers, because saving individuals during wars and natural disasters is very noble and good, but come on, it’s inefficient as hell, they can do much better!

(It absolutely sends me that Copley saw the kind of accomplishments reached by the people that the Guard saved, or by their direct descendants, and STILL it didn’t occur to him that there was a pretty decent chance that sometime in the future they would save someone that would find the cure for ALS and/or other shitty diseases! HE’S LITERALLY HINDERING THEM!!!) 

Old Wounds

Hidden Scars: I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX - X - XI.1 / XI.2 XII - XIII - XIV - XV - XVI - XVII - XVIII - XIX - XX

Bonus Chapter (21):

Three years ago, you broke up with Miranda.

Or, to better say, three years ago, Miranda broke up with you.

After escaping Victor’s grasp and embarking on the flight headed to England, Miranda thought it was best for the two of you to be constantly moving around.

She easily procured fake IDs and documents and, as Mrs. & Mrs. O’Brien (so lame that you loved it), you checked in the most expensive hotels and made a mess of the room, only to be off the next day. Every bill was paid and the staff generously tipped, even though the money didn’t certainly come from your pockets as you didn’t have any: you found out it was fairly easy to transfer money around and trick the systems; at least all those hacking software lessons had proven useful, though you weren’t up to anything illegal - it was a matter of survivance, that was what you told yourself. 

Life was wild and exciting, every morning you were someone slightly different while remaining the same, every night you got lost in the scent of her, only to be woken up by her fingers exploring your body.

Miranda was never satiated. And while it was only a matter of sex, before, there was something addicting, now, that flickered between the two of you.

It was something you thought was unbreakable. Something so rare to be born in such a hostile condition that it would be so hard to kill that nobody would even try to.

You thought.

Miranda lit up the day you reached Glasgow.

You could see her eyes gleaming, you could see her sharp fangs shining at the pale light of the sun as she dragged you around, showing you this and that, telling you about her childhood while turning a child herself, innocent and carefree and happy enough to be pulling you in and kiss you in the middle of the road.

You stayed in Glasgow for five months after that, because she thought you were both safe.

You decided to rent a small apartment next to the theater because, apparently, Miranda loved the theatre and you loved discovering things about her just as much as you loved watching her glow as she watched the show and the people acting or the orchestra playing.

You even convinced her to take yoga classes and, except for a couple of smashed glasses when she thought a waiter was ogling you, and an exploded pillow when her football team lost to the rigors, she seemed to have learned how to manage her anger pretty well.

Even her part-time job as a dog-sitter helped her keep her calmness, even to balance with the frustration she would accumulate during her other job as a consultant; of what, you never worked it out completely, you simply knew it was something to do with finance, probably internationally. Miranda didn’t like to talk about it excessively - the pay was good, she seemed satisfied with it - so you let her be.

As for you, when the first opportunity came out, you accepted it right away: as a receptionist of a luxury hotel, you had a fair amount of working hours, perfectly timed with Miranda, and you were able to bake breakfast for the both of you, pack your lunch boxes and be back before her to prepare dinner when Miranda didn’t surprise you, instead, with some take out and a lit candle.

She uncovered a nice, unexpected side of her, but sometimes she still was the scary old Miranda, even when it wasn’t necessary, to your opinion.

Whenever she acted bad, you served her a banana on a plate instead of a nice dinner you baked, to commemorate the first meal she had you eat. Miranda would pout, eat the banana in silence, and ask for forgiveness between the freshly cleaned sheets. This worked the other way around too, of course, with the exception that she enjoyed herself a little too much, sometimes, prolonging the punishment to something more than just a banana for dinner. Either way, everything was solved in bed. Not that you complained about this method, of course.

You thought you couldn’t be happier; but you thought you could never be any less happy either, and, of course, you were wrong.

It was a casual question you blurted out without much thought.

One night, you were watching a cheesy movie on tv, just for the fun of hearing her complain while she had her legs slung over yours, silently demanding for cuddles she would never admit to be requesting. As the couple on the screen kissed and cried happily, you said “have you ever thought about marriage?”

Miranda froze. You tried to explain that it meant nothing in particular, it was just conversation, but something in her eyes had changed.

She never answered the question.

Days went by and you could tell that something had painfully shifted between the two of you.

You tried to take it back, make her forget with some rough nights, just like she used to like it, but nothing worked.

Miranda wasn’t the same.

And then, one morning she was simply gone, without a single explanation. 

After twelve days of waiting, you made peace with yourself that Miranda wouldn’t be coming back.

You started to hate everything you loved so quickly that even going out in the streets and hearing all those people talking Scottish made you sick, so taking the next decision wasn’t too hard, after all: you told Cecilia to mind the tabby cat Miranda pulled out a stray dog’s jaws and brought home for you to heal, vacated the apartment hotfoot and accepted the job as head manager of the hotel subsidiary in Rome, Italy.

 After a few weeks, you realized the change was exactly what you needed: Rome was amazing, you like the people and, most of all, the food. You even decided to join a gym so you could keep eating the delicious meals the hotel chef cooked for the staff and when the weather was good, you went for a run, early in the morning, enjoying the sight of the city lazily waking up. Late in the night, before going to bed, you would flick your tear-drop-shaped dagger and put it in the top drawer in the nightstand, only to wear it the next day, because now you felt naked without its cold blade pressing against your leg. You dropped the habit of wearing it on your thigh - it wasn’t practical with your work attire - but strapped to your calf or pocketed inside your boot. You hated yourself for it, but it couldn’t be helped. You tried to convince yourself it was just in case you had to defend yourself - it was sensible since you had to walk by yourself most of the time.

All things considered, you fit in well.

Your apartment is good, with a nice view on the Tevere, the pay is almost double the one in Glasgow and you can allow yourself some treats, from time to time, whenever you feel too blue to stay in the apartment by yourself.

You contemplated the idea of getting a pet for a time, but you decided against it since that too would awaken sour thoughts.

You tried to date for a while, but nobody was enough.

Nobody compared to her.

Despite everything Miranda did to you, her memory was latched to your brain like a plague.

It still is.

Sometimes, only some heavy drinking can get her out of your head.

 You weren’t on duty tonight, and while you’re coming back from a peaceful stroll, your colleague calls: there has been a great fuss in the hotel; he tells you about ambulances and police cars hurrying with the sirens blaring to arrest some psycho that attacked a woman in her room. A guy was shot, but you don’t register much about the events, nor do you ask for further information, eager to drop the argument and avoid some unpleasant memories rising in your mind. Guns, people attacking other people, blood… It’s all in the past.

Hurrying up the stairs and fishing in your purse for the keys, you barely notice that the door lock is slightly scratched.

You don’t pay attention to it, nor the way your key slides inside the hole, until you step inside your home, pawing at the switch, and the light doesn’t work.

Immediately, all your senses turn on, your eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness, your ears eager to capture the smallest sound.

It’s the hair on the back of your neck that puts you in alarm. Rising for an imperceptible breath of wind, they notify of the imminent danger.

The next thing you feel is a strong arm wrapped around your throat, and a warm body pressed against your back.

The attacker clearly knows what they’re doing, but you do too.

Everything she taught you is stuck in your brain, branded on your bones.

In a flash, you lift your dominant leg just enough to grab the knife.

You plunge it into your attacker’s thigh without hesitation.

She - it’s a she - grunts in anger.

The hold of her elbow softens, her arm slides from your neck, her body moves abruptly from yours as she limps away, leaving you alone and scared, but in complete control of yourself.

“My, my. I am getting sloppy.” The voice sends chills down your spine. It’s warm, it’s smug, almost amused, and familiar. Terribly familiar.

Your heart, despite yourself, throbs painfully.

You open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes from your lips.

“Good.” She says, “very good, m’eudail.”

Whatever doubt you might’ve had, now it’s completely gone. It’s not your mind playing tricks, associating a familiar event with a lost person, this is happening for real. Running away from England to another country, taking a new name, a new identity, rebuilding your life almost from zero has served you nothing: she still has found you.

“Miranda?”

Three years.

Three years you haven’t heard from this woman.

Three years you’ve tried to push it out of your head.

Three years of pretending it was just a nightmare.

Three years and she’s back as if it’s nothing, standing in your apartment like she owns the place. She does, in a way. Miranda still owns you, in the first place, whether you like it or not: it’s not your choice to make. Until Miranda decides to let you go, you’re hers. It’s inevitable. And you know, you feel it in your guts, that Miranda will never let you go.

Some exchange rings, some jump over an old broom; your ‘until death do us part’ was a carving in the shape of an M - not on wood or marble, but on flesh - and you wonder how could she be so scared of marriage in the first place if she, too, has made a promise for life.

She comes into the light pouring in from the windows: it’s sunset, and the streetlight has just been lightened up.

Like it’s no big deal, you watch her bend down and wrap her fingers around the handle of the knife and, with a quick motion, she pulls it out from her wounded flesh with minimum bleeding.

With a wince, you notice that her trousers are already stained with dried blood, mixing with the fresh one.

She straightens her back and bares her teeth into a crooked smile, her split lip glistening with droplets of crimson. It looks painful. She doesn’t seem to mind one bit. Her cheekbone is blooming with blue and purple, her throat bears a sore line around. Miranda wears her bruises as if it was makeup, proud and confident. And, oh, so beautiful like the night before she left.

You can’t help but feel concerned, which only adds to your frustration: you shouldn’t care about her, you shouldn’t feel so strongly about the blood running down her chin - she probably deserves it, and more - but you do care.

You watch her, powerless, as she stumbles toward the couch and lets herself fall unceremoniously on top of it, grunting as her bruised body slackens against the soft pillows. Her shirt is stained as well, her knuckles scraped.

“You’re beaten up.” You dumbly point out.

She lets out a dark chuckle and lolls her head back. Your eyes are drawn to the rhythmic movements of her throat as she swallows. You can almost taste the iron inside your own mouth - how many times she’s kissed you after a training session, how many times your sweat mingled with hers when you wondered if you were fighting or fucking.

It all felt so long ago and, still, it hurt like it was yesterday.

“Tried my best, but you can’t expect the featherweight to win against the heavyweight without a significantly favorable weapon. He was just a bigger psycho than me: came out on top, in the end.” Miranda murmurs, a smug expression deforming her features. “Victor, on the other hand-”

The name has your head spinning. His ugly mouse-face comes to visit on the blurry surface of your mirror every time you shower, the rough lines crossing your back are a distant yet a painful reminder of those days of imprisonment, confined in that small room with Miranda, uncovering her past, her job, her boss and his despicable ways. Those marks hurt, but not as much as it hurts the one on your left shoulder - not until now.

“You’ve gone back to work for him?”

After all you’ve been through, after all the pain he inflicted, after she promised to have him killed because he took it out on you, Miranda decided to still work with him. Betrayal didn’t even compare to what you felt.

How many things can change in three years? You lived a lifetime in two months, since Miranda kidnapped you. Three years, right now, are an eternity.

Miranda’s smile drops. Her blue eyes wander aimlessly around the room, stopping in a dark corner. They aren’t focused, but it’s easy for you to see the regret blaring in her lost gaze.

“It was what I am,” Miranda murmurs, her voice emotionless, “it was the only thing I knew.”

There’s a pregnant silence between the two of you. It feels like forever before you move your first step toward the couch, your gaze fixed on her as if you were trying to control a snake about to snap its vicious attack.

You know Miranda won’t move, not to attack you anyway, but you’re cautious when you speak.

“You’re talking in the past tense.”

“He’s dead now.” Miranda breathes out heavily. Her voice almost overlaps yours, as if she’s completely zoned out, not listening at all, unaware of her surroundings, as impossible as it seems. “I killed him, gave him what he deserved.”

The sheepish look she gives you is the sparkle that lits your flame. It doesn’t matter if Victor is dead now, the memories still haunt your dreams, and Miranda has gone back to work for him.

You feel cheated on, betrayed, and you still don’t know what she wants from you. Frustration builds up from within until you feel like exploding.

You would smack her and shake her by her shoulders if she wasn’t so bruised - and if she’d let you, of course, before succumbing to her strong arms and be stopped by force.

“Miranda, why are you here?” You would ask her to leave, tell her you can’t stand her sight… if only that was true. Angered beyond words by her persistent silence, you walk to her with heavy steps, until you’re in front of her, for the first time, towering her small figure on the couch. She looks frail, harmless, submissive, but you know she’s not any of those things. “Miranda-”

“Shut up.”

You don’t know how she’s managed that - if she’s pulled you down by the collar of your shirt, or hooked her fingers in your belt, or even hit the back of your knees with her foot - but you’re falling right onto her, like the controlled destruction of a building, collapsing right where the demolition expert planned. You try to catch yourself with one hand on either side of her head, fingers clawing the soft pad of the back cushion, even if it’s not necessary: of course, Miranda has caught you first.

Although ‘catch’ is not entirely correct. Her greedy fingers are grabbing your head, pulling more than supporting, and before you can realize what’s happening, her lips are on your mouth.

Oh, God, how much you missed her.

It’s not a nostalgic kiss, she’s not asking for forgiveness or awakening long-lost memories. Her lips are urgent, almost aggressive.

It’s like those three years never went by, as if a lot of things never happened: this one isn’t Miranda, but the mysterious woman who kidnapped you in the alley; she’s back to that unhinged creature that tortured you in the most pleasant ways, who turned a cage into paradoxical heaven where wrong was right and the pain was pleasure.

Too easily you fall back into the addicting spiral that bound you to her. You’re completely at her mercy, once again, with no power nor will to pull yourself out of it. Despite everything, you want more of her kisses, you want more of her touches, you want more of her, no matter if she’s rough or brutal - something of Miranda is still better than nothing.

Hungry hands travel fast from your face to your neck and, for a moment, you prepare to hold your breath thinking she will wrap her fingers around your throat to have you squirm in her lap, desperate for air, just to assert her total control, but you’re wrong. Miranda doesn’t stop: she paws possessively at your breasts, teasing your nipples through the coarse fabric - you hate a little how your body seems to react regardless of your mind, answering to her touch in all the right ways.

You always take minutes to remove your uniform, Miranda hasn’t taken more than one to leave you in your undergarments, confused and wondering if you were actually wearing something before she claimed ownership over you and your body, like always, like she was entitled since the beginning.

Her mouth travels fast, in tow, she nibbles and lavishes, sending electric sparks to your core.

You don’t dare speak, afraid that the spell will break, that you’ll wake up from a dream even though you don’t remember falling asleep, even if it feels real, so real, almost too real that you can’t bring yourself to renounce it.

The tip of her nose tickles the valley of your breasts when she kisses her way down your stomach and belly, her nails scratch dully at the small of your back, pulling your knickers down in one move.

You’ve never noticed how chill your apartment can be. Or maybe you’ve never been so hot before, within these walls.

Her mouth knows exactly where to tease you, her tongue touches all the right places and only in the right ways. Her body remembers everything, and at the same time, it feels new. She tastes you, pursuing the depths of you, almost as if she wants to drown right there and then.

Bare and vulnerable, you don’t even perceive the typical powering position on top of her; Miranda is always on top, also when she’s not.

You can only arch over her as she draws a hurried orgasm out of you, leaving you raw and trembling, your mind spiraling from contentment, nostalgia, and a deep sense of guilt and then back again, when her tongue doesn’t stop until she isn’t satisfied with a second climax, and a third.

It’s easy to lose count when Miranda is having her way. It’s easy to get lost and losing track of time and of yourself, it’s easy to set aside everything to chase her with your hips, desperate for everything and in everything.

She doesn’t allow you to catch your breath when she’s done. You barely catch a glimpse of her when she pulls away, working her jaw to relieve the soreness that has surely set in her muscles, but her eyes are elusive, disappointing you when you hoped to look at her and find the woman you know.

It’s just another confirmation that she is still somewhere else, at least in spirit.

You’ve learned to know her strength, despite her petite size, and yet you can’t prevent the surprised gasp that escapes your mouth when she pushes you off of her and into the couch on your front, so fast that you gape at the pillow below.

You struggle to adjust your head and tilt it to the side when you feel her climb on your thighs, her ripped legs grabbing yours with vicious force when she lowers herself, and despite being fully clothed, you can feel the heat from her core right below your bottom, where she sits.

You swallow in anticipation, shiver when her nails rake at your skin, and then, then everything stops. She pauses.

You feel all the tension leave the room like the fog lifting from the streets.

Her legs are looser when she shifts lower on your thighs, her hands are softer when she glides her fingers up the small of your back and they linger, for a moment too long, across your shoulder blades.

You want to say something, even say her name again, listen to your own voice calling Miranda while still striving to breathe, wearied by the pleasure her skilled tongue has brought you. But as soon as you take a small breath to speak, a startling weight on your back knocks the air out of your lungs.

You take a moment to comprehend that Miranda has leaned on the top of you, her chest rises and falls rhythmically against your back, her breath tickles your left shoulder and you blink at the fact that her cheek is probably resting on her carved initial, and not just by chance.

You mentally count three seconds in, three seconds out. Her warm breath sends shivers down your spine.

“Had to find you.”

It’s a murmur, barely a whisper, so small you even doubt you heard it for real or just in your head.

“What?”

You try to squirm from below, eager to watch her face, read in her eyes if she’s making fun of you in the cruelest of ways or not. Her voice has tricked you on many occasions… or not. Maybe it was her eyes. Maybe it’s better for both of you if you can’t cage into each other’s eyes.

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, relax your muscles, stop your hands from scrambling in the purchase of a steady surface to push yourself up and Miranda off of you.

It’s better this way: she won’t talk, otherwise.

“Thought I could do it.” She sighs, her lips move on your skin, leaving a moist halo around her lips. “Thing is… that I could.”

“You’re talking about-”

“Glasgow.” She snaps. You feel her clenching her jaw tight. “When we lived together.”

“You’re scared that you could live normally?”

Silence.

“You don’t understand.” She huffs. “People like me can’t usually walk away whenever they please and forget about their pasts.”

“But you did.” You retort. “We were fine.”

Miranda chuckles. It’s a bittersweet one, and it ends quickly.

 “I was doing fine before you came.” She clarifies. It clarifies nothing, but you don’t dare to interrupt, fearing she’ll just walk away for good. “There’s a reason why so many have failed. No one was able to ruin me while I ruined them. No one was you.”

You can breathe easily now that Miranda has rolled off of you.

You turn to your side quickly, eager to follow her with your eyes and make sure she won’t take the door and never come back after such a declaration. Rare have been the times you’ve heard Miranda talk in such ways and you can only imagine what is the prelude for: something fatally bad, or something impossibly good.

In the forced darkness of your apartment, the blue of her eyes glows at the dim reflection of the streetlights.

Her voice echoes in your head.

When you initiate the kiss you’re surprised she doesn’t pull back. She doesn’t even complain. She doesn’t grab your face or the back of your neck, she doesn’t claim the lead.

It’s startling, and it’s a foreign sensation you’re not used to, at all.

You barely register the soft rustle of fabric as you chase her taste and mingle it with yours.

And then finally you feel her hands on yours, her slender fingers reaching for yours and sliding almost perfectly in between, like pieces of a puzzle.

She swallows your breathy moan.

You haven’t expected your hands to be drawn closer to the warmth of her body. She lets her fingers move to your wrists, she lets them loop around the protruding bone there - she doesn’t squeeze, she doesn’t pull nor push - leaving your pads free to roam over her stomach, through the small crack of her shirt, gliding over the taut skin of her abdomen. You feel new bumps, new scars perhaps.

She squirms when you push a little too hard against her hip bone.

Or, maybe, she doesn’t exactly squirm.

You feel her adjust, raising her pelvis off the couch, but not to ease discomfort.

Your fingertips slip easily beyond the band of her high-waist trousers.

Miranda doesn’t move.

She’s even stopped the kiss, letting you decide.

It’s an open invitation - a request, perhaps - to touch her, properly, like you’ve been asking, for weeks, silently, before you decided to voice your thoughts and your feelings. 

Everything went downhill from there.

Your breath catches, the long-awaited moment feeling so terrifying, now, that you can’t bring yourself to just stop thinking and follow your guts, your innermost desires, to claim what has been denied to you for so long.

Miranda wouldn’t have hesitated. She didn’t hesitate to take when she wanted and could.

Thing is, you’re not her.

You pull away from her in a blink, your fingers tingle with unsatisfied electricity when you hide your face in your hands.

“Miranda.” You growl. Your voice comes out muffled from behind your palms. You’d want to yell at her, berate her, but it only comes out desperate, you sound on the verge of crying. Maybe you are. “What are you doing?”

Her hands are touching your wrists again. She’s gentle. More than she’s ever been. She forces you to unpeel your hands from your face.

In the dim light from the streetlights, her eyes shine again. They seem full of unshed tears, but you don’t want to fool yourself with dull illusions that don’t belong, with every possibility, to either of you.

Miranda doesn’t talk. You know it, you can see it, there’s a whole universe of things she’s dying to say, and still… she doesn’t speak.

You let out a shaky breath, sit lower on her legs, your gazes locked.

“Miranda, what’s your point?” You try again, softer this time.

She opens her mouth to speak then, only to close it soon after with a frustrated sigh.

You can’t endure more of it. You’re too spent to keep playing.

Miranda speaks only when you push yourself off of her, trying to stand up.

“My point is- I’m done.” She huffs out a disbelieving chuckle as if it’s the first time she’s told that, to herself even; the first time she’s truly grasped the idea and made it final. “I’ve got tons of money now and I can leave it all behind.”

“Miranda-”

“We can leave it all behind.” She corrects. One of her hands slithers to the small of your back, pushing you down to keep you near. It’s confident but for the first time, somehow, it’s not possessive. “Start over, for real.”

You swallow a mouthful of sand. Your head is spinning. You even wonder if something has possessed Miranda’s body and has turned her into some normal person who is actually repentant and is willing to start over.

How much can a person change in three years? Does it also apply to Miranda? The rules of mortals apply to such mysterious creatures like her?

You’re about to ask for a moment when you hear a distinct mew.

“What the fuck-” You startle, snapping your head toward the kitchen. It’s hard to see, but there’s definitely something on the counter. A box, maybe a crate. With something furry poking out. “You brought the cat?!”

Miranda’s lips are crooked into a sheepish smile when you look back at her.

“Please?” She whispers. Her voice is velvety against your lips, so close you could answer with a kiss. “What do you say?”

Maybe you will answer with a kiss.

Maybe.

Tik Tok - A Haven Sequel

F/M Pairing: Chan x OC (original female character)

Genre: Have Sequel; Enemies to Lovers

Warnings: Explicit Smut (unprotected sex) and Language

Word Count: 4.6K

Summary: Chan would do anything for his adopted family, and maybe that’s cost him a chance or two at finding love for himself. However, when the convenience store hires a strong, independent young woman to act as assistant manager, Chan finds himself in competition with someone who is very much like him - he’s just too stubborn to admit it.

A/N: This is another anon request that I spent way too long writing.

There was only so much more that Chan could take before he inevitably fell over the metaphorical edge. It wasn’t helping that work had become a source of unrestrained anxiety and frustration for him, but he definitely didn’t need to be a victim to one of Hyunjin and Jisung’s increasingly frequent pranks. And when Chan woke-up one morning with a strange stirring in his abdomen, he was shocked to find his hand in a warm glass of water while the two miscreants in question observed him from the side of his bed.

“I told you it wouldn’t work!” Hyunjin whined.

Meanwhile, Jisung was shaking his head in disbelief. “Chan, you were supposed to piss the bed!”

Chan rolled his eyes, shaking off the accumulated water droplets from his hand before glaring at Hyunjin and Jisung. “Get the hell out of my room,” he grumbled, and the two younger members had enough common sense to obey the eldest when he was in a foul mood.

Chan sighed as he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower, attempting to do something with the messy curls laying limply on top of this head. It might be a while before he ever bleached his hair again because the sorry state of his scalp was no laughing matter. Yet, Chan eventually found himself giving up on making his hair look presentable, proceeding downstairs to offer a grumpy greeting to Minho, Sara, and Changbin who were reading something from the newspaper.

“Bad mood again?” Minho inquired while stuffing his mouth with more cereal.

“No thanks to anyone in this house,” Chan responded, and he found himself even more irritated when he looked over to see Sara giggling when Changbin whispered something into her ear. “I’m sure everyone would like to hear what’s so damn funny,” Chan said, and Changbin and Sara both immediately averted their gazes.

Meanwhile, Minho was studying him with that stupid look of his that only served to encourage Chan’s quick exit from the kitchen before he blew-up on his members. Honestly, his persistent mood changes weren’t really the fault of anyone he lived with in the house. In fact, the real source of his frayed nerves was the red-headed bitch who the convenience store had just hired as an assistant manager.

Chan had a certain order to how he ran the store, and Lisa was determined to ruin everything. She refused to obey his strict ordinances - often flaunting a change to his regular routine as if she found it humorous. It was like she was going out of her way to make Chan as miserable as possible, and he was slowly losing the battle with his patience.

Perhaps that’s why Chan was dreading the prospect of work, and when he pulled into the parking lot outside of the convenience store, he sent a silent prayer up to anyone who was listening that he might survive the afternoon.

But his mood only worsened from the second he walked through the door, and Lisa spotted him from behind the counter. “Morning, Satan,” she greeted him with a chipper tone that Chan despised.

“I’m supposed to teach you the cash register today,” Chan grumbled, and he threw on his apron before joining Lisa at the front.

“Well, this should be fun,” she remarked. “I guess you’re planning on making it harder than it needs to be.”

Chan frowned at the comment because Lisa had told on numerous occasions that he was far too strict with the store’s management. But that’s how Chan had always been taught to conduct his affairs - with a stern hand and a detailed explanation since all the little details were critical. It’s how he ran the house with the others, ensuring that the budget was maintained and that everyone was always contributing. “You might treat everything with indifference,” Chan said. “But I care a lot about this place.”

It was the first job he ever had, and Chan owed a lot to the owners who agreed to take a chance on a young man who had no experience to offer them. Overtime, Chan had proven himself more than capable, and he would like to keep things in order like he preferred. “Whatever,” Lisa said while smacking her chewing gum

Which Chan had told her repeatedly was improper.

“Listen carefully,” Chan said, and he inputted his employee ID before grabbing a few items around the register. “I’ll start with a demonstration.”

“Great,” Lisa said with an exaggerated sigh that Chan chose to ignore as he meticulously explained the various types of ways in which a customer might try to pay for their purchases. 

“Credit or debit,” Chan reiterated. “They might also try paying with cash or a check, and you have to make sure that it’s legal tender.”

“Ugh,” Lisa groaned. “Do me a favor, Chan, and skip the lecture where you explain the history of counterfeiting.”

Chan immediately tensed at the sharp jab, but he took a deep breath to steel his nerves before he ensured that Lisa understood what every button on the register controlled. “Our clientele expect quick service,” Chan said. “You can’t spend all day trying to figure out how to open the drawer.”

“Oh, really?” Lisa asked, and she raised an eyebrow in question as she reached over to press the button in question without even looking. “It’s not that hard.”

“Yes,” Chan hissed as he slapped her hand away. “I can’t expect anything less from you! I suppose you think this whole job is a big joke and you can do whatever the hell you want?”

“When did I say that?” Lisa countered. “I respect the position, and if there’s a problem with the store, then it’s you.”

Chan froze at the accusation, and he imagined that someone might be inclined to draw flames above his head because the comment was nothing short of incendiary. “I’m the problem?!”

“That’s what I said,” Lisa replied. “You take everything too seriously, Chan. I’ve spoken to the other employees, and they’re all afraid of messing up because you expect perfection.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything!” Lisa exclaimed. “Most of these kids are working here part-time to help get themselves through school. You act like this place is a damn computer software company!”

“There’s nothing bad about taking pride in my work,” Chan said.

“I never said that,” Lisa returned. “But you take your work to the extreme, and it really makes it hard to come in every morning just to here you complain that there aren’t exactly twelve cups next to the slush machine!”

But Chan was flabbergasted - he had never seen anyone stand up to him like this and express such vile contempt. He was just trying to make everything better! Why was that so difficult for her to see?

“We’re supposed to be professional,” Chan finally muttered. “I’ll be in the back office.”

“Okay, but have fun micromanaging everyone,” Lisa said, and Chan started counting down from ten inside his head before he really lost his shit.

It was late when Chan returned home, and he was feeling drained from his horrible day at work. As soon as he pulled into the driveway, he rested his head against the steering wheel for just a moment to collect his thoughts. His mind was a chaotic engine of latent rage directed at Lisa, but he didn’t want to take it out on anyone inside the house.

And when he felt like he had better control over his emotions, he put on a forced smile and greeted Jisung and Hyunjin who were both sitting in the living room. “Yo, Chan,” Jisung said, and he was jabbing at the buttons on his Xbox controller. “You look pissed.”

“Just a bad day at work,” Chan said, and he lifted his head when he started smelling something spicy. “Is someone cooking?”

“Y/N and Minho were supposed to make dinner,” Jisung said.

“I think they just made a mess,” Hyunjin added, and he laughed at the pained expression on Chan’s face.

“Oh, great,” Chan muttered, and he knew to prepare himself when he walked into the kitchen to greet a cloud of smoke.

“Channie!” Y/N yelled, standing at the stove and mixing some sort of sauce in a giant pan. “I’m making your favorite.”

“I can see that,” Chan said while withholding a sigh - his kitchen was a disaster, and Minho wasn’t washing the dirty dishes fast enough before new ones piled up on the counter.

“Excuse the mess,” Y/N said as if realizing that Chan was not pleased by what she had done.

“Y/N,” Chan groaned - looking around the disaster zone that she had made of their dishes. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Both Y/N and Minho looked up at the same time - surprised to hear Chan’s bitter tone. “What do you mean?” Y/N asked. “You were coming home late so I thought I could make dinner.”

“Yeah, but look at this fucking mess,” Chan cursed, and Y/N flinched because Chan never cursed very much.

“I’m sorry, Chan,” she whispered. “I was just trying to be nice.”

“You never do it right!” Chan found himself snapping at Y/N who instantly cowered behind Minho who had come to stand between his girlfriend and Chan.

“Hey!” Minho growled, and he was suddenly crowding Chan against the wall. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Get off,” Chan grunted, and he shoved harshly at Minho’s shoulders. “I don’t need this right now!”

“Is that right?” Minho asked. “You think I shouldn’t say anything when you come home and act like the world’s biggest asshole?”

“You’re just making everything worse,” Chan retorted.

“No!” Minho shouted. “You’re the one who made this into a problem! We’ve been working for hours getting this together, and you have no right to come home and accuse us of anything.”

“Are you blind?” Chan snapped. “The kitchen is a war zone!”

“It can always be cleaned,” Minho said, and he turned around to look at Y/N while softening his tone. “Go upstairs, baby, this isn’t your fault.”

Y/N nodded once before cautiously tiptoeing backwards in the direction of the side door, and Minho waited until she was gone before returning his attention to Chan. “What’s going on with you, Chan? You’ve been rude to everyone these past few weeks.”

Chan closed his eyes as he swallowed down his pride and bruised ego because he knew that Minho was right. “I know,” he said. “There’s been a lot going on at work, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Figure it out, Chan,” Minho said - blunt as always. “You can’t let this affect everyone else.”

Chan knew that Minho was right, but he had never felt so conflicted.

During his next shift, Chan was determined to control his undesirable tendencies and assume a far more lenient attitude with the rest of his employees. 

“You’re doing fine,” Chan said, even though he was screaming on the inside while watching an employee attempt to stack one of the produce windows.

The young man offered him a sincere smile to express his gratitude, and Chan took that as affirmation that he could return to Lisa’s side as she restocked the candy section. “You’re in a good mood,” she remarked while offering him a look of suspicion,

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Chan asked while crossing his arms over his chest - a move that was meant to keep him from reaching out to straighten the price tags.

“Well, there’s been like a thousand violations of your unspoken rules,” Lisa remarked. “That new guy even broke the coffee machine.”

“His paycheck next week should suffice to repair the damages,” Chan said through gritted teeth - an unexpected chink in his armor. 

But Lisa caught it nonetheless, and she smirked while indicating to the display she was working on. “Do you have something to say about my section?”

“Of course not,” Chan exhaled.

“What about the expiration dates,” she said before leaning in closer. “I didn’t even check them”

Chan grimaced, and he could feel the beginnings of his patience unraveling. “It’s fine, Lisa.”

“Really?” she asked. “Would it bother you if I left the labels backwards?”

“No,” Chan muttered. “But it might be better if they were facing the customer.”

“Should they be alphabetical as well?”

Oh, that was the last straw! Chan was done with this whole good guy act, and he didn’t need Minho or anyone else to tell him how he should act towards the people who were supposed to be working under him! “I’ve fucking had enough!” Chan exclaimed, and he reached out for Lisa’s hand and started pulling her in the direction of the backroom.

“What’s this all about?” she asked, but there was an airiness to her tone that told Chan that she still wasn’t taking things seriously!

He locked the door behind them and corralled Lisa against the wall - to the point where their noses were brushing. “Do you take some sort of sick satisfaction in pissing me off?”

“Maybe I like you this way,” Lisa said, and Chan was startled when she reached out to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “This is a good look on you, Chan.”

“What?” he questioned, but he didn’t pull away because there was something strangely hypnotic about her eyes. 

“I’m really attracted to you,” she whispered, and the sound was spoken directly into his ear. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Lisa-”

But Chan was interrupted by the unexpected pressure of her lips against his - wiping all coherent thoughts out of his mind.

“I think you might want to talk less, Mr. Bang,” Lisa purred, and Chan clenched his jaw to strengthen his resolve.

“Get on your knees,” he growled, and Lisa closed her eyes around a moan before pushing back against his chest - allowing her enough room to drop down on the floor while her hands started working apart his belt. 

“I’ve been wanting this since our first day together,” Lisa said, and Chan braced himself against the wall when she took out his cock from his boxer shorts - running her hand up and down his length. “You’re really big, Chan.”

“Yeah?” Chan grunted, and he could barely hold himself together when her lips wrapped themselves around the tip of his erection. 

He watched through a haze of lust as she took him deeper - hollowing her cheeks while bobbing her head along his cock. It was the last thing Chan could’ve ever imagined, but he was experiencing so much pleasure from her warm mouth. 

“Is it good?” Lisa asked - pulling off for a moment to ask the question while exploring the slit of his cock where pre-cum was already forming.

“Keep going,” Chan replied, and dug his fingers into her crimson-colored hair to ensure that she took him as far as she could. “Is this what it takes to shut you up?” Chan snarled, forcing more of his cock down her throat.

Lisa moaned around him, and Chan almost came from the vibrations that jostled his sensitive erection. “Take off your jeans,” Chan said, managing the words around a rather loud moan that he couldn’t seem to prevent.

But Lisa obeyed him at once, shimmying down her skinny jeans while sucking on his cock and using her tongue to trace the underside. “Stand up, slut,” Chan ordered, and he was pleased by Lisa’s willing compliance as she walked over to a nearby desk - spreading her legs wide when he walked between the gap. “Do you want me to fuck you?”

Lisa nodded her head, glancing back over her shoulder to give him her best sultry look. “I know you’re angry with me, Chan, and I deserve whatever you give me.”

Chan was delighted by the words, and he didn’t hesitate to push his cock inside her welcoming heat, grinding his hips against her ass just to feel her convulsing around him. “Where was this obedience before?” Chan asked, pulling out to just the tip before forcing himself back inside with as much strength as he could manage.

Lisa gasped when her hips slammed against the edge of her desk - whimpering around the discomfort. But Chan had no intentions of stopping, and he held onto her waist as he started ramming himself into her pussy with the weight of his frustrations adding to his power. It was hot and passionate, and the sounds of their fucking echoed throughout the backroom while Lisa’s moans provided the perfect melody.

“Come inside,” Lisa said, and Chan cursed.

“Are you on the pill?”

“Yeah,” she gasped, and Chan knew better than to leave her unattended, even if she might deserve it, so he allowed one hand to leave her hip and play with her clit in teasing circles.

“Come with me,” Chan said, and he pressed down even harder while nailing himself between her walls one last time before the entire world exploded around him.

There was a blurriness around the edges of his vision, and Chan was gasping for breath while Lisa hummed in content from beneath him.

When Chan woke-up the following morning, he wasn’t sure what to think of the unexpected encounter he had with Lisa from the previous afternoon. For the remainder of his shift, he had avoided Lisa as much as possible while carrying the weight of his guilty conscious. Because he couldn’t help but think that he had taken things too far, and their work relationship would suffer as a consequence.

Chan glanced at the clock on his nightstand and knew that he couldn’t delay the inevitable any further. But at least Chan could afford enough pride and apologize to Lisa? Perhaps she would forgive him, and they could forget about everything that had happened and move on with their lives.

But maybe Chan’s optimism was misplaced because Lisa gave him a dark look when he met her at the counter. “Oh, hey,” Chan said, and he winced when his voice broke.

“So...” Lisa trailed off, looking at him with an intense gaze. “Yesterday was something.”

“Uh, yeah,” Chan said, and he allowed an awkward laugh as he messed with the cash register. 

“You don’t regret it, do you?” Lisa asked, and this was Chan’s opportunity to fall on his knees and beg for her forgiveness. Because she was surely upset with Chan for his behavior. Yet, when Chan forced himself to look at her, he was surprised to see that she held no resentment.

“I don’t know,” Chan decided. “I guess I’m confused.”

“Confused?” Lisa repeated with a playful smile. “Chan, we had sex, there’s nothing to be confused about.”

“Shhh,” Chan hissed, looking around the room to see if anyone had overheard them. 

“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked with a laugh. “Chan, you were fantastic. I wish we had done that earlier.”

“R-really?” Chan stuttered, and he hesitated when Lisa leaned into his weight.

“I loved it,” she told him. “I’ve never been with someone like you before.”

Chan was surely blushing, and he could feel the heat scalding his ears. “Lisa, I don’t usually act like that.”

“Oh, I know,” Lisa said, and her fingers trailed down the buttons on his shirt. “It was refreshing, Chan, to see you so aggressive. I could get used to that.”

Her words did something peculiar to his arousal, and he found himself feeling more comfortable around her. “You mean, it’s better than how I usually am.”

“There’s really nothing wrong with your little ticks,” Lisa said. “I think you could afford to loosen up every once in a while.”

“I see,” Chan said, and he reached out for her waist. “Are you the person who can help me relax?”

“If that’s what you want, baby,” Lisa said, and Chan couldn’t stand it anymore - reaching for her hand to bring them both back to that same backroom where everything had collapsed around them.

His lips were on hers instantly, and Chan moaned when their tongues started to move between them. “Come here,” Chan growled low in his throat, wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her closer.

Lisa allowed him to handle her with a sigh of pleasure, and she opened up for him like a beautiful flower - something gorgeous to behold. Chan had never experienced these feelings with anyone else, and he was certain that he had lost every bit of oxygen in his lungs when they finally pulled away from their heated session for more air.

“Woah!” 

They both jumped apart at the sound of their co-workers voice, and he held up his hands in surrender while his gaze moved between Chan and Lisa with clear surprise. “Josh,” Chan said, and his voice had a much higher-pitch than usual.

“I’m sorry,” Josh said. “I didn’t realize-”

“It’s okay,” Chan interrupted, and he backed away from Lisa with a heavy breath. “I need to check on the shipment.”

He was gone without waiting for Josh’s response, but there was a small voice at the back of his head that told Chan he needed to figure this thing out between him and Lisa before the situation escalated.

Still, he couldn’t really explain his decision, but Chan found himself standing outside of Minho’s bedroom that night with his hand raised to knock. Of course, it was one thing to think about something, and another to actually put those thoughts into action. Consequently, Chan was desperately searching for the courage to reach out - literally - and ask Minho for help.

Thankfully, his internal debate was terminated when the door suddenly opened and Minho flinched in surprise when he saw Chan. “Were you just standing out here?” Minho asked, and Chan took a deep breath.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure,” Minho said, and he stood back to allow Chan enough room to walk inside.

“It’s something kinda personal,” Chan said, and he was grateful that Han and Felix weren’t there because it was already awkward enough opening up to Minho.

“You can sit down,” Minho said, and Chan joined the younger on his bed while messing with the loose fabric of his work jeans. “Is something wrong?”

“it’s more like...someone,” Chan said.

“Oh?” Minho frowned. “The same person who’s been bothering you at work?”

“How did you-” But Chan trailed off at the end of his sentence and decided not to question Minho.

He was unusually astute for his age.

“I figured it out,” Minho still answered him. “Did you want to talk about this person?”

“Yeah, but’s complicated.”

“Why?”

Chan grunted at the question because he didn’t really know why things had gotten so complicated. “I thought there was a mutual hatred, but I think I read everything wrong.”

“Something changed your mind,” Minho said, and Chan slowly nodded.

“We had sex.”

“Woah!” Minho laughed, and he threw up his hands like he wasn’t quite ready to just jump into this part of the story. “All of a sudden?”

“She got on my nerves.”

“So, you thought that sex would fix everything?”

“I don’t know,” Chan groaned, and he collapsed backwards on the mattress. “But she said that she really liked me.”

“Did she give any indication of that before?”

“No,” Chan replied. “But she was always messing with me. She liked to ruin the way I ran the store, and she tried to change everything.

“Damn,” Minho finally remarked. “I admire any woman who has the guts to stand up to you.”

“What do you mean?” Chan asked, and he supported himself against his hands as he glared at Minho.

“Don’t take it personally,” Minho said. “But you’re a bit of a control-freak, Chan.”

“Are you sure?” Chan asked, and it was a dumb question because Minho rolled his eyes.

“I’ve been living with you for years, dude. I’m bound to notice these things.”

“Well, I don’t mean to act that way,” Chan said, and Minho sighed and patted his shoulder.

“The first step is admitting your wrong-doings, my friend.”

“But what am I supposed to do about Lisa?”

“Oh, is that her name?”

Chan groaned in frustration because nothing was going the way he expected. “It feels awkward.”

“Then, you have to talk to her,” Minho said - like it could really be that simple.

“It’s awkward,” Chan repeated with a pointed glare.

“And there’s only one way to fix the awkward,” Minho replied. “Seriously, Chan? Don’t make this into something bigger than it needs to be.”

Chan knew that Minho was right (because he was really good at helping others with their problems), but he was still afraid. He was scared that talking to Lisa would bring up complicated feelings that he’s never had to deal with before, and what was he supposed to do, then? Feelings weren’t something that his careful rules could control, and he didn’t like it when things happened without him realizing. But he was also frightened by the idea of ruining something because of his own shortcomings, and maybe it was time that he made the effort for someone else.

And Lisa was certainly worth more than all the consequences.

Chan was a complete mess of nervous energy when he started his shift on a bright, promising Saturday afternoon. He diligently cleaned down the counters, and ensured that the register was online before shifting back and forth between his feet as he stared at the entrance. Because Lisa was due to come in for her shift at any moment, and Chan was giving himself a mental pep-talk for their impending conversation.

But it still didn’t stop his heart from beating erratically when she arrived, giving him a generous smile as she took off her coat. “Good morning, Chan,” she said, and he was relieved that the old nickname of “Satan” had been abandoned.

“Lisa,” Chan said, clearing his throat. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure!” Lisa said, and she walked behind the counter to stand next to him. “What’s up?”

“Well,” Chan started around a deep breath, “I want to talk to you about our...encounters.”

“Encounters?” Lisa repeated, and Chan could feel himself growing more and more embarrassed as she teased him. “You mean like when we had sex in the backroom?”

“Yes, that,” Chan said, and Lisa giggled. “I just think I handled everything inappropriately, especially the way I talked to you.”

“Oh, don’t apologize for that,” Lisa said with a sly wink. “I liked the things you said to me.”

“Uh-huh,” Chan agreed, and he shook his head to collect his thoughts. “I should’ve never avoided you because I made things worse, and that was wrong of me.”

“It’s fine, Chan,” Lisa assured him. “I was willing to give you all the space you needed.”

Chan was surprised by her generosity, and he pushed through to the end of his little speech. “Would it be okay if we tried things out?” Chan asked. “Like, maybe in the right way?”

“The right way?” Lisa repeated with an amused smile.

“Yeah, like I could take you on a date or something,” Chan said, hoping he didn’t look as awkward as he sounded.

“Hmmm.” Lisa pretended to consider his suggestion, running the tips of her fingers over the edges of his bright-red ears. But she eventually ended his misery - moving in closer for a sweet kiss that Chan could feel all the way down to the points of his toes. “I would love that, Chan.”

And maybe he could blame it on the novelty of the situation, but Chan quite liked the warm feeling that blossomed from the center of his chest. Almost as if he had never felt more content before in his entire life.

Tagged by: @resident-of-remnant​ thanks for tagging me!

Rules: Answer 30 questions an tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better.

Name: Alex, or rose but i think im gonna have that as my middle name

Gender: trans girl

Star Sign: scorpio

Height: 6′2″ish

Time: 22:09

Birthday: 3rd November 2002

Favorite bands: rn the longest johns, they do sea shanties, check out their cover of “the wellerman” (the tik tok shanty) but a more long stading favourite would be nothing but theives.

Favorite solo artists: im not sure that i know of many, or quite what they are. Prince maybe? p sure he made his first album alone.

Last movie: Die hard (on christmas eve)

Last show: Hilda, its a cute cartoon with a cool world, and id reccomend it.

When did I create this blog: uhh pretty sure i first made a tumblr in like 2016? when i first got a phone, but then i locked myself out at some point and made this one

What I post: whatever comes across my dash and i like, its an assortment.

Last thing I googled: what a solo artist is, sorry

Other blogs: nope

Do I get asks: not all that many, most of them from lucy which i appreacite but suck at answering, thanks for all of them!

Why I chose my url: my brother and i went through a phase where we would just say blap to each other, so to offer me a glass of orange juice hed say blap why holding out the carton, then id nod and say blap back, basically blappery became my usual username meaning something like a whole lotta nothing

Following: 690 dang i spend too much time on here

Followers: 100, getting nice round numbers today folks

Average hours of sleep: sleep schedule? never heard of her, last night i went to bed at 10pm, that morning i went to sleep at 7am, the day before that at 3am. when im normal i get like 7 1/2 hrs but that hasnt been the case for a while now.

Instruments: i used to play trumpet, which i enjoyed but am glad i stopped, now im learning bass! just got one a bit ago and im enjoying it a lot!

What I'm wearing: a soft maroon shirt, short leather shirt, tights, flats and my aroace rings

Dream job(s): hmm maybe baker. or software engineer maybe, lets hope so bc its likely going to be the one i do

Dream trip: im not much of a traveller but i would want to explore, hill climb and camp n stuff with a couple close friends. just walking through forests and glens all day chatting shit and singing poorly.

Favorite food: its all great but bean enchiladas all the way, its like 3 bean chilli in wraps with yogurts cheese hot sauce and jalepenos on and its glorious.

Nationality: Scottish/Engl*sh (i know its tragic)

Favorite song: uh rn its ever new by beverly glenn-copeland, but i have quite a few faves

Last book: a joe abercrombie series starting with the blade itself, it was alright but theres only one woman in it who isnt a love interest so i would not rate the writer. this is a 5 way narrative btw. ive enjoyed it though.

Top 3 fictional universes: hmm the elder scrolls bc ive played too much of it, RWBY love the way semblances work, its the only show ive made ocs for, and bloodborne bc its hot girl shit.

im tagging:  but dont worry about it too much

@violetdesolation @sstarbee @leacko @arainofravens @artist-that-sucks @thxsilvxrshrxud @happi-iris @myfatuglyslugtits

One Night Stand  Sad Eyes x Black/Hispanic  Plus Size Reader!!

warnings: Smut 18+, choking, Angst. 

Please let me know what y’all think, I want to thank @multiyfandomgirl40​ and @lady-pswrld​ for their help, it means a lot. 

P.S. All my Ocs will be Black/Hispanic Plus Size, Because Plus Size Woman deserve love too!!. Here we go!!

There's some grammar mistakes, Beware!!!!

GIF Creator: @merakiaes​

 Ashanti was sitting on the toilet, staring at the pregnancy test she took just 5 minutes ago, she was glad her parents Dwayne and Stacy and her little brother  Jamal, weren’t home because if they were, they wouldn't have liked  the results that the pregnancy test showed. Standing up and putting the test on the piece of toilet paper she ripped from the toilet paper earlier, she washed her hands, grabbing the test and heading to her room. Closing her bedroom door, Ashanti places the test in her safety deposit box, before laying on the bed, as Ashanti turns over, cuddling with her pillow, wiping her tears away, she starts to think about that one night. 

Ashanti was on her bed watching The Vampire Diaries, as a celebration for herself, she recently graduated college with her Bachelors Degree in Software Engineering, a month ago and two days ago she got hired to work for Google at home, and since it was peaceful at home, she decided to order pizza and binge watch the diaries, but was interrupted by a call from her best friend of 15 years, Monica Guzman. 

“Hello.” Ashanti says, after chewing the piece of pizza that was in her both.“Whats up Bitchh” Mariana  yells over the phone. “Nothing just chilling.” Ashanti pausing her show. “Well chilling time is over cause we are about to go to Oscars party.” Mariana picking her outfit, after looking thru her closet she decides on a pair of Levis 501 pants with a white crop top with  one of her boyfriend, Jokers Black and white flannels with air force ones and a gold chain, that Joker brought her for their 5 year anniversary. “Mari, really I don't like partying.” Ashanti silently  groans, moving from a lying position to a sitting up position. “SIS we just graduated college and we were both hired from  our dream jobs, if that isn't something to party about then i don't know what is.” Mariana  fixing her hair after getting dressed. “Mari I don't know.” Ashanti looking at her nails. “Sad Eyes is going to be there.” Monica convinces Ashanti. “So??, hie is dating Andrea Ramos' ' Ashanti mocking Andreas' voice. “ Not anymore, I don't think, Just pleasee comeee pretty please. '' Mariana begs. “Fineee.” Ashanti gives in. “Great, so Joker is picking me and my brother up first, so ill say about 30 minutes we should be at your place and also, wear something sexy!!” Mariana putting her on speaker. “I don't have anything Sexy!” Ashanti getting up from her bed and walking towards her closet. “Yes you do, you have the 2 piece yellow set, the one with a crop top and matching short skirt and wear you're black vans.” Mariana  instructs Asthanti. “Okay, I found It” Ashanti finds the 2 piece outfit under the chest box in her closet in the Ross shopping bag she hid from her dad. “Alright see you in 30.” Mariana  says. “Bye.” Ashanti replies , before ending the call. Picking up the box from her bed and heading to the kitchen, placing it in the fridge and closing the fridge door, she heads to the front door and the back door making sure they are both locked before heading back to her room and grabbing her black towel and running to the bathroom, locking the bathroom door once As Ashanti got inside, turning on the shower, she hangs up the towel while the shower gets hot before stepping inside shower, washing her body and wetting her hair since she washed it yesterday, she starts to rinse her off when she quickly remembers she needs to shave her legs, grabbing her men razor and her shaving cream she quickly but carefully starts to shave her legs, after spending 15 minutes in the shower, Ashanti turns off the shower, grabbing her towel drying off her body before exiting the shower, stepping on the mat and the towel they use on the floor. Reaching  the sink, She grabs her hair products from the sink cabinets that's located under the sink, and putting them next to the sink before getting up and opening and grabbing some gel spreading to her hair evenly, before checking the final result in the mirror, noticing she missed a few stands, Ashanti grabs a smaller amount than before playing the gel on those strands she miss before smiling at the end result, washing her hands, and putting her hair products away.

 Unlocking the door and jogs to her room, Ashanti quickly hangs up her towel, before walking to her outfit that was laying on her nightstand, grabbing her yellow lacy set, she brought from Torrid she quickly puts it on, then her skirt, crop top and finally her socks before putting her shoes on, Grabbing her lanyard which contain her house key and car key and her new Employee Id for Google, before shutting her tv off and fixing her queen size bed with black comforter set covering it. Taking a small glance around the room making sure everything was shut off and checking the bathroom, she heads outside opening and closing the door before locking it with her key. The minute she turned around Joker's car was already on the sidewalk waiting for her. “Hurryy upp” Mariana  yells, making Ashanti jog towards his car, getting inside once Sad Eyes steps out to let her in. “Thank you Joker for picking me up.” Ashanti yells. ‘You know I got you, you're family.” Joker says. Turning her attention to Sad Eyes, aka Angel Guzman, Mariana’s brother, she thinks about all the times he used to drive her and Mariana to the liquor store to get snacks for their sleepover, and how she would buy him a coke as a thank you, how he would smile at her making her blush like a schoolgirl, Mariana finally found out her best friend has a crush on her brother when Ashanti told her on a dare, of course like every girl who has a brother thinks EWW!! But later Mariana was glad it was her best friend, somebody who knows how to treat someone unlike Andrea Ramos. Ashanti didn't realize they were there until Sad Eyes tapped on her shoulder. “Are you coming Ash or are you going to sit in this car and stare off in the distance?” Sad Eyes chuckles. Seeing Sad Eyes giving both of his hands to help her out of the car made her start to feel like a schoolgirl over again. “They're here!! Freeridge newest College graduates Ashanti Turner and Mariana Guzman!!”Oscar Diaz, aka Spooky shouts out with a beer in the air in his left hand, once they made their appearance on Oscar's lawn. “Congratulations!! Proud of you!!” Oscar kissing both their foreheads before heading back to his Reina of 4 years Letty Mendez. “Gracias.” Both girls shout so he can hear them. Walking behind Joker and Mariana while Sad Eyes is walking beside her, she felt out of place, since some of Andrea's friends here giving her a glare once they saw her walking next to Sad Eyes. Sad Eyes must have felt her discomfort, grabbing her hand and bringing to his lips and giving it a kiss before saying “It will be okay, enjoy the party it's for you anyway, you and Mariana!!”. 2 hours have passed since arriving to the party  and after dancing with Mariana, shaking her ass, letting loose.

Ashanti decides to take a break for herself and grabs a Modelo and heads to the porch in front of Oscars front door, taking a seat and sipping here and there, Ashanti thinks back to the past how far she's overcome, but is interrupted by a voice. “Can I join you?” a voice asks, making Ashanti turning her head and looking up. “Oh sure, if you want?” Ashanti asks, regretting what she just said instantly hitting her forehead with the palm of her left hand. “You're cute” Sad Eyes chuckles, looking at how embarrassed she might have felt right now. “Me??’ Ashanti pointed to herself after looking around to make sure it was her he was talking about. “Yes you” Sad Eyes takes a sip of his beer. “You shouldn't be saying that stuff when you're with someone else .” Ashanti looks at Sad Eyes. “It's complicated.” Sad Eyes looking down at his shoes. “What do you mean complicated?” Ashanti uses air quotes for the word Complicated. “I feel like she's using me, to  buy her clothes and shoes or whatever she wants , and also to show off to other girls that she's with me, that I'm taken.” Sad Eyes looking up at Ashanti. “I'm sorry. “ Ashanti put a piece of strand of her curly hair in front of her face. “Don't be. It's not your fault.” Sad Eyes putting that strand of hair in front of her curly hair behind her ear “Don't hide your beautiful face Mamas.” Making Ashanti giggle. “Can I kiss you Ashanti Marie Turner?” Sad Eyes putting his hand under her chin making her look at him. “I don't think t-that's -” Ashanti stutters. “Please just this once.” Sad Eyes looks at her. Ashanti nods. Getting her confirmation, Sad Eyes craved more the minute his lips landed on hers, taking matters into his own hands he slowly leaned in again for a full blow kiss, after receiving a reaction from her he smirked slightly as his arms wrapped around her waist pulling her closer, Ashanti wraps her arms around his neck,  unhooking one arm from his neck, she places her hand on his right cheek, then her other hand on his left cheek, bringing him so much closer now, as both of these two were to focusing on fighting Dominance in this makeout session on the front porch, that they didn't hear Joker and Mariana coming towards them. “Are you guys  ready to go home??” Joker asks, while waving his arm that wasn't around Mariana's neck, making Sad Eyes and Ashanti pull away from each other quickly. “Did we interrupt Something?” Mariana smirked, as she can tell they were kissing by the way their lips were looking. “No,No” Both Ashanti and Sad Eyes say, shaking their heads. Monica nods her head, knowing they are lying. “You guys ready??” Joker asks one more time. “Yes” Ashanti and Sad Eyes both reply. Getting up from the porch and walking behind Joker and Mariana, Both Sad Eyes and Ashanti can feel the sexual tension rising as both of them walk beside each other. Getting in and sitting behind Sad Eyes Ashanti blushes at their little make out session. Parking next to the sidewalk in front of her house, Ashanti stepped out of Jokers car after giving Mariana her kisses on her cheek before patting Joker on the bed and stepping out once Sad Eyes got up and opened his door and stepping out, once she was finally out of the car, she looks at Sad Eyes and says as Mariana and Joker look at her, “Sad Eyes do you want to come in, my parents are gone and Jamal's at Ruby's for the night. “ fidgeting with her fingers, once she hears a car door open she looks up, seeing Sad Eyes standing in front of her and says” Yes!!” Sad Eyes chuckles, making Ashanti laugh, walking along the sidewalk towards her front door, they hear Joker scream “Use protection.” Making Mariana hit  him on his shoulder before pulling away and driving down the road, Reaching her door, Ashanti walks in front of Sad Eyes, enters her home, and turns around and watches Sad Eyes close the door and locks it before leading him to her bedroom, to watch a movie on Netflix.

Picking The Lodge as the movie they would watch , after she changes to her pink pajamas set, with a soft comfy tank top and a soft and comfy pair of shorts, Ashanti pulls back her covers and slips in and wait for Sad Eyes whos in the bathroom, to start the movie. Hearing the bathroom door open Ashanti pulls back the covers over her so she is mostly covered, and watches as Sad Eyes enters her room and closes and locks her bedroom door, before slipping in her bed next to her. “What are we watching?” Sad Eyes asks , looking at her tv with one of his arms behind his head, and the other one laying across her stomach. “It's called the Lodge, about a woman who babysits her boyfriend's kids while he has to go on a business trip I think.” Ashanti squinting one eye, trying to remember what it said for the movie description. Sad Eyes nods his head, taking in what Ashanti just said, before pressing play. Half an hour in the movie, Ashanti was laying down, with the covers covering her face, just to be prepared for the jump scares. Ashanti jumps as the scary scene pops up on scene, making her yelp and Sad Eyes chuckling, touching Ashanti thigh rubbing back and forth as sign that she's okay, feeling his hand move back and forth on her thigh, Ashanti starts to felt tingling down in her pussy , Ashanti was a virgin, but tonight she wouldn't be anymore. As Sad Eyes turned his attention away from the movie, looking at Ashanti as she was looking back at him, they both could feel the sexual tension, but before anything happened Sad Eyes said “One night, that's all i can offer you Ashanti.” Ashanti nods understanding this is a one-time thing. Sad Eyes turned to the body, laying on his side facing her, looking at her, putting his hand under Ashanti's chin, making her look up at him, leaning in Sad Eyes kisses her lips softly, Ashanti puts her hands behind his neck, Rubbing the back of his head up and down. Sad Eyes, moves from her lips to her neck, kissing it roughly, before sucking it, creating a hickey. Ashanti moans, tilting her head back at the movement, giving him more access's, which he granted. Removing her hands from his neck, moving them down his shirt until she reached the bottom of it, she pulls it up, signaling him to take it off, Sad Eyes stops sucking her neck, getting up from her, sitting up on his knees pulling the shirt over his head, throwing it across her room once it was fully off, before going back down sucking on her neck, kissing up from her neck down to her pussy, stopping it, once he reaches her skirt.Pulling her crop top up and exposing her yellow lacey bra, pulling the bra down freeing her breasts out, squeezing them, rubbing her nipples, pulling them as Sad Eyes places kisses from her neck to below her belly button before stopping in front of her skirt, making her tilt her head back, lifting her stomach. Looking up at Ashanti, Sad Eyes asks for permission to remove her shorts, threw his eyes putting his hands on her waist, once Ashanti gave him a nod as a yes, he wastes no time then pulling each side of the shorts down, until they reach her ankles, yanking them off of her, he throws it across the room. Looking back at Ashanti, Sad Eyes Pulls her legs apart from each other, before kissing her from ankles on both legs  to the inside of her thighs on both legs.pulling her underwear to the side, Sad Eyes looks at her one more time, sending her his sexiest smirk, before sticking his long tongue inside her pussy, diving in, putting his arms underneath, her thighs earning a squeal from Ashanti, pulling her closer to him, giving his tongue more access to her black/ pink pussy. Ashanti felt wave of pleasure hitting her, once Sad Eyes stuck his tongue inside of her. ”F-Fuck Angel” Ashanti moans, traveling her hands to her breast before squeezing them, playing with her nipples with her middle finger.”You like that mamas” Sad Eyes words sending a vibration through her body. ”Fuckkk you taste so good, You taste like strawberries my favorite.” He says, adding a finger while he licks her pussy. “A-Angel I’m about to cum!!” Ashanti moans, lifting her stomach up. ”Yeah, you gonna cum for papi, Fuck the more I taste you the harder I get” Sad Eyes feeling his boner growing each lick he licks.“Yeah??!! I want to feel you in my mouth!!, I want to taste you papi” Ashanti tilting her head back. "You will mamas, But first you gotta cum for papi, can you cum for papi??!!” Sad Eyes sticking his long thick fingers in her pussy moving in and out at a rapid pace. `Yes, Yes I can” Ashanti feeling her release coming. Ashanti's body starts to shake, as Sad Eyes sticks his tongue on her, slurping all of her juices in his mouth. Ashanti tries to calm down her breathing after feeling her first release, Sad Eyes looks over at her laughing a little bit. “How do you feel??” Sad Eyes, asks standing up, moving to her side of the bed. “Amazing but it’s your turn now” Ashanti gets on her knees, crawling towards Sad Eyes on the bed, reaching him Ashanti wraps her small , yellow manicured nails around his long thick cock, before looking up at him through her eyes lashes.``Your soo big” Ashanti looks down at his cock, moving her hand up and down, making Sad Eyes groan. “Stop teasing Ash, put it in your mouth baby, stop being a tease, show papi how deep you can swallow my cock!!” Sad Eyes looks down at her. Without a warning, Ashanti places his cock in her mouth, hitting the back of her throat moving her head up and down slowly at first before speeding up. Sad Eyes brings a hand to her hair, grabbing a fistful before moving her head faster and faster. “F-Fuck look at the good girl, how she can suck a cock just like a porn star!! I bet you mom and dad don’t know how much of a freak their daughter is huh??” Sad Eyes leaning his head back.Ashanti moans, sending vibrations to Sad Eyes body, looking down at her, he can see tears coming out of her eyes, making him almost releasing. F-Fuck baby, Your gonna make me release in your mouth.” “Do it” Ashanti mumbles, pulling Sad Eyes closer to her, grabbing the back of his thighs, pushing them forward towards her. “No, I want to feel how much of a freak you can be!” Sad Eyes, pulling his cock out of her mouth, Ashanti felt some spit drip down from her mouth to the floor. Sad Eyes picks her up, throwing her on her stomach, Ashanti already knows this position she saw it so many times on Pornhub, arching her body, waiting for him. Sad Eyes taking in the view, slowly hands his hands down from  her back to her ass, Smacking each ass cheeks until each ass cheeks is turning red before leaning forward, his top carefully lays on top of her off, whispering in her ear. “You are not allowed to cum until I do??!! Understand!! IF YOU DO, papi will destroy that tight little pussy of yours so rough, that you won’t be able to leave your bed for weeks.” Sad Eyes commands, kissing her cheek before grabbing her waist pulling her closer to him. Sad Eyes wasted no time and slammed into her, Ashanti moans the feeling of him going in and out making her throw her head back, grabbing a fistful of her hair, pounding into her fast and rough, Sad Eyes groans, feeling her clench around his cock like a little pornstar would, ”F-Fuck Ashanti who knew the little good girl had some bomb ass pussy.” Sad Eyes chuckles. ”Yess papi!!” Ashanti biting her lip, trying to hide her moan. ”Don't be shy, Let those moans out baby, let you're neighbors know who's fucking you so good!!” Sad Eyes wrapping his other hand around her neck, choking a little bit. ”F-Fuck Angel, I'm about to cumm” Ashanti whimpers. ”Dammm you love to be choked too, dammn you're a freak for sure!!, HOLD THAT SHIT UNDERSTAND!!” Sad Eyes grunts, feeling his release approaching. ”I-I-I can't hold it any longer” Ashanti cries in pleasure. ”FUCKK HERE IT COMES BABY!!” Sad Eyes, growls, spilling all his cum inside of her, painting her walls white ” Cum for papi.”Hearing Sad Eyes, giving her permission, Ashanti waiting no time cumming so hard she and his cum mixed together inside of her and on his cock. Pulling out of Ashanti, Sad Eyes watches as Her body lay flat, while she was still gripping the sheets, chuckling at the sight, before heading to the bathroom and grabbing a washcloth from her bathroom and wetting two towels from the sink and wiping himself before heading back to Ashanti wiping her down with the we towel before placing her under the covers, closing her bedroom door he heads back to the bed, laying next to her, he watches her turn over and look at him. ”What??!!” Sad Eyes laughs. ”Thank you for being my first.” Ashanti says, caressing his cheek. ”Wait you're joking right.” Sad Eyes gasps. ”No I'm not.” Ashanti shaking her head. Sad Eyes gets up and checks the covers, not seeing any blood, he pushes the blankets back, seeing a big red spot on the mattress. ”Fuck, why didn't you tell me??!!, I wouldn't have been so rough on you.” Sad Eyes exclaims. ”I knew if I did you wouldn't have done it, besides I wanted it rough. ” Ashanti taking the blankets off the bed. ”But the way you suck my cock and the stuff you did, people who aren't virgins Don't really do what you did.” putting his hands on his waist. ”There's porn websites like Pornhub, redtube.” Ashanti placed the old blankets in the hamper in her room, grabbing new sheets from her closet. ”Fuck, I don't know what to say” Sad Eyes helping her make the bed. ”Don't say anything, Don't beat yourself up, I love the way you fucked me, even if it's one night.” Ashanti placed a kiss on his cheek stepping on her tiptoes. ”Is it bad that I want another round but this time in you're shower?” Sad Eyes looks down at her. ”No, Because I was thinking the same thing.” Ashanti giggling. ”Well in that case.” picking her up, opening her bedroom door, walking her to the shower closing the door behind them, after making her bed. After they finished around 2, they finished round 3 in the kitchen, Sad Eyes fucking her over the sink. As the night processed, neither one of them didn't realize the risk of not using the protection. 

*Next Morning* 

Ashanti woke up, to her front door being opened, and closing, hearing her parents, brother's voice, she starts to panic thinking that Sad Eyes was still here, turning over and seeing the side he slept on empty, she calmed down, but she knew it was just for one night but she still felt a little upset that he did leave, even though she agreed to it. 

*ending* 

Ashanti knew how much fun it would be , inviting him in her home, but what she didn't know was how much drama would enter her life by having one night of fun. 

Ashanti looks at her phone, staring at the number she just typed in, debating on calling the person, Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly, opening her eyes. She clicks on the phone icon before putting the phone to her ear, waiting for the other person to answer, after the phone rang for a second time someone picks it up. ”Hello?” The person on the other side of the phone call asks. 

”Hey it's me, can we meet up and talk, it's really important ” Ashanti tried not to sound upset. . ”Yeah, I'll come over tomorrow at 2 is that okay.” the other voice answers. ” See you then.” Ashanti replies before hanging up the phone, placing her phone by her side, looking at her fingers, letting the tears fall down her beautiful brown face. 

@thewarriorprincessxo​ @firebenderwolf​ @sincerelyasomebody​ @imaginetrahs​

More Than Just a Line of Code Pt.1

Robot x Female Character. Tracey Romero recieves a bot from her Auntie Carol. Little does she know that he isnt just some everyday house bot.

Rating: Teen Relationship: Robot X Female!Human Warning: fluff, exposure of genitals, pg13 at most, robot and human relationships

Word Count: 3835

Part 2

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I walk up the steps to my two-story bungalow. Juggling the keys in one hand while adjusting the phone against my ear.

"Two weeks, tops! You can’t expect me to give you quality when you take away my clock," I chided. I unlock the door and head inside. The voice on the other end rants out some excuses and reprimands. It was idle threats, just some big dog talk. I throw the keys onto the side table, missing the bowl I bought for them.

I roll my eyes as I toe my shoes off," Let me explain how this will work if I do what you are asking. First, I will be rushed, I’ll work late with a fishbowl of coffee beside me at all times. Then after about three nights of this, I'm going to get sloppy. Which for me is still really good work but it’s not the best. I always promise my best but only if you work with me on this. So I ask you, do you want it done or do you want it done perfect?". I waited in the foyer for his answer. I already knew what he was going to say. No one wants subpar work, it’s understandable. He is paying big money for my expertise and it would be foolish of him to deny me now.

After a moment I heard the beautiful sound of his begrudging approval. I fist pump, "Two weeks and you will have the best software on this side of the Mississippi. The Tracey Romero guarantee.". With a few words, I hang up. I smirk down at my phone before shoving it into my pocket and walking to the kitchen.

I shimmy around the kitchen, dancing to my own music." I got the extend, I got the extend," I sing. I grab some bread and make myself a sandwich while still patting myself on the back.

I didn’t need the extend, his software was mostly done already. His team did a great job. It just needed some touching up then to be properly tested. Take about two afternoons at the most. I just wanted to go on break and get paid for it. Call me a con, it’s just a living.

-

As I sat at my computer, I heard the chimes of my security system. Then the quick thuds from the front door. I huffed as I pulled up my front door camera. I saw my front porch and a man walking away from the steps to a van.

"Someone has a package," I quirked to no one. I hopped off the chair and headed to the front door. Once I opened the door, I looked down at a huge box crate. It was as generic as they came, even had the large text of the word 'Fragile" on every side.

"Well, I have no idea how to move this," I mumbled as I tried to push it with my foot. It was heavy for sure. I bent over to try to pick it up, but it mostly just hurt my back. Rubbing my spine I pondered how to get this thing inside.

I would consider myself smart, maybe even a genius. I was a straight-A student, graduated top of my class at CMU in Pittsburgh. So using my beautiful mind I came up with a way to move the box. I pushed it inside.

Using a pry bar in my foyer to open the crate. The nails were removed smoothly, and the lid slid to the floor. Looking inside I first noticed a large black dome near my knees. Looking down from there I saw a large trapezoid shape then the rest was submerged in the shredded bits of cardboard. After a few moments of observing I figured out what it was.

"Of hell yea, it’s a robot," I shouted with giddy. I dropped to my knees and shoved my hands around the head. In most standard bipedal robots the on switch was near the neck. Right towards the faceplate. "Come on, momma wants to play with her new toy," I chuckle. With a flick, the faceplate turned on in a blinding light. It switched off quickly but still left me seeing stars. I jerk back when it jolted forward. It sat up straight then the soft sound of buzzing echoed in the room. I waited patiently for their system to boot up.

I got off my knees and walked around to watch it. Its face was blank, it just had the reflection of light. Showing off the dust and pieces of cardboard it laid in. getting bored I looked over at the lid to see who sent me a full robot. Even though robots are common it didn’t mean they were inexpensive. I make good money; I live very comfortably. Still buying a robot would set me back and make me eat nothing but microwave dinners for a month.

As I found that it is my aunt who sent it, I noticed the bot was staring at me. I turned at looked up at them and still, their faceplate showed nothing. I waved at them as I sat up. To my amusement, they waved back, but more jerky motions.

"Do you talk," I ask.

It dropped its hand, "Yes."

"Then mind introducing yourself," I smile. Its head tilted to the side for a second then back to normal. It faces plate lit up with a standard face. It was cartoony but it was most likely meant to be comforting. No one wants a robot with a mean-looking face. It smiled wide at me then dropped it to neutral. I quirked an eyebrow and they copied me. "You copying me," I chuckle.

"imitating, but yes," he answers. His voice isn't obstructed like in most bots. It sounds basically human, normal even.

"semantics, either way, I'm Tracey. Who might you be,” I greet. I try to coax them into introducing themselves.

"You are very appealing," they look me up and down.

I snap my fingers catching their attention," Getting off track, doll. Name please."

"Yes, I am D-4N1-3L," they finally introduce. I mumble out their text to myself.

"Daniel," I offer. They nod. "Alright, Daniel, do you mind if I call you a he?"

"He," he cocks his head.

"Give ya male pronouns. Or would you rather them/they," I clarify.

"He," they repeat, "I'm a man."

"Alright then Daniel, shall we get you out of that box," I stand and offer a hand. He looks at it before cautiously grabbing it. I don’t need to offer actual help because he stands on his own. He steps out of the crate and I get a good look at him. His build is standard if not a bit retro. Most robots I've seen are completely covered in their shielding plastic. Hiding all of their technical bits. Yet he has his joints exposed and everything else covered. His neck showed his wiring and the air cylinder that limits his neck movement. To anyone else, he would look like junk, some outdated pieces of hardware. But to me, oh to me he looks terrific.

-

I leaned against the island in the kitchen, watching as he wanders around. He snoops through my cabinets, investigating everything he finds. I look down at my phone that's ringing near my arm. I have set out to call my aunt about Daniel. I placed it on speakerphone so Daniel could listen if he felt inclined to.

After the fifth ring, she picks up. "Whose got three thumbs and is excited you called? This aunt," there was a confused pause," This would be funnier if you saw me, I'm holding a thumb right now. Either way what's up Chica?"

"If I didn’t know you were a mechanic id assume the worst about that severed thumb you are presumably holding," I eye Daniel as I answer. He was currently messing with the microwave. Pressing buttons and jumping when he turned it on.

"besides my possible dismemberment what do I owe this pleasure," She asks. In the background, I could hear some loud tinging noises. Probably in her workshop, or she does in fact have a human finger. Then probably a different workshop if that were the case.

"Well, I’ll give you a hint," I lean on my elbow.

"Oh goodie, I love games. Three hints," she chuckles.

I can’t help but chuckle as well, "alright three hints. Its long, hard, and came in a box."

"Tracey," She scolds, " I don’t believe you should talk about that kind of thing with your aunt. It seems more like a mother conversation."

"I don’t know, mom would be upset that I have him in the house," I answer vaguely.

"Oh, batteries not included? Who needed powered boyfriends when you can get the real thing," She jokes.

I shake my head," we both know battery-operated is better. Humans don’t tend to vibrate.". This caught Daniel's attention.

"I can vibrate," He informs pointing to his face.

"I'm sure you can, doll," I look up at him.

"And who is that," my aunt asks.

"My new boyfriend, best model out there. Even has same-day delivery," I joke. Daniel cocks his head and his electronic eyebrows furrow.

"A robot," she asks before it clicks," Right! The robot, god I'm a terrible creator. How could I forget my baby boy."

"Terrible mother indeed," I click my tongue," tsk, tsk. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.". I look up at Daniel again and give him a wink. He turns his head as a pink color shines from his screen. "Aw, he blushes," I coo.

"Of course he blushes, he has a full range of emotions. My best work if I do say so myself," she pats herself on the back," Practically human."

"So it’s an A.I.," I ask," here I thought I was getting a butler. But I shouldn’t be so disappointed, I got a new friend instead."

Daniel turns his head to look at me," friend? I thought I was your boyfriend."

"We can talk about that later, doll," I answer.

"Aw, breaking up already. Poor Daniel, only been alive for a year and now he has his first broken heart," My aunt coos.

"We are talking about its later Carol, I'm sure it will be fine," Daniel says to the phone.

"You have me on speaker," My aunt asks, "Hi Daniel darling, how do you like Tracey's place?"

"It is cozy, living here would be most joyous," He answers.

"that’s a great sweetie. be nice to Tracey, ok?"

Daniel cocks his head," Why wouldn’t I be anything but?"

"No reason, sorry I doubted you," She apologizes.

"Well, I'm going to get off. Just making sure that you did indeed send me a bot. you can never be too sure," I call out.

"Oh absolutely. Love you baby, take good care of him. He is a sensitive bot, you may forget that he is more than a robot sometimes," She warns.

"Goodbye Carol," Daniel calls out. With that I press end. I cross my arms and lean forward. We both look each other over, observing in the silence.

"Do we need to talk," He asks with an adorable head tilt.

"About what," I answer with a question.

"Us. Are you breaking up with me?" I can’t help but laugh. This only confused him more.

"We aren't together, Daniel. That was just a joke I made with aunt Carol," I answer. I step away from the table and walk around to the fridge.

Daniel stepped away from the table as well and laces his fingers together. It was interesting, robots generally don’t have nervous ticks or idiosyncrasies. Auntie did a good job with him.

"Well, that I won’t lie and say that I'm unfavorable to that," He dropped his head. I was a bit confused about his reaction. He is a strange robot.

"You want to date," I ask. What did she program into this guy? It got my brain moving, how could anyone get a robot to seem so human. Most had applications built in to pretend to empathize with someone, but this was too detailed.

He looked up with a wide expression," Yes."

"Why?"

Daniel looks me up and down before walking over. He takes a hold of my hands and intertwines them.

"You are very appealing," He mimics his earlier words. I pull my hands from his and stare up at him confused. A strange robot indeed.

-

I sit at my computer with my legs crossed. I hunch over my keyboard and stare with my mouth partially opened. I'm working on pulling up Daniel's code and programs. He is currently hooked up to my tower with a bunch of cables. He is sitting patiently, if not happily, against the wall. His 'eyes' were darting around the room, taking in all the area has to offer.

"What is a battery-operated boyfriend," He cuts the silence. I jerk away from the computer, not use to having someone around in my office.

"what? Why do you ask," I blush.

His eyes focus on me, "you said it earlier, I was curious. Technically I'm a battery-operated boyfriend but I'm assuming it isn't me you were referencing."

I can’t help but smile," I guess you are a battery-operated boyfriend. But you are correct, I wasn’t referring to you."

"Then what is it," he asks again.

I look back to my computer, "I'm not going to answer that." I glance over at him for a second and see him pouting. Another curious attribute.

-

I stare amazed at the lines and lines of text. His code was so long, even too long. There were programs for such minor things like when to twitch his finger or raise an eyebrow. Looking further I found a curious program label 'Surprise'. Of course, I clicked on it, I'm only human. Looking it over I was nosy to turn the function on.

"Oh, this is new," Daniel mumbles to himself. I look over as he raises his hands from his lap. Looking down I see a protrusion.

"Oh indeed," I say shocked. He was majority matte black with traces of blue deep in his wiring. The protrusion was more on the blue side and had the lining of matte black. It was definitely an eye-catcher.

-

"Why does he have a cock," I nearly shout into the phone.

"Cutting to the chase, I guess. No foreplay, but I'm going to guess there was some if you found this out," My aunt jokes.

"Not funny, I looked through his programs. Also seriously, you named it surprise," I sneer. This was extremely uncalled for. Auntie has always been a mischievous person. Last year she spiked the punch at the family reunion to 'spice up the party'.  But this was too much. "Seriously, you sent me a sex robot? Not to steal your joke from earlier but I feel this would be a better present for mom," I scold. Mom divorced dad about five years ago, this seemed like a better gift to a lonely mother than a 25 y/o.

"First off, ew. I don’t want to think about my sister's sex life a-"

I interrupt her, "And you want to think about mine?"

"Do not use that tone with me. You haven't had a boyfriend since high school, you bury yourself in work. You convinced yourself that it’s enough, fulfilling even. Excuse me for thinking of you. Also, I will make this clear, I made his A.I. as a little side project. He was not for you till after he was made. His personality seemed perfect for you, so sue me for being kind," Carol snapped. I grabbed the bridge of my nose and sighed.

"Fine, I'm sorry. It was kind of you to think of me but It's a bit much that you added such a personal feature," I say calmer.

"I know you will find some use for it, till then please don’t treat him differently for it. I'm sure he doesn’t know what it’s even for," she pleads. I sigh again, this is just weird.

"Alright, I will still take good care of him," I relent. He is but a vessel for my aunt's ignorant kindness.

"I'm sure you will," she laughs.

"Goodbye carol," I hang up. I drop my phone onto the kitchen counter and exhale. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Daniel peaking his head out from my office.

"Are you angry with me," he asks. I look up at him and can’t help but smile.

"Of course not, just surprised," I answer. It was honest, I can’t be mad at him. I've known him for a few hours and I already adore him. He has such wonder for everything around him that makes my jaded self feel humble.

-

A few weeks with Daniel have been both tiring and rejuvenating. He asks so many questions that I gave up answering them and just introduced him to the internet. I got curious one day and checked his history, he goes on a lot of tangents. Now that he can answer his own questions online, he has moved on to asking about myself. He would ask about my interest or my job. Even comment on things he likes about me. For a robot, he was a bit of a flirt. His favorite thing about me was my hands. He said they were 'gentle and talented'.

We currently stood in the kitchen. He watched me as I cooked, he says he enjoys watching my human rituals. He can’t eat so he just likes watching me eat.

I stir the pot of food as I call out to my home bot," Home, play 90's hits." There was a chime then the music began to play softly from the speakers. Daniel looks around the room a bit confused.

"what was that," he asks her.

"My home bot, it controls some electronics around the house like lights or locks," I explain. He nods his head.

I get into the music and shimmy a bit as I finish off my meal. I slide towards my cabinet and pull out a bowl. With a twirl, I slide the bowl to the stove. Shaking my hips I pour a large helping of soup. Another twirl and I turn to Daniel. His face had its pink cheeks and wide-eyed expression. I set my food down and stare curiously. Why was he blushing?

Before I could ask, I caught sight of his blue swelling. I raised my eyebrows in shock and acknowledgment.

"I'm sorry," he stepped closer to the island to hide himself from view.

"N-No needs to be sorry," I stutter," I'm just curious why it decided to make itself known."

He turned his head as he continued blushing," Y-you."

I point to myself," Me?"

He nods, "You w-were dancing around. You have a firm r-rear."

"O-Oh, thank you," I blush. For the time he has been here I have never witnessed his, um, member. Since the first day it has never come up, pun intended, it’s never been noted again.

"Have you ever, um. Have you ever had this happen before," I ask a bit nervous. We have flirted a bit but I'm still off-put of using him. To have a boyfriend was simple, but to fuck him felt wrong. It was a bit taboo to keep a fully functioning robot around as a sex toy. Even if he seemed human, he wasn’t.

"Yes," He answered short.

"When," I look up at him.

"Depends. Sometimes when you bend over, other times when your shirt drops a bit too low. Most the time is when we sit together on the couch," He answers calmer than earlier.

"When we watch movies," I ask. We watch movies every weekend, I never noticed anything. Not that I would be looking at his crotch.

"Yes," He steps around the island and stops on the side. His crotch still blocked but he was in arms reach. "when u start to daze off and you rest your head on my shoulder. I feel the tingle and I want nothing more than to touch you," he smiles. He places his hands on the counter, not moving them but keeping them where they are. Daniel was leaving me to decide.

Daniel is very smart, never doubted it. Yet he still surprises me with his emotional intelligence. It’s easy to program a robot to see patterns or understand words on a paper. To explain an abstract concept like emotions was hard. You can fake it, but it always comes across as wrong, almost psychopathic. In Daniel, it came off as authentic. It felt real, like he honestly felt those things.

I bounce my finger on the counter as I stare at his hands. He still waited on me.

"You want to touch me," I ask softly. I look down at his fingers. One hand was stretched a bit farther than the other. His hand was sideways, his fingers were slightly splayed.

"more than anything," He murmured. His index twitched a bit.

I skidded my fingers across the table and let our fingers tap against each other. He didn’t move more than his fingers, leaving me with the choice still. Daniel was really smart indeed. I moved closer and grasped his hand, intertwining our fingers. I could hear his body make a low buzzing noise and his chest expand slightly.

My other hand grabs his free one. I pulled him around the table and towards me. Releasing my grip, and him reluctantly doing the same, I reach forward and hug him. I rest my hands on his lower back and my head on his chest. He does his form of a sigh again before wrapping his arms around me. He rests his head on mine and we just stand there.

This feels nice. I can’t remember the last I hugged someone. It had to be over seven years ago when I dated that saxophone player in high school. This felt better though, Daniel was warmer. I ran my hands up his back along the cylinders that controlled his back. I leaned back and looked up at him. I reached for his neck and pulled him down. I kiss him where his lips were on the screen. The whirling in his chest became a bit louder and his hold on my back gets a bit tighter.

I pull back with a shy smile. It felt silly to kiss a screen, but his reaction made it less so. He smiled at me too, even had his adorable blush on his screen.

Daniel led his head down and tapped his screen to my forehead. He pulled back after a moment and looked down at me.

"You look pretty when you blush," He mumbles.

"I could say the same thing about you," I smile.

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There is a part two. Also i did a lot of unnecessary research on this. even the name of the main character is shared with a famous programmer John Romero. He designed games like Doom or Wolfenstein. But check out my Archive page.

Fun times dealing with the equestrian center’s radio net. For the director of the equestrian center - who is here on a work visa, doesn’t have a car, and uses one from the equestrian center to take home - they just a few days ago retired a 1985 Chevrolet Chevette she had been using previously, and replaced it with a 2015 Chevrolet Sonic transferred over from one of my employer’s other companies. The Chevette did not have a radio installed in it, but they decided that the Sonic does need one. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the interior of a Sonic, but there really isn’t space for any sort of add ons in the interior. It could be installed on the center console on the passenger side and leave room to open the glove compartment, but I really don’t like the idea of having her look way down and to the right to see the radio if she has to switch channels and such, especially as she’s not a particularly fantastic driver to begin with. Even though we sell radios to the equestrian center at a much lower cost than we would for commercial customers, the owner of the equestrian center rejected that idea on cost, as she already knows she can buy TK-860 or TK-880 radios from us for substantially less. So, it looks like it’s going to be a Kenwood TK-880 (mobile radio to the left) mounted on the dash. Which, I don’t like doing dash mounts because I think it looks sloppy and I like my work to be professional, but it’s ultimately her call.

Honestly, I never saw any need to install a radio in her car... even the company which used it previously never saw a need to. So the owner says, “Well, she might drive it to events”. But never has she (the director) ever shown any interest in driving herself to those... if they’re taking the bus, she much prefers that, as she pretty much has a work center there which was made by taking some seats out of the bus and installing a small desk. Otherwise, she’d ride with someone else, even when given the opportunity to take a newer vehicle, and even when offered someone to act as her personal driver. She’s not into driving, and she’s not going to be now. But I lost that argument.

The equestrian center uses an organizational GMRS license which they had originally obtained in 1984 and have maintained since; thus, it was grandfathered in when the FCC stopped issuing organizational licenses in 1987. Originally, they had used the Motorola MR-355R (bottom left) and MR-356R blister pack radios. Problem is, they were buying these things at whatever big box retailers everyone else was buying them at, so we ended up with hordes of unlicensed users getting on the equestrian center repeater (there’s also a sorry saga of how GMRS users were screwed out of exclusivity on Channels 15 - 22 on account of squatters who bought the 22 channel “hybrid” radios en masse and completely ignored the blurb on the packaging which stated use of those channels required a GMRS license).

When I was given charge of the equestrian center’s radio net, I changed a lot of things. First, I limited who accessed the repeater. Crew and barn leads, admin staff, etc. Everyone working under the leads could use simplex, as they were never a far enough distance from each other to require a repeater. So, we were initially going to use BaoFeng BF-888S radios for the crew members who weren’t accessing the repeater, but we had difficulty finding a seller who could guarantee the radios they sold us had the FCC ID on them (a legal requirement in the US for operating transmitting on any service outside of Part 97 rules). We found one who could guarantee it if we bought the BaoFeng GT-1 (second from the left on the bottom row), which is internally the same as the BF-888S, but uses a different battery and case. For the crew leads, barn leads, admin staff, and those who were going to access the repeater, we went with the B-Tech (BaoFeng) UV-82C (not pictured), which is a commercial Part 90 type accepted variant of the UV-82 series radios. The dual watch feature also allows them to monitor both the repeater and their internal crew simplex net simultaneously without having to go into scan mode.

As the blister pack radios used a standardized list of CTCSS and DCS tones, I changed the repeater to split tones, with separate DCS tones for the transmit and receive side, and also used a mixture of non-standard and inverted DCS tones throughout the entire equestrian center net. So while someone running a police scanner or radio on carrier squelch can still hear our traffic, they won’t be able to talk to us or interrupt us with the blister pack radios, Midland radios, etc., as we had problems both with people intentionally getting on our repeater and also those running simplex who “coincidentally” used the same frequencies and DPL tones which we did. Once the FCC co-banded all of the FRS simplex and GMRS frequencies in 2017, we were left powerless to do anything about it (not that we really could before... the FCC was always pretty lax on their enforcement when it came to GMRS). If we run into a matter of getting disrupted by someone who successfully finds our DPL tones, then I have the means to require the radio’s PTT-ID to be on an approved list to trip the repeater.

For the riding instructors, we felt that perhaps something more durable was in order after one of the GT-1s broke. Initially, I took of the Motorola HT750s (second from the right on the bottom row) from the rental side of our business and loaned them to the equestrian center until we could figure out something more permanent. The permanent solution came when I happened across some Kenwood TK-350s (center of the bottom row) which were sitting in a bin and pretty much unwanted. So, after finding batteries for them, I was allowed to take those and donate them to the equestrian center. I actually had to lean how to use DOS in order to program them. Surprisingly, only one ended up preferring the HT750 over the Kenwoods. In the end - since she rents a room from and lives with me - I purchased one at cost from the business and donated it so that she could continue using one.

All the way to the right on the bottom row is one of my Kenwood TK-3180s, which I use both for the equestrian center’s GMRS net as well as the LMR radio net at my regular job. I was using one with the 16 key DTMF keypad (and the Tactical Features Set), but the owner of the equestrian center wants all radios labeled... while crew radios will tyically have only a number, the equestrian instructors wanted their names to be displayed on the radios they were issued, and I was instructed to do the same with mine. The running joke with it is, when we’re doing fundraising events (the equestrian program is a registered nonprofit), tours of the equestrian center, or other events, then husbands can try claiming they were only looking at the nametags on the radio to try remembering our names when their wives catch them staring at our asses. Since the DTMF keypad didn’t leave space for a label, I took one with the four button keypad and used that.

GMRS is regulated under Part 95E and requires a Part 95E radio. However, due to a lack of viable Part 95E radio options, many users have taken to using Part 90 LMR radios, as many of the UHF models cover GMRS frequencies. For example, the Motorola HT750 can be programmed with frequencies from 403  -470 MHz, and GMRS (as well as FRS) is a collection of 22 frequencies in the 462 and 467 MHz range. The use of Part 90 radios in GMRS plays fast and loose with the law, but acts in the spirit of the law, even if not the letter of it. The FCC has acknowledged the practice and has been leaving it alone, but they haven’t actually given approval to do that. To that end, we ensure that all radios are Part 90 (or Part 95E, as some employees have bought their own radios).

Which of course brings us to other problems in dealing with the radio net. A number of licensed GMRS users are quite upset about our use of a repeater on GMRS, especially given a lack of viable ones in the area. Some have identified the tower and have threatened to report us to the FCC (to which we tell them to go right ahead, as our use of that frequency is 100% on the up and up), some have tried to get us to make it a public use repeater (and typically suggest we use travel tone).

Then, of course, a number of the male employees - not content with the little GT-1 radios - always want something more “badass”. So I had one come up to me asking me if I could program his radio to the equestrian center net, and he hands me a BaoFeng UV-5R and told me the equestrian center owner gave her approval. Problem is, the FCC ID on that one - 2AJGM-UV5R - only shows Part 15 certification for 134 - 174 MHz and 400 - 470 MHz. So, outside of Part 97 (ham radio) use, it’s only legal as a receiver and scanner in those band splits. The ones which don’t have an FCC ID aren’t even legal for that. Had another one come to me with what looked like a Kenwood TK-3207... great 16 channel UHF radio, and the TK-2000/3000 series are becoming one of the mainstays of our rental service. When I removed the battery, it showed the model as TK-3000, but there was no FCC ID on it, so I asked him where he’d gotten it from. He said his brother used it for his business and had some extras. Just out of curiosity, I tried programming it with the KPG-137D programming software and was unable to. So I asked the brother where he’d gotten it from. He said he bought it off of Ebay. When I searched Ebay, I found a bunch of TK-2000/TK-3000 series radios from a seller out of China. So I installed KPG-137D on another computer and this time used the serial number for the UK/European version, and it successfully programmed the radio. All fine and dandy, but I gave it back to him and told him it’s not a legal radio for use in the US without an FCC ID being present.

I swear, I wear too many hats sometimes.