#ill be watching the individual pixels
Text
Father of Technoblade, YouTube Minecraft Star Says his Son has Died
He read his son's last message on the YouTube channel where the 20-something had entertained more 11 million viewers with Minecraft games and hilarious commentary. The titlewas "So long nerds."
Technoblade, a YouTube persona who earned an audience of millions thanks to his wry commentary on videos of himself playing Minecraft, has died as his father announced in a video that was posted on the account of his son.
Technoblade's Minecraft gameplay was watched by more than 11 million users. He also provided commentary on camera. He presented every day life events in videos, some as mundane as going to the doctor for a D.M.V. or as devastating as being diagnosed with cancer.
A video called "so long nerds," that was uploaded to Technoblade's YouTube channel on Thursday and has been watched more than 26 million times by Friday afternoon, deviated from the channel's usual aesthetic of colorful, pixelated bricks. Instead an individual who claims to identify himself as Technoblade's father has been shown sitting in a chair, against a stark white background with an adorable white dog on his lap.
His father, who does not give his name, reads an email from his son, which begins: "Hello, everyone. Technoblade here. You can see me dead if you're watching this.
Servers
The message continues to reveal Technoblade’s first name, Alex. He didn’t use it on the internet. A few photos of Alex and his family members are also featured in the video. Alex rarely appeared in YouTube videos and preferred to show himself as a crowned, sword-wielding porcine avatar.
Alex's letter says that "If I had another hundred years in my life, I believe I'd pick Technoblade again every time." "Those were the most enjoyable years of my life."
His father, who remains emotional throughout the film, says the two of them talked for months about whether or not to create the final video. His father claims that Alex wrote the letter and died within eight hours of writing it.
He states, "I don’t think he said all he wanted to however I believe he was able to get the main points."
The video concludes with a statement written by the writer that is believed to be the mother of Alex, who's name is not revealed. She said Alex was not famous and was self-deprecating despite his channel growing in popularity.
She wrote that Technoblade was always seeking ways to please and reward their fans. He gave away prizes online, encouraged good sportsmanship, and most importantly, shared his Minecraft adventures for entertainment and laughter.
Alex's family could not reach the player on Friday. Hypixel is a gaming firm that worked with Technoblade, said the family had asked that requests for comment not be forwarded to them. "The video they posted contains all information they are confident about sharing at this point," Don Pireso, the chief administrator of the company stated on Twitter in a direct message.
Alex first made public his diagnosis of cancer in a video posted on his channel in August. The video, which featured Alex's off camera comments and showed the game. He kept his self-deprecating and humorous style, avoiding any attempt to be serious. He also admitted his age at the time, 22.
He described how his first chemotherapy treatment left him exhausted and unable to even sit up for an appointment via video with a doctor. Then the comedian joked: "Sitting in a chair, am I Superman?"
He claimed he was diagnosed after experiencing severe discomfort in his arm. He initially dismissed it as a repetitive stress injury from playing video games, however, after several days of rest, he stated, his shoulder "was swelling up to the roof."
He also urged people to obtain the vaccine Covid-19. He claimed that his treatments for cancer had weakened his immune system, which made him more vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus.
He said, "I'm going ahead and speak for all cancer patients when i find it extremely irritating when hospitals are overloaded by people who are suffering from preventable diseases." "I'm just saying that we've got a right to use those hospital beds."
Technoblade's friends, fans, and followers on social media praised his wit and humor and also for being a role model for Minecraft players.
Minecraft is distinct from other games in that its owner, Microsoft does not have control over the servers where players can connect online. Instead, players can create their own servers or join one that was created by someone else, creating a sprawling universe of worlds within the Minecraft universe.
Hypixel which runs a network of Minecraft servers, announced that it had created a digital publication where users could write messages, and the book would be printed and sent out to the loved ones of Technoblade. The tribute included a photo of Technoblade's pig character as an artifact. The company stated that Technoblade's success is tied in many ways to the achievement and success of a lot of people.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Weddings are authoritative and compel a unnumbered of decisions to be made ahead of sentence. At that place are no specifically correct or awry turns to have when it comes to provision and departure through and through with your wedding ceremony. However, explore bum leaven to be useful in helping you lay out in Stone the decisions you spirit are right wing for you. The tips beneath are in that location to aid place you on the right wing track to your merrily ever later on.
Hiring an alien or young photographer bottom really be throwing forethought to the breaking wind when it comes to the durable memories of your wedding party. You deprivation every minute of your braggy daytime captured in pictures you and your future tense better half can cherish for a life sentence time, so don't carry chances on a cheap lensman or nonpareil that has non shown test copy of his or her expertise!
When you are walk-to refine the aisle, count at once into the eyes of your ostler at whole times. This wish be a exceptional second that you deuce wish portion for the ease of your life, as you leave lack to envision apiece former when it happens. Search and smiling at your groom to take a crap the outflank of the minute.
Essay to utilize a limousine device driver that you fuck and trustingness so that you do not throw to become apprehensive on the sidereal day of your wedding party. Spend a penny certain that he shows up in promote and earnings him the special time of day to sit down and wait for you. This bequeath ensure that you go far on clock time.
Draw trusted that you ne'er design your knight bachelor or bachelorette parties the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. ahead the wedding. At that place Crataegus oxycantha be a dish out of imbibing at these parties, and the concluding matter that you volition privation to do is ruining the mean solar day of your wedding because you are not amply utility. Bear a composure daytime correct earlier your wedding ceremony.
If you are preparation a wedding, it Crataegus laevigata profit you to architectural plan it in an away calendar month. 메이저사이트 of the cheapest months to aim marital in are October and November. Marriages comparable anything else are a business organization. The call for for weddings in these months is selfsame low, so to effort to beget higher need prices are take down.
If you're one of the many populate WHO don't require to expend upwards of a one thousand dollars on a fat-and-sugar-loaded marriage cake, check out with topical anesthetic bakeries for lighter, individual-sized wedding ceremony pastry suggestions. Many bakeries propose pocket-size tarts or mini-cakes that amount in fitter options, alike reinvigorated fruit-filled, gluten-discharge or vegan options.
If you're sledding to be photographing a wedding, correct your tv camera to the largest resoluteness potential. With child photos lav be cropped to sole include the safe parts, which commode be real helpful. They are also printable without any blurriness or pixelation, which is crucial for the hymeneals album and whatever framed shots the duet wants to get.
Spousal way changes drastically from year to year. Unless you are arrange on disbursement the money and computer storage blank space necessary to conserve and livelihood your marriage ceremony dress, deal rental a gown or else. Well-nigh formal put on holding companies are really reasonable in Price and policies, and you sack bust the expensive room decorator garment of your dreams for pennies compared to purchasing it for a one-metre eroding.
If you are ministering a wedding, urinate for sure to impart a give or a lineup and make it on fourth dimension. In one case the aggregation has started, you won't be capable to be seated until subsequently it has finished, and unless you are a closely grammatical category friend, it Crataegus laevigata be ill at ease to consume you standing in the hall watching the ceremony party as they fix to base on balls down feather the gangway.
Your wedding ceremony colours are identical significant which means fetching efflorescence seasons into thoughtfulness for your wedding party day of the month. The monetary value of flowers not uncommitted in the electric current temper is quite expensive. The extra price of these flowers hind end easily pressure you to emasculated your flower of necessity in half to adapt the high-flown cost.
It is significant to make up the correct decisions that you won't regret qualification by and by. Preparation your nuptials is whole grammatical category and the decisions dissent from mortal to soul. Therefore, in that respect are no right wing or amiss decisions. Use the tips from the article higher up to assist you tactile property that your nuptials was a succeeder with no regrets.
0 notes
Text
this was an absurd amount of effort for what was ultimately an offhanded-joke but i needed to procrasinate lmao
if you watched @henrykathman's "Melody of Moominvalley" stream, (hi, hello, i made the thumbnail art, that was a cool surprise to see in my sub-box lol) Kathman made a comment about being glad no one has made him into a Moomintroll (or Snorktroll, i guess) because he thinks he would look like Snork
i had two thoughts in reply to this VOD:
that's probably because i would assume most video-essayist are on the spectrum of Hemulans (oversimplification: academics) to Teety-Woo/Woodies (oversimplification: big fans, arguably obsessive). you're probably more of a Hemulan? based on how you present yourself in videos? idk, i dont know you in your personal life lmao Hemulan just seems likely considering the hobby being so analytical (and also is easier for me to look at the different styles of since Woodies seem to have less general rules towards their appearance. and Teety-Woo is the only one of its kind that i know of, idk what is Teety-Woo's species and what is Teety-Woo's individuality there. but, like, that's not nearly as fun as my bullshit quiz lmao)
fucking bet
*: assets in not-gif form below Read More
(psa: please do forgive me for misspellings. i am dyslexic and will probably edit this repeatedly for quite some time, but im tired atm so Now It Is Posted)
anyway, i whipped all these up in about 2 or 3 days? idk, my chronic health issues have been a monster lately, its hard to keep track of days rn
but i made:
comics Moomintroll/Snorktroll
90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll and Hemulan
Tales From Moominvalley inspired illustration art of Hemulan where it has those lifeless "bug eyes with tiny pupils" style i love (but that i also understand why Jansson went back and gave them bigger pupils after a certain edition, and drew with more expressive eyes after a while)
why did i do three different styles + 3 different species? because i was torn on which to do and ended up pulling a classic Kaiden-Shenandoah and going "ill do more work and let them choose which one they like best". something something anxiety, i dont know what to tell you, im trying to learn self-acceptance lmao besides, it was fun to do a quicker shuft through style changes than the usual heavier studying i make Google Images help me do
speaking of, i dont often share my references because i worry about clutter, but i want to include it today and i also used less ref than usual, so you get clutter lol
(i learned last time that Tove Jansson doesn' often draw mugs; so i did my best guesses based on the references here + the result of my references the last time i drew in Jansson' style, which was more so her later novel-illustrations, if i remember right, as opposed to today. lots of best guesses today.)
first of all, i guessed on Kathman's eye-color based on zooming in and it was too pixelated to tell for sure even with the eyedropped tool. secondly, very fun tying in the blue hair dye since 90s Snork has a pink edge to his hair and Mr Hemulan has a green edge to his. last of all: i made them with (and without) a light beard/stubble, since i saw Kathman has one now. but also that was enirely guesswork on my part: Tove Jansson drew heavy-duty moustaches/beards or completely facially-hairless characters, no in-between. so i used educated guesses on how to adapt that. and i feel a bit like i did the male version of that one Snorkmaiden lipstick comic for my efforts lmao but hey! i tried!
my only thing is idk which set to upload to instagram, bc doing all the assets of with/out facial hair feels oddly excessive and maybe goes past instagram's images-per-post limit, idk, ill upload these there someday i guess. really wish instagram would let me post a gif but idk how to do that. c'est la vie
you also may notice one of the Hemulan sets includes a magnifying glass. i just thought it was thematically appropriate for someone analytical, especially since one of my references above did have it available for me to also reference lol
as a fun detail, i did a more Police Inspector color palette for the 90s Hemulan design, and a more Moominpappa palette for the 90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll designs. hence why those colors aren't the same
and the last thing is that i made the comic assets yellow-y to reflect the aging of paper and the quality of the photo references i have. (Henry Kathman, if you want to edit them to be white for the aesthetic of something, feel totally free)
here's all the assets i made in total. the gif version felt the most succint but yeah. also, Henry Kathman, if you are reading this: same rules apply. feel free to use these in anything you want, credit would be nice. (also, very sweet that you saw my name change away from my childhood nickname, i appreciate that 🫶). credit in the future can be to either here or my instagram (which i changed to match this hyphen-less url, since tumblr terminated my last blog for unknown reasons) i hope you are not upset that i went against your wishes of gratitude that nobody had drawn you as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll, but i hope the fact that i think you don't look like Snork even as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll helps. i hope you also dont mind the Hemulan additions lmao. but yeah, i wont blame you if you prefer the more human (or arguably Mymble? idk species) style i did beforehand in the last batch and don't use these. that one has way more references with lots of drafts and this is more of me messing around and finalizing the first draft i made each time around lol but i think they came out fun! very silly distraction, thanks for the idea lmao
thanks to Henry Kathman for the fun VOD and the much-(un)needed procrastination excuse. it was a good distraction from a pretty bad flare-up in my disability and a full plte of things to do that i needed an escape from. hope youre having a great day!
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sparktober Bingo 2021!
Back for a new generation: Sparktober Bingo!
Instead of coming up with an Atlantis-specific list of prompts, I compiled a bunch of 2021 -tober prompt lists into one google doc here. (Links to original prompt lists are on the google doc.) Add in a list of Atlantis episodes and...
How to play:
Choose a “flavor” from the prompt sets below the cut, then paste it into this fandom bingo card generator.
Adjust your browser size til it looks right and take a screenshot, or use the html script if you’re familiar with using html on tumblr. Tag @sparktober if you want us to reblog it so everyone knows you’re playing!
Sparktober Bingo Rules:
Complete a row/column, corners, or a blackout of your card by November 1, or not! Update as you go.
All fan-works are allowed: art, edits, fic, meta... bonus points to anyone who picks the “sprinkles” flavor and goes full mid-aughts by filling their bingo cards with 100x100 pixel icons.
You are allowed to pull multiple cards until you get one that inspires you, and you can also go through the prompt list of your choice in advance to pull out squicks or things you absolutely won’t write. I recommend not googling unfamiliar words from your work computer.
Use the prompts liberally! Episode titles can be treated as the episode or as generic prompts (e.g. “Epiphany” can be for an episode-related fic or a prompt for an epiphany of your choice).
Flavor descriptions:
VANILLA: Gen prompt lists from Fictober, Inktober, Trektober Gen, and Trektober Trek.
CHOCOLATE: Zesty prompt lists from Trektober NSFW, Kinktober, and Whumptober. The multiple-prompts-per-day from Kinktober and Whumptober have been broken into individual prompts.
CANDY CORN: Fall / holiday themed prompts from TUA-tober.
SPRINKLES: Atlantis episode list (in order, in case you only want to copy certain seasons), along with characters and a few Atlantis-specific prompts.
TWIST: All of the above! (You can also manually mix and match different flavors, of course.)
Text blocks to copy into the bingo card generator are below the cut. Enjoy!!
VANILLA
“I need you.”; “You have no proof.”; “I’ve waited for this.”; “Fine, I give up.”; “I’m not saying I told you so…”; “Didn’t we already have this conversation?”; “That could have gone better.”; “This is it, isn’t it?”; “There’s no right side to this.”; “It’s so quiet.”; “I swear, it’s not always like this.”; “You keep me safe.”; “The things you make me do…”; “Your information was wrong.”; “I like that in you.”; “Not this again.”; “I’m with you, you know that.”; “This was not part of the plan.”; “I feel strange.”; “That’s what I’m known for.”; “What did I say?”; “No promises.”; “This time, do what I say.”; “Is this supposed to impress me?”; “Do you know what time it is?”; “I’m sure this has never worked, ever.”; “You could have died!”; “I don’t have to explain myself.”; “Why are we whispering?”; “Don’t ruin this.”; “Take me with you.”; Crystal; Suit; Vessel; Knot; Raven; Spirit; Fan; Watch; Pressure; Pick; Sour; Stuck; Roof; Tick; Helmet; Compass; Collide; Moon; Loop; Sprout; Fuzzy; Open; Leak; Extinct; Splat; Connect; Spark; Crispy; Patch; Slither; Risk; Meet-Cute; Amnesia; Age Difference; Pining; Sick Fic; Fake Relationship; Accidental Meeting; Epistolary; Secret Identity; Historical AU; Nightmares; Monster Hunter; Reunion; Soulmates; At Pride; Angst; Seasons; Fix-It; Coffee Shop; Movie Plot AU; Kid Fic; Actor's Other Crossover Work; OT+; Getting Together; Only One Bed; Pirates; Making Up; Forbidden Relationship; Tattoos; Halloween; Prime Directive; Lower Decks / Background Characters; Away Mission; Ship's Bar; Aliens Made Them Do It; Observation Deck; Crew with Family; Holodeck; Science Crew; Character Survives; Headcanons; Diplomacy; Decontamination; Trek Crossover; Replicator; Worldbuilding; Redshirts; Sex / Love Potion; Medical Crew; Transporters; Medbay; Interspecies Relationship; Mirrorverse; Uniforms; Mutiny; Stranded on a Planet; Rec Room; Academy Era; Second Contact; Command Crew; Off-Duty
CHOCOLATE
A/B/O; Soft; Anonymous Sex; Penetration with Object/s; Sleeping; Intercrural Sex; Restraints; In/Under Water; Group Sex; First Time; Possessive Behavior; Dry Humping / Grinding; Overstimulation; Roleplay; Rimming; Stretching / Fisting; Power Imbalance; Food Play; Fingering; Body Worship; Sex Work; Voyeurism / Exhibitionism; Safewords; Technology; Oral Sex; Omorashi / Wetting; Crying; Underwear / Lingerie; Friends with Benefits; Pain Kink; Dirty Talk; Trick or Treat; All trussed up and nowhere to go; Talking is overrated; Sticks and stones may break my bones...; Trust fall; I've got red in my ledger; Touch and go; My spidey-sense is tingling; Coughing up a lung; Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated; Oops, I did it again; Just keep swimming; It'll be fun, they said; That's gonna leave a mark; Under pressure; Feed a cold, starve a fever; On a need-to-know basis; Field care 101; The doctor is in; Just a scratch; Lost & found; That's where the blood's supposed to be; They made me do it; You break it, you buy it; One down, two to go; Hide & Seek; You will go down with this ship; “I'm fine, I prom...”; It's (not) just in your head; All work and no play; Digging your grave; Hurt & Comfort; “You have to let go.”; Garotte; Taunting; “Do you trust me?”; Betrayal; Bruises; Helplessness; Pneumothorax; Presumed Dead; Hospital; Adrift; Torture; “This is gonna suck.”; Crush injuries; Delirium; Recovery; “Please don't move.”; “Now smile for the camera.”; Bitten; Trunk; Bleeding through bandages; Cursed; Auction; Self-induced injuries to escape; Escape; Fallen; Passing out; “Good, you're finally awake.”; “You're still not dead?”; Major character death; Disaster zone; Barbed Wire; Choking; Insults; Taken Hostage; Misunderstanding; Touch Starved; Numbness; Exotic Illness; (Blind) Rage; Flare-Up; Drowning; Made To Watch; Burns; Beaten; Fever Dreams; Scars; Hemorrhage; Doctor Visit; Bleeding; Trapped Under Water; Pressure; Demon; Ransom; Flashback; Flight; Waterfall; Vertigo; Nightmares; Too Weak To Move; Left For Dead; Trauma; Bound; Gagged; “Who Did This To You?”; Pushed; Broken Nose; Hunger; Blindness; “Definitely Just A Cold”; Tears; Ice Chips; Dehydration; Begging; Cauterization; Force; Bees; Aftermath; Dread; Cpr; Stabbing; Solitary Confinement; Blood-Matted Hair; Obsession; Pursuit; Revenge; Hiding; Trap Door; Collapse; Panic; Overworked; Ghosts; Prisoner; Losing Control; Threats; Caning; Mercy; Forgotten; Head Injury; Screaming; Comfort; Self-Sacrifice; Trapped; Near-Death Experience; Regret; Tragedy; Battlefield; Anxiety; Gore; Petplay; Bimbofication; Panties & Lingerie; Bondage; Double Penetration in 2 Holes; Breeding; Humiliation; NTR; Incest; Emeto; Omorashi; Free Use; Crossdressing; Public; Three (or more) some; Daddy & Mommy; Double Penetration in 1 Hole; Distention & Cockbulge; Xenophilia; Shotgunning; Watersports; Pregnancy; Lactation; Waxplay; Grooming; Human Furniture; Feet; Prostituion; MacroMicro; Spanking; Cockwarming; Glory Hole; Somnophilia; Body Modification; Temperature Play; Leather; Size Difference; Sounding; Stockings; Tentacles; Medical Play; Stripping; Orgasm Denial; Master & slave; Scissoring; Titfucking; Frottage; Knifeplay; Formal Wear; Breathplay; Fisting; Pegging; Scat; Beastiality; Fucking Machine; Tickling; Boot Worship; Bukkake; Collaring; Foodplay; Non or dubcon; Feederism; Sensory Deprivation; Oviposition; Clone & Selfcest; Exhibitionism & Voyeurism; Impact Play; Sadomasochism; Bloodplay; Praise Kink; Body Swap; Sweat; Branding; Massage; Role Reversal; Armpit; Masturbation; Inflation; Sex Toys; Burnplay; Menophilia; Stuck in Wall; Deepthroating & Facesitting; Dacryphilia; Hate Sex
CANDY CORN
Birthday; Sick Day; Autumn; Candles; Plaid / Flannel; Leaf Piles; Sweaters; Baking; Cinnamon; Pumpkin Spice Latte; Carnival; Movie Night; Candy; Graveyard; Black Cats; Goosebumps; Pumpkin; Party; Monster; Ghosts; Witch; Vampire; Traditions; Magic; Mask; Haunted House; Trick; Treat; Costume; Monster Mash; Halloween
SPRINKLES
Rising Part 1; Rising Part 2; Hide and Seek; Thirty-Eight Minutes; Suspicion; Childhood's End; Poisoning the Well; Underground; Home; The Storm; The Eye; The Defiant One; Hot Zone; Sanctuary; Before I Sleep; The Brotherhood; Letters from Pegasus; The Gift; The Siege Part 1; The Siege Part 2; The Siege Part 3; The Intruder; Runner; Duet; Condemned; Trinity; Instinct; Conversion; Aurora; The Lost Boys; The Hive; Epiphany; Critical Mass; Grace Under Pressure; The Tower; The Long Goodbye; Coup d'Etat; Michael; Inferno; Allies; No Man's Land; Misbegotten; Irresistible; Sateda; Progeny; The Real World; Common Ground; McKay and Mrs. Miller; Phantoms; The Return Part 1; The Return Part 2; Echoes; Irresponsible; Tao of Rodney; The Game; The Ark; Sunday; Submersion; Vengeance; First Strike; Adrift; Lifeline; Reunion; Doppelganger; Travelers; Tabula Rasa; Missing; The Seer; Miller's Crossing; This Mortal Coil; Be All My Sins Remember'd; Spoils of War; Quarantine; Harmony; Outcast; Trio; Midway; The Kindred Part 1; The Kindred Part 2; The Last Man; Search and Rescue; The Seed; Broken Ties; The Daedalus Variations; Ghost in the Machine; The Shrine; Whispers; The Queen; Tracker; First Contact; The Lost Tribe; Outsiders; Inquisition; The Prodigal; Remnants; Brain Storm; Infection; Identity; Vegas; Enemy at the Gate; Ronon Dex; Teyla Emmagan; John Sheppard; Carson Beckett; Elizabeth Weir; Rodney McKay; Jennifer Keller; Samantha Carter; Aiden Ford; Radek Zelenka; Kate Heightmeyer; Evan Lorne; Laura Cadman; Kolya; Chuck; Peter Grodin; Steven Caldwell; Lantea; Ocean; Ancient(s); Richard Woolsey; Athosians; Daedalus; Wraith; Nanites; Asurans; Genii; DHD; SGC; Stargate; Earth; Antarctica; Ascension
TWIST
“I need you.”; “You have no proof.”; “I’ve waited for this.”; “Fine, I give up.”; “I’m not saying I told you so…”; “Didn’t we already have this conversation?”; “That could have gone better.”; “This is it, isn’t it?”; “There’s no right side to this.”; “It’s so quiet.”; “I swear, it’s not always like this.”; “You keep me safe.”; “The things you make me do…”; “Your information was wrong.”; “I like that in you.”; “Not this again.”; “I’m with you, you know that.”; “This was not part of the plan.”; “I feel strange.”; “That’s what I’m known for.”; “What did I say?”; “No promises.”; “This time, do what I say.”; “Is this supposed to impress me?”; “Do you know what time it is?”; “I’m sure this has never worked, ever.”; “You could have died!”; “I don’t have to explain myself.”; “Why are we whispering?”; “Don’t ruin this.”; “Take me with you.”; Crystal; Suit; Vessel; Knot; Raven; Spirit; Fan; Watch; Pressure; Pick; Sour; Stuck; Roof; Tick; Helmet; Compass; Collide; Moon; Loop; Sprout; Fuzzy; Open; Leak; Extinct; Splat; Connect; Spark; Crispy; Patch; Slither; Risk; Meet-Cute; Amnesia; Age Difference; Pining; Sick Fic; Fake Relationship; Accidental Meeting; Epistolary; Secret Identity; Historical AU; Nightmares; Monster Hunter; A/B/O; Reunion; Soulmates; At Pride; Angst; Seasons; Fix-It; Coffee Shop; Movie Plot AU; Kid Fic; Actor's Other Crossover Work; OT+; Getting Together; Only One Bed; Pirates; Making Up; Forbidden Relationship; Tattoos; Halloween; Prime Directive; Lower Decks / Background Characters; Away Mission; Ship's Bar; Aliens Made Them Do It; Observation Deck; Crew with Family; Holodeck; Science Crew; Character Survives; Headcanons; Diplomacy; Decontamination; Trek Crossover; Replicator; Worldbuilding; Redshirts; Sex / Love Potion; Medical Crew; Transporters; Medbay; Interspecies Relationship; Mirrorverse; Uniforms; Mutiny; Stranded on a Planet; Rec Room; Academy Era; Second Contact; Command Crew; Off-Duty; Soft; Anonymous Sex; Penetration with Object/s; Sleeping; Intercrural Sex; Restraints; In/Under Water; Group Sex; First Time; Possessive Behavior; Dry Humping / Grinding; Overstimulation; Roleplay; Rimming; Stretching / Fisting; Power Imbalance; Food Play; Fingering; Body Worship; Sex Work; Voyeurism / Exhibitionism; Safewords; Technology; Oral Sex; Omorashi / Wetting; Crying; Underwear / Lingerie; Friends with Benefits; Pain Kink; Dirty Talk; Trick or Treat; All trussed up and nowhere to go; Talking is overrated; Sticks and stones may break my bones...; Trust fall; I've got red in my ledger; Touch and go; My spidey-sense is tingling; Coughing up a lung; Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated; Oops, I did it again; Just keep swimming; It'll be fun, they said; That's gonna leave a mark; Under pressure; Feed a cold, starve a fever; On a need-to-know basis; Field care 101; The doctor is in; Just a scratch; Lost & found; That's where the blood's supposed to be; They made me do it; You break it, you buy it; One down, two to go; You will go down with this ship; “I'm fine, I prom...”; It's (not) just in your head; All work and no play; Digging your grave; Hurt & Comfort; “You have to let go.”; Garotte; Taunting; “Do you trust me?”; Betrayal; Bruises; Helplessness; Pneumothorax; Presumed Dead; Hospital; Adrift; Torture; “This is gonna suck.”; Crush injuries; Delirium; Recovery; “Please don't move.”; “Now smile for the camera.”; Bitten; Trunk; Bleeding through bandages; Cursed; Auction; Self-induced injuries to escape; Escape; Fallen; Passing out; “Good, you're finally awake.”; “You're still not dead?”; Major character death; Disaster zone; Barbed Wire; Choking; Insults; Taken Hostage; Misunderstanding; Touch Starved; Numbness; Exotic Illness; (Blind) Rage; Flare-Up; Drowning; Made To Watch; Burns; Beaten; Fever Dreams; Scars; Hemorrhage; Doctor Visit; Bleeding; Trapped Under Water; Demon; Ransom; Flashback; Flight; Waterfall; Vertigo; Too Weak To Move; Left For Dead; Trauma; Bound; Gagged; “Who Did This To You?”; Pushed; Broken Nose; Hunger; Blindness; “Definitely Just A Cold”; Tears; Ice Chips; Dehydration; Begging; Cauterization; Force; Bees; Aftermath; Dread; Cpr; Stabbing; Solitary Confinement; Blood-Matted Hair; Obsession; Pursuit; Revenge; Hiding; Trap Door; Collapse; Panic; Overworked; Ghosts; Prisoner; Losing Control; Threats; Caning; Mercy; Forgotten; Head Injury; Screaming; Comfort; Self-Sacrifice; Trapped; Near-Death Experience; Regret; Tragedy; Battlefield; Anxiety; Gore; Petplay; Bimbofication; Panties & Lingerie; Bondage; Double Penetration in 2 Holes; Breeding; Humiliation; NTR; Incest; Emeto; Omorashi; Free Use; Crossdressing; Public; Three (or more) some; Daddy & Mommy; Double Penetration in 1 Hole; Distention & Cockbulge; Xenophilia; Shotgunning; Watersports; Pregnancy; Lactation; Waxplay; Grooming; Human Furniture; Feet; Prostituion; MacroMicro; Spanking; Cockwarming; Glory Hole; Somnophilia; Body Modification; Temperature Play; Leather; Size Difference; Sounding; Stockings; Tentacles; Medical Play; Stripping; Orgasm Denial; Master & slave; Scissoring; Titfucking; Frottage; Knifeplay; Formal Wear; Breathplay; Fisting; Pegging; Scat; Beastiality; Fucking Machine; Tickling; Boot Worship; Bukkake; Collaring; Foodplay; Non or dubcon; Feederism; Sensory Deprivation; Oviposition; Clone & Selfcest; Exhibitionism & Voyeurism; Impact Play; Sadomasochism; Bloodplay; Praise Kink; Body Swap; Sweat; Branding; Massage; Role Reversal; Armpit; Masturbation; Inflation; Sex Toys; Burnplay; Menophilia; Stuck in Wall; Deepthroating & Facesitting; Dacryphilia; Hate Sex; Birthday; Sick Day; Autumn; Candles; Plaid / Flannel; Leaf Piles; Sweaters; Baking; Cinnamon; Pumpkin Spice Latte; Carnival; Movie Night; Candy; Graveyard; Black Cats; Goosebumps; Pumpkin; Party; Monster; Witch; Vampire; Traditions; Magic; Mask; Haunted House; Trick; Treat; Costume; Monster Mash; Rising Part 1; Rising Part 2; Hide and Seek; Thirty-Eight Minutes; Suspicion; Childhood's End; Poisoning the Well; Underground; Home; The Storm; The Eye; The Defiant One; Hot Zone; Sanctuary; Before I Sleep; The Brotherhood; Letters from Pegasus; The Gift; The Siege Part 1; The Siege Part 2; The Siege Part 3; The Intruder; Runner; Duet; Condemned; Trinity; Instinct; Conversion; Aurora; The Lost Boys; The Hive; Epiphany; Critical Mass; Grace Under Pressure; The Tower; The Long Goodbye; Coup d'Etat; Michael; Inferno; Allies; No Man's Land; Misbegotten; Irresistible; Sateda; Progeny; The Real World; Common Ground; McKay and Mrs. Miller; Phantoms; The Return Part 1; The Return Part 2; Echoes; Irresponsible; Tao of Rodney; The Game; The Ark; Sunday; Submersion; Vengeance; First Strike; Lifeline; Doppelganger; Travelers; Tabula Rasa; Missing; The Seer; Miller's Crossing; This Mortal Coil; Be All My Sins Remember'd; Spoils of War; Quarantine; Harmony; Outcast; Trio; Midway; The Kindred Part 1; The Kindred Part 2; The Last Man; Search and Rescue; The Seed; Broken Ties; The Daedalus Variations; Ghost in the Machine; The Shrine; Whispers; The Queen; Tracker; First Contact; The Lost Tribe; Outsiders; Inquisition; The Prodigal; Remnants; Brain Storm; Infection; Identity; Vegas; Enemy at the Gate; Ronon Dex; Teyla Emmagan; John Sheppard; Carson Beckett; Elizabeth Weir; Rodney McKay; Jennifer Keller; Samantha Carter; Aiden Ford; Radek Zelenka; Kate Heightmeyer; Evan Lorne; Laura Cadman; Kolya; Chuck; Peter Grodin; Steven Caldwell; Lantea; Ocean; Ancient(s); Richard Woolsey; Athosians; Daedalus; Wraith; Nanites; Asurans; Genii; DHD; SGC; Stargate; Earth; Antarctica; Ascension
33 notes
·
View notes
Text
honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)
see other chapters, notes, and warnings here!
chapter one: qualia
qualia: in philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. philosopher and cognitive scientist daniel dennett once suggested that qualia was "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.”
JANUS
Janus almost always develops a headache when he has to deal with the latest idiot intern at the firm, but this headache is beyond the pale. Then again, so is this intern. He has never met a uni student that is more destined to become an obnoxiously vocal Tory. It’s like someone granted a novel about Etonian history his wish to become a real boy.
“Out,” he bellows at the intern who has been attempting to stick himself to Janus's side, unable to pick up on the fact that his repeated mentions of his father, you know, the chancellor of the high court, is doing the opposite of impressing everyone around him.
This intern—Janus is going to make it a point to never remember his name now—has probably never been yelled at in his life. He gives Janus a very offended look, sniffs, and retreats from Janus's office, likely to bother whatever barrister he hasn’t yet told about the blatant nepotism that has gotten him into their office.
Janus puts his elbows on the table and pinches the bridge of his nose, breathing slowly in and out. Though the intern has certainly exacerbated the headache at hand, he’s had the headache since he inexplicably woke up at four in the morning.
He’s taken paracetamol, he’s tried hydrating, and drinking caffeine, and rubbing his temples, and even wearing the blue light glasses Key swears by, but there’s been no luck. His head’s throbbing just as badly now as it did when he woke up from a dream about a strange American wearing a pale brown cardigan and a pink tie.
The man had gone pale and sweaty as if he was ill, leaning back against air, clutching at nothing, like he’d hoped to find someone’s hand to hold, but despite the pain he seemed to be in, he’d stared straight at Janus, beaming and wide-eyed.
“I see them,” the man had whispered. He’d opened his free arm as if to offer a hug. “Oh, they’re beautiful. You’re beautiful, my dear. My darling.”
You’re beautiful, my dear, my darling…
Janus rubs at his forehead. If he’d been so beautiful and dear and darling, he would have appreciated being left without this migraine as the price of the compliment.
“You,” he barks at the nearest intern walking by his office—a mousy little thing, a girl who’s swimming in a cardigan that makes his eyes throb with a familiarity he can’t recognize—“I’ll let you assist on this case if you get me a tea with two sugars, right now.”
She perks up. “Really?”
“Right now,” he thunders, and the girl practically squeaks before she heads for the building’s refectory with its in-house café.
Janus tries his hardest not to smile to himself, really he does, but the best part of intern season is scaring the interns. What is he supposed to do, not revel in their suffering?
He’s about to reach for his smartphone resting on his desk when he feels a buzz against his sternum.
He pauses, glances toward the door, before he swivels around his desk chair and opens a lower cabinet as if he’s searching for a file; instead, he reaches into his innermost breast pocket to pull out his other phone. This one is a good deal cheaper than the one resting on the table; that is by design.
He glances at the window to double-check the reflections, that no one is watching him—they aren’t—before he unlocks the phone and looks at the message.
K: jazza, you found anything yet?
Janus scowls at the phone. Honestly.
J: Do you want to get arrested, Key? Because rushing this job is how you get arrested.
K: aint that the reason ur a big fancy barrister in the first place
J: Do they want to put up the rush fee?
He turns back to his desk and manages to get some actual, legal, non-shady work done before the phone buzzes.
K: no.
If pixels could look sullen, these ones do.
J: Then tell them to put up or shut up.
A pause.
J: And don’t text me for inane little updates during actual people’s work hours again. You are specifically only to contact me during these hours for emergencies.
He shuts off the phone and tucks it into his breast pocket again before Key can respond. The nerve of some people. He’ll do the work, fine, but people needed to realize they’d get what they paid for. For the information that Key’s clientele wants him to retrieve, they’ll have to put up quite a bit more cash for him to move at anything beyond a snail’s pace.
A knock at the door. Janus gives the girl his most imperious look.
“Here you are, sir,” she says, handing over one insulated to-go mug, keeping another one in her hands.
“Yes, fine, fine,” he says, taking it. “What’s your name again?”
“Emma, sir.”
“Emma,” he repeats. He takes a sip of the tea.
Or, he expects to take a sip of tea. What he gets is a mouthful of coffee.
Very good coffee, very high-quality coffee, but coffee, and lukewarm at that. He pulls a face instinctively.
“What did you get me?”
Emma immediately looks petrified. “Tea with two sugars, sir?”
Janus frowns at her, then examines the side, where the tea option is ticked off. If they’ve managed to mess up the order, at least they’d given him the good-quality stuff, even if it did taste like it had been sitting on a desk for an hour. He takes another cautious sip.
Tea. Sweetened, hot tea, fresh from the café.
He’s never had a headache this bad before. So maybe he doesn’t know that headaches this bad can mess with his sense of smell. And temperature. Now that he thinks of it, he is feeling really quite hot, even though the building’s air conditioning is blasting.
“...Very good,” he says slowly, and then proceeds to nudge a perilously tall stack of manila files toward her. “Read the top one so you can get reacquainted with the case.”
Emma takes the file immediately, and, just for a moment, just for barely a flash, Janus could swear he’d seen someone walking in the hall in their pajamas and bunny slippers in the reflection of his office windows.
He looks at it more directly.
No. It’s just Emma’s reflection and his. Janus's office, furnished in dark woods and leather desk chairs, his fine suit, the damningly recognizable birthmark and scar splashed across his face.
Janus frowns at himself in the window, turns away, and reaches for his own manila file.
VIRGIL
Getting off the plane from America to South Africa is always an experiment in temperature adjustment.
He takes off his hoodie in between the shuffle of getting off the plane to going to the baggage claim, tying it around his waist, leaving him just in a purple t-shirt and his ripped jeans.
It doesn’t help that he’s got a headache that’s absolutely killing him.
By the time he gets there, his baggage is already waiting at the side of a woman with her hair wrapped in a scarf, her glasses resting low on her nose; they look new, and it makes Virgil’s chest hurt—what else has he missed since he’s been across the world?
Virgil’s mother, Andisiwe, beams at him. “Virgil!”
“I’ve missed you, Mama,” he says in Xhosa because ever since he was a child jetting back and forth for school breaks she’s been worried about him losing his mother tongue.
She laughs, hugging him tight and warm, and he wraps his arms around her in kind, closing his eyes tight. This is the longest he’s been from her since he was born. She’d been in America to teach for a year and a half at Johns Hopkins when she’d met his father, and then Virgil happened.
He couldn’t have gone back to South Africa with her, a black woman with a mixed-race child, not during apartheid. His white father had had to bring him home to his white wife, and white children, and initiate what would eventually become a long, messy divorce.
But he doesn’t like to think about that, and he won’t, not today, not when he’s finally back here. He’s missed her, and Pretoria, and his jacarandas, and his grandmother’s recipe for coconut pitha, and umngqusho, and proper, African coffee more than he can say.
All he’d drunk in the States was tea because he didn’t want to be reminded of home; he can taste it lingering in the back of his throat, even now.
“Or should I say, Doctor Virgil Wright-Nkosi,” she says, beaming at him wide, and Virgil ducks his head, grinning even through how awkward he feels.
“I’m a doctor of botany, it’s not the same as you,” or Dad, he tacks on in his mind, taking his suitcase and gesturing her ahead of him; she trades him with a to-go cup of coffee, which he sips eagerly. It’s such a perfect taste of home that he doesn’t even care that it’s lukewarm.
“Quite right,” she says, leading their way through the airport. “Ph.D. is different from an M.D., I’m thrilled my employer has taught you so excellently in your undergrad—”
Virgil laughs, again, but his foot slips on the smooth airport tile, and he looks down instinctively, and his breath catches in his throat, laughter dying in his mouth, freezing where he stands, because if he takes one more step he is going to die he is going to die he is going to fucking die—
There’s this tight feeling across his chest like a band and suddenly he’s not looking down at clean airport tile but he’s looking down at a yawning expanse of air between himself and the ground at least three stories up and he’s standing on a thin metal bar and if he keeps moving he’s going to fall he’s going to die
“Virgil?”
Virgil looks toward his mother, breath seized in his throat, and—
And he’s at the airport again. Bustling crowds, pinging PA system, his mother, a hand reaching toward him in concern.
“Virgil, are you all right?”
Virgil swallows once, twice, squeezes his eyes shut, and shakes his head to clear it; he opens them again.
Airport. His mom. The crowd. And, just a flash, weaving in and out of the people, there’s a big man with tattoos, and he’s wearing bunny slippers. It’s strange enough that it manages to shake him out of it better than any physical gesture could.
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds strained to his own ears. “Yeah. Um—jet lag, I think.”
Andisiwe surveys him, before she nods, once, decisively.
“Finish that coffee,” she says. “You know how much worse it’ll get if you let yourself fall asleep now.”
Virgil takes a long pull from his cup—bitter, dark, African coffee. Home. He’s home.
Jet lag, he tells himself. Jet lag, and that weird dream you had on the plane. That’s all this is.
REMUS
“The fucking rat bastard bitch-ass sorry shit-stain of a cunt,” Remus pants to himself, as quietly as he can when he’s heaving for breath and sprinting along the forest floor. Remus wasn’t particularly athletic in the first place—one doesn’t really become a horror author if they’re a star athlete, do they?—but when one is running for their life, things like “stitches in my side” and “is that blood I taste in the back of my mouth” kind of take a back seat to things like, you know, continued survival.
Remus nearly trips over a vine, which he verbally abuses for a few hundred more feet, (“fucking useless pieces of shit fucking—”) before he manages to slip and stumble into the shelter of something like a cave. He checks it—as much as he likes wildlife mauling other people, in theory, it kind of goes against this whole survival thing if he wanders into a cave only to get his throat ripped out by a bobcat.
As he casts back the hood of his jacket and mops his brow of sweat, looking back and forth to ensure he hasn’t been tracked, and his heart rate returns to something like normal, turns his mind back to Miguel fucking Contreras.
That fucking bastard was lucky he was dead, and even so, Remus might go back and dig up his freshly-turned grave with nothing but his own two fucking hands and he’d gladly break a hundred of his fingers and turn his knuckles into right-angled wrongness just to reach in there and grab his rotting corpse and wring his neck to kill him again.
He didn’t even kill him the first time, that’s the unbearable thing! He’d wanted to kill him and someone swooped in and did it before Remus ever could!
Remus spits on the ground, furious, and even more furious that everything with him is so vital he can’t risk destroying any of it in a rage—his clothes, his last couple testosterone pills, a burner phone he’d stolen off someone who reminded him of his own wretched abuela a couple cities back and kept shut off ever since. She’d been yelling at some homeless kids trying to get some pesos for a goddamn meal, though, so Remus felt as if he’d performed a public service by making her day worse.
He’d managed to snatch her purse and empty it out, too. The kids got a meal, Remus got a meal, everyone won.
Remus chances a peek around the forest once again, just to ensure he hasn’t been tailed, and—
He shrinks back into the cave at the sight of a large man jogging by. He’s very big, very tall, very tattooed, and very confused, by the looks of it. Like he’s sleep-walked miles into the forest and now doesn’t know his way back.
The man pivots on his foot, walks out of Remus's view behind a tree, and doesn’t resume walking again.
Remus's eyes narrow. He tenses his muscles, ready to start sprinting again, but that man had looked rather big and strong, and therefore much more decisively athletic than Remus.
But minutes pass, and the man doesn’t emerge again.
Remus creeps out, just enough to see past the tree, and—
No. The man is gone.
Anyone else might think that they were losing it. Anyone else might think that they were going crazy.
Remis is fully aware that he’s crazy, though, so he shrugs and returns his attention to sorting through his bag, except—
His fingers run through the money he has, and they aren’t pesos anymore. Remus frowns at the sight of the money, holding it up to the meager light to see it.
There definitely isn’t an old white lady on pesos usually.
“The fuck?”
“Erm.”
Remus whips his head around, very suddenly aware that he isn’t in a cave anymore.
He’s in an apartment. A swanky apartment. The air conditioning is blasting—Remus hasn’t been in air-conditioned surroundings for so long, and he nearly melts under the feel of it, cooling the sweat coating his face, running down his back.
A white man lowers his glasses down his nose and frowns at Remus. The way his mouth moves twists up the scar on the side of the face. He’s holding up a handful of pesos.
“Well, first of all, I really need to send a note so they improve security around this place,” the man says in an undertone. Then, “second of all, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to need those pounds to pay for my takeaway.”
Remus stares.
“I’ve ordered Indian food to my office,” he continues, “and I’d think that they’d prefer the national currency in exchange for my food. I’ve been craving samosas something awful.”
Samosas do sound good. Any food sounds good, Remus thinks, as his stomach growls with envy.
Remus slowly extends his handful of the old white lady money. The white man places the pesos into Remus's hand, taking his money back at the same time.
“Much obliged,” the white man says and disappears.
Remus blinks down at his handful of pesos, then looks around. No more air conditioning, or swanky office, or promise of takeout.
He shakes his head.
“If I hadn’t lost it before,” he mutters aloud and goes back to counting his money.
Well. It’s not like Remus's brain is any great loss.
LOGAN
Logan gives a cursory peek through the telescope and grumbles, pulling back and rubbing his forehead. Fantastic. On top of this untimely migraine, his equipment has decided to throw a tantrum, too.
He’s known technology can be fiddly even in the best of conditions. He’s known that cold can adversely affect equipment. And yet, for some reason, it is still constantly frustrating when it does happen. Which in turn is frustrating; he should expect cold conditions to interfere with any equipment that he uses for his space research. He’s in Antarctica.
Logan makes effort to simply narrow his eyes at the telescope before him, fiddling with the lens. He has half a mind to ask it there, will you behave now? but considering it is simply scientific equipment, it will not answer. Therefore, there is no reason to speak.
Logan rubs his forehead again, and, for the brief moment before his hand obscures his eyes, he sees a flash of something.
Logan squints, lowering his hand. But no, he decides; he just sees snow, rock, the local wildlife.
But for a moment he could have sworn, while he was looking out at the sea, that he’d seen a large, tattooed man looking out at the sea, too.
No, he decides. It couldn’t have possibly been; this headache, coupled with the general brightness of the world right now, is making him see things.
There is no way he’d just seen, in the midst of an Antarctic island, a large, tattooed man in pajamas and bunny slippers.
ROMAN
Fuck if it’s not early, but fuck if he’s not having a blast.
“Do we wanna run it one more time?!” Roman hollers down from the catwalks.
“I should’ve known better than to give you a fly scene,” María says ruefully. Roman blows down kisses from where he’s strapped in, harness tight across his chest, the camera crew looking dutifully to María to see what the verdict is.
A long pause. She sighs and waves a hand. “Set up for the close-up landing!”
Roman whoops to himself, shifting on his own two feet. He never gets to do stunts, much less stunts like this. All his movies are machismo, punching people and firing guns, and sure, this one is full of all that, but at least this time he gets to spend a day flying around on wires like he’s a superhero.
Which is ironic, considering he’d started his career in movies as a stuntman. But now his pretty face is too high-market-value to risk it doing the thing he’s been trained to do.
But whatever! Today he gets to fly around! Today he gets to throw himself into saying his lines! Today he gets to throw himself into his script and his acting and his costars!
Today he gets to spend it on set and not lying in bed taken down by this godawful migraine and scrolling through his phone with his heart in his throat to see if there are any developments in the news!
Today he gets to tell Sasha all about the day he’s had in his usual bright and happy voice! It’s a great day!
Roman shuffles on his feet, waiting for the “action!” to be called when he hears the tell-tale rumbling shriek of a plane flying overhead, and Roman bites back a sigh; that’s going to delay the shoot of the scene for sure while they wait on that, so Roman slumps, looking for something to occupy either his hands or his brain with, but then—
“Quiet on set!” María barks.
“We aren’t going to hold for the plane?” Roman asks, confused.
“What plane?” María says.
“I thought—” Roman says, and frowns; from where he is in the catwalks, he can’t exactly look up and see the sky, but even then the angle of sound seems wrong; it’s like he’s walking past an airfield, planes taking off and landing all at once.
“Never mind,” Roman calls down weakly. “Thought I heard something, must have been tech stuff.”
María looks up at him, eyes narrowed briefly before she shrugs, and repeats, “Quiet on set!”
Roman shakes out his shoulders, intent on getting into the mind of Pablo Márquez, and out of his own.
⁂
Roman’s got an icepack under his shoulder and on his forehead, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Okay, so, maybe he got a bit too into it today. Whatever. It’s not his fault he’s stuck with a killer migraine, and it’s definitely not his fault that the person who fastened his harness clearly didn’t know what he was talking about; you’d think that now he was the big star, people would be more cautious with him than they were when he was a stuntman, but what does Roman know? He’s just the pretty face.
But whatever. He’s got a breather for a while as his costar shoots a few scenes with her supposed father (a twist of the movie is that her father is not, in fact, her father) and so he’s taking the time to sit and relax.
He’s going to relax.
Really.
...oh, who is he kidding. Roman immediately rolls to grab his phone from where he’d set it on the minuscule table in his trailer, and loads the page to El Universal.
He’s got the search down to a science, really. He starts with the wider, more professional news sources—ergo El Universal—and then gradually meanders his way down, through the magazines, then the tabloids, then the blogs dedicated to the writings of R.J. Duke.
When he’s really desperate, he checks Twitter.
He turns out to be really desperate every day, though.
He isn’t really sure how not to be desperate when one’s brother is on the run for committing murder.
He definitely isn’t sure how not to be desperate when one’s brother is only revealed to not be his brother under a thin guise that someone might find out any minute.
He absolutely isn’t sure how not to be desperate when any day now, someone will crack it, and they’ll raid his apartment to see if Roman was hiding him (Roman would absolutely hide him if Remus would just come to him) and ask him questions, and how is Roman supposed to respond when they ask him if Remus would be capable of murder, no? Fucking obviously Remus would be capable of murder.
And the thing is, he is desperate. He’s desperate to get news of how Remus is doing, where on earth Remus is, if he’s okay.
And then he wonders what kind of person he is, to be so willing to set aside that his brother might have killed someone. He’d like to think that he’d do the right thing and turn Remus in, but he is also sure that he absolutely wouldn’t.
But the question is, does Remus know that? Does Remus know that Roman would throw everything, everything—his fame, his fancy apartment, his money—just to be sure that Remus was safe, that Remus was with him?
They’d been so entrenched in their petty disagreements over the years that Roman isn’t sure that Remus does.
The thought that his brother might not know Roman loves him is a thousand times more painful than this headache will be.
Remus is his brother. His twin brother, the only person in the world who understands Roman; for all their differences, for all their disagreements, he and Remus have always understood each other. They’ve always been on a wavelength no one else has, in sync and in step with each other. They’d even been born at exactly the same time, by virtue of their mother’s c-section.
How is Roman meant to just set that aside?!
So he lies on the couch in his trailer, scrolling obsessively through a Twitter search of his brother’s pen name and his legal name and his actual name, eyebrows drawn together further and further.
He’s so lost in chasing down clues, he doesn’t even notice the large, pajama-clad man appearing in his trailer and disappearing again, between five blinks of the eye.
PATTON
The view in front of Patton is crystalline and beautiful, dark gray rock and snow a blindingly clear shade of white and the ocean, constantly shifting between deep, lovely blue and bottle-green depths; ice, and rock, and the sun glinting off the sea and the snow, so bright that it almost hurts to look at it.
It’s so lovely that Patton would gladly spend all day looking at it, if not for the deep chill working its way into his bones as if he’s been here for months instead of minutes. Which is kind of confusing, but he doesn’t think his flannel pajamas and bunny slippers probably don’t make the cut of approved winter gear, so that might be it.
And also the part where Patton went to bed in his apartment in Auckland because of his blindingly bad migraine, and he has woken up in some wintry wasteland. That part’s kind of confusing him, too.
There’s a particularly sharp gust of wind, and Patton squints, turning his face away and lifting his hand. The breeze lessens, and Patton lowers his hand.
He’s in an office.
A nice office, the kind with hardwood floors that would click under his feet if he weren’t wearing slippers and the big, floor-to-ceiling windows that speaks of a recent, expensive renovation, a door ajar. He walks forward to peek into it—
—and finds himself looking inside of a cramped little trailer, a man flung out dramatically on the couch, one arm over his forehead, not able to cover the anguish on his face, and the other scrolling through his phone.
He takes a step forward, and just like before, without any sense of transition, just one blink and he’s not in a trailer anymore, he’s outside, standing at the foot of a mountain stretching for forever above him, moving quickly on his feet, jogging alongside a hooded man sprinting down a barely-worn path—
He takes a step forward, and his foot lands on the carpet.
“Goodness,” a man says, with a familiar, amused tone. “You’ve been walking quite far, haven’t you?”
Patton looks up to see a man—the parent he’d thought he’d seen yesterday. He’s in the same cardigan and dress shirt, looking rather rumpled, but his tie has, at least, been loosened from around his throat. The lights are off, the only light filtering weakly through the windows. The man is lying down in his bed, looking pale and sickly.
The room would look quite depressing if not for the laptop blaring a cartoon—an American one Patton doesn’t know—and various assorted cartoon art and sculptures as clutter around the room. His duvet has a subtle pattern that Patton, after tilting his head, looks a bit like gemstones.
“...I think so,” Patton says cautiously. “But it doesn’t feel like it.”
“No, it never does,” the man says, smiling. “Even when you’ve walked halfway ‘round the world.”
For lack of anything to say—other than who are you, what’s happening to me, what on earth is going on—Patton keeps quiet.
“I like your tattoos,” the man continues.
“Oh, thank you,” Patton says, twisting his arms so that the cardiganed man can see them, swelling with pride. They are a big part of his culture, his history, himself, after all. “They’re tā moko.”
“Tā moko,” the man repeats as if committing it to memory.
“I’m Māori,” Patton adds because he can place the accent now—American. And, well, nothing against Americans, it’s just that he isn’t sure how much the average American knows about the indigenous populations of other continents.
“Indigenous to,” the man says, and his eyes narrow for a moment. “New Zealand, right?”
Patton nods to the man, before he says, “Where am I?”
“Oh, excuse my manners, please sit down,” the man says, gesturing to an empty spot on his comfy-looking bed. Patton sits. It is comfy.
“I’m just so excited, you see, I’ve spent most of the past day recovering, so you’re the first one I’ve met. I’d expect you to be recovering, too, this is either a fortunately-timed fluke or you seem to be getting the hang of this very fast. Doesn’t your head hurt?”
“Terribly,” Patton admits, then, “First of who?”
Before the man can answer his question, his brain flashes with images from today—an airport, dark catwalks, a yawning cliff face, that fancy-schmancy office.
“Well,” the man says. “I’m Dr. Emile Picani.”
For whatever reason, it feels like he should have known that name already; his name slips into Patton’s mind like a key turning a long-forgotten lock.
“And,” the man continues, “you’re technically wherever your body is now.”
“Auckland.”
“Auckland,” he repeats. “Patton the Māori from Auckland. Oh, how wonderful, I don’t think I know any of our kind anywhere near Australia or New Zealand yet.”
“Our,” Patton says, and his brow wrinkles. “Our kind?”
“Patton, my darling,” Emile says warmly, leaning forward to put a hand on Patton’s. “Have you been walking around in other places? Feeling things that aren’t there, seeing people that aren’t there?”
“Yes,” Patton says.
“Those would be your cluster,” Emile says, and the word buries itself deep in Patton’s heart with an aggressively radiating kind of warmth, instantaneously fond, like he’s loved them all along but just now realized it. My cluster. It may as well be my family, that’s how much love he feels.
“Your body is in Auckland, still, but right now, your mind? You’re visiting me in Florida.”
Patton can’t help but smile a little. “I’ve never been outside of New Zealand before.”
Emile smiles back at him, warm and comforting, and it feels just as familiar as looking at the face of his father.
“Patton, dear, you are no longer just you.”
REMY
Remy turns from where he’s making a mug of green tea to see that he’s in Emile’s room.
“Babe,” Remy says, reflexive, before he sees the look on Emile’s face; and he understands immediately.
“Fuck, are they still here?”
Emile, still smiling, shakes his head just a touch regretfully. “You just missed him.”
That piques Remy’s attention. “Him? You’ve got a son?”
“He’s not technically my son,” Emile says bashfully; they swap, effortless after so long, and Emile takes a sip of Remy’s green tea using Remy’s hands, Remy’s ] mouth. Remy takes that time to use Emile’s body to settle more comfortably in the bed, and he places a cool, wet washcloth across Emile’s forehead.
They swap back without losing a beat; this rhythm between them has existed for a decade, Emile’s psychic birth isn’t about to trip them up. Sure, it looks different to him than it does to Emile; right now, to Remy, it’s like Emile’s curled up in his Nicean apartment, just at home in France as he is in Florida. To Emile, he knows, it’s like Remy’s appeared in his bedroom, oddly dressed for the Florida spring.
“Your psychic son, then,” Remy teases, then it clicks. “Wait, you’ve seen one of them already? How long did it take one of us to see Harley after the activation—?”
Emile waves a hand in a so-so type gesture. “Linny saw Dalisay and she kind of served as a mentor for her, didn’t she? That was the closest to a non-cluster visit that we got.”
“And that was after three days or so,” Remy muses. “Hm.”
“Yeah,” Emile agrees. “I dunno if it’s a fluke or if Patton’s just really well-adapted for this life.”
“Patton,” Remy repeats.
Honestly, he isn’t really sure how to handle this; the closest he could get to preparing for his boyfriend’s psychic birth is googling things about being a stepdad, and that’s not even slightly close to what’s actually happening. Bonding with the stepkids can only really happen if Emile’s lucked into a cluster with a Frenchman, Frenchwoman, Frenchperson, whichever.
Emile quirks a brow at him, knowing what he’s about to ask. “New Zealander.”
“Fuck,” Remy says. “No in-cluster education for Patton, then. Do we know anyone there, baby?”
“I’d have to check with the Archipelago, and, well,” Emile says, gesturing vaguely to himself; he’s laid out in bed, and, with the washcloth on his forehead, he really does look quite ill. Out-of-cluster visiting might be too much of a strain right now.
Remy frowns, taking the washcloth in hand and gently dabbing Emile’s forehead.
“Tell me about him?”
Emile beams.
“Oh, Remy, he’s wonderful. Simply fantastic! He’s Māori—indigenous population—and he’s got all these interesting tattoos. I’ve been researching, look,” Emile says, tilting his phone so that Remy can see.
Remy takes it. He sees swirling designs, up and down arms and legs, neatly segmented lines filled with various patterns, a few portraits of tattooed faces.
“—the tattoos themselves have a really interesting history, but I have a lot of reading to do when it comes to the Māori population itself. I've already tried to put a few books on hold at the university library.”
“What’s he like?”
“Big, tall,” Emile says, gesturing vaguely with a hand where the top of Patton’s head would compare with his own. “It’s late there, or early, I think, he was still in pajamas. Bunny slippers.”
Remy smiles at that, knowing for a fact that Emile’s wearing his knee-high muppet socks. “Takes after you, then.”
“Maybe,” Emile admits, then, “oh, all right, probably. We have a lot in common, at least, even if we don’t have any solid evidence on if cluster parents influence the traits of their cluster.”
“Influence, schminfluence,” Remy says.
“But he seems very nice, very polite. Wasn’t too shaken by appearing in America.”
Emile’s brow creases.
“I think he needs a cluster,” Emile says, very quiet. “I think he needs them badly.”
Remy isn’t sure what to say to that, so he puts a hand on Emile’s cheek, attempting to check his temperature.
“Harley should have given us the equivalent of psychic sex-ed,” Remy mutters irritably. Emile’s skin, always soft, is warmer than Remy would like.
Emile yawns. “Not gonna disagree with you there.”
Remy tugs up Emile’s blankets to tuck him in. Emile smiles up at him, a little bashful, a lot sleepy.
“Cuddles?” Emile mumbles, holding out his arms, entreating.
And, well. What is Remy gonna do, not cuddle his incredibly adorable boyfriend recovering from psychic birth?
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
In this Pandemic, all of us was suffering when it comes to education. We are experiencing struggles about learning and how do we passed our grades when it is online.
We don't know what will happen to our grades for the following days. We must not make fun to the pandemic we experience in these days.
ADVERTISEMENT
I woke up an hour late Wednesday morning, and by the time I had thrown on a sweatshirt, prepared my glass of Emergen-C, and logged onto Zoom, my class had been going on for 15 minutes. The night before I had taken cough syrup for my seasonal cold, and this was the first day my school switched to virtual instruction. Over the course of the three-hour workshop, I noticed my puffy eyes on the panel of faces and became self-conscious. I turned off my video. I became distracted with the noise of sirens outside and muted my speaker, only to then realize: by the time you’re done muting-and-unmuting, the right moment to join the conversation has already passed. I found myself texting on my computer, stepping away to make coffee, running to the bathroom, writing a couple e-mails, and staring at my classmate’s dog in one of the video panels. I don’t think my experience is unique; I imagined similar situations playing out in virtual offices and classrooms across the world.
In the aftermath of the World Health Organization’s designation of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11, universities across America are shutting down in an attempt to slow its spread. On March 6, the University of Washington took the lead, canceling all in-person classes, with a wave of universities across the country following suit: University of California, Berkeley, U.C., San Diego, Stanford, Rice, Harvard, Columbia, Barnard, N.Y.U, Princeton and Duke, among many others.
This shift into virtual classrooms is the culmination of the past weeks’ efforts to prevent COVID-19 from entering university populations and spreading to local communities: cancellation of university-funded international travel for conferences, blanket bans on any international travel for spring break, canceling study-abroad programs, creating registration systems for any domestic travel.
ADVERTISEMENT
Columbia University, which I now attend virtually, moved all classes online starting on March 11. The following morning, president Bollinger declared that classes would be held virtually for the remainder of the school year, and suspended all university-related travel; both international and domestic. The pandemic has affected over 114 countries, killing over 4,000 and shows no sign of abating, leading to chaos in university administration and among students. I find myself obsessing over my family in Japan, especially my mother, whose lung cancer puts her at particular risk. Cancellations are affecting future students as well—admitted students’ events, open houses, and campus tours are all being canceled to minimize contagion.
The quick turn to platforms like Zoom is disrupting curricula, particularly for professors less equipped to navigate the internet and the particularities of managing a classroom mediated by a screen and microphone. I had professors cancel class because they had technical difficulties, trouble with WiFi, or were simply panicked over the prospect of teaching the full class over the new platform. With university IT services focusing efforts on providing professors with how-to webinars on using online platforms, individual student needs for these same services have been placed on hold.
While the initial shift online has created a flurry of chaos, there are benefits to a virtual classroom. Especially in a place like New York, students can continue participating in discussion sections and lectures without riding the subway for an hour, avoiding the anxiety of using public transit or being in other incubators like classrooms, public bathrooms and cafeterias. Students can “sit in” on a class while nursing a common cold or allergies that come with the season, but which can make students a target of serious threats or violence—particularly racialized harassment for Asians. I have found immense relief in not having to pay for Lyfts to campus, avoiding side-eyes for my runny nose or using the little remaining hand sanitizer I have left after holding subway poles. In some situations, online teaching may not even affect student behavior or learning. Studies have shown that medical students learn and perform equally in live versus recorded lectures, and these results are reassuring at a time like the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, the reality is that some subjects are much harder to transfer online. A biochemistry or introductory economics lecture is easier to teach virtually than a music or dance class. The creation of a film or theatrical production requires physical bodies in close proximity. Even in my creative writing workshop, responding to a colleagues’ memoir about her mother’s death is hard to do without looking her in the eye. The screen creates an emotional remove that makes it difficult to have back-and-forth dialogue between multiple people, and it’s almost impossible to provide thoughtful feedback without feeling like you’re speaking into a void.
Over the last few decades, online learning in higher education has been studied extensively. Online MBA programs are on the rise, perhaps unsurprising for a field that often requires virtual conferencing and remote collaboration. Universities now offer online master’s programs to accommodate full-time work and long commutes, or to circumvent the financial barriers of moving to a new location with family. Online bachelor’s degrees are offered by a growing number of schools: Ohio State, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Florida, Arizona State, Penn State and many more. The benefits are the same: classes can be taken anywhere, lack of commute offers more time for studying or external commitments, and the structure is more welcoming to students with physical disability or illness. And yet, online learning hasn’t threatened the traditional model of in-person learning.
ADVERTISEMENT
A large part of this can be attributed to accountability. Online classes require significantly more motivation and attention. I found it difficult to focus on a pixelated video screen when I could browse the internet on my computer, text on my phone, watch TV in the background, have one hand in the pantry, or just lay comfortably in my bed. The problem, too, is that webinar technology doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Noise and feedback—rustling papers, ambulances, kettles, wind—make it impossible to hear people talk, and so everyone is asked to mute their microphones.
But muting your audio means you can’t jump into a conversation quickly. The “raise hand” function often goes unnoticed by teachers and the chat box is distracting. Sometimes the gallery view just doesn’t work, so you’re stuck staring at your own face or just two of your eighteen classmates. It also means another hurdle for those who hesitate to speak up, even in the best of circumstances. It means you’re just one click away from turning off your camera and being totally off the hook. In an online class over the summer, I once watched a woman—who forgot her camera was still on, though she was muted—vacuum her entire kitchen and living room during a seminar.
In a recent New York Times article, columnist Kevin Roose wrote about his experience working from home while quarantined after COVID-19 exposure. Roose, once a remote worker, cites studies that suggest remote employees are more productive, taking shorter breaks and fewer sick days. But he also writes extensively about the isolation and lack of productivity he feels: “I’ve realized that I can’t be my best, most human self in sweatpants, pretending to pay attention on video conferences between trips to the fridge.” He notes that Steve Jobs, who was a firm believer in in-person collaboration and opposed remote work, once said, “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters.
Sign Up
In educational settings, creativity is arguably one of the most important things at stake. The surprises and unexpected interactions fuel creativity—often a result of sitting in a room brushing shoulders with a classmate, running into professors in a bathroom line, or landing on ideas and insights that arise out of discomfort in the room. This unpredictability is often lost online.
In the essay “Sim Life,” from her book, Make It Scream, Make it Burn, Leslie Jamison writes about the shortcomings of virtual life: “So much of lived experience is composed of what lies beyond our agency and prediction, beyond our grasp, in missteps and unforeseen obstacles and the textures of imperfection: the grit and grain of a sidewalk with its cigarette butts and faint summer stench of garbage and taxi exhaust, the possibility of a rat scuttling from a pile of trash bags, the lilt and laughter of nearby strangers’ voices.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Classrooms offer these opportunities for riffs and surprise, and a large part of being a student is learning to deliver critique through uncomfortable eye contact, or negotiating a room full of voices and opinions that create friction with your own. When I Zoomed into class from my apartment, I missed being interrupted by classmates who complicated my ideas about a poem or short story. I missed being in workshop and bouncing ideas off of each other to find the best structure for a piece. I missed handwritten critiques, and felt limited in Word: no check pluses, no smiley faces, “Wow” feels flat when it’s not handwritten in the margins, and "Great" feels sarcastic in 10-point Calibri. I was frustrated that I could sleep in because online class meant I could wake up five minutes before class and pretend like I’d been ready all morning.
The COVID-19 pandemic will likely continue presenting challenges beyond those that come up in the course of routine virtual education. Even if this viral spread subsides, or a vaccination becomes readily available, the shift from online classes back to in-person learning may create disruptions of its own—adjusting back to higher standards of accountability, weaning off of phone-checking habits, and transferring comments back to hard copies instead of digital notes. Hopefully, these phases of trouble shooting can provide universities, professors and students the opportunity to practice adaptability, patience and resilience. And hopefully, these experiences will serve as preparation for future challenges that come with the next epidemic, pandemic and other disaster.
For now, I am trying to not look at myself in the gallery of faces, stop being distracted by my expressions, resisting the impulses to check my phone or e-mail, or at least recognize these urges when they arise.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
how you made me feel
...hello. so. remember two months ago when i fulfilled a prompt from a list, “I could never forget you,” and dumped, like, a whole bunch of nurseydex graduation feels on everyone’s laps and just, like,, sprinted away?? well the sequel i promised is now here. (to any who haven’t read the first part, it’s like kind of necessary)
my apologies for the long gap between then and now. i’ve been having weird writer’s block recently, where i can write but then halfway through i get doubts and think the whole thing is shitty and stop.. so i;ve started a whole bunch of things but finished none, and this is the first substantial thing i’ve finished in a while, and while it’s not, like, monumental, it feels like a lot to me right now :)
AND me finishing this was due in no small part to @rhysiana who beta’d this and helped me feel confident in writing again.. so thanks :))
no warnings for this (i know, a surprise for me, right?) but thought i’d tell y’all that the title is from a maya angelou quote that i repurposed a little.. now without further ado, here’s the sequel
It’s not the type of place Dex would pick to spend an afternoon. It’s not even the sort of place Dex would spend a five-minute break, if given the option. Coffee houses make Dex feel on edge. The thick, rich smell makes him nauseous, gives him a headache like long car rides do. He’s always gotten carsick on long drives—that is, if he’s not the one driving. The lack of control makes him sick, he thinks, or that’s how he imagines Nursey would put it, if Dex ever told him about it.
Dex stares up at the menu board above the counter. The drinks are all named with literature-themed puns and their descriptions—the fancy type of coffee, the origin of each individual bean—doesn’t clarify anything. Dex sways slightly and glances out the window of the shop.
It’s still pouring. He still doesn’t have an umbrella and his apartment is still too many blocks away to run, risk the wetness seeping through his bag and reaching his laptop. He sighs into the coffee-laden air and swallows, turning back to the counter.
It’s his turn.
“Um, hi.” Dex smiles awkwardly at the barista, who smiles back, big and blank. “Do you have, like, regular coffee?”
The barista winces and tries to stifle it, and Dex opens his mouth to apologize, instinctive, when he hears a heavy, incredulous utterance of his name.
Dex turns, the chill running through him completely unrelated to his soaking clothes, and—yes. It’s him.
*~*
A summer rain in New York is a heady thing.
The sweet, cool weather smothers the hot asphalt roads in steam that clings, heavy and metallic, on the back of Nursey’s tongue. A rain in the city is an inconvenience—those that walk are forced into cabs, subways, packing everything too full of frustration and humidity. The streets are barer, eerily. Nursey stands in a thundering cityscape, utterly and intoxicatingly alone. There are two things Nursey thinks could clear a city street—rain or the apocalypse.
The rain around him, then, is to him the reminder that the world has not ended yet. It makes his blood surge in that desperate kind of way, that want to live kind of way. It pushes him, jittery, as he runs down the empty street, feet pounding against the sidewalk in slapping splashes of water. His hair is ruined, a mop of unmanageable curls that drifts into his eyes, sends water cascading down his forehead, lets raindrops cling to his eyelashes, clumping, blinding. The smart button-down stretched across his shoulders is freezing and drenched, tight like a second skin and peeling. His shoes, and the socks inside, squish with each pounding step and he knows—in that inevitable way that tends to send him into anxiety attacks—that he will be unbearably uncomfortable when he reaches the coffee house and he is then the only soaking thing there.
Even with all that, though, Nursey grins as he sprints.
What a thing it is to be one with the world around you. The raindrops against his skin, cold and [cloying], are the same ones shuddering all around him, and even as Nursey’s body recoils at the drowning, it knows in that way all natural things do that it is simply returning to something it was, once, or will be, one day. It’s a comfort that does not know its own name—a comfort older than its name, even.
And for moments, as he runs through the streets on the familiar path to his favorite coffee place, Nursey feels home like he hasn’t since the day he stepped off campus for the last time.
Even the ache of knowing it is fleeting can’t touch him, now.
*~*~*
The coffee cup in his hands burns. Dex juggles it between his left and right, holding it in each until it hurts more than he can handle.
He could leave. It’s a fleeting, foolish thought. The door is there and his feet work and, yes, even the rain seems to be mellowing in the wake of this monumental shift, but none of that means that Dex can actually walk away. For one, Dex doubts Nursey would let him. For another, it’d been hard enough to do it—to leave Nursey—the first time. Dex doesn’t want to see if he can do it again.
Nursey orders. Dex watches for a lack of anything else to do. The barista writes Nursey’s name, Derek, on a cup, then works out Nursey’s change. She holds out a few coins and Nursey takes them quickly, dropping two in his rush. He hurries to pick them up and smiles in that charming, self-deprecating way. Dex used to think it was put-on, one of those things rich people learned, like dining etiquette or handshakes, that kept them above the rest, above Dex. He doesn’t remember when he figured out that it was one of Nursey’s more honest reactions, that smile.
Dex’s fingers twitch against the coffee cup, burning.
*~*~*
The coffee shop is warm in a grounding, shocking way. Nursey has come to be familiar with the place, enough that the judging looks he receives from its dry patrons can be interpreted as the confusion of visitors who will be gone soon anyway.
It is not quite Annie’s, but then again, most things here are not quite Samwell. Even the rain outside, though liberating, is not New England rain. A rain in New England is less heady. It does not distract, fleetingly, but awakens. A New England rain, thick and clean, characterized by dew-drenched grasses and shuddering, screaming trees, it is a wholly sobering thing. Late-spring rains, the ones caught between winter and summer like the unsure smile following silence but before the laughter. Post-playoffs rain, when the seasons were dictated by nature once again, when life stopped happening between game days and practices and plays, when life just started happening, once again. When bare skin in shadowy spring sunshine made the need to touch all that more insistent. When flower petals tucked around edges of yards and landscapes, behind ears for jokes and softness, made for contrasting reminders of the winter preceding it. When possibility was perched on the edge of every blade of grass, twined within the tunes of birds, newly home, all a reminder that things will change, always change, and sometimes that can be good, too.
This is what Nursey tells himself, has been telling himself, when he steps into the coffee shop, since he came home to this foreign place.
He takes a deep breath and sighs against the not-quite-right. He steps up to the line, musing to himself over which drink he should order today, when the voice, “Um, hi,” shudders through the world like the right kind of rain and Nursey’s heartbeat—too fast like the endless rush of people through his streets—for a brief moment, settles.
*~*~*
Nursey turns from the counter with his drink, still smiling. It’s duller, this smile, more conscious than Dex would prefer. “The good table is open,” he says, gesturing with his cup. Dex follows the direction to a circular two-seater by the window, squished between a bookshelf and a decorative wall. Dex takes a seat in one of the cushy armchairs, lower than he likes, and understands instantly why Nursey deems this table “good.”
The coffee shop chatter dims the moment they sit, and Nursey’s smile twitches a bit wider, honest, in response.
“So,” he says, and takes a sip from his drink so he can raise his eyebrows at Dex over the rim. Dex looks away, drumming his fingers on the lid of his own drink. “You’re in New York.”
Dex wishes they were in a place, still, where he could just nod and Nursey wouldn’t push any more than that. (Quietly, though, he really, really doesn’t.)
“Yeah, uh. I—I work here.”
Dex doesn’t look at Nursey’s face, where he knows eyebrows are rising impossibly high.
“You work here?”
Nod.
“How long?”
Clench jaw.
“…oh.”
*~*~*
It’s difficult, has been difficult, to be himself in this place. In the city, Nursey’s skin is itchy, tight and ill-fitting, and his steps are heavier, like each forward movement simply increases the distance between the safe person he used to be and the stranger he seemingly must become. Calls with the team make it easier. Facetimes with Chowder and Dex as Nursey hangs upside down on his bed, hoping it isn’t too obvious the way his eyes lock onto the screen in spreads of constellation-tan freckles. With the pixelated gaze of his two closest friends focused on him, smiling, even from hundreds of miles away, he felt settled, comfortable. Home.
Now, with Dex watching, that familiarity returns to his fingertips—if, unfortunately, in the form of his typical clumsiness. He fumbles his coffee order, stuttering, and drops the cold coins the barista hands him, his body suddenly warm from the cold. The raindrops dripping against his skin are hot, confusingly, and he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that it is Dex’s gaze making them so.
Dex waits, seemingly patient, and Nursey worries at the change until he notices the way Dex shifts his cup from hand to hand after a handful of blinks, the way his body sways with the movement. As an editor, it’s probably worrying that Dex has been the easiest thing for Nursey to read since he came to this city. Maybe, he thinks, as he collects his drink, it’s the writers’ fault, and not his.
Then again, he thinks, falling into step behind Dex, an impossible standard is hardly fair.
*~*~*
Nursey says nothing for a long while.
Dex, greedy, grasping, stares unrestrained. He didn’t know how much he missed this, wouldn’t let himself dwell on it, until now. Nursey eyelashes, drying but still glistening, flutter against the dampness of his cheeks. Green, bright eyes, like all the good parts of Maine Dex wants to remember. The softness of his ears, hidden under sodden curls, the hard lines of his neck, his shoulders. He’s been working out since he left, Dex can tell, but nothing like the routines they had at Samwell. And after the heavy playoff season, after the summer sun, Nursey looks smaller, calmer. More at ease.
This is what I wanted, Dex thinks, breaking. I wanted him to be happy without me.
Even without speaking the words, the familiar bitter taste of a lie sits heavy on his tongue.
*~*~*
Nursey doesn’t know what to do with this.
With Dex, sitting here all sun-soft and freckly, real and in person and absolutely way too much. With the fact that he’s been here, been within seeing distance, visiting distance, for almost two months, and he said nothing about it. With the part of himself—the aching, lovely, desperate part of himself—that doesn’t even seem to care, wants to reach out and hold and pull comfort from regardless of mistruths or omissions.
“Why?” he finds himself asking, without quite knowing if he wants the answer.
Dex’s eyelids flutter momentarily, the way they do when he’s wondering whether or not to be an asshole, and Nursey loves it—missed it too much not too—and wants to curse, yell, something, because Dex didn’t want to see him, has been here in this foreign place and didn’t want Nursey as much as Nursey has wanted him and—and he’s going to be a dick about it?
“Dex.” Nursey swallows, fingers pressing too hard against the paper cup. “Why did you—why didn’t you—”
“Nursey.” Dex’s lips flatten. He’s decided, it seems, and Nursey exhales, slow, thankful. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he says, and going by how he doesn’t look up from the table, he knows that is a shit excuse. “I—I don’t know how to—it wasn’t you. Well. Sort of. I…”
Nursey waits. Dex has taught him a kind of patience he didn’t think he could have. A kind where his hands do not shake, his shoulders do not tighten. When the waiting isn’t worrisome, because the result—long-awaited and slow-coming as it is—will be worth it, must be worth it, because Dex does not know how to leave expectations unfulfilled. Good expectations, that is. Dex is the smile at the end of a good play, the laughter after a clever chirp, the summation of four years of growth, both a constant reminder pushing for the best and the monument to the work it took to be better. Dex is what Nursey has learned to wait for, for better or for worse, and he realizes as he waits that this is the thing that’s been missing since he got to New York.
Someone who knows what he came from, someone who can appreciate the progress, someone who loved all of it and will continue to do so, no matter what.
“Your life here,” Dex says, and Nursey’s too-quick heart suddenly doesn’t care what he’s about to say. “I don’t fit.”
“Bullshit.” Nursey’s mama always told him his quick tongue would get him in trouble one day, and that was before he sorted his body out enough for his mouth to work along with his mind. He’s ruined, now, Nursey thinks, watching Dex’s lips part into a pretty pink ‘O’. Dex is in New York, Nursey thinks, delirious. Dex is here.
“Really,” Dex continues, because he’s nothing if not the stubborn, snarky ginger Nursey met on Taddy Tour, and fuck, Nursey missed him. “You—you’re supposed to be a fancy New York writer, with friends who read, like, interesting novels, and travel to places I don’t even know the names of, and you go to weird hipster places like—like this—” he gestures all about himself, absurdly insistent and frowning all wrinkled up and Nursey can’t help the smile pulling his lips apart, because it’s ridiculous, and Dex is ridiculous, and he’s here— “I feel like you’re not listening to me,” Dex says, mildly deflated, pouting a bit but mostly just annoyed, and the laugh bursts from Nursey’s tongue, sweet.
“I’m totally not, dude, wow. First of all, this place? Not hipster. You want hipster, go to Totally Caff’d two blocks over. That place is hipster. Second?” The smile feels too wide and Dex is staring at him like he’s crazy and everything feels right in a way that would be worrying if it was their frog year, or Nursey liked himself a little less, or Dex wasn’t the bright ginger ball of change and assurance and perfection that he is now. “Just so we’re clear, my life is always better when you’re in it. And third,” Nursey says, barreling on doggedly even as the lovely pink embarrassment flush floods Dex’s freckle-tan face, “you are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.”
Dex blinks, sighs, and—after a moment—says, “Frustrating but probably true.”
“Most def true,” Nursey says, just because it makes Dex’s nose wrinkle the way it always does when Nursey uses bad slang. “Now come on, Dexy-do.” Nursey stands from the table and the coffee-house chatter floods in, but he hardly pays it any mind because Dex stands up without hesitation even with the adorable confusion on his face. “We’re going to go on a walk,” Nursey says, reaching out to take Dex’s hand (prompting a darker, lovelier shade of pink to overtake his face), “and catch up.”
Dex, delightfully, lets himself be led out of the coffee shop into the freshly washed world. Nursey’s shoes squish, wet, against the sodden sidewalk, and Dex still has this dazed look on his face—though it is distinctly pleased. The air is warm, and damp, and unquestionably, wonderfully new.
#nurseydex#dexnursey#check please#nursey#dex#derek nurse#william poindexter#my writing#sort of fic#ficlet#mild#angst#but a bunch of#fluff#and imagery#bc why not#thanks again to rhysiana for helping me out!!#and thanks to anyone who read the first one#and was patient while i wrote the sequel#also thank you to people who sent in prompts#i will still be getting to them!!#it's just taking a while :/
121 notes
·
View notes
Text
PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN (yes that’s the title)
We are surrounded by it. Is there ever a time when you don’t have your phone in your pocket? Everywhere we look it is Instagram this and facebook that. Oh you only got 100 likes? Guess your picture is not good enough to be showcased to the world. How many times a day do you think you look at your phone? How about a computer or any type of a screen? Every day we are constantly reminded that we are choosing to compare ourselves to the people around us. Social media of all sorts fills our heads with unrealistic expectations of reality. How do you contribute to society? American culture has evolved tremendously over the past few decades mostly due to the media and technology. My development as a young adult has also been heavily impacted by the media and it has transformed me into the savage queen I am today.
Can you even think about a time when people were not so readily available on social media? It boggles my mind to think that in the 80s when my parents were alive that they could not just call their friends on their personal cell phones. I remember growing up when I was taught to call up my friend on the home phone and say “Hello sir this is Nicole Bernier calling I was wondering if Naomi was available to have a play date?” And then I would wait patiently for Naomis Dad to go ask her if she wanted to bike over to my house. Nowadays kids don’t even talk to each other! The children I coach already have their own instagram accounts and get 3 times the amount of likes I do. I cant imagine being so young in a world of technology trying to figure out how they want to be viewed by society. Even as a young adult, I continue to waste my time stressing about how I want others to view me. We get here to college and expect that everyone has got their life path figured out when most of us have absolutely no clue what we are doing and spend more time on Snapchat than we do writing an essay.
When you turn on the radio there is a large chance that it will be some rapper singing about drugs, money or chicks. It’s tasteless how famous people want to present themselves by trying to promote bad behaviors. But oh no everyone loves Ariana Grande and Drake and how “lavish” their lifestyle is. How Nicki Minajs butt implants and Kylie Jenners lip injections are the new craze. Statistics have shown that the younger generations are more insecure due to the conveniency of social media and how the celebrities choose to promote themselves. The media can have a negative impact on certain people especially children because they often compare themselves with these unrealistic standards we are constantly surrounded with.
As an avid 50s music listener, I truly find it interesting how the lyrics of most of the songs are about love and romance or true heartbreak. It’s pretty rad how that is an artifact in itself and its so readily available to us all the time. It also shows how the music culture has changed over the years. Most kids I’ve met think my music taste is weird or what “my grandma listens to” but honestly in a world of people listening to the same genre, I like to be unique. I think everyone should give a good listen to some Dion and the Heartbreaks or Frank Sinatra and at least give it a chance.
So just a couple of months ago I had to go on a cleanse. Not a juice cleanse or a bath full of Lysol, no I mean I had to delete all social media off my phone because it was making me unhappy. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) the people I surround myself with told me that it also made them feel insecure and that they would be better off without it. This sparked my interest and I did a poll on instagram seeing how many people disliked social media and the results had me shook. More than half of my followers that answered said that they hated it. Why do we keep these apps on our phone if our happiness is not benefited by using them? I chose to be happy and after I deleted my instagram facebook and Snapchat I felt 1000% more productive.
Unfortunately I caved in after 2 months and redownloaded them because there was no way I was going to Europe and not showing the world pictures of how delightful my vacation was. I posted a whole bunch of fabulous pictures but in reality I was sick nearly the entire time so I couldn’t enjoy myself to the fullest extent. I posed and pretended I wasn’t hacking up a lung and I was thrilled to see that people “liked” my vacation more than I did.
Don’t get me wrong I’m the queen of taking pictures to the point where my mom is like “Nicole I am not going to be your photographer. Put your phone away.” I have to catch myself sometimes and remember that I am not living to please random people on social media. I am living for the experiences, for the laughs and the genuine connections.
Pictures were made to capture a moment but why force happiness to present a life you are not living? It’s almost like propaganda in a way because were only showing one side of how we live. Hey if you’re as happy as every single post on your insta then go you that’s awesome but most people can agree that life is not always just the happy moments. That’s the thing. Most people use these platforms to only show the attractive parts of their lives. It’s all just a game of comparison and perception. But who’s life really is the best? Are you genuinely happy in that picture you take on the beach with your butt hanging out of your bikini and Gucci handbag just so convenient placed in the frame of the picture?
When I think of media and pop culture I think of how my goal as a child was to literally become Sandy from Grease when she was all decked out in her red lipstick, leather pants and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I though she was the coolest person ever. I watched that movie on REPEAT because it was the only PG13 movie my mom allowed me to watch on my DVD player. Within a few years I was that kid who started smoking as a teen because I thought it looked “cool”. Now I’m stuck with a nasty habit that everyone thinks is gross because the media evolved to somehow make smoking cigarettes uncool but vaping apparently pretty dang cool. Guess I’m just a few years late.
When you’re young you need some kind of an idol or a person to admire. When I was a preteen I listened to Eminem and really resonated with his lyrics. His anger lit a fire within me and I became more and more defiant the longer I listened to him. I chose to be influenced by his freedom of speech and it gave me confidence to deliberately act upon my impulsive behavior. Parents hated Eminem because he got fame for promoting violence and presented himself in a negative way. I related to the fact that he was misunderstood yet also didn’t care about how people viewed him. As much as I want to forget 2008 me I will always remember how the music I listened to impacted my life and decisions at the time.
Speaking of 2008, I remember having a flip phone and trying to hold it still for about 4 seconds to make sure the pixelated picture did not come out too blurry. Now we have 12 year olds editing their face and their body on photoshop because that’s what the instagram models do. They wont ever understand how hard it was to type the s on the flip phones with no alphabet keypad. I was out here responding to texts hours late with one word answers and now here I am texting paragraphs like its none of my business.
Technology and the media is constantly evolving and shaping our culture into what it is today. It is changing so rapidly by incorporating technology into every little task and as much as I hate it I know that it plays an important role in who I am as an individual and how I choose to be viewed by others. People like to communicate with each other and that is why social media exists but there is a fine line between using it for practical purposes and allowing it control your life. To this day I struggle with using my phone as a tool rather than a time suck. Maybe Ill just pack my bags, and venture out into the wilderness to escape this crazy tech era. Hopefully they’ll have an outlet for my iPhone charger though.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
I work for a food delivery system part time. I had this issue last night. It was my first order, took an extra 10 minutes to make because the restaurant fucked up, had to drive 10 miles across town to deliver it and when it came time to open up the gate, she wasn responding to texts or calls.( mind you, theres like 5 notifications you get from the app and 2 texts from me by the time I show up to the door, not including the extra calls and messages to get in the gate) I had another order to deliver (across the OTHER side of town) and another one called in.. I love the simplicity of the design which is counterbalanced by its ostentatious gold. It's absurd yet tasteful at the same time. I mean really, who needs a gold watch?I admire the essence and philosophy of Japanese watches but there are two main caveats that keep me from owning more of them. Needle length: each has its use and vary on skin thickness (those individuals whom scar easily should take extra care). It is recommended that anything over 1.5mm in length (derma roller) not be done at home. However it is largely due to improper use/technique. "Why would I do it? I didn't have a motive. "Investigators, however, saw an excellent motive, and they think that money had a lot to do with it. The couple hadn't yet begun to split up property, but already a judge had ordered Illes to pay Miriam $13,000 a month in child support. Most importantly, I got taught the language in Monterey, CA, living a mile from the beach. It was basically like college, except everyone had a bunch of disposable income, everyone was obnoxiously smart, and in RIDICULOUS shape. 예천출장마사지 I was one of, if not the dumbest person there. Aerys II ekes out a win over Aegon IV for worst king for being the one to acbring down the Targaryen monarchy. Aegon IV undoubtedly shares some of the blame for the Blackfyre Rebellion by creating so much confusion regarding the succession, but at the end of the day it was Daemon Blackfyre who decided to be a shithead and try to take the Iron Throne. The only point in Aegon IV favor is that the Blackfyres were ultimately failures. Personally, I think it is worth investing in. I recieved a Le Creuset Dutch oven as a wedding shower gift and I been hooked ever since! I actually used it tonight to make chicken pot pie soup. I live in Chicago so I make soup at least once a week when it cold out. Are we in a hospital bed, or in a bed attached to a vitals monitor? Tend quality just increased by whatever the medical potency offset of those things are. Lastly, we sprinkle some good ol RNG on top of it. Give or take up to 25% tend quality. Idk, I can see what you say about her not being chubby in relation to others in her country. But that means that you have to accept that someone somewhere would consider her actually fat, even though she clearly not, just because she would be fatter than most people this person knows. I just don think these sort of things should be relative to anything else other than her height and how she carries her weight.. (Privacy Policy)TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that 예천출장마사지 have visited our sites.
1 note
·
View note
Text
The Thin Silence Review - A Dark Yet Hopeful Experience
The Thin Silence is a well-crafted game that weaves the intricacies of mental disorder into a story-line of recovery and self-worth. However, it also hiccups in its characters and the ramblings of its self-deprecating government.
The Thin Silence starts you off as Ezra, who seems to suffer from PTSD, depression, anxiety, self-doubt, and more that snowball one after the other. Ezra was also a Minister of Borders during a war that seemed to end the world. The player’s goal is to keep moving forward in order to emerge from the underground darkness in which you find yourself. This game relies heavily on the use of allegory to underscore precisely what kind of state Ezra is in at particular times.
A Heavy Dose of Darkness
The developers wanted to use the world that Ezra is in to depict what is going on in his mind. Ezra sees things that aren’t there and speaks with himself in the darkness about knowing things, committing horrible atrocities, and not going back or thinking about what he’s done. In the beginning, Ezra is underground, but as the game progresses, it goes through stages of different illnesses that could be affecting the character.
We start off by shutting everything out; we are lost in darkness. The act that follows is bright and starts to touch on Ezra’s self-worth, and the identity of who his comrades-in-arms were. Ezra is thrown into despair again because of his conflicting thoughts over getting out completely free. Thrust down underground again, he accepts the past and what happened.
The game takes the highs and lows of each state of mind and accompanies them with dark and dimly lit or bright and radiant environments. The feelings of the character are considered at all times, which shows in the background with text and visuals alike. As we learn of Ezra, his illness, and his story, we also see an attempt and a desire to attack the government in some way throughout the game.
Time to Focus
The Thin Silence suffers from taking a broad topic and trying to redirect it too often. It seeks to speak politically of government failings, the trope of chaos begets order and vice versa. Since it also covers broad spectrums of mental illness and political topics, the story and its original meaning seem to be lost sometimes, especially in a game that only takes roughly four hours to beat.
Not only are you reliving war, you are also watching it through the eyes of a mentally ill person. But when the game becomes too focused on what the government is doing wrong and overthrowing it, you begin to feel like you are in a different game than the one you were just playing. The Thin Silence was built around the idea of a clinically depressed PTSD human, not government reform. Yet, the topic of reform comes in at two critical moments of the game.
One of them is in a collectible journal. The other is when you finally meet Ithaca, an old companion of Ezra, who calls for reform and asks Ezra to help. The game mentions Ithaca at the beginning, and she seems to be someone special, someone who directs the flow and narrative of who Ezra is. For her focus to be a corrupt government instead of pure loss or love is tangential to what this game is really about.
Characters are essential to the overarching story due to their unique connections to Ezra. However, the pixel graphics didn’t convey the characteristics you’d expect from influential people. They lacked visual impact equal to their noteworthy appearances in the text.
Crafting to Beat the Puzzles
One of the most phenomenal parts of this game was the crafting system. To make a simple crafting system for such a short game felt unnecessary at first but soon became one of the most excellent parts. To bypass individual puzzles, you need tools that you can craft out of three items or less. These items range from a boot, rope, or battery. By combining eight or so items, you could make a plethora of tools that each has its use or sometimes many uses.
Once you craft the necessary gear, the game’s puzzles are no challenge. The most substantial problem, other than figuring out which tools could make what, is walking everywhere in this world. With no speed up button, the game forces you to take things nice and tediously slow.
An Almost Clear Message
The Thin Silence really shows off its skills when you are watching the world change around you to match exactly what Ezra is going through. It tells a story of hope and meticulously explains it. Even when it treads off the beaten path, it manages to bring you back. The game’s focus lacks, but its message does not.
span { display: block; } h2 { text-align: center; } h2 { border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; }
Score
table, th, td { table-layout: fixed; border: 3px solid #6698cb; border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center; color: #545454; }
Good Bad Meticulously Detailed Text Simple Puzzles Simple and Fun Crafting Diverging Focus Intricate Story No Sprint Collectables Hopeful Message Well-Detailed Background
h1 { text-align: center; color: #5a5a5a; }
- 7/10 -
#The Thin Silence#PTSD#depression#Dark#Hopeful#TwoPM Studios#Adventure#Indie#Violent#Steam#Nkidu Games Inc.
1 note
·
View note
Text
12 Smart Virtual Reality Opportunities For Businesses in 2020
Virtual reality will have a wide and lasting impact on our work, education and home lives. The emergence of commercial VR technologies has led to an increase in innovation, with a wide range of businesses looking for Virtual Reality opportunities in 2020.
A group of successful entrepreneurs make predictions about the future of VR in business and we think these might be the smart VR opportunities that businesses are looking for.
12 members from Young Entrepreneur Council, community of successful young entrepreneurs share their ideas on how “Virtual Reality” technologies will be used by businesses in the next years:
1. Brands Will Use VR to Improve Customer Loyalty
Brands and VR were made for each other. Businesses and brands will engage consumers with story-driven VR experiences that educate and entertain. This will create a new kind of relationship between brands and their audience as they start becoming active participants instead of passive bystanders. The hardest thing to do as a brand is to get your audience to actually feel something. Immersive, interactive VR experiences will get people closer to feeling, which gets people closer to caring.
2. There Will Be Changes in Teleconferencing
Trying to connect everyone by phone and talking to laggy, pixelated faces on a flat screen is probably one of the most hated things in modern business. Virtual reality will change that and allow these sorts of meetings to take on a more personal and natural feel. As the technology progresses hopefully it will be able to incorporate expressions, eye contact and other human elements we currently lack. This will make our telecommuting lives better and our meetings more productive. When fully formed it might even reduce business travel significantly.
3. Virtual Reality Will Improve E-Commerce for Products That Require Fit
Complemented with augmented reality, VR will have a big impact on online shopping. One industry that’s not making as big a breakthrough as others is shopping for things that need to fit well (whether clothes for you or furniture for your place). Being able to “see” those things to determine the fit will remove the handicap for these products and open the floodgates for online shopping that have been lagging. It will be amazing to see how a couch would look in your living room before buying it.
4. There Will Be Changes in the Education Market
From applications for all levels of education, including college and university classes, virtual reality can make learning more enriching and enjoyable as well as address some of the various ways people learn that current curriculums cannot seem to individually address. Companies that can offer educational products that use virtual reality have a real opportunity.
5. There Will Be an Improved Design Process for Products
I think it will further enhance the ability to design products. With virtual reality and simulations, you can do much better user testing without them having to be in the same room and get faster feedback, as well as make much quicker changes. This will decrease the overall cost of production.
6. VR Will Offer the Opportunity to Have an “Anywhere” Experience
VR’s use cases for businesses are only limited by our imagination. A huge application I expect in the near future is in e-commerce. Currently, one of the biggest issues with e-commerce, for both the store and the consumer, is ordering something that doesn’t match your expectations. VR gives us the opportunity to create the “anywhere” experience so that a user can manipulate a product and get a better understanding of what they’re buying. The same can be said of booking hotel rooms, cars, travel and adventure tours. Virtual reality is poised to bring the world to you, just like the internet itself, on a more nuanced level.
7. It Will Offer Improvements in Entertainment Like Movies, Media and Games
Entertainment will be the first industry to get disrupted by VR. Imagine sitting in your living room and watching the Superbowl with VR. VR takes you right in the stadium. It will have a similar impact on movies and gaming. I was at CES recently and I saw that even a one-person VR startup had 10 minute-long queues simply for trying out the demo. The VR economy will easily surpass the app economy in my view.
8. Virtual Reality Will Definitely Advance Real Estate Sales
Nobody is satisfied purchasing a house based on pictures, and some people would rather not go “house hunting” physically. VR could be a great bridge between those who would like to see the property up-close and those who’d prefer a less involved approach. It will assist agents in increasing turnover by making fewer site visits, and might be a more efficient (and secure) way to conduct business in real estate. While it might currently be reserved for apps on smartphones and tourism, VR has the potential to change how we make investments into property. There’s a huge opportunity for a company that will be able to assist realtors in capturing real-time imagery of each property in a manner that is timely and user-friendly.
9. HR Departments Will Become 100 Percent Remote
I think the best aspect of virtual reality is that employees can have more engaging interactions with the HR department, whether it is in the interview process, training, or just a simple meeting. This will be able to happen from anywhere in the world and still feel as though they are sitting across from you. For example, instead of asking an employee a situational question and getting their reply, we could actually put them in a situation in VR and see how they truly react. This will take HR to a whole new level never before experienced.
10. It Will Impact the Health and Fitness Industry
Virtual reality will become a tremendous performance hack for anyone who wants to visualize the future as if it is already here. Athletes and doctors are already using hardware like OculusVR (acquired by Facebook) to visualize all of their goals coming into fruition, including perfect health and performance. People will finally be able to step outside of themselves and hit the winning shot, beat illness, or close the perfect deal.
11. It Will Offer Immersive, On-the-Job Learning Experiences
I’m most excited about the opportunity of virtual reality apps to facilitate learning and relationship building in a business setting. You’ll be able to master public speaking by practicing in front of a virtual audience, you’ll be able to see how business is conducted in Japan by working virtually from that office for a week, and your avatar can get together regularly, face to face, with your boss across the country. The number of skills you’ll be able to acquire and mentors you’ll be able to tap will explode when there are no practical or geographic limits.
12. Geographical Location Will Become Irrelevant
Already we live in a virtual age, where with the usage of Skype, Google Hangouts and other forms of digital media it doesn’t really matter where you are physically located. However, with the advancement of virtual reality, not only will it not matter where you are geographically, but it will actually appear as if you are in the same place even when you are thousands of miles apart.
0 notes
Text
Cute sportarobbie/Lazytown idea I think
Okay so I’m a dancer, and a ex martial artist but recently, I’ve medically gotten to a point where it’s hard to do anything that’s too physical and I have to take constant naps now (I also sometimes have spells where my vision goes black and I have to lay down to feel better) and it got me thinking
A new child shows up in lazytown. Everyone is ,of course, so excited. They hear that the child is a ex martial artist/ swimmer/ some kind of sport. Everyone’s excited and asks for them to show them their skills, but the kid has to refuse or only do the simplest stuff. When the kinds all wanna work out, the child (coaxed by the others who were all so excited and I’m a people pleaser so I’ll put myself in horrible situations to make sure I don’t disappoint )
So the child goes ahead and does their best. Like, five minutes later the child is starting to have a spell (you may be like “but would sport’s crystal go off?” I personally think in this situation, it wouldn’t because they have dealt with it so much they've convinced they they’s not in danger) and get exhausted, so they do their best to get away with some excuse (probably like I have stuff I have to finish at home) and goes and takes a nap in a bench. Well a certain someone *cough cough* Villain Number One *cough* sees this kid on the bench, looking absolutely pale and breathing kinda hard. The gently wakes the kid because ‘he doesn’t want a child dying on his bench’ (or that’s what he told the others) and they explain their condition, And how they moved to be closer to a big city to find a doctor to figure out what’s wrong, even going as far to tell him the whole not wanting to disappoint thing.. Robbie instantly realizes “this kid is gonna get themselves killed” and he starts to try and watch after the kid. Literally everyone notices how they try not to do too much in the physical area, how they take more naps then normal, and how Robbie seems to constant be talking to the kid (he’s trying to convince them to start journaling how they are feeling and he reads over them trying to help). The others convince them to go on a run, and they agree because the others seemed so excited. The kid then has a spell mid run and lays on the ground heavy breathing unresponsive (when I have a spell, I can’t speak until like a couple second after it’s over) and they flip out. Sports crystal blares and he tries to help them by bringing them back to town to try and go to a doctor. When Robbie sees Sportaflop running with the child in his arms flipping like a rag doll, he FREAKS. He runs over and stops sport dead in his tracks and makes him lay them on the bench until the spell can pass. Robbie explains why the child fainted and the issues they have. He also explains how they really wish they could be more active, but can’t because of the illness, causing them to have low self esteem. From then on, sport tries to help them do some physical things, but also makes them understand they have limits. Robbie is like the mother hen when the child starts to feel bad. The kids understand and all individually find a thing to do with the kid, making sure the kid will be okay even if it’s physical in some way, like Stephane showing her a cool dance move she learned, or watching and playing games with pixel, or even talking about superheroes with ziggy. Father’s Day rolls around and the child sends both Sportacus and Robbie a Father’s Day card and both are so happy and for sportarobbie maybe they can mutually bond on the fact they both want to protect the child. I don’t know it sounded cooler in my head but thanks for listening! [Edit] I messed up but I fixed it to where it’s gender neutral!
#lazytown#sportacus#robbie rotten#sportarobbie#ziggy zweets#fanficidea#pretty much me in lazytown honestly
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
Simple Actions For Top Quality Website Design
From blogs to storefronts, great web design is usually key in presenting your posts to everyone. Who will trust what you need to say when your site looks unprofessional? The info contained on this page will help you build a website that looks great, functions cleanly and brings you the traffic you deserve!
You can also find out more advice: web designing in new york
HTML5 video is scheduled in becoming the subsequent standard for displaying videos on the web and naturally, you ought to offer both a method by which users can stream your articles with an HTML5 format in addition to another format such as flash should you have an older browser version.
Break-up long text blocks. Possessing a huge wave of text is unnecessary for any site, especially when you can break it by utilizing images, or even separating it into different pages. Boring your viewers is only going to get them to leave, so keep things as easy and fresh as you can.
Make certain your introductory page is neat and simple. People exploring will decide immediately if they would like to make use of the site simply by the way your homepage looks. Be descriptive in regards to what your company does, plus your unique offerings, but keep the rest to a minimum to avoid distraction.
Figure out how to use colors to influence your potential customers. Every color includes a certain feeling that it will induce. By way of example, using black backgrounds or images could bring up feelings of depression and darkness. The use of a color like yellow is associated with happiness. Take the time to read up about the psychology of colors when determining your site's color scheme.
Help make your website content grabbing to readers. The overall design is usually important, but it's more important to use content that keeps visitors returning for more. When you can provide quality and useful information to your visitors, you will notice those visitors returning to the website regularly.
Make sure your small business logo is well-designed and prominently on every page of the site. Your logo is a key component of your brand, and it needs to be one of the primary things people see once they visit your website. When you can't make a wise decision for any logo, there are design firms that will make you one at a relatively low price.
Using proper and-quality meta tags on your internet site is essential to proper web design and attracting increased traffic. Having some meta tags offering quality can help show different search engines like google what your site is all about. Your web site will under-perform on search engines and draw fewer visitors than it should if you use inappropriate or ill-conceived meta tags.
Include a search feature on your website. When visitors come to your website, they would like to easily be able to find the things they are looking for. A keyword search feature is likely to make it easy for folks to obtain the right page on your site, specifically if the website you will be designing is incredibly complex.
Create a scalable and reliable website. As technology advances and monitors keep changing, you can't test out your site across all platforms and screen sizes. Be sure the design, hosting, and code are scalable. Try this through making sure it's error-free and making the loading smooth. This helps you produce a good design that works well for many circumstances.
Watch the level of flashy multimedia that may be on the site. Don't overdo it with a variety of "extras". Flash graphics and multimedia might appear enticing, nevertheless, these may make it difficult for visitors to discover the desired information in the site, particularly if they're viewing your site coming from a non-Flash compatible device.
When you design your internet site, remember that you just do have must fill every bit of space. If you use every available pixel, the internet site can experience extremely cluttered. Permit good spacing between elements, which will consequently, create the experience more pleasing for the visitors. Space can lend equally as much value as information.
Proofread everything before publishing. This makes it easier for anyone to learn. When the site is clunky and slow, you will end up labeled as a fly by night marketer and lose not merely traffic but potential revenue.
When designing your internet site, it is a good idea never to stray too much from popular conventions. By way of example, most users expect that whenever they select the website logo towards the top of a website, they come to your home page on the website. When your website behaves differently, it might confuse an individual. Oftentimes, straying from such conventions can cause a poor overall user experience.
You can make your blog more entertaining by utilizing graphics. Using image text wrapping is certainly one great technique. A web site that looks much like the owner cares and sets considerable time involved with it will have more people to it, and possibly they are going to become your customers.
Don't assume that you need to utilize every last inch inside your website layout. Using a good amount of blank or "white" space is a very common design strategy and a great one. Through the use of white space properly, users can read your site content more comfortably and comprehend things better.
Ensure that your fonts on your pages are very structured and aren't changed up too much as people scroll using your website. You don't want individuals to become confused and agitated with inconsistency, people like things to flow one of many ways as it shows you are aware of how to deal with things on the professional level.
While the more ads you have on your site the more potential you possess at making profits. But make certain you don't get too greedy and you manage the volume of ads that happen to be on your sites into a reasonable number, you wish to make the site feel open and welcoming, not ad central.
I hope you've learned using this article and feel positive that you're ready to begin in the world of web design. Whether you are just starting to design your site or maybe you intend to build websites as being a career, your first step is learning how it's done. You can now start working on the enjoyment stuff, enjoy!
0 notes
Text
Truck Driver and other games coming to Xbox One this week
Truck Driver and other games coming to Xbox One this week.
We Were Here (September 16, 2019)
Lost in a frozen wasteland and split up from your partner inside an abandoned castle, the only possession you have left is a walkie-talkie with a familiar voice on the other end. Can the two of you find your way out in time in this unique co-op puzzle adventure?
Bus Simulator (September 17, 2019)
Whether in the industrial or harbour zone, downtown, in the surrounding villages or the business park, in Bus Simulator, you experience up-close the exciting everyday life of a bus driver in a vast and freely drivable urban area. Get behind the wheel of your 8 original licensed city buses from the great brands of Mercedes-Benz, Setra, MAN, and IVECO and transport your passengers safely and punctually to their destinations, either solo in single player mode, or with friends in real-time multiplayer mode. As a bus driver in the 12 different districts, you’ll face the challenges of the traffic in a big city and everything that entails. Don’t be deterred by freak weather conditions, potholes, traffic jams, fare evaders, accidents, construction sites, night driving and specific passenger requests. On the contrary, take full control of your bus, earn money, gain a good reputation owing to your safe and punctual driving style and enjoy almost limitless driving pleasure in the authentic urban locations. Use the thousands of miles of virtual roads and streets to gain new districts, new buses and new customisation options. But drive carefully with the buses you build! Don’t cause any damage or accidents and watch out for the speed cameras located around the city, or it could have a negative effect on your reputation, not to mention your wallet.
So, what are you waiting for? Your shift has already started!
8 buses from 4 leading manufacturers are faithfully reproduced in meticulous detail, including the Mercedes-Benz Citaro K, Mercedes-Benz Citaro G, MAN Lion’s City bus, MAN Lion’s City CNG articulated bus, SETRA S 418 LE business, SETRA S 416 LE business, IVECO BUS Urbanway and the IVECO BUS Urbanway CNG articulated bus.In real-time multiplayer mode you can drive around the 12 districts and over 5.8mi² of routes in the freely drivable urban area with up to 3 friends and therefore promote your bus service.The updated progression system and the comprehensive management element, including route planning, the purchase and sale of buses, staff planning and numerous statistics will guarantee long-term game motivation.For novices and pros: you can play in a simplified or a realistic mode.Authentic bus sounds, extensive tutorial and passenger voiceovers in English and German to provide even more atmosphere.Control your bus in different weather conditions, both day and night.Customisation: fully customise your buses with different colours, patterns and advertising panels.Authentically reproduced cockpits of the 4 manufacturers, equipped with numerous individual functions.Smart traffic AI and a range of challenging traffic situations await you (bus station, night driving, construction sites, diversions, long-distance journeys, potholes, traffic jams, accidents and speed bumps, etc.).For a complete gaming experience, a variety of incidents in the bus, e.g. interior soiling and debris, special passenger requests, fare dodgers, loud music and cars parked in designated bus bays.Modern technology: The Unreal® Engine 4 provides a high level of graphic detail and stunning simulation quality.
Rebel Cops (September 17, 2019)
Lead a rag-tag squad of cops in rebellion against their town's new criminal power, and see how long you can hold out when you're constantly short on supplies, and a single shot can cost a cop his life in this spin-off from This Is the Police featuring the series' turn-based tactical gameplay.
Stela (September 17, 2019)
Stela is a cinematic, atmospheric platformer about a young woman witnessing the final days of a mysterious ancient world.
Overcome daunting challenges, treacherous terrain, and gargantuan beasts while traversing a decaying land. Manipulate the environment to solve elaborate puzzles and creep past dangerous creatures under cover of muted landscapes, all set to an original soundtrack. Survive sweeping environments including mysterious towns, haunting forests, and massive subterranean ruins brought to life in an atmospheric experience.
Mable & The Wood (September 18, 2019)
Mable & The Wood is a Metroidvania where you can take the form of the bosses that you kill, changing how you're able to explore the interconnected world. It's also a Metroidvania where you don't have to kill anyone.
The strange cult that resurrected you speak of an ancient prophecy that says you will hunt down the great beasts, take their shape, and use their powers to save this dying world. But what if they're wrong? The prophecy is old, and words lose their meaning with time...
When the world is falling apart around you, what will you do? In Mable & The Wood, it's up to you to make that choice. You don't have to kill anyone, but you might kill everyone.
Will you banish the darkness, or will you become it?
COMBAT IS MOVEMENT
The way you move is deadly. Dragging a sword that is too heavy to lift, Mable shape-shifts into a fairy and leaves it where she stood. Recall the sword to your hand once again to slice through any enemies in your path.
You can only maintain your non-human form for a limited time, but killing creatures extends your power.
HUNT THE GREAT BEASTS AND TAKE THEIR SHAPE
Defeat the great beasts to take their shape and transform into a mole, medusa, spider and more...
Find and defeat the other bosses to unlock even more shapes!
EXPLORE A DYING WORLD
The game takes place in a dark fantasy world, with each area making up part of a large, complex map that's packed full of all kinds of secrets for you to discover.
Uncover secrets that you can use to find alternative, non-combat routes through the world and discover a different side to the story (and multiple endings!)
DISCOVER WHO YOU REALLY ARE
Discover a rich story and define your own role in it. Will you become the saviour everyone's trying to convince you to be, or will your actions lead to the world literally tearing itself apart?
Features:
Your choices matter - The cult wants you to kill everything, but it's up to you whether or not you listen to them or find your own path and unlock the multiple endingsA rich story with a diverse cast of characters who have their own take on this whole 'end of the world' thingCombat is movement and movement is combat - Mable can't lift her magical sword, so she has to use it in unique ways to move through the worldA large and varied fantasy world brought to life with state-of-the-art pixel technology and a beautiful original soundtrackMultiple endings, different routes to take through the world and secrets to discover
Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning (September 18, 2019)
Join retired salesman rabbit, Hank, and his canine pal, Larry, in part one of this story-driven game series as they use their knowledge of influence and persuasion to make their way through the apocalypse. With a mixture of dark comedy and the use of real-life influence tactics, this story-driven game puts you behind the wheel of the characters’ choices.
Sally’s Law (September 18, 2019)
This is a story about a father and a daughter. The story about Sally, "the girl loved by the goddess of fortune", and her father. Sally, who left her home to become a picture book writer, hears that her father has become ill and heads toward her beloved home. The clumsy father and Sally who is trying hard to make her dream come true. On her path to meet her father, the two feel a change of heart. The players will control the 2 characters and help them reunite at their beloved home in the game. Sally is always at her own pace. She will jump through the stairs, cliffs and valleys. Any dangerous-looking branches or fences would never stop her! Her father will remove anything that comes in her way. He will follow Sally's route and make sure nothing would harm her. There will be numerous gimmicks along the way. Help Sally using the time stop and warp holes. Sally's Law on XBox has multiplayer mode and also prologue and epilogue videos that were not included in the smartphone version. In addition, players can obtain Sally and her father's unique avatars! Play the touching game which shed every players to tears on Xbox!
Features:
Sally's Law is an action game with a storyline. Players will play as the daughter and father alternately.
Truck Driver (September 19, 2019)
When you inherit a truck from your father, you take your chances and move to a new city. Here, it’s up to you to make a name for yourself and earn the respect of the local community. Drive through a seamless open world, work with all kinds of people ranging from a constructor to a lumberjack and honor your father by making it as a Truck Driver!
Enjoy a trucking experience focused on your career as a truck driver Build stronger relationships with the local community with each job Customize your truck with tons of parts and tune it to your liking Explore a vast open world and watch it progress with you Navigate through diverse landscapes and interesting locations.
Compatible Steering Wheels:
Thrustmaster Ferrari 458 Spider Racing WheelTX Servo Base Force FeedbackTX Ferrari 458 Italia Force FeedbackTX Leather Edition Force FeedbackThrustmaster TMX Force FeedbackThrustmaster TMX Pro Force FeedbackThrustmaster TS-XW racer SPARCO P310 (competition mod)Logitech G920 (driving force)
The Sojourn (September 20, 2019)
A tale of light, darkness, and the nature of reality.
Traverse a thought-provoking puzzle game and its immersive colour-drenched world of light and shadow.
In The Sojourn you arrive in a mysterious land, where lights guide you forward. It’s not long until the world reveals itself to be full of challenges. Now, you must overcome these intricate and ever more demanding obstacles to uncover the nature of reality.
Features:
Dozens-upon-dozens of challenging puzzlesDelve into four beautifully crafted chapters, each with their own distinct style and atmosphereBanish the darkness in order to reveal the obstacles The Sojourn has prepared for youUnravel a captivating tale of light, darkness, and the nature of reality
Rebound Dodgeball Evolved (September 20, 2019)
Rebound is a fast, competitive, multiplayer Sci-fi themed dodgeball game. The top down camera and twin stick shooter controls makes it easy to just pick up and play however the fast-paced nature of the game gives it a high skill ceiling. Players can team up and play against each other both online and offline with any combination of maps, Mutators, and gamemodes.
Mutators greatly change up the rules of Rebound by changing the behaviour of the dodgeballs or through adding new abilities. Instead of slowing down over time, Nitro Ball speed the ball up with each collision resulting in a hectic game that only gets more dangerous over time. Time Glitch throws a spanner in the works by throwing everyone back in time to where they were shortly before, pay attention and you can save your past self from a dodgeball!
With over 15 unique maps you must adapt quickly to take advantage of the new geometry and stage hazards to ensure the win. Watch out for portals!
Rebound can be played both locally and online with up to 4 players. Team up with your friends or play free-for-all to see who truly is the dodgeball champion.
Create a playlist with any combination of maps and Mutators for the ultimate customised experience or play one of the pre-made recommended a hemed playlists.
Niffelheim (September 20, 2019)
Your avatar is a brave warrior who has fallen in battle. But instead of finding well-deserved peace in Asgard, his soul is trapped in the harsh world of Niffelheim. Survive in this hostile world, ransack the neighboring lands, explore dangerous dungeons and find your way to Valhalla.
Survive in the Underworld
Warriors remain warriors even after death. Set out on the path to the last challenge and prove yourself to the Gods. In life you were never frightened by the cold, darkness and death, and you won't fear now. make sure you have enough provision, defend yourself and unravel the mysteries of these lands.
Do not become forgotten
Crush anyone who dares to attack your lands. Each fallen enemy brings you closer to Asgard! Bones, teeth, fur - use all of that as your weapons and armor. Build a fortress that will cover you from enemy attacks as well as help you destroy the attackers. The Death Priests will issue ultimatums. Will you comply or reject their orders and join the fight of their dead minions?
Find a way out
Collect all the pieces of the portal to Asgard. But be careful - these are fiercely guarded by mighty giants, undead and deadly spiders.
Craft
Brew various potions from mushrooms and slayed beats to become stronger. Cook the best dishes to feed all you friends. Brew poison that will kill the most powerful troll.
Explore ancient caves
Reach the very heart of the world to find powerful artefacts that will help you win the final battle. Find out what is hidden in the darkness.
Read the full article
0 notes
Note
Aren't you at all frustrated with the ending? You seem to really like the reality show/everyone's memories and talents are fake twist and take Shirogane at her word for the truth. Doesn't it annoy you that everyone else except the survivors, Tsumugi and Amami are basically rendered irrelevant in future installments or worldbuilding because they were literal nobodies outside the game? It sure as hell still frustrates me that my favorite characters (especially ouma) will not be important at all.
No, I quite like the ending. And while I think Tsumugi wascertainly telling the truth about some things in the Chapter 6 trial, I’mrelatively certain she was lying about others. In fact, there’s plenty of proofto suggest that she was absolutelylying about having “scripted” Momota’s illness, as well as that she couldinfluence emotions and feelings for the characters. Tsumugi may have been ableto set certain “scenarios” in mind or had something of an idea of what shewanted each character to perform or embody on the show, but she certainly couldn’tcontrol them or bring them to mind.
I simply don’t believe that the reality show twist being trueor that everyone’s memories and talents are fake immediately makes them “irrelevant”or “unimportant.” If anything, the ndrv3 ending and epilogue stresses thenecessity of lies and their importance. The ending is very straightforwardabout the fact that “even if everything is a lie, even if everything isfiction, that doesn’t negate the very real impact that it can have on the worldaround us or on our personal feelings and growth as people.”
That’s a wonderful message that I felt very personallytouched by. From a realistic perspective, not just a meta perspective, fiction is,after all, a lie. Regardless of how much we enjoy Danganronpa and itscharacters, it is absolutely true that every single part of the DR franchisewas just a fictional, made-up story written by someone else, and that itscharacters consist of nothing more than a bunch of colored pixels and words ona screen. Does that automatically negate the enjoyment that we have by watchingor playing DR? Does that mean that its characters aren’t genuinely fun, good,or well-written? Not at all.
Fiction is a lie. Fiction is made-up. But fiction, lies, andmade-up stories aren’t necessarily any less important than the truth. “Truth”is, after all, very rarely objective, and much more often simply an agreed-upon“fact” acknowledged by most people. To say that something being fictional orfake automatically negates its importance would be like saying that we cannever be truly impacted by that fiction. It’d be like saying we’ve never criedor laughed or gotten genuinely emotional over a fictional story.
Even if everyone’s talents, memories, and backstories arefake, that doesn’t mean that they’ve automatically become irrelevant to futureinstallments or worldbuilding. If anything, there’s even more room forworldbuilding and growth than there was in previous DR games, in my opinion. Weknow about the characters’ in-game, “wacky Danganronpa backstories,” but weknow relatively little about them, as people. If there were ever a spin-offnovel or side materials delving into the characters’ pre-game backstories,their motivations, their personalities, etc., I guarantee that tons of peoplewould read it. The Japanese fanartists I follow on Pixiv and Twitter who drawtheir own interpretations of what the pre-game characters were like could easilyattest to that.
There’s also tons of proof that those pre-game personalitiesaren’t necessarily “the opposite of” their in-game personalities, either. Tonsof evidence, including the characters’ likes and dislikes, as well as theprologue, suggests that Tsumugi’s “in-game personas” for each of the characterssimply took what was already there and… expanded upon it. The in-game versionsof the characters feel like caricaturized versions of their real selves, ratherthan “entirely different people.”
After all, Miu and Tenko, for example, act very similarly inthe prologue to how we see them in-game. Tsumugi can claim all she wants inChapter 6 that “the people they were before don’t exist anymore,” but that’spretty clearly a lie. There’s certainly no way for them to check for themselves what they were like before orwhat kinds of memories they used to have, but we, the players, can reread theprologue for ourselves, and compare the characters’ likes and dislikes and allthe information we’ve compiled on them enough to know that their pre-game andin-game personas are similar, not drastically different.
I’m not really sure why you think Ouma “won’t be importantat all” in future spin-offs, either. Kodaka and his staff have clearly alreadycaught onto the fact that Ouma is wildly popular—with his birthday coming up,the ndrv3 crepe café has already announced a plan to launch a 5-day specialcrepe and birthday drink for him. Anything about Ouma, be it merchandise or additionalinformation, becomes a trending topic almost immediately nowadays.
As the character who best represents ndrv3’s themes of “liesvs. truth,” it makes sense that Ouma would still be the biggest enigma even atthe end of the game, and therefore the one who people want to know the mostabout. I can understand Kodaka’s desire to keep Ouma in a catbox of sorts,refusing to give too much explicit information about him for now. But Kodakaalmost always clarifies is characters and provides answers on things he left asa deliberate cliffhanger beforehand. I don’t doubt that we’ll definitely seesome kind of Ouma-related side materials or spin-off in the future, becausepeople are definitely curious about him.
There are so many mysteries as to what Ouma was truly likepre-game, what his motivations were for entering the killing game in the firstplace (for example, did he enter specifically to stop the killing game evenfrom the start?), whether DICE actually existed or not in the real world,whether he’s an orphan or not, etc. These mysteries make for infinitely more opportunities for futureinstallments, not less.
I can’t make everyone like ndrv3’s ending, nor do I want to—everyonehas the right to experience the game for themselves and decide what it means tothem. But I personally found the ending’s message and themes very uplifting, ina sense. That message of what fiction is, what it means to us on a personal andindividual level, and how lies can themselves be just as relevant and importantas the truth, is something I can understand due to personal experiences. Theworld is a tough place to live in, sometimes, and the truth can be harsh andpainful—fiction are “lies” that we use to help us cope with that harsh andpainful world. And while it’s important that we cope and lessen the blow fromthose truths, it’s just as important that we don’t completely immerse ourselvesin fiction or lose sight of reality around us. Both truth and lies arenecessary, in the end.
That’s what I took from the ending, anyway. I’m not sayingthat ndrv3 is a perfect game, because it definitely isn’t. It certainly has itsflaws, and there are things I would change about it if I could. But I honestlyliked the ending, and all the questions and mysteries it posed. Thanks forasking, anon!
#ndrv3#drv3#new danganronpa v3#kokichi ouma#ouma kokichi#ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta#okay to reblog#anonymous
89 notes
·
View notes
Text
( * shin deiji . )
scanning shin deiji, he is twenty-two years old and read as audacious but hazardous, which explains why he is referred to as the scelestic. before virtual reality he was battling multiple personality disorder and living in japan. he’s been said to look incredibly similar to park jimin, but he’s never seen it. in this new virtual world, he plans on finally taming his temper and hopes to never go back to reality.
trigger warning: multiple personality disorder, abuse ( physical, emotional, sexual ), death, murder, violence, blood, adoption.
heeeeeeey-ho, your favourite friendly neighbourhood loser sky is finally here to talk about her beloved Angel™. she/her, twennnnney & from cest aka gmt+2, a nerd. but !! i’m not important here, my baby is sooo i’m really fckn hoping you guys are down for reading some perhaps confusing shit bc i plan on rambling a lot eeek ok here we go.
ps. i hope no one is triggered by this. if you have a problem with any part of my bio, feel free to contact me but only if you genuinely have a problem with it & not because you wanna be an asshole. ok ty~!!
pss. i know that it might seem Extra, introducing so many dark topics here, but abuse, separation & depression are believed to be among the main causes of mpd, so they needed to be included.
psss. i won’t actually be portraying the mental illness itself. it’s only present in my love’s past.
GANG JINYONG:
of course shin deiji isn’t a real name. shin deiji doesn’t exist in reality. at least not with this face. the name they’d attach to his solemn features back home was gang jinyong. jinnie.
born twenty-two years ago on november 11th in ilsan, south korea, this scorpio was raised by a single mother with occasional, undesired appearances of his sperm donor ( his father, but he doesn’t deserve to be called that ).
he was a result of a loveless act, a drunken hookup that failed to turn into anything more. a product of reckless infidelity. his mom, min seo, was a college senior & the guy, jiho, was the owner of a local pub, a married man with two children. when she discovered that she was pregnant & that he was married & uninterested to help her with the baby, she threatened to ruin his marriage if he did not support her financially.
he did so during her pregnancy. she kept asking him for help even after giving birth ( naturally, bc her parents didn’t want to support her & she had to drop out of college so she had no income whatsoever. couldn’t work bc who’d take care of tiny jinnie then ? ). he found them a decent apartment & gave her a job at the bar. jinnie grew up in that bar and watched men catcall, emotionally & sexually abuse his v young mother night after night. he even witnessed jiho slap her a couple of times when she asked for a raise or complained about the regular customers being nasty towards her.
min seo, bless her soul, was a wonderful mother. she put her child first and would rather starve than let her kid walk around hungry. but during the years of torture she became very mentally ill & she would snap at jinnie during her breakdowns. afterwards, though, she’d fall on her knees in front of the tiny kiddo & apologise, kiss his little cheeks & forehead.
when he grew up, he became a victim of the drunks as well. i don’t feel like writing about that now, it was too nasty.
experiencing all of this first hand, more often than not, jin would lock himself away & daydream about a better life. either a life where he was capable of protecting himself or a life in which he was appreciated. those two were among many scenarios he’d get lost in.
while he was still young he dealed with some blackouts & memory loss. he couldn’t figure out how he ended up standing in a particular room. he couldn’t remember certain conversations or things he had done. it was a rare occurrence at first, but as he got older & more plagued by tragedies, it became more frequent.
min seo, believing she was doing the right thing, gave jinyong away when he was eleven. he would’ve been taken away from her anyway, since she was deemed an unfit parent & jin was growing up in an unhealthy environment.
the separation made his illness even worse, it really did. that’s when he had the most alts who distracted him. however, all of them merged and then split into two, leaving jin only with jiu & jeaki.
he was adopted by won mina & jongin, who moved to tokyo, japan with him a year later.
he went to school there & was a remarkable student who was especially interested in nanotechnology.
personality-wise, he was more of a quiet type. not shy but he didn’t like to speak when he had nothing smart to say. blunt af, honest. though, still considerate & kind.
JIU:
the only major alt that survived besides his most prominent one, jeaki.
jiu loves fashion more than life itself. sometimes jin would wake up in piles of new clothes & then look in the mirror and see that his hair’s grey or pink ------ that’s mostly how he discovered when this alt was in charge of his body. jiu always styled his host. other alts didn’t really care about that, but would sometimes sigh at jiu’s extravagant fashion choices, cashmere suits & silky scarves, while going through the closet.
jiu wasn’t delusional, he knew he was not actually a fae prince, but he liked to view himself as one. no one ever praised him, so he took it upon himself to praise himself.
he was created to battle sexual abuse & the depressing lack of love jin was dealing with.
sweet af. pure. heart of gold. god of love. lecherous. classy.
heart-shaped sunglasses. dimmed lights with a rosy glow. tasty, edible lip scrubs. summer.
JEAKI:
main alt. he came when jin was feeling helpless. when anger was bubbling inside of him & ached to be released. he was initially envisioned as a protector of both jinyong & his mother, but soon jin could no longer control him & jeaki became a separate personality with a mind of his own. he started appearing more when jin moved to tokyo to live with his adoptive parents. with a tongue as sharp as a razor & steel knuckles that aren’t afraid to fight back, he failed to manage his wrath whenever he was present.
he was aware of his host & other alts and he wanted to do everything he could to be the most superior alt, often engaging in conflicts with them in jin’s mind even when he was not controlling his body. he managed to consume a couple of minor alts.
he’s not your typical murderous alt you know in media. no, he was never violent just because and he was never aggressive when unprovoked. as i said, he was there to fight back for jin, who was too afraid to do it himself.
thunderstorms. static noise. heavy eyeliner. danger. sore knuckles. bruised skin. jumping out of a plane. taking risks. cats. glares. autumn.
the night of doom: jeaki didn’t have the time to change from jiu’s ridiculous clothes. he needed to go out & get some fresh air. he was angry. mina yelled at jin because of a bad grade, not knowing that he, jeaki, took that test insted of jinnie. jeaki was the one feeling worthless so he needed to go out & cool down. but when his anger management issues combined with a street thug calling him out on his ( jiu’s ) fashion choices & using slurs ( reminding him of his days back at the bar in ilsen ), he could only see red. he started a fight without the intention to end a life, but that’s what happened.
TRANSITION:
jinyong came back to his senses in the middle of the street with dirt & blood on his knuckles & face, beaten, but without a sign of the other’s body anywhere around him. he had no memory of what had happened, but he was having a panic attack & didn’t trust his adoptive parents enough to ask for help.
not long after that jinyong was tracked down & supposed to be charged for murder but a psychiatrist managed to prove that jin had dissociative identity disorder, so they placed him in a mental hospital.
alone, terrified & clueless of jeaki’s deed, jin cried his eyes out in his room in the hospital, until everything around him started pixelating.
SHIN DEIJI:
present day. no, there was not an epic war between alts & their host in order to determine who’d be the cured version of him in this world. it was peaceful. fragments of jin, jiu & jeaki merged in order to form a boy who thoroughly knows himself, but doesn’t know how he’ll react to anything. the voices from his head are gone ------ they all speak at the same time when he opens his mouth.
seeing how he’s the perfect harmony of the three boys that used to live in his body, he couldn’t choose one of their names. he also didn’t want to be associated with anything from his past. that’s when he adopted the name shin deiji, deiji meaning daisy, his mother’s favourite flower. he might introduce himself to you as daisy rather than deiji if you don’t speak korean.
depending on what kind of person you are, you will be shown an appropriate side of deiji’s personality. so, when a couple of different people sit down and start talking about deiji, they might realise that it sounds as if they’re talking about different individuals.
he doesn’t trust people easily. he’d rather die than let anyone lay a poisonous hand on him again. he sticks up for himself. he’s his own protector and best friend. he’ll play you before you even think about playing him.
him not trusting people doesn’t mean he doesn’t engage in various interactions with them. he loves to charm his way into people’s lives because he’s no longer scared that he’ll blackout & do something that he won’t remember afterwards. something that he won’t be fully aware of & unable to control.
hooo, boy. he’s so angry. if you’re rude to him, he’ll be twice as rude to you. always wants to one up others. always. if you’re playing a game ?? he will lie & cheat & do everything to win. then lie about lying & cheating. if he still loses, expect a hissy fit.
god. affection. give this boy affection. would 11/10 die if someone cuddled him. especially when he’s being Extra with his raging, burning anger. he’d just ... melt tf away.
loves to party ?? he doesn’t have to take his medication anymore, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to drink and get high every chance he gets. get those nasty substances away from him. they took his mother away.
he’s forgiven his mother for every single bad word she directed towards him bc he knows what it’s like battling a mental illness. he’d give anything for a chance to see her again & tell her that he loves her.
nanotechnology is still the love of his life & he’s still such a nerd and wants to know what tf is up with this virtual world & figure out how it works but like ... he’s a scared bambi that fears that he’ll get sent back to his own personal hell if he tries to figure out what’s going on.
so rly what he’s focusing on rn is becoming an actor because he has all these FEELINGS that need to be expressed without having a poor individual who’d be hit by that tidal wave. he rly wants to act, he thinks that will help him a lot. the idea of finding roles that would fit each of the personalities he previously consumed makes him all giddy.
pansexual & rly just a sexual person afaf.
so ... basically what i’m giving you here is a screaming nerd who loves to flirt. ok. should’ve only written that. rip.
if you’re still confused: he no longer has mpd. call him deiji/daisy. don’t yell at him. unless you want bad shit to happen ??
if you’ve read all of this, you’re my new best friend & i love you more than anything glrwbgowgo. come plot with me !!
6 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
deadtrashpanda
Technically An Art Blog
seungchacco
U^ェ^U
awakentheworld
Go to Truthfrequencyradio.com for Truth
harlowhockeystick
resident writer for the tortured poets department
marthepitous
MARTHE