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thefirstknife · 5 months

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Speaking of weird things in the season already, I'm back with the obsession with names of things in the seasonal activity.

So in Riven's Lair, you get randomly assigned "missions" that change with each run. I believe there's five of them as I've played a lot of Riven's Lair so far and only got these five to rotate. Maybe there will be more in weeks to come!

Anyway, if you look in the top left corner when you start the activity, it will tell you the name of the mission you're on. The names that I've seen so far are:

Polysemy

Apophasis

Synchysis

Enthymeme

Tautology

Long post under:

These aren't random words! They're all related to language and rhetoric, which makes sense with the Ahamkara theme as Ahamkara are very dependent on the way language is used around them.

Polysemy is when words or symbols are capable of having multiple meanings. Apophasis is when you speak about something by denying it or mentioning it by saying it's not required to be mentioned (def check examples on wikipedia if this is confusing). Synchysis is also a way of speaking in a way that deliberately messes up the order of words to confuse or surprise the person you're speaking to. Enthymeme is a type of an argument where you construct a sentence which tells some sort of a fact by omitting the way you came to that conclusion because the fact should be obvious on its own (again, check wiki for examples, it will be easier to understand). And tautology has a meaning in both language and logic; in language, a tautology is a statement that repeats something, adding redundant information and in logic, a tautology is a logical formula in which a sentence is constructed in a way that every interpretation of the sentence is true.

I doubt these words were chosen randomly and there might be more or perhaps more will cycle in during weeks to come. But even with just this, there's a pattern. I'm not sure which meaning of tautology is being used here; possibly the language one because it fits the rest, but the logic interpretation could also be possible.

The first week's mission was also specifically Polysemy:

I assume next weeks we'll probably do other specific ones in some order, which would also mean there should be at least 2 more. I'm wondering if there's some sort of a reason why these specific words were chosen. Obviously they all relate to forms of speaking and language which is the primary way that Ahamkara use to affect reality; speaking in specific terminology and using particular phrases and language forms is important to them and when speaking to them.

But given the involvement of the Vex, it also reminded me of the lore book Aspect in which every chapter is named after grammatical, linguistic and logic terms. Aspect is also specifically related to the Black Garden and Sol Divisive. Not only that, but Aspect deals with, among other things, the fate of the Ishtar scientists and their copies in the Vex Network, and primarily uses Chioma as their main viewpoint, and the whole situation with Neomuna and Veil Logs has returned my interest in this lore book.

I feel like it isn't a coincidence that we've spent essentially the entire year reacquainting ourselves with Chioma and Maya and Ishtar as a whole only to bring back Sol Divisive and the Black Garden back in the final season in this way. As the Veil Logs told us, one of Maya's copies interfered with one of the logs, sending signals, and Chioma, at the end of her life, contacted the Vex presumably to be consumed by the network so she could possibly reunite with one of the copies of Maya in there.

This brought me also to the mysterious signal from Scatter Signal lore tab in which Osiris tracks down some sort of a signal that seems to be talking about the Vex, but spoken in a strange way. So I began thinking that this signal might be coming from Chioma, consumed by the Vex, from the Vex Network, reaching out to the man who's been studying her, living in Neomuna and researching the Veil for months. Specifically, the final Veil Log mentioned a few similar words and phrases being repeated. Specifically, when Osiris mentions that Chioma was researching "the entaglement of Light and Dark" and when Nimbus and Osiris discuss "parallel connections and parallel energy fields;" then in the Scatter Signal message there's mention of how, presumably, the Vex are trying to "move from parallel to entanglement." The Veil Log also talks about how the Witness can communicate through our Ghosts and how that connection might be going both ways; Scatter Signal also mentions "bridging communion with a Voice."

Copies of Chioma and the other scientists (with the help of Praedyth) once tried to use the Black Garden to send a message out of the Vex Network, detailed in Aspect. We don't know if they succeeded (at least in our current timeline). The Black Garden has been a big focus in Lightfall almost out of nowhere in such an immensely world-changing way (with the explanation of the Black Heart), and it will still be important this season with the exotic mission. It's a very pleasing loop of the story; everything started with the Black Garden in D1 and everything just before TFS might end with it. I'm also incredibly intrigued by the fact that the returning weapons from Undying (a season about the Sol Divisive and the Black Garden) have returned with a new perk called nano-munitions: very Neomuna-sounding name. Perhaps certain Ishtar scientists are influencing the Vex or extending a helping hand to us.

The questions that remain: how does this tie back to the Ahamkara? Why are the Vex interested in the Ahamkara? What do the Ahamkara have to do with the Black Garden? What's with all the strange language terminology that deals with double meanings and ways to confuse? Is it just regular Ahamkara shenanigans to trick us? To trick the Vex? Maybe both?

The point is, I don't think this is as simple as Riven just being sad that all the Ahamkara are dead and wanting to secure her clutch. Nothing is ever simple with the Ahamkara and nothing is ever simple with the Vex; and now we're dealing with both. And somewhere in all of this, there is also a concerning involvement of the Black Garden that connects to both of these elements. At the end of it all, there's us, who rely on this specific combination of elements to get through the portal, pursue the Witness and save the universe.

Spreading the brain worms to the rest of y'all to think about. If you spot any other mission names, feel free to share, though I think that if they happen, they might happen in the coming weeks. Also as I mentioned before, I know there's been leaks and lore tabs unlocking early on Ishtar: I've not seen any leaks or cutscenes and have not read any lore tabs that aren't explicitly visible in-game so if there's a really simple answer in that leaked material, I don't know about it and don't want to know about it so please don't spoil to me or to others!

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the wish #season of the wish spoilers #ahamkara #vex #black garden #lore vibing #long post #it took me a few runs to notice the names in riven's lair ngl. i was not paying attention to that at all #it was a few runs in when i realised there's weird words as 'missions' and then remembered polysemy being the first separate one #and whenever there's words like this they're there for a reason. they weren't picked randomly #it's so interesting to try and decipher why the writers chose those in particular #if anyone has any other ideas for them feel free to speculate!#also getting the feeling that the vex are taking a crack at paracausality #therefore their interest in the ahamkara. perhaps even taking a crack at also following through the portal #whatever they're doing it can't be good. i'm going insane #if anything. it's setup for them being a big threat post-TFS

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ciceroprofacto · 2 years

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Well it's putting the cards on the table time apparently. I heard once about a rumor that basically said that you didn't do the research for soa, nor did your wife. That some Tumblr user(s) actually made ("an important") part of the research. I think the ones that told me that hate you or something.

So I just wanted to know - is that true? Because well, even i sometimes thought that it was almost impossible to make that amount of research by oneself. Or even two people. Both in so, so busy careers and being successful in those careers.

Look, it's not as if I believed it's completely impossible. I mean, I've been building a world with my bf for some years now, and just a month ago we discovered that its political laws are incredibly similar to spartan ones... without any of us having ever studied ancient politics before.

So anyways. Have a nice day!

ugh. I've seen this one (or a variation of it) before and I have some questions.

what's this 'important part' of the research that I didn't do?

and if not me...who's doing it?

seriously- who? I'd love to call them up. I was begging for help when I first started- what do y'all think that obnoxiously-long timeline post (made January 9th 2017) was? it's literally titled as a call to action...and it barely got feedback at the time. it took 6 chapters for @madtomedgar to pick me up and help with editing until I got my footing and then @denialandavoidance picked me up. if anyone can be credited with helping me, it's them- which is why they are credited on those chapters. but, I will say, and they could attest (though this is so far below worth our time...), the legwork was always there on the details. I just needed touch-ups, fact checks, and proofreading.

on that- did we just...scroll past the years of posts where I was discovering details for the timeline and sharing them...some of that process was pretty public? unfortunately, a lot of it was also just in my notes and on the chapter drafts because I was more worried about writing the story than showing my work...because it's a fanfic. I couldn't imagine anyone would need me to prove that I'd researched.

which- what is the bar here for citations? the closest thing I've done to a bibliography has been the recent meta posts I'm making on the reread, but the idea of including that on the work itself is nightmarish. even my meta post leaves a lot out, and you'd end up with ~2k words of notes on each chapter. that ruins the immersion, distracts from the plot, and worst- adds extra effort on my part. I just won't do it. sorry. I'm not making money off this, I'm not being graded on it. it's a fanfic.

even if I tried, a full-bibliography isn't going to have all the records for every nitty-gritty detail that's included in the story. I wasn't adding footnotes on my drafts as I went along. I just wasn't. my method was to keep it as simple as possible, and a bibliography wasn't the priority, just getting the information. I basically just had a timeline that was like an agenda for each day and I was backfilling it with details from all the books and journals and primary source documents I was reading. anytime a date would come up in a source, I'd add it to my notes. anytime there was a gap or I had specific questions, I'd dig around until I could fill it (or I’d make something up because it’s fiction). though most of my sources were publicly-accessible (we stan Wiki in this house), I don't even have access to everything I used back in 2015-18. I was in college and had access to academic databases, my library, and @john-laurens was also still in school with similar accesses, and towards the end of 2016, started helping me find specific details. google could get me 90% of the way there, but the really detailed day-to-day stuff was in letters and journal entries.

it seems a lot like how someone might research to write a biography, they'd just be more thorough about annotating their sources since their goal is to publish...I might not be doing it for the same reasons, but why is it so hard to believe I could?

anyway- no. that's not true. I've had contributors. the people I've mentioned above have helped me directly and they're credited in the work because of it- though I would still emphasize for the context of this question, their help has mostly been as editors, occasionally fielding specific questions or giving me source recommendations. any contributions other than theirs would come from posts that are public on this blog, but I truly, genuinely, can't think of any that have already been incorporated or would warrant recognition...

if someone feels like I've missed something they gave me, they're always welcome to take it up with me.

#my process feels so simple I don't understand the disbelief #it's just...read books. take notes #that's it #that's literally it.#anon #long post #answered

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cristianwhyc612 · 6 months

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#fake bags online

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devandahlcourte-work-in-progress · 2 years

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Section 4. five chapters, ending with chapter 18

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 4. five chapters, ending with chapter 18

↩️return to previous section, section 3

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

The Spheroid / Ambraluxia

The AI, a registered sentient being and citizen of the amphictiony, had chosen to absorb the sub AI spheroid’s research progress and all its experiences before it was decommissioned. It was determined to essentially be a comedy of errors and not the fault of the manufacturer or anyone aboard the spheroid’s mothership. Still, it had made all the right decisions according to regulations, but produced a colossal cluster-᎘x࿔ᢈᡜ …she recorded in her equivalent of an online blog that was publicly accessible to all other member-species. So the company issued a voluntary recall. Ambraluxia now instantly comprehended the spheroid’s actions: she saw that its first priority had truly been the welfare of the “child,” even if it meant neglecting to follow certain environmental regulations.

The computer had assumed, by brain activity only, that Alex was an Altairean toddler. The fact that its parents had changed it into a human body while on Earth was not at all surprising for Altaireans. It was their absence that was cause for concern.

When it asked Alex where his parents were, he only knew the location of two of them, and he gave their coordinates in terms the computer couldn’t decipher. When asked about his Ardhanari parent, Alex’s answer was incomprehensible... curious, since at this age the Ardhanari parent would be handling most of the nanny-type responsibilities and spending the most time with the child, according to the customs of Altairean society.

What the spheroid’s computer had failed to grasp, was that Alex was saying he only had two parents. Humans would have two, Altaireans would have three. An actual sentient being would have reasoned that Alex was an inordinately intelligent human with some abnormal imbalances of neurotransmitters, receptor antagonists, and receptor site blockers – and then backed off. Not getting involved and caring for the “lost child,” feeding it, entertaining it with toys, and sending it back in time to wait for who it felt was its family.

Ambraluxia did think it was adorable how Alex played with the math games. He had been in the chair for about an hour before his appetite took over, but he enjoyed the educational toy in precisely the way that an Altairean child of his perceived age would have been predicted to. Then he had wanted Earth food, and wanted to play with the giant food-advertising character outside and see it come to life. The spheroid had naturally obliged him and then, it even sent his toy back in time with him, to New Year’s Eve of 1991.

Brenda

Could memories be erased? She’d researched, or at least googled, different types of amnesia. Retrograde and anterograde amnesias, Korsakoff's syndrome, or Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, other neurological conditions, etc. It all made perfect sense how one person could forget things. But it was beyond absurd to think that it could be orchestrated so as to make a large population – in the millions – all forget about the same thing.

Wheeler not only couldn’t remember, but later that week he could not produce pictures of himself from when his mom had tried to make him the outfit for cosplay. Brenda had had him on FaceTime, looking at the strangely oversized cork board in his room, pretty much as she remembered it. The thing had pictures from the past half-decade-plus, gathering dust and pictures layered up in some cases on top of older ones. There had at one time been old-fashioned Polaroids of the attempted Stalko-Taco outfit which he pinned up in his room. Those were now missing, and predictably, he had no recollection of them.

And this next part totally blew her mind during the FaceTime call: She located the actual vacant spots where she was sure they had once been, guiding him to exactly where she wanted him to position the phone’s camera. When she asked him why those spots were vacant, his answer was bizarre!

After babbling for a few seconds in a way she couldn’t understand, he got some words together. But they suddenly sounded like the speech of a person who’d just been abruptly awakened and asked a question while they were still half asleep. He was wide awake, but the words that came staggering out were: “Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it.”

“Dude!” she managed to choke out a response, trying not to laugh and cause the cranberry-grape juice she’d been sipping the moment before to come spewing out of her nose, “you just quoted Andy Warhol!” She paused just briefly to swallow and catch her breath. “I thought during your, uh, critical diatribe last year that you made it clear you, um, didn’t like him? To put it mildly.”

“Not exactly. What I said was,” Wheeler intoned with a now news-anchor-perfect masculine voice that he could’ve made money with doing voiceovers for ads, “that I thought he was way overrated and that I could name at least ten other artists of the twentieth century who made more artistically significant contributions, and then I proceeded to do just that... along with detailed reasoning for why I thought so in each case. But I don’t exactly dislike him. I simply –”

He paused again and she was worried that maybe the expression he saw on her face was one of “Oh no! He’s going to repeat the whole gawdawful long lecture again!” So Brenda in that split second tried to look pleasant and slightly raised her brows as if to appear quite interested in what his next words would be. But her look wasn’t what had caused him to cut himself off.

“Wait,” he ventured in a less lecture-y tone, “did you say I quoted him? I don’t even know any quotes from him because I’ve never really studied him in that much depth. Oh hold on, the one about the greatest art... great art versus good art,”

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal?” Brenda offered sweetly.

“That’s it! That’s the only quote I know from him. But I didn’t quote him. At least not that I’m aware of,” Wheeler said with utter sincerity.

“Nah. First of all that was Steve Jobs, not Warhol,” she tried to correct helpfully.

“No shit? I always thought it was an artist.”

“Steve Jobs said it a lot and liked to blame it on an artist. It doesn’t matter which one because it was none of them. But no, it actually goes back to San Francisco in the 60s when – Nancy! And Entropy!” Brenda said gleefully, and then rápidamente to Wheeler: “I’ll tell you later about Haight-Ashbury.”

His mom hadn’t barged in or anything; the door to his room had been open and Wheeler was walking in and out multiple times as he went to different spots looking for the old pictures.

After exchanging happy greetings with Nancy, she scribbled a word furiously, without looking, in her paisley-shroom-brain-book, determined not to forget: hypnosis!!!! A bit more shorthand followed but Brenda didn’t want it to be obvious and appear to be ignoring her, or preoccupied, or whatever.

She asked Brenda “Haight-Ashbury? You two couldn’t have been talkin’ about me – I’m old but not quite that old.” Wheeler’s mom, a self-described “aging hippie” insisted that no one should ever call her Mrs. Wheeler even though she was still happily married to his dad. All the other kids they knew in Austin were asked to address her by her first name; not especially rare for their part of the city.

Brenda honestly didn’t want to be rude, and smiled genuinely at Entropy, their odd little chihuahua-yorkie-dachshund mix whom they’d rescued when they found him as a stray near SoCo.

She got her chance to scribble more, which she could easily do without looking at the paper. Exactly two more words. Altogether it was enough to keep her aware of the situation and the idea. She thought initially that Wheeler had been trying to come off as goofy, to mock the way Warhol was in most of his interviews. It wasn’t quite how he used to sound. But she realized he truly hadn’t studied the guy that closely.

When pressed about where the things had gone which should have been there, he’d given some kind of almost pre-programmed sounding, canned response. It was also as if he’d momentarily gone into some quasi-trancelike state. That, and the memory anomaly were starting to scare her. As in “oh shit, I may actually be right” sort of scary.

She talked a bit more with Nancy, watched as she picked up Entropy’s paw and had him waving at the camera, and thought about the dozen or so older experiences they’d been rehashing in their conversations. She’d had to table the discussion, understandably. How would you go about saying to Nancy: “Hey, by the way, it looks like someone is messing with your son’s mind and putting him in a hypnotic trance... and oh yeah, they’re breaking into his room and stealing stuff.”

Wheeler wasn’t just alright with his last name, he wanted to be called by it exclusively. Enough boys at school and some male teachers did that anyway, and the rest were mostly convinced to go along with it. Come to think of it she couldn’t even recall his first name; beginning of the sixth grade possibly, some teacher in the class they had together may have called roll using it. It was so common, she remembered the woman approving of the decision because three other boys in that same class also had the name. She’d resorted to calling them something like “Name K.” or “Name R.” etc. So using “Wheeler” simplified things by avoiding a fourth one.

Brenda realized she’d been lost in thought and hadn’t heard the last couple of things Nancy had said. She tried the old “I’m sorry you cut out just now” trick, and asked her what was it she said after the part about Entropy eating the pillow while they were gone. “Entropy... you were a bad boy,” she said in her silly pet voice while tapping his nose as he wagged excitedly.

Well, it was understandably difficult to focus, considering the level of weirdness that might be going on with Wheeler’s memories. Brenda was almost finished reading The Cool War by Frederik Pohl, and was suddenly struck by the memory of how they wanted Hake, when his general orders were read to him, to only respond to each one with: “I understand and will comply.” Maybe that trance state was what they were going for. And perhaps that character’s tendency to ramble, ask questions, and at first just forgetting to respond as ordered, explained why he was never fully hypnotized – even though another character made a point to say that he was acting like he was.

Listening to Nancy would have been a pleasant diversion from this if Brenda could’ve gotten her head all the way in the game, so to speak. A bit too young to have been part of the original movement in the 60s, Nancy had managed to not only find but become a resident of a genuine hippie commune when she was 19. And this happened at a historic point that was practically the nadir of popularity for all things hippie in America: 1986. As far as the “aging” adjective she chose to put in front of it? If she was doing it, she was doing it in a very Cher kinda way!

Thirty years of “intelligent and informed vegan eating” according to Nancy, plus seaweed extract, plus a tendency to “shun the Sun” directly on her skin for more than a couple of minutes here and there, may have contributed… she liked carrying and using a parasol. It also gave her ample chances to wear her beloved collection of floppy hats. She also wasn’t a heavy drinker, preferred her weed eaten rather than smoked – and moreover, she practically went into some sort of toxic episode and had to leave the room if anyone ever smoked a regular cigarette.

Whatever she was doing was definitely putting the brakes on the whole aging process. When she was 43, other kids used to think Wheeler was being dropped off at school by his older sisters. Plural of course, and not his mom and sister.

Then a dark thought intruded: Marky Mark. Not the ‘90s singer or rapper-turned-actor himself, but a movie of his that was hitting cable tv at exactly the time she was just thinking of in their childhood. Brenda and Rosa couldn’t understand why their parents wanted to always refer to him that way when the actor clearly had a different name. Then YouTube appeared when they were in elementary school and they immediately understood.

The movie was a bit later; too scary for her, they said. Not until she was older... but what was it called? She thought she might have to goog– Never mind! She got it. The Happening. By the time she was “old enough” Brenda had already seen way scarier shit, in her opinion: the Chucky movies and the Pinhead movies for example. The Marky Mark one had mainly caught her attention because she’d always been a Zooey fan… ever since Elf.

But this formed the basis of a new idea: As an alternative to someone physically invading Wheeler’s room, what if some kind of mysterious signal or combination of chemicals went out all over the world?

Instead of a suicide command, like in The Happening, that made them jump off buildings or throw themselves under heavy duty lawnmowers, maybe it’s simply telling them “take everything you have that’s related to Stalko-Taco, including not just files but pictures and memorabilia, and destroy it all.”

Okay, she thought, “if I kept a top ten list of silliest ideas I’ve ever had, I’d need to take every one of them down a notch and bump one completely off the list, because this would be my new number one entry!” Worth scribbling down a note in paisley-shroom-brain?

She did, as she changed the subject with Nancy and changed position in her chair to get more comfortable. Just three words would do. And she hadn’t made it obvious.

The new subject had just been a “covering-all-bases” line of subtle questioning, and for some reason hadn’t prepared her to expect more weirdness for an answer. Nevertheless it caught her off guard: his mom couldn’t remember having attempted to make the outfit for him either! Fortunately Wheeler had to go and needed his phone to take with him, so it stopped Brenda from visibly commencing a freak out, or at least looking stressed out, on FaceTime. Wheeler and his mom exchanged their goodbyes with her and agreed they’d talk again soon.

What the fuck!? Did the “forget about Stalko-Taco” signal apply to Nancy too? But then why not Brenda? She had been physically there for part of the project. The yellow-ish taco shell color had been a little off. Wheeler’s older sister Sherri had walked through the room and said, during try-ons and pinnings, that he looked like the wrapper from an overnight jumbo pad. It was at a time just before Brenda became “aware” and was not yet requiring any products, and it wasn’t a brand that her own mom or sister used. So since she didn’t get it right away either, fortunately, it ended up being Sherri who had to elaborate.

After explaining to Wheeler what it was, he didn’t say “ew!” or “gross!” or anything but he did seem less than enthusiastic about wearing it. Anyway the idea got back-burnered for awhile when his mom ran out of some kind of elastic material and shortly afterwards he started to think about the mascot resemblance. Her point being though, that he remembered the conversation, the outfit, his sister’s bad joke, and other associated events for months afterwards… Not anymore he didn’t! And neither did his mom, the seamstress, apparently.

A little later she told Renaldo about her hypothetical mass memory erasure. Like the flashy-thing, in Men in Black she said, while leaving out The Happening kind of scenario.

“You mean the neuralizer that that guy was using, um, Jaden Smith‘s father?” He seemed to strain to remember. That was typical Renaldo: knowing the correct technical name of the flashy-thing, but not able to recall one of the most well-known actors of our time by name. He was very focused on tech. Well, good, Brenda thought, that’s what she needed right now.

“Is a neuralizer really technologically possible? I feel like it probably shouldn’t be, but I’m not sure…” she asked tentatively.

“For humans,” he asked, “or for aliens?”

That kind of took Brenda by surprise. She hadn’t thought of an alien angle on Stalko-Taco. He explained the Drake equation in detail and why it was statistically almost certain that there were extraterrestrial civilizations if one expanded the search to an intergalactic scale.

Her mnemonic from school paired things up just so she could recall the order of the sizes correctly: cities, states, nation, the world... are as planets, stars, galaxies, the universe.

So his use of the word intergalactic meant travels to the farthest reaches of the universe? It reminded her of the song by the Beastie Boys that her father had been dancing to in a silly vhs video of himself from the 90s that she and her sister used to laugh hysterically at. This triggered another spark of memory and she made a note to herself with her last mechanical pencil that still had graphite, not wanting to get up and rummage around on her desk during her FaceTime with Renaldo: look in garage for doll house box full of middle school papers. She double underlined the words enthusiastically.

Renaldo went on to expand on the book code, using microwaves for surveillance (the photons from the region of the electromagnetic spectrum known as microwaves – not microwave ovens as that one government imbecile had misinterpreted the word earlier that year), and why playing loud continuous music with speakers against your windows was a good way to mess with listening devices that could be pointed at your house or office from a long distance away. She felt like she should be going for Sarah Conner-mode after the first movie and picking up whatever knowledge and skills she could learn from these dudes. She listened as intently as possible whilst sipping her third coffee, but her mind kept drifting to that dollhouse box.

Alex

The Z. C. Ploughman’s Trophy was supposed to be the mathematical analog of a Nobel Prize. Or so they said. Alex did grapple with the moral – or was it ethical(?) – dilemma of whether or not he deserved it. It was a prize for human mathematicians, right? Although no rules specifically stated this.

He had already been a fairly bright young amateur mathematician in his time, and had access to branches of math that hadn’t been invented yet in 1991. These things alone would’ve allowed him – starting in 1992 – to phone in his performance as an undergrad, to breeze through grad school, to be a fountain of brilliant publications; tenured professorship would only be a matter of time.

But the Ploughman’s Prize? That was alien technology. Whatever that chair was that they had put him in aboard the alien spacecraft way back in – or rather way ahead in – the year 2137? It had sorted out his thoughts. Not just mathematically, but logically in all areas. It made him, in his opinion, the world’s smartest human…

He hadn’t met Prajina lately.

Not in almost 27 years by his reckoning. It was 2018 in the local calendar and he had done well for himself in his chosen time and profession. Prajina was more of an abstract concept now, like a fictional character he once read about. One who he knew would live happily ever after with young Padmanabhan long after Alex was dead. He would be chronologically 100 years old in 2073, though he would be born in 2119. Since no radical advances in human life-extension beyond the age of 130, were going to be forthcoming, he could easily expect to have lived out his natural life before they were ever born.

What Alex failed to realize was that “the aliens” had in fact been an automated device. That a moronic, by alien standards, computer moiety had misread him to be a child from Altair. It had placed him, for about an hour, in a device that was the alien equivalent of a leap pad for toddlers. And yes, until Prajina’s arrival last year, it had made him the world’s smartest human. Well, one of them anyway. If Alex had accepted the philosophical premise of IQ theory, he might’ve been amused to know that his was on par with the extrapolated IQs of Stephen Hawking or Leonardo da Vinci.

What he was also unaware of was that the spheroid’s computer had elected to repair and upgrade his human body. It sent in nano robots to make repairs to his telomeres… and performed a few other simple tricks. In the spheroid-computer’s analysis, the human body that his parents had dressed him in was a temporary job. Since the spheroid wasn’t sure how long the child would need to wait, it extended the life of the child to effectively 5000 Earth years. The body would grow to an apparent age of around 55. Alex would be a distinguished looking scholar, but would continue to live for a few millennia if necessary.

Had the sphere’s computer been equipped with a more thoughtful intelligence, it might have pondered why all humans didn’t repair their bodies in this elementary way. The repairs to Prajina had been more extensive than an infomercial gadget’s computer could fathom. There was every reason to think she would still be around to see this environmental disaster averted in 120,000 Earth years.

Cufflinks had been a gift from the department, to wear to the banquet. He was regarded as an all-around good guy, in an environment that could get a bit competitive; he was the go to guy – the sounding board to bounce ideas off of. Colleagues who hit a rough spot on some proof they were working on could come by after office hours with a bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee sipping whiskey… And do just that. Bounce ideas off him through the night. His suggestions had a way of saving the day.

Obviously any person who says they think better drunk than sober is a fool. But this wasn’t always just about logical thought; it was creative energy as well. People would wake up in the morning and suddenly find that they had scribbled down some brilliant gems of wisdom that seemed to solve all their problems. Alex of course, being from the future, knew all of their work. He knew what they were going to publish and when.

His head cloud was invariably neat and organized. And like clockwork, as was his eccentric habit, he had physically backed up everything all the way up to the Friday morning before the rave at hell-hole. Optical chips, each the size of a starburst fruit chew, with many terabytes each of data storage capacity… contained all the mathematical journals that his parents had bought him subscriptions to. Which meant all the journals. Even though money didn’t exactly mean as much in his century, there were still some advantages to being a baby billionaire.

So he knew precisely what everyone was supposed to publish, and when they would publish it. The cufflinks reminded him of the prolate spheroid form of the “odd sphere” in the rave’s light show. The aliens aboard that craft had been surprisingly flippant about the prospect of him “changing history,” but as he understood it, this had to do with their ability to comfortably navigate betwixt parallel universes. He was simply adding another universe to the “multiverse,” as Heinlein would have phrased it.

That night at the banquet he caught a glimpse of a girl who he was sure had to be an ancestor of Prajina.

Amidst the mandatory hobnobbing and mingling, he made futile attempts to move closer to her and hopefully strike up a conversation to ask her if her last name, by any chance, was Ranganathan.

ℏ♄

It was the human empire called the United States of America that seemed to be calling the shots on policy decisions relating to Earth’s exploration of space. One of their presidents, the one called Jack Black, did not seem to be directly involved at first glance. But at some point during his second term, a new cabinet appointee and two government agency heads were recommended to him. He wisely signed off on these suggestions and the synergy of these three women – correction, one was something called an intersex person and preferred to avoid using the gender binary paradigm – ℏ♄ made a mental note to acquire more information from agent Ranganathan about her society – had initiated a sequence of events that made Earth a truly spacefaring civilization within less than one of their centuries.

This needed to happen during his second term. That is, the term where he “Mooned Congress” as Prajina described it. Although his mooning of the congress of this group of humans was one of the things he would be best remembered for, his actions during that particular legislative versus executive branch conflict were completely irrelevant to Earth’s future space exploration activities.

ℏ♄ was still at a loss to understand the nuances of human behavior and politics. She had seen the videos of the event from C-SPAN as well as some of the emotional news commentaries and interviews afterwards… And still understood nothing of it. But to move so many people to such enthusiastic and emotional responses on both sides, with such a simple and no doubt well-timed gesture… He must truly have been a master of communications. The humans obviously had chosen their leader wisely.

Eventually, when the mission was completed, she would ask her deputy agent Ranganathan to explain the significance of this “mooning gesture.“ What, in particular, did it have to do with any moon? The Earth’s Moon? One of the tiny ones orbiting Mars? Not one of the Jovian Moons which they’d only recently begun to inhabit in her time, right? She had been repeatedly assured that this had no impact whatsoever on space exploration policy. For now Agent Ranganathan regarded ℏ♄ as an all-knowing infinitely wise being. That would be a good state of mind to keep her in throughout the rest of this mission.

When humans of the future were interested in extracting energy from stars by way of Dyson spheres, they had been tinkering with a neutron star. Humans 120,000 ᪠Yrs in the alternate future had mastered the ability to move stars around from one location to another. Very well done to have advanced so far so quickly, she thought. ℏ♄ tried to dredge up the name from her childhood history class, of the particular member of her own species; the engineer of her distant ancestors who’d done the same thing 180 million ᪠Yrs earlier.

Reviewing the report on their alternate future neutron star fiddling, she saw how they had accidentally fed the thing too much mass too quickly, forming a supermassive black hole that became a second galactic nucleus for their “Milky Way” galaxy. ℏ♄ smiled and shook her head slightly, thinking out loud “rookie mistake!”

Keith

For the occasion on which he finally conjured it – in front of people – Keith was employing a combination of drugs, rituals from Wicca books, geography, breakbeat techno and trance music… anything that he could think of to help reproduce the same conditions as that first night. It was mainly the drugs that did it.

Of course they had staked out the same park again. The Moon was in the same phase again, and the time and lighting were identical. At that moment when the taco actually appeared for others as well as himself, it was as if he could hear a choir in his head loudly singing Ode To Joy similar to the scene from Die Hard where Alan Rickman is marveling that the safe is finally open. The rest of his party was in shock when the thing actually appeared. Finally, he thought: they can understand why I was so excited and babbling about this! Wild! It even smelled like a taco.

It was Keith’s fourth time seeing Stalko-Taco, but the amazement had not worn off at all, and at last having it appear for his friends was thrilling. Not just because they now wouldn’t think he was crazy; he cared nothing about that. But because now he could begin to have some serious intellectual discussions about just what in the hell this might mean. He wondered like every time: how is this even possible? Well, it was time for some entertainment; the taco danced for him on the previous occasion – like a little riverdance move. It was just like it could read his thoughts.

He wasn’t thinking about disco dancing on this particular night. Perhaps the thing could pick up on other people’s thoughts as well. His friend Jared might have been having these images in his head. But it was definitely setting up something with strobe lights and a blue colored light. Then he saw some flashes of a red light in the trees above and realized… cops!

It wasn’t the taco preparing a light show for his/her/its(?) next dance number. The cops had pulled up at a leisurely pace, taking this group of stoners completely by surprise. There would be no point in trying to tell them about Stalko-Taco. As far as the police were concerned it was just a bunch of teenagers hanging out stoned in a park on a Friday night. Well, after midnight, so technically Saturday morning. Still before dawn though.

Stalko-Taco wouldn’t have cooperated anyway. It responded before the first car was even in full view, by getting onto its… knees he guessed? And then crouching into a yoga position and morphing into a boulder. The boulder looked like part of the scenery and seemed to belong there.

Had it always been there? Keith had been coming to this park since he was 12 and couldn’t be sure. Would everyone else believe it now? Or would they decide that it was a “consensual hallucination” they were all agreeing to have? Anyway, time to deal with the local fuzz.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.

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marioyuri · 2 years

Text

The…… Afton Family………………..

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blu-joons · 2 years

Text

First Snow ~ Lee Minhyuk

The crunch of the snow underneath your shoes brought a smile to your face, giggling to yourself as Minhyuk took a hold of your hand and helped you to step onto the snow-covered riverbank, heading down to take a seat right by the river which was freezing over.

The two of you had walked for some time, deciding to take a break down the most schenic part of the city, where you could watch the world go by, and enjoy the enjoyment of others too.

“Do you want to know a piece of information that I learnt?” Minhyuk whispered as you sat down, trying to find a comfortable bit of ground underneath the covered ground.

“What have you been reading up about now?” You teased, “I never know with you.”

Having checked the forecast a few days before the snow fell, Minhyuk had decided to do plenty of research on snow in order to make your first snowfall in Seoul special.

It wasn’t just your first Korean snowfall, it was your first with Minhyuk too, which meant it even more special knowing how much the winter usually meant to him too.

Before he spoke, Minhyuk wrapped his arm around your frame and pulled you closer towards him. Your head rested down against his shoulder, trying your best to warm yourself up using Minhyuk’s affection, suddenly missing the warmth from walking.

“Apparently, when it’s your first snow as a couple you’re supposed to make a wish,” he told you.

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, tilting your head back to look up at him. Minhyuk nodded back at you with a wide smile, assuring you that it was a true fact, having ready up plenty about what it all meant.

“If you make a wish then it’s supposed to come true, you can either wish separately or as a couple,” he added, making things more believable for you the more he spoke.

“Do you want to make a wish by the river?” You quizzed, “is that why you made me walk to here?”

The corners of Minhyuk’s mouth continued to turn up, shaking his head at just how well you knew him, relieved his plan had been figured out though with the two of you already at the river.

“Do you want to make a wish? For our first winter snow together?”

“I think it would be quite a cute thing to do.”

You knew that Minhyuk was quite superstitious about these sorts of things, he often followed things like wishes and prayers in the hope that they would come true. If his wish didn’t come true, then Minhyuk wouldn’t miss out on much, but if it did come through, it would be perfect for him.

His grip tightened around you as you went quiet, “do you want to wish as a couple or should we make a wish each?”

“What if we both wish for the same thing?”

Your question had Minhyuk stumped, pondering for a moment before shrugging his shoulders, having not researched far enough into things to know what that could mean for you both.

“Maybe it makes the wish more powerful?”

“But are we allowed to know what each other has wished for?” You then asked him, “how do we know if we wished for the same thing? Or is that something that only the snow knows?”

Minhyuk glanced out over the river with a smile on his face, “maybe we should share what we wish for? I don’t think there’s anything wrong about that.”

From the moment Minhyuk suggested making a wish, you knew exactly what you wanted to wish for. On your first anniversary, when you blew out the candles on your birthday cake that year too, the wish that you had never seemed to change.

“You go first,” you nervously told Minhyuk, not wanting to deal with the attention that came with being the first to make their wish, “I want to hear what your wish is before you hear mine.”

“Alright, I’ll make my wish,” he grinned.

You sat back as Minhyuk began to share his wish, staring out over the water as he spoke, a little too nervous to look you in the eye. Your heart was fast with its beats as Minhyuk shared his wish that the two of you stayed together.

“That’s a lovely wish,” you smiled as Minhyuk finished, reaching into his lap so that you could take a hold of his gloved hand and give it a gentle squeeze too.

“Go on, it’s your turn to share now.”

Your head nodded as you took a moment to compose yourself, looking out over the river too. “My wish is also to make that sure that we stay together, continuing to make memories like we have done today. Even though I know that we both can sometimes be busy, I hope that we’ll at least be able to keep supporting one another.”

Your words brought a blush onto Minhyuk’s cheeks too, “I’ve never had someone support me like you have,” you suddenly told you, letting go of a shy giggle again as he spoke.

“Do you think that our wishes will come true?” You enquired, bringing your eyes away from the river and back across to Minhyuk by your side, “do you have a good feeling?”

Straight away, Minhyuk nodded proudly, “all of the wishes that I’ve made before have come true, and I’ve never been as confident of a wish as I have with this one.”

“I hope that if I keep wishing for this, it will make sure that it keeps coming true,” you smiled, “there’s nothing really else that I could wish for right now.”

“Maybe every time it snows, we should come down here and remake our wish,” Minhyuk suggested, tightening his grip around your hand to keep you warm, “I know it’s a bit of a walk, but I think it will be worth it to keep the wish alive.”

Despite how long the walk had been for you, the sentiment behind it most definitely made it special for you both. If it meant that it would mean that the two of you would be forever, then the walk would be worth it again and again.

“What about if we make sure that we come to this spot too?” You added, suddenly finding yourself as superstitious as Minhyuk was.

As soon as he read about the idea, he knew it would appeal to you. Despite how sceptical you were at the beginning, there was never any harm in making a wish.

Minhyuk’s eyes continued to study you, noticing the shy smile that was on your face. “So, judging from your wish, is forever really something that you want to spend with me?” Minhyuk asked, teasing you slightly.

“It is, but I know that forever is what you want with me too,” you reminded him, remembering exactly what Minhyuk’s wish was too.

“I’ll never shy away from admitting that forever is what I want with you,” he smirked, “I think just about everyone knows how I feel about you too.”

Your head nodded, finding yourself a little flustered once again. “Forever seems inevitable when it’s what we’ve both wished for.”

“And my wishes have always come true too.”

---

Masterlist

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greenplumbboblover · 3 years

Photo

(Original post from my Patreon)

Hiya Everyone!

Some might have followed all the cool things that I've been slowly but carefully been working on :) I figured I've worked on plenty of things to make it worth another post!

I don't have much to offer regarding individual interests yet, since I've been mainly focused on the basics of 'leveling' up the interests passionate score at the beginning of participating in an hobby/interest.

1. Visually seeing a sim's interests score

I wish I could've added this to the relationship panel, but that would mean this mod would become a core mod just for this UI piece :p So I decided the best approach would be to click on any sim and showing which interest your sim has OR showing what interests your sim has discovered. It's a bit easier to find out than the trait 'discovery' of another sim :)

To do:

Adding actual score numbers OR percentages into passionate/dislike

Adding a button that shows the hobbies linked and how far your sim is into that hobby (Novice, Intermediate, Master)

Clean up the UI a little (Top space needs to be way less, text is not 100% centered.) Maybe adding icons for each Interest? And adding the name of the sim whose interests you're currently checking out.

2. Debate About...

A social Interaction! If your sim loves the interest AND has finished the Research (which means your sim has now 11 points into said interest), then your sim can debate the interest with others!

It pretty much works the same as discovering a trait of a different sim; through this, they can find out if that sim HATES or LOVES that interest. And shows the animation accordingly to that. They'll also leave a notification. Another cool thing is, if you find any sims that are compatible with the interest AND your own sim has a passionate score of under 13 (20 is still the max), they can get skill points to higher their passionate score!

If a sim does know that another sim loves said interest, they'll just be talking and nothing interest will happen.

There is however a 25% chance (which can be tuned) That they can convince a sim to at least try the interest and you'll be giving the other sim a passionate point into that interest. This will only work if the sim you're talking to is between 10 and 13 points.

Two Compatible Interest sims:

Two Incompatible Interest sims:

(Which is Ironically Gunther and Cornelia :p I actually ported their pre-set interests from TS2, so they have a lot of conflicting interests... So that's on EA lol)

When Successfully convincing a sim to try an Interest....

Pie menu:

3. Rant About...

While Talking and debating about an interest your sim is passionate about is cool and all, sometimes a sim just needs to rant about that ONE Interest they absolutely hate (and maybe the entire town is into!)

(Fun fact: most of Sunset valley's sims are super into the Environment because of their traits or TS2 interests > TS3, except for Agnes Crumplebottom... I guess she was destined to also grump about people's interests rather than just love...)

Rant about's animations are pretty much just the 'complain about' animations. However, as you might have guessed, if 2 sims hate that interest, they'll show you and express the happiness of finding another sim who hates it. If its a sim that loves it, they'll let you know they don't appreciate the rant...

Here are Bella and Mortimer loving their little rant about Sports:

4. Convince To Pursue...

If that 25% success rate is not working on a sim you absolutely want to go into that interest, Or because they simply just happen to be exceeding over that 9 (or lower) or 13 (or higher) score, then this is a great workaround!

If your sim is a master in at least one hobby and are 100% passionate about that interest, then they might have a chance on getting that sim actually interested into trying. Of course, this comes with a 'success' score which is depending on the following stats:

Compatible traits with the interest (if incompatible, then that will subtract points from the final score too!)

Their relationship score

Any skills they've been up to that might fit with the Interest type?

No worries about the chances though and having to calculate all this yourself on a spreadsheet, the interaction will exactly show how much chance your sim has on convincing said sim!

5. Books!

Part of researching an Interest is reading! Unfortunately, I'm still looking into a way to get them to work properly in the bookstore, but for now, your sim can look for them in the Library :)

(I might have had too much fun with the titles :p)

The very first time your sim finishes it, they'll be getting an interest point. After that, it's 0.10 per reading (Also tunable). So it's possible to use it as a 'skill book' basically, just not the main element of participating in an interest.

Each interest-only has 1 book.

6. Magazines

You might remember from TS2 that each hobby has a magazine you can get. However, that can only be purchased in a magazine rack or being phoned up for a subscription.

However, I felt it was more suitable for it being a phone interaction or through a computer. Plus, it's just more or less a "nowadays" thing.

I was thinking of also making the magazines you get per week accessible to read on your computer/phone, but that yet has to be implemented.

About the magazines:

Each interest has a magazine that you can subscribe to. That magazine will be getting a randomly generated title. Now it may happen that "issue number 44" has the same title as "Issue number 3" because of that. But then, if you've ever had a magazine subscription, you might have noticed that magazine companies have a tendency to also re-use or recycle already written articles/sections in newer magazines whenever they seem fit.

Of course, you can only purchase any magazine interests you've actively been researching ;)

And after that, the computer will let you know all the details!

(I still need to fix that weird cancel button thingy :p)

And in case you're scared that you're not sure which magazines you have a subscription with and what's a new interest you can get it for...

The interaction will be greyed out ;)

And then just wait till Tuesdays to find your magazines!

I'm still working on a new cover for each different interest type magazine. Otherwise, I might just use TS2's :) But currently, they just got the comic covers!

---------------

And that's about it! A lot of the things changed are very 'behind the scenes', like rewriting the instantiation of interests and fixing bugs and glitches while I was playtesting it :)

#wip #hobbiesandinterests #interestshobbiesprogresslog #Work In Progress #the sims 3 #ts3 #sims3 #Long post warning

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lichenaday · 2 years

Note

Since lichen is a composite organism, what would theoretically happen if you separated each part? What would de-lichenized fungus look like, and vice versa?

Oooo, a great question. SO. As a reminder, lichens are (usually) and association between an ascomycete fungus and a photobiont colony made up of green algae (90% of lichens) or cyanobacteria (10% of lichens), sometimes both. There are also unicellular fungus (yeast) in there, and maybe some others, but let's focus on the fungus and the photobiont. The green algae and cyanobacteria that live inside the lichenized fungus can survive on their own, and the fact that they can be found in various habitats is what allows lichens to reproduce sexually and disperse fungal spores containing only the fungal constituent. These spores disperse far and wide, but only those that successfully form an association with a photobiont will grow and develop. The fungus CANNOT survive on its own without the photobiont. If the photobiont dies, the fungus dies. Lichen species are typically specialized to form associations with specific algae types, but some are more adaptable. Trebouxia green algae are the most common partners, and are microscopic and unicellular, so unless they are forming a thick algal mat, you won't seem them with the naked eye. But here they are under the microscope:

Aren't they adorable? Tiny little unicellular plant pals! Trentapholia is another common green alagal partner that doesn't actually look all that green. You do often see mats of these filementous algal pals growing on tree trunks, and they look like this:

source

Looks kinda like a lichen, right?

Cyanobacteria, like nostoc, can also be seen with the naked eye when they form filamentous communities like this:

source

Also kinda looks like a lichen. It's easier to form a structure when you're a filamentous microscopic organism. So why team up with a lichen at all? Well, it's first and foremost not exactly a "choice," but lichens provide added protection and structure, and make a nice home for colonies of these photobionts.

How the different organisms come together and form a composite organism is complicated, and quite frankly a bit beyond me to explain. Development and physiology is not my strong suite, but I love these sorts of asks because it forces me to research these topics more. So hey, we're all learning here! Thanks for the ask! for more info, check out What is a Lichen?

#lichen #lichens #lichen asks #physiology #symbiosis #lichenologist #lichenology #composite organisms #algae #cyanbacteria #fungus #fungi #biology #ecology #mycology #science #scientist #can I call myself a scientist yet really?#IDK future scientist

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news

Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains. Because Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, it periodically erupts in ghastly scandal. Sometimes whistleblowers or reporters reveal historic crimes, including (but not limited to) deliberately helping to foment genocide.

Sometimes, the scandals are contemporary: either Facebook blithely announces it’s going to do something terrible, or we learn of some terrible thing underway from leaks or investigations.

Thanks to a history of anticompetitive mergers — Whatsapp, Instagram, Onavo and more — based on fraudulent promises to antitrust regulators, Facebook has grown to nearly three billion users — except FB doesn’t have users, really — it has hostages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

As Facebook’s own internal memos show, the company doesn’t just buy up competitors so users have nowhere to flee to, it also engineers in high “switching costs” to make it more painful to leave the system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

For example, Facebook’s internal memos show that the manager for its photo products set out to seduce users into entrusting FB with their family photos, because that way quitting Facebook would mean abandoning your memories of your kids, departed grandparents, etc.

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers — their true customers.

The polite term for what FB has is a “two-sided market” (selling advertisers to users and users to advertisers). The technical term is “a monopoly and a monoposony” (a monopsony is a market with a single buyer).

The colloquial term?

“A racket.”

A scam. A bezzle. A blight.

Facebook gouges advertisers on rate cards, then lies about the reach of its ads (like when it lied about the popularity of video, evincing a media-wide “pivot to video” that bankrupted dozens of news- and entertainment-sites).

Facebook didn’t set out to destroy journalism by price-fixing ads, lying to advertisers and media outlets.

FB set out to acquire a monopoly and extract monopoly rents from advertisers and publishers, with a pathological indifference to how these frauds would harm others.

Having shown a willingness to destroy journalists and media outlets to extract a few more billions for its shareholders, Facebook has attracted a lot of enemies in the media.

If you’re a whistleblower with a story to tell, there’s a journalist whose editor will allocate the resources to report your story out in depth. The combination of a rotten company and a lot of pissed off journalists produces a lot of bad ink for the company.

But the fact remains that FB has a vast pool of hostages, billions of them, and it gets to decide what they see, when and how. I used to joke with my human rights activist friends that the best use for Facebook was showing people why and how to leave Facebook.

FB’s response was predictable. As Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel write in the New York Times, FB’s Project Amplify is a Zuckerberg-led initiative to systematically promote positive coverage of FB and its founder — including articles that originate with FB itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html

That is, FB staffers are charged with writing puff pieces about how great the company is, and FB’s algorithm will push these ahead of reporting by actual journalists who present detailed, factual, multi-sourced accounts of the company’s fraudulent and depraved conduct.

Project Amplify marks a pivot from FB’s longstanding policy of issuing insincere apologies for its scandals. Company sources told the reporters that everyone figured out these don’t convince anyone, so the company turned to pushing happy-talk quackspeak instead.

One of the leaders of this project is Alex Schultz, “a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year,” but the major impetus comes from Zuck himself, one of the most hated men on the planet.

Amplify is just one of FB’s strategies for distorting the discourse about itself. In July, it neutered Crowdtangle, an widely used analytics tool that showed that FB’s top posts were unhinged far-right disinformation and conspiracies.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth

And Facebook has declared all-out legal warfare (accompanied by a disinformation campaign) to kill Adobserver, an NYU project that tracks paid political disinformation on the platform.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

By shutting down Crowdtangle and Adobserver, FB hopes to control the academic findings about the company’s role in disinformation, hate, and harassment. The company runs its own research portal where academics are expected to access data about the platform.

But as with the journalists who report on it, FB has heaped abuse on the academics who research it.

Its portal data was bad, leaving PhD and masters’ theses are at risk of retraction. Mid-dissertation researchers have been set back to square one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#facebook-sent-flawed-data-to-misinformation-researchers

In retrospect, Facebook’s decision to game its own algorithm to push pro-company quackspeak seems inevitable. It’s not just that no one believes the company’s apologies anymore (if they ever did) — it’s that the company seems incapable of hiring competent spin doctors.

Take the WSJ’s blockbuster “Facebook Files,” a series of reports detailing the company’s willingness to harm children, commit fraud, and allow millions of favored, powerful people to violate its rules with impunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-16/facebook-s-promised-to-gain-the-public-s-trust

FB’s response was genuinely pathetic. In a perfunctory blog post, its top flack — the widely despised British politician Nick Clegg, paid millions to front FB on the global stage — vilified the WSJ’s reporting without producing any factual rebuttals.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

It’s the kind of ham-fisted policy advocacy that Facebook is (in)famous for. Who can forget the absolute shitshow in India over its Internet Basics program, when it bribed telcos to exempt FB and the services it hand-picked from their data-caps?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

This Net-Neutracidal maneuver, falsely billed as a way to bring the internet to poor people (something is absolutely does not do), was the subject of a consultation by India’s telco regulators.

FB pushed deceptive alerts to millions of its Indian users, tricking them into sending a flood of form-letters to the regulator urging it to leave Internet Basics intact.

But whoever drafted the form letter didn’t bother to check whether it addressed any of the questions the regulator was consulting on. That made these millions of letters non-responsive to the consultation, so the regulator ignored them.

FB lost! It’s almost as though people who are good at fighting policy battles don’t want to work for Facebook, and the only talent they can attract are the kinds of opportunistic blunderers that no one takes seriously and everyone hates.

Weird, that.

#pluralistic

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desidarling123 · 3 years

Text

FACT CHECK: Did JKR sue people for writing Wolfstar fanfiction? [FALSE] [with sources]

So, if you're at all active in the HP fandom, and ESPECIALLY if you're on TikTok, you've likely come across a post or video claiming the following:

JKR LITERALLY SUED PEOPLE OVER WOLFSTAR FANFICTION! AND THAT'S ALSO WHY SHE MADE REMADORA CANON -- TO SPITE THE SHIPPERS!

I'm not sure who first started this claim or how its various permutations grew, but it spread at the speed of light across social media. This widely-circulated meme summarizes it:

For the LONGEST time, I didn't know what to make of it. The claims were vague enough that they seemed like they could be true -- after all, JKR is a megacunt and a renowned TERF. You don't need to fact-check either of those things.

But then -- for the first time ever -- I came across a video on TikTok claiming that what was being said was NOT true, and that it was being used SPECIFICALLY to stir up drama. Which was... crazy, to say least.

And that led me, well, to do my own research & fact-check. I've taken the original video's structure and added some exposition as well.

So here's the truth:

That 2003 case the above meme refers to? Not even REMOTELY what the situation was about. Hell, not even CLOSE.

In 2003, JKR sent a cease-and-desist letter to an explicit adult HP fan fiction website, called "Restricted Section". Here's the letter:

As the above letter states, the site was sent a notice because of overarching concerns that minors would accidentally stumble onto the sexually explicit content the site hosted after searching up 'Harry Potter'.

The hand-wringing over minor safety probably seems dated now, but it was, in fact, standard practice in the early 2000s - sexually explicit fan content was being removed across the internet for those exact concerns. In fact, just the year before, in 2002, fanfiction.net was purged of NC-17 content (which would happen one more time, in 2012).

I feel ridiculous stating it, but just to be clear -- in the above letter and all my subsequent research, there's NO evidence she went after Wolfstar -- or any ship, for that matter -- directly.

In fact, the letter goes an extra mile to declare that "our clients (JKR) make no complaint about innocent fan fiction written by genuine Harry Potter fans", but that, "there is plainly a very real risk that impressionable children... will be directed... to your sexually explicit website".

But that leads in nicely to the next point -- the website DIDN'T shut down, as per the letter's request. Instead, they added password protection to ensure only members older than 17 were accessing it.

OK, but why did JKR and Warner Bros go after this site in the first place? Most believe it was because of a widely-publicized article in THE SCOTSMAN that talked about the website. But, once again, this article doesn't go after Wolfstar in particular -- it only goes after Harry x Draco and Harry x Snape. The inclusion of latter was arguably what generated the biggest controversy -- the pairing of Harry, a fictional minor, with an adult character, in slash stories largely written by adult heterosexual women, was not one that could be cast in a good light to the general public. It's hardly a surprise JKR's lawyers sought to do something before the controversy got out of hand and worried parents started to make calls.

What I said before still goes, though. The legal core of the issue was ALWAYS to do NOT with the ships, but the EXPLICIT NATURE of the work -- and the (very real) concerns that the series' then-mostly-under-18 readership could find said works with very little as far as guardrails were concerned. (I know, because I was one of those kids)

TLDR; JKR did NOT sue people over Wolfstar fanfiction, she sent a cease-and-desist notice to a website that was not taking adequate precautions to prevent minors from accessing the explicit adult content on the site.

To be clear -- this is not meant to be a statement on what to ENJOY in your fandom ships. You can ship Wolfstar, Remadora, both, neither -- it really doesn't matter. I think the fandom is critical enough of the author to have reclaimed her work on our own terms, and people should be allowed to just, idk enjoy things.

But propagating straight-up falsehoods is dangerous, especially when it comes at the expense of 1) a safe fandom environment (see: the current fandom ship wars between Remadora and Wolfstar, which are difficult to watch) and 2) serves as a distraction from the ACTUAL garbage JKR engages in (of which there is plenty -- no need to make it up lol).

Also, truth be told -- inter-fandom ship wars don't generally add anything productive to the necessary conversations that need to be had about her works. The thought that dashing fan ships was a key motivator in her writing rather than, I don't know, plot concerns, is ludicrous on face, and gives fans a level of control over the original writer that just... doesn't exist IRL? And certainly didn't back then?

And again -- the books would have been VERY different series, plot-wise, if Sirius Black HAD lived. Him being in a relationship with Remus, confirmed or implied, has no relation to that decision.

If we have talk Harry Potter, I'd rather talk about just about anything else -- the racism, the misogyny, the lack of any sort of organic queer rep and JKR's inability to just own up to the problems in her works. But the minutiae of ship wars -- and the inevitable stream of disinformation that comes with it, sans any kind of concrete evidence -- is one I'd prefer to pass on.

SOURCES:

Cease-and-Desist Letter Copy: http://archive.is/HTLsq

THE SCOTSMAN Article: http://archive.is/VdEaY

Restricted Section Updates Page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030815233612/http://www.restrictedsection.org/news.php

BONUS: The original TikTok video I came across whose structure and sources I shamelessly stole to read and build out my argument. I copied a lot of their wording because it explained it better than I could, you just get some bonus snarky commentary from yours truly

#wolfstar #remadora #atyd #all the young dudes #jk rowling #harry potter #fandom meta #fandom fact check

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thatfragilecapricorn30 · 3 years

Note

Prompt: Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.

thank you anon! i hope you like this. i'm still accepting prompts based on this list if anyone wants to send one!!

msr | ftf missing scene | 1k | tagging @today-in-fic

Mulder startled awake with a gasp. His head was pounding and his vision blurred, but those symptoms were nothing compared to the painful tingling of his extremities. Mulder was lying on a metallic floor with just an emergency blanket pillowed under his head. A figure - a woman - moved closer and held out a cup.

“Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.”

The woman gripped the back of his neck and helped him sit up enough so he could swallow the cool liquid without choking. It would have been nice if the drink was warmer, but it soothed his dry throat nonetheless.

When his blurred vision finally cleared, Mulder could see that it wasn’t just any woman, it was his partner. The memories of the past 36 hours began rushing back: Scully’s anaphylactic shock, the gunshot wound to his head, and a race across the world to save her.

“Scully,” he croaked, his voice still weak along with the rest of his body.

“Mulder,” she stated simply and smiled tentatively at him. Her face was pale under the bright red frostbite on her cheeks. Combined with her wet titan hair clinging to her skin, she could have been a siren, if the water of Antarctica was liquid instead of frozen.

Mulder sat up quickly, filled with relief that they were both alive and apparently safe. They were in the sno-cat he “borrowed” from the scientific research facility, which was his first stop on arrival to the continent. The only light inside came from a portable lantern, but the heater was pumping out hot air, which brought the indoor temperature to a more habitable degree than outside. Though the heater had its work cut out for it, as high winds whipped across the metal frame, sending bursts of cold air through the parts of the sno-cat that had poor seal. The storm must have started after they made it to the vehicle.

“How did we get here? How long have I been out?” Mulder asked. The last thing he actually remembered was the alien spaceship, the one that Scully somehow missed.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she whispered, her eyes wide and incredulous. “I think we helped each other get here, because I only remember parts of the journey. But you were unconscious only about twenty minutes. You passed out as soon as we climbed inside.”

Mulder marveled at whatever forces allowed two very sick and injured people to miraculously survive such harsh conditions and very low odds. Even though they weren’t out of the woods (or ice) yet, the fact that they made it this far made Mulder extraordinarily more optimistic than any person in their situation should be.

Scully was still thinking practically though. “Mulder, were you shot?” she asked, pointing to his forehead.

“Yeah,” he admitted, rubbing his temples. “Right after you passed out in my hallway. I’m okay, though,” he added after seeing her shocked expression. Luckily the bullet had only grazed him, but it did leave him with a nasty headache that was returning in full force.

“How are you doing?” he squinted at her. It was hard to do any type of assessment in the low light of the lantern.

“I’m fine,” she responded. “Just weak.”

“Here, you should drink some of this too,” Mulder said, holding out the cup.

She shook her head and turned away. “I already tried, but I threw it up. I don’t have the energy for more vomiting.”

Some of Mulder’s optimism began to slip away. He gave her the vaccine but who knew what kind of side effects it had? Who knew that it even worked in the first place?

To make matters worse, Scully began coughing, large gasps that wracked her whole frame.

When she finished, she was out of breath. Okay, time to get out of here, he thought, moving to the driver’s seat of the sno-cat.

“Mulder, we can’t go anywhere until the storm lets up. There is basically no visibility right now.”

“Scully, I don’t know if there is time to wait,” he responded, concerned about both the gas and Scully’s declining state.

She crawled over to the seat and grasped his arm. “Please, Mulder. If we get lost and run out of gas, then we’re really screwed. We have enough gas to keep the heater going for a few more hours before we have to make our way to the research facility.”

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows, surprised that she was so knowledgeable about the sno-cat's limitations. It was a wonder she was even alive, let alone thinking clearly.

“While you were asleep, I looked at the maps and did some fuel calculations,” Scully said in between coughs.

Mulder stared at her, a big grin on his face. She really was incredible. They were both definitely suffering from hypothermia, not to mention Mulder’s gunshot wound and Scully’s exposure to an unknown alien virus, but somehow they were going to make it out alive. He had a good feeling about it.

“How many more hours exactly?” he questioned.

Scully checked the clock on the dashboard. “Two hours and forty-six minutes.”

Mulder smiled again. “Why don’t you try to sleep and I’ll watch to see if the storm lets up?” He also wanted to monitor her condition without her realizing it.

Scully disagreed. “Unfortunately, I think we need to stay awake. You most certainly have a concussion and we’re both experiencing hypothermia. The last thing you want to do is fall asleep.”

Mulder conceded, “Okay, well then you need to at least keep warm. You should sit in front of the heater so that your hair will dry.”

“Mulder, I don’t want to take up all the heat,” she argued back, still concerned more for his well-being than her own.

He gently guided her so that she was seated on the floor, her head level with the air vent from the dashboard. “I insist. I’m going to need you to navigate later, so I can’t have you turning into a popsicle.”

Surprisingly Scully didn’t argue any further. She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the hot air envelop her. Mulder pulled the zipper of her oversized jacket all the way to the collar, moving the hood so that her hair could dry. He grasped her hands and brought them to his mouth to blow warm air onto them, trying to speed up the process.

“Mulder?” she asked, eyes still closed.

“Yes, Scully?”

“Can you sing so I don’t fall asleep?”

“Ouch, my singing can’t be that bad!” he joked.

“No, you have a nice voice. I just need something to concentrate on to stay awake,” she explained.

Mulder thought back to another cold night spent out in the wilderness, cuddled with Scully to keep warm. He watched the icy storm rage outside but felt hopeful anyway. They were together - and alive. That’s all Mulder could ask for.

He began to sing.

#please ignore any inaccuracies regarding sno-cats and antarctic weather conditions lol #all that matter is mulder and scully tho really #the x files fanfic #txf fic #msr #the x files #txf #dana scully #fox mulder

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aphrodite-would-be-proud · 3 years

Text

🕯Anon said : Can I request headcanons with a Modern Au Teacher!Erwin and his s/o is a slightly famous artist like a painter that’s always in the basement. Maybe have a moment where the art teacher begs him to bring them to the school when they find out who Erwin is with. ? 🕯

Teacher!Erwin brings you, a famous painter, to work.

{ Erwin x Reader | tw:none | fluff, suggestive kiss | modern }

{ "Leisurely Sunday in the Villa Comunale in Naples" 1993 by Francesco Tammaro Born in 1939 }

Grassy fields surrounded the old big building as the trees undressing of their leaves onto the sidewalks, currently being swept away by the janitor.

Students were filling the halls, the sound of chatter and laughter following after. Outside in the yard, the whistle of the gym teacher could be heard following by heavy footsteps as the football team started their morning practice. Not long after the bell rang, the halls were empty again only for some crumbled papers and snack covers left behind.

"Pigs, all of them. There's a trashcan right there." Levi scrunched his nose at the smell of axe spray and deodorant near the trophy cases. "Tell Miche to spray his running monkeys with soap every once in a while."

"Now now, what got you so grumpy this early in the morning?" Adjusting the lab coat on their suit, Hange replied. "Oh cut the kids some slack, their big game is coming soon or something."

"And he's been implenting a more strick hygiene policy." Said Erwin, holding a plastic binder with a stack of exam papers, mostly marked red. "He's trying to convince the principal to ban deodorant during practice because it's making his nose burn."

Huffing in response, Levi crossed his arms. "Yeah because the principle will definitely listen to him after that whole sniffing people scandal- Hey! Brats, don't you have classes"

As Levi went to scold the two students currently hanging a handmade poster for the upcoming game on the wall, a couple of students came up to Hange, looking in a hurry as they explained the Science lab was locked and they're getting tired of sitting on their backpacks outside.

Soon after, Erwin too made his way to class.

Upon entering the room, the talking quieted down as the squeaking sound of people going back to their own desks followed. Walking upfront, Erwin dropped the binder on his desk beside the empty mug, a couple of groans filled the room as the students realised what it was.

"Mr.Smith, didn't we just take the test yesterday? Shouldn't you like...I don't know double check or something? Maybe you rushed grading them?" One student called from the back as some chuckles and agreement followed from the rest.

Taking the stacks of papers out, Erwin made his way between the students, giving each on their graded paper. "I don't know Connie, maybe you should've double checked your answers instead?"

The playful atmosphere of the classroom was cut short as the door slammed open, making everyone freeze in their seats, none other than the art teacher walked in.

Nile Dawk, current art teacher who fails at least a quarter of his class each year. Who has oh just the most swell relationship with Erwin and anyone can tell you that.

You see, Erwin adored art, both the classic and the modern. Nile admired history and knew just how each art era had its link to a historical event.

And the pair couldn't stand each other.

Crossing his arms, Nile said "Erwin, you have explaining to do." Before dropping a newly printed magazine onto his desk,

Its cover, showing a brand new art museum that just finished construction and is hosting a lot of different paintings from unrecognised underground talents.

"Nile, I think you misunderstand. I teach history, I'm not an architect." He said raising an eyebrow, before tilting his head as if he's deep in thought, "or do you want me to explain what a museum is?"

Sneering at his remark, Nile flipped through the pages till he reached a certain one. It depicted a one of the paintings that will be displayed in the museum, a portrait of a blond man with broad shoulders and sharp blue eyes seemingly distracted from reality by the book in his hand.

The soft glow of the fireplace next to the red armchair he sat in, adding a certain orange hue to his light complexion. His long fingers holding the leather book as a glass-stained maroon vase sat on the small table behind him, containing a single red rose.

It's clear from the details poured into his eyes and the shading for each strand of his hair that whoever made this painting, held a great affection for the man.

"Now Mr.history teacher, care to explain why your face is on this painting? By one of the few promising artists of this useless generation?."

Hushed murmurs filled the classroom as students took out their phones googling the name y/n, showing each other the said painting while staring with wide eyes at Erwin.

Rubbing his temple with his fingers, Erwin frowned at the scene the other was causing. Knowing very well it won't take long for this fire to spread, he decided to add more fuel to the flames.

He took a long breath, before telling the class to quiet down with a stern expression.

"Mr.Dawk, are you really asking me why y/n, my love, the person I'm married to, paint me?" He said facing the other, looking directly into his eyes. "Maybe you should ask y/n instead if you're so insisting on forcing yourself in my private life."

Narrowing his eyes, Nile snorted. "You know what Erwin? Maybe I should.

And that's the story Erwin told you while having dinner that day.

He looks at you with pleading eyes as if to silently apologise for dragging you into this mess, his plate still half full and drink untouched.

Please reassure him that it's alright, you don't mind taking a day off to visit his work

He'll reach out to gently squeeze your hand in his, whispering a small thank you as his thumb rubs against your skin.

He also says he'll do the dishes that day, you can go rest and he will join you in bed after a while, a relieved smile on his face.

The next day, as he wakes up early like usual. He makes sure to wake you up with a kiss, stroking your face before murmuring "good morning" against your lips.

He knows because of your work you don't wake up early, so he's really patient and understanding if you happen to get grumpy for a while.

Handing you a warm drink to help wake you up, he'll make sure you eat something before changing and heading out.

You're not surprised to find him already done and dressed himself.

Hair as perfect as usual.

On the drive to school, you'll feel the cool morning air against your skin while your head leans back into the seat, eyes fluttering shut.

You can have your mini nap, Erwin will make sure to wake you up when you arrive.

When arriving, he made sure to open the car door for you. The fresh air and green scenery surrounded you both.

When arriving at the teacher's lounge, you're almost surprised to see two people already there from how early it was.

The first was sitting on the old black couch near the window, his dirty blond bangs covering his eyes. The second you could see making tea on the other side of the room Where the kitchenware was.

Both of them glanced up when Erwin called their name, staring at the way he had an arm wrapped around your waist while introducing you.

It was Miche who came first, standing from the couch you noticed just how tall he was. Offering your hand for him to shake, only for him to pull you into a tight hug instead.

He pulled away, tapping his nose before a smile slowly formed on his face, nodding in approval

The second was Levi, who ignored your offered hand only to sip on his teacup, assessing you up and down.

Not too long after, a person with a messy ponytail and a colorful lab coat arrived.

They took one glance at you, then the matching wedding rings on yours and Erwins fingers before taking an immediate interest in you.

Hange asked questions faster than you can answer them, with sparkling eyes and a wide smile.

At the first sign of you being uncomfortable, it was Levi who stepped in to tell Hange to tone it down before apologizing to you.

And it was Miche who got you some snacks from the teacher's secret stash after.

You've heard stories and one sided phone calls about them from Erwin, yet it still didn't prepare you for actually meeting them.

While overwhelming at first, the more time you spent talking as Erwin reassuringly sat beside you, you noticed how genuinely interested they were.

Levi, while seemingly cold, was actually the most considerate and paid the most attention to you. He'd step in whenever things got too much and would be really polite despite having a colourful language. By the end of it he even made you some tea, something that seemed to surprise Erwin and the rest.

"It's just...he never trusted someone this quickly before."

Hange was genuinely interested in you, having researched you and your art beforehand. They really were eager to hear even the most boring details and were capable of understanding your way of thinking. They even gave you a small rubber frog they carried around in their pocket to hand out. It would've been cute wasn't for the fact immediately after they mentioned the real human skeleton they have pinned to the lab door.

"His name is bean! I've been actually investing into getting him a human heart for Valentine's day, but all the ones I've found so far were in jars."

The most quiet of them was actually Miche, although he'd smile at you whenever you looked his way. Despite his intimidating size you learned how harmless and easy going he is, the most chill out of the three. He did mention knowing Erwin for the longest time out of them, having been childhood friends even. He promised to tell you all the embarrassing secrets Erwin tried to erase from existence as he added his number on your phone.

"He ain't as proper as he looks, I got the dirt on him."

You saw Erwin's jaw tightening before he changed the subject quickly, giving the side eye to Miche who only smiled back.

The rest of the day went by smoothly, Erwin didn't leave your side for one minute and made sure to check on you constantly.

He introduced you to the rest of the teachers and seemed only amused at any teasing he got from students passing by.

By the end of the day, as the sun began to set and the students already done with their clubs, you and Erwin had one final place to go.

The art classroom.

"Just one more thing before that" he told you, guiding you into an empty classroom.

You saw his desk, the mug you gifted him on father's day as a joke sat on his desk, several paper sketches you made were framed next to it.

It was his classroom, with only you and him, the door open.

He closed it.

You stood against his desk as he moved closer, arms circling you, not breaking eye contact.

"May I?" He whispered, licking his own lips.

As he got your permission, he pressed his lips against yours, arm stroking your back before pulling away after some seconds.

He rubbed your swollen bottom lip with his thumb, a small smile on his face before pulling away.

Your heart was still fluttering against your chest as you left the classroom, while Erwin seemed to be smiling at nothing with a slight curl to his lips, steps more lighter than before.

Right after that he took you to the art classroom. The smell of oil paint and sound of brushes scratching against paper filling the air.

Stepping inside, the scratching sound stopped as a certain black haired man stared at you, eyes wide and lips parted.

Disbelief clear in his face, Nile was quick to mask his emotions as he noticed the smugness Erwin was in.

"Nile, I'd like to introduce you to my lovely darling, y/n." There was a chipper to Erwin's voice as he leaned in to kiss your cheek.

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wolfieyoungblood · 3 years

Text

𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬𝐢

pairing: stiles stilinski x fem!reader

trope: best friends to lovers

summary: when stiles finds out how much you miss fireflies in beacon hills’ preserve, he takes you out on a surprise boat trip and quite literally lights up your world

word count: 3k

song: please and thank you by wildcat! wildcat!

a/n: hey guys, waddup, here’s my first fic on this blog. i’ve actually already posted this as a peter parker one shot on my main blog, but since i originally wrote this for stiles, i thought i might as well post the original on here:) enjoy!

* * *

Slamming the car door shut, you let your back fall against the Jeep while you hugged yourself tightly. Your gaze flitted across your surroundings as Stiles snatched the keys from the ignition and grabbed his backpack. He had refused to weigh you in on its content, keeping it just like the whole point of this spontaneous expedition a big mystery.

The fact that you could be snuggling in the warmth of your bed right now, made you groan and you had to resist the urge to bang your head against the nearest tree. Stiles, on the other hand, didn’t seem to share the same sentiment at all as he stopped at your side with a big grin plastered on his face.

“Stop smiling so devilishly,” you grunted, and he looked at you offended.

“How was that a devilish smile?” His arms fell to his side.

“It’s the glimmer in your eyes.” You deadpanned. “Like you’re about to meet with Satan for Sunday brunch or something.”

He rolled his eyes at your words, dangling the gloves he brought for you in front of your yearning eyes before stuffing them into his jacket with a smirk and walking off. He ignored your cry and kept his gaze at the small path leading into the woods. When you fell into step with him, you walked next to each other in silence, letting the leaves underneath your shoes have a conversation of their own. Your thoughts wandered, and you pondered once more why you were even here.

It was only 7 P.M. but considering it was late autumn, it wouldn’t take long until your bodies would be swallowed by the blanket of the evening. The awareness that tonight was a full moon didn’t necessarily calm your nerves either. Images of fangs and claws took form in front of your eyes, and you quickly shook off those terrifying notions.

Realizing that you had spent some time in silence now, your eyes darted to Stiles. Just like you, he had been in deep thoughts as his face was pulled into a slight frown. But when you were about to reach out, his scattered moles caught your attention, prompting your gaze to travel over each of them with captivation. Aware of your boring eyes on his face, the boy looked up and caught your gaze with a cocked brow. You quickly strapped a meek smile to your face to cover up your flustered state, which he luckily returned without any teasing comments.

Finally, the trees around you became more familiar and scarcer in number and soon you had arrived at the destination of the night.

A wide lake stretched out before you, reaching into the woods for miles. As predicted, there was no one around, leaving you to turn to Stiles with a quizzical look only to realize that his eyes were already settled on you. His lips curved into a smirk, and he let out a short chuckle, fog fleeing his lips for a second.

Before you could say anything, he grabbed your elbow and pulled you down to the dock. The white wood led you out to the glimmering water. Your eyes danced across the sight in front of you in awe, taking in the orange leaves as they framed the lake like a golden portal.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” You heard Stiles say behind you, and you could only find it in your to nod.

“Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve already been here…”, Stiles continued and you glanced over to where he was crouching and fiddling with a rope attached to the dock.

“It just never gets old,” you finished for him, glimpsing his way with a warm look on your face.

“Exactly.” He smiled and stepped to your side to wrap his arm around your shoulders.

He held the rope in the other hand and gestured to the fisher boat as it appeared to wait for you both in serenity. Bowing his head slightly, he gave you a dopey grin. “Ladies first.”

Shooting him a look, you settled into the boat and picked up the paddle. Glancing up at the boy, his feet were still planted at the same spot while his gaze was far off. You threw a glance over your shoulder to catch what he was staring at, but when you couldn’t see anything suspicious, you turned back around. “Did you send me in first to see if there were any water monsters?” His eyes snapped to you, and you could see the confusion edged on his face until he registered your words.

“You caught me, huh,” Stiles joked and jumped off the dock to land in the boat with a thud, making it whip wildly while your eyes grew wide from the motion. “I always force my friends to partake in human sacrifices,” he added with a wink before bopping your nose. Using the paddle to slap his side, he yelped in surprise and you shot a glare his way.

“No more jokes about dark and traumatizing events that actually happened in real life, remember? At least not for a week.” You shrugged before adding with a serious tone, “And on that note, if you plan on pushing me into the water again, I will perform a handmade vasectomy on your balls.”

Menace dripped off your words, but Stiles being Stiles, he only raised his eyebrows at you before pursing his lips.

“Sounds to me like you’re just offering me a handjob.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And I would be an idiot to deny that, right?” He let his tongue run over his lip before cocking his head to the side. Scoffing at him, he stared back at you with the slightest hint of a smirk.

You blinked before throwing the paddle in the air to catch it with your hands positioned differently. Lancing it forward, the blade was now situated between Stiles’ thighs—pointing merely inches away at his junk.

Smiling sweetly, you mirrored his tilted head and asked with a stoic voice, “Still want that handjob, Stilinski?”

He gulped thickly. “How about a rain check?”

You didn’t move for a moment before reluctantly lowering the blade and casting it into the water.

“Brutal.” You heard him mutter before mirroring your action.

In light conversation, the two of you paddled toward the middle of the lake. Midway, you had handed Stiles your paddle to let him take over while you leaned back on your elbows to enjoy the view.

View meaning Stiles.

When you had reached the middle, he dropped the paddles and mirrored you, also leaning back and staring up at the cloudless sky. It was getting darker, and no birds nor planes were flying by. At that moment, it truly felt like Stiles and you were the only beings on this planet. You let your eyes flutter shut and took a moment to let your senses be flooded with the sounds of the vast forest. A small smile perched on your lips as you remembered the first time the boy across you had brought you this very location.

You had just moved to Beacon Hill and were ecstatic to find such a large and relatively solitary expanse to take refuge in. But you were even more psyched about the fact that your next-door neighbor and new friend was also into the quiet purity and sense of tranquility that nature offered. This corner of the preserve had easily become your guys’ little untouched hideaway.

Years passed and he had quickly become your favorite person. All it took for him to get you out here tonight was a soft knock on your window as you were sprawled out on your bed and conquering the mass of homework for the week. You were determined to stay, but one look at his puppy eyes and you were already sitting in his passenger seat while he was passionately going on about his newest topic of research. Sometimes it freaked you out how he had you right in the palm of his hands. He could ask you to conquer the world with him, and you wouldn’t even hesitate.

But at what cost came this willingness to do any possible thing for the painfully oblivious guy that you called your best friend?

Desperate to know the answer, you lowered your gaze to look at Stiles, only to find much to your exasperation that he had already been staring at you with matched curiosity.

“What?” You whispered amused.

He opened his mouth only to clamp it shut again. His hands were clasping and releasing the wood bench he was sitting on, and it made you cast your gaze downward. You ran your hand along the cool wood surface, your fingers delicately dipping into the grooves carved in the past, your lips twitching upwards as you realized they made up a smiley face.

You didn’t notice how Stiles’ eyes were fixated on you, watching your fingers dance along the wood while your lips were slightly parted. Then, you snapped your eyes to him, catching his gaze with widened eyes before falling to your knees and pushing his mystery bag aside to search for something on the side of the boat’s interior.

You noticed his frantic gaze and enlightened briefly. “Do you remember how we carved something into the side of this thing a while ago?” Your fingertips glided over the wood blindly as it was now too dark to make out anything.

Staring at you with confusion, he soon realized what you were talking about and snatched up his bag. Rummaging through it, he let out a victorious “Aha!” when he found what he was looking for.

“Y/N, take this,” Stiles ordered, and you looked up just in time to catch the end of a fairy lights string. Ignoring your confused stare, he moved swiftly around the narrow boat and grabbed the box of batteries.

“Since when do you own fairy lights?” You asked baffled before changing your question to the bigger obscurity at hand, “Do you always carry fairy lights with you?”

He snorted, but when he grasped that you were serious, he shot you a deadpan look. “Oh, no worries. I just do freelance kidnapping.”

You narrowed your eyes at his sarcasm, but he kept going. “I hold my victims hostage with fairy lights while I sing them Christmas carols. You know, personal preference. For me, at least.”

Ignoring your eye roll, he put the batteries in the box and flicked the switch. Instantly, the boat lit up. Yellow fairy lights illuminated your surroundings and the dancing reflections on the water surface deprived you of any signs of annoyance.

“Yesterday, you mentioned how much it sucked that fireflies were no longer around to this season, so I bring you…” He trailed off and gesticulated wildly. “Fireflies straight from your garage!”

You let out a light laugh, grinning broadly at the boy as he gave you a proud but dazzling smile. Since he was too busy admiring the glimmer dancing in your eyes, he didn’t even notice that you were staring at each other a bit longer than necessary but when he did, he quickly averted his gaze and plopped to his knees. Flashing you a cheeky smile, you felt his breath fan over your face before he snapped his head to the side and imitated your movements from earlier—fingers dancing over the interior of the boat. You followed suit and searched the wood as well. Now that you could see, it didn’t take you long until you found what you were looking for.

Stiles had found it at the same time as you, reaching out for the carved letters and tracing the heart shape that encircled them in trance. Your fingertips moved along the line, shaping the letter “S” while Stiles did the same, trailing the letter on the left—your initial. Meeting in the middle to outline the plus sign, your fingers brushed and queasiness bloomed in your stomach. You chastely smiled at Stiles.

Dipping his head for a second, he stared at his lap before looking back up. With a more confident look in his eyes, he took your hand in his, and you felt your breath hitch. He sat down with crossed legs and began to fiddle with your fingers, letting them dangle onto his warm palm.

“I still remember the night we did that,” He said tenderly and nodded toward the carved initials. “Freshmen year. You were sad about not having a date to the winter ball, so we ditched and I took you out here.” His voice was soft, and you couldn’t help but hang onto every word that crossed his lips.

“My dad even made me wear that stupid suit.” He chuckled. “The sleeves were too long so I had to scrunch them up and you kept making terrible jokes about how I looked like I was the outcast of a mafia gang.”

A smile sprung to your lips at the memory. “Those weren’t jokes, by the way. You did look like the lost duckling of a mob gang,” you teased, and he gave you a pointed look before cracking a smile.

It was silent for a moment before he hesitantly settled your intertwined hands on his lap. His gaze held so much warmth and comfort that it rendered you speechless. All of a sudden, you felt something cold touch your wrist. Glancing down, you made out the shape of a bracelet that Stiles had slipped on. Gaping at it, your eyes flitted back and forth between your wrist and his anxious stare. He gnawed on his bottom lip while fidgeting with his hands. “Do you like it?” He spluttered, cheeks glowing a faint shade of pink.

You twisted your wrist carefully to admire the thin gold chain with its dangling charms. It kept slipping up and down since it still had to be adjusted, but you loved everything about it.

At the sight of a Batman charm, you let out a laugh, filling the quietness with a melody that Stiles couldn’t get enough of. The boy dropped his hand from his neck and heaved a sigh of relief. “I love it.” You pouted and attacked him with a wild hug, not caring that you almost flipped over the whole boat.

He didn’t hug you back at first, overwhelmed with the scent of your perfume, but then you felt him wrap his arms around your waist just as tightly. “Thank God.” He muttered into your hair and you giggled.

Pulling away with a grin, you let your arms drop to your side, feeling immediately how the bracelet slid from your wrist and dropped to the ground, prompting you both to bend down at the same time.

Both being dangerously clumsy, you bumped your foreheads and both let out a yelp. “Sorry, head-butting was not part of the gift,” Stiles cursed under his breath while rubbing his head.

You waved him off, intending to make a joke about concussions being great Christmas gifts, but instead, you froze. There were only paltry inches left between his nose and yours, and you could have easily counted each and every one of his lashes if you wanted to. Awkwardly aware of how close you two were, he flashed you a nervous smile.

“What’chu doing?” He said lightheartedly and you had to laugh.

“Living the dream,” you whispered while your eyes flickered to his lips.

“Yeah?” His tongue ran over his bottom lip. “Feels like it, doesn’t it?”

He gulped before leaning forward, lips hovering over yours.

“Your face is very close to mine,” Stiles observed, gaze flitting to your lips and back to your amused eyes. Slowly, his eyes fluttered shut and he leaned in. Lips brushing yours when he whispered. “And your lips are very soft.”

“Chapstick,” you replied mindlessly, enjoying his nervous chattering.

“The honey one?” His voice was barely audible.

You hummed while your fingers fiddled with the collar of his shirt.

“I like honey.”

Halting your movements, you opened your eyes and cocked a brow.

“Stilinski, stop talking and kiss me already.”

The corner of Stiles’ mouth curved into a broad grin as he cupped your cheek and finally brought you in for a passionate lip-lock. Your chest sparked with adoration as you slowly ran your fingers through his hair. He tugged you closer, one hand resting on your cheek while the other ran down your back and settled on the small of your back. Using it to press you closer to his chest, he leaned in further, not getting enough of your lips molding together. They moved in perfect synch. So much even that everything felt undoubtedly right and you forgot that you were on a boat.

Instead, you drowned yourself in Stiles’ touch. His touch was warm, igniting a trail of sparkles on your body and encasing both of your lips in a smile. You were the first to pull back, but your eyes remained closed. You were breathing heavily and just as you decided to take a peek, you found Stiles also fluttering his eyes open.

He beamed at you dopily, and you couldn’t help but steal another brief kiss.

And another.

And when you had leaned back for good, he couldn’t help but press yet another kiss at the corner of your lips. Shuffling backward, he propped himself against the wood bench of the boat and let your back lean against his chest. His arms wrapped tightly around your frame and you sunk further into his embrace.

Taking your wrist in his hand, he slipped the bracelet back on and adjusted the clasp before intertwining your hands together.

“Stiles?” You asked softly after a second of him tenderly pressing soft kisses on your knuckles.

“Yeah?” His voice was hoarse, and you tilted your head upward to meet his affectionate gaze.

“Stop breaking into my garage, you weirdo.”

* * *

aaaaaaand the end:) i hope you guys liked this one! it’s kind of a lot of fluff but welp. i write for the hopeless romantics so it’s fine lol if you want to get tagged in any of my future writing, just send me an ask! wishing you all a sweet day. stay hydrated x

masterlist

#stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski x reader #stiles stilinski x y/n #stiles stilinski fic #stiles stilinski fanfiction #stiles stilinski one shot #stiles stilinski fluff

210 notes · View notes

supersickies · 3 years

Link

Summary: "Steve absolutely wasn’t nervous. Compared to every intense and grueling Avengers mission he’s completed, taking care of a sick kid was a walk in the park right? Except when this sick kid was also one of the most precious things within Tony Stark’s life and if anything were to happen to this boy there’s no doubt in Steve’s mind that Tony would dump him in an instant.

So no, Steve was not nervous at all."

Tony has meetings, Steve has anxiety, and poor Peter just has a fever.

A/N: It’s Sicktember 2021! Very excited for this month and to see all of the amazing works! Not to mention it gives me an excuse and the motivation to write as many sickfics as I can! And let's see if I do because writer's block is too real right now :) Anyway thank you @sicktember for coming up with this month of prompts and I hope you all like this little fic! Read it here or click the link to read on AO3!

Steve absolutely wasn’t nervous. Compared to every intense and grueling Avengers mission he’s completed, taking care of a sick kid was a walk in the park right? Except when this sick kid was also one of the most precious things within Tony Stark’s life and if anything were to happen to this boy there’s no doubt in Steve’s mind that Tony would dump him in an instant.

So no, Steve was not nervous at all.

Tony, however, could see right through the false confidence.

“Relax, Stevie! Good lord, I can feel you panicking from over here.” Tony jokes as he enters the living room and gathers his briefcase and Stark gadgets for his day of meetings.

Steve jolts a bit as he looks up at Tony. “Huh? I-I’m not panicking.”

“You were just glaring daggers into Petey over there, hon.” Tony points out, to which Steve just shrugs with a blush. “There’s really no need to worry Cap, the kid is probably just gonna sleep and cough a bit until I’m back, alright? And if he wakes up and gets antsy or something just heat up some of the soup I made and throw on Adventure Time. Pete’s an easy kid, I swear.”

Steve stands from his chair with a deep breath and nods in understanding. Tony strides over to the super-soldier and takes his face in his hands. “There’s no one I trust more with Peter than you. Except maybe Pepper, but she can literally do everything.”

Steve laughs at that and bends down to give Tony a quick peck on the lips. They break apart so Tony can give Peter’s hair a quick ruffle. His hand pauses on the boy’s forehead as he gauges his fever. His lips quirk downward, he does not love the temperature the kids running at the moment.

With a sigh, he stands up and walks hand in hand with Steve to the elevator. “I think his fever went up, so just keep an eye on that. Friday is down for maintenance so you’ll probably want to wake him up in a bit to take his temperature manually.” The elevator doors open and the super couple shares one last peck before Tony steps in. “I’m just thirty floors down! You’re gonna do great! I love you both!” Tony calls as the doors close and suddenly Steve is alone. Well, save for the snoring spider-teen on the couch.

Steve wanders back to the living room, nervously glancing at Peter as he does. The poor kid is basically in the exact opposite of his regular state. On a normal day, Peter was a bright ball of action, seemingly unable to stop talking or moving at all. But that wasn’t the Peter he saw now.

Instead, this Peter was silent. Sick. There’s an eerie ambiance in the air and Steve hates it.

So, to quell the weird vibe, he turns the tv to TCM, (un-ironically his favorite channel as the rest of the team loved to tease him about) and sets it at a low volume so he doesn’t wake the kid.

He’s just about to the end of an old western film when he hears Peter groan and shuffle around on the couch. The sick teen sits up wearily, his hair a mess and his eyes unfocused. Not to mention his cheeks are deeply flushed with fever, which has clearly gotten worse in the last forty-five minutes.

“S’eve?” Peter slurs as he spots the super solider.

Steve’s focus quickly turns to the kid, who looks undoubtedly sicker. “Hey, Pete. How you feeling, pal?” Stupid question, Rogers. He thinks to himself.

Peter sniffs and shivers with sudden chills. “Mm, n-not v’ry good.” His voice cracks as tears fill to his eyes. His sleep-addled brain catching up to and feeling the full effect of his feverish achy body. He can’t stop his breath as it hitches and the tears spill over. It just hurts so much.

Steve’s up and at the boy’s side almost inhumanly fast, doing his best to comfort him. Unfortunately, he’s no expert on Peter care (i.e, he’s not Tony). If there’s one thing he does know, however, is that you can never go wrong playing with the kid’s hair, which Steve had quickly learned by watching his boyfriend. And while Tony was the “Peter scalp massage pro”, Peter definitely wasn’t picky about who or how. The kid simply just wanted his hair touched.

So Steve did just that. The larger man was relieved to find that the action had the desired effect—Peter had calmed almost instantly, curling up against Steve’s side— but the super soldier was quickly fulled with nerves again as he felt the nearly scalding heat coming from the kid.

When Peter had relaxed enough, Steve grabbed the thermometer Tony had left on the coffee table. Peter spots the machine in Steve’s hand and opens his mouth, accustomed to the routine after being sick all day yesterday as well.

With the thermometer under his tongue, Peter lets his eyes close as they wait for the reading to be done. When it is, Peter lightly jumps at the beep before burrowing back into Steve’s side as the blonde takes the thermometer back and reads its results.

And while Peter looks peaceful once again, Steve is panicking. 103.5. Steve’s not a scientist but he knows that’s not a good temperature for the body to be.

“Friday can you- ah.” Oh, right. Steve remembers that the AI was down for maintenance. Instead, he looks around for his phone, ready to research exactly what he should do for a kid with a near brain-melting fever.

Steve bites the inside of his cheek as he, again, remembers. He doesn’t have a phone right now, as he sat with his last one in his back pocket and it cracked in half. He and Tony had laughed themselves to tears when it happened.

Steve wasn’t laughing now.

He’s thrown back into the moment as Peter groans again, another intense chill running through the kid’s frame. Poor kid must be freezing, Steve thinks.

Freezing.

With that realization, Steve is taken back to his teen years. The years he spent consistently sick and feverish like Peter is now. The years his Ma used to keep him in bed for days, wrapped in every blanket they had in their house.

Blankets!

Steve suddenly remembers how to treat a high fever. You sweat it out, duh. With a tiny smile at the memory of his Ma, he stands from the couch carefully and heads to Tony’s linen closet. He spots a soft looking quilt beside a thick fluffy throw and grabs the two, knowing that when paired with the blanket the kid was already wrapped in they would make the perfect fever banishing covers.

Peter is almost back to sleep when Steve returns, but he hears the man's footsteps and his eyes open again. Steve makes quick work of unfolding the blankets and laying them over Peter. The kid hums, content with the warmth of the added blanked combating his chills, and falls swiftly to sleep. It makes Steve smile, pleased with his ability to care for the sick spidering.

Steve was feeling pretty confident that Tony was going to be just as pleased.

______

Tony Stark was far from pleased.

He had excused himself from his meeting after an hour, intent on checking Peter’s vitals on his phone through the watch the boy wore on his wrist.

What he saw was less than ideal. In fact, it was terrifying. 104.3 should be Peter’s physics grade after perfectly completing extra credit for fun, not his kid’s body temperature. The mechanic bolts to the nearest elevator, paying no mind to the white-collar assholes who awaited his return. They didn’t matter, not when his kid’s brain was melting thirty floors up.

“Steve!” He shouts when the elevator doors finally open to the penthouse. The blonde jumps when he hears his name and his eyes widen as he sees his panicked boyfriend sprinting towards him.

“Tony wha-?”

“Where’s Peter, Steve? Where is he— is he okay?”

Still a bit flustered, Steve just points to the sleeping boy on the couch, still wrapped in the thick blankets. When Tony sees him, his eyes only go wider.

“What, are you trying to fucking roast him?” Tony asks, exasperated. Before Steve can answer, Tony begins removing the blankets from his kid. Cringing at the heat that wafts out from them as they go.

“I-I- his fever got higher! I was trying to help him sweat it out!” Steve stumbles through his explanation.

“Sweat it out? Jesus fuck what are you from the thir- oh my god you’re from the thirties.” Tony halts with the realization. Steve Rogers was borderline a complete stranger to modern medicine and comes from an era of absolute batshit home remedies. The man smoked cigarettes for his asthma for fucks sake.

“Okay, alrighty then. Steve do me a favor and go start a lukewarm bath for me please.” Tony orders in about the most anxiously calm voice Steve had ever heard.

“Okay but Tony-“

“Now please, Steven.” Tony demands once more. Steve gets the memo, fast, and quickly heads to Tony’s bathroom.

Shit.

_____

After a quick dip in the tub and a quick anxiety attack from Tony, Peter’s temperature is back down to a less dangerous level. He’s sat back on the couch in the lightest t-shirt and boxers he owns, sipping ice water through a straw with a fever patch stuck to his forehead. Maybe it was overkill, but you couldn’t tell Tony that.

When the boy's eyes begin to droop Tony takes the water from his hands and helps him lay back down.

“Comfy, bubba?” He asked in a hushed tone. Peter just nods and yawns as he closes his eyes and quickly drifts back to sleep. “Get some more sleep bud.” He hums softly, laying a thin—thin—blanket over his kid.

Steve watches the pair from afar, afraid to step in or offer any more “help”. He doubts Tony will even want to look at him after what he’s done. Which is why when Tony stands and turns to him, he immediately tenses. He’s ready to be yelled at, cursed at, probably dumped.

“C’mere.” Tony says, opening his arms to Steve, inviting him into a hug. The blonde is shocked, sure, but he accepts the hug quickly, silently thinking it could be his last with the man he’s come to love so much.

“Again, Stevie, I can hear you overthinking.” Tony mumbles against his boyfriend's shoulder. He pulls away from the hug and takes the man's hands, looking up at him. “All things considered, you did nothing wrong, hon.”

“Tony I just-“

“You just did what you thought was right. You didn’t know any better Steve.” Tony rebuts before Steve can even finish.

“I’m just…I’m really sorry Tony. You trusted me with your most important person and— I fucked up bad.” Steve apologizes.

“Woah there big guy!” Tony’s brows shoot up at the apology. “First off, language mister.” Tony teases, it makes Steve blush and a hint of a smile ghosts his lips. Tony sees that as a win. “Second, yes, you’re correct. Peter is incredibly important to me. He’s my kid, but you are my Steve!” Tony emphasizes, shaking Steve’s shoulders a bit as if it will help get the point across. “You are incredibly important to me too! You made a mistake, and guess what Steve, that’s human— you’re human!”

Steve smiles sadly and nods before looking back at Peter’s sleeping form on the couch, just double-checking that the kid was truly fine.

Tony huffs lightly, using his fingers to softly move Steve’s head so he’s looking at him again. “Look at me, love. Peter’s fine, you’re fine, I’m fine, and we are fine. Okay?”

Steve takes a deep breath, closing his eyes with a smile. “Okay.” He confirms quietly. He can feel Tony’s hands move to cup the sides of his cheeks as he’s brought into a deep kiss. It quells all of his anxieties. Tony is here, with him, and he’s not going anywher-

“Eeugh, y-you guys ‘re cute and stuff, but the PDA ’s kinda makin’ me nauseous.” Peter’s voice breaks their kiss. Both Avengers turn to the kid, their faces about as red as his feverish cheeks after getting caught.

Tony snorts. “Oh come on kiddie!” Tony pulls Steve’s face closer to his again, this time just peppering kisses across his face. “A man can’t show his boyfriend some love?”

The older men laugh until they hear a legitimate gag from Peter. “N-no I’m serious Mr. Stark—“ Gag. “I’m really nauseous.”

“Steven grab a trash can.” Tony prompts, the same anxiously calm demeanor back in his voice as before.

Steve wastes no time, sprinting to the closest receptacle. “On it!”

#sicktember #sicktember 2021 #sick peter parker #stevetony #iron dad #sickfic

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calboniferous · 3 years

Text

In Theory

Work 1 in The Pen and the Sword aka. my jedi and academics AU

A stressed post-graduate anthropology researcher from Coruscant University enters the Jedi Archives for the first time and is promptly taken under the wing of one Master Archivist Jocasta Nu.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32355310

—

Master Jocasta Nu felt the visitor before she saw them. Stress and a frenetic energy radiated through the force tangled with the unique threads of emotion and colour that made up their signature.

Closing the book in front of her with a soft thud, mindful of its frayed edges, she appraised the blue nautolan hurrying towards her. Their worn brown coat was unbuttoned and struggling to stay onto their shoulders, saved by the strap of the bag hanging off one side which the nautolan had one arm wrapped around. Apparently, the bag’s tie had lost the battle against the tide of flimsy and datapads making the simple bag bulge obscenely.

Ah.

A scholar.

Like the many before them, they had come to Master Nu’s beloved archives in hope of finding salvation in its hallowed stacks. With her guidance, they always did and more often than not, they would return again. And again.

However, this scholar was not one that Master Nu had seen before and as they glanced wide-eyed at the towering shelves, shying away from passing Jedi, she surmised that the Jedi archives were unfamiliar to them also.

They reached her desk out of breath.

“I need books on Kante martial arts and history. Do you have books on Kante? If it has historical martial arts then that would be incredible but I’m setting the bar low. Really, the bar is non-existent. Should I even be setting a bar I don’t know- do you know what the Kante are? Were? They’re extinct”

“Young one, breathe.” Master Nu said, lifting her hand to interrupt the rush of words. Her brow softened in sympathy, “How about you start from the beginning and tell me what your thesis is and then we’ll go about finding resources.”

She signalled to one of the Padawans stacking holopads nearby for them to take over monitoring the main desk and led Tema to one of the many sunlit alcoves tucked between the buttresses.

Settling on a cushion across the low table from the sleep deprived nautolan, Master Nu pulled out her well-worn datapad, ready to formulate a list of texts to recommend for this student’s project. She had gathered quite the collection of such lists over the years and took great pride in curating them. Often, she would continue to add to them in her spare time so that when the person they had been made for returned, it was waiting and ready. And, if Master Nu happened to enjoy the thrill of a hunt for obscure references through her own archives every now and again, that was her own business.

Stylus in hand, she was ready to begin.

“You mentioned martial arts?”

“Right. Yes. I’m studying the fighting style of the Kante people which they used to reclaim their lands 7000 years ago after it was conquered in the Chandrillan Divide. The politics of the reclamation itself have been documented to death but there’s kriff all discussing how they actually fought,”

Master Nu hummed sympathetically, listening as a classic university post-graduate research tragedy poured out in all its glory. The purple shadows smeared under Tema’s dark eyes suggested that more than one night had been lost to this.

It was a credit to her Jedi training and skill as an archivist that Master Nu could write notes, elegant script flitting smoothly across the datapad without misspelling a single title or name, while offering comforting hums and interjecting words of encouragement where Tema faltered.

“So now I need to piece it together myself in order to build a theory on how the Kante people approached battlefield strategy,” Tema finished, fidgeting with their bag strap.

Setting her stylus down, Master Nu surveyed the drafted list with a critical eye. It was a daunting selection. She weighed the situation in her mind and carefully turned the datapad off, placing it down with a muted click of metal on the polished stone table.

“That’s quite the task you’ve got” Master Nu said, “more than an Honours project scope covers.”

She loathed to discourage any scholar but there were limits to the workload that could be shouldered and she had a strict honesty policy. With all her Jedi compassion and experience ad Head Archivist, Master Nu knew how to recognise when a student needed guidance in whittling down their research focus to a reasonable magnitude.

“I know,” Tema sighed, shoulders sagging, “I know but my project topic has already been approved by my supervisor.”

“Dear, your project as it stands is enough to satisfy a PhD and beyond. I can tell you are passionate about it but it’d be a tragedy for you to fail because you tried to complete years’ worth of work in the 10 months you have.”

The blue nautolan wilted a little, head tails curling.

“I don’t see what choice I have. I can’t form a thesis on the merits of Kante strategy without knowing how it worked at the individual level,” they said, resignation colouring their force signature grey with worry.

Master Nu paused, and after a moment spoke.

“Have you considered centring your project on the martial arts itself? At the individual level, as you say. Leaving the rest aside to focus on that should technically be within your project topic.”

Tema blinked, “That’s…that would work. Yes.”

Master Nu watched as they turned the idea over, considering how to approach it.

“Yes. That would make it more of a research-and-reconstruction project. A literature review with practical application.”

They gave a wry smile, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

Some of the frazzled emotion of their presence eased and a few threads of humour sparked in its wake.

“I could have saved myself from being sick from worry in the University ‘freshers yesterday.”

They flushed a little darker at that admission and Master Nu suppressed what would have been a rather unprofessional snort of amusement as she clicked the datapad back on. Ah, younglings. They never changed.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, dear. That amount of stress isn’t conducive to clarity of mind, I’d wager,” Master Nu soothed, deleting a few items from the list with a satisfied air, “You’re hardly the first person’s I’ve known to have an adverse reaction to academic stress. Now, I do believe this list is ready.”

Rising with more grace than her age suggested she was capable of, she smoothed the creases in her cream and straw-gold robes and led the way into the maze of columns and shelves. Tema followed a step behind in a manner that to any observers bore remarkable resemblance to a duckling following its mother – if ducklings were six-and-a-half feet tall, that is.

“Somehow I find it hard to imagine a Jedi getting sick from assignments,” they mused absentmindedly, tipping their head to catch some of the book titles they passed, “all this information – it’d be hard to fail.”

Master Nu chuckled at that, passing through an archway into a side corridor.

“I’m afraid it can happen to anyone. One of my agemates routinely emptied his stomach at the prospect of examinations – that one, in fact,” she said, gesturing to one of the bronze busts lining the hall. The metallic features gave the human man depicted a severe expression. In Master Nu’s opinion, it was rather true to life even if the beard was far to neatly sculpted.

“The poor man. Perfection was as much his vice as his virtue.”

She smiled fondly, crows’ feet crinkling with nostalgia at sharing this particular story – at sharing the humanity of someone so proud and distant both in life and artistic rendition.

Tema faltered and the markings on their head tails blanched light blue.

“Oh, uh, my condolences.”

“Hmm?” Master Nu turned to them, “Oh no, he’s not dead. He’s retired.”

“Oh,”

They blinked, nonplussed.

“This way, dear”

The pair continued on their winding path. Master Nu, frequently gesturing to some architectural feature or other with her datapad, began to explain how the Jedi Archival system worked, pausing every now and then to pull a tome from the shelves.

“It is what many have described as ‘archaic’,” she said, stepping deftly onto the fourth rung of a sliding ladder attached to one of the shelves to reach her next target, “but no one—and I mean no one—has said it is an ineffective system.

“At least not in my earshot,” she said with a laugh, pulling the volume from its place and passing it down to Tema. The rumours the initiates (and fully-grown Knights) liked to spread about Master Nu’s draconian defence of the archives may not be entirely accurate but were taken by most as a warning to avoid slandering the archive in her presence. She knew Tholme liked to stir the pot and recount tales of her lightsabre prowess to the initiates, no matter that the stories were thirty years out-of-date.

“That being said, it can take some getting used to. The Padawans and Knight Archivists are always around and willing to retrieve sources for our visitors.”

Master Nu dismounted from the ladder, blew dust from her sleeve, and turned a critical eye on to the stack of books and datapads in Tema’s arms that had been steadily growing in size. The scholar looked strong enough to take a couple more, taking into account that their bulging bag would not fit anything more inside.

“That’s the last one from this aisle.”

She clicked her tongue and marked a check on her list next to the sources they were borrowing. They were all copies, of course, or volumes easily enough to source a replacement that their loss wouldn’t be abhorrent. Nonetheless, clean records made maintaining the collection less stressful on her soul.

On that note, Master Nu was pleased to feel that Tema was no longer pouring stress into the force like an anxious firehose. And—

She stilled, tilting her head as a familiar presence tickled the edges of her senses.

“Master Nu?” Tema asked, noticing her change in manner.

“Nothing to worry about,”

She once again took the lead. Down the aisle, then one aisle to the left and as they rounded the corner Master Nu smiled at the sight before her.

A little blue and beige figure was hunched over a book resting on the floor, absentmindedly gnawing on her Padawan silka beads and completely oblivious to the world around her.

“Padawan Secura! Why am I not surprised?” Master Nu called lightly and the twi’lek girl jerked, breaking from her literature-induced reverie to scramble to her feet.

“I’m not skipping sabre class again. I swear!”

Had it been any other Padawan of Aayla’s age group, Master Nu would think that emphatic declaration of innocence meant the Padawan in question was skipping class. Skywalker came to mind as a repeat offender of that variety.

Only question was that Junior Padawan sabre classes were always on Taungsday afternoons—this afternoon—and had been since before Master Nu was a crecheling. She hummed, unconvinced.

“Knight Kenobi is doing catch-up lessons this week and he said my forms were good enough to skip.”

That explained it. It seemed only yesterday that he’d been roaming the archives as a padawan himself, tearing through histories of the planets he’d visited at Qui-Gon’s side with single-minded focus. Shame that his lineage had picked him up before her own could. He would have made a fantastic archivist despite his record of being convinced to scale the bookshelves whenever Vos got temple fever.

Well, at least Aayla’s fencing education was in good hands.

Master Nu beamed at Aayla, “Then good work padawan and, as you are free, would you like to join us in gathering sources for Scholar Induri here?”

Aayla brightened, “Absolutely!”

And then, remembering her diplomacy training, bowed to Tema, setting her Padawan beads swinging. “Nice you meet you, Scholar.”

She scooped up the book she had been reading and as she put it back in its slot, Master Nu glimpsed the title.

“Reading Bastilla Shan again are we Padawan?”

The padawan blushed, fiddled with her tunic and handily dodged the teasing with a question of her own, “What are we looking for, Master?”

“See for yourself, young one,” Master Nu passed over the datapad, pointing to the highlighted entries.

Aayla squinted at the handwriting for a second before passing the pad back and running away down the aisle, one hand skimming the shelf labels. Padawans were lovely to have around and, watching Aayla slide 4 meters down a ladder and return to them with a grin plastered across her face, Master Nu wondered if she should take another student. Or, better yet, invite her former Padawans around for tea to see if more Grandpadawans would be joining the lineage soon.

“Thank you, dear,” she gave Aayla a pat on the head, “I’ll leave you to your reading. Just don’t forget to remind your Master that he needs to renew the materials he borrowed last month.”

Then, she turned to Tema who hadn’t made so much as a peep the past five minutes, seemingly satisfied to observe the interaction.

“Let’s get these checked out so you can get to reading them.”

Back to the main desk, the archivist and scholar wandered, and a minute later there was a new name entered into the borrowing database.

“Again, thank you for everything, Master Nu” Tema said, gathering the stack back into their arms. They were a little overwhelmed but they were smiling.

“Dear, it’s no trouble. One last thing, are you planning on enlisting someone practised in martial forms in your project? Or were you aiming for a more theoretical illustration of your findings?”

Tema cast their eyes to one side and shifted their weight.

“Ideally, yes, but I have no idea where to find someone like that so…theoretical?”

They trailed off.

“Good. I’m free to ask around here, then,” Master Nu said, tugging Tema’s bag strap so it was in less immediate danger of falling of their shoulder.

“If you need any help at all, don’t hesitate to send me a message or drop by. My archive is always open,”

At that, she tucked a slip of flimsy with her com code underneath the top datapad in the stack and gave Tema a parting pat on the cheek. With hope in their step, the scholar passed back out the archive doors, into the sunlight of the hall beyond.

Content, Master Nu smiled and watched them go.

“Now,” she mused to herself, opening the roster of temple-bound jedi and beginning to peruse the list, “who to ask…”

Her thoughts turned to the bronze bust of a man whose devotion to esoteric research was only outmatched by his skill with a blade.

His legacy…

Her eyes caught on a name. Yes, that would do very nicely indeed.

In the interest of vetting the source she intended to recommend, Master Nu made a mental note to attend next week’s exhibition tournament.

#jedi #jedi culture #fic #my writing #jedi and academics #the pen and the sword #jocasta nu #repost #star wars

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