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#process fractal
didanawisgi · 2 years
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The human brain builds structures in 11 dimensions, discover scientists
Groundbreaking research finds that the human brain creates multi-dimensional neural structures.
“The brain continues to surprise us with its magnificent complexity. Groundbreaking research that combines neuroscience with math tells us that our brain creates neural structures with up to 11 dimensions when it processes information. By “dimensions,” they mean abstract mathematical spaces, not other physical realms. Still, the researchers “found a world that we had never imagined,” said Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, which made the discovery...”
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nawtacop · 7 months
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art-of-mathematics · 1 year
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Do you have any recommendations for free resources like books, podcasts, videos or courses that help an autodidact get a first glimpse of chaos theory or game theory? Both topics will probably come up at my workplace and I felt you'd be a good person to ask! Thank you for your time
I'm glad you came to my ask box; Currently I do not remember most of the resources I once used, but once I remember I will reblog that post.
- Benoit B. Mandelbrot's book "The fractal geometry of nature" is pretty good for getting a good "visualized idea" of the topic of chaos theory, fractal geometry and dynamical systems. It uses helpful analogies and some parts are really awe-inspiring - overall, good food for the imagination as well!
In the meanwhile:
Does anyone of my mutuals/followers/[other humans seeing this post] know any good (introductory) resources about chaos theory and game theory?
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eccentricstylist · 5 months
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Moving Snowflake Mandala :)
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tawaifeddiediaz · 1 year
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1 & 41 for the fanfic writer asks :)
Hello!
What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)
Honestly, not a single one came to mind. I like lose me (in the sight of you) because it's softness of Buddie's morning routine that was written for an art piece by @andavs, and I like cinnamon kisses because it's also soft, but pre-relationship softness with friends-to-fiances (friends to fiances is definitely a brand, i have at least...3 or 4 on my page)
But honestly, I would recommend fractals because it's angsty, which is the stuff I like to flesh out xD I think it's a pretty good place to start, no?
Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”
Not a singular fic, but I remember reading @ao3theskyisblue's backlog and genuinely laughing for the first time in a while, because it was just so good. I feel like I struggle a lot with writing humor because my sense of it is just. sarcasm and dry comments xD It's hard to bring that levity and I think Sky does it beautifully.
We ended up cowriting tho so xD No need xD
Thanks for asking!
fic writer asks
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inkskinned · 3 months
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crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.
i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.
in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.
i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.
i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.
plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.
the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.
we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.
i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.
a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.
today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.
loved beyond thinking.
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ofroundness · 2 years
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mooselybased · 6 months
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What's this?? It's the Dad Squad from The Adventure Zone: Dadlands, all together in a single platform fighter moveset! Enter Briquette Hoggins, Chip Hugginsbee, Guy Ferrari, and Coach Red Ruffinsore!
I wanted to include a law/chaos meter mechanic in this, so here's how this one works. You play as one dad at a time, and each of the four special moves will swap you to the corresponding dad. Landing hits as a chaos dad (Briquette or Chip) will raise your chaos but drop your law. Landing hits as a law dad (Guy or Red) will raise your law but drop your chaos. Most standard attacks are themed after one type of dad (grill, vacation, car, or sports), and landing hits themed to your current dad will give extra meter. You can spend meter by holding down the special buttons for powered up versions of those attacks. Spend chaos for stronger neutral or up specials, and spend law for stronger side or down specials.
Now for the moveset itself. The down special swaps you to Coach Red Ruffinsore, who let's out a piercing toot on his whistle for high damage but practically no range. Spend law meter to chain together several whistles with no cooldown.
The side special swaps you to Guy Ferrari, who will drive forward a good distance in his Hyundai Elantra. Spend law meter to instead drive Yvette the Corvette, which explodes for massive damage at the end of the move.
The neutral specials swaps you to Chip Hugginsbee, who will toss a snack from his backpack in a lofty arc. Spend chaos meter to instead whip out just a gun, for a faster and more powerful projectile that shoots straight forward.
The up special swaps you to Briquette Hoggins, who fires a cut of meat from his chest cavity straight down, giving him a small bit of air in the process. Spend chaos meter to instead summon Chokey the barbecue spirit, which propels Briquette faster, further, and in any direction.
The Dad Squad's finale has them reach into a Continuity Obliterating Recurrent Neutrino (or, C.O.R.N.) Hole, extruding them through time and space. Briefly, all four dads, and fractal copies of them, will spread horizontally across the stage, moving and attacking in unison.
To those who made it this far, thanks! This was my 29th moveset concept in this series, and I'm planning on taking a break from this once I post the 30th one. Lemme know if you have any guesses as to who it might be, and I'll see y'all then!
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fatehbaz · 6 months
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[D]ebt and indebtedness [...] produc[e] forms of spatial enclosure [imprisonment] that do not rely on the spectacular [singular moments of blatant literal physical violence] but are, rather, achieved through temporal openings and foreclosures. To be clear, this frame does not obscure the many forms of carceral enclosure [...]: the prison, the checkpoint, the security wall. Historically, enclosure is understood as the privatization of land. But Wang extends the concept of enclosure to encompass time. Wang demonstrates that [...] mobility is policed through [...] an apparatus of punishment that solicits time as the form of spatial enclosure. [...]
[D]ebilitating infrastructures turn able bodies into a range of disabled bodies. [...] [C]heckpoints [...]; administrative bureaucratic apparatuses that stall and foreclose travel, mobility for work, [...] the capacity to move and change residences - baroque processes to apply for permits to travel [...], absence of public services such as postal delivery [...]; and finally [...] denial of resolution, suspension in the space of the indefinite [...]. In fact, slow death itself is literalized as the slowing down of life [...]. [Land] itself becomes simultaneously bigger - because it takes so long to get anywhere - and smaller, as transit becomes arduous [...] where it is so difficult to travel between areas without permits and identifications. Movement is suffocated. Distance is stretched and manipulated to create an entire population with mobility impairments. And yet space is shrunken, as people are held in place, rarely able to move far. [...]
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Time itself is held hostage.
This is the slow aspect of slow death: slow death can entail a really slow life, too, a life that demands constant calibration of different speeds and the relation of speed to space. [...]
The suspended state of the indefinite, of waiting and waiting (it) out, wreaks multigenerational psychological and physical havoc. [...]
Time thus is the meter of power; it is one form that physical enclosure takes on. The cordoning of time through space contributes to an overall “lack of jurisdiction over the function of one’s own senses” (Schuller 2018: 74) endemic to the operation of colonial rule [...]. [T]his process entails several modes of temporal differentiation: withholding futurity, making impossible anything but a slowed (down) life, and immobilizing the body [...]. Julie Peteet (2008) calls the extraction of nonlabor time “stealing time” [...]. [T]he extraction of time attempts to produce a depleted and therefore compliant population so beholden to the logistics of the everyday that forms of connectivity, communing, and collective resistance are thwarted. The extraction of time functions as the transfer of “vital energy” [...], an extraction that recapitulates a long colonial history of mining bodies for their potentiality. [...]
Checkpoints ensure one is never sure of reaching work on time.
Fear of not getting to work then adds to the labor of getting to work; the checkpoints affectively expand labor time [...].
Bodies in line at checkpoints [...] [experience] the fractalizing of the emotive, cognitive, physiological capacities of bodies [...]. It’s not just that bodies are too tired to resist but that the experience of the “constant state of uncertainty” becomes the condition of being. [...]
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All text above by: Jasbir K. Puar. "Spatial Debilities: Slow Life and Carceral Capitalism in Palestine". South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (2) pp. 393-414. April 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for criticism, teaching, commentary purposes.]
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didanawisgi · 2 years
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Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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bestworstcase · 29 days
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thoughts cooking.
mountain glenn, grimm overwhelmed the city and the people took shelter in caves, building an entire underground city after the destruction above. an explosion later opens a breach into a grimm nest, grimm flood the city again, and vale seals off the tunnels, implicitly without attempting rescue or evacuation, sacrificing the people to protect the core city.
<- same choice ironwood made.
“i see lives that could have been saved,” and all. vale created the world’s largest tomb.
fast forward a few decades. a single transport ship approaches vacuo with the news that salem came to vale and “there’s nothing left.” the huntsmen aboard “led the civilian retreat, brought as many people as we could…”
that turn of phrase—‘led the civilian retreat’—doesn’t evoke a panicked, disorganized scramble to get away from vale. it calls to mind the orderly evacuation procedures we saw during the battle for beacon, where people were loaded efficiently into transports to move them from beacon into a safe zone established in vale. port and oobleck were in charge of that retreat too. (and it demonstrated generally that emergency evacuation is something vale has on a lock—the assault on beacon blindsided everyone but the kingdom’s crisis response plan sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.)
only one ship, though.
when cinder attacked beacon, they retreated to a safe zone in vale. when salem hit vale, the immediately obvious place to establish a safe zone is patch—it’s close by but separated by a body of water, and it’s relatively defensible (an island). unlike vale, patch probably doesn’t have the room or resources to support a large urban population indefinitely, but you can use it as a relatively secure staging area for a subsequent evacuation to somewhere else. what you probably can’t do is squeeze anything like the majority of vale’s population onto patch island. (i mean, you could if it’s as huge as it appears to be on the map, but the map is NOT to scale and i get the impression that patch is supposed to be quite small.)
mountain glenn. “i see lives that could have been saved.” vale’s greatest failure, standing abandoned as a dark reminder. and “if you can’t learn from [history], you’re destined to repeat it.” did vale learn from its failure in abandoning mountain glenn to die?
in this fractal spiral of a story. ironwood didn’t get his way, but what if he had? “we are saving who we can” -> “brought as many people with us as we could,” with the history teacher whose chosen purpose is to prevent another mountain glenn from happening hunched over, haunted, in the background. is this a fucking counterfactual.
also if there were people left behind in vale, the mountain glenn undercity is the obvious place for them to flee. it’s not safe, but you can get there from vale through the tunnels (less exposed than driving or flying above ground) and if you can barricade the points of ingress to the cavern, it’s at least a more defensible place to set up an encampment than anywhere out in the open.
and i mean it might be that salem massacred the city and let one ship escape to maximize the damage to morale and provoke as much outrage as possible for the sake of getting the sword out of that vault. but mountain glenn is such a crucial narrative cornerstone, and vale has a history of making the kind of sacrifices ironwood tried to make with mantle, and the specific phrasing used here is interesting (“nothing left” vs “no one left,” “civilian retreat” implying an orderly process a la the evacuation from beacon).
i think it’s also the more narratively interesting and dynamic choice for there to have been a judgment call to leave a large number of people behind—it’s a counterfactual vehicle for unpacking team rwby’s conflicted feelings about their decision-making in atlas through comparison to what vale’s leadership did in the same situation, and there being some ambiguity as to whether anyone else survived allows for a thin ray of hope (maybe there are some people still alive) to galvanize the coalition into a counteroffensive (if there’s even the smallest possibility of survivors, we need to help them. we have to try.) and you draw the tension in salem’s character between her extremism and her effort to chart what she believes is the minimally destructive course to the surface by putting a survivor’s encampment within her immediate reach.
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art-of-mathematics · 1 year
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Title: Biological evolution as example of emergence in chaos theory - or: The serendipity of chaos
2022/11/22 [green, red, blue and black ballpoint pen on dotted A5 paper]
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The equation depicts a feedback loop in fractals: [source unknown]
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A feedback loop can be imagined as a kind of "alteration in the rendered structure" - Each iteration alters the resulting structure slightly.
In my drawing I declared the letters of the equations as:
C as "process/interaction pattern/interaction rule"
Z_old as Z_n and "prior structure"
Z_new as Z_n+1 and "posterior structure" [the resulting structure after a new interaction/iteration]
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eccentricstylist · 4 months
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Merry Christmas Tumblr Community :)
Enjoy your holidays! :)
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vickysaurus · 4 months
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Happy New Year!
Let's imagine it was the Earth itself that was going into its 2024th year. That is to say, we're compressing the entire history of the Earth into just the past 2023 years. What events would have happened when?
Well, not too much is certain about the first couple decades after our planet formed, until around 50 CE when we were hit by another proto-planet, Theia, and the debris formed the Moon. After a couple years of the planet cooling down again, the oceans formed out of boiling rain. The timing of the origin of life is very uncertain, but there are chemical signs it may very well have happened as early as the second century. Around 200 CE, the gas giants did a big funky orbit-swapping dance, and in the process inflicted the Late Heavy Bombardment on the rest of the solar system, meaning the Earth was suffering a ton of meteorite strikes for the entire third century.
The first indisputable evidence of life is from around 330, and the first stromatolites appear around 470. Those are basically the first fossils, stones created by layer upon layer of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria living and dying on top of one another. But even with oxygen producers evolving, it would take many centuries before oxygen became a major part of the atmosphere: not until the Great Oxygenation Event, which happened during the ninth and tenth centuries. That's also about the time the first complex, eukaryotic cells evolved through a symbiosis between an anaerobic archaean and an oxygen-breathing bacterium. The bacterium became more and more focused on just the oxygen-breathing task inside the larger cell, until its descendants were mitochondria, which as you all know are the powerhouse of the cell. The next seven centuries passed by with only slow, gradual changes, and life continuing to be unicellular and difficult to find in the fossil record.
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(1735's Snowball Earth, by me)
From 1704 to 1730, the entire planet froze over. After merely two years of thaw, it happened again, this time lasting from 1732 to 1742. But these snowball Earth episodes set the stage for the evolution of animals that began right after. Across the mid-18th century, the bizarre Ediacaran biota, with its strange symmetries, fronds, and fractal-like pattern filled the oceans. In the early 1780s they went extinct, possibly due to a temporary drop in oxygen-levels, only to be replaced by a great variety of quite different creatures in the Cambrian Explosion.
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(Class of 1799, by me)
Starting in 1784 and running for a few decades, the Cambrian period saw the origin of most of the modern animal phyla, reaching its most famous form in the Burgess Shale fauna of 1799. During this time, most animals still lived on the sea floor, either attached or crawling, with relatively few actually swimming creatures. Plants started tentatively moving onto land around 1817, and in 1825, the rising of the great Appalachian mountains caused a severe drop in global CO2 and thus temperatures, leading to the Late Ordovician mass extinction.
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(Horseshoe crabs and sea scorpions on a beach in 1834, by me)
Bony fish first showed up during the 1830s, and around the same time plants were getting serious about inhabiting the land, evolving roots and vascular tissues so they could properly grow there. Millipedes and the ancestors of spiders were the first animals to follow them onto land. Our own fishy ancestors did not take their first step until 1857, by which point the arthropods were well established there and the plants had figured out how to become trees. The Late Devonian extinction, partially caused by the evolution of said trees and partially by the south pole freezing, played out in two pulses over the late 1850s and early 1860s.
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(Swamp prominently featuring Meganeura and Mazothairos in 1889, by me)
Arthropods and vertebrates continued to gain adaptations to life on land. The insects became the first creatures ever to fly in 1878, and the high-oxygen atmosphere of the time would be especially good to them. Around 1884, a group of vertebrates called the amniotes, after the membrane that kept water inside their eggs so they could lay them on land without them drying out, split into two groups: the reptiles and the synapsids (which we mammals descend from). The next few decades would see the synapsids in particular being extremely successful as the supercontinent Pangaea formed. Until 1912, when a massive episode of volcanism caused the worst mass extinction of all time, the Great Dying, scouring the Earth of a huge portion of its life.
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(A 1930 scene featuring the three branches of archosaur: dinosaur, pterosaur, and pseudosuchian, by me)
The 1910s were a period of slow recovery during which strange new forms of animal evolved. Many different, unrelated reptiles, such as the ichtyosaurs and plesiosaurs, went to sea, where they would continue to provide some of the most impressive creatures for most of the 20th century. On land, the dinosaurs first appeared in 1920, though for the next decade or so they'd live in the shadow of their pseudosuchian (crocodile-line) cousins. In 1934, Pangaea began to break up, resulting in another terrible pulse of volcanism that caused a lot of extinctions and left particularly the feathered and furry survivors with a lot of empty niches to fill, allowing the dinosaurs and mammals to diversify greatly. The last common ancestor of all modern mammals lived in the early 1940s, and by 1957 the dinosaurs had figured out flight, with Archaeopteryx usually being considered the first bird. Other dinosaurs took on an incredible variety of sizes, shapes, and forms. Some of the most famous ones include Dilophosaurus (1942), Diplodocus and Stegosaurus (1955), Iguanodon (1969), Velociraptor (1991), and Tyrannosaurus rex (1994).
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(A tropical lakeside in the year 2000, by me)
In 1995, the world was struck by a meteorite, wiping out many groups, including the marine reptiles, pterosaurs, and ammonites. The surviving mammals and dinosaurs went on to diversify across the next couple of years and had formed thriving new ecosystems in the tropical world of the turn of the millennium. The first known bat lived in 2001, and the whales returned to the oceans next year. Around 2009, the world's climates turned colder and dryer. Antarctica froze over and grasslands spread widely. Our last common ancestor with the chimpanzees and bonobos lived in 2021, and by new year 2023, our ancestors were getting brainier and more proficient with tools. That's also when the north pole froze and the Quaternary ice age cycle began. The first known members of Homo sapiens lived on 10 November 2023. The latest ice age started on 14 December, and ended at 2 AM on 30 December. The great pyramid of Giza was built at 6 AM on 31 December and On The Origin Of Species was published at 23:22 PM.
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tunastime · 1 month
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A Gear of the Heart, Starting
just a little something I wrote for somebody's (@shepscapades) birthday back in November :3 after I asked what etho and bdubs would've been like shortly after etho's deviation. this is the few times before last life where bdubs realizes etho might be a good friend, and how their relationship changes. comes right before A Gear of the Heart, Turning! (4653 words)
Etho remembers quite a bit.
He remembers the ricochet of the explosion through his left side. He remembers a dozen errors across his vision, showing every unit damaged by the blast, the fractals of fracturing snaking up his arm, the shattered remains of his central programming lingering like a livewire. 
Over and over he can remember the pitch of Bdubs’ voice and had to wonder his own diagnosis at that moment. Bdubs watching his android die in his name—he remembers that, too. Bdubs didn’t even ask for that. It was something Etho gave to him. He’s not sure he could even say why, either. 
It remained a bitter flavor he couldn't identify, even as Xisuma assured him he was okay. Something had happened then, sitting on that floor, thirium in hand. Some movement in his chest he couldn’t place. It wasn’t anything physical, but it felt like some gear of his nonexistent heart had started, turned—rotated. And all he could do was ask himself why. What’s he supposed to do with that?
He doesn’t know. Fine. 
Etho goes back to work at someone’s request. Not even his own request, either, so he has to wonder if maybe Doc put him up to it. Him being Bdubs. Him being Bdubs who shifted back and forth on his feet at Etho’s door—a facade of a base in the process of being designed. If one could even call it a base, yet.
And even though he was increasingly certain that Bdubs had been told to ask—and Etho asked him if he’d been asked to help, and he was adamant about asking by himself, that’s what he said. He said: “You think I gotta be told to ask people for help? I can’t just be doin’ things on my own?” and it had felt so much like doublespeak that Etho didn’t even fight to differentiate his tone. 
But Bdubs had asked if he wanted to help with the horse course. Terraforming—it should be right up his alley, if he’s still into that kind of stuff. Figured he was the expert—or so it goes. Etho had nodded. He wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to do. He supposes he could have easily said no. 
But every part of him yearned to say yes.
So he did.
The dust sifts through his fingers.
Etho perches in the grass, partially hunched as he leans over his line of redstone, shrouded by the hill half-built around him. He’d spent most of the week prior carving out the lines of the track, setting posts for buildings, laying out blueprints for Bdubs to finalize. Today, he lays his line meticulously, dust shifting in his hands. They still shake a bit—nothing a human would notice, nothing that disrupted the flow of his lines, but the overworked gears still shifted in protest as he worked. He could see the faded overlay of the project in his vision if he focused. It crackled, slightly blue-yellow, orange glowing indicators where action was needed, where there were mistakes to be corrected.
It isn’t his redstone to fix. The lines under his hands were—freshly laid by his near-expert technique—but the deeper lines, noteblock announcements, droppers, doorgates, the flourish of the house course, weren’t. Etho smooths out the line he was standing near with his thumb. 
There was nothing wrong with the laid redstone, really. It’s just. Well. It’s not even. It takes up so much space. It lacks the efficiency and tidiness he practiced to a precision. It radiated Bdubs in an overpowering way, one that might turn a gear of the heart—one he didn’t have, of course. Etho’s lines are neat, rigid, conforming to his perfect mental map. 
He lets down his section of dust, drifting over to the dispenser system. He pushes a line further into place, brushing dust back from the side. Further on, where the line crosses, he readjusts it, he smooths them from start to end of line. His hands work where his mind recalculates, looking for errors along the redstone already laid out by Bdubs. Programs bubble up to assist; he dismisses a message, and another as he works. The line straightens from source to sink. 
As he passes, searching for another correction, he hears someone above him. In the corner of his vision, another message notification pings: from Bdubs.
They’re all from Bdubs, actually, now that he notices in full. He blinks, mouth twisting into a frown. Whoops.
He hears someone—Bdubs, he realizes, as he notes the fall of his feet, and the sigh he hops down from his horse, the shuffle of said horse, hooves on grass—clear their throat. Bdubs shuffles around as Etho moves back over to his finished redstone, dusting his hands on the sides of his pants. He lifts the small bag of dust, twisting the tie shut around his fingers as he travels back up the line to recheck the connections. 
“Etho?” Bdubs calls. Etho straightens, just on instinct alone, glancing up at the stretch of sky he can see. It’s bright blue, barely dotted with clouds, and the grass looks warm with sun. He fixes where the dust starts as he sections off the end, tossing the rest of the redstone over to his sling bag.
“Under the hill!”
Bdubs leans over the edge, tilting his head at Etho as he peers into the dark. It takes him a moment to find Etho’s face, partially obscured by black fabric and the fluff of wool around his collar. Etho tilts his head, raising his eyebrows.
“Did you need something?” he asks, arm hanging loosely by his side. Bdubs frowns, too, watching Etho’s expression. As his eyes seem to adjust to the dark, his gaze falls on the lines of redstone. He pauses there for a long moment. In that moment, Etho feels something in his chest grind, almost to a noticeable ache. If he could pull in a breath to settle it, he might have, but the sensation and minute sound passes as soon as he moves his hand to press flat against his regulator. Bdubs is gone when he looks up, reappearing only as he drops into the cavern, catching himself on the wall. He readjusts his cloak around his shoulders, shuffling into the low-light.
“Etho,” he says, still frowning. Etho looks him over. He watches Bdubs set his hands on his hips, but his heart rate stays even and his temperature level. The only thing that changes is the tone of his voice, fluctuating with a pattern Etho recognizes as forcing something. Bdubs takes a long breath in and lets it out. Etho’s eyes find the twitch of his fingers as he folds his arms, rather than the sharp curve of his mouth.
“Yes?” Etho asks. He feels his pump work a little harder. It kind of hurts still, whatever’s stopped working in his chest. He flicks his eyes, recalling a diagnostic, setting it to run in the background as he closes out of the overlays and the world returns to yellowish-grey. Bdubs is still frowning.
“You mind tellin’ me what’s wrong with this redstone?”
Etho blinks. The diagnostic comes up clear.
“What do you mean?” he says, his expression shifting into something copying amusement. He’s trying. He’s at least trying to mimic the emotions he sees. Soon enough it’ll feel natural, he’s certain. “What’s wrong with it?”
Bdubs snorts, which turns into a laugh, which turns into Etho smiling a bit wider, a bit more confusion lingering in his expression as he leans around Bdubs to check his meticulously placed line. Bdubs turns away from him, facing the system, the clock that linked the start gates to the timer below.
“What’s—” Bdubs scoffs, shaking his head. “What’s wrong with it? Etho—” he holds out his hand, waving Etho over. Etho lingers at his shoulder as he steps forward, peering over the curve of it and the moss and small leaves and flowers draped over his neck. “It’s too perfect.”
Etho makes a sound like a scoff now, a caught sound in his vocal unit, a stuttering start to his sentence that doesn’t form right away. He’s trying for surprise, the pitch of his voice rising unexpectedly.
“It’s too perfect?” he asks. 
Bdubs nods. After a moment, Etho thinks he sees his expression shift, the high of his cheek rising. When Bdubs turns his head to look at him, just for a second, Bdubs is smiling.
“Bdubs,” Etho says, sighing, turning away from him, to his bag on the far side of the room. He shakes his head. That something-nothing in his chest flutters and fades and disappears all at once, instead replaced with the urge to smile back. Bdubs laughs, and Etho can imagine him tipping his head back, mouth curved up as he giggles to himself. Etho shakes his head. As he starts to pull away from Bdubs, he feels him catch his sleeve, holding fast to his elbow.
“Etho, wait—” Bdubs giggles. “It looks really good.”
Etho raises his eyebrows. Caught in Bdubs grasp, all he can do is look at him, head tilted, trying not to let the amusement show on his face. Bdubs giggles, face breaking again as he does.
“Etho…” he tries again, fighting back a smile. Etho tilts his head the other way, as if to prompt him further, looking for anything. He stays silent. Bdubs hand lowers slowly, that smile faltering just a fraction. Maybe he thinks Etho’s upset with him. There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You gonna say anythin’? Or you just gonna stand there?”
Etho smiles, finally. He shrugs a little, glancing over at the fixed lines of redstone.
“I fixed your redstone,” he says cooly, sticking his free hand in his pocket. Bdubs blinks. He jerks away as Etho’s smile grows, shoving him hard in his shoulder. Etho wobbles for a moment, smiling to himself, scrunching up his face as Bdubs’ expression morphs. He does laugh, after a beat, poking Etho in the shoulder as he does. Etho hopes he can see the smile in his eyes. He saves, logs, keeps this moment. He’s sure in the low light that his LED spins yellow for a moment. It feels right. If there’s any feeling to catalog.
Bdubs huffs. Etho thinks he hears him say something under his breath. It sounds a lot like thank you.
It’s out of habit, rather than obligation, that Etho finds himself back at the horse course. Of course he ends up here, his feet moving him about as if his brain-not-brain had no thoughts of its own. Man. Some days, it really felt human.
He wanders across the plain, eyes lingering on fully-built buildings, knowing the schematics and plans, watching as those plans-now-buildings stretched higher above his head, where they nearly threatened to pop the sky wide open. 
Bdubs had sat down with him earlier that week, papers spread out between them. He’d stopped by, actually—worked his way up the mountain to the base Etho had finally finished, papers in hand, looking like he was on the verge of collapse. He’d dropped the blueprints on the largest table Etho had managed to clear, spreading out the designs for huge, complex buildings. Etho watched him explain, listened for the inflection of when to offer suggestions, heard the way Bdubs’ voice grew quieter, almost conspiratorial, as he explained his palette. There was something methodical in the way Bdubs spoke, not only in the approach to his colors, but to his style. As much as it seemed eclectic and strange, he watched the pieces fall together as Bdubs spoke of his gradients. There was something deeper there, a precision that Etho, all of a sudden, in that room, craved to emulate. To write to disk. To save. To do more than just copy. 
He’d built the horse stable first—all to his own specifications. It was Bdubs later who came in to detail, tilling up the dirt around to plant grass and flowers, sectioning off parts of the empty stable. It was almost difficult to compartmentalize that Bdubs was finished with it now. That they’d worked each line of the redstone and Etho had supervised the first steps of building, and now he could look up and see the very top, or almost, if he were to strain, of the spikes above the buildings. 
And in just a few weeks, Bdubs was onto another project. Etho smiles to himself. He can’t help it. There was something rather comforting about that. Something about Bdubs dragging him along to help, pointing him toward the thing he was good at, and asking for help. Bdubs showing up at his door with plans. Bdubs cracking jokes with him, and looking for a laugh Etho couldn’t replicate yet. It’s like something clicked. Or was just on the breach of it. And Etho liked it.
Etho clears his field of view, taking in, instead, the stretch of sky where it met the ocean, along the line of hills and grass and flowers, and further still, to the smudge that looked like Bdubs. He blends in too well—the green of his coat barely noticeable against the field of grass that splayed out from the side of his build. There were still materials strewn about—chests half opened, shulkers stacked waist high. 
Bdubs stands to the side of a dark grey and white horse, one hand placed on its nose, the other digging through his bag. Etho watches for a moment. Bdubs fishes around for that entire second that he lingers, searching for something, until he pulls out an apple. Another falls to the ground, rolling away from him. He holds out the fruit for the horse as Etho clears his throat. 
“Hiya, Bdubs—” he says as Bdubs startles, twisting around to see him. He huffs, an immediate frown coming to his face. Bdubs turns to fetch the dropped apple, holding it high above his head as the grey horse nudges its nose into his empty hand. He pats it instead.
“Etho,” he says, tone thin. He sighs, shaking his head. “Scared the life outta me, you know that? You gotta make some noise when you’re walkin’ around.”
Etho smiles, a nice and easy reaction to the annoyance in Bdubs’ voice. It’s getting easier. At least a bit. The smiling part, that is. The inflection that comes with being happy.
“I’ll try next time,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. His hands find his pockets as he looks around, eyes following the path around the buildings. He’s sure the pollen and moss will be stuck to his clothes for days before he gets them out.
“Mm,” Bdubs hums, unconvinced. “I’m sure you will. Now, what’re you doin’ here? You don’t have anything better to do?”
“That’s a good question,” Etho says.
Bdubs turns back to him for a second, just a glance over his shoulder as he cocks his head to the side. He raises his eyebrows before he turns back to the horse, who’s started to nose at his bag. He drags his hand down its nose.
“You’re tellin’ me you don’t have an objective right now?”
“I never have an objective, Bdubs.”
Bdubs snorts again . Etho steps over, slow, minding the horse. It sniffs as Etho holds out his hand, nosing his gloved palm. He pats the horse's nose, somewhat stilted, smoothing over the soft bridge of his nose.
“Right,” Bdubs hums. When Etho glances over to him, Bdubs glances away, as if he’d lingered as Etho stepped over. He’s not moved from Etho’s side, which. Makes something fit into Etho’s chest in a way he isn’t expecting. He rests his hand on the horse's head, looking over at Bdubs in full.
“I can’t come see how the horse course is looking, now that you’re done?” he asks. Bdubs makes an embarrassed sounding noise, watching the rise of the buildings to their left. The horse sniffs, and Etho lifts his hand away, letting it fall to his side.
“I—I got excited about it,” Bdubs mutters. If Etho leans enough, he can see the beginnings of a flush creep over his cheeks, up the shell of his ear. Something about that, too. Etho looks beyond him, though, studying the rise of the buildings as Bdubs does. He nods to himself.
“I can tell,” he says, amusement slipping into his voice, almost naturally. Immediately, Bdubs whips around again, face twisted in offense.
“Hey!” he snaps. “You makin’ fun of me?”
Etho shakes his head, spreading his hands out in front of him as he does.
“No, no. Not at all,” he says, hoping the smile he’s giving is reaching his eyes. “I’m saying we make a pretty good team.”
Bdubs makes a little huff of a sound, but his posture and expression softens. Etho studies it from the moment it appears, trying to place the emotion behind it. He seems upset—but not from anything Etho said. He almost looks guilty.
“We’ve always made a good team,” Bdubs mumbles. Etho blinks.
“Since when have we been a team?”
“Since—s…” Bdubs blurts, then backtracks, folding his arms over his chest. “Well we’re a team now!”
Etho raises his eyebrows, stepping away from the horse and more around Bdubs’ side. He leans in a bit as he stands by his side, bumping their shoulders together. Bdubs doesn’t recoil. Instead, he pushes back, just for a moment, and they jostle. Bdubs hums, sighing through his nose.
“Are we?” Etho asks. Bdubs nods, short and firm.
“Mhm! ‘Cause I said so.”
Etho nods with him. There’s that thing again, a turning, jostling, in some part of his chest that really shouldn’t turn or jostle. He can feel his temperature tick up just a few degrees, a fan kicking on to settle the temperature, thirium sludging warm to cold through his limbs. A team, huh? He couldn’t beat Bdubs’ conviction, that’s for sure. Maybe it was a bit of guilt, then. Maybe something in Bdubs had realized Etho was much more of a help than a hindrance. Maybe Bdubs wanted a friend. Maybe he just felt bad and the feeling bad got to a point where he had to just do something about it. Etho didn’t know. He didn’t live inside Bdubs’ brain. And picking at Bdubs’ every emotion was a task enough to drive his processor into the ground. He could already feel another spike in temperature, LED glowing yellow-blue. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. Etho sticks his hands in his pockets.
“I’d like that,” he says, finally pushing out the words as his programming jumps into gear, “What’s our next project then?”
Bdubs goes back to jostling him before he turns away, moving from Etho’s side to collect his horse. Gathering the horse's reins in his hands, Bdubs pauses.
“Ooh…” he says, frowning a little. Etho watches the little furrow of his eyebrows—thinking. Bdubs is turning the idea over in his head. Bdubs steps back over with the horse in tow, already walking in the direction of the horse stable. Etho jolts forward, taking several big steps to match Bdubs’ pace. “Well why don’t you come back to the clock and we can talk about it, huh?”
“That sounds nice.”
Bdubs makes an affirmative sound, leading the horse around and into the stable. Etho watches him unlatch the gate, ushering the horse into the pen.
“I can put the kettle on and everything,” Bdubs says. He lifts the bridle out of the horse’s mouth, running his hand along the length of the horse’s nose. Etho doesn’t mean to watch him as he does, but the action is so purposeful. There’s a moment where Bdubs’ expression is unreadable—unreadable as in Etho simply can’t place anything on it. Unreadable in the amount it changes—something softer than he’s seen, something far away. Bdubs’ whole demeanor seems to shift as he stands still for a moment. Etho isn’t sure what to do with himself. He’s just standing in straw and dirt and stones, all of which he can feel under his shoes. He shuffles a bit, back and forth, to make his presence known, before he says:
“You know I can’t drink anything, Bdubs.”
And Bdubs rolls his eyes, squinting over at him, stepping away from the horse to hop the gate.
“Well you can at least fake it,” he grumbles. He folds his arms again, wrinkling his nose at Bdubs as Bdubs leads him out of the pen and into the open field around the horse course. The shadow of the buildings above them hasn’t changed, yet. The sun is still high and warm in the sky.
Etho laughs. At least, he makes a sound that he thinks passes as a laugh. Bdubs laughs too, though, so it must sound pretty convincing. He nods, the smile on his face feeling much more natural than he ever could have expected. 
“I could fake it,” he laughs. “Sure.”
Bdubs grins at him. It’s nice. It makes the walk back to his base a little more bearable.
By the time Etho gets his invitation to the life game, he’s grown accustomed to being at Bdubs’ side again. He wanders around Bdubs’ base like he knows it, makes it a spot he chooses to map, to memorize. Bdubs checks in on him when he isn’t around as much—asks him how his builds are going, wonders if he needs help. Bdubs lingers in his spaces too, like a plant trying to root, gives himself reasons to stand in doorways just a bit longer, just enough to extend their goodbyes. It feels right—in a way that almost gives reason to Etho’s deviation. Maybe, deep down, from their first introduction, Etho had decided to glue himself to Bdubs’ side and not become unstuck. Maybe he’d simply put that decision, his first ever decision, into motion that day. It didn’t matter much as to why anymore.
When Etho gets his letter, he doesn’t open it. He holds it between two fingers, turning it over and over. He doesn’t need to read it to know what it says. There’s a dark red seal on the back, shaped like a heart. He makes a little sound, some sort of click in the back of his mouth, before he stuffs the letter in his pocket, half-folded.
He finds Bdubs exactly where he expects. Bdubs is sitting cross-legged in his garden, hands in the dirt, when Etho arrives at the crescent moon base. If he looks closely enough, Etho can still tell that Bdubs’ own letter sits on his window sill in the kitchen, unopened. But he’s really squinting to notice, so he writes it off for now as a flaw in his own sight. 
Bdubs turns to him as he walks up. His hair is pushed back away from his face with his bandana, and his hands are covered in dirt, and he’s got a streak of black soil across his forehead that Etho tries not to look at for too long. Bdubs shoots him a toothy grin, going back to his bright orange tulips. If Etho looks long enough, he could probably guess the soil mixture, and tell him if it's good enough to be planting orange tulips in, but he doesn’t. Instead, he comes to stand behind him and Bdubs hums in greeting.
“Etho,” he says, looking up again, wiping the dirt from his forehead. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, nothin’,” Etho says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He forgets who he picked the gesture up from, but it’s become part of his natural body language patterns now, so he won’t be stopping it anytime soon. “I just came to see how you were doing.”
“How I was doin’, huh?” Bdubs asks, amusement trickling into his voice. Etho smiles, feeling his face pull.
“Mhm,” he says. “That’s right. I can’t come and check up on a friend?”
Bdubs laughs, sticking his spade in the dirt.
“Oh, we’re friends now?” he says, still giggling as he turns around. “I thought we were just a team.”
Etho watches him lean back on his hands, legs coming out from under him. He tries to read Bdubs’ expression and voice for any note of insincerity, or play, or teasing, but doesn’t find anything he normally associates with Bdubs. This just feels true.
“I mean, I figured with how much we’ve been working together…” Etho starts, to which Bdubs startles, waving his hands.
“No, no!” Bdubs yelps. “Etho, I thought the same thing! I just wasn’t expectin’ it from you.”
Etho blinks. It feels owlish, small, almost a wrong reaction to hearing Bdubs say something like that. But it’s what immediately happens, before he tries to open his mouth, and no sound comes out. He waits for a moment. He assumes his LED spins, maybe even red, as Bdubs watches him, face paling.
“Oh,” Etho says quietly.
“We’re friends,” Bdubs says, voice much smaller than Etho’s ever heard it. “‘S that alright with you?”
Etho feels like the proper response would be to laugh, if he could really feel anything at all besides every gear in his chest halting and restarting themselves. He makes a noise that sounds almost like a cough.
“Mhm,” he says. He watches Bdubs’ shoulders relax and finds that his own posture sinks with it. 
“Good,” Bdubs says, nodding along. “Was there anything else you wanted to scare me with?”
Etho knows this tone—playful. Teasing. He works up a smile and fishes the letter from his pocket, slightly bent. Bdubs’ eyes flick right to it, right to the red seal pressed into the paper. Immediately, he scrambles up, reaching for the note in Etho’s hands. Etho lets him grab it in his dirt-covered fingers, even as Bdubs tries frantically to dust off his hands as he notices. Bdubs turns it over itself, glancing up at Etho.
“It’s for you?”
Etho nods.
“It was on my doorstep this morning,” he says. “I can see you’ve got one in your window?”
Bdubs snorts, shaking his head.
“Yeah, I haven’t opened the damn thing. I’m excited up until the point I’m not, ‘cause I know I’m gonna lose again.”
Etho hums. As Bdubs hands him back the letter, Etho rests his hand on his shoulder, giving it a hesitant, light squeeze. Bdubs looks quickly down at it, before he’s back to staring at Etho’s face.
“Don’t worry, Bdubs,” he says, hoping his voice is full of amusement and affection like he feels like it is. “You’ll have me there this time!”
And Bdubs laughs, full and warm in his chest, and Etho jostles him around as he does, until Bdubs is smacking his shoulder and wiggling free. He picks up his fallen hat and his tools, and Etho follows him around the side of the house as he puts things away. As he shuts one of the chest, Bdubs says:
“You mean that, though? You wanna be on a team?”
Etho smiles, feeling his eyes squint, forces every ounce of new feeling into his words when he says:
“I don’t think I wanna team with anyone else, Bdubs.”
And Bdubs’ grin in excitement is more than enough to convince him he’s made the right choice.
It’ll be a long two weeks until the death game starts. When he returns home later that night, Bdubs’ plans for success turning over in his brain, recording for later, Etho reads over the letter enough to commit the page to memory. He keeps it safe internally as the letter finds its way to his bookshelf, half-sealed. Through him, like it’s just under the skin, runs an emotion he’s not yet familiar with. He hopes it's a good one, at the very least. He hopes so, as much as an android, a machine, someone just now familiar with the idea of free will, can hope. 
It feels good, though. And something makes him think that everything will turn out just fine.
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gavisuntiedboot · 10 months
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ok you totally don't have to do it butttttttttttt like could we get a spare gavi spending eid w/ the reader's family for your muslim readers 👀
It would be so islamaphobic if I didn’t do this (reader is an Arabic speaker. If you don’t speak Arabic, pretend that the Arabic is whatever language you want!)
~~~
Drip Too Hard
“Pablo I’m almost ready I just need to- what are you wearing?”
Pablo fought back the urge to laugh at the look of shock-horror on your face. It didn’t seem like the appropriate time. His eyes scanned your figure, wrapped in a beautiful blue dress. The skirt and sleeves were embroidered in gold thread, weaving elaborate floral patterns that cascaded and shimmers across your body. Delicate glass beads reflected the light, throwing fractals around the room. Layers of jewelry hung delicately from your neck and wrists, chiming with every one of your movements. He was used to your face done up, but your hair flowing and the precise black lines framing your face made you a different type of captivating. You looked simply stunning. He peered down at his own attire, suddenly feeling horribly underdressed. His short sleeve shirt and khakis, despite being rather pricey, gave the impression that he was off to a beach volleyball tournament, while you looked ready to grace a runway or gala.
“…clothes? I didn’t know this was a formal event. I thought we were just going to go have brunch with your parents.”
“Right but it’s Eid brunch. Why are you in shorts??”
“Why does this brunch need us to dress like we’re going to a ball?”
Your eyes were wide as saucers, jaw on the floor. You know Gavi hadn’t been around the culture and religion for that long, but you couldn’t process this level of unawareness to his surroundings. You had dragged him across Barcelona to different markets to get fabric and beads for your dress, taking swatches to perfectly match your heels, and even asking him to bring you a specific pendant from his trip to Ibiza. You thought he might sense that the occasion called for something more formal than khaki shorts.
“Come here, Pablito.”
You said, sitting on your couch and beckoning him over. He froze in his spot a moment, realizing he was about to face a potential scolding. He walked slowly and sat beside you, careful not to crush the luxurious fabric you were wrapped in. You turned your phone screen to him, showing him a glamorous photo. Three young men, all around your age, in different colored suits. All of them brandished designer belts with large buckles, the leather matching that of their dress shoes. Three wrists displayed three gleaming watches, all embossed with a crown. Next to them, a girl stood in a beautifully embroidered dress, the glittering fabric reflecting the sunlight. The deep purple of the garment was reflected in her intricate eye makeup, and the red bottoms of her heels peaked through the drapery.
“These, Pablo, are my cousins. This is what they wore to Eid brunch with the family last year and they were called underdressed because one of them didn’t have a suit jacket. Eid is the Muslim Met Gala, and I will not be on the worst dressed list by association. Please tell me you have something else to wear.”
Gavi brought his hands to his temples, rubbing them to soothe the oncoming headache from all the information.
“Amie Paris always sends me stuff and I haven’t opened most of it. Oh and Dolce & Gabbana. You can look through and pick an outfit for me.” He suggested, watching your eyes light up and a smile erupt across your face. You tugged his wrist, encouraging him to follow you in. For the next 20 minutes, you treated him like your own personal Ken doll, dressing him up in different luxurious clothing.
You took a step back to admire your artistry. On his chest rested a crisp blue Amie dress shirt, tucked into the pants of a stunningly tailored D&G suit, hugging every muscle in an elegant and yet drool inducing manner. A black Hermes belt sat low on his hips, matching the black leather dress shoes you had forced him into (“Pablo it’s a formal event put the Dunks away!”). Matching Hermes cuff links clinked softly against the platinum Rolex on his wrist. He pushed his hair back and put on his favorite sunglasses.
“Good enough for the Eid instagram picture?” He asked, smirking as he saw you look at him like he was ambrosia from the heavens above.
“Mhm, almost too good. Let’s go before my parents get suspicious as to why we’re late.”
~
Pulling up to your parents house, Pablo parked behind the six or seven other cars by the property. The gorgeous weather had brought the Eid festivities outside, and Gavi couldn’t help but be struck by the beauty of it all. Tables in white and gold cloths held serving trays piled high with sweet and savory delicacies. Every utensil, from the plates to the silverware, was embellished with gold patterns, forming the shapes of stars and crescent moons. Your entire family was spread across the lawn: parents in the middle conversing with aunts and uncles while sipping on cold juices, and cousins ages 3 to 33 were spread about, running and laughing and of course taking photos.
“While I’m incredibly grateful that you made me change, I still feel a little out of place. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do on Eid.” He said, keeping himself at a respectable religious distance. You giggled softly before grabbing his hand, lancing your fingers between his clammy ones. “You just celebrate. Like Christmas. We’ll say hi to my parents, then we can mingle and do whatever we want until they serve the food.”
“Okay okay, one last question.”
“Yes, pablito?”
“What is that creature on the table?”
You turned around to follow Gavi’s line of sight, a loud laugh releasing itself from your throat before you could contain it. You tried to stifle it quickly as the redness creeped onto Gavi’s cheeks. You didn’t want to embarrass him.
“That’s a roasted lamb, amor. I know it looks a little strange to see a whole one on a tray like that, but it’s tradition. They might ask you to eat the head.”
“What??”
Before you could answer and quell Pablo’s fear, your mother called you over.
"حبيبتي، شو المضحك لهذه الدرجة؟ صوتك كثير عالي"
(Love, what’s so funny? You’re laughing very loudly)
Walking over, you kissed your mother on the cheek three times, hugging her close and wishing her a blessed Eid.
"ولا شيء مهم، ماما. كان خطيبي بس خايف من شكال الخاروف "
(Nothing important, mama. My fiancé was just scared by the lamb)
Pablo followed you over after a moment, shaking your father’s hand and kissing your mother on the cheeks. He thanked them for allowing him to be a part of their celebration, and your mother hugged him once again, reminding him that he was like family.
After small talk with your parents, you and Pablo moved around the function, greeting and chatting with various cousins. You laughed and talked loudly, continuing carefree. You loved watching Gavi interact with your family, culture, and religion. About 30 minutes after your arrival, you felt a tap on your shoulder.
“We’re going to take instagram pictures now, and we were wondering: can we steal your man to be in them with us?” You stated in shock at your cousins, who often payed you and your doings no mind. “Why him?” You asked, amused by how shy they seemed, like children asking if their friend could come play. “Because he’s dripping hard. Plus if we tag him we could get mad amounts of girls in our DMs.” Have to appreciate that honesty.
Gavi agreed to the photos, and stood with your male cousins to take some hot and only slightly cringey photos in front of all the expensive cars people drive to the function. Afterwards, Pablo handed his phone to your cousin, asking for pictures of the two of you.
“We have to get some together princesa. I wouldn’t look this fine without your help.”
Walking over, you wrapped an arm around him and kissed his cheek, eliciting vomit sounds from your family. “You’re pretty fine looking all on your own. Thank you, by the way, for coming with me.”
“Of course. There’s no one I’d rather spend my time with, habibti.” (My love)
Needless to say, that one phrase is what created the best photo. You were looking over your shoulder with sheer joy on your face, eyes meeting those of an excited and lovesick Pablo. He was your biggest blessing.
~~~~
Based on my real eid fit and how serious eid insta photos actually are. Also, Eid is 3 days, so this is y’all’s eid gift from meeeee!! Hope y’all enjoy this one 🥰 love u guys xoxo, boot w another migraine !!!
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