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#I'll edit this or delete it in the morning probably
silas-is-sleepy · 9 months
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One of the biggest differences in the dsmp vs qsmp storyline (purely story line and lore) is that. In the dsmp there was no hope in the end. There only could ever have been a bittersweet ending, a double edged sword, a moving on but never truely healing. There was only wars and trauma and hatred. Everyone separated, there was no family anymore there was no love, no friends. The only somewhat happy ending i can think of was a Wilbur going back 'home' to Utah after apologizing to as many people as he could. There was no chance for a truely happy ending. It was all pain and angst and one final hurrah. However on the qsmp. At least for now. There is always some form of hope. When felps got kidnapped, Cellbit was going insane looking for him and others supported and helped him during it, there was always love there. When Cellbit got kidnapped himself, so many others looked for him and banded together. There is always love, family, hope. The residents trust each other, no one is left out, at least not intentionally. Even now, with that trust being tested, there are still laughs and joy. they made one of the NPCs into an actual character, they gave Walter bob his name, his clothes, even a face. He is cared for so much now. There is of course horrors, and traumas, and loss, but there is Love and Hope mixed in. It is balanced. When charlie lost juanaflippa, when quackity lost tilín, when max lost trump, there were people there for them, wether they realized it or not. When the eggs started dying and being attacked by codes and the island itself seemed like it was trying to kill them, Forever created N.I.N.H.O, a safe haven. Everyone trys so hard to stay together and united because they know it's them against the island, them against The Federation, and they don't stand a chance alone. But even then it's not only out of necessity, it's out of Care. There will always be hope. There will always be love. Ultimately, despite The Horrors, the qsmp is about connections, love, and hope. It's cheesy but it makes all the difference.
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spockandawe · 7 months
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Double edit: actually, that's enough of that.
Edit: I was expecting maybe thirty notes tops. This is a surprise, and one that doesn't delight me. If I hear about any harassment stemming from this post, I'll be more pissed at the harasser than the person this is about.
God. Dammit.
I hate this, let's just out that out there! I'm unhappy that I'm talking about any of this, I'm unhappy there's an issue that's come up at the intersection of media preservation, respecting authors, and one of my favorite book series. And I'm unhappy that I've censored the names in the screenshots I'm about ti post! I'm not happy that I'm helping to slide consequences away from someone who thought this was an acceptable thing to do to a modern working author. But I'm even less happy this is something that happened in the first place, and I'm VERY unhappy the original post has been deleted without a whisper of accountability or apology.
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And here's a partial screenshot of the IA page, which has since been removed. I get the excitement to share something you love with a new audience. This isn't the right way to go about it.
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First, if Martha Wells' patreon is still in place, I encourage everyone in the strongest possible terms to go sign up for it. It'll charge you one dollar. I've been a member since probably 2018, and I mistakenly believed it was locked to new members (it's labeled 'Currently Closed To New Patrons') until I had reason to look it up last night, when I tripped across this reddit post from earlier this year.
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Now. I was looking it up because of this sudden patreon message:
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Even if the patreon goes away, I still recommend that people sign up. Explore the stories! They're very fun! Even though the patreon has been dormant for years, I've loved having that repository in place.
In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, what kept me from immediately reblogging last night is that I've felt the same archival urges! I bound a hard copy of these stories earlier this year, and let me quote my own words from that post:
I live in a state of perpetual low key stress over the impermanence of digital media and that goes extra for sites that aren’t designed to work well as archives. I hope, desperately, that someday Martha Wells publishes more raksura, maybe even including these stories! I will buy it immediately. No thoughts, wallet empty. I own all her other raksura books in literally three formats, fingers crossed that by printing this, I can actualize a formal official printing of these stories by the author 😂
So. Archiving, yes. But especially with a living, working author, I would never DREAM of posting a public free-for-all with IA and mediafire links. My most charitable interpretation is that OP thought it was fine since the stories were "free," even though the writeups acknowledge that access costs a dollar. Ao3 is also free. Reposting someone else's fic is still understood to be a dick move.
Last night i was left kind of stunned, and I was hoping to see some kind of response from op this morning taking responsibility, and was... disappointed to see that the post was just deleted. The IA listing was deleted too, and I hadn't actually looked up the mediafire post yet but I'm guessing it's also been nuked. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if there was anything more in the comments, so I found a surviving reblog. And there was!
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So I'm writing this post because I'm... frustrated. Taking down the files is a good step. Posting them publicly was a worse step, but hey. I still more than understand if Martha Wells still deletes her patreon. I don't understand what sending her files of her own stories is meant to accomplish, but whatever. Ascribing a profit-driven motive is driving me up a wall, though. She's financially stable. I read her email, and what i see is frustration that even though it only cost a dollar to access 62k of her work through her own chosen location, control of her writing is being forcibly removed from her. I'm sure that seeing copies sold by third parties wouldn't help, but I don't think that's the root issue.
This is a fandom-heavy website, I'm sure most of us have seen posts about not reposting art when you can share directly from the artist's blog. I've seen posts about stop copying your ao3 faves over to wattpad just because you like reading there better. At a fundamental level, I read the message from Martha Wells as a deep frustration at having no way to share her creative work without someone removing control of it from her hands. And I don't know if there's any way to really take back that damage.
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lovelycureaestetic · 3 months
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Hello everyone, I'm using this secondary account as a temporary back plan as I wait for Tumblr to wake up and give me back my main: Cureaesthetic.
What happened is that last night (for me around 1am of Jan 17th) I casually opened the app after just a few minutes and the message "something went wrong" popped up. It happens at times so I closed the app and tried again. I did this a few times and since it kept on not loading I decided to log off and back on. "Email or password invalid".
Panic.
I access another account and look up my url. Gone. I search for my name and find some asks from me that people have answered. Click on my blog. "There's nothing here". I acces through my computer "Your blog has been deleted".
12 years. 12 years of my life just gone in the blink of an eye. It broke me. I alternated between spiraling and dissociating. Felt sick to my stomach. I tried filing a ticket using the email associated with that account and got nothing, so this morning I did it again with another email and immediately got a reply saying they got my ticket. This is probably because the email attached to that account also got nuked? Who knows. This is insane they JUST finished talking to me the day prior (Jan 16th) for another issue. I checked and for that whole debacle I got an answer back from a human in four days, so I suspect this time will be the same but the thought of not having Tumblr for four days is simply absurd. It's the only social I use, all my beloved friends and mutuals are here and to not be able to casually open the app to check on them saddens me immensely.
So I decided to use this other account for the time being until I get my other one back.
If you followed me and noticed I was gone, you can stay updated by following me here so you will know when I'll be back on main. If we were mutuals I'll shortly reach out to you and if I don't it's because I'm shit at names SORRY ABOUT THAT. Again this is CUREAESTHETIC the cool and sexy proship blog who made the "proship love zone" banners and many more endeavours. I'll try to tag this with various things.
I just want my home back 。⁠:゚⁠(⁠;⁠´⁠∩⁠`⁠;⁠)゚⁠:⁠。
Edit I'll tag some of my mutuals here just in case
@midorikawawas @dante-redgravee @puppyfan9000 @fishjoshi @semephobic @redcurrantorchard @anisecandy @bl00dalchemist @reaversanctuary @hangfiretales @aralezinspace @zenosmalewife
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jaybarou · 2 months
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I'm turning some of my most AU fanfics into Original short stories in the hopes of selling them to a publisher. (And thus get some cred to send my CV to Publishers and leave my job)
While I unfic them all, I'll post them here and you can read them with the tag #limited edition. I'll delete them after a few days
<7k words
Freddie is running out of time before the presentation for Stenson Industries and he needs a competent technician yesterday. How fortunate, then, that someone who was waiting and overheard his problem is willing to help.
Freddie burst into the hall and everyone held their breath while the second son of the boss made his way to the head of department. The rest of the employees mourned the poor woman and settled to watch the dismemberment. There were three rules in the company. Number one: Don’t piss off the boss. Rupert was a clever bastard who should have been a lawyer. Number two: Don’t mess with Tim, he was under Rupert’s protection and Rupert would utterly destroy you if you dared contradict the guy. Number three: Keep Freddie as a friend, but only behind Rupert’s back.
Freddie had turned into a tyrant lately. He used to be the most understanding of the three and the one to go to if the others were being unreasonable. The Winter fiasco had taken its toll on him, but even with the new bitterness, he was far more flexible than his relatives and he was your man if you wanted something that was technically off-limits. Going against Freddie was a suicide too, especially after the winter thing. Today Freddie had his ‘I have had a horrid day and I’ll be polite about it until I’m not’ face going on. The head of the department was so doomed.
She didn’t know it yet, though, since Freddie was coming from behind.
“Rosita,” Freddie’s icy tone clued the woman in, so she was properly scared when she turned to face her boss. “May I inquire as to the whereabouts of our IT crew?”
Ow, he was using the big words, he must be royally crossed.
Oh, but the head of department was breathing relieved, she probably had an ace up her sleeve. Anyone who worked at the Intenur Company for longer than a year had to lean to be prepared for their bosses’ moods.
“I alerted them when you asked me; I have sent no less than three messages this week and three more during the morning in anticipation. They assured me that the material would be ready yesterday and that they wouldn’t work on it today.”
Wow! Perfectly deflected blame! And the IT crew wouldn’t have it too bad; they were Tim’s friends. This was not a surprising development all the same; they always messed up Freddie’s tasks, and everyone knew that it wasn’t a coincidence. Tim’s protection was the only explanation as to why they still had a job.
“And the material is there for Tim’s and Rupert’s worthless power points, but I told them there was a compatibility problem with my presentation a week ago.”
“With all due respect, sir, that is not my responsibility.” Rosita had brass balls, or ovaries.
Freddie pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed slowly. “I’m aware; Rosita, but now I need a solution.”
“The other presentations are not causing problems,” she had the cheek to mention.
“Of course not! They are using the company’s system!”
“And why is that a problem? Maybe if you didn’t insist on using your personal computer...”
“It is a problem because it is Pi-21’s stupid technology, Rosita. What kind of impression do you think we will give to Miss Lloid and Mr Stenson if we present our data with their rival’s technology?”
“I’m sure they know by now.” Rosita sent a furtive look at the clients whispering into each other’s ears; a businesswoman and some oil-stained technician. Freddie didn’t spare a look. They were probably gossiping about Freddie’s tantrum; that seemed to be the default these days. Maybe Freddie’s interruption was making them impatient, but Freddie couldn’t care less. He had bigger problems.
“I can’t just transfer my presentation; Pi-21’s software keeps wrecking everything, I could write the transfer code, but not in the next...” Freddie looked at the clock on his mobile. “Not in twenty minutes!”
“I could call the IT crew for you.”
“Today it is Sophie’s shift; she will say that it is my fault, for working with Stenson technology. She only works with simple ‘intuitive’ code like Pi-21’s. I want someone competent!”
One of the two waiting clients approached them.
“I-” he started. 
Freddie didn’t give him the chance to complain.
“I’m terribly sorry for the delay, but there is an emergency in the company.” Freddie usually kept his cool like a boss, well, better than the other bosses. He was usually PR’s wet dream, but he could be downright irrational if the situation really got to him. The Winter Project had been proof enough. “Unless you can fix the computers in time, kindly stay put for a few minutes.” The ‘or else’ was implied.
“I certainly could,” the client said cheerfully. Freddie looked at him skeptically.
“But…” Rosita tried to intervene.
“Do you have a solution, Rosita?” Freddie asked.
“Of course she doesn’t, she is a clever girl, Pi-21’s software is not for clever girls. Show me to the problem, Mr Legs.” The man had the gall to walk to the door where Freddie had come from and open it for him.
Freddie regarded the man warily. Twenty minutes. He still had time to look desperately for someone else if the man couldn’t help and fail. “Why not? I’m doomed anyway.” Freddie walked to the door with a sigh.
“But, sir! He is Ryan Stenson!” Too late; the door was closed. “I’m so screwed,” Rosita muttered thinking of the moment when Rupert heard how she had failed to stop Freddie.
Miss Lloid put an understanding hand on her arm; she probably knew a thing or two about trouble with bosses.
*
Freddie took the man to the conference room where he would have to meet the head of Stenson Industries. He had his custom Stenson laptop there with his presentation and an enormous mess showing on the Pi-21 screen of the company. There wasn’t even an error message, just all the text overlapped with the images and the data, and then it had frozen. If Rupert wasn’t such a resentful man, they’d have Stenson’s holo-displays everywhere instead of that waste of space that Pi-21 called technology. Unfortunately, Rupert would own the company for as long as he lived and Tim would follow his steps like a trained monkey.
The unexpected client-turned-help didn’t ask for permission, he just sat in front of Freddie’s computer as if it was his. He sent a disdainful look at the problematic frozen screen and he turned to Freddie with an amused smile to say: “Let’s start with archaic solutions for archaic technology.” Then the technician crouched to unplug the projector.
“I’ve done exactly the same more than once today.” It was the only way to unfreeze the projector, but Freddie resented the know-it-all attitude of the technician.
The man seemed to take that as a challenge, so he cracked his knuckles and promptly opened the familiar black window of MS-DOS. He started to write while Freddie looked over his shoulder. He was pulling pieces of code that Freddie had not considered, and he didn’t even need to do much after he was done. He just opened the Stenson software for presentations and saved the file that Freddie pointed out in a format that wasn’t there before the man had touched the computer.
The smug bastard had a cheeky smile when he presented Freddie with the pen drive.
Freddie saved all his praise until he plugged the USB drive on the projector and it miraculously worked. The clock on the screen said it had taken the technician… less than five minutes. Freddie was pleasantly surprised; he was going to thank the stranger, but then the presentation played the music that Freddie had saved without hope of it working.
“This thing never plays music, at least never at the same time as the presentation!” He let himself slouch on the chair closest to the projector. The presentation was saved. 
“It was just too easy,” the smug technician commented.
“I would have managed with a bit more than twenty minutes,” Freddie said, pride a bit hurt.
“If your coding is as good as your people skills, twenty minutes would have easily become a week of work.”
“What gives you the right to say that?” Freddie protested.
“You have not even asked my name.”
Freddie pursed his lips. Despite having collapsed on the seat, he was tense all over. He had been stressed since he found trouble with the presentation a week ago and predicted more trouble with IT on top of the other preparations. The man was right, he had been snappy and the presentation hadn’t even started yet, so he took the chance to breathe deeply. And to collect his politeness from the depths of despair.
“Excuse my manners, I-”
“Yes, you don’t need my name, just my services,” the man cut him without retracting that annoying smirk of his.
“Fortunately your coding is better than your own people skills, then,” Freddie said, annoyed.
“No, just as good, people love me, I have people skills to spare somewhere, just not today,  and I have a lot of class.”
“And what are you implying there exactly?”
“That music in your presentation? Tacky.” Let it be known that Freddie knew when he was being mocked and when he was being teased, he just had more experience with the former. 
“I didn’t expect it to work and I can put whatever music I want, because the content is solid.”
“Show me.”
Freddie leaned forward. “What?”
“I said show me!” The technician leaned forward too. “You have time, right? I want to see the monster I helped to create.”
Freddie didn’t have time to reply, because the man stood up, took the remote control from the table, walked in front of the screen and played the presentation. Freddie did have the time now; Stenson should be with Tim and his unproductive dreams of harnessing storms to generate electricity. The technician’s opinion wouldn’t be very enlightening, but this way Freddie would have the chance to check his own presentation one last time.
“This section, why is it so short?” The technician said about the grid connection as he sat on the table. Freddie sat next to him.
It was Freddie’s favorite section, but Rupert didn’t like it, so Freddie had only sneaked a basic idea. He was quite proud of having passed it under the old man’s nose.
“Rupert is old school.” Freddie smirked privately. “He likes the old power plants and he hates Stenson. Hates that his green approach to energy is harming our productivity, and he doesn’t see that an update could benefit both of us. After all, as you see here, we already have a power grid that Stenson wants; we would only have to update the power plants. It would be a great investment, but he doesn’t like it.”
The technician crossed his arms. “He doesn’t like Stenson?”
Freddie laughed. “It is more than dislike. Stenson is the bane of his existence, as Rupert says: who does he think he is, that short-sighted idiot? or whatever short joke he thinks at that moment; apparently the man is quite short.”
“Yes, people say that. Go on.”
“Well, Father always says that Stenson will destroy America, because Forbes might call him a hero but his technology is destroying jobs everywhere, his words, not mine.” Freddie rolled his eyes.
The technician kept playing the presentation and smirked at one of the references.
“That is the project I… saw in a magazine about Stenson. It is not well known, is it? Have you been stalking him or something?”
“I’ve done my research. That high-entropy alloy project is spectacular, but it is not showy enough for the press, or the shareholders, Miss Lloid and he will probably value that Intenur-”
“Your boss is not here, Legs.”
Freddie hesitated for a moment, but the man was smart, he was learning how the Intenur Company worked incredibly fast.
“They will value that I recognize the real potential out of the flashy prototypes for the general public.”
“Are you saying that they lie with their flashy prototypes?”
Freddie looked the technician dead in the eye.
“Of course they do. That’s what marketing is about.”
“Would you tell them that to their face?”
“Of course not. Rupert would behead me if I did something to hamper his deal.”
“Why would he want a deal with a man he hates?”
“I convinced him that he could push his hate aside for the good of the company and to leave a better legacy to Tim.”
“The company, of course, because clean energy and the bigger picture are nothing compared to stock numbers.”
“Obviously you have never discussed it with Rupert. I told him what he needed to hear; I won’t jeopardize the ‘bigger picture’ as you say, by telling him something as feeble as the whole truth.” Freddie leaned his hip against the table. “Then the shareholders gossiped about Stenson and how easy it would be to negotiate some changes with him and Rupert was sold.”
“Huh? And what did they say about Stenson?”
“Why do you ask?”
The technician shrugged and grinned. “Because I want to keep listening to your voice, but I don’t think you’d appreciate me distracting you from the topic.”
Freddie raised an eyebrow at the blatant flirting, but let it slide. “They said that it takes a lot to keep Stenson interested in a single topic unless it is really engaging, but they also told us to use eye-candy to keep him involved.” Freddie allowed himself a private smile, the one that people compared with a snake’s. “Tim called his girlfriend to play the part of eye-candy. She is an expert in the field of his presentation, so he was terribly angry that she was called only for her looks.”
The technician shared his smile with the same subtle touch of cruelty that Freddie found… endearing.
“Maybe you should have read more magazines, and you would know that you put eye-candy in your presentation anyway?”
The technician was looking up and down at Freddie quite obviously. Freddie’s lip twitched and he retreated any endearing thought that had passed through his mind.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he swings both ways, you know?” Freddie didn’t dignify that with an answer, which was a bad decision, because the technician came back. “Don’t tell me you are one of those bigoted idiots who think bisexuality is just...”
“You are lucky I needed you. That comment would have you in the street by yesterday if you worked here.” Freddie didn’t appreciate being called bigoted; he had enough putting up with Rupert daily trying to keep his second son’s “scandalous ways” in the closet, thank you very much.  “I was merely surprised; I don’t think I’ve ever been called eye-candy before.”
“Why the hell not? Do you usually hang out with blind people? Wait, Rupert is the guy with the eye-patch, right? Does that count as half-blind?”
“That is very insensitive of you.” Freddie chastised, but his twitching lip was persistent. He would love to say it was annoyance, but deep down he knew it was amusement.
“Let me guess; that comment would put me in the street by yesterday if I worked here. How lucky that I don’t actually work here, don’t you think?” The man had no sense of self-reservation. “And let me tell you, if your definition of eye-candy is allowed to have brains, you totally qualify, take it from an expert in eye-candyness.”
“An expert.” Freddie deadpanned with only a badly concealed hint of interest showing.
“An expert indeed! I look into the mirror every day, after all.”
Freddie pretended to think seriously, looking the technician up and down on his spot sitting on the table. He was indeed quite handsome, but Freddie was not going to make the same mistake twice and appreciate a man within Rupert’s earshot. “No, I don’t really see it.” Despite the words, Freddie sent a challenging look at the technician that contradicted is words, just in case the presentation went well and Freddie decided to celebrate when he went home.
“I’ll have you know I look amazing in a suit, in any suit, or with nothing at all, I’m only wearing the workshop uniform to piss… my friend off. Hell, I could wear a corset and stockings and I’d still look hot as-”
Freddie’s phone pinged. He put a hand up to make the technician stop for a moment while he read Tim’s message and his face fell a little.
“Apparently the eye-candy won’t be necessary after all. Tim says that Stenson didn’t come; it was only Miss Lloyd in his presentation, and apparently she is headed here.” Freddie looked at the clock. “Early. You should probably leave, ask Rosita anything you want at the front desk and tell her I approved it. She’ll make an invoice if necessary.”
“Unless she’s giving me your phone number I’m staying.” 
Freddie glared at the man. 
“What? Pi-21’s technology is famously unreliable as fuck. What if you suddenly need a dashing hero to help you?” 
Freddie glared harder.
“I told you that I wanted to keep hearing you; what makes you think you’ll get rid of me anytime soon?”
Unfortunately for Freddie, Rosita showed Miss Lloyd into the conference room at that exact moment and Freddie had to put on his public mask and shake hands with the woman. Lloyd excused Stenson for not coming. She said something about a last moment change of plans; she also said that her chief engineer was prone to last-minute impulses and ideas while sending a look at the technician by Freddie’s side. There was no polite way to get rid of the man in front of Lloyd, though, and the man knew it. So he rolled on with his presence and ignored Ms Lloyd’s look. She’d have to suffer his presence too.
Freddie would have said something scathing about Stenson’s absence, but his lips were sewn as long as there was a possibility of a deal on the horizon.
The presentation ended up being a disaster and it was the technician’s fault. He kept interrupting Freddie and addressing Ms Lloyd directly, to Freddie’s chagrin. Freddie couldn’t explain the man’s presence now and he couldn’t just throw him away in front of Ms Lloyd. His comments were on point, but Miss Lloyd wouldn’t appreciate that someone that Freddie had not even introduced interrupted like that. Also, Freddie had prepared the presentation with Stenson in mind, he didn’t know as much about the discrete CEO.
A complete disaster.
Ms Lloyd left the room an hour later to speak with Rupert and as soon as the door closed behind her, Freddie collapsed on one of the rolling chairs. The technician was giggling like Freddie’s career wasn’t crumbling before his eyes.
“That was brilliant!”
“No it wasn’t. You were interrupting!”
“I assure you she won’t mind, she is used to much worse.” And as an afterthought he added, “probably.”
“Even if that is true, I don’t think Rupert will see it your way.”
Freddie wallowed a bit more in his misery before the technician derailed his train of thought.
“If Stenson had known what kind of presentation you had in your hands, he wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“I guess we will never know.”
“Hey! I’m telling you! I’m sure!”
Freddie huffed sarcastically, but the technician was having none of it. “How come you know about a small project of Stenson but you ignore the most basic things that everybody knows about him?” He had an elbow planted on the table and his teasing tone was both baffled and soft at the same time. 
“When I started to investigate I didn’t know he was a celebrity. When I realized he was, I did everything in my power to avoid yellow-press literature. It’s just too unreliable, and it would poison my own vision.” Freddie was defensive over his choices. “I think that reading his papers is enough. Don’t you think?”
“You have read his papers?” His eyebrows lifted briefly. 
“And patents. Of course.”
“But most of his patents have nothing to do with clean energy, why would you read those too?”
“He is quite inventive; the material innovations were clean solutions. Masterpieces in a field that still managed to convey how his mind works. You can follow his thought process by-”
“Reverse engineering?” The technician ended his phrase. Freddie didn’t like how surprised he looked.
“I might come across as Rupert’s left hand, and the convenient scapegoat but I assure you that I’m more than the company’s tool.”
“I don’t know you,” the technician showed his hands conciliatory. “Maybe you should show me how much more you are.”
“Don’t play with me. It is not a good moment.” Freddie regarded the technician; he wouldn’t be trouble. “I planned today’s meeting with a high risk to my career, things are already terrible as they are.
“Why risk so much? You would have convinced The CEO of Pi-21 instead easily.”
“First, no matter what Intenur does, I only deal with the best and second… Well, I was looking forward to meeting him in person.”
“Why?”
“That is not your concern.” Freddie knew he had said the wrong thing, because now this man’s interest was piqued. 
“Awww, how cute, you have a crush on him!”
“What? No! I don’t know him!”
“Yes you do, why would you bother otherwise?”
Freddie was done with that conversation, but he was starting to remember that this technician was supposed to be a client who was owed an apology for getting dragged into this whole mess, so he ended up answering in defeat. 
“His research into AIs. There is speculation about him having made great leaps, but he covers it with zeal. It’s been years since he last published on the subject and I think it is because he made something spectacular.”
“His AIs... You are a nerd, aren’t you?” The technician-maybe-still-client laughed. “Why would you want to know about that and not his super-amazing robotics sowcase?”
“Because… Well, I have a couple of AIs myself, and as I developed them beyond what we currently know about AIs... I understood that I would never expose them to the public, no matter the sum offered. You wouldn’t understand, it is a strange connection with something that you’ve created that sounds… ridiculous. A program…” Freddie shrugged. “Tim says it is unhealthy, being attached to a few lines of code. But I found that I want the best for them and to make sure they cause no harm either.” He turned to watch the man warily. “And you won’t make me feel ashamed of it.”
“Perish the thought.” 
“Any joke about cyberphilia and I’ll make sure nobody finds your body.”
Freddie could see the alternative joke forming in the technician’s mind, but before he could brace himself, the communication system came to life and Rupert’s voice filled the room.
“Freddie, Ms Lloyd has left the building without a closed agreement. Your plan has failed! and the company will suffer for it!”
“Maybe if Tim’s presentation hadn’t been so bland, Ms Lloyd would have been more interested in that agreement.”
“Your brother’s proposal was bland because you let him down, to do your own thing, like you always do. I hope you are proud of yourself! I should have known that you would make this deal a failure. Do you know how much time I put into this? Time I don’t have, Freddie! Time I can’t waste if you can’t even make Stenson come to listen to us.”
“You can’t blame me for that too. He is the one who decided not to come.”
“I warned you, my son. That little man isn’t worth a single minute of our time. Now, you will make sure this has been your last failure, you will forget about this venture or, as much as it pains me to say this, you will leave the company.”
Freddie’s blood went cold. His whole world darkened around the corners, all of him was focused on that speaker. Leave the company?
“Sir, negotiations have only started; it was almost six months until we convinced Vanestia co. to sell the company. We could still strike a deal with Stenson Industries in that time.” Freddie tried to hide how much it hurt him to think of giving up on this opportunity.
“No, son.”
The communication system died and Freddie held his breath. Rupert had never been so direct, he always insinuated and implied that Freddie was a waste of time and space that should only help to make Tim climb higher, but he was never this blunt. Rupert knew how to make Freddie stay by the company’s side and Freddie tried to earn the same respect as his brother, well, his not-blood-brother, as Freddie had discovered during the last project. His efforts had been less and less effective since the winter affair.
Of course, Freddie had suspected that Rupert favored Tim; it was plain to see, but Freddie had expected to overcome that favoritism with hard work or trickery. Apparently nothing was enough, nothing would ever be enough. What was the sense in trying anymore? Freddie should give up, leave Intenur definitely before being pushed out. But what would he do? He had worked there his whole life; there was nothing he could do now. Other companies hated Freddie because he had inconvenienced them in favor of Intenur. There was nothing to do.  No solution. Nothing.
“Hey, ravenlocks? Someone home?” Freddie looked up to the Technician. Freddie had been still looking at the loudspeaker for a few seconds after it disconnected. Without the man’s interruption, he would have kept falling for a long time, he was sure of it. “After that, you look like you need a drink.”
“I won’t have a career by tomorrow morning. I think I need more than a drink.”
“You need to stop thinking before you give yourself an aneurysm, pretty thing, and I know just the place.”
Freddie wouldn’t be needed anymore that day. Maybe ever, if Rupert was to be believed. Freddie could just… Let go. There was a chance that Rupert would want him to be there, but if Freddie only did what Rupert told him, he’d stay put quietly in a closet until the old man had use for him. Therefore, and to spite Rupert if he actually called, he sneaked out of the building with the technician, who still avoided saying his name claiming that Freddie had had his moment to ask and that the moment was gone. 
Freddie wanted… Freddie didn’t know what he wanted now, but he was on the verge of wanting to find a cliff, which was probably bad for his continued existence. Being alone now would be his worst decision to date, so he let himself be dragged away. The technician made inappropriate jokes and kept the self-destructive feelings at bay, so Freddie decided to cling to the man until he felt better or until he found something better to cling to.
They drove through New York like a pair of clueless tourists and they hit all the bars in what Freddie had named ‘A list of the most outrageous places’. It seemed like the technician knew his way around a good number of holes in the wall.
Once there was enough alcohol intaken, Freddie answered the Technician’s questions very easily. He had always been quite private about the family part of the business, and he had never spoken badly of it, but nothing had been the same after the winter collapse. The company had lost his respect; the family had lost his respect. And today Freddie’s career had crumbled down; sometime after the sixth drink he had realized that he didn’t really have any career to speak of. All his skill set was built around making Intenur work. He didn’t have a job description; he embodied all the spare parts of the well-tuned machine of Intenur. He was… a puppet, even though he was the spine of the company… the spine of the machine… maybe he should stop mixing metaphors, or drinks, maybe he should stop mixing drinks.
In between realizations, Freddie had decided that there was nothing to lose if he talked with the technician. He wouldn’t get into more trouble and he would finally get it off his chest, even if the man didn’t believe him, so he told the cheerful and rather handsome mysterious man about the project Rupert had in the works to create energy out of cold.
The man had laughed loudly enough to startle the other tables and the sound had pleased a petty and vindictive part of Freddie.
It was a senseless monstrosity called Productive Winters; a stupidity, of course, anyone with basic knowledge of thermodynamics would know it: it was a ruse to keep some clueless, idiot, brain-dead shareholders interested, but Freddie’s brother had wanted to put it into practice. Tim had been in charge of the company while Rupert was recovering from an eye operation in some spiritual retreat center. One of the mildly intelligent shareholders, Mr Ludwig, had suspected that the whole thing was a huge lie and Tim didn’t take kindly to being called a liar.
Freddie had been in charge of damage control. Mr Ludwig had been dealt with, but the problem was far from over. Both Rupertsons fought over the path to take and Freddie destroyed the project behind Tim’s back so it would never see the light of day and uncover Intenur as scammers or worse: idiots. In doing that, Freddie broke the shareholder’s trust and when Rupert found out, he ordered the PR department to make Freddie into the jealous villain who wanted more power in the company, to save face.
In that click-bait story that Rupert’s PR department fed to the newspapers, Tim was the magnanimous, kind brother who took Freddie in back again despite his ‘treason’. The story was heartwarming enough to save Intenur in the stock market and there was everybody’s happy ending. Freddie had been willing to sacrifice his public image to save the company, but he had never realized how much of himself he was giving away. Now he saw it as it was: a cage of his own making.
Intenur was the place where Freddie could live until he retired if only he submitted to Rupert’s rule. Only now, after decades of loyalty and sacrifice, did Freddie realize that he was considered chaotic and a liar in the larger world of business. Freddie had been pleased to take the burn of any problem in the company; it was not as if he would ever need to have references outside of Intenur. But now he had nowhere to go. He had built his own golden cage one bar at a time and Rupert had provided the tools all too happily.
His only chance of staying away from this was his mother. He could still try to find her wherever she had escaped from Rupert and beg forgiveness. She would receive him with open arms, but after years of defending his father and brother, Freddie couldn’t bring himself to concede defeat, the shame was too great.
The lack of flavor in his latest drink made Freddie realize that he had a bottle of water in his hand and that he had been complaining out loud. The technician was still next to him; he had two untouched colorful glasses in front of him and a boozed smirk. It took Freddie’s alcohol-filled brain a few seconds to realize that the man must have been the one to change the glass for the bottle of water, but the reason eluded Freddie. 
The feeling must have shown on his face.
“Believe me, you will hate yourself tomorrow enough as it is. You don’t want to worsen your prospective hangover.”
Freddie took another sip of the bottle. They were in a nook away from prying looks. It was comfortable. He wasn’t sure of what he had said and what he had only thought, but the technician had a strange, mellow look, so the silent part had probably been very small. Freddie prided himself in knowing facial expressions, but he didn’t know enough about the man, and he couldn’t concentrate on his face beyond the basic features.
“Why don’t you try to work abroad, my emo friend?”
The technician had slipped an arm around his shoulders. Freddie didn’t even care when; he was very very focused on the face in front of him. He was going to read that face, he knew he could if he tried enough.
“It is not the job, it is me. If they don’t fire me, I’m leaving tomorrow.” He sighed. It had always been him, hadn’t it?
“From where I stand, it is them.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do! I do I do! Who do you think sinks the market points in my company?” The technician seemed to be quite drunk too, he wouldn’t have shared anything personal otherwise. Freddie was watching the corner of his lips; there was a tell when people lied… or was that the corner of the eyes? It didn’t matter, because Freddie kept getting distracted with the rest of the lips. “A company I didn’t ask for, too! A goddamned company that has almost killed me more times than I care to count.”
“Yes, Intenur is killing me slowly too.”
“And all because I had to carry on some kind of legacy, stepping on the heads of giants or something like that. It is what my father used to say to the ladies when my mother wasn’t around.”
“Wait, you have a company,” Freddie said unwisely. “And it was your father’s.”
“Ok, story time. My father built the company…” The man slumped against his seat. “No, I don’t think I’m up for story time.”
“What?” Freddie realized that he had scooted closer, to listen. Not because the warmth was nice and distracting. “You must tell me something, I told you a lot of things, now you owe me.”
“Since when are stories currency?”
“Since I want them, and you want me to stay, so I will have my stories.” Freddie hung his head back, supported by the nook’s headrest and closed his eyes. He opened one of them in what he hoped was a discrete move. He was not sure he was being successful. The man had that drunken smirk and his eyes half-lidded, as if Freddie’s gesture had made him sleepy in turn.  
“Spoiled brat. Have it your way.”
The man said something about a company, a step-father? a story that seemed made to fit an action script, and Freddie was not sure why he kept mentioning the son of Sten. Freddie didn’t know, and only half of it could be blamed on the soft buzz in his head; the bastard was being cagey on purpose. He had the feeling that something in his brain was demanding he pay attention. He knew that story b- What if he is a corporate spy? The thought had already crossed his mind a hundred times during the day when he decided to let the man help with the presentation. He had ruled it out because… because of logic at the time. Logic that was not currently accessible.
Even though he didn’t know exactly what the man was talking about, he got the feeling that he was sad and Freddie had something to do with it. Oh! He was telling Freddie something sad about his company, or his family, or both, because Freddie had made him sad too.
“Hmm. I had planned to celebrate with you, not this.” Freddie most definitely didn’t whine.
“Don’t look at me! I’m the party king! I’m never a sad drunk! It is all your faul-hmpfmm.”
Freddie only knew that he had finally seen the sadness behind the smiling lips, and he had decided that he didn’t like it. The man was sad, he was also sad and they could make each other less sad, so the only answer to that was a kiss, obviously. Obviously? Huh. There was something about two negatives floating in his head, but logic was still not available.
For a delightful moment he wasn’t thinking about anything but the sensation of the other man’s lips against his, the sweetness of his latest drink, the tickling of his beard… He plunged deeper into not thinking when the technician responded by pressing and holding his neck first with one hand, but then he moved to sit on his lap and cradled his nape. Nothing mattered now, especially not when he sneaked an arm around his waist and pulled them closer together.
The water bottle and the time listening to the man had helped to clear his head moderately, so his brain had enough presence to kick in when he felt the man’s hand pushing him away. He let it happen, not without regret. The technician looked regretful too; he was breathing deeply as if he could get rid of the desire in his chest that way.
“Look, let’s stop here. Because tomorrow this will be very… interesting, but if we end up in my room…”
“Mmno,” Freddie protested and hid his face in the other’s neck. He felt the jawbone and cheek against him pressing back. “If I don’t work there, you can go back to being the client tomorrow and this would mean nothing.”
The hand that had been on his neck was still over there playing with his hair. “I’m not going back either. I shouldn’t make decisions right now, but I’m thinking of poaching one of their workers and be done with them.”
Freddie’s smile couldn’t be seen from his position, but it was audible. “You are lucky I don’t work there anymore, or I would have destroyed you for saying that.”
“You still work there.” 
“Not mentally, no.” 
“You made up your mind, then?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever I do, it’s going to be easier to decide if I don’t go back to Intenur. Beyond that… No idea.” 
“I know exactly what you are going to do.”
Freddie emerged from his hiding spot, regretting not being able to kiss that neck. “You think so?”
The man climbed off of Freddie’s lap, but he didn’t back away from his personal space. 
“Go to sleep.” He leaned on the backrest, trapping Freddie’s arm. But Freddie didn’t mind keeping it around the tech’s waist. “And once you have slept the hangover away, you are going to call me.”
“You are very sure of yourself.”
“You would be too if you were in my place.”
“If I were in your place I wouldn’t have stopped this.”
“Yes, you would.” The tech called the waiter over and asked for a pen, then leaned against Freddie’s chest for balance and took to writing on his white shirt, left side, close to the collar.
“Are you going to pay for this when I take it to the cleaners?
“I’ll be happy to, because you’d have to call me for that. And you’d have to use this number.”
After a few numbers Freddie was not ready to guess by feeling alone, the man paused for a moment, squinted while looking at Freddie’s face and went back to his task, but higher, closer to his neck.
The silence while he wrote was meditative. Freddie could still draw circles with his thumb on the man’s hip and he still squirmed very sweetly.
“Maybe I could leave the country, as you said,” Freddie wondered aloud.
“Call me first,” the man mumbled while capping the pen. He waved over the same waiter, gave back the pen and paid before Freddie could protest.
“Maybe I could start my own company,” Freddie kept daydreaming.  
“Call me first,” the man insisted. He got close to Freddie’s ear. “We have much to talk about.”
Freddie woke up only a few hours later with his mobile in his hand. First, an alarm. He dismissed it. Then there was a 5% battery warning in red. He dismissed it. When the warning closed, he squinted at a perfectly composed e-mail, addressed at Rupert, cc’d at Tim, where he told them that he was leaving Intenur in not the politest terms. It was unsent. 
He thanked his luck and the version of himself that had been too tired or too out of it to send the mail (but not too tired to spell asinine). He would have hated waking up only to see that email marked as sent. 
He pressed send. 
It was much more satisfying to do it when he was going to keep the memory of doing it intact. 
He found the charger cord that he had failed to use the previous night. The phone died just before he could plug it in, but it was better that way anyway. He had no desire to dodge family calls for hours. 
He turned to leave the mobile on the nightstand and he hugged his pillow, ready for some lazy extra rest now that he didn’t have a job to go back to. 
Before tiredness could do him in, his eyes fell on the shirt that he had taken off the previous night and had discarded on the floor by the bed. It was no longer prim and proper, and from where he was, he could see a few numbers, written just an inch below the collar. The memory of the last night and the technician brought a smile to his face that was almost enough to wake him up all the way. 
He stretched one foot to drag the shirt from the floor, grab it and memorize the number, or maybe write it down somewhere, but once he had the fabric in his hands, he noticed that over the phone number, under the shirt’s collar, there was more. He could see a “R”. Finally, a name! He flipped the collar up. 
“Ryan Stenson xxx”
He threw the shirt across the room and rolled the other way, groaning into his pillow.
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Water
I initially wrote this as a standalone chapter but decided to make it a full chapter fic. This is for the stranded au, with Leonarado figuring out water and food to survive in the prison dimension. Once I start working on the fic and get the chapters going I'll probably delete this or at least edit it to have the chapter number and fic title.
Krang was leaving him alone lately. 
    He was laying in a comfortably shaped divot in the hull of one of the hundreds of ships that floated around. He was still healing from the big beatdown he had had with Krang a few weeks — had it been weeks — A week? — ago but he could probably thank his mutation or something for the quick healing. He would have to send Drax a thank you letter, or maybe a postcard. 
He chuckled at the thought.
Leonardo had woken up some time ago — that’s all time was at this point, seeing as how the lack of sun rotations was throwing off his inner clock. When his stomach growled he ignored it until the gnawing sensation started to become unbearable. It must be because he didn’t eat before he laid down to sleep. He had just been so tired lately. Leonardo made it half way up before he collapsed back into the dust. With a grunt he forced himself up into a sitting position, and then he stood, choosing to ignore the subtle sensation of pins and needles in his hands and feet.He crossed his arms to stretch them, and then straightened with a groan. 
“Good morning!” he shouted to himself with a smile. “The weather today is~” he announces, pausing for effect as he rotates a full 360 looking at the sky, “gray! There is no breeze, medium light, and a whole bunch of nothing!” His voice bounced into echoes as it traveled off and away into the gray void, leaving him in silence once more.
“Well, time for breakfast,” he muttered sourly, and he lept off of the platform. Gravity quickly fell away and he free-floated… fell? Fell through open space until he came into contact with some ruble. He propelled off of it towards a gargantuan Krang body, landing on a dusty white tooth the size of a taxi.
    Gravity was weird in the prison dimension, which is why he was able to walk into its mouth, still technically being straight up. It was like space moved around him. The mouth was cavernous, the tongue a bristled carpet like a shriveled cat-tongue, and multiple rows of teeth pointing inward on the cheeks and roof of the mouth. Leonardo had guessed that at some point it might have smelled bad, but now it just smelled like dust. In the back of the mouth, blocking the throat in bulbouse, smooth masses was breakfast. Sepia colored orbs varying from the size of pencil erasers to softballs. Leo grabbed onto one a bit smaller than his fist, he found that the taste of these were a bit more bearable.
    Back on earth there was a spoken rule about never eating an unidentified mushroom and the rule was probably the same here. He only learned these were edible when Krang shoved them down his throat to keep him from dying.
    “Man, I miss pizza.” Leo mumbled before crunching down on the ball. Like always, it immediately turned to coarse powder in his mouth, sending a stinging, rotten vegetable taste over his taste buds. Leonardo held it in his mouth for a moment before bracing and swallowing the chalk-like substance down his throat. It hit his stomach like a rock and he gagged,  “I miss pizza so much!”
    Leonardo sat down and slowly ate his chosen fungus. He didn’t gag as much as he used to, but it was still bad. A few months ago — months? — he’d be having breakfast by now. If it was Saturday Mikey would make pancakes, mini waffles, or those crepes that everyone liked, with fruit or whipped cream. If April was over she’d be the one to drag Donatello from his lab, otherwise it would be Raph. Dad would be up and make Leo his favorite tea, they always did like the same types of tea. He and his family would all sit down together and eat, talking about silly things, or what they wanted to do that day. They might hang out at home and watch tv or play video games in the arcade, they’d wait until evening and head to the boardwalk and take the ferris wheel to watch the sunset while they ate funnel cake. Raph used to be so scared of heights when he was little, so when Leo would ride with him he'd hold his hand as they reached the top.
    The memory was swallowed down with the last bit of mushroom. While his stomach was technically “full,” the shrooms always left his feeling dry and gross on the inside, like there was a thick film coating his intestines.
    He sat inside the mouth for a moment, loosely hugging his knees as he stared out into murky dead space. If this wasn’t a gruesome prison he might have actually found some sort of “macabre beauty” in it. Leonardo chuckled, that’s what Mikey would have called it. He would have said it in his silly professional art critic voice.
    ‘Eh, not really my type of art.’ Mind-Mikey sat next to him, holding his legs the same way as Leo and looking past him out of the mouth and into the gray. With Leo’s attention he stuck out his tongue mockingly. ‘Never really flowed with me.’
    Leo had a habit of imagining Mind-Mikey and his other Mind-brothers in their older, colored outfits. The mind version of Mikey wore his old colored knee and elbow pads, a call for older times as Dr. Feelings might call it.
    The mental image of Michelangelo nodded, and then he was wearing a sweater with the rounded prescription glasses. ‘What’s on the agenda today?’ 
    “Nothing.” Leo said flatly.
    ‘Well, you have to do something.’
    “No I don’t,” Leo looked away from him, choosing instead to stare back into the gray as he rested his head on his knees. “I don’t have to do anything anymore.”
    ‘I don't think I have to educate you on the importance of doing enriching activities. You need some form of mental stimulation in order to live a full, happy life.’
    “A full and happy life, huh?” Leo laughed dryly. 
    ‘Well, as happy as you can get.’
    There was no point. Leonardo didn’t want to do anything. He did what he was supposed to and he did what he needed too. His family was safe. The world was safe. There was no point in enrichment, there was no point in continuing this.
    ‘C’mon, get up.’ Mind-Mikey stood.
    Leo turned his head to look at him. Mind-Dr. Feelings was standing over him, expectantly but patiently staring down at Leo as he waited for him to follow. Leo groaned but still stood up.
    ‘Let’s do something.’ Mind-Mikey smiled.
    “There’s literally nothing to do, this prison dimension has nothing.”
    ‘Have you looked around?’
    “Everyday I wake up and have to open my eyes to this place.”
    ‘Yeah but have you looked?’
    Leonardo rolled his eyes, but with the patient stare of Dr. Feelings, he buckled. Leonardo sighed, “alright, hermano, i’ll look.”
    ‘That’s the spirit!’ Mind Mikey leapt out of the mouth and Leo followed.
    Leo didn’t even humor the first ship. It was small in comparison to the others, the size of a small apartment building. He obediently followed the vivid hallucination of Dr. Feelings, not taking in any of his surroundings. They walked through together for maybe an hour, and at the end they hopped out of the front of a broken cockpit.
    The second ship was larger, and with the weirdness of gravity they explored it with everything upside down. Leonardo took more interest, as it was comparatively clean, with more unbroken glass that you could use to look outside. It’s not like Leo took any notes or anything, but he definitely felt less bored after walking through.
    It was at the third ship they were walking through. This one was almost the size of the technodrome, with dark hallways that sucked up the light. Leonardo stepped carefully over the body of a Krang that had long-since fused into the wall in the process of its decay. Something cold touched him and he flinched away. He rubbed his shoulder and came away with… water. Leonardo’s eyes widened. He put the trail of liquid in his mouth, yup, definitely water. Above where he stood was a tiny crack in the ceiling, the water grew, reflecting what little light there was in the room and falling into his hand. He looked to Mind Michelangelo and walked ahead of him, beginning to jog. He passed through corridors and jumped over gaps where the floor was missing.
    And then there was a door.
    As far as he had seen, Krang ships didn’t have doors besides the immediate entrance. He put his hand to the lumpy surface. It was ice cold. There wasn’t a switch, or a door knob, but next to the door on the wall was a panel, full of decaying, slimy masses.
    “Any ideas on how to get it open?” Leo looked to Dr. Feelings.
‘Perhaps you just need to… hm,’ Mind Mikey hummed, ‘I’m afraid that this is out of my skill set.’
    “Mind Mikey, can you maybe get Mind Donnie, please?”
    A purple clad hand physically shoved Mind Mikey out of the way and an illusory vision of Donnie came into the view with a bright smile. ‘I was wondering when you would call upon my intellectual talents!’
    “Yeah, so this panel has got some weird gooey stuff and I want to get inside past this door.”
    Mind Donnie hummed as he scanned the door. ‘Well, ignoring the fact that Krang vessels don’t usually have doors and that definitely possibly  means that whatever is inside was sealed away for the safety of a mutated monstrosity crew designed to be extremely physically resilient: put your hand in the panel.’
    “What?!”
    ‘Don’t worry, I've done this before!’     “Yeah, but I didn’t exactly get details on how you did that!”
    ‘Oh, pish-posh I need to get a feel for it.’
    “You mean I need to get a feel for it,” Leo mumbled but he obediently put his hand to the panel. His hand broke through the cold and slimy surface and he felt a bundle of thick slimy tube-like organs. He shivered from the feeling but pushed deeper, feeling around for anything that might indicate a switch or a pulley. Leonardo came into something a bit harder than the rest of whatever he had his hand in. It was more metallic in texture, and had less of a give to it than the rest of the mass he had his hand in.
    ‘Hm~ interesting.’ Mind Donnie hummed, narrowing his eyes in concentration. ‘You feel that thing under your fingers?’
    “Yeah,” Leo choked out.
    ‘Rip it out.’
    Leonardo gripped it and pulled. It came out and snapped immediately.
    The door flung open and a cold temperature washed over Leonardo. 
    The room was huge. The ceiling reached five stories up, with large, claw-like gashes cut through the ceiling bleeding starlight into the room. Leonardo stood on a crumbling platform that sloped downwards to the left but dropped straight off in front of him. Hanging from the ceiling by meaty gray wires was a large Krang organ covered in white ice. Below it was a pool of water, and something glowed at the bottom.
    ‘This must be the ship's reactor!’ Mind Donnie was giddy with excitement. ‘It must have an endothermic decay property to it, causing the crystallization of water in the atmosphere and allowing it to naturally form ice!’
    Leonardo immediately unclipped his belt and dived into the water before Mind Donnie could protest. Cold — Freezing cold water flooded his senses and he squeezed his eyes shut. For a few seconds his skin  burned with how cold it felt. He blew out a jet of bubbles that coated his face and he slowly opened his eyes. The water was so pure it was like he was floating in the air. The pool was so much deeper than he had first thought, maybe… the depth of the original turtle's lair. Before shredder. There were the remnants of a tall platform in the water, starting at the top in a thin disk right beneath the reactor, with poles attached to it reaching all the way to the bottom, with two other disk platforms of the same size evenly spaced between the first platform and the floor. At the bottom of the pool, floating gently, were clusters of… something reaching up past the second platform. Cautiously, he swam closer. They were arctic blue collections of tiny cells, held together by a jelly-like membrane — similar to frog eggs. Leonardo poked it and it bounced away. He gripped it and ripped away a big chunk. Was this… edible?
    ‘Maybe don’t eat that-’
    ‘Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!’ Mind-Raph jumps into the picture, shoving Mind Donnie to the side
    Leonardo immediately bit into it. It was soft, breaking between his teeth like a soft gummy. He groaned, this tasted so much better than the mushrooms. It was sweet, like licorice, with something pleasantly spicy like ginger underneath. Under the water Leo grabbed handfuls, greedily eating fist fulls of the stuff, only bothering to chew once between each swallow.
    ‘Oh-me-gosh stop you don’t even know what it is!’ Mind Donnie pushed back into the picture, yelling as he fought Mind-Raph for a voice in his head.
    Leo only muttered in protest under the water, swallowing an oversized bite down his throat. He felt the need for oxygen and he swam up, sucking in a large lung full of air. He floated on his back, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling, finally feeling full — in a good way for a change.
Leonardo covered his mouth as he burped. “What do you think it is?”
‘Probably something you shouldn’t have eaten six handfuls of.’ Mind Donnie glared at him, but after a moment, they sighed, ‘maybe it's some alien algae? This is strictly a hypothesis, but the microbes could have been picked up in another planet's atmosphere and then once there was a suitable place to grow, aka light and water — did so.’
    Leonardo turned in the water, still on his back and kicked, allowing himself to slowly float under the Krang organ. If it wasn’t a literal giant intestine Leo might have called it beautiful, if still only in a morbid way. The crystals were almost transparent, softly reflecting the bleeding light from the ceiling across his face and body. As he floated under it he felt a thin stream of water dripping onto his shoulder and down his body as he floated away.
    ‘I guess the moisture in the air freezes when it comes into contact with it, and then melts from the natural temperature of the space.’ Comedically, Leo had now imagined Mind Donnie to be the size of his hand, sitting with his knees to his chest on Leo’s stomach.
 “Yup.”
  ‘You know we’re coming for you, right?’
  Leo didn’t answer.
‘I bet that I’m — well, the real me is working on a portal as we speak. We’ve been to prison dimensions before, like, with the shredder, and we have Draxum and the key, so it can’t be that hard.’
They would never be dumb enough to open up the portal again, no matter how much it hurt. The thought made his heart ache, and he tried his best to not think, but Mind-Donnie kept talking.
    ‘Raph is probably the leader again, and he’s training really hard to be strong enough. And Mikey’s probably… well, I don’t know what he’d be doing but he’s definitely doing it.’
    “He’s probably beat my pizza box stacking record.” Leonardo lightly laughed. “What’s April doing?” She was probably back at school by now. Being awesome and continuing her pursuit in journalism like she always wanted, even when they were kids.
    ‘Do you remember that class she was excited to take?’
    “Digital Photographic Imaging.”
    ‘I bet she passed that, she knows me and I am a - as the kids say - whiz at anything digital.’
    “Has it been that long?”
    ‘Leo, it's been months.’
    “You don’t know that,” Leonardo whispers.
    Mind Donnie didn’t say anything else. Perhaps this was his way of not arguing with him, or at least not arguing with himself.
    There are too many days where Leo thinks too much, and the illusory avatars of his brothers are a symptom of it. He doesn’t mind too much when the visions show up though, it makes this more bearable. The cracks in the ceiling let him stare into the dark void, and for a moment he allows himself to imagine that there are constellations for him to marvel at. Leonardo closes his eyes, allowing himself to draw a mental blank, to not think of anything anymore. He didn’t want to keep thinking.
    “You need to get out of the water.” Mind Donnie broke the silence.
    Leonardo ignored him.
    “Leo, the water’s too cold, you need to get out.”
    “Just another minute.” He didn’t want to get out of the water, this was the best thing he had felt in, according to Mind Donnie, months. After so long his skin didn’t feel dirty, and he finally had something in him that didn’t taste like an oil spill. 
    “Get out of the water Leo.” Mind Donnie’s voice began to rise.
    “I don’t want to.” Leonardo rolled over, submerging his face to let the cold feeling wash over his front. 
    “Please.” Donatello whispered, fully in his head.
    Leonardo opened his eyes again to stare at the bottom of the pool. He opened his mouth and let the water in, taking a few swallows. He breathed out.
He didn’t expect to stagger with his first step out. He fell to the ground on his face, feeling even colder than he did in the water.
    ‘Your experiencing early symptoms of hypothermia,’ Mind-Donnie said flatly.
    “You don’t say.” Leo laughed dryly.
    ‘Get your body moving, there isn’t another heat source so you’ll have to rely on yourself.’
    Groaning, Leo mutters out “yeah, I know.” Leonardo shakes his upper body, waking himself up a little before staggering into a standing position.
    He was only in the water for about twenty minutes and he was already so cold. It wasn’t going to get any warmer here, so if he was going to come back and swim some more — which he most definitely was — he would have to cut the time down significantly.    He had water. Finally he had water. And food that didn’t taste like poisoned chalk. It felt small, but it was something that he was finally looking forward to.
Note: Thank you Rott on Discord for beta-reading
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steeklover · 10 months
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You guys sleep on their friendship too much 😔
Time-laspe (I tried to download the video and attach it to this post but I think it was too big and my computer is tired because it won't download. That is the link, you can watch it if you'd like too, I know I like to watch art time-laspes. It is around fifteen minutes though, I didn't know how to make it any faster so there's your warning)
(Okay so I'm just now realizing that the part of the video where I used actually colors got cut off 😐And I can't even fix it because I've already deleted the clip off my computer and emptied my recycle bin. I'm so upset now, I'm sorry 😭😭I'm not a tech savy person at all)
You don't have to read this if you don't want to, it's more of an artist's note to myself. If you want to know more of my thought process while doing this then you can read it though.
First, I just want to give credit to the base I used!
Second, I used Krita to draw and Canva to put the video together. I've never really used another drawing app/software thing before (I've used Procreate a few times on my sister's IPad but it's not like I'm going to draw anything South Park on there) so I don't really have anything to compare it too. It's free though so... how much better can you get. The only thing I don't like about it so far is that the fill tool kind of sucks but it's not too bad, you just have to go over the edges to get a solid color (at least from my experience). And I've been using Canva for a while now, I've put together a few videos before but not in a while so I was a little rusty. The only thing I don't like about that is that I have to pay for an upgrade if I want to download a long video.
I started trying to draw seriously in April and now it's July so it's been like two months (?). I haven't posted anything since May I think but I've still been drawing a lot, I just haven't finished anything worth posting up until today.
I started out drawing this thinking it was going to be bad. Then about halfway through I thought it might actually turn out alright. Then I finished it and I kind of hate it. I think it would be much better if I practiced shading and textures but I'm too lazy for that, at least for now.
I hardly know anything about art, whether it be digital or traditional. I don't know anatomy, color theory, perspective, none of it. You can see on the time-lapse that I basically traced the base I used, did the faces and clothes and then colored it and that took me ALL DAY! Granted I had breaks like when I made my lunch and ran over to my grandma's house but other than that, I've been working on this piece (along with Stan but I did most of Stan yesterday, I just colored him this morning).
I have mad respect for every single artist out there because this is so hard... but for some reason I want to keep doing it. I know it's going to be super satisfying to look back on my art work from two years ago and see how much I've improved (hopefully I've improved, please tell me I'll improved)
As you can probably tell, I didn't get everything in the time-laspe. Recording the process was so hard, I tried to do it with Stan yesterday but I barely knew what I was doing and I kept getting called by my mom to do stuff so I had to keep pausing and un-pausing so I gave up and tried again today. I think my computer is worn out by working all day because not only have I been drawing on it all day but I have also been editing the video all day. I really like when artists post time-laspes though because it gives me an idea of their process and it's really nice to watch.
But anyway, I ended up giving Jason eyeliner because one) he's metro, two) I headcanon him wearing eyeliner (same thing with Tweek) and three) he needed a little something MORE to him, if that makes sense. I orginally wasn't going to give him eyeliner because I was afraid he would look too much like Tweek but once the picture was done, I decided they wouldn't look too similar. I also gave Tweek and Jason both freckles because for Jason, it's canon and for Tweek, it's my headcanon for him. You probably can't tell that Tweek has freckles because I made them really faint (on purpose) and I like to think he'd only have a few on his cheeks and nose. I gave Jason a lot though because I'm pretty sure that's how it is in the show. Lastly I forgot to color Jason's shirt in so that's everything that's not on the video.
I think the hardest thing for me was the eyes and the clothes. I have a love-hate relationship drawing eyes. I love looking at how different people draw their eyes but when it comes to drawing my own eyes... yikes 😬Also I think it's the facial proportions that might make this seem off, I think I have a bad habit of making the eyes too big but that's what I've been doing ever since I was a little kid so now if I make the eyes small, it just looks off. And again, I didn't do anything shading so it probably makes the picture look flat. Plus I have no idea what I'm doing.
I also usually have a hard time drawing hair but today I had a pretty easy time doing it. I was really surprised. Also another headcanon of mine for Tweek is that he has platinum blonde hair. I love platinum blonde hair and just blonde hair in general and his hair is SO YELLOW, I feel like if he was older than he'd dye it. Also they are both teens in this picture.
Tweek looks really pasty here, I tried to give him pale skin but I didn't mean for it to be THAT pale.
I think that's all I have to say. If you read this and have any tips for me, I'd love to hear them. I'd love to redraw this in a few months or maybe in a year if I decide to keep drawing, I know there's defiently room for improvement.
Despite all the complaining I just did, I don't HATE this picture per say. I really like my art style, it's simple but cute (imo of course). I feel like if I learned more about shading and learn how to draw faces and clothes better than I'd do a lot better. I think Stan was a lot cuter but this is cute too.
Lastly, ignore the two random dots if you find them, I'm too tired to fix this.
Anyway, if you read all of this, I really appreciate you! Have a great day/night! ❤️❤️
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Congrats on one year! You have such a thoughtful, detailed approach to everything you write/theorize. Do you have any particular research you do when writing, or do you outline what you’re going to write?
IRIS! Thank you so much!! ☺️
I am so glad that people find my lil essays and whatnot to be thoughtful. I don't *feel* like I put a lot of thought into them, but I've learned that's because all the things I learned during my education and/or through reading have more-or-less become knowledge.
When I'm writing a little analysis on, say, the symbolism of Syril Karn trading in a brown shirt for a suit and tie and how this relates to the "new" uniform of white supremacy, I am writing about something I have knowledge in. I do sometimes link sources or further reading, but this is Tumblr and I want to write about the things I know and their representation in Star Wars without putting in all the work to create a bibliography.
I do have two shelves full of all the (second hand, paperback) books I had to buy for school over the years. My favorites- the only ones I bought new (they didn't have used)- are the "A Very Short Introduction" books from Oxford University Press. It's like an academic's version of "for dummies." It introduces you to the topic and some essential things to know before introducing you to further reading. Sometimes, I do reference the books on my shelf or look back to them for something specific I'm thinking about when I'm writing.
Now, if I were writing an essay for a program or lecture there would be lots of research and well-cited sources. If it's a research paper, specifically, my outlines are extensive because I have to hit such things as a literature review and a methods, etc. If the paper is just a narrative or a non-research based paper, my thesis statement in the intro paragraph lays out the rest of the paper well enough, imo.
Because of this, I used to feel as if I were always pulling papers and writing out of my ass. I'd spend several hours writing something the night before it was due, turn it in the next morning and would get it back with, like, a 93 on it. I just figured I was bullshitting my way through school. I was not, but I still felt like I was a terrible and incompetent student. It took me a lot of years to realize that maybe I had developed a skill in writing.
When it comes to creative writing, like stories, my outlines and research depends on the length of the story. I put lots of planning into my novels. I'll have a story outline plus profiles for each important character and important location and each important event. There is often a good bit of research that might go into this, depending on how realistic and detailed I'm going for. Reader's don't need to know the intricacies of how cast iron is made, but I do need to know whether a story taking place in 1500s England could have any cast iron (the answer is yes).
My favorite tools when I'm writing are a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and the delete button (or the cut function). Sometimes, I need to find a different word. Sometimes I need to look up whether a flintlock pistol existed yet. Sometimes I just need to start over.
And that's what I do. A lot. No matter what I'm writing. I start and restart sentences. I cut or delete entire paragraphs. I cut and move stuff around. If I can't make it work; if it still sounds "off" or awkward, I just get rid of it. I probably delete more than I write, even before I get to an editing process. If I had the time and the will, I could write about a chapter or about 2,000-4,000 words a day. I had a week off once and ended up hyper focusing on a project and I wrote some 18,000 words in 6 days. I cut that down to just under 11,000 after some tweaking and editing.
If I'm really attached to a piece of information or a scene that I wrote into the story, but need to cut for the sake of length and cohesion, I have a separate word document titled "misc excerpts" with a table of contents and a title for each scene. That document is longer than my actual projects, sometimes. I also do this (kinda) if I'm stuck. If I'm stuck, I'll cut the scene and paste it into a separate document and then start working on it from this new document.
I also highlight things as I go along. If it needs fixing, I'll add a little [FX] at the end of the sentence with a comment attached like: "awk" or "unfired gun?" or "who tf is this?" or "why? do you need this detail?" or "this is too convenient," etc. I'll also leave comments along the way for background. If I introduce a character, I'll leave a comment by their name explaining their further relevance to the story. If I introduce a Chekov's Gun, I'll leave a note explaining how I'll use this detail later. My goal is to not have any extraneous details or plots or features in my stories.
I feel all of this makes editing quicker and more efficient later, especially as it's real easy to search up [FX] and find everything that needs an immediate fix before I get into the weeds of editing for grammar.
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strawwritesfic · 1 year
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Hello Straw! It has been years so I am actually super stoked and happy to find you still active in fic writing!
Since The Last Of Us TV series has been coming out I vaguely remembered reading a fic of Joel x Reader that I believe was by you because it was so well written. She was an amputee and had lost her arm from a bite, but that was the only detail I can remember. I read it on Lunaescence and have been trying to look for it again, so I thought I’d shoot in the dark as I couldn’t find it on your master lists. If this doesn’t ring a bell, so sorry—but I hope your creativity continues boundlessly as it has been since I read that fic of yours in 2013.
Cheers!!!
Aw, that's sweet of you to say! I'm glad people have enjoyed stuff I wrote even a long time ago.
Yes, that sounds like my Last of Us fic, (Don't) Hold Your Breath. Unfortunately, it's not available online at the moment. I mean, it's probably accessible somewhere, because it's the Internet. But I tried posting it on Tumblr a while back, got absolutely no interest, became embarrassed myself by the amount of swearing in it, and deleted it off Ao3, which was the one place I had posted it after Luna uh...did whatever the heck Luna did.
I was actually considering brushing the fic off and editing it before I realized there was a TV show (and no, I will not be watching it, because I am a coward), but I don't actually have a copy of anything more than my handwritten draft for a new chapter right now. I thought I had a copy in my email, but it turns out I deleted that email along with the fic.
There should be a copy of it on my old laptop, but that started acting weird almost a year ago and I turned it off and haven't actually turned it on since, since I didn't want to make the hard drive worse before I had time to try salvaging anything. I'm kinda scared to try charging it up and turning it on now. I need to, but ahhhh. What if everything is gone?
Anyway! Yeah, it's not really around right now. If I can retrieve it (and at this point in time, I don't know when I'll have time), I've had several people ask about it, and I'd be interested in editing it a little and reposting it. It's really touching that so many people remember that old thing fondly even after all these years. Thank you for your kind words, and have a nice morning/afternoon/night/whatever it is where you are!
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themagicruby · 1 year
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i'm tripping for the first time in a while on a p low dose of an rc and im like out of the peak where i was just playing dragon age inquisition and i cannot decide if i should smoke marijuana or not like logically i know it is very synergistic and will make me peak again but also..... will it make me more sleepy or not probably not but also maybe it will. i also think that i could probably take half a klonopin to dampen the effects if i needed cause the rc im on is often compared to shrooms in effect and structure (ofc i know it's its own thing) but ppl say that benzos decrease the effects of psilocybin so it might also do that for this but who's to say - not a lot of info and i didn't have the patience to scroll thru this one guys trip report where he took a benzo at one point to see what the effects were. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i mean i took a very low dose of this rc which i've taken multiple times before and it will end so ultimately whatever i do doesn't matter usually when i trip i smoke a lot of weed throughout but that also was when i was smoking a lot of weed in general and now my tolerance is wayyyyy lower. but i did roll a joint with a more cbd heavy strain earlier so it won't b like getting hit by a semi if i smoke it
lmao tumblr mobile formatting is terrible i press enter and this paragraph is down here, maybe ittl look different if i post this which i think i will and probably no one will read which is fine but if you are reading this; Hi!
also i know how very much this reads like someone who is on a psychedelic lol i might delete this in the morning but maybe i'll keep it for posterities sake or whatever, and also if i smoke (which i almost certainly will go do after i post this) i'll probably reblog this with what happened. this is what blogs were made for folks! lol ok bye
while writing the tags i realize i have no idea what the rc community on tumblr is like maybe there are ppl who follow tags idk anyway bye for real until i reblog this
EDIT: uugh ok i can feel myself coming down do i just wait it out or do i smoke i kinda wanna smoke.... i really wanna smoke lol but i also dont wanna b up all night cause my gf's asleep and i can't like watch stuff on my tv and i dont really wanna sit at my computer cause my neck is stiff from playing dragon age lol. i know im probably gonna smoke lol but ok if this ends up fuckinf me over and making me stay up all night at least i'll have this post as reference for next time
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skiddlecat · 2 years
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A while ago, I sent a problem concerning TV Tropes to a Tumblr user called bootsforthebootgod, and they used their TV Tropes account, Boots, to send the problem to Ask the Tropers.  Unfortunately, the conversation was nuked before I could read it, so I have no idea what was said.
Boots believes that the problem is resolved, but it's not! I'm still unable to participate in forums (that also includes the Edit Banned/Suspended thread), edit or create pages, read, send, or get messages, write reviews, upload videos, or use the Wishlist, Ask the Tropers, Trope Finder, You Know that Show, the Trope Launch Pad, the Cut List, or Submit a Bug.  Worse yet, I can't even change the email address I'm using on my account, so I can't create another account.  Because I never had a chance to read the conversation, I have no idea why nothing was done, or if anyone even tried to do anything.  I'd delete my account if I could, but that will only make my account permanently inaccessible, so I'll still not be able to use my email address for another account.  The Contact Us function is useless to me as well because the only people who can respond to email messages are the mods and the staff, and they will not respond to my messages.  None of this would be a problem if I had access to another email address, but I don't.
Want to know the worst part?  I've had people tell all this to Boots, but Boots keeps insisting the problem is resolved.  I don't know what they mean (or think they mean) when they say that, but their definition of "resolved" is clearly not the same as mine.  I'm starting to suspect that they didn't even actually read the message; they probably read only "the problem has not been resolved" and automatically assumed I haven't actually tried using my account.  Worse yet, Boots seems to think I want them to appeal a ban, but I don't; all I want is to know how the conversation went so I can find out what went wrong and what to do.  By not telling me how the conversation went, they are only worsening my problem!  Could you contact Boots on their TV Tropes account or on their Tumblr account, bootsforthebootgod?  If you have to, ping them on Tumblr and tell them to actually read this whole message, or better yet, go to their inbox (I could submit the link to you so you can go straight from there) and send them this message (preferably on mobile).  You can even DM them.  Have them know that this message is urgent and that they should leave not a single word of it unread.  I want them to properly understand my problem and help me to solve it.  Could you tell them to send you screenshots of the conversation (every single post), and then, could you post it on your blog so I can read it and know what to do?  (If I have to, I'll even send you a link to the conversation.  That way, you could send it to Boots so they'll know what you're talking about.)
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...buddy by "i have a tv tropes account" i meant i created one to edit exactly two pages of tv tropes to add oneshot to them. i have autism, and it is exactly 7:58 in the morning at the time of writing this, i don't have the attention span to read all of this nor do i think i'm the person you should go to for this
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I made a post this morning but I deleted it because I keep forgetting I'll probably be scoped out here in my verification process and I don't want to mess up my verification talking about other shit. Oops 🫢.
I wish that would go a little faster, I feel like I'm having to be too careful right now (and like I said, I keep forgetting) so I have to consciously be too mindful of everything when I'd rather dedicate those mental resources elsewhere. 100% behavior is just too hard for me, lol.
Surely, they expect they'll have a few artists that are a handful 😂, artists have a long reputation of being handfuls, I'd be one of those....especially if "personal baggage" is considered part of the package and we all know, I've got a ton of that.
Edit: Now I'm questioning whether I should delete this too 😅....I can't take the eggshells much longer.
Last edit: I'm human....I do other stuff besides art and those things don't always intermingle perfectly.
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emailrulesposting · 6 months
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Vent? below
I might be comfy sharing more later on. For now I guess I'll share things in a slightly coded manner.
Last night I had three dreams where someone who isnt't real (please stick with me) infiltrated my dream (GOD that one ellicited a vine boom sound effect) and "infiltrated"(???) it. It feels like something I wrote coming back to haunt me but it is based on something In My Brain considers important. Gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross gross! Sorry had to get that had lol What am I even saying I totally see why people think my mind has been lost.
I planned to say it in a slightly humorous way this morning but procrastinated doing it on here. I'm not entirely sure what's going on wait what's the word count on this who am I again? Oh where'd that come from um? I'm not sure? I'll just... ignore... it? Yeah I will okay we're good I'm not sure how to figure out the word count I guess I could Google it on my PC. THE CHARACTER LIMIT IS WHAT NOW??? HOW MANY ZEROES? Holy shit we're probs about to be here for a little bit longer. It's actually crazy wait stream of thought is something so wild. Probably because of the way I think WHY ARE YOU HERE oh sorry about that! Interesting thats editable
Oh my God I could just post to text and make I'M THINKING CLOSER TO WORDS!!!!!!! THAT'S WHY IT'S EASIER TO WRITE!!! OMFG!!!! This is good information for the future. oh my god. The future. I'm not sure what that's going to be like... not based on what it's like here in the present.
Now I'm making email rules it's honestly so cathartic if you want to see the folder of emails let me know! Organication,,,,,,,,, if you want to see a screenshot lmk I'll have to take one! It's going to be sooo soo soooooooooooooooooo satisfying sorry I stopped holding my breath for a second there.
Wait why tf was I holding my breath? What was it helping? Why did it stop working? How did I know it did? What am i writing about again? Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers is playing I forgot how long I've been writing this post
Waiting room is still playing so it definitely hasn't been been long. A couple different songs have played. I guess it's really affecting me or it's just bc I'm high
Honestly I feel like I'm finger painting rn listening to caesar salad - demo by slimdan honestly feeling like that rn. Absurd indie song ass emotion.
Ive been in the wrong playlist for like 5 songs omfg I forget to keep changing it. It felt like the sun just tried to consume me a little bit also like it
Woahhhh the playlisy is already workign wow I'm influenced by music I need to listen to more high tempo music huh listening to HOT TO GO! by Chappel Roan en maybe I need to go back on my old Spotify to see whats there so I can remember what've felt to go. I know I used to spam.... I think going through that could be helpful.
Heey look at that in
I don't remember that thought. I remember deleting a song from the playlist. I remember configuring the email rules to fix the mistake
emaillistposting
Wait that's a perfect url. I'm worried corporations will make "xyz infulencers" for their companies as a marketing strat
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cinnamon-bunni · 2 years
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Hello A3! community
edit:
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now he matches :))
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ncutii-gatwa · 3 years
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there’s many people i wanna edit but i know im not as good as the bigger blogs so i get put off. there are actors i wanna edit but there’s so many blogs that edit for them and edit them a lot and better so it’s hard for me to be confident about editing and posting something.
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