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pangzi · 4 years

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Otome gay [Nielan] - Chapter 1

word count: 1663 other chapters: INTRO - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 [AO3]

When the doctor said Mingjue had to rest for three weeks, he knew it was going to be hard. Maybe if Huaisang still lived at home, or if he had a boyfriend, it would’ve been bearable. But one week in now, Mingjue was losing his mind. Zonghui refused to let him come to the gym to at least do some administration or something. He could do all that from home, Zonghui had told Mingjue. He had no way to get there either, as he couldn’t drive with a broken foot. So Mingjue was stuck at home, alone.

Luckily, Huaisang had promised to come home for the weekend to keep him company. Mingjue won’t admit it out loud, but he really misses Huaisang. It’s quite boring at home without Huaisang’s constant nagging, without someone to boss around a bit.

Mingjue had only just gotten out of bed, groggily making his morning coffee, when Huaisang burst inside.

“Dage, I’m home!” He yelled, “did you miss me?”

Mingjue heard him drop all his stuff near the door. Only seconds later he felt his little brother wrapping his arms around him for a short hug.

“Can you make me a coffee too, dage?” Huaisang asked, immediately going for the puppy dog eyes he knew his brother had a hard time saying no to. “The coffee on campus is disgusting compared to that honey and vanilla latte you make!”

Mingjue pushed him away and grabbed another cup as a reply. Huaisang smiled brightly and hopped on the countertop behind him.

Huaisang just chatted happily about some things that happened at school, while waiting for his coffee. Mingjue didn’t really reply to anything, but he was listening and Huaisang knew that. Huaisang knows not to expect a reply from Mingjue until he’s had his morning coffee, he also knows that Mingjue does enjoy listening to his non-stop chatter no matter how early it is.

He hopped down as soon as he saw the coffee was ready, handed Mingjue his crutches and took the coffees.

“Let’s go talk on the couch, you should keep your foot up!”

Huaisang waited for Mingjue to be comfortable on the couch, with his foot propped up on the table, to start talking again. He chattered on happily while Mingjue just enjoyed his coffee and his brother’s company. Mingjue’s heart almost ached with how much he had missed his brother.

“Now, dage”, Huaisang said when he noticed his brother’s morning mood had passed, “what have you been up to? Have you found anyone yet to fill the void I left when I left for uni?”

“I’ve been working a lot,” Mingjue said, “no time to find anyone.”

“As usual”, Huaisang sighed, “You can’t tell me there isn’t some guy at the gym that has caught your eye at least once”

“I don’t date clients”

Huaisang rolled his eyes and took the empty coffee mugs to the kitchen. Sometimes he really couldn’t believe how stubborn his brother could be. Mingjue has always been big on following the rules, stubbornly sticking to his own morals and beliefs even when breaking them wouldn’t harm anyone, when they could make his own life better. Huaisang knew several people who only came to the gym because they were interested in his brother, but Mingjue refused to even give them a chance as if he’d be breaking a huge moral code. Huaisang often reminded his brother that he wasn’t a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or something and the only thing that could happen was that someone stopped coming to the gym, but it didn’t do anything.

Instead of having the same conversation for the umpteenth time, Huaisang changed the topic as soon as he sat down.

“Dage, now that you’re home for three weeks and you don’t have me to keep you company”, Huaisang said, “you must be bored, right?”

Mingjue huffed. Of course he was bored, all he could do all day was sit around, read a book or watch a movie or tv-series. All big fun, when you have the choice to do other things as well. But instead of giving a snappy remark, he just hummed and asked why.

“So, Wei Wuxian and I had the idea to develop this otome game and we still need someone to try the game, and now that you’re stuck at home for so long you’re the perfect candidate!”

“You developed a what with who? Please speak in a language I understand, a-Sang”

Huaisang laughed and told him to wait a second. He disappeared into the hallway and came back with his computer in his arms. He plopped down close to his big brother and started his computer.

“So, my roommate Wei Wuxian and I had the great idea to make a game together”, Huaisang started to explain, “He does the coding, I draw the characters and backgrounds, the story and conversations we come up with together.”

Mingjue hummed, as Huaisang clicked open an application.

“We don’t have a name for it yet, and we haven’t agreed on the names of the characters, but except for that it’s mostly done”

SangXian’s wonderous otome game appeared on the screen in a fancy font, with underneath the options to play, load save game and exit. The background seemed to be a sort of slideshow of, what Mingjue guesses are, the in-game locations.

“The game is an otome game, which is some kind of dating game” Huaisang explained, the cursor hovering over play for a second before he closed the minimized the application and opened a folder that was filled with drawings. “There are several characters you can choose to try and date, all of them have a positive ending, a negative one and a neutral one.”

Huaisang selected a few images in the folder and opened them. “I’ll introduce you to the characters now”

First character he showed was a boy with a scowl on his face. He was wearing all black with a purple apron. His hair seemed to be half long, pulled backwards with a purple ribbon.

“This is our barista”, Huaisang said, “I cannot tell you much more than that and that he clearly likes purple, what do you think?”

“He looks like he’s trouble, but he’s handsome. Probably an interesting person”

Huaisang beamed at that before going to the next drawing. This one showed another handsome boy, this one was dressed in clearly expensive clothing and had quite a cocky posture.

“Our rich boy, a student at the university your character goes to.”

“Hm, looks nice but not exactly my type.”

Huaisang nodded and opened another drawing. This one gave Mingjue a weird feeling immediately and not in a good way. This one was clearly smaller than the rest, he was wearing what seemed to be tights and a big shirt.

“I don’t like him,” Mingjue grumbled before Huaisang could even say anything about him.

“What has he done to you? You don’t even know anything about him yet!”

Mingjue shrugged. “I just don’t like him, gives me a weird feeling, bad weird”

“Well, either way, this guy is a dancer. He is close friends with our next character!”

The next character took Mingjue’s breath away and it made him feel ridiculous. This character was dressed in white dungarees splattered with paint. He was tall, muscular, his hair was neatly cut and he has a soft smile on his face with eyes that radiate warmth and love. Everything about him just screamed Mingjue’s type.

“I knew you would like him”, Huaisang said when he saw the way his brother was staring at the image. “This is our art guy, probably the nicest out of all characters but… well, all I can say is that he’s a special character.”

Huaisang opened the last image. A cute boy, innocent looking, smiling brightly. The way his hair covered most of his face made him seem shy.

“Last but not least,” Huaisang said cheerfully, “our sweet med student! Again, he goes to the same school, he dreams of becoming a doctor like his sister and is probably one of the sweetest characters in the entire game”

“Looks like a sweet boy indeed”, Mingjue said and sat back on the couch.

“So?” Huaisang asked, “will you try it?”

Mingjue sighed deeply. He wasn’t the guy for sappy romance games like this. He didn’t really play games to be honest. Some candy crush on his phone every now and then, or Mario Kart with Huaisang when he’s home.

“Come on, dage”, Huaisang pouted, “you’re stuck at home anyway! Just try it for a bit, if you don’t like it that’s okay we’ll find someone else!”

Mingjue cursed at how weak he was for his little brother. He hated that Huaisang knew how weak he was for him, he hated that Huaisang knew exactly how to get him to do something. Huaisang batted his eyelashes at Mingjue a few times and opened the game again.

“Please just try it”, Huaisang whined.

“All right, all right. But I’m not playing that dancer boy’s route, I don’t trust him”, Mingjue grumbled.

Huaisang jumped up from excitement before hugging his brother shortly and thanking him profusely, after which he went to fetch Mingjue’s computer to install the game.

“All right, while this is installing you can tell me exactly what happened with your foot”, Huaisang said after starting the installation process.

“I already told you, a dumbass took weights too heavy for him and dropped them on my foot when I was trying to help him.”

“No, I want the whole story! I want the tea!”

So, Mingjue told his brother the entire story, what wasn’t much more than what he’d already told Huaisang, just a lot more swearing. Then he sent his little brother to the store for some groceries with the promise that Mingjue would try the game while he was gone. So with a sigh, he opened his computer again and started the game.

#mirf writes #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #nielan #lan xichen #welp not yet but #nie mingjue/lan xichen #nie mingjue x lan xichen #nmj/lxc #nmj x lxc #otome gay

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crystalninjaphoenix · 5 years

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Chaos Theory

Part Six

(Even after the disaster of the last part, there are more puzzles to solve. The three boys better hurry on this one, or else there will be consequences.)

They stopped only a few blocks away from the building, sitting on a street corner. Jackie made them stop, despite the fact that they all wanted to get farther away. He remembered the gamemaster’s warning about taking too long, and nerves started eating away at his stomach.

“Here, give me the laptop,” Jackie said. JJ handed him the box with the computer inside.

Chase watched as Jackie booted it up. “I...you know, I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on.” He sounded almost apologetic.

“We’re in Saw,” Jackie said, not taking his eyes away from the screen. “Some psycho decided to kidnap the group and threatened me with your deaths if I didn’t play his fucked-up game and solve his puzzles.”

Chase whistled. “Well, shit.”

“Yeah.” Jackie opened his email, finding another message from the same user as before. This one had a zip folder titled ‘Set 3′ attached. He quickly unzipped it, finding a few files inside: an image called 3.png, a folder called ‘3′, and a text file titled ‘open me first.’ Jackie did so, and inside was a single url. He opened the browser and copy-pasted the url into the search bar.

At first, the three of them found it hard to tell what they were looking at. The website was mostly black, with some white text, and a square that showed a dark video. Until they realized something was moving in the video. Jackie ran his hand through the box until he found the earbuds, plugging them into the laptop and putting them on. Suddenly, when he clicked the little sound icon on the video, he could hear the sound of rushing water and splashing, along with muffled cries and whimpers. His heart sank. “I’m gonna...” He turned up the brightness on the laptop.

Chase gasped. Jameson covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide. Jackie leaned back. Marvin was in the video, bound and gagged. He was stuck inside a box with glass walls, small enough that he couldn’t straighten his legs. There was water slowly flowing into the box from a connected pipe. There was also a timer in the corner of the video, counting down: 55:12, 55:11, 55:10...

The time on the laptop’s clock read 3:03am.

“Is...is this live?” Chase asked.

“I think it is,” Jackie muttered.

“You can livestream shit like this?!” Chase shook his head. “Why haven’t the police—or whoever—why hasn’t someone stopped this?!”

“Well, firstly, because this video has probably only been active since tonight. And secondly, because you’d be surprised what goes up online.” Jackie leaned closer to the screen, looking around the website. “The Dark Web, you know? There are several sites that are like Twitch for sadists.” Unconsciously, he rubbed his left arm. “I don’t recognize this one, though.”

JJ snapped his fingers, drawing the other two’s attention. There is a timer in this video! he signed in obvious distress. And it’s counting down. I don’t think we want to find out what will happen when it reaches zero.

Jackie shoot his head. “You’re right. We need to hurry. My guess is that timer is how long it’ll take for that box to fill up with water, and then...” He shuddered, immediately closing the web page. “We have to find out where that is. And it’s going to be in the puzzles, just like before.”

He clicked on the 3.png image. It opened to a picture with a dark red background and black text reading: “SEEK THROUGH THE CATALOG, FIND WHAT’S BELOW.” The text was followed by that symbol of a skull inside a hollow circle, divided in four. Below the text were three black-and-white photographs with captions beneath them: a black wand with white ends labeled “Magic Wand,” a spread-out deck of cards labelled “Card Game,” and a white fluffy cat labeled “Norwegian Forest Cat.”

Jackie frowned. “Okay, I don’t know what this means other than some sort of instructions, so I’m just going to plug this image into the editing program and see if anything shows up when I play with sliders.”

It sounds like we’re meant to find those images in some sort of catalog, JJ figured. But what catalog?

“I dunno. Maybe it’s in that other folder. You know, that came with this?” Chase wondered.

Jackie paused. “Maybe. I haven’t found anything in this image yet, so we can look what’s in there.” He went back into the files and opened the folder labeled 3.

What was inside were countless black-and-white photos, all with names written in numbers and a few letters. “What the...?” Jackie scrolled down...and down...and down...until he grabbed the scroll bar with his mouse and pulled it all the way to the bottom. “There must be hundreds of images in here!”

“Jesus,” Chase muttered. “Uh, I think this is the catalog.”

“How are we supposed to find three pictures out of all these?!” Jackie threw his hands in the air. “That could take hours! W-we don’t have that much time!” Jackie clasped his hand over his mouth, trying and failing to keep his eyes from watering. “It was rigged. This whole thing was rigged, we were never going to win it.” He blinked, and tears started falling down his face. He’d been scrambling, frantically trying to complete puzzles and reach the locations quickly, only for this? For two of his friends to die without him being able to do anything about it? What a sick game this was.

“No no no no, there has to be a way,” Chase took the laptop, using the mousepad to scroll through the photos, eyes scanning in rows. “Maybe they’re really early on, and this is meant to discourage us.”

“Chase, I don’t think that’s the case.” Jackie buried his hands in his folded arms. He was shaking.

“No, listen, there has to be a way.” Chase didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “This guy’s a sick fuck, but he also has another set of puzzles after this, he’s not gonna rig it so you fail before getting to that last set. There has to be a way to find—” He stopped, eyes suddenly widening. “We can use the find feature.”

Jackie looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “The what?”

“The find feature, the search bar, it’s built in to your files.” Chase circled the mouse around the search bar in the upper right corner of the window. “We just need to know what the images are called.”

“Well, uh...I think he gave us the image names. In the other picture, with the instructions.” Jackie gently took back the computer, switching to the other image. “See? Magic Wand, Card Game, and Norwegian Forest Cat.” Jackie typed the first phrase, Magic Wand, into the search bar. Nothing came up.

JJ tapped Jackie’s shoulder for attention. All the photo titles are in that same code from before, he pointed out. Perhaps we simply need to encode the titles of the images we’re looking for?

Jackie suddenly threw his arms around JJ. “Jameson Jackson, you’re a genius.” He let go, then turned to his other side and hugged Chase too. “And you also, Chase! I don’t know if I’d have thought of the search.”

“Aw, it’s nothing,” Chase muttered, smiling a bit.

Really no problem at all, JJ signed.

“Well, I would’ve been stuck for a while. And time is of the essence.” Jackie opened up the same online code converter from before. He typed in the first phrase again, and then copied the result—4d 61 67 69 63 20 57 61 6e 64—and pasted it into the file search bar. Immediately, the image they’d been looking for popped up. “Yes!” Jackie shouted, punching the air.

“Wait, something’s up.” Chase leaned over and opened the image. There was a strange bit at the bottom, taken up with a white and black boxy symbol. “That looks like...I dunno, part of a QR code.”

“How much do you want to bet the rest of the code is in the other two images?” Jackie muttered.

After encoding the other titles and finding the images, it was clear that the QR code was split up between the three images. Jackie plugged all three into the photo editor, and arranged them next to each other so the code was complete. He patted his suit. “Fuck, do either of you have your phone?”

Chase checked his pockets. “No. I last remember setting it down on my desk, but then I passed out and woke up in that...place.”

JJ waggled his mustache, and pulled out his phone with a grin.

“Jays, I love you so much,” Jackie laughed. “Oh, the old-fashioned man is the one with the smartphone, how ironic.”

JJ passed it to Jackie. It’s very helpful. I’m trying to make a habit of keeping it on my person.

“That’s a good idea.” Jackie leaned back a bit as he tried to get the entire code in view of the camera. Then he snapped a picture, and a notification immediately popped up, saying the code had been understood and explaining what it would do. “This’ll take us to a website...” Jackie said, clicking on the notification to activate the code. The browser on the phone opened up,

Chase leaned over. “What’s that?”

“It’s a crossword puzzle.” Jackie groaned. He’d hoped the QR code would just give them the location to find Marvin, but no such luck. “Alright. Some of the squares are colored red, and at the bottom there’s this thing...” He scrolled down, and read out loud. “‘The address is 68′ and then a blank space. I bet we have to solve the crossword puzzle and then plug the letters from the red squares into this space to find the street address.”

Then what are we waiting for? JJ asked. What is the puzzle asking for?

Jackie looked through the hints. “Looks like a bunch of trivia...oh! I know the answer to number one! It’s Undertale.” Jackie smiled a bit. That was Marvin’s favorite game...thinking of Marvin, the smile faded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

By the time they finished, the clock read 3:25am. Piecing together the letters from the red squares, they came up with the address of 68 Aspen St. “That’s on the other side of town!” Jackie cried, distressed. “Okay. Okay, I can probably run there quickly, you guys will have to catch—”

“We can drive,” Chase suggested.

JJ frowned. Chase, I know you can drive, but you don’t have your car.

“There’s a car right there, in that parking lot.” Chase pointed diagonally across the street. There was indeed a single car in an empty lot. “Jackie, do you still know how to hotwire things?”

“Ah—I mean, yeah, but are we really about to steal a car?” Jackie asked tentatively.

It’s either that or let Marvin die! JJ signed furiously. We can return it after!

Jackie jumped at JJ’s sudden motion, but then nodded. “Yeah, guess it’s the lesser of two evils, huh?” He shut the laptop. “Alright. We have to hurry. If my math’s correct, we only have about half an hour before that timer counts down. Let’s go.”

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #jackieboy man #jameson jackson #chase brody #marvin the magnificent #brigid writes fanfiction #chaostheoryfic

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misstinfoilhat · 4 years

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Whumptober 2019 #19: Muffled Scream- Bungou Stray Dogs

I was finally able to tear away from the in-laws! This is the first holiday I've ever had a serious boyfriend and coming from a really small family myself, it's super strange to suddenly be a part of his enormous one. I went to him on the 25th, thinking I would stay over the night. Now, four days (and three family-gatherings later, with another two or three to go) … (and that's only his family)... I'm still here.

But, I was able to sneak off into the guest room where I have my computer and a bottle of wine, and now I'm itching to write! So, this chapter is dark; consider yourself warned. Also, there’s a lot of character study (I guess?). Especially concerning Kenji, who is usually very under-represented in the fics I’ve read. That made me curious since after watching the anime and reading (most of) the manga, I still haven’t created a clear image of him. Read the first part of this story here ---

“These are all just spanning missions,” Tanizaki complained, sighing as he rested his chin in the palm of his hand, putting away yet another mission file from a suspicious spouse or a businessman, paranoid about his associate's intentions. “They always take up so much time and involves traveling and every time they are grossly underpaid!” He tiredly stretched out onto the hardwood table and buried his face in the fine-grained timber, groaning as his joints creaked with fatigue.

“None of these cases seems urgent enough to spend time on right now,” Kenji agreed solemnly, picking a random manila folder from the pile, opening it up in his lap.

“Maybe we can make something up. Like a missing person's case somewhere in the Caribbean,” Naomi suggested dreamingly, turning the page in her own file absentmindedly.

“Talk about wasting time,” Tanizaki responded a bit agitated and shot a glare towards his sister. “Besides, we wouldn't get paid to do that.”

“I just want a vacation,” she smirked, hand reaching out and making its way underneath the redhead's shirt. Tanizaki blushed violently and immediately tried to fight her off.

“That's so disrespectful to Dazai-san! This is a matter of-”

Ignoring the Tanizaki-sibling's bickering, Kenji's eyes trailed intensely over the new binder at hand, reading it quickly with great vigor, before he tried to break into the slightly disturbing fight going on at the other side of the counter from him.

“Guys?”

“-life and death and we don't have time for a freaking vacat-”

“Relax brother, I'm just messing around. What's with you-”

“Hey, guys?”

“...you're never any fun anymore.”

“I'm trying to focus!”

“Guys!” Kenji finally raised his voice. Not loudly; he wouldn't do that. His mother had raised him right, and shouting the loudest was not part of his gentle demeanor. But, the good thing about always being the jovial one, was that once he did speak up, everybody would hold up and listen. This time was no exception. The Tanizaki siblings turned, Naomi having nearly crawled under her brother's shirt and Junichirou trying desperately to keep her out.

Kenji paused for a moment to take in whatever was going on in front of him, eventually shrugging it off as being some big-city thing that he didn't quite understand yet. He hadn't seen anyone else try to crawl up someone else's shirt in the middle of a heated argument before, but he also didn't have any sisters... Maybe he could ask them about it later.

Satisfied with that, he slid the piece of paper over the table towards them.

Tanizaki picked it up and read silently before handing it over to Naomi, who had finally taken a seat at the chair her brother had initially set out for her.

“Niko Saito,” Junichirou mused while Naomi finished skimming through the papers. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“It's the kid that we were looking for when Dazai went missing,” Naomi reminded him. Kenji nodded affirmatively.

“Six months ago, it was their mother who requested our help to find her missing daughter. But this time, it's her older sister. Look at the date,” Kenji instructed, pointing a chubby finger, nail coated with dirt from his small vegetable garden, towards the top of the page.

“That's only two weeks after Dazai went missing,” Tanizaki noted.

Kenji nodded again with a slight furrow between downy eyebrows, wrinkling his freckled forehead.

“Yeah... and two weeks after they recovered Niko Saito's body.” -------

The tray stood in the corner of the room, mocking him. Dazai hadn’t known that he was able to feel hunger anymore. He could go for days on end forgetting to eat, and only remembering when close to passing out. He didn't know how long he had gone this time, but apparently, longer than he used to in his life before. Maybe he had passed out already, but he couldn't be sure. Sleep and unconsciousness had always been two completely different things to him, but at this point, he took what he could get. Anything to get away, if only for a couple of minutes.

He wasn't even actually hungry anymore. It had gone far, far beyond the craving for food. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that he felt his body eating away through the thin layer of fat he had, devouring away at his muscles instead.

It wasn't going to break him though. They would not make him get down on all four and eat from that tray like a dog. Not again.

The first time he had gotten to a point of hunger where pure animalistic appetite made him desperate enough to degrade himself to that extent; ignoring how they had literally glued the bowl to the floor and only tossed a scoop of an unidentifiable paste onto it- that’s when he had found out that whatever that pulp of brown puree was- it could not have been considered food for several weeks.

Anyone who truly knew Dazai could testify to that he had always been hyper-sensitive about what he ate and that he had a very weak stomach. For a moment, all he could do was to gorge into it in blind mania; desperately filling his gut with long sought-after nourishment. Then, after a short while, as the first bite where he could feel the maggots squirming between his teeth finally registered, he had instantly hurled out all of his meager stomach’s contents back into the bowl.

They left it there, deciding that he was ungrateful and needed to finish his meal before he could get a new one, and he had sworn that he would never eat anything ever again.

He hadn't been able to hold that promise to himself. He had failed, several times, and it had made him horribly sick. But after a while, they had started to replace his “food” more frequently. Dazai figured that they had noticed how sick he was, and figured that they would have to make some changes to keep him alive.

This had only fueled his determination to not eat. It was a small victory, but he took what he could get.

The sound of heavy boots echoed outside his isolation, and he felt his body tense up instinctively. He held his breath, praying they would pass him by. As they stopped only a small distance away from him, he started wracking his brain about when he had showered or been to the toilet the last time. Maybe it was time for that? Usually, nothing too bad would happen then. Only a couple of half-hearted kicks or whacks over the head if he was unable to pay attention.

...but he could remember the last time they had taken him out for that. He had no idea when it was, but the fact that he remembered at all was a bad sign for what was to come.

It creaked in a high pitched noise as the lock on the other side of the door he was shackled to slid open, and Dazai held his breath in anticipation for the pain to come. He wasn't actually afraid of the pain- it was simply something to be endured. Sometimes it would be gone in an instance and sometimes it would start small and gradually increase to a climax where it would absolutely suck- but it was still nothing to be afraid of. Other times, it would only be a dull, slightly irritating ache, and sometimes it would never truly go away. In the end, even if he hated it, it was the promise of it that was worst.

Suddenly, finally, he was yanked backward by his neck. The wounds on his knees were once again reopened as his scattered knees raked across the floor while a dizzying, immeasurable pain wracked through his body from his dislocated hip. His air supply was cut off right as the door was wrenched open and it felt as if his windpipe was being crushed by the force of it.

A strangled gasp swirled around in the cold hallway for a moment as he tried to catch his breath. He was getting lightheaded; he wasn't getting enough oxygen and he felt his whole body shudder with the effort it took just to draw a breath.

Half-aware, he could hear someone talking to him. Dark pants and combat boots were crowding around him, their prods lingering threateningly and close to him as they kept throwing commands at him, waiting for him to react.

Even if he couldn't make out what they were saying, he knew what they wanted and it made him want to chuckle. Because he couldn't get up on his feet even if he had been trying, and he wouldn't be trying even if he had thought he would be able to. Giving him a shock in the state he was in, would only make him less coherent, and make their job that much harder and make it absolutely hopeless to try and make him talk- yet again because he wouldn't be trying even he thought he would be able to.

A faint memory of an old folk tale about a snake eating its own tale came to mind. The ouroboros, he remembered. It was supposedly meant to symbolize life, death, and rebirth, but to Dazai, it had always seemed like it was a tale of a double-edged sword. People doing stupid shit and continuing doing stupid shit without gaining anything. Because no matter what, the snake would end up cannibalizing itself.

He wasn't sure if the snake was him or them in this scenario, but it didn't matter. None of them were getting anywhere anyway.

The sharp pain of electric shock pulled him out of his musings, aimed at his bare ribcage. Dazai was hardly able to react before his head was forced up by a death grip on his hair.

The man that spoke faded in and out of focus and his voice was nothing but a muffled sound that told Dazai absolutley nothing about what was going to happen next. Two strong hands were grabbing onto his skeletal arms and hoisted him up between them and started carrying him through the hallway, towards his inevitable doom. ----------

“Kunikida-san, we found something interesting,” Kenji announced as the three teenagers came rushing back into the office. A single casefile was fluttering in the blonde's hand and quickly, it was resting on his idealistic elder's arms that were still lingering at the keyboard connected to his computer.

Kunikida's hazel eyes slowly trailed down from his screen and onto the file, a small irritated nerve twitching at the edge of his eye.

“Yes?” he answered darkly before he shifted his attention to the eager fourteen-year-old. He was clearly trying to suppress his anger at being interrupted in the middle of work by yet another impatient teenager. But looking into those hopefull emerald eyes, his fury quickly diminished, albeit reluctantly.

Being mad at Kenji was much like holding a grudge to a puppy. In the end, it would only make him feel like a heartless monster.

He took a deep, steadying breath, mentally sifting through different voices and reactions, once again realizing how big of a void the loss of Dazai had left.

With him, it was so easy. No matter how Kunikida reacted, how much abuse and rage he subjected the glorified toilet-roll to, it would just roll off his back as if the reaction to his antics hadn’t been (slightly) unreasonable.

It was just so liberating. Kunikida always had to censor himself around other people, in fear of hurting them. In the end, that had been his downfall as a teacher. But that was mainly because kids were just so damn stupid. There were so many feelings all the time; so many feelings that always seemed to get hurt by him. In the end, that hurt him as well, but that didn't matter much when he was called into the principle's office for a tongue-lashing or a peace offering to the student he had offended's parents.

Admittedly, he respected all the brats he worked with at the agency, and things had been going well while he had his verbal punching-bag there, with him. Now, however, he found himself stepping over the line more often than not.

He needed to do better, if not for himself, then for the kids and Dazai. Because Dazai cared for those brats. Often, it seemed like Dazai even cared about him, which... felt strangely nice. Because people didn't usually like him at all. They thought he was too stubborn and rule-abiding and mean.

But not Dazai. If Kunikida hadn’t known any better (which he absolutely did) he would have thought that Dazai was slightly stupid, accepting a bitter and angry man like himself for who he was just like that. There was simply no logical reason for it if he couldn’t think of one.

“A-are you okay Kunikida-san?” Kenji suddenly asked, bringing Kunikida out of his toxic train of thoughts. Moss-rimmed eyes stared at him with a concerned squint to them, and the frost that had crept up on him seemed to melt away in a moment.

“Yes, Kenji-kun. I got lost in thought for a moment, that's all. Don't worry about it,” Kunikida answered, slightly surprised by the softness of his own voice. As the worry slowly vanished from the boy's face, Kunikida continued just as calmly, “what is it that you've found?”

The teen's face lit up in an instant and opened the file for him, pointing towards the page where the applier had to register their personal information.

“This case came in just two weeks after Dazai-san went missing,” he explained eagerly.

“It's about the same girl he was looking for, except this time, it's from the girl's sister,” Tanizaki shot in.

“But they found her, didn't they?” Kunikida asked as he read through the first page, scratching the small stubbles on his chin.

“Yeah, unfortunately, they found her washed up along the Yokohama river, but that's not actually the point. Dazai-san went missing just a few days after she was found dead-”

“It looked like a drowning, but the girl was an excellent swimmer,” Ranpo interrupted Kenji, stepping forward between the three teens and gaining their attention.

“Her sister, Hinata, said that Niko was captain of the swimming team when she and her mother came by when the girl initially went missing. She held a record for holding her breath the longest on her swimming team,” he reminisced.

“I remember that,” Kunikida murmured thoughtfully.

“So, when she was found, the police decided it was an accidental drowning and closed the case. Apparently, the sister must think otherwise,” Ranpo deducted.

“Do you know what she was wearing when they found her?” Kunikida asked.

“She had stripped to her u-undergarments,” Ranpo said shyly, blushing as he remembered the crime-scene photos he had gotten a small glimpse of while helping the police with a different case.

“It was in the middle of summer. She might have felt like a spontaneous swim,” Naomi pointed out.

“But she had swim practice every day. It seems unlikely that she wouldn't have her bathing suit with her,” Kenji retorted.

Silence fell upon the room for a while as the five of them thought. Eventually, it was Kenji who broke the silence.

“So, what do you think Kunikida-san? Is this a lead we should be looking into?”

This time Kunikida didn't miss a beat. If anything, he was kicking himself for not having doubted the outcome of the case that Dazai had gone missing after sooner. When did he start trusting that the police knew what they were doing if not Ranpo had aided the investigation anyway? Those lazy bastards were getting way too comfortable these days.

“Absolutely.”

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

This was new, and new was never good. Not in this place, anyway.

Dazai was strapped to a table he recognized from his days in the Port Mafia. It was a surgical table, there was no doubt about that. But not the soft leathery ones, covered in blue or green rolls of paper. This was made of steel and felt unyielding and chilled down his bare back and every part of his body that could possibly move was strapped down by belts with big buckles that buried painfully into his skin as he tried to move.

His eyes darted from one side to the other- trying to get just the slightest of hints about what was about to happen to him. Slight recognition of the room dawned upon him, but he would only wake up there when he was at his weakest; at the absolute brink of death. That gave him a faint hope of not getting out of there alive.

That made him calm down a little, with the hope that this could possibly be the last stop; the stop he was getting off on after an endless train ride with a long-expired ticket.

An apparition appeared at the edge of his vision. He expected that it would be Dr.You-shall-no-pass, as he had nicknamed him, inspired by a long-ago memory he had after being forced to watch a strange movie at the cinema as an important client's date in his Port Mafia-days.

Dr.You-shall-not-pass would make sure that he got the life-saving treatment each time they had pushed him too far (or as of late; when he had pushed himself too far), but this time, that was not what met him.

It was Him. The middle-aged guy with the smoker's laugh. Icy blue eyes stared down at him with a satisfied grin, uncovering his yellowing teeth. Without meaning to, the small amount of air Dazai was able to inhale got caught in his throat and if he wasn't so dehydrated, he would spit into that smug face.

“Now, young man,” the man said with his graveled voice. The parting nicotine-stained teeth revealed a souring breath; not being able to breathe properly while having his nose stuffed with sickness after days, weeks or months of malnourishment was all that kept Dazai from vomiting.

“I heard that you haven't been eating the food I've prepared- just for you. Now that just breaks my heart.”

'Food is a strong over-statement,' Dazai wanted to say, but as he opened his mouth to speak, two calloused hands abruptly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and hastily made their way between his teeth, forcing his jaw open.

He immediately started to struggle, but his limbs were held down tightly and he could hardly move millimeters from the table. Dazai arched his back and bit down as hard as he could, but the hands that held his mouth open hardly seemed to flinch by his futile efforts.

Amidst his desperate fight to gain some control back of his own self, he could hear the venomous voice of his captor.

“If you won't eat, I guess we'll just have to feed you, won't we?”

A pale yellow tube closed in on him and his jaw was forced even wider. A small click sounded from somewhere close to his temples, and he wondered if his jaw had been dislocated. The hands holding the tube didn't relent by this, and Dazai stuck his tongue out to make yet another hinder for the feeding tube to pass, but all that left him was blood coating his gap as the sharp edges of the tube cut into if before the device was forced down his throat.

Panic like Dazai had never felt panic before hit him; something feral; animalistic providing him with a strength he didn't know he had. The bands against his right wrist suddenly snapped and immediately, he went for the tube, trying to tear it out from his throat.

A guard was quickly grabbing onto it, forcing it back far enough that they could hear the bone snap. Dazai let out a choked cry of anguish before several crackling prods were pushed into his line of sight.

He was able to feel a nauseating sensation of something filling up his gut before the shock-sticks shot him from several different angles. His vision was tunneling, and hicks for air ravaged through his entire body from the offending article forced into his insides while a muffled scream tore its way through his broken form, and he finally lost consciousness.

----------

Oh wow. That is becoming darker than I had anticipated. This story will be in several parts! So stay tuned!

#whump #whump community #whumptober #Whumptober day 19 #muffled scream #fanfiction #fanfic #bsd fanfic #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #OSAMU DAZAI #kenji #bsd kenji #tanizaki junichirou #naomi #kunikida #torture fic

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destinywillowleaf · 4 years

Text

SWN-002 Wing Man

“That's the power of love!”

Wingman was created by Dr. Wily in an attempt to beat Mega Man in a field outside of battle by harnessing the power of love. Wing Man has flight capability and wields a piercing arrow called his "Cupid Crossbow". Being designed to defeat Mega Man through love, Wing Man has a large board dedicated to unravelling his love life. Similar boards exist for Proto Man and Bass, forming the "Tiny Trio". He'd call them the Big Three, but they're short.

Wing Man likes cheesy romcoms and dislikes Proto Man (for being hard to read). His strong point is his dedication to his task, though he can become blinded by the task at hand and not remember the other couples he's trying to get together.

This took longer than I expected to actually write and get out to share.

With this year’s Valentine’s contest over(courtesy of rockmiyabideusexmachina), I can finally talk about this boy! He was so much fun to make and I’m definitely gonna be using him more in the future. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on him, the stages of his design, and a lot of pictures, so it’s gonna be under the cut.

Now that that’s outta the way, let’s get into the process of Wing!

...I thought we were talking about Wing Man, who’s this?

Meet “Playboy Bunny”, this duality of a Maverick and the first draft of a character for this contest. Usually she’s the sweet Playboy Bunny, a majorly human-like Reploid acting as a performer. However, once you’ve provoked her, she throws off the sweet guise and becomes Magnet Hare, the quick and fast-attacking Maverick with attractive properties.

To be honest, I’m half wondering if I would’ve done better if I had done more with her design and actually gone with her instead. The main reason I didn’t go with her in the end was cause I thought someone else was gonna go with it and then there would’ve been repeats.

I might come back and do more doodles of her someday, refining her design to be less human with bunny accessories and more rabbit/bunny with human-like proportions.

The very first drawings of Wing Man. The only thing I really had down at this point were the general heart-shapes, his name, and his weapon’s name. The one on the left was the first draft, and the right one was a case of “should he actually have wings or nah?”. The name actually came to me when I was sitting in class and I think that’s part of the reason I got attached. The pun name is probably the biggest holdover from Bunny, though another element did come by later…

This is where the magic happened. The front-facing sketch was the first real attempt and trying to figure out what I wanted from him. I knew that he should have a general heart-shape for his chest armor, and maybe his helmet could follow the same idea with one in the center. It took a bit to look through the other Robot Master helmet designs, but I feel like Wing’s looks like it could fit with everyone else’s. At one point I was considering giving him a heart braid kinda like Tundra’s, but I wound up scrapping it. I think it was because I was sick of braids after doing so many for Nahyuta…

Then some arrows! I couldn’t decide whether to have actual arrows or energy arrows, but I feel like the energy arrows make it look more unique. And the first appearance of the bowtie! I didn’t even know if I was gonna give him one at first but once I made the doodle I knew it was gonna stay. Bunny has a bow, too, but hers was just a regular ribbon one.

The collapsible crossbow was something I knew I wanted from the start, because Wing’s not a huge fighter. He will fight to achieve his goals, and sometimes it’s more necessary than at other times, but it’s easier to have it folded outta the way. The “string” of the crossbow forms when it is expanded out, and then he can start firing his weapon.

Also, his boot. Simple enough design. Not much to be said. Same goes for the side profile, I was just trying to get a better feel for his design.

I was debating for a while about whether or not to actually give Wing Man wings. On the one hand, it’d help for the joke of him being a wingman and a wing(ed) man, but on the other hand I don’t like drawing wings because I still don’t really understand them all too well.

The bottom center image was a pretty defining part of making Wing, to be honest. It’s probably one of my favorite drawings/doodles of him just because of the causal nature of suggesting a relationship with someone(and it’s up to you to decide who it is) and Rock’s immediate reaction of fear/concern. I don’t screw around with expressions enough anymore…

I don’t have any versions of this page without color on it, but that’s because this was a color testing page. I wanted to test out my physical colors first before spending too much time digitally experimenting, and I had two main ideas: either red-pen red in varying pressures or coral Sharpie highlighter. By the final design, you can tell which one I went with. I wanted to compare them side-by-side, and the half-and-half wasn’t really cutting it for me. I did a second comparison on the other page(which is gonna be further down this post).

I was trying to get a better grasp on the wings, too, since I eventually decided just to go for it and make it more of a pun.I couldn’t decide if I wanted the wings like on top of the jetpacks or off to the sides, but I went with on top of the jets in the end. The off to the side wings were taken from how Tengu Man’s “wings” are positioned. As for the wings themselves… I was honestly mostly taking reference from Pit’s emotion portraits from Kid Icarus Uprising. I had the image with all of his different emotions and it wasn’t like Wily would be going for complete accuracy how big wings would need to be since, y’know, jetpack.

The color scheme of the wings also changed over time, and I think probably for the better. Layering the colors instead of just making a weird gradient overtop looks nicer(even if those colors could probably use some refinement all things considered). I was also deciding on the weapon “type” for the crossbow, since Megaman’s weapon get picture is on this page. Piercer seemed like it would fit the best, going through multiple enemies in a straight shot.

Designing the ability get was actually pretty simple, which I’m glad about. I wanted to go more off of the Megaman 11 style of weapon get, altering the helmet, arm, and color only, and I wanted to stick to that. I also wanted to keep two of Wing’s more defining elements - his bow and wings - on the ability get, so I moved them from Wing’s torso to Rock’s helmet.

Alongside the ability get, an unfinished battle scene. Nothing too special here.

I tried the color testing thing again, and it was here, I believe, that I first settled on the idea of “hey what if he looked like he was wearing a suit or something” and colored it accordingly. The color on the feet honestly sold me on the left one, because the cherry-red was beautiful and it was just red pen under the highlighter. I was happy with the pieces I had and started to put it all together into the final product…

Every Robot Master needs a pose for their artwork, and Wing was gonna be no different. I could’ve gone for something more dramatic, I know, but I was really really happy how the posing turned out for the one on the left. The smaller one on the right was more for fun and was messing around with some line thickness. There’s also less feathers because I was kinda lazy.

The main reason I have him sitting is because I think his boss entrance, were he to be fought in a typical arena, would have him pulling a Meta Knight and coming down from a high ledge to attack. Saying his pre-battle line, sliding/jumping down from on-high, and with a flourish, the battle begins.

Also I just wanted to draw my boy looking cute. Sue me.

The physical version of Wing sitting(on the left) is what I had initially been going for in color scheme, with a lot less coral-ish colors in the mix. Trying to recreate those colors, however, was a problem, so for all intents and purposes this is what I hold as why he's really supposed to look like. But with a complete physical form, what's next?

...hoo boy.

Trying to make the leap from physical to digital was a pain. I realized after I had essentially finalized the physical sketch of Wing posing that the helmet and face kind of made no sense. I spent a while trying to make it right and nothing worked how I wanted it to so I eventually just moved on from that.

One thing to know is that I basically only work in MS Paint. I don’t have any other digital drawing software on my computer and the tablet available to me doesn’t respond to styluses as far as I can gather. So taking the widely-varying-in-color picture and making it not like that was something I had to remember how to do because otherwise I was gonna suffer the consequences. I knew it had to do with outlines but apparently Paint didn’t want to accept my drawn outlines and would only take ones made in the software. And jpgs were pixel-y, which I forgot since the last time I was extensively using the software.

Once I had my system back, I made the silhouette and digitalized “I’m just sayin” as a practice round of sorts. But with the simple pieces out of the way… the time came for making the whole reference sheet. The pose, the front and side views, the shipping board to serve as a back view, the wings, the Weapon Get, the weapon, and the little character-defining details.

Save states fill most of this folder for a reason. Working with what I had and going over and through everything to make sure I had all the pieces ready, making saves before the background deletion so I would just have outlines, and just hoping that this was all gonna be worth the work.

One of the more… challenging, I guess, parts of the design process for Wing: trying to give him a unique silhouette. Including the wings was, in part, because of this. Most, if not every Robot Master has a unique silhouette that you can look at and say “Oh that’s [name here]” or at least be able to tell them apart. Whether it’s fire, a boomerang, a snake tail, a lightbulb, a weird body shape, or their arms, there’s something to set each one apart. And I wanted Wing to have that same feeling, so if you were to see a blacked-out version of him you could still tell that it was Wing and not someone else.

Without the wings, he’d probably resemble a downgraded Quick Man - which makes sense, considering I was using Quick’s body shape as a base for Wing’s for a more subtle top of a heart. But I didn’t want Wing just to look like Worse Quick Man, so the wings had to stay. The crossbow helps in that regard too, but the wings really set him apart.

This is what I’m talking about. He looks like a generic character without the wings.

Trying to keep Wing in the same vein of design as other Robot Masters was also, I guess, the reason I used the colors I did. Robot Masters typically don’t have too many colors, and didn’t want Wing to be a colorful mess. Maybe I could’ve had another more striking color in his design, but I’m happy with the colors I have. Reds and pinks and white with a skin tone taken from the physical doodles that I tried to have be a brownish-cherry if that makes any sense. Like it was supposed to still be in the red(kinda orange) family of colors but still be distinct enough as a skin tone. I didn’t want to have too many variations on colors, but I do think I could’ve done better on some of the distributions(and holding onto the idea of “stop using so many colors”).

Like I said, I consider the physical drawing to be the true colors of Wing, and the digital can’t quite capture the physical.

...Okay, I think that’s everything I wanted to say. If you actually read through this entire monstrosity of a post, thank you. I do have a full colored version of the "I'm just sayin'" that'll go up eventually because it was fun.

#willowtalks #willowarts #wing man #rockmiyabideusexmachina #Valentine's day 2020 robot master design contest #mobile is a pain #even though i don't like drawing wings i love my boy #i should work on my other projects #like Golden Days #or school stuff #if someone draws him ill cry #i should draw my characters moreeee #finally went back and edited the images to be in the right spots ^^;#mostly because i wanted to draw him again #still don't like drawing wings

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petitprincess1 · 5 years

Text

Why Does Clemencia Love Demencia? (One-shot)

Summary: Clemencia ends getting asked the age old question and what better way to answer that question than in song!

Characters: Slug, Hatbot, Clemencia, Demencia, Flug (briefly), DCS (Demencia Cult Society), and White Hat

Words: 1,571

Warnings: A bit of gore and violence.

If you want to read the original post click here and if you want to listen to the song while reading (even though it won’t match up) click here

Slug scrolled through the many questions that people asked with extreme boredom and mumbled them aloud, while Hatbot was blowing bubbles and Clemencia was playing with her Demencia doll and decapitated Flug doll, “Can I marry White Hat? No. How much training does it take to be as good as you all? You will never be as good, give up. Can we see your face? Ha! No. ...Huh?”

He raised an eyebrow at a folder that wasn’t marked and asked Hatbot, “Hey, what is this?”

Hatbot looked at the computer screen and gasped, “OOOOH! It’s all the questions that I marked as spam and unnecessary! They were primarily Clemencia’s que-”

“AAAAH! WHAT!?” Clemencia squealed as she hopped into Slug’s lap, making the scientist grunt in pain, and cheered, “OH! OH! Let’s do them! Please please please please-”

Slug interrupted, “Alright, fine! Get off of me, please!”

Clem giggled as she teleported out of his lap and watched as he clicked on the spam, watching the images of the copious questions flicker endlessly on the screen, all of them asking, “Why does Clemencia love Demencia?”

Clem blinked at them and the suddenly started vibrating with excitement, as she squealed and her eyes turned into hearts. Slug then jumped up and grabbed Hatbot, making him hide behind one of the chairs along with him. Hatbot asked, “Daddy, what’s happening?”

Slug whispered to him, “Let’s just pray that it’ll be over soon.”

Clemencia’s horn then glowed brightly, changing the whole entire scenery surrounding her and even making the others disappear. An electrifying, seductive, and terrifying tune filled the air as Clemencia teleported into a pastel pink and fluffy room filled with Demencia posters, drawings, secret pictures taken of her, stolen items, and in the middle a giant statue of the lizard hybrid in her apocalyptic gear. Everything, including the statue, was covered in glitter, rainbows, and hearts that read “Clem x Dem”, “She’s mine”, “Love u”, or “My Goddess”. Clemencia teleported in front of the statue and then began to answer the question...in song, “Her absolute vile and disgusting being,” she teleported to the statue’s shoulder and kissed its cheek, “it fills me with the most wondrous feeling~”

She continued as she crawled into her hair, letting it fall crazily out of its ponytail, and crawl-danced in front of a poster of Dem in her apocalyptic gear, stepping on a person and cackling, “Her discordant and unkempt appearance,” she then fainted onto a spear and got impaled, still having giant, lovestruck smile on her face with rainbow blood dripping from her mouth, “It brings a whole new meaning to my existence!”

Down below the many people impaled on spears, Demencia was inaudibly laughing crazily as Clem was singing over it, “Her chaotic cackle and bombastic behavior,” Demencia then turned to an upside down, tied up Flug and began punching him, “How can you not have her as your savior?”

Next was just Demencia smiling wickedly before pulling many knives, daggers, scalpels, and toothbrush shivs out from her hair, while Clem sang, “Her crazy smile and carnivorous greed,” Clemencia appeared, leaning back against the now still picture, with her hand on her heart and she hummed, as hearts appeared around her head, “Only raises my lustful need~”

She then pushed back on the image too hard and that caused both her and it to fall backward, awkwardly, while robed figures that were dressed in what looked like Dem’s jacket and they even had a long green ponytail sticking out from their hoods. The Demencia cult members chanted along with the music, as all of Clemencia’s stalking and pursuing of Dem appeared behind them, “That girl is psychotic, her love for Demencia is barbaric. If you captured her, it’d be in vain, her maddening love would drive even Black Hat insane.”

A pastel blue and pastel pink heart appeared and the words “Clem x Dem” got sliced into the middle, causing a glittery rainbow to bleed out from the gashes. Clem trilled, “Her wrath and savageness I cannot fear; she’s just an untamed lizard~” She then leaned backwards in front of the heart, almost bending herself completely in half, clasping her hands together, still singing the note. The she spun around and got herself wrapped up in her blue ponytail, finishing off with a giggle, “with fluffy hair!”

An image flashed with her practicing kisses on her Demencia poster in her room and then another showed her watching the lizard woman beating a hero’s teeth out with a delirious and loving smile on her face. All the while drawings of hearts, lizards, and unicorns, along with the words: “Mine”, “My love”, and “Perfection” came in. It all dissipated to show Clemencia riding happily on a giant, blue and white, robotic spider.

As the giant spider with WH Inc’s logo on its abdomen stomped throughout the villainous suburbs, Clemencia lied down on her stomach on its head, while kicking her legs in the air, hands propping her head up, and rocking her head back-and forth to the chaotic beat of the music and the blood-curdling screams below her as lower lifeforms got impaled on the robot’s legs. She sang with hearts in her eyes as she stared down Black Hat’s manor, “She’s a part of mean and nasty corporation,” she took a remote out of her hair and pressed a button, sending rockets out of the spider’s fangs and blowing up the manor, “I’ll be the one to end her destruction!”

Next she ended up beside Demencia in her Predator armor, sans helmet, while she was tearing open a hero and squishing their guts into a bloodied mush. Clem twirled towards her and swooned, while wrapping her arms around the back of Dem’s neck and turning around to slide down the lizard hybrid erotically, “Her armor’s bloodied with hero’s spleens.”

Clemencia climbed up the suddenly growing Demencia, as the lizard woman placed her helmet on as she towered over Hatsville. A red lazer beam came out from Demencia’s helmet and sliced through several buildings, causing many cataclysmic and uproarious cries. Clem just climbed up to the giant lizard’s shoulder and maniacally sang, watching the destruction with amorous glee, “She’s always leaving the night filled with screams!”

The image burned away along with the city and Slug appeared, leaning back in his chair and was casually singing-speaking, “Will you finish this song?”

Clemencia shook her tush at him, mocking, “Make me, you bore!”

She then reached into her ponytail and pulled out dozens of cute daggers, twirling around and sending them of towards Slug in different angles, while declaring, “Nothing can stop my love for her~”

Slug shrunk in his chair and covered himself with his arms, as the daggers went flying past him and over him, creating a heart shape into the wall right behind him. Hatbot wheeled up to Clem and begged, “Miss. Clemencia, calm down!”

She then snapped around to face Hatbot, making the little bot jump in fear as he wheeled in reverse to White Hat, who was reading the newspaper, and hop onto his lap. Clemencia climbed onto the recliner White was sitting in to be over both of them as she sang with a deranged smile, while her eyes changed into pinpricks and her horn glowed dark pink, making Hatbot tremble and White raise an eyebrow, “And something I know is something that I will share!”

She magically conjured an ensemble of the Demencia Cult Society to stand on wooded, curved choral risers, while a few others were summoned to play instruments in more shredded like robes, with graffiti, stickers, and tattoos all over them, and they all chanted lowly, in tune with the music, “Crazy in love…”

An anime-like image of Demencia and Clemencia appeared, possibly drawn by a woman that Clem threatened, and it was of Clem being dipped down in a seductive manner, while one of her arms wrapped around Dem’s neck and she held a sickle up to the lizard’s trachea. Demencia’s arm was wrapped onto the small of Clem’s back and the other hand was both caressing and squeezing Clem’s neck. The unicorn witch crooned, “Because in the end…”

She finished off on a high note as her powers went berserk and started changing the entire lab into a twisted half unicorn, that was pastel blue and pink, and half lizard skull, that was green and red, stage, along with gogo dancers in cages, interpretive dancers, aerial silk acrobatics, and the rest of the cult walking up ramps with torches in hand, all of the dressed somewhat like both her and Dem. She belted out while the dark pink aura surrounded her and lifted her in air, “The most real and right is Demencia~”

The cult vocalized along with her going into a crescendo, as the ones with torches went up to the cauldron and lit it on fire, making the orangish flames somehow turn pink, blue, and glittery and spell out “Clem x Dem”. Clemencia then suddenly stopped singing, flipped her fluffy ponytail over shoulder, and blinked her eyes cutely, while sparkles and stars appeared in her pupils. She cooed, “And me!”

Then her aura quickly turned blue and everything disappeared, causing her to fall from the stage, land harshly on the table, and start twitching. Slug and Hatbot were instantly put back in their chairs. White ordered them, “Let’s get back to the questions, s̪̜̣͍̗̦ͅh̗̯̘a͖͎͝l̳̪̬l͍̟̙̞͎ ͓̦̠ẉ̶̘e̵̥̰̺̩̣?̩͠”

Slug and Hatbot jumped and then saluted, “Yes, sir!”

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imaginetonyandbucky · 6 years

Note

Hi!! Thanks opening prompts; I was wondering if anyone is interested in writing a Post TWS fic where the WS is on the loose and kidnaps Tony to be his new handler since he's good with mainteance for his arm and giving out orders and falls for him bringing sparks of Bucky back. While Tony alrrady knows (through Jarvis searches) that WS was responsible for his parents deaths and while he is angry he's tryibg to survive snd wants to help Bucky. Both see how damaged the other is. Xo, Katie

A/N: I tweaked it a bit so that I could turn it into a sequel for my story One More Light, which you might need to read for context.

Also on AO3!

Out of Ashes Chapter 1: Falling

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Tony said out loud, back in his lab and spinning around in circles in his office chair. In his pocket he was turning the dog tag over and over in his fingers, trying to resist temptation.

“What is, sir?”

“Nothing, JARVIS.” Tony put the tag in the top drawer of his desk and closed it firmly. He wasn’t going to look up Barnes, James Buchanan. Because it was just a coincidence.

“I mean, lots of people probably have that name.”

“What name, sir?”

“Never mind, JARVIS.”

Tony lasted thirty minutes before he opened the drawer again.

It took him ten to determine that there has not been another James Buchanan Barnes in the US military since the James Buchanan Barnes; there was a James Brantley Barnes twenty years ago, but that’s all. There was a James Buchanan Barnes out of Little Rock (sandy-haired and twenty years old) and one out of Fort Wayne, Indiana (fifty years old if he’s a day). The man he’d seen was the spitting image of Bucky Barnes, if ol’ JBB had gone on a week-long bender after growing his hair out. But no way the man he’d seen was over ninety years old.

Tony rubbed his hands over his face and stared at the picture on the screen, the hat tipped at a jaunty angle, the confident smirk and the dark, guarded eyes. He ran his thumb over the raised letters of the dog tag for a moment before he closed the windows on his computer and tucked the tag into his pocket.

“Alright JARVIS, open up the files on the palladium, we’re going back to the drawing board.”

Beware the read more

The next day, and then the day after that, and the one after that, until it became a daily habit, Bucky checked the newspaper - first the headlines, then the obituaries, just in case. He knew it was kind of silly, because there was no reason for him to believe that if Tony did decide to go through with it, his death would even make the news, but he did it anyway. Gradually it evolved into also doing the crossword puzzle, then the crossword and the Sudoku, until he realized that he had made himself a whole morning routine, complete with a coffee shop where they knew his order as soon as he came in.

The first time he realized he had become predictable he panicked and hid out for days, calling out of work and jumping at shadows. He spent one whole day wedged into a corner under the Brooklyn Bridge with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other before he finally calmed down enough to crawl out of his hiding spot in order to find food. Eating made him sleepy, and as soon as he got to a safe place he crashed for twelve solid hours. When he woke up his body felt shaky, fragile, but his mind was clear. And when he finally slunk into his coffee shop, still feeling vaguely embarrassed by his overreaction, the barista greeted him with a huge smile.

“I saved you the paper,” she said. “Your coffee will be right up.”

Bucky smiled shyly and thanked her, taking his usual seat near the rear exit with his back to the wall. He sipped his coffee and did both puzzles before he started flipping through the paper itself.

Then his brain stuttered when he saw the headline. STARK EXPO ATTACKED, it said in big letters, and underneath Iron Man and War Machine Defeat Rogue Robots. The main picture on the page was of the Stark Expo convention grounds mostly destroyed and still aflame, but above the fold there was a small picture of a man with a cocky grin and a distinctive beard, looking out at the camera over a pair of colored sunglasses.

“Tony…Stark?” Bucky read incredulously, hand drifting to the watch on his wrist. Jesus. No wonder Tony hadn’t believed that Bucky didn’t recognize him. But in Bucky’s defense, he had pretty much been living under a rock for the past few years. He devoured the article, which took up the front page and half of one farther into the paper, not counting all of the related articles, one of which was about some guy named Justin Hammer and another about Colonel James Rhodes. “Rhodey,” Bucky said under his breath, folding the paper up neatly and draining his coffee. Nothing in the paper talked about Tony’s mysterious not-cancer, but defeating a small army of robots almost single-handedly didn’t sound like the actions of a man on the edge of death so maybe he figured out whatever he’d been looking for.

Bucky let out a long exhale and relaxed back into his chair, feeling like a weight had come off his shoulders. Tony was ok. He’d obviously made up with Rhodey and he was going to be fine. “Good for you,” he murmured as he grabbed his bag and tossed it over his shoulder. He waved goodbye to the barista, feeling a real smile curl his lips for the first time in days, and when he went back outside he tilted his head up and inhaled deeply, feeling the crisp spring air filling his lungs. He took a moment outside the coffee shop to close his eyes and feel the sun on his face, because, damn, he’d forgotten what happiness could feel like.

He didn’t realize someone had come up behind him until a voice whispered “Sputnik” in his ear. Bucky sagged to the ground, suddenly trapped in a body no longer under his control.

***

Two Years Later

“Who in the hell could do something like this?” Tony said, staring at the photos of the crime scene that was Steve’s apartment. He studied the bullet holes in the brick wall, each the size of a quarter, and then pulled out the map with the shooter’s location marked on it. “I mean, that shot was just…unbelievable.” When he glanced up Rhodey was glaring at him repressively and Natasha was rolling her eyes. “What?” Tony said defensively. “I used to sell sniper rifles, I know what it would take to make a shot like this!”

“All I know about him is that he was fast,” Steve said absently, staring down at the wooden table that dominated the SHIELD conference room. “Strong. And he had a metal arm.”

If Tony hadn’t already been looking at Natasha he would have missed the way her eyelids flickered when Steve said metal arm, even as the rest of her face stayed impassive. She was holding herself tightly in the way that people did when they were afraid they were going to fall apart. “Alright,” Tony said slowly, still watching her closely. “Metal arm. That’s pretty distinctive, I’ll start digging.” Steve nodded, something else clearly on his mind as he stood. “Natasha, a word?” Tony said, shuffling the photos and papers on Fury’s assassination back into the folder as the conference room emptied. She raised an eyebrow but lingered, giving Interim Director Hill a brief squeeze on the arm as she walked by.

“What is it, Tony?”

“Not the first time you’d heard of a guy with a metal arm, Nat? Because I gotta say, I stay pretty up to date with the latest technology, including prosthetics, and I’ve never heard of something like Steve’s describing.”

Natasha exhaled and looked at the conference door, making sure it was closed firmly. “Look, most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists,” she said, voice low. “And the ones that do, call him the Winter Soldier. He’s assassinated over two dozen people in the last fifty years.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “So he’s a ghost story. Or like the Dread Pirate Roberts.”

Natasha pressed her lips together. “Look, Tony. One time, I was extracting an engineer from Odessa. The Winter Soldier shot out my tires, and then shot my engineer straight through me. So I know he’s real. But going after him is a dead end. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“But I haven’t.” Tony offered her a crooked grin, tapping the folder against the table. “You dig on your end, I’ll dig on mine.”

“You know Steve’s not going to sit still on this,” she warned.

“Uh, you think? After his boss was killed in his own living room by a mysterious metal-armed stranger?” Tony opened the door to the conference room, gesturing for her to lead the way. “Were you planning to babysit?”

“I was going to watch his six, yes.” Her heels clicked sharply on the tile floor as she pushed the button for the elevator. “And you? Are you going back to New York?”

“No.” As the elevator dinged and the doors opened, Tony texted Happy to bring the car around. “Something strange is going on at SHIELD and I’m going to find out what. Let me know if you need backup, ok?”

“Sure thing,” Natasha said with that small smile of hers that said either ‘I’m way ahead of you’ or ‘I’m going to agree and then do whatever I was going to do anyway,’ which more or less amounted to the same thing.

***

“Son of a bitch,” Tony cursed as his call went to voicemail for the sixth time; neither Steve nor Natasha had been answering their phone for the past twenty minutes. “JARVIS, where are Steve and Natasha right now?” He asked as he continued sprinting down the stairs to the garage, taking the steps two at a time.

“Sir, there has been no trace of Ms. Romanov’s since her last update in New Jersey, but the tracker installed on Captain Rogers’ shield indicates that he is in the middle of the Potomac.”

That made Tony’s steps slow in confusion. “What? Did he decide to go for a swim?”

“This may provide some clarity, sir.” Tony glanced down at his phone at the footage JARVIS downloaded; it was a clip from a news channel showing three helicarriers emerging from the river next to SHIELD’s headquarters.

“Son of a bitch,” Tony said again, and continued down the stairs. Thirty minutes ago JARVIS had finally broken through SHIELD’s encryption. Twenty-seven minutes ago Tony’s search query started turning up decades and decades of documents relating to the Winter Soldier project and the man with a metal arm, including security camera footage of a gravel road that Tony knew very well. Twenty-two minutes ago Tony realized the implication of finding all of this information on SHIELD servers, and fifteen minutes ago he started getting a really bad feeling about not being able to reach Steve or Natasha.

Tony was three floors away from the garage where his suit was stored in the trunk of his car when a shudder hit the building, making Tony miss the last two steps and hit the far wall of the landing heavily. “Sir, one of the helicarriers has hit the building,” JARVIS said. “There is an emergency exit on the first floor, evacuation is highly recommended.”

“No kidding,” Tony said under his breath. “What about my suit?” He held tightly to the railing as the building shuddered again; there were no windows in the stair well, and the concrete walls muffled any sound coming from outside.

“Sir, it is mathematically impossible for you to reach the emergency suit before the building collapses. Evacuation is highly recommended,” JARVIS repeated with emphasis.

As Tony hit the emergency exit door at the base of the stairs, he was greeted with chaos. Two helicarriers were tilting drunkenly in the sky, cannons and rail guns still firing at each other with a noise like thunder. The third cast a long shadow over the grounds of the Triskelion as it fell from the sky, taking the southeast corner of the building with it in a cloud of smoke and rubble. Helicopters circled at a distance, and the air smelled of smoke and fuel as debris rained from the helicarrier battle. “Holy shit,” Tony breathed.

“Sir, you are still not at a safe distance,” JARVIS said disapprovingly. “Please continue to-”

“Where’s Steve?” Tony said instead. “You said he’s on one of those things, right?”

“Captain Rogers’ position has not changed. Sir, I cannot recommend that you-”

“JARVIS, if Steve went up against that metal armed bastard he’s going to need back up. I’m not leaving.” Tony swung a leg over the stone balustrade that lined the patio area he was currently on and dropped down to jogging across the parking lot. It wasn’t long before he was in the woods that lined the Potomac, trying to keep an eye on the helicarriers as he approached Steve’s last known position.

“Any updates, JARVIS?” Tony asked, cursing under his breath as he tried to make his way through the underbrush.

“Captain Rogers’ signal has moved a thousand meters south of your position,” JARVIS answered, making Tony groan.

“I don’t suppose there’s a trail or something-” Tony was yanked backwards as an arm wrapped around his throat, tight and implacable, cutting off his air. Tony’s hands came up to scrabble at the arm around his throat as the edges of his vision went dim. He spent the last of the air in his lungs trying to twist out of the grip but it was fruitless; he might as well have been fighting one of his own suits. He felt his hands drop limply to his sides as the dappled leaves of the forest went black.

#winteriron #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #prompts #dracusfyre #Anonymous

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codywalzel · 7 years

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The night starts with a big, spicy Philly cheese steak. It’s about 6pm. I’ve been wanting to try the cheese steak from this corny, 50’s retro place for a long time. I gobble down the big greasy bowl of meat, hot sauce, and cheese, then head to the coffee shop for my weekly draw group. A little after I get home, about 10pm, a stomach ache comes on. “Damn, guess spicy foods are out.” I’ve been getting stomach aches every time I have spicy Thai or hot wings. I google search about spice pain- possible stomach ulcer? “I guess I have been stressed lately, but no more than usual I don’t think…” File under “Will investigate further later.“ According to the comments on this health website, a glass of milk will help. Gulp one down, go to bed.

Wrestle to sleep for about an hour. Realize the ache is just over the required pain threshold to keep you from sleeping. Do some work on my comic, more tired, but stomach worse. Will play batman until I fall asleep. I feel like I’m just running in circles... How many times have I failed this mission? Batman, batman, stomach now hurts too bad to enjoy an active task like video games. Deliriously tired. Would be great to sleep through the rest of this abdominal temper tantrum. Try the old “hot shower will make you sleep” trick. Take some Pepto-Bismol, and some generic acetaminophen. Out of the shower, hurts to walk around now, and to lie down. Guess I’ll have to wait it out with my eyes open. Call and leave my Doc a message, maybe will get a spot in there tomorrow. Need to get that ulcer discovered... Time to enjoy a passive task like watching TV. Breaking Bad feels like the right mixture of funny and painful, just like me and my burning spice belly. Damn, I can’t even enjoy that part where during Hank’s interrogation of that meth head, Wendy, she accuses Hank of trying to buy sexual services from her on behalf of an underage “football player” (a misunderstanding involving Walter Jr. from a few episodes before). Oh hell. Time to look up what time emergency medical clinics open. Guess I’ll have to pay out of pocket since I can’t wait for my Doc tomorrow. It’s about 4am now. Earliest clinic opens at 8. Now hungry again, but can’t eat what with all the pain. One hour down. Man, this is really starting to hurt. Can I really wait 3 more hours? Sitting is starting to hurt as much as lying and standing. And I’m still not enjoying TV. Okay, I’ve come to a decision…. “Hey, Kayla, my stomach still hurts, I’m thinking about driving to the ER, do you wanna come?” “Oh! Ya, sure. What time is it?” “It’s 5:30”. I call the hospital “Hey, I’ve had a pretty bad stomach ache all night, I’m thinking of coming by.” Operator: *long pause* “Haha, well, okay! We’re open all night, so just come on in.” Driving with a stomach ache is not so bad, because you’re already hunched over. Wish Kayla could drive, but she doesn’t really know how, probably would have a panic attack and would definitely crash. Interesting that they have ER parking, I wonder how many ER patients drive themselves here… All bodily positions hurt my insides now, signing in to this place sucks. Give Kayla half the paperwork to fill out, glad she’s here, or this would be really boring. Man, they sure take a long time for someone trying to get into an empty emergency room… Signing in with a nurse, she ask me my height and I say “ ‘5’’8”, but I notice she puts down “ ‘5’’7”... They want to look at my pee, they always want to see my pee. I pee, no blood, so whatever that tells them means I’m getting an ultrasound first. Then a young nurse named Ken, a cool Asian dude with screws through both ears, squirts so much morphine into my IV that I lean back and audibly say “oh my god.” I feel it ripple like a shock wave from my arm down to the ends of my body. My belly is feeling alright now. The ultrasound technician tells me that babies are the least common thing she uses ultrasounds for. My joke has fallen flat. Back in the room, the doctor and his manila folder tell me “Good news! No gallstones, there are kidney stones inside your kidneys, but since they are inside, you shouldn’t be feeling the pain from those.” “Wait, does that mean I have to pee those stones out at some poin--” It is not discussed again. Seeing that neither organ has the appropriate stones, Doc would “rather not expose me to more radiation than necessary” and is working on discharging me. But, “I won’t leave here without a diagnosis.” In I go to the CT scan tube. That hot squish of contrast dye spreading through my veins. “Okay, we’re moving you into a room upstairs.” Says a hippy technician. Upstairs in my sweet and swanky single with couch, a person I’m pretty sure is just a businessman disguised in medical scrubs types on a computer. He takes down my answers to what seem like pre-surgery questions. “Do you have anybody specific on file in the event you are medically unable to yield consent for yourself?” This, combined fact that they won’t feed me, makes me wonder what it is I’m going into surgery for. I saw this same thing about a year and a half ago with the whole brain debacle, but that’s a story for another time. Several medical people dip in, sprinkle breadcrumbs of information; it’s like a game show challenge that combines a scavenger hunt with a jigsaw puzzle. You have to gather the pieces of information from their hiding places, then assemble them in the correct order to reveal an answer. A tech comes in and spoils the game, “You seem to have a lot of questions, so I just want to make sure, you know you have appendicitis right? We’re about to take it out.” “Thank god,” I think. “It’s not the spicy foods. Spicy foods are still in.” Downstairs, in pre-op, I complain to my plain-clothes surgeon about how analog tests like pressing on my stomach are remarkably inaccurate, since a doctor’s subjective interpretation of my poor description of say, “the pain is slightly higher” can rule out appendicitis, the same appendicitis that a machine might spot an hour later. I tell him that I almost got sent home. My surgeon tells me he’s been doing analogue tests for 30 years, and not to worry about it. I start to tell him how “my deadpan reaction to pain also causes a lot of people to misdiagnose me, that a lot of people laugh when I describe how I’m in pai--”, but he walks away in the middle to get dressed for surgery. The operating room has big TVs and lights, it looks like a set, and I consider the possibility of fake hospitals as the anesthesia takes the wheel. In the recovery area, the nurse tells me how big, inflamed appendixes can be agitated by spicy foods, foods high in fat, and dense foods like heavy cheese. I see an image of a spotlit cheese steak appear in a black void. Nurse feeds me ice chips and tells me she craves ice chips when she’s dehydrated. I suggest that she only craves ice chips because she works in a hospital, that ice chips are too unsatisfying a thing to crave at random, and that most people would just crave water. She agrees. Back upstairs in my room, it is now 8pm, and it has been 26 hours since I’ve eaten. I’ve been hydrated only through IV’s. The driest mouth and the clearest pee. Because the lingering anesthetic can cause nausea and vomiting, they will only give me jello. I go nuts on the jello. They continue to give me every jello I ask for, one at a time, like a test. Way past where I though the cutoff point would be, the nurse tells me “That’s it! There’s no more jello! You ate all the jello on this floor.” You’re damn right I did, you’re damn right….

#story #me #hospital #text

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blackwidownat2814 · 7 years

Text

Never Forget (How Much I Love You)- Chapter 11

AO3 link to Chapter 11

From The Beginning

Chapter Under The Cut

Six weeks later- September 2016, Manhattan

He hated the city.

Well…that wasn’t entirely correct. He just hated being there away from his son. When Liam had come to visit a few weeks previous, he brought papers from Emma for Killian to sign so that he would be officially and legally recognized as Brady’s father in every single way. He sent them back to her signed and with a single Post-It note affixed that said ‘Thank you’.

“You need to come home little brother.” Killian sighed into his cellphone.

“I know I do. I don’t want to be here, away from Brady but my probationary time is almost up. Just one more month…and it’s younger brother.” Liam chuckled on the other end of the phone call.

“Of course. Tell me…was it always going to be like this? You getting this job and spending two months away? Were you going to come back?”

“Of course Liam! I was never going to stay here.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“She wouldn’t let me. I tried, but she just wouldn’t hear it…and then the whole thing with Brady. What made me angry was that she felt that she couldn’t trust me, when it should be the other way around.”

“I’ve seen her around. She’s sorry, you know.”

“Then let her tell me herself.” They were both quiet for a second before Killian spoke again. “Did you receive the video?”

“Yes I did. I’ll be seeing the little sailor tomorrow, so he’ll watch it then.”

“Thank you brother.”

They hung up a few minutes later. Killian dropped his phone on the couch of the suite at the Roosevelt that Nautilus had put him up at and stepped out on the balcony, staring out at the city.

I’ll be with you soon my boy.

~*~*~*~*~*~

September 2016, Storybrooke

“Uncle Liam!” Emma watched as Liam crouched to catch Brady in his arms in a tight hug.

“How is my favorite nephew?” he asked.

“Awesome!”

Emma couldn’t help but smile at how happy Brady was to see his uncle. It had been almost a month since Liam had come to see him after his allergy scare.

“Guess who I talked to yesterday?” Liam asked.

“Who, Uncle Liam?”

“Your Papa!”

“Really?!”

It killed Emma that Brady hadn’t been able to see him. But it had been her fault and she lived with that every single day she saw the sadness in her son’s face. As soon as she’d yelled those horrible things at Killian, she had wanted to take them back. She had been so scared, seeing Brady that way, and faulted herself for not remembering to check if there was an Epi-Pen in the glove compartment of the Bug. It’s what prompted her to go to see Peter Bell, Rose’s dad and Storybrooke’s only family lawyer, to ask him to draw up papers acknowledging Killian’s paternity.

~*~*~*~*~*~

August 2016

“Come in Emma!” She stepped into Mr. Bell’s office and hugged the man in question. Rose’s dad was a jovial person and always had a smile and a hug for everyone who came to see him. Emma pulled away from the hug and they both took their respective seats. “Now, getting down to business. What makes you in need of my services?”

Emma flipped open the red file folder she’d brought with her and placed Brady’s birth certificate on his desk.

“I need to officially fill in this slot”, she said as she pointed to the blank ‘FATHER’ space.

“Okay. What is the father’s full name?”

“Killian Brady Jones.”

Emma saw his eyes widen slightly when he heard the name. For the first year or so, the town’s gossip mill had been running itself ragged trying to determine who Brady’s father was because Emma refused to outright discuss it with anyone. After a while, people were so charmed by her little boy that they forgot to care.

“I want to you to know that I mean nothing by this next question Emma, but it is one that I must ask. Unofficially, I 100% believe you.”

“Of course.”

“Officially, I have to ask: Are you sure Killian is Brady’s father? There won’t be another man coming out of the woodwork to claim paternity?”

“No, sir. I can assure you with 100% that Killian is his father.”

“Okay.” Mr. Bell typed the information into his computer.

“However…” Emma continued as she pulled out two baggies and placed them on the desk. “If you want proof, I’ve got hair from both of them.” Mr. Bell chuckled as he looked at the bags.

“We don’t need that. Like I said, I believe you. Besides, I know them both and even the three blind Ivimey brothers that live over on Farmers Road can tell Killian is Brady’s father, that’s how much they look alike.” Emma truly laughed for the first time in weeks.

“Thank you Mr. Bell, I needed that.”

“Well, I am here to help after all.”

Mr. Bell finished up the paperwork for Emma to sign and then put together the packet so that it could be sent to Killian to be signed by him. She knew Liam was going to go visit him in the city in a few days, so she texted him on her way out of the office to meet her outside Granny’s for the hand-off.

~*~*~*~*~*~

September 2016, Storybrooke

“Momma! Did you hear that? Uncle Liam talked to Papa!” Brady jumped up and down in front of her with a wide smile on his face.

“That’s awesome Peanut.”

“When can I talk to Papa?” It broke Emma’s heart to hear the sadness in her son’s voice when he asked. She looked over to Liam who had a similar look to her own.

“I don’t know Peanut. He’s very busy working…” She almost cried when Brady ducked his head and started shuffling his little feet around. After what happened, Emma never intended to keep Brady from his father. She spent countless nights trying to make herself call Killian from her phone so she could just hand it to Brady. She was 1000% sure Killian Jones would never speak to her again…and he was quite right not to.

“Oh. Okay then.” Brady started to walk away to his room when Liam stopped him.

“Hey there, you didn’t let me finish. I’ve got a surprise from your Papa for you.” Brady’s little eyes widened.

“Really?!”

“Yes sir.”

“What is it? Can I see it now? Please Uncle Liam! PLEASE?!”

“Of course, but I need to borrow your mummy’s computer.” Liam looked up at Emma at the end of his statement.

“Sure. Brady can show you where it is. I’ve got to finish a few things before I go.” She smiled to herself as she watched her three and a half foot son practically drag his six foot uncle out of the kitchen and out to the living room where their computer was hooked up to the TV.

Emma heard Brady telling Liam how to turn everything on. She watched from the kitchen as Liam clicked on Brady’s profile picture and was prompted for a password.

“What’s your password Mr. Brady?”

“My hero!”

“Ah! I’m sure I know who that is”, Liam replied as he tapped in a password. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

“What’d you type Uncle Liam?”

“Jake.” Emma saw him give Brady a puzzled look.

“Jake isn’t my hero Uncle Liam.”

“Clearly.” He sat staring at his nephew for a second. “I think I’ve got it this time!”

Emma laughed quietly to herself as Liam’s new attempt at the password was rejected.

“How about this time?” asked Brady.

“I used ‘Hook’ this time.”

“Captain Hook isn’t my hero!”

“Then, pray tell, who is my dear nephew?”

“Papa!”

Emma’s hand flew to her mouth as she felt tears start to form in her eyes. She was a horrible person for treating Killian the way she had. None of this was his fault and she’d kept him from her little boy who saw him as his hero.

Liam successfully logged into Brady’s profile and Emma saw her son’s face light up when he saw his background image made up of pictures of him and Killian. Liam said nothing and simply clicked into the internet and pulled up his email. When he found the correct one, he opened and downloaded the attachment.

“What is it Uncle Liam?!”

“Your Papa made you a video.”

“I wanna see! Please Uncle Liam!”

Liam clicked on the downloaded attachment and a video popped up on the screen, Killian’s smiling face looking back at them…and it made Emma’s heart hurt even more. Liam clicked once more, and the video began:

“Hey my boy!”

“Hi Papa!”

“I miss you so much and I’m so sorry I’m not there with you right now.” Killian looked off camera and sniffled (and Emma kept dying just a little more). “I wanted you to be here with me, you and your mum, that was my plan. I was going to surprise you both. But then, you got sick and I had to go. I swear I didn’t leave without saying goodbye. I went to see you and you were asleep.”

“Did he really Uncle Liam?”

“Of course lad, your Papa loves you very much.” The video continued, but the scenery had changed: Killian was now in some park.

“I thought that maybe getting out of my place would be a good idea. This is Central Park Brady, and it has a zoo!”

“A zoo Papa?”

“Yes my boy, a zoo. I know how much you love animals. I promise to bring you here and we’ll spend the whole day seeing all the animals you want.” The video switched from Central Park to bustling Times Square.

“Momma! Come see!” Emma wiped her eyes as Brady called to her and she went and sat next to him.

“This is Times Square. I’m here because I’m trying to decide what to buy you for your birthday.” The camera panned up to reveal the big blue sign that said THE DISNEY STORE.

“Momma! Look!”

“I see Peanut.”

“I know you well enough to say you’re probably bouncing around and showing your mummy.”

“Yup!” Killian walked inside the store and they heard him asking if it was okay to continue filming as he was making a video for his son. Once he was given approval, he continued, wandering in to aisle with all things Peter Pan related.

“I’m not going to show you what I’m going to get for you because that would ruin the surprise. Suffice to say, I promise I’ll be there for your birthday.”

Brady turned to Emma with an eager look on his face.

“Momma, can Papa come to my birthday party? Please?”

Emma could never deny her son, or Killian. She smiled at Brady and pushed away the hair covering his forehead (much like his father’s liked to do).

“Of course Peanut, he’s your Papa.”

“I miss you, so much.” When Emma looked up at the video, she just knew Killian was talking to her. “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that everything got bungled up and I didn’t have a chance to explain it all to you. I’ll be home soon, I can’t wait to see you. I love you so much…both of you.”

#Captain Swan #CS ff #CS fic #CS au #CS family #Daddy!Killian #Never Forget (How Much I Love You)

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365elephantsoap · 4 years

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THANKFUL FRIDAY

Prints have been ordered for my April showing and the large prints finally arrived this week. I was the most worried about these because I have ordred large prints before from some place different and they did not turn out well. The photo paper was the desired size, but the actual photo printed onto that paper was smaller. So when I placed my order for six 16x20 prints (costing me almost $100), I set the computer down and headed to the bathroom to throw up. I’ve been waking up in night sweats and mumbling ‘disaster!’ with a jolt of panic because I have had yet another nightmare about picture sizes. When they finally showed up, I hesitated in opening them, but they are good. Actually…they are really good. I am fascinated by the one of a Japanese beetle. The size of the image makes it possible to see the battle scars and scratches on his beetle armor. I am happy with these prints.

Of course, now that this worry has been removed from my plate, others have taken its place. Wednesday night, as I drove to teach my yoga class, I started to feel overwhelmed by all of the things. I have spent every spare moment this week taking online courses for CPR training and I will spend four hours on Saturday in more CPR training, which feels like a lot of CPR training. My class that I’m teaching at the Y is struggling with attendance and I have started toying with the idea of finding an alternative teaching venue. We have been going through the process of refinancing the house and it is taking months. I have called twice, been sent to voicemail and emailed twice about what is going on and I have heard nothing back. I made Michael cancel spa-birthday because our debt is out of control and a spa day is an inappropriate use of funds right now. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to hang pictures on a brick wall or figured out when I am supposed to get into the building to hang pictures. I need an HDMI cable and a way to hook up my laptop or even my iPad to a projector. I need to start putting together my lesson plan for my photography workshop.

Shut up! I know the workshop is not until June!

Michael has a comedy showcase Sunday night. March has Michael headed to San Fransisco for a conference and then he comes back to spring break. We need to pick up a chicken coop that JP has so generously gifted us. I need to figure out something really nice to give or do for him and his partner. I am behind on keeping up with people (Terry, how are you doing? You doing okay?). I think I’m volunteering for the AIDS Walk Open in a few weeks. At least, it is on the calendar. All of these things need to happen on top of normal day to day chores. I still don’t know who I’m voting for in the primaries AND I just got an email with a DIY video on how to tighten up your turkey neck that I have to watch. I also need to schedule my yearly exam, a haircut for Josephine, and an eye exam. When I think about all of it at the same time, my chest tightens and I struggle to draw a deep breath. I have been focusing on making mental lists and categories each morning during meditation to keep myself from hyperventilating. I have been mentally filing stuff into two major categories: things that I can do and things I have no control over.

Quite a bit of all of those worries have easily been placed into the things I have no control over category.

Thank goodness I got a firm handle on my meditation practice, particularly at a time when I have decided to fill my calendar with a whole bunch of things. The things I can do category is organized by timeline and what needs to happen first. I imaging these things in a manilla file folder, placed in order, and on the outside I’ve written with a fat Sharpie “SLOW YOUR ROLL”. I have assignments but those assignments are not due tomorrow. I am not, nor have I ever been, a procrastinator. I invested in a calendar so that I could keep myself organized and on task. All of the things that need to be accomplished and that I have control over will get done in the time it needs to be.

Slow your roll. And take a deep cleansing breath.

I’ve got this.

#gratitude #stress #worry #lists

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leo173-blog · 6 years

Text

Midterm Documentation

Introduction

This write up is for my midterm project. The goal of this project was to create interactive art using an "air piano" and computers.

"Air piano" is similar to an "air guitar", in the sense that users will be playing keys in the air to create sound. This is established by using a Pi and a laser range finder (LRF). The LRF can determine the distance from the source to the object, which act as the range for determining which key is pressed. For example, if the set maximum range is 1000, and there are 10 keys, a measured distance of 50 will result in the first key being "pressed". This is because the bins range from 0 to 1000, in intervals of 100. Each bin corresponds to a key. The distance will fall in one of the bins, which can then activate the key.

The second part is audience interactivity. Since only one person can use the LRF, it is difficult for the whole audience to participate. This can be fixed by allowing participants to use their personal computers to interact with the piece. A webserver is used to show the pressed keys, and allows others to use their keyboards and also create music. Their keystrokes are shared among all users, so everybody can create sound together.

The rest of the this writeup will discuss how I setup all of the components. Any mistakes that I have made will be explained at the end.

Components

Raspberry Pi

Electronics Starter Kit

Parallax Laser Range Finder

Private Webserver

Setting up the Webserver

The first step is purchasing private server. This is necessary because interactivity can be established by allowing all clients to interact with a central host, which is my webserver.

I personally bought the cheapest droplet because this project does not need a lot of computing power. I selected Ubuntu with NodeJS as the system image, so that less setup is required. Then, I selected the SF location server because it is the closest one to me, which will result in lower latency.

Next, I had to login to my private server.

There were a few of methods I used to login. I used ssh, the online console. Both methods are nearly identical, but I prefer using ssh. I also used PuTTY on my Windows machine to ssh in. On my Macbook, I used console/terminal to ssh.

I entered the following commands to setup the extreme basics of Nginx (webserver). Pm2 is an easy to use process manager, which will be useful for forking processes.

sudo apt update sudo apt install nginx sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP' sudo npm install pm2 -g

After that, I organized my webserver because organization is always very important!

cd /var/www/html mkdir public

This will create a new folder called public, where I stored client sided files. That means that vistors will be shown the files inside public.

Now, I modified the configuration of Nginx so that it knows what to display.

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

I changed the line containg root /var/www/html; to root /var/www/html/public;. This basically changes which directory is the root or public directory of the website. Anything in the public directory can be displayed or found by visitors.

Setting up the Server

As a side note, this whole section is a mistake that I will explain at the end of this write up. After navigating to /var/www/html, I created a new file called server.js and installed some necessary libraries.

cd /var/www/html npm install express npm install socket.io nano server.js

I'm using Express to create the server because it requires very little setup. The following code block will load in the necessary libraries and initialze Express.

const http = require('http'); const express = require('express'); var app = express();

The following block initializes the server on localhost port 8080. Any connections to that port will establish a connection between the client and server. It includes a callback function that includes callbacks whenever data is transmitted from the client to server and when the client disconnects. When it recieves a signal post, it broadcasts the casted data to everybody that is connected. The client will handle the incoming data.

This next block basically creates another server on port 3000 that handle POST requests.

I saved the file and started it as a background process using pm2.

pm2 start server.js

This will start server.js as a process in the background, so it will be able to listen on ports 8080 and 3000.

Setting up the Client

I created a new folder in /var/www/html/public called assets to store my piano sounds. Next, I made a new file called sketch.js, which holds the client code.

This block of code splits the canvas into blocks, depending on the set width and height and connects to the websocket. It also contains a function that handles socket packets. Whenever the server sends a packet with a key 'post', this function will run. It basically sets the row and column of where the next letter will be placed and also plays the corresponding sound.

The next block of code allows limited keyboard input.

function keyPressed() { if (key <= '7' && key !== '0') { socket1.emit('post', key); } }

Basically, whenever a key number key from 0 to 7 is pressed, it sends a packet to the server with the key number as its data. The server will transmit the data recieved from the client to all clients, so everybody else can see what is played.

This next part contains functions that draw the letters. Based on the current row and column, it sets the block the color white. The getValue function is not needed, but was there because of an idea that I wanted but decided it would not be in the final version. There are also functions between keyA and keyG, but most of the code is the same, and to save space, I'm not including it here.

After coding all of that, I ran sudo systemctl restart nginx to restart the webserver. Going to my website now loads the sketch.

The Raspberry Pi and LRF

This section will be completed in the following days.

Mistakes

So, the main mistake is that this whole project is not the correct way to setup a webserver. Due to a lack of sleep, I misunderstood some documentation, which confused my view on a webserver.

The fix for this mistake is to just use ExpressJS for the whole thing. The whole public file system and pm2 is not necessary because Express can serve static files. Instead of having pm2 host server.js in the background, and Nginx serving index.html, sketch.js, and assets/, Nginx can just serve one javascript file that contains code that uses Express to deliver sketch.js and handle websockets.

The code might something like this:

var express = require('express') , routes = require('./routes') , http = require('http'); var app = express(); var server = app.listen(3000); var io = require('socket.io').listen(server); // this tells socket.io to use our express server app.configure(function(){ app.set('views', __dirname + '/views'); app.set('view engine', 'jade'); app.use(express.favicon()); app.use(express.logger('dev')); app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public')); app.use(express.bodyParser()); app.use(express.methodOverride()); app.use(app.router); }); app.configure('development', function(){ app.use(express.errorHandler()); }); app.get('/', routes.index);

This allows Express to handle everything. When going to the default webaddress, the public files will be served. It also starts a websocket, so clients can connect.

A short summary is that I basically complicated my delivery of files by using pm2 with Nginx, while the whole server can be hosted just using Nginx. In other words, I was using pm2 to host the server and Nginx to deliver the client. In reality, Nginx should have hosted the server and client using Express.

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ixvyupdates · 6 years

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Before I Come to Your Classroom, Let Me Show You Mine

Hi.

I’m going to spend the rest of the year traveling to classrooms all over the country and talking about the things we are doing super well, and some of the things we could be doing a whole lot better.

I’m sitting in my classroom writing this, late on a Friday afternoon, enjoying the short quiet after a long, loud week. I’m looking around my room, dimly lit and breathing slowly, like the set of a play between performances. If you’re a teacher, I bet I’d like to come visit you soon. Before I do, I thought I’d show you around my room and what I do with my students the first week of school.

I really love my room, and it seems like students do, too. I don’t have a class first hour, but there are always five to 10 kids in here before school hanging out. My desks are old and…desky. I don’t have a lot of room or money for flex seating, and I don’t have the eye or time for Pinterest-worthy bulletin boards. Still, my walls, like my room, are a whole lot better when given to the kids.

It Took a Year to Create a Classroom Library with Books Kids Want to Keep

I am absurdly proud of my classroom library. When I moved into my new classroom last fall, the library was suffering badly from being out-of-date and almost entirely full of White writers. In one year, I have done a whole bunch of stuff to bring the collection to where it is now. I’m not done, not by a long-shot, but my collection now includes many books by people of color and indigenous writers.

I’ve always believed in the power of diverse reading choices, but this year I’ve been especially aware of how important it is to my students. I have a ton of graphic novels and superhero comics, and have started to add books in some of the languages spoken by my students that are not English. My students from Tibet and Haiti have been so happy to see books by and about their people.

I had a student walk down from the high school this week, looking to borrow a copy of “The Hate U Give.” I started the year with 15 on my shelf and was already down to my last two. I don’t know her name, but she left with a book. I’m not all that worried about getting it back.

By far, the books are the most expensive part of my room, made more so by my not having any sort of book check-out system and encouraging students to take books that seem interesting to them. I’ve written some grants in the last year that have helped out, have sought donations through a constantly updated Amazon wishlist, and have made some money through writing that I’ve often used to buy every book I can that my students may enjoy.

Also, these pictures are from before school started. The library is now a well-used mess and it is perfect.

Now, let me show you how our first week together went down.

Day One: Four Agreements

I only really have four rules in my room, and I stole them from The Pacific Education Group’s protocol for Courageous Conversations. On the very first day of school, I introduce those four rules to the students and we talk about what they mean, and how they make my classroom a little different.

For example, one of the rules is “Stay Engaged.” I ask them who likes to draw in class, and a bunch of kids raise their hands. Then, I ask them how many students know that drawing helps them pay attention, and about half keep their hands up. So, I explain, if I made a rule like “No Drawing in Class,” I’d be hurting half of you and helping half of you. If the rule is, instead, “Stay Engaged,” then you can do whatever that means for you to be engaged.

For some, staying engaged means drawing, for some not. Some may stay engaged by responding verbally to me or their classmates, and some may need to stay quiet. I had a student a few years back who was most engaged in my class when she was able to do handstands against the wall on the side of the room. OK.

The other rules work pretty much the same way: “Speak Your Truth,” “Experience Discomfort” and “Expect/Accept Non-Closure.” We talk about how your truth rather than the truth is important because it opens up the conversation to multiple perspectives.

I explain that I want them to lean into discomfort, whether that means a challenging conversation or focusing on skills and subjects they struggle with, but I don’t ever want them to feel unsafe or unwelcome. I let them know we will often leave discussions half finished at the bell. And we will not, no matter how hard we work, fix everything in the world this year, but we can be happy at any ground we gain.

I don’t really talk that long. I hope I don’t. Mainly, we get the ideas out there, and then students make little signs to hang up around the four rules, or agreements. We talk about how it looks and feels for them to do those things. They go up the night of the first day and hang there the rest of the year for easy reference.

Day Two: One Word

On the second day of school, I walk students through an identity exercise. I do one myself in front of the room to model the kind of words and thinking they could be doing, but also let them know there’s not any real way to do it wrong.

I hand them this sheet, and they fill in five words that define them (mine this year were Anxiety, Dad, Writer, Teacher, Social Justice Warrior). We talk about what it’s like to define ourselves in such a narrow way, about all the parts of us that didn’t make the list, about how any time we try to reduce ourselves or someone else to a list like that, we are missing big things about that person.

Then—and this is where it gets difficult—we cross a word off. There is much yelling. It is glorious.

When I first did this exercise during a training a whole bunch of years ago in a district that doesn’t even exist anymore, teachers rebelled in every way possible from having to cross out pieces of themselves, even hypothetically, because it was too painful to do. We had a good discussion about how often we ask students to do exactly that, to erase some part of themselves, in the very non-hypothetical space of our classroom.

Still, it’s hard to cross those words off, and harder still as we continue, crossing off one word after another, each time taking small breaks to discuss our reasoning and process. In the end, we end with a single word, a word that we have decided is, at least on that day and in that moment, is the most essential piece of our own identity. This year, mine was “teacher,” which is a departure from many, many years, when “writer” has won the day.

Students then pick out some paper and markers and stuff and write down their one word. After school, I get a whole bunch of tape and a decent podcast, and tape them all up on the wall. It’s a beautiful thing, this physical representation of all these wonderful people, of the diversity in who they are and how they see themselves. The next morning, students from all hours came in early to read through the wall. They stood with their friends, pointing proudly at their sign. They said, “There I am, that’s me.”

Day Three: What I Bring

On the third day of school, students get this packet, and start work on a project that will show what they bring with them into the classroom every day. I’m clear that when I ask this, I’m not looking for them to talk about the pens and folders and stuff they bring with them, but instead key parts of their identity, their passions, their personal history, their interests and personality.

The students have a couple days to brainstorm and work on them, and then we take a few days to share. We put the desks in a big circle (which always makes me think of this), and each student gets a few minutes to show what they made, explain why they made it and answer questions from the class about themselves.

This year, I had a student who didn’t want to make art, so he made a computer program that would randomly produce an image. Another student showed us a digital model of one of his favorite kinds of math equations. Yet another took the opinion section of the newspaper and used it as a canvas to re-create a famous Banksy image.

I could go on, 147 more times, at all the cool things students brought in. They all, each one of them, hang in a circle around the top of my room. Some speak of their faith, or their favorite sport, or their family or where they’re from. It’s a great way to get to know students on their terms, and also a way to make sure that, in addition to their one word, students all have a piece of the classroom that is exactly their own.

Photos courtesy of Tom Rademacher.

Before I Come to Your Classroom, Let Me Show You Mine syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

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raystart · 6 years

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Design Debate: Have New Tech Innovations Made Work Life Easier or Harder?

In our newest design debate, Martin Lorenz, Marina Esmeraldo, and Fredrik Öst weigh on in the impact technology has on creativity. Ready, set, debate.

“In a way, we were only able to become a studio because of the internet. We were able to work with people that we never physically met.”—Martin Lorenz, Co-founder & Graphic Designer, Twopoints.net

When we opened our studio in 2007, TwoPoints.Net wasn’t known, and we didn’t have any clients yet. It was only when we met some friends from Harvard that we started to get a lot of jobs from the United States. Without the internet, it wouldn’t have been possible for our network in America to grow, though, or for us to be able to design for U.S.-based clients while living in Germany and Spain.

In a way, we were only able to become a studio because of the internet. We were able to work with people that we never physically met. To this day, we still haven’t met some of our clients.

We really don’t have many local clients; instead we have international ones – a lot in the USA and in Asia. These days, it doesn’t matter where you live; it’s more about the networks you enter. It helps, of course, that Lupi, Elio, and I speak English, Spanish, and German. This internationalism makes our job much more interesting. We learn so much from every client, and sometimes it is very surprising to see how our work is perceived in different cultures and contexts. The things that we design for clients in the U.S. are received in a different way from how they are received in Europe, but that’s sometimes the exact reason why they hire us and not a local designer.

Practically, of course, the design process is much easier today, too, especially if you’re working across different continents. Once upon a time, designing could be a real pain, let alone if you were working for someone abroad.

We share a Dropbox folder with clients in America and Asia so that everyone is always up to date. There’s no delay anymore.

I remember having to work with low-res images in order to be able to work quickly and efficiently, and then, before the files were sent to the printer, replacing them with high-res images. Sending files to the printer was a whole different thing too. We had to burn CD-ROMs and send them across the city with a messenger. Then the printer would return proofs, and if there was something wrong, we had to change the print files, burn another CD, and send it off with a messenger again.

Later we started to use FTP servers, which made life easier, but it was still a pain when you had to upload large documents. It could take days. Fast internet connections, Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer, etc. made our life much more simple. We share a Dropbox folder with clients in America and Asia so that everyone is always up to date. When we are done, we just share a link with the printer. There’s no delay anymore.

For our clients, it doesn’t matter that we’re in Germany and Spain and they’re in New York, or Los Angeles, or Tokyo. It doesn’t matter that we have a team member working from Spain either – in fact, it’s especially good for us because we work with a great printer there. Having our team split across two cities isn’t a problem at all – it’s almost like they’re sitting at the desk beside us because of all the new technologies and programs, when in fact they’re on the other side of Europe.

The internet has become so common that we hardly even think about it anymore; it’s like an extension of the office. People don’t say, ‘Now I am going to sit down and use the internet.’ You’re just constantly using it. And it’s because it’s become so natural to the working process that international clients have been able to trust us, and that’s been one of the most important things that’s allowed us to do what we do. Being able to trust someone on the other side of the world with your design process wouldn’t have been possible 15 years ago.”

“The problem is that you have to be on social media constantly. I personally became very addicted to Instagram.”—Marina Esmeraldo, Illustrator

Consistent and long-term self-promotion through social media has been really crucial for my freelance business. The problem, though, is that you have to be on it constantly. The thing with social media is that it’s designed to be addictive. I personally became very addicted to Instagram. I became disillusioned with Facebook and Twitter because of all the political drama, and it felt quite organic getting off those platforms. But Instagram always seemed like the fun place to be, and it’s been hard to disconnect and reduce my usage.When the algorithm change was implemented, everyone started to freak out about whether their content was getting seen. All these ‘marketing specialists’ began popping up, who said things like ‘You have to post every day’ and ‘You have to use hashtags.’ There was this whole narrative about how you have to be on it constantly to get the best out of it, and that’s partly how my obsession started to kick in. I would justify that I needed social media for work.

I was using Instagram in the morning, on my breaks, and before bed. It was bad for my mental health I was never off.

And at every moment of pause, I would get on Instagram. It becomes a real black hole of time and energy. You tell yourself you’re going on to see what everyone is up to, to get inspired, and you end up tricking yourself into thinking it’s research. But really, it’s an energy drain. I was using Instagram in the morning as an excuse to wake up. I was using it on my breaks. And I was using it before bed. It was bad for my mental health because it meant I was always working. I was never, never off.

I began feeling really unhappy. I felt like I was constantly looking at all the beautiful things that other people were making and all the amazing trips that people were going on, and even though I was rationally aware of how good my life was, the brain often latches onto the negative. After a while, I realized I had to decrease the time I was spending on the platform. Because I was aware of the damaging effects, one day I just looked at my phone and deleted the app. It wasn’t planned. I needed a break. I ended up taking a 47-day detox.

My work improved immensely, and immediately. We are so connected with our peers and our history all the time that it’s easy to regurgitate what everyone else is doing. I always make an effort to filter influences, but after a certain amount of exposure, trends do trickle into your subconscious. The fact that I was making an effort to insulate myself gave new life to my ideas: I felt more original because I had to dig deeper.

It’s easy to fill up empty spaces with noise, but the empty spaces are important.

During my detox, I remember waiting for a friend at the Barbican in London. He was late, and normally I would have just been scrolling through my phone, but I didn’t have that option so I went into the bookshop and bought a notebook and a pen. I went into the courtyard and started drawing lots of things. It was a complete revelation. It’s ridiculous in a way: I’m an illustrator and I studied architecture; we used to do observational drawings all the time. But I’ve become so accustomed to drawing digitally that sometimes I just skip the analog part of the process altogether.

Through that experience and others like it, I’ve realized that I need time with myself and without online chatter. As well as Instagram, I’ve been obsessed with podcasts recently, too, and after a while I realized that during every moment of silence I was putting a podcast on. Today it’s so easy to fill up empty spaces with noise, but the empty spaces are important. As a creative, it’s the time where your brain makes fresh connections.

“At Studio Snask, we create all our models by hand. People often say, ‘I could have done that with the computer much faster,’ but we find that building our sets creates a far more refined design.”—Fredrik Öst, Founder & Creative Director, Studio Snask

Digital tools have become so good and so ubiquitous that there’s a tendency to use them for every part of the creative process. That’s not necessarily a great thing, though: It might hinder your full potential. In the creative industry, technology today tends to be used as if it’s more than simply a tool. It becomes unanimous with all stages of the design process: a place for gathering inspiration, for sketching, and then for completing a project.

When I was at art school, my university told me that we weren’t going to use the computer for the first year. I was like: ‘What?! That isn’t how this is supposed to be!’ I had this assumption that all graphic design was made on a screen. Then I realized that the computer is just one of many tools. You need it today because you need to make things digital, but you can choose how much you want to work with it.

Who wants to be a machine, working as efficiently as possible?

At Studio Snask, we create all our models by hand. People often say, ‘I could have done that with the computer much faster,’ but we find that building our sets creates a far more refined design. We start all projects by sketching by hand, then we scan the image to get it into the computer and keep designing from there. Then we take it out of the computer again, and build it physically to photograph. Finally, we put it back into the computer to deliver it. In that way, the computer is just one step in the process and doesn’t dictate what we create.

For a motion video, for example, having a physical piece of artwork in front of us is a far better way of working. We can move elements around with our hands. In a 3-D modeling program, you can’t see the final outcome initially because you have to keep rendering it, which can take a long time. And even if rendering becomes faster in the future, for Studio Snask, moving physical elements is part of how we create. Who wants to be a machine, working as efficiently as possible? In creativity, you need the time to reflect. I don’t want to live in a society where art or music or film is produced within a few days, because that’s not how high-quality work comes into being.

Back in the day, photographers used to take loads of photos, and just a few would turn out how they wanted them to. Now, of course, we can be much more precise. But back then, unexpected things could happen. Now you have an image in your head, you look through the screen of a camera, and then you snap it quickly. It’s done. At Studio Snask, when we take a photograph, we first get the perfect shot and then we make the time to screw up some pictures for a bit. We do this because often something more interesting might happen that way. In these situations, the final picture that we select is often one of the messed-up ones. When you’re constantly looking at a screen on a camera to get the perfect shot, you might forget that you can also make mistakes, and that interesting things can come from that.

We always ensure that we give ourselves time for something we didn’t plan for. One must remember that tools are just one aspect of the design process; making mistakes – and playing around – is also vital. If you’re working with creativity, you have to disconnect in order to go back to things with fresh eyes.

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech #love

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nmoleosoftware-blog · 7 years

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OneNote vs. Evernote vs. Dropbox Paper vs. Google Docs

OneNote, Evernote, Dropbox Paper, and Google Docs are four of the biggest note-taking programs. There are a ton more - Simplenote, Google Keep, and a lot I haven’t listed. However, I chose these three because they are very popular, sync across all of your devices, and support more formatting than others like Google Keep.

OneNote

OneNote is Microsoft’s note-taking program. If you like lots of features, such as password protection, advanced reviewing, drawing, built-in integration with Microsoft Excel, and a lot more, OneNote is definitely for you.

If you haven’t tried OneNote yet, OneNote is grouped into “notebooks” which have “sections”, which have “pages”. For instance, I have a School notebook, with a Math section, and then my notes from today are in a page.

One of the biggest reasons to choose OneNote is for the equation editor. The equation editor lets you type equations, including, but not limited to, fractions, square/cubed/etc roots, exponents, Pi, and a lot other mathematical symbols.

Another big reason to choose OneNote is for the built-in drawing feature. You can draw with your mouse, your finger (on touchscreen devices), or a pen (either a stylus on touchscreen devices or using a special pen, like the ThinkPad Pen Pro, the Surface Pen, or the Apple Pencil. The drawing tool supports lasso selection, erasing, typing, a lot of different colors and thicknesses, highlighting, and shapes drawing. It also supports Ink to Math, which lets you see your drawings be automatically be converted to equations.

Unfortunately, while OneNote supports a plethora of features, it does have some downsides, also. The biggest downside (for me) is the lack of equation editor support in the web version. You can view equations, but not create or edit new ones. The OneNote mobile app lets you edit equations, but I don’t think it lets you create new ones. This rules out OneNote for Chromebook users who want to use equations.

Another big downside is the large amount of bugs in the OneNote equation editor. For instance, if you have a bunch of equations, one on each line, if you press Shift+Home (select until the start of the current line), OneNote will select the entire group of equations. That is just one out of the many bugs in the OneNote equation editor.

Another thing I dislike about OneNote is the inability to delete notebooks. Yes, you heard me right. There is no easy way to delete a notebook. You can “close” a notebook, but it will still be there; it will just not be synced (sunk?) with your computer. Something else I dislike about OneNote - you can’t crop images. At all. Whaaaat?

One last thing I dislike about OneNote: syncing. Microsoft just can’t seem to get real-time updating right. OneNote syncs automatically with the cloud, but you can’t see someone (or yourself) updating in real time like you can in other programs like Google Docs. This can be annoying and cause sync conflicts.

Overall, OneNote is a good choice if you want lots of features, but I would turn it down in favor of better programs.

Evernote

Evernote is one of the most popular note-taking programs out there. Evernote is very similar to OneNote in many ways. It is laid out the same way as OneNote, except you only have “Notebooks” and “Pages” - no “Sections”. The desktop version of Evernote supports quite a few features, although unfortunately, equations are not one of the included features.

Evernote includes quite a few useful features, such as note reminders, meeting notes, work chat, and tags. However, most of these features seem geared more towards large organizations than towards consumers.

Unfortunately, Evernote has quite a few downsides, the biggest being the price. Evernote is the only application in this article that you have to pay for - the other three are free, and I would probably choose one of them over Evernote. While Evernote has a nice user interface and has more features than Dropbox Paper, it does not have anywhere near as many features as OneNote, which is free. Because of the price, I would probably recommend one of the other three over Evernote.

Dropbox Paper

I love Dropbox Paper. Considering the fact that I’m currently writing this article in Dropbox Paper, I might be a bit biased, but Dropbox Paper is definitely very nice.

At first glance, Dropbox Paper looks very simple, and you might decline it in favor of one that seems to have more features. Dropbox Paper has quite a few useful features, although not quite as many as OneNote, Evernote, or Google Docs. I think Dropbox Paper is the perfect balance of simplicity and features.

One thing about Dropbox Paper is that it isn’t setup like OneNote and Evernote. Instead of notebooks/sections/pages, you create folders. You can nest as many folders as you want, or you could put a document in a folder, but also have another folder in that folder. I like this a lot, because you can set it up however you want to.

Dropbox Paper supports semi-full formatting - bold, strikethrough, italics, highlighting (but only in blue), links, headers, bulleted and numbered lists (but no lettered lists… ???), checkboxes, and comments. That’s a full list of the formatting features, which seems pretty small at first, but is actually just the right amount.

Dropbox Paper also supports equations using LaTeX, which is very nice. Dropbox Paper makes it easy to write equations without confusion or glitches. One of my favorite things about Dropbox Paper is that when you click on an equation, it shows it in code form instead of the way OneNote or Google Docs do it (by trying to show it in equation format but making it editable, which is pretty terrible).

However, Dropbox Paper definitely could use a few more features, most notably drawing. I would use Dropbox Paper for my math notes, but unfortunately, I need to be able to draw, which Dropbox Paper doesn’t support.

Another downside of Dropbox Paper is that it doesn’t support offline editing/viewing on the desktop version (actually the web version; there is no desktop version).

Overall, I really like Dropbox Paper. If they added a few more features (cough drawing and more colors cough), it would be the perfect note-taking application.

Google Docs

If Google made a version of Google Docs that was more suited for note-taking - perhaps if they gave it a notebook/page structure like OneNote and Evernote - it would be my absolute favorite.

You might be wondering why I put Google Docs in here - isn’t Google Docs for documents, not notes? That’s correct, but I find Google Docs is actually pretty good (but not great) for note-taking. Google Docs has all the features I like in a note-taking program - full formatting, easy cloud integration, equations, and drawing. I find that you can use Google Docs pretty easily if you create a different document in place of each notebook/section.

Now that I’ve told you I put Google Docs in here, you might ask - why not Word? To which I answer: Word is not good at cloud integration. You can put a Word doc in your OneDrive/Google Drive/Dropbox/whatever and let it sync that way, but it’s not the same as turning off your laptop, turning on your desktop, and seeing the document there - no waiting for your OneDrive/Google Drive/Dropbox/whatever to sync, no browsing through folders: it’s just there.

However, Google Docs isn’t perfect. It wasn’t designed as a note-taking program, so there are a few things that can get annoying there - like the fact that if you fill up a whole 8.5 x 11 page, you��ll go onto the next page, whereas the other three don’t work like that. Another annoying thing about Google Docs is that all your docs go in your Google Drive root folder. You can’t set a default location; you just have to remember to tell Google Docs to save your document in a different Google Drive location.

Round Up

Dropbox Paper

Google Docs

OneNote

Evernote

Dropbox Paper is my favorite note-taking program by far. It’s the perfect mix of simple but powerful.

Google Docs is my second favorite. It supports all the features I want - Chromebook support, equations, drawing, and a lot more. It would get first place if they built a version with a structure like OneNote or Evernote.

OneNote is my third favorite. It supports a lot of features, so it’s very unlikely that you’ll be like “Aw, I wish it had that”.

Evernote is my fourth favorite. Evernote has a nice user interface, but it is expensive and doesn’t do anything special.

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