#miss my old computer where I could pop the battery out on my own and just click the new one in | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ms-demeanor · 4 years

Text

You know what’s funny is whenever I make a tech post I get people going “this is blatantly untrue” and I get people going “this is really good information and everyone needs to know it” and the dividing line is how much time you spend with people who are tech literate.

Yep, I would tell my computer savvy friends where they could get keycaps and fix their keyboards; I don’t even have to bother telling my computer savvy friends how to run a fifteen year old laptop because we’re all pretty good at it.

But GODDAMN I just read a response to my “cheap computer season” post that claimed that it was totally reasonable to run a macbook from 2010 and

Look.

That’s not a reasonable thing to tell a student who needs a functional computer to do research and write papers. (have fun trying to find installation discs from when the OS was still named after cats and have fun trying to get a browser to get along with that OS)

You know why most people bring me laptops with missing keys? Because the key got ripped off by their two-year-old and damaged the soldering in the keyboard and I have no idea it’s going to be “oh, yeah, that’s a ten dollar fix” or “sorry, that’s going to be an hour and a half to disassemble and reassemble and we’ll have to order you a new keyboard specific to that model out of new old stock” and the thing is the second one is much, much, much more common in my experience than the first.

Do I think you need to replace a laptop when the bezel is cracked? No. I also don’t carry my laptop powered on in the bag with a flashdrive sticking out of the USB port. Customers do weird things that I don’t understand and when a customer tells me they want me to fix the bezel they think it’s a twenty-dollar snap-on repair because they have no idea how this works and then they get mad at me when I explain “no, you’ve gotta have this specific piece of plastic, these haven’t been made in five years, and you might be better off buying a used model online than trying to track down a new bezel.”

So here’s the thing: Can Macs get viruses?

There are three answers here.

“No, of course not, Macs are made to be virus-proof”

“Macs need antivirus protection because, while it is less common than infections for PCs, there are types of malware that can infect macs and it’s worthwhile to guard against that”

“tEcHnIcAlLy a virus has to be self-replicating and IOS’s file management system [or some other bullshit] prevents that so TECHNICALLY Macs can’t get viruses and what you need is anti-malware software if you need anything because you’re fairly likely to have security through obscurity”

I’m aware of the third position and voicing the second position to people who believe the first position.

YES TECHNICALLY YOU CAN KEEP A COMPUTER RUNNING INDEFINITELY AND YES IT’S TOTALLY POSSIBLE YOUR LAPTOP WILL LAST TEN YEARS.

“Well if you treat it right and run it well it’ll be in great shape for a long time”

YES THAT IS CORRECT DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK ON THEIR OWN CARS DRIVE AROUND WITH THE OIL CHANGE LIGHT ON FOR MONTHS?!?

Tons of people in the world today use computers. They use computers every day, they use computers at home and at school and at work.

Tons of people drive every day. They use cars for fun and for commuting and for their jobs.

That doesn’t mean that all (or even most, or even half) of the people using these things is any good at keeping them running, or even has the barest idea of how to start tracking down a problem.

Someone in the notes of that post described a green line on their screen and thought that was a symptom of hard drive problems. I don’t have the hours in the day to catch this person up to speed on why a display issue on a laptop isn’t indicative of hard drive issues.

Do you know how much people think it’s going to cost to get data off of a broken drive? Not “won’t power up” not “won’t spin” but “I dropped this and part fell off and now it won’t power up or spin and also the platter is chipped”? I’m going to have to send that shit to a clean room and the customer is *staggered* that it might cost more than a hundred dollars to get their data. “Outrageous, what kind of blackmail operation are you trying to run here, just plug it in and get my pictures.”

A year or so ago I was at Jiffy Lube (ew). I’d been shooting the shit with the mechanic when a parent and child rolled in in a panic. And they should have been panicking! They’d thrown a fucking rod because they’d been driving with no oil in the car for god knows how long because neither of them had had the oil changed in the two years they’d owned the vehicle.

*I* can keep a 30-year-old car running. I can put a belt back on an engine in a dark parking lot with a wrench and a headlamp. I can drop a gas tank and replace my fuel filter and thumb my nose at the mechanics who tried to upsell me on “replacing your old, worn-out air filter” the day after I’d popped a new one into my truck.

These folks couldn’t keep a new car running with three alarms telling them what was wrong.

*I* can power up my 2005 macbook running Leopard and use garage band to record a song or do some design work on my copy of Adobe CS3; I can kludge its FF3.5 browser into playing nice with the internet and accept that it’s going to be a slow piece of shit.

The lady who called me confused by the fact that the password to her email was different than the login information for her grocery store rewards account will not be able to function if she gets a pop-up that says she’s using an outdated browser and will think it’s a virus if her bank won’t let her log in on that browser.

And you know what, I’m kind of sick of this attitude.

I would *fucking adore it* if computers were actually easy to repair; I’d love it if you could run new OSs on old hardware (especially on macs because I think apple are kind of shitheads about planned obsolescence).

But you know what, no, most people *CAN’T* reasonably expect to use a ten-year-old computer and have pleasant experience of it. It’s going to run slow. It’s going to shut down when they don’t want it to. The battery is going to swell slightly with the heat and your touchpad is going to go nuts. Your USB ports will stop working. Standard wear and tear that most people don’t know how to protect against and don’t know how to repair is going to make it harder to use AND software requirements will outstrip the hardware capabilities of the computer.

If your old computer sucks it’s not your fault. If you can’t happily use a 10-year-old laptop to do your homework that’s okay, it wasn’t designed for you to use it that way and YOU SHOULDN’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT.

Because that’s kind of what a lot of these “well anybody should realistically be able to run a laptop from 2010″ responses comes down to: if you need new hardware you’re just not doing it right. If you have to replace your computer you didn’t make good choices when you bought it. If your battery dies it’s because you didn’t take care of it.

No. No. No. No.

This shit is A) designed to fail and B) actually really hard to keep running (hey how many blown capacitors do you think someone has to have on their motherboard before you say it’s not their fault for wanting to replace the laptop)

ALSO SOMEONE IN THE RESPONSES OF THAT POST LITERALLY SAID THAT IF YOUR BATTERY DIED AT THREE YEARS IT WAS BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T DOING THE DRAIN CHARGE CYCLE RIGHT AND FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. It’s discharge cycles and heat, motherfucker; they are going to fail at some point and people shouldn’t feel bad if their batteries stop working after a couple years.

UGH.

You shouldn’t have to be a mechanic. You shouldn’t have to be a computer technician. Yeah, your shit will last longer if you know how to take care of it but, fuck. Imagine you were still using internet speeds from 2010. Imagine all your devices still had USB 2.0. Imagine you couldn’t log onto your online bank because your hardware won’t run he software that your bank recognizes because the hardware manufacturer decided it won’t support the older hardware.

What I was trying to get across in that initial post was “computers fail, and they fail pretty frequently; your life will be better and you will save money if you plan on replacing them at a regular interval and have reasonable expectations in terms of cost and failure. So buy a cheap computer now because you’re probably going to need one at some point”

And now I’ve got to Do A Yell about how there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism and it’s unreasonable to expect tired, overworked, broke people to become experts in computer repair in order to do their homework or play the goose game.

FUCK THAT.

IT’S CHEAP COMPUTER SEASON MOTHERFUCKERS. LAPTOP FAILURE RATES INCREASE AT THREE TO FIVE YEARS AND DESKTOP FAILURE RATES INCREASE AT FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS. RIGHT NOW THERE ARE DISCOUNTS ON NEW COMPUTERS AND IT’S CHEAP TO GET AN EXTENDED WARRANTY.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER AND WORK ON COMPUTERS IF YOU WANNA AND PLAN TO REPLACE REGULARLY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK ON COMPUTERS.

ALSO CHANGE YOUR FUCKING OIL YOU’RE PROBABLY DUE.

9K notes · View notes

bang-fantansies · 3 years

Text

Sasaeng BTS Profiles: Yoongi Edition

Warning: Heavy mentions/implications of suicide, mentions/implications of overdosing on medication, insomnia, unhealthy behaviour, obsessive behaviour, poor mental health, self-denefse killing, homelessness, nightmares, mention/implications of side-character being drunk, death, blood, gore, destruction of evidence, crime, profanity.

I did my best to include any triggering topics mentioned in this post, but if you see any more potentially sensitive topics I may have missed, please let me know!

This does not represent Bangtan as people or a business, nor does it represent anyone/anything associated with them. This is purely fictional and was made for entertainment purposes only; not to slander anyone or any company.

Mental Stability: 3/10

2:50 AM.

As was the same battle every night, Yoongi lay in bed, the whole world sleeping apart from him. He couldn’t help it, of course - believe me, he would if he could - and this was what made the thoughts in his head run wild.

Each thought had a voice, all unique to their varying degrees of uselessness, yet the message they chanted was identical.

“Sleep! Sleep!” they cried. They’d grown louder over the years as Yoongi’s insomnia worsened, and in spite of their efforts to help their master, they did the complete opposite.

That dream - red and monstrous - drowned out any measure of volume the voices could hope to muster.

The sound of a man gargling with his own blood made Yoongi feel as if he was suffocating, and more often than not he’d jolt up in bed, forced to replay the events of his early adult years.

Before finding his current residence, Yoongi had been forced onto the streets by unjust circumstances, leading to a great deal of situations he’d rather keep buried beneath the layers of his memory.

One such situation involved another homeless man - drunk, Yoongi had assumed - competing with Yoongi for a bottle of liquor he had scored.

Yoongi’s only use for such a thing was to sell it off and use the money to find a cheap room and a meal. But his opponent had refused to accept such nonsense.

“Such fine wine shouldn’t go to waste!” Yoongi could still hear him say, voice ringing in his ears.

“And it won’t if you just let me pass, you stupid old prick.”

In short, the drunkard had taken Yoongi’s tone very personally and caused his own demise by making a haphazard attempt on the younger’s life, resulting in having the bottle of wine he oh-so desired slammed into the side of his head, shattering and giving Yoongi a sharp enough tool to puncture his throat with.

Yoongi fled the scene not long after, keeping the remains of the bottle to hand until he could destroy the evidence later on.

Nowadays, while he was far from sleeping rough, he hardly slept at all for fear of his actions whispering cruel and dark remarks into his ear.

As it would for most, this took its toll on Yoongi’s health; physical, emotional, and mental.

The pressure had proven to be too much for him to handle, and on this night, he had decided he’d had enough.

On his computer desk stood a bottle, a proud shade of orange with its contents revealed in a cluster of black ink, made to resemble actual handwriting, written across a label stuck to its front - the only semblance of privacy Yoongi was allowed. Its white cap was ajar, and though no scent came from within, Yoongi could practically smell the prescription enticing him to a snack.

And under normal circumstances, he would have declined as he had many a time before.

But these were no longer normal circumstances.

Yoongi rose from beneath the bed sheets, any semblance of humanity he’s once held having burnt out alongside his will to continue.

He knew what it meant to live - to love the act of being human - but he was no longer human. He most similarly resembled a shell; cold, hollow, and filled with the shadows of his own mind.

And so he had made his decision. Despite his lethargy shackling him to the bed, he made a reach for the bottle, popping off the cap and peering inside.

A glass of water sat on his bedside table, bubbles sticking to the water-covered walls as a result of disuse.

Yoongi counted the pills, assuming that the amount he was left with would be enough.

At this point, he figured that if he was to find no rest in life, he would surely find it in whatever lay beyond his broken, mortal body.

In these last moments, Yoongi granted himself his last comfort.

He brought his laptop beside him and searched his favourite artist on YouTube.

He only had a few artists in his arsenal that he could dispense at family dinners or reunions he’d been invited to.

he never was an adept conversationalist: even at friends’ parties where a guest he didn’t know would be obligated to talk to him on account of appeasing the birthday girl or boy.

For a second, Yoongi faltered.

His mind backtracked to the joy he’d felt with his friends, and in turn the joy he had granted them.

Was he really going through with this...?

A stab of doubt was all it would take to make Yoongi withdraw from his initial intentions, and he cut the tie with said doubt immediately, pushing his friends to the back of his mind.

He was exhausted - tired of helping and appealing to others; now it was time to take care of himself.

From the tiny speaker in his laptop came the sound of solace: his favourite track from his idol.

He lay back, pill bottle and water placed on his bedside table as he basked in his last melody.

Through the duration of the song, Yoongi’s unease had worn away - eroded by the tides of his own resolution.

The song eventually clambered to a fading finish. Yoongi knew what came next.

He sat up and tipped the contents of the bottle onto the table, a hill of oddly-coloured tablets forming.

He threw the bottle somewhere behind him, hearing it land in a hidden corner of the room.

Pale hands scooped the pills up like candy, bringing them to Yoongi’s lips.

And like a saving grace emerging through a storm, a miracle unfolded.

A soft sound played beside him; the sound of angel wings and promises of a better future.

Yoongi didn’t so much as falter as he did pause, lending his ear to the tune.

It played notes from an instrument Yoongi didn’t even think existed - a soft twinkling stalked by a voice he had yet to have heard on his musical voyages through Soundcloud and YouTube.

For a second - just a second - the doubt that had made such a ruckus to enter had now slithered through the back door of Yoongi’s mind.

What was this music?

Reluctant, he lowered his hand to his side, though held tightly on to the pills.

Turning the screen to face him, he came face-to-face with someone other than his idol.

Her eyes looked a soft shade of (e/c) in the no-doubt filtered lighting of the video, though the sincerity she held within them was far from fabricated.

The background was crystalline - faux crystal props - oversized and oversaturated. They were littered around the studio in which the woman sang, and beneath a purple hue she sat on a stool, an air of comfort radiating from her.

As to what she was singing, Yoongi had no idea.

He let the music play for a moment, considering his options.

What harm would it do him to listen to something new? It wasn’t as if he’d be able to after he was gone, anyway.

Lying back down, Yoongi stared at the ceiling, the lack of light or patterns making it easier for him to focus solely on the music.

His fatigue embraced him like a long-lost mother, shrouding him in a warmth unmatched by that of any real person.

The singer’s soft humming filled the desolate room. And if Yoongi wasn’t mistaken, he could feel his eyelids growing heavy.

He forced a bitter smile, doubtful that his mind would actually allow him any such solace as sleep.

To humour his weary self one last time, Yoongi shut his eyes, sighing deeply and sinking into the mattress.

The next time Yoongi opened his eyes, his room was still dark. And as if it had never left to begin with, his bitter smile returned.

I knew it, he thought. Though the victory of beating his already hell-level expectations filled his overflowing spirit with grief, disguised and diluted by the anger that had slipped into the mix so long ago.

Sitting up, Yoongi lent his ear to the room once more.

He could hear the soft hum of the woman’s song no longer, and it was in this second that he realised he didn’t remember actually hearing the song end.

It was on one minute, and off the next.

Suspicious, Yoongi glanced at his half-lidded laptop, faced with a blackened screen as the device had switched itself off.

With a push of the power button, the power returned, and in a blast of light the screen sprung to life.

Through the tips of his fringe, Yoongi checked the time.

11:15 AM.

He recoiled.

That couldn’t be right - surely.

Logging in, he noted how his battery was running low, despite having been fully charged before he lay down.

The screen gave way to the last application he’s been using, and clear as day the same starry-eyed woman with the voice of velvet was on-screen, though the video she was in had long since ended.

Yoongi checked the time again, pulling his fringe back so as not to trick himself a second time.

11:16 stared back at him, steadfast and unwavering in its absolution.

Yoongi’s eyebrows raised in a sense of alarm.

He rose from the bed, tearing his curtains open.

A cityscape greeted him, and the sun waved from its fixture in the sky. It was daytime.

Yoongi stumbled back, carding a hand through his hair.

There was absolutely no way he’d-

...Had he actually managed to get to sleep?

Yoongi checked his phone, watch, and alarm clock; no-one dared deceive him of date nor time.

He was willing (and already considering) to accept the idea that he’d time-traveled; the concept of having a decent night’s sleep was as foreign as a language to him.

Nevertheless, he hadn’t the time to dawdle in such a concept, though he made absolute certain to when he was at work.

His colleagues seemed to notice a change in Yoongi’s behaviour.

Though he was often dazed into bouts of silence by his exhaustion, this quietude was new. Different.

A few co-workers commented on how he looked much livelier. And more alive, he felt.

In spite of this, the constant what-ifs of the morning had followed him - clung to him like a cologne.

What if...what if he was actually dead?

He considered this, deciding against his theory.

If he was dead and this was indeed Heaven, he should be receiving a lot more good fortune for all the shit he had to deal with in his life.

No, this was neither Hesven nor Hell. Or Purgatory.

Yoongi also considered that he was in a coma, but that didn’t add up, either.

He tested to see if he was comatose. Nothing.

He was still trapped in his same-old reality. But at least he could think clearly now.

By the time he got home, his body yearned for the sweet release of music, and he sought the comfort of his favourite artist - as he usually did on days as long as this.

Shoving his bedroom door open, he grumbled at the brightness the room held for a change.

He’d forgotten to shut his curtains before he left.

In the dwindling light of the afternoon sun, he saw the pills scattered across his duvet, the sole remnants of his almost-actions.

He cringed, forcing them to the back of his mind.

He could acknowledge the gravity of his decision later. Right now, his head was filled with the phantom melodies longing for a vessel.

Yoongi has attained the good sense to charge his laptop, and as he switched it on, he was greeted with the same lady who had pulled him to sleep the night before.

Or, Yoongi supposed, who had just happened to be playing on the night he was finally able to sleep without the nightmare scaring him awake.

Such wonderment remained at the back of his mind as he went about his business.

Through his own music, the whisper of the lady’s tune plagued him. So much so that, after a good three hours of composing, Yoongi found himself eyeing the tab he’d left open from before.

Having returned home from work later, his body was weighted with the day’s contrivances and stresses, as well as its successes and joys.

Emotionally, Yoongi had given all he had to offer, which, if he was to admit it to himself, was far more than he usually did.

He considered that it was more than likely it wasn’t just the song that had sent him to sleep.

On the contrary, he believed that a multitude of factors had to have been at play in such a miracle.

He wished to replicate the conditions of the night before: he kept his room dark and a glass of water on his bedside. He packed his pills away and placed them on his bedside, too, taking care not to lose any in case their service was required again.

He set the woman’s song up, lying in bed and playing it.

The creeping horror of the notion of never obtaining such a quality of sleep again was the only odd variable in this equation, and though it quietly consumed Yoongi’s thoughts, the hum of the song muffled it.

The song was no longer than 4 minutes, though the eternity that stretched between Yoongi and his voyage to the fabled land of dreams made it impossible to tell how long it had been.

He was not yet familiar enough with the song to place a time on the segment he was experiencing.

His concerns faded as he simply let himself be.

If it works, it works, he told himself.

The next thing Yoongi remembered was hearing a bird chirping nearby his window.

He cracked an eye open.

Much like the night before, his room remained in a state of quiet disarray, though only noticeable to the trained eye.

His laptop lay near his side, screen dark and lifeless.

Yoongi checked through a crack in the curtains. And sure as anything, the sun had risen once again.

Over the next couple of weeks, Yoongi researched the song, its creator, and whether it was really the secret to staving off his insomnia.

He had discovered that the creator’s name was (Y/N) - a popular artist who had fans far and wide, as well as domestically.

He found more of her particular songs - the ones that she hummed.

He tested both the original and these humming bird songs (as he called them), and to his delight, the humming birds worked.

Yoongi would go to sleep and wake up at reasonable times, rather than the odd dips in and out of consciousness he would try to induce on his own terms.

It was just your music that soothed him so, and from the day he uncovered this, he vowed to be your loyal follower.

Though, with any influential fan can blossom obsession, and as Yoongi became ever more eneamoured with your gossamer vocals, he feared the day that your songs would no longer support his sleep.

Or, God forbid, you stopped singing.

He often fretted over such a premature worry, though he couldn’t deny how it had all but devoured his thoughts.

Months into his expedition into your music, he decided to finally take action to ensure that your voice would never die - never fade with age, accident or abuse.

No, he would preserve it like the fine wine he had failed to so many years ago - to be sipped and savoured for eternities to come.

Sasaeng Masterlist

#yandere bts #bts #yandere bts x reader #bts x reader #Yoongi #min yoongi #suga #yandere yoongi #yandere yoongi x reader

120 notes · View notes

system76 · 3 years

Text

Behind the Scenes of System76: Sales Team

The System76 Behind the Scenes series aims to give readers an inside look at the people behind our mission. This week, we spoke with VP of Sales Sam Mondlick about the challenges of conducting business during a pandemic, and how long it’ll take the Sales Team to make a certain blog author a millionaire.

You know. The important things.

Take a moment to describe the different functions of the Sales Team.

The Sales Team itself is currently made up of two different positions. The Customer Experience Specialist (CES) is the first line of conversation with System76 with regards to anything order-related. Their job is to make your process from purchase to shipment as easy as possible and provide you with as much information as you might need, such as giving status updates about orders or answering questions that may have arisen.

The other position within Sales is Account Management. They’re the people you talk to from first inquiry to System76 about products. These guys help anyone, from my 80-year-old grandma who’s looking to transition from Windows to Linux, to Fortune 50 companies. They deal with a wide variety of customer base, so they’re pretty much experts in getting the customer what they need.

Then there’s the Product Management side of Sales. The Product Manager stays up to date on all-new technology, and then informs and directs the team. The position was built to ensure System76 is at the forefront of new and exciting technologies, whether that’s within the Thelio product line or in the form of updates that come to our laptops. And that could be as simple as tracking memory updates from DDR4 to DDR5, or with PCIe 3.0 updating to PCIe 4.0. For things like that we’ll track and update products throughout their lifetime.

What is the guiding principle for how the System76 Sales Team operates?

The Sales Team philosophy we push is what I call, “Consultative Sales.” We’re here to be an assistant to the user in order to get them the right product for the job; we’re not going to upgrade you for the sake of upgrading. The team is there to understand what you want to accomplish so that they can get you the right machine with the optimal performance for your use case.

What factors into the decision to introduce a new product?

There’s quite a few factors internally that we’ll go through. Looking at our product line we ask ourselves, is there something that’s missing from it? And if we do find something, what are the benefits to it? How is it going to make us as a company better, and us as a provider of Linux-based technologies the right fit for our customers?

For the Lemur Pro, battery life had always been a high-value item for our customer base. Before the Lemur Pro and Darter Pro were introduced about 2 years ago, the average battery life on a System76 computer was about 3-5 hours. The ability to introduce a product with a higher battery wattage allowed us to extend battery life almost threefold. That value is really what drives a product forward.

What is your team’s background with Linux?

A lot of the team members have a background in Linux as users. That’s what we tend to typically hire and bring on. They are apt in review and understanding, and helping customers that have specific tasks and needs within the Linux environment. Charles was using Raspberry Pis in order to do some cool things, and Bradley used Ubuntu even before he was hired. The same can be said for Jeremy and John. They all believe that Linux is the right tool for people, and they showcase that for incoming customers. Even if they’re not tech-savvy within Linux, there’s a background there with using it and seeing it in the wild.

What challenges did the pandemic present when it first started?

I think at the very beginning, the biggest challenge for us was the loss of the team camaraderie. A lot of Sales is personal relationships, and the team feeds off of each other, so having everyone in the same area was a huge benefit pre-pandemic.

In the first month or so after it started, there were definitely challenges with productivity and communication because Sales works a lot with Engineering, Support, and other departments in order to give the customers the information they need to make an educated decision, or to update them on the status of their order.

But, I think one of the best tools we have is our employee messaging client. That was already ingrained in us as something that was used pre-pandemic that really started to show its value post-pandemic, especially with the team members being in different homes—and in some cases, different states. It allowed us to provide our staff with as much as they needed to make their environment feel like they were still in an office, still able to get the camaraderie, and still able to get almost the same instantaneous response as they would in the office, but now done remote.

Our ability to put tech first, especially within Sales and Service, is one of the things we do really well. We never throw people at a problem. By that I mean we don’t delegate a problem up the chain to solve it. Instead we work for a solution, and our people evolve into that solution. From my viewpoint, we’ve established that a remote environment is as productive as an in-person environment, which has opened up the door for System76 to grow. Instead of working within a local pool, we’ve now moved to the ocean. Whereas you used to have to hire and work to provide resources for new hires to move to Denver so they can work with the team, now we can bring on team members from pretty much anywhere on the globe to come help make System76 better.

System76 has seen steady growth in the past year despite drastic political and economic changes. What do you attribute the success to?

I think we’ve matured as an organization. We have introduced products and product lines that are meeting and exceeding a lot of different customer requirements. When I look at our desktop line from when I started seven years ago, our options were the Ratel, the Wild Dog, the Leopard, and the Sable. With production moving in-house and the introduction of Thelio in the last two and a half years, keeping in mind both Intel and AMD, we’ve gone from offering a four-desktop solution to nine.

Laptop and desktop quality has also increased in the last seven years, and a lot of that has to do with what we’ve done in our new manufacturing facility. We have made leaps and bounds with regards to what we’re doing with software engineering now. There’s a huge demand for what our Software Engineering Team has done, driven by Jeremy and our open firmware/open EC that speak to a lot of people. Companies are looking at an open source solution instead of proprietary because they want more control over what their team and their organization are doing.

One of the things we’ve noticed is that our business clients have grown. There’s significantly more support and drive from both the end user and the corporate side to make it so Linux is a valued and desired solution for their teams. Today, I can probably put a Windows 10 machine next to my Pop!_OS 20.10 machine and accomplish everything in the same amount of time or faster. Maybe I’m not using the same applications, but anything I as a businessperson could do within Windows, I can now do with Pop!_OS or Ubuntu. The Linux ecosystem is continuously changing, and that only helps us as a company.

You’ve been at System76 for quite a while. What’s it been like watching the company grow?

It’s amazing. When I started at the company, I was really the first Sales-oriented person. I was the 8th employee at the time, and now I’m the 5th-oldest employee of System76 out of over 50 employees. So it’s huge, man.

When you look at a lot of big corporations, change is hard to make happen. It’s looked at as too different, too risky. But here, change is really something we strive for. We work to be different, to be new, to figure out new ways to help our customers or create solutions to help them, or figure out ways that can change us for the better that you just typically wouldn’t see from a corporation.

What was your favorite moment?

When I first looked at System76, back when we were only offering Ubuntu, I saw the beginning of something very similar to another major player. Very grassroots, very much specialized and hardware-specific. They also created their own operating system, so when I interviewed in 2014, I made comments during my interview with Carl that I expected us to probably produce our own operating system as well. I thought that would be our endgame as a company. At that time, and Carl might contradict my memory on this, but I remember he didn’t think that would ever happen. And then in October 2017, we released the first version of Pop!_OS. That made everything come kind of full-circle for me.

The following year, we brought hardware inside in order to make it the best that we could. So in three short years from me starting, we took what we were doing and elevating it to something that only a handful of companies do, and do well. Our potential is really limitless from what I’ve seen so far, and it’s very apparent with what we’ve done with Pop!_OS since its release, as well as where we’ve taken Thelio. I bet you we never thought we would’ve implemented something like i3 tiling into Pop!_OS. I really goes back to how we view change. We embrace it. We see it as trying to do something better than we did before. Carl and the Engineering Team view software as always being about revision, and we bring that philosophy back to hardware and back to the company as a whole.

#system76 #s76 #76 #linux #computers #hardware #software #firmware #STEM #engineering #gaming #science #sales #behind the scenes #bts #Pop!_OS #Thelio #laptops #desktops #servers #manufacturing

14 notes · View notes

forgadgetsandgizmos · 4 years

Text

It Pulls Me Back into the Night

Written for Day 2 of Alex Manes Week 2020 | Prompt: AU/Canon Divergence

Read it on AO3

When Alex woke up at five in the morning to a text from Max of a location and-

>>come quick

-he has to admit that the first thought to cross his mind was something along the lines of again? His second was annoyance at having to wake the sleeping bed of curls beside him in order to attach his prosthetic.

At no point did he expect to drive to a cave in the middle of the desert and find himself staring at a glowing, mystery alien device, a Max lookalike, and one Mimi Deluca. Or that the three of them would precede to ask him to plan a heist. . . in 1948.

Yet here he sits, plans for said heist spread out in front of him, aided in his endeavors by a bearded, country version of his alien boyfriend’s alien brother.

Antarian, not alien, he corrected. Because the mystery planet Mimi had deemed ‘that place with the red skies’ was called Antar.

At least it was according to Jones-the-alien-lookalike, who had yet to provide another name.

Jones’ cave hole hideaway has its own pod and consul set-up. According to him, his consul was the original one linked to Michael, Isobel, and Max’s pods, and therefore stored their missing seven years of memories, like a back-up on a computer. Jones was locked out of the interface and while Michael, Max, or Isobel should have been able to access it, the memory of exactly how was just as lost as everything else about their past. Hence, a power-borrowing, time-walking heist to find Nora in 1948 and have her give Michael a psychic impression of her mind, allowing him to gain access to the consul and restore his own memories. Which will include how he can restore Max and Isobel’s. According to Jones. Whose trustworthiness Alex remained on the fence about.

Plus, just thinking about the physics of it all for too long made his head spin.

“I think the plan is as good as it’s going to get based off seventy-year-old information,” Alex finally announced. In the last three hours, they had created a timeline of everything they knew about Nora’s day at the harvest festival in October of 1948, even calling Sanders to ask for his recollection of events.

“Are you sure?” The real Max stood to the side, leaning against the cave wall. In the time Alex had been here, he had barely taken his eyes off of Max-lookalike.

Alex shrugged. “As sure as I can be.”

“Finally,” Jones exclaimed; the word drawn out near the end from his exaggerated accent. Alex had to resist rolling his eyes every time he heard it.

“I’ll call the others,” Max directed to him. He headed outside for cell reception since this cave was a complete dead spot.

It was a fact Alex had been cursing every five minutes of their little three-hour research project. The only skill Alex brought to the table and Max brought him to the one place in miles it was useless. Although if he’s being honest with himself, it was perfectly on par with every other insane event during the past few months.

Forty-five minutes later, Michael and Isobel were running in, Kyle, Liz, and Maria not far behind.

Michael rushed straight to his side and pulled him into a quick kiss. “Leave a note next time.” He shoved Alex’s shoulder lightly. “I didn’t even realize you had left this morning when I got Max’s call.”

“I didn’t wake you when I put on my prosthetic?”

“Busy day at the junkyard, I was exhausted. Slept right through.”

“Is anyone going to explain what’s going on?” Isobel questioned, waving her hand in a hello, remember me? gesture.

And that was how Alex ended up explaining theoretical time travel to the gaping faces of his friends before he’d had his (second) morning coffee.

He had to hand it to Liz and Kyle; they had managed to set up a mini-hospital room in a cave with bare-bones equipment and an extension cord hooked up to Max’s car battery outside.

Liz was comforting a worried Maria who was hovering over her mother while Kyle connected her to vital monitors.

Max had conveniently ducked out, leaving him to explain Jones’ plan to Michael and Isobel.

“Let me get this straight,” Michael started. “You want Isobel to link my mind to Mimi’s so I can steal her powers- “

“Borrow her powers,” Alex corrected.

“-steal her powers and use them to time travel-“

“Time walk.”

“-into creepy Not-Max’s past to get a psychic impression from my dead mother that will make the glowing alien machine return my missing memories?”

Alex grinned, unabashed by Michael’s bewildered tone. “That about sums it up.”

“Are we sure this is possible?” Isobel appeared to be taking this more seriously than Michael. She had dropped her previous look of exasperation in exchange for the intense concentration she displayed now. After she recovered from the shock of Alex saying, ‘back in time,’ of course.

Alex sighed. “That’s where it gets dicey. Theoretically, yes. Jones said that Mimi’s ability to walk through the past of people in her direct line is a common power among Antarians. The thing is, Michael’s going to be going backwards through Isobel to Mimi to Jones. It’s is a lot of hoops to jump through in order to make this work.” Alex didn’t try to hide his displeasure at his next words. “There’s a slight chance that when Michael tries to come back to his body, he can’t ground himself and gets stuck between times.”

Michael’s eyes shot to him, wide as saucers.

“We have a plan for that,” Alex reassured him.

“Yes, your boyfriend.” Jones’ booming voice echoed around them.

Michael scowled, turning his body in a vein effort to block Jones’ view of Alex. A pointless gesture in the cramped cave but it made Alex smile, nonetheless.

“Boyfriend goes in connected to you, separate from the other two, giving him a straight shot back. Your connection to him,” he directed to Michael, “will allow you to travel with him and use to him anchor you. As long as he can ground himself, you’ll both wake up safe and sound.”

Michael ran a hand through his hair. “And it has to be me because...”

“You aren’t physically traveling back in time,” Max answered, finally back from his car to join the growing group. “You’re traveling back through Jones’ experiences. If I went, Jones would be the only person who could see me. Your familial connection with Nora should theoretically allow her to see you as well. Isobel has the same connection with Louise, but she has to link you and Mimi.”

“You get to meet your mom,” Isobel realized.

A guilty expression flashed across Max’s face. “I’m sorry, Isobel. You’re the only one who can make the connection between Mimi and Michael.”

“I offered,” Jones added snidely.

“We aren’t letting you in their heads,” Alex snapped, his annoyance obvious. He and Max vetoed this hours ago and Jones had repeatedly brought it up since then, especially since the other five arrived. “I’m not comfortable with it and frankly, Maria isn’t either.”

A rough hand grabbed his and thumbed over his skin in soft circles. He squeezed back firmly.

“We’re all set up,” Liz announced, drawing their attention to the opposite wall. Mimi sat calmly, hooked up to a heart and blood pressure monitor beeping steadily. Maria held her hand beside her, looking significantly more concerned about the next few minutes than Mimi.

Liz rubbed her hands together and looked between Michael and Alex. “Remember, you’ll have eight minutes, maybe nine. Longer than that and I can’t make any guarantees about how well Mimi will hold up to the stress.”

“Time limit.” Alex nodded and raised his wrist to show the room where the pre-set timer was blinking on his watch. “Timer. We got it.”

“Time travel,” Michael muttered, shaking his head.

Alex grunted his agreement.

Yeah. This was insane.

He was standing.

It was the first thing Alex noticed when he opened his eyes. He had been laying down in the cave beside Michael, holding hands with their arms pressed together to make sure they didn’t break contact when they lost consciousness.

Now he stood in the midst of a bustling fall festival. His head spun behind his eyes from the sudden, blinding sunlight and loud screeching of children laughing.

The first thing he noticed when his head had finally calmed enough for him to crack his eyes open was the color. The movies always show the ‘40s and ‘50s in pastel, as if they had been painted in faded watercolor with age.

The real ’48 was nothing like that.

He stood on a bed of hay. Tents selling crafts and food formed makeshift streets around him. Vibrancy was everywhere, the scenery adorned in neon colors and strong patterns. Men and women alike wore bright colors with clenched waists and high-waisted denim. Young women passed by in coveralls with bright shirts for a pop of color.

He jumped back as a child in bright blue pants and a yellow shirt burst past him, a woman in a polka-dotted dress following close behind. He stepped back on his prosthetic, so that had made the jump at least. Good. He’d been worried.

Michael placed a steadying hand on his back. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” he whispered.

Alex nodded dumbly.

Shoot, the timer, he remembered. Alex clicked a button on the side of his watch, starting the countdown from seven minutes and thirty seconds. Jones had suggested the thirty-second cut, figuring they would be disoriented and need the cushion. It irks Alex to know he was right.

Jones had been telling the truth about them not being visible. Despite knowing they must have suddenly appeared standing in a spot that was empty seconds before, no one had spared them a second glance.

It was definitely for the best. With him in his leather jacket standing next to Michael in worn jeans and his black hat, they certainly didn’t fit in with the tailored suits and squared shoulders of the men here.

“We need to find Nora,” Alex said finally. “The longer we’re here, the more the connection fades and the harder it’ll to get back.”

Michael nodded his agreement. Neither of them wanted to risk Mimi’s health.

“Okay. According to Sanders’ timeline, Nora, Louise, Roy, and Walt got to the pumpkin contest around two o’clock today, while Jones said he’d been here since twelve. Assuming our version of the timeline is correct, we’re in the thirty-minute window between when Jones sees Nora at half-past two but keeps his distance and when he speaks to her at three. After that, he gets too far away.”

“I was there when you explained it the first time, Alex,” Michael remarked with a poorly stifled laugh.

Alex rolled his eyes and stepped forward. “Excuse me for knowing my boyfriend has a tendency towards selective hearing.”

Michael caught Alex’s hand, pulling him back. “My boyfriend.” Michael’s eyes glinted mischievously. “I like that.”

“Think we can tell it to your mom?”

Michael’s face softened at the mention of his mother, forming an almost wistful expression. “I hope so,” he mumbled.

Alex squeeze his hand reassuringly and tugged him forward. He didn’t have any experience with coming out to a parent – his dad had seemed to know he was gay before he did – but they had still daydreamed together, usually in bed, usually blissed out after sex.

Some things were too painful to even think about. His mind drew a blank when he tried to imagine his dad’s reaction to Harlan murdering Tripp and building a shed to hide the body. But other things, like Christmas with grandad Tripp, who’d be accepting and warm, or telling Nora about them together and her being overjoyed that they found a cosmic love to match her own? Those daydreams were perfect. And in a way, this was their chance for one of them to be real.

Despite Michael’s cool attitude before they’d left, Alex could tell he was nervous about meeting his mom. Whether it was excitement, embarrassment, her meeting Alex (assuming she could see him as well), her meeting Alex as his boyfriend, or some combination, he wasn’t sure. Alex didn’t blame him. He couldn’t meet Tripp, who was human and therefore unable to see or hear them, but the sentiment was there.

It was barely a half-minute of walking before they saw the sign from the picture reading ‘Roswell Fall Festival.’ Nora was easy to spot; she stood beside an overly large pumpkin and the only non-white man in the small crowd. He noticed Nora’s eyes on them seconds before Michael did.

Alex paused next Michael’s frozen body. Nora’s posture mirrored Michael’s, stiff with shock.

He spun and met Michael’s eyes, a dozen, churning emotions reflecting back to him. As much as Alex wished he could him be, to take a second and soak this in (he was seeing his mom, alive and healthy), they had already wasted precious time getting here. They didn’t have more to waste.

“Ms. Nora? Everything alright?” A child beside her – Sanders, Alex presumed, as a child and before he’d lost his eye - noticed her distress and was tugging on her skirt. The man beside her – Roy Bronson – drew his eyebrows in.

Nora shook her head. “Everything’s fine, Walt.” She swatted his hand away. “You know not to be pulling on my skirts,” she admonished half-heartedly.

Michael’s hand tightened suddenly in his.

“Sorry Ms. Nora,” Walt said, seemingly unapologetic.

“I need to excuse myself,” she announced. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Roy reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Louise will be back soon,” he protested, “and the contest is about to begin.”

“I’ll be back in time,” she answered, turning away. She looked over to where the two of them stood, oblivious to the rest of the crowd, and tilted her head towards a closed barn to her right. With another glance to Michael, who seemed to have a better hold over himself, he followed her.

They stopped once they had reached the back of the barn, hidden on each side by large stacks of hay decorated in fall-themed leaf print outs strung together.

Michael and Nora stood facing each other.

Mother and son in a bittersweet reunion, Alex realized. Nora would understand how they were here. She could see their strange clothes and must realize what it means.

They couldn’t warn her about what would happen tomorrow. Jones had explained again and again before they left. To everyone else, everything happening around them is real. To Alex and Michael, they were experiencing a memory as if it was projected around them. Or more accurately, as if they had been projected into it. They couldn’t change anything because this was had already happened. Even if they spent the next five minutes explaining to Nora, in painstaking detail, everything they know about the next seventy years, she would forget the second they left. They’d arrive back at the same future they left empty handed, having wasted their time.

“Hi, Mom.” Michael’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“My son,” Nora said softly. She reached a hand up to cup his face before it fell as if for a moment, she had forgotten he wasn’t here and then reality hit. Alex watched her eyes trace Michael’s body, catching briefly on his tight grip of Alex’s hand. “You’re alive. And healthy.” She beamed at them.

“We’re not really here,” Michael started to explain, his voice dripping with unspoken apologies.

She shook her head. “I know. You won’t have long. What do you need?”

“I’m not really sure, something about accessing a consul. We found Jones-“

“He’s still alive?” Nora asked suddenly, eyes snapping to Michael’s.

“He was in pod, like ours, hidden away.”

“You stay away from him,” Nora demanded. Her voice took on a sharp edge to it. “He’s a stowaway who took a dangerous stance in the war on Antar and I don’t want you near him.”

“I don’t really understand that, but, well. That’s what I’m trying to say. When we woke up, we didn’t remember anything from before. Jones said that you can give me some psychic link to trigger my memories with the consul he was found with?”

Alex saw Nora’s face crumble before she could steady it. “It unlocks with a psychic connection that’s tied to me. I can transfer it to you.” She reached out a hand, palm up. “Hover your hand about mine,” she directed.

With a glance towards Alex, he placed his hand palm down above Nora’s and both their hands light up with the same faint, iridescent orange and purple that the ship pieces glowed with. After a few tense seconds, the colors faded.

“It’s done,” she announced, taking her hand away.

Michael followed suit.

“Rath - “

Alex tilted his head.

“- listen to me. This is for you and only you, alright? Get your memories back but you can’t give it to Jones,” she implored, a hint of a scowl (a very familiar scowl, Alex noted) appearing when she said his name.

Alex’s watch beeped. One-minute warning.

Michael looked at him, eyes suddenly frantic. Not enough time. It won’t ever be.

“Rath?” Michael’s voice was small, timid.

Nora didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Yes? That’s you. That’s your name. Do you,” she trailed off. “What do you go by?”

He swallowed. “Michael.”

She repeated the word a few times as if she was feeling it out.

“There’s 3 of us,” he continued, “Isobel, Max, and I.”

“Vilandra.” She was blinking, rapidly. Blinking away tears? “And the other. Zan.”

“Rath,” Michael repeated.

Nora looked at Alex properly for the first time since they’d arrived. “And you?”

Michael had her eyes, Alex noticed. They shared the same shine when they smiled.

The unexpected question seemed to shock them both into silence.

“This is Alex. I love him, Mom. So much.” Michael answered the question with confidence, the first Alex had seen since waking up here.

Alex let his grin show. It was his Michael again, emerging from this shell he had climbed into roughly six and a half minutes ago.

Michael had dropped Alex’s hand earlier when Nora asked for it. Now, he took it again.

“Manes, Alex Manes,” Alex said again. He winced, realizing what he had said. The first thing he does when he officially meets the love of his life’s long dead mother is copy James Bond?

“I see,” Nora said softly.

“I’m Harlan’s grandson,” Alex answered her unspoken question. “I don’t agree with his values.”

“I can see that,” Nora said with a wink, motioning towards their hands. She flattened her hands over her skirt. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Alex Manes. I’m Michael’s mother, Nora.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, ma’am.” Looking over at Michael, he didn’t think either of their faces could smile any bigger or brighter.

His watch beeped again. “30 seconds,” he said apologetically. And they’d have to go or risk getting stuck here or Mimi getting hurt.

“I understand.” Nora took a step closer and placed her hand over Michael’s chest. Had he really been here, they’d be touching. “Michael, I’m so glad you’re safe. It’s all I’ve been worried about for a year and to know that you survive, and you’re healthy and loved is a blessing I will treasure, even if I don’t remember it for long.”

“You see me again,” Michael choked out. “Right before…”

Nora placed a finger over his mouth and shushed him. “I wish I could’ve been with you and raised you, watched you grow up into this handsome young man. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be. Know that I fought for you. You go and be the amazing, intelligent, compassionate boy I know you to be. I love you, dear heart.”

Michael choked back a sob. “I love you too, Mom.”

Nora looked to Alex. “You’ll keep him safe, now.”

“With my life,” Alex agreed.

“I’m glad he found his family,” she said softly. “Time for you to go then. I have a pumpkin contest to win.” She put on a brave face and gave them a wink.

“I’m not ready for you to leave, Mom,” Michael cried, reaching out to her.

“I know baby. I’m not ready to leave. But parents never are, and it’s the job of the kids to keep going.”

BeepBeepBeep. BeepBeepBeep.

Alex cut the sound off quickly.

“I assume that means it’s time for you to go?” Nora supposed.

Alex nodded.

“I can’t be here when you do,” Nora said, backing up to the edge of the hay wall sealing them off from the rest of the crowd. “I love you, Rath.” Alex caught Michael’s shoulder, wrapping him in his arms as the figure walking away from them faded from view.

He let Michael hold onto him for a few seconds before placing his hands on either side of Michael’s face and pressing their foreheads together, both their eyes clamped shut. “Baby, we gotta go,” he whispered.

A shaky breath. Then a nod against his head.

An orange glow filled Alex’s vision. He squeezed his eyes shut as the light built and the sounds of the festival faded away. The sound of his own heavy breathing filled his ears. The feeling of Michael’s stubble under hand was gone, as if it somehow faded beside neither of them moving.

Alex didn’t dare move his hands despite not feeling anything under them. Michael hasn’t moved – if he had, Alex wouldn’t be able to go back – and letting go might mean Michael losing his anchor.

The light dimmed.

This was his part. He had to ground himself in his body - without actually returning to it – and then link himself to Michael so he could return as well.

Without opening his eyes, he turned his attention to his other senses. He could feel the damp, cool atmosphere of the cave against his skin and rock digging into places where he remembered it when he laid down. His prosthetic was just slightly digging into the top of his leg from laying down with it on for too long. He could hear muffled speaking, though he couldn’t distinguish it as any specific person or words.

He focused his attention on his right hand, the one that was supposed to be in Michael’s. He remembered the feeling of warmth against his arm, the places the hair would tickle against the crock of his elbow, and the way Michael’s thumb always caught on his finger when they held hands in bed.

And then Michael was squeezing his hand and he flung his eyes open and the room erupted in his ears.

Alex tightened his arms and rolled over, slowly pulling away from Michael’s sleeping body on the other side of the bed.

It had been a hell of a day. But as exhausted as Alex’s body felt (it turns out that time walking with borrowed alien superpowers took a toll. Who knew?), he couldn’t get his mind to catch up.

As soon as they got back, everyone had begun yelling, wanting to know if they were okay (Liz and Max), how seeing Nora was (Isobel), and if Michael got what he needed to access the consul (Jones). Isobel and Max had taken to learning their birth names with as much grace as one could when said names are delivered through their time traveling brother’s conversation with his dead mother seventy years in the past. Jones had wanted Michael to try and get his memories right then and there, but it turns out that the seven and a half minutes in 1948 equated to seven and a half hours in 2020.

Liz’s calculations had been right for Michael and Alex’s part, but she hadn’t factored in the time dilation. After the initial panic when nine minutes past and they didn’t wake up, but Mimi’s vitals held steady, Liz and Kyle figured it out pretty quickly.

And god, they’d been exhausted. Alex had been about to kill over where he stood. The only thing that kept him standing was his training and knowing that Michael was just as tired, only with acetone substituting for military experience.

He had never been happier to be in his own bed. With Michael too. He had persuaded Michael to come with him instead of going to his airstream, claiming if Michael wouldn’t come to Alex, he’d have to go to him and the bed there would make his already hurting leg worse.

He had gotten a dirty look for it but getting to be here, now, the mop of curls he’d cuddled to sleep peeking out from under the comforter?

He didn’t mind all that much.

Alex stared at the ceiling fan spinning above him in the dark. As soon as they could leave that cave, they’d had. Stopped by the Crashdown for to-go food and eaten it in bed while watching Animal Planet on Disney Plus.

They hadn’t talked about those seven and a half minutes yet, him and Michael. Alex wouldn’t blame Michael if he never wanted to acknowledge them again. They didn’t need to talk about the bad things to understand.

But Nora wasn’t a bad memory. She’d been good. She’d been great.

He supposes, in a few days when the wound wasn’t so raw, when they were cuddling in the dark, blissed out after sex, Michael would talk about it.

And he would listen.

See it on AO3

#alexweek2020 #roswell new mexico #alexappreciation2020 #malex #alex manes #michael guerin #roswellnm #roswell nm #rnm #fic #malex fic #my writing #ao3 #alicewrites

17 notes · View notes

sicklyscribe · 6 years

Text

i had a family, once

Day 3 - “Family Above All” - Writing about your favourite familial ship

Day 8 - "Lets do the time warp!” - Writing set in the past

Day 10 - Free Choice (Self explanatory, do as you wish!)

My free choice was “angst specifically targeted to break @klausmikelsons‘ heart”, fair warning.

“Sometimes there’s honor in revenge, Stefan.”

He kept the power on so that he could charge his phone.

He had fired his assistant (compelled her to politely fuck off, really) and so this month he would have to make it downstairs to the lobby to get his mail. So that he could pay the bills.

Electricity for the battery. Wireless for the cell signal. Dial-up for the computer in the study, but he didn’t need to check his email. He just figured it would be good to have, in case of a call.

Elijah sat with his head against the windowsill, feeling his eyes begin to prickle with dryness.

He ran his thumb over the buttons on the cellular phone. He’d had the phone for almost a year but only in these past few weeks the ink had rubbed off of the rubber in a telltale swipe from the tip of the 4, the corner of the 7, the whole of the 8, and most of the 6.

Muscle memory hit the arrows and selections necessary to play the most recent voicemail for the 46th time that morning.

“I told you to stop looking for me, brother.” a tinny crashing, splashing sound punctuates Niklaus’ voice. “There goes Kol! That makes three. You brought this on yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Make trouble for me again and you’ll be joining them.”

There had been a ship. There had been three coffins. It had only taken a few weeks to confirm those details. Even negating all human or vampire testimony, he had been able to determine that.

He had not been able to determine their destinations in the untouchable shadows of the Marianas Trench.

They could not be gone.

Klaus would not --

Elijah’s body was too dry for tears, it was barely well enough to move his hollow muscles to slide the phone away from him a few feet across the room.

It had not been the voicemail that had stricken him, had not been the years of silence, the compulsion of their entire network to forget the sons of Mikael existed (at least outside of Klaus’ own presence, as was his preference), had not been the per-decade meeting Klaus had missed in 2000.

It had been the doubt.

If Klaus had killed the others, if he had forsaken his oaths, Elijah would kill him.

But Klaus had become a ghost.

Klaus had the white-oak ash and the Hunter’s silver daggers (well, dagger singular, as one of Klaus’ final correspondences with Elijah in 1983 had been to tell him that one vial and one dagger had gone missing).

Elijah had no way of knowing the truth.

His only option was to gain leverage over Niklaus, and the only path to leverage was Mikael himself. Elijah couldn’t ally with him, had no leverage over Mikael to keep Klaus alive if his siblings did prove salvageable. He would need to steal the stake and make his own fratricidal threats.

But Mikael, too, had become a ghost.

Last known confirmed whereabouts had been Northern California in 1990, followed by a rumor in some midwest witch covens that the Original Father had killed one of their own a few years later.

Two years ago Elijah had found a lead on Klaus -- the Martin witches in Louisiana had lost their daughter to a rakish British stranger who left bodies in his wake and whose power nearly struck Jonas Martin to the ground when he had shaken the man’s hand. The Martin clan -- masters of old international magics. The Martin daughter -- a prodigy in the theory and practice of soul and body magics.

Elijah imagined Klaus’ body in a coffin somewhere, desiccating, while his soul enjoyed the anonymity of another’s visage.

Jonas had tried to strike him down at first, did not believe him when he said he would help the Martins recover their daughter and fell the Hybrid menace. It had taken a year before he earned his trust. Before he could say the words “I want him dead,” without trembling at the omitted if.

Mr. Martin had been searching for Klaus’ body or soul ever since his daughter disappeared, finding both cloaked beyond his means, often times by his own daughter’s power.

They were at a stalemate.

His only hope had been to try to lure Mikael to New York.

The first few months had been almost blissful, a justification for his heinous bloodlust was a welcome respite to the pain of if. Bodies in alleyways, opera house bathrooms, hotel elevators. Blood ran hot and thick and blood had always been his only oath.

Rebekah nudged against his hand, biting when he did not respond.

“Yes, Becky,” he rasped. “I know.”

He had to call the lobby and ask for someone to come get his trash, and while he waited for dinner to arrive he reached out to feel the white cat’s spine as she purred and chirped.

Knock, knock. “Mr. Falk, you called for a bellhop?”

“The door is open, please come in.” Maybe the kid would think he was a hundred-pack-a-day smoker, he surely sounded like one.

The door opened to reveal a familiar face, Elijah had already gotten this one sorted. The young man stepped inside, closed the door, and began rolling up his sleeve as he walked towards him. His gaze was blank with the months-old compulsion, not seeing or smelling the bodies in the corner of the living room.

He didn’t even flinch when Elijah bit into his outstretched wrist. He felt his tense tight graying skin revitalize just a bit as the fresh human life flowed through him for the first time in a week. As soon as he had the strength to detach and the instinct to go for the man’s neck became overwhelming, he shoved the human away from him. Perhaps a bit too hard.

Elijah took a few deep breaths, hearing the difference in his veins as they pumped a bit fuller. Then he stood, biting his own wrist with a single fang, and let the human heal himself. He straightened the boy’s sleeve himself, brushing the wrinkles smooth, and sent him on his way.

The bulk bag of cat food was stashed in a cabinet above the fridge. The cat dove and needled around his ankles as he got her a generous portion.

The storm within him calmed just a bit as he listened to the creature eat.

He had never been one for animals, not since he had died the first time. But this one had refused to be ignored, that day in the alley, staring down at him like only one other person in the world had ever done.

He had tried to give her other names. He hated that there was only one that seemed right.

She had been the only thing that eased the rushing crashing maddening flow of if if if if IF IF IF within him. Her simple loyalty -- bought with kibble and a warm place to sleep (his own bed, untouched for months) -- soothed his own.

Always and Forever, they’d said.

He was well enough to cry, now, which he did without censure. It was a silent, still affair that began as he settled back down at his place leaned against the window sill.

Rebekah settled in his lap, full and thankful, and he rested a hand on her as he shook with fury at himself for feeling that dreaded shred of doubt. If.

He couldn’t live like this. And he had no way to end this seemingly endless sentence of isolation, of purgatory for the crime of what -- seeking his brother out, when he had been told not to do so?

It didn’t add up.

But there had been a ship, and there had been three coffins.

Elijah’s thumb began the motions to play the voicemail once again when the electronic device beeped beneath his fingers. He jolted, sending Rebekah yowling off of his wrinkled slacks.

The message was not from Klaus. It was from Brando, one of his few contacts Klaus had never known about.

A Trevor and Rose want a meet. Claim 2 have a human Petrova Doppelgänger.

As Elijah stared down at the message, willing himself to reply but frozen in confusion, another message popped up with an video attachment.

It took forever for the file to load, but when it did, Elijah’s fist hit the floor and dented the hardwood. He stood immediately, eyes locked on that face.

She was unconscious, but breathing softly. Clad in a sweet pink sweater and with straight brown hair, she almost looked... younger. Innocent.

But it was Katherine.

He stood for half an hour, playing and replaying the fifteen-second video in a daze. If only it could be a human doppelgänger.

Finally, he responded. Where?

He showered for the first time in... how long? It didn’t matter. Old blood stains and grime fell away. His closet smelled dusty, but he dressed himself in a clean suit. Dabbed cologne on his wrists and neck. The cat butted her head against his hand and he petted her gratefully.

When his phone beeped again, and he typed the given number into an app on his phone he couldn’t help but smile as the location loaded.

A million thoughts coursed through his brain. The exodus from Salem. Katerina. The missing dagger. The moonstone, long thought to be somewhere in the United States.

It wasn’t the leverage he needed, but it was leverage enough to try.

He scrolled through his burner phone contacts and dialed JM.

Straight to voicemail. “Jonas. Meet me in Richmond two days from now. I mean to make good on my promise regarding your daughter.”

He slammed the flip phone shut and caught his own eyes in the mirror. He could read the if there as always, but now it finally had a measure of satisfaction.

If they are lost, we will die by my hand.

He wondered if the woman next door would be interested in adopting a cat.

#klelijah #ogappreciation18 #elijah mikaelson #the originals #TVD #my writing #sorry not sorry

56 notes · View notes

maealbert · 5 years

Text

The Liaison // Birth

AU Characters: Team x OC (Lucy De Luca) A/N: Love ya’ll! Hope you enjoy! :) Master List The Liaison

tag list: @idkbutspencer @literallyprentissstwin @remember-me-forever-silent-angel @cynbx @tenaciousarcadeexpert @rawritsmolly @dontshootmespence @princesswagger15 @drspencerreider @illegalcerebral @marvelfanlife @rt8815 @punkpenguin2019 @extremeobsessions101

Today started like any normal day. Alarm clock went off at seven o’clock, everyone took showers and got dressed with either work or school. Spencer packed the lunches for the girls while Lucy got their go bags ready in case another case came through. The sun was just rising as they left the apartment to drop the girls off at school. Kisses goodbye before Julianne walked Vivien to her class and went off to her homeroom. They flashed their badges at the guards who let them into the parking garage. It was a quiet ride up to their floor, Lucy’s head resting on Spencer’s shoulder. Once the elevators came up to their floor, they went their separate ways. Lucy to her office and Spencer to the bullpen.

Everything still seemed normal.

Reaching her desk, she sets her bag down on the floor. She brought it knowing real well that Emily wanted her to stay here in case she went into labor. Right as she sat down, a knock came on her door. Garcia peered her head in. “Hey pretty mama.”

Lucy scoffs rolling her eyes. “I don’t feel so pretty.”

“Do we have a case today?”

“I haven’t finished going through these files yet to determine where we go next.”

“Please somewhere sunny.”

“Sorry boo,” Lucy says shaking her head. “Not this time. We either have Alaska or Connecticut. Not that you would mind either way, you get to stay here in your warm office.”

“True, true. I was just hoping for you guys. Do you need me to get your anything?”

“No, I’m good right now. I’ll probably make Spencer go get food on our lunch break.”

“Well holler if you need anything.” She says before leaving the office.

Still.. Everything was normal.

Finishing her case files, she grabs her phone and shoots a text to the team to be ready in the briefing room. Picking up the stack of files, she leaves her office and heads to the briefing room. She turned on the tv and pulled everything up. Seeing one of the photos come up of a woman, she held her stomach. Taking in a deep breath, she turns away from the screen and starts to place the files around the table at the different spots before taking a seat in her own chair. One by one the team filed into the room and taking their seats at the table.

“Oooo Connecticut.” Rossi says opening his file. “Beautiful place, but not beautiful pictures.”

“So far three women were reported missing since October,” Lucy started to explain the case. “Two turned up dead in different alleyways around the town square. The third, who was the last to go missing in October, turned up alive at the police department. She was bruised pretty badly around her face and she has bruises on her wrists.”

“The same as the first two victims.” Emily pointed out.

“They were pregnant?” Luke says.

Lucy nods her head. “All three were at least seven months pregnant when they went missing.”

“And the babies?” JJ questions. “What happened to them?”

Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “No babies were dropped off at the church, fire department, or the hospital.”

“The unsub could be keeping them,” Spencer speaks up. “It’s kind of like that one case we had years ago when girls were kidnapped, impregnated and killed after giving birth. The boys were kept but the girls were dropped off churches or hospitals.”

“But none showed up at either place,” Lucy says. “I checked with all three places and none reported anyone dropping off newborns.”

“They could have gone out of state.” Matt says. “If they don’t want the child to be found, it’s easier to drop them off over the border than to keep them in town.”

Lucy’s phone vibrated on the table and she lifted it to see a text from the lead Detective on the case from Hartford. “Well.. Another woman went missing. She’s nine months pregnant and due any day. Husband reported her missing when she didn’t come home last night. He said he thought she would be home when he was already asleep but when he woke up this morning, he found the bed empty beside him. No sign of her anywhere in the house, the car was found still at the doctor’s office just like the other three women.”

“Abducting women in broad daylight,” Emily says nodding her head. “That’s very risky.”

“I’m still waiting on the security footage to be pulled from the doctor’s office to see if we can try to identify who abducted killed this women.”

“Good, stay on top of that. When it comes through, I want files sent to both Garcia’s computer and to mine. She narrow down the height to help us narrow down our list and we’ll be able to profile the unsub from Connecticut. When we land, I want JJ, Rossi, and Tara to go speak with the husband of our fourth victim. Reid, you’ll go with Luke to scope out the crime scenes and see what you can gather with location, view of the alleyways from around the town and see if our unsub could have been spotted on traffic cameras of security cameras from other shops. Matt, you’ll be with me setting up at the station and speaking with the Detective. And Lucy--”

“I’m staying here, I know.” Lucy says as she gets up from her chair.

“Yay! You get to hang out with me.” Garcia says as she hugs Lucy.

‘Good luck.’ JJ mouths holding up her thumbs before leaving the briefing room behind the others.

___________________

Lucy turned side to side in one of Garcia’s spinny chairs as she watched Garcia type quickly on her keyboard. Suddenly a video chat popped up revealing the other team members. “Hey all, I was able to figure out the height of our unsub. About five feet, six inches.” She says pulling height measurements.

“We can’t tell if it’s a male or female.” Luke says. “Do either of you see something that we missed?”

Lucy leaned forward in her chair as she looked closer at the security footage. This video was filmed right outside of the doctor’s office. She took the mouse out of Garcia’s hand and pulled up the other footages from various shops that had the alleyways in their view. “I stopped all the videos when our unsub appeared to see if it were the same person, because you know how our luck is….” Her voice trails off as she notices something in all three video feeds. “Wait..”

“What did you find?” Emily asks.

“Either our unsub is a virgin or their married.” Lucy says. “But that’s not all.”

“What else are you finding, Luce?” Spencer says.

“I see hair.” She says. “You can’t see it in the footage from the doctor’s office but you can see enough of it in the others to know it’s a female.”

“Damn she’s good.” Luke says.

“I play a lot of hidden objects games. It’s easy for me to spot things out of the ordinary.” Lucy says. “She must have a purple ombre because you can see some of her black hair underneath her hoodie.” Lucy forward all four videos until she got the unsub’s face shown. “Garcia, do you think you can try to get a photo recognition from these?”

“I can try.”

“Thanks Lucy, Garcia send us what you find.” Emily says before she logs out of the video chat. Leaning back in the chair, Lucy begins rubbing her stomach as she feels a contraction hit. Keeping a straight face she continues rubbing her stomach until the pain subsides.

Back in Washington, Connecticut; the team starts going over all of the information that they had so far. “So we now know we’re looking for a female with a purple ombre,” JJ speaks up. “How easy could that be?”

“Not so easy.” Luke says. “If we go out looking for her, she could just hide.”

“Guys guys guys!” Garcia exclaims as the video chat pops back up.

“That was quick.” Matt says as he turns his attention to the laptop.

“Did you get an ID?” Emily asks.

“And more!” Garcia exclaims again. “Thanks to our keen eye over here,” She says pointing at Lucy. “I ran recognition through every day data base known to man and BINGO! Our unsub pops up. Although the photo that came up is from her time in juvie. But I did some photoshop and changed her hair to what it looks like now and BAM!” She shoots the photo over. “I give you twenty-one year old, Marie Gilmore. Such a sweet girl who got mixed up in the wrong crowd. Drugs, illegal drinking, vandalism, trespassing, and the gig that landed her in juvie is assault and battery. She was in there for two years before being released at eighteen. Still a druggie though.”

“Whoa whoa, bring up the photo of the girl she beat up in high school.” When Garcia pulled up the photo of the girl, Lucy compared the photo to all four women. “Guys, do you see what I see?”

“The patterns are the same.” JJ says.

“Look at their wrists.” Rossi says pointing between all four photos.

“Do you think that she did the same thing to these women like the girl in high school?”

“It’s a possibility,” Emily says. “We can’t rule it out.”

A knock comes on Garcia’s office door. “Come in!” Garcia calls.

“Hey Garcia, I was wondering if you had any--Oh, I didn’t realize you were in the middle of a conversation.” Hotch says.

“No you’re fine! What brings you by?”

“I need tape.” He says.

Lucy chuckles as she rubs her stomach again. “You came all this way for some tape?”

“No, I was already here.” He says as Garcia hands him her tape dispenser.

“Oh yeah! You start today!”

“Wait, what?” Lucy says looking between the two.

“Yeah I’m your fill-in when you go on maternity leave.”

“But I’m not even on maternity leave yet.”

“I know, I’m just helping you with some paperwork right now. Don’t worry, I know you have a system. Emily explained to me how you do it.”

“Well…” Lucy says turning back around. “Good. Because I think I’m in labor.”

“What?!” Garcia and Hotch exclaimed followed by the team over the video chat.

Soon Spencer rushed out of the room. “Spence!” JJ calls running after him.

“My wife is in labor!”

“You forgot the keys!” She says tossing him the car keys to one of the SUVs outside. “Good luck!”

________________________

“No, I can’t do this.” Lucy says shaking her head. Garcia was trying to keep her calm and not to stress herself out. “I need Spencer. Spencer needs to be here. I can’t do this without.”

“Relax, everything is going to be okay.”

“Garcia, he can’t miss the birth of our baby--Oh my gosh, the girls! Someone has to pick them up from school!”

“Don’t worry about them. I sent Hotch to go pick them up.”

A knock comes on the door before a few nurses walk in followed by the doctor. “I’ve been informed that you’re dilated enough to start pushing.”

“No, no, no.” Lucy says shaking her head. “Can’t we wait until my fiance gets here? He can’t miss this.. Please, I need him.” Lucy says, her eyes watering over.

“We can’t wait, Lucy.” The doctor says. “Now when I tell you to, I need you to push.” The doctor says as she positions her on her stool. “And push!” Lucy’s screams filled the room as she gave her all.

Her screams filled the room as pain coursed through her body. Marie hovered over the woman as she kept pushing. “One more!” The doctor says as she looks up at Lucy. “He’s almost here.” Marie says as her smile grows bigger. “He’s here!” The doctor exclaims holding up a baby boy for Lucy see.

“Can I see him?” The woman says as she lifts her head from the pillow. “Can I see my baby?” Marie ignores the woman as she wraps the baby up in a blanket and leaves the room. The woman yelled after her and crying for her baby.

“You did it.” Garcia says as the nurse places the baby boy on Lucy’s chest. “He’s gorgeous.”

Marie heads for the nursery when she hears a click of a gun behind her. Stopping her tracks, she keeps her back faced to JJ. “Slowly turn around.” She growls. JJ wasn’t the type to take kindly to an abductor. Especially ones who kidnapped children. Marie slowly turned on her heels and looked up at JJ. Keeping her gun train on Marie, she loops her other arm around the baby and bringing him into her chest careful not to wake him. Emily walks around them and handcuffs Marie’s hands behind her back.

“Marie Gilmore, you’re under arrest for the four abductions, three murders, and four kidnappings. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney, if you can’t afford one, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand your rights?”

“Yes..” Marie muttered as she still stared at the baby.

Lucy couldn’t take her eyes off of her son. Though he only had a little bit of dark hair on his head, she had a feeling it would grow out to be like his father’s. A knock came on the door and Hotch peered his head in. “How are you feeling?” He asks walking over to the bed.

“Just really tired,” Lucy says smiling down at her baby. “It happened so quickly.”

“I was surprised.” Hotch says chuckling. “Have you picked out a name yet?”

Lucy nods her head. “Isaiah Derek Reid.”

“Oh Derek is going to love his name.” Garcia says as she snaps a photo of Lucy and Isaiah and sending it to the team. Lucy’s phone buzzed on the table beside the bed.

“Hello?” Lucy answers once Garcia handed her her phone.

“Hey baby, how are you feeling?”

“Tired..”

“I bet. I took a red A and I should be there in about an hour. Get as rest as you can, alright? I love you.”

“I love you too.”

_______________________

“How did the case go?” Lucy asks the team.

“Deja vu, I swear.” Rossi says rubbing his forehead. “Kathleen gave birth at the same time you did. A baby boy.”

“And Marie? How did it end for her?”

“I think once she got a look at JJ, she didn’t think twice about wanting to fight her off.” Emily laughs. “If looks could kill…”

JJ rolls her eyes as she smiles. “Don’t mess with her.” Luke jokes playfully pushing JJ.

“Well I’m glad you guys came,” Lucy says. “But I really want to thank Garcia. She is a trooper!” Lucy adds with a laugh.

“I did not pass out,” Garcia says nodding her head. “I am quite proud of myself.”

“I’m sorry, can I hold him again?” Emily asks. “He’s just so darn tiny!”

If you enjoyed this than please be sure to leave it some love!

Btw, did this remind of when JJ went into labor?

#criminal minds #criminal minds au #the liaison #original character #lucy de luca

12 notes · View notes

aestaetickookies · 3 years

Text

a true story

this story is about my little sister. let's start from the beginning, shall we? (also the beginning's a little boring but it's the background information you need to understand the story fully)

me and my brother used to have an iphone 6 (each of course). i had been begging my parents to get me an iphone 11. so the day comes and they both get iphone 12s so me and my brother get their old phones (which are iphone 10s). that left 3 iphone 6s without an owner. nobody was going to use my old one because that's trash. you can have it open and watch the battery go from 80 to 20% in 2 minutes. so there were 2 phones left.

since me and my brother got new phones, my sister has been asking for a phone too. i'm 16 and i barely got a phone number 2 summers ago before i went into 10th grade but i've had the phone since 8th grade. my brother is 14 and he's had his phone for a while too, but i don't think he'll get a phone number till he's in 11th grade. my sister is in the 6th grade so there's no reason for her to get one.

well, she decided herself that she gets one of the phones. she bought a phone case and a pop socket and stuck it on there. my parents let her because she was only going to listen to music on there really.

i don't know if you know this, but my sister is a big liar. she lies about almost everything. she lied that she uses both of the leftover phones, so my mom took one away and put it in a drawer that we never open, so my sister only had one phone.

then, a couple weeks later, my mom got an email about someone buying 3 stray kids things and the total being $40. she knows i like stray kids, but she never asked me anything and went straight for my sister. my sister kept saying that she never bought anything and stuff, but of course, that was a lie.

my mom had a talk with her about how lying is not good and then nobody will believe her and stop liking her. my sister must have looked like she understood, even though that talk took up almost an hour.

now, we are in the middle of this story. it's something you wish you would have never have done when you were in the 6th grade. this part is so bad, that it's funny when it's not you who did it. also, i was playing roblox with my cousin, so this next part is part of what i could hear and see and what my brother told me (and he's terrible at explaining).

so my dad has been trying to figure out the science behind the purchasing of the stray kids things for weeks. i, myself, have been trying to comprehend what she actually bought. my dad had to change the password on the apple id and kept needing the codes that went to my phone so i couldn't watch youtube.

then days later, he had the brilliant idea of checking my sister's phone. he got the phone she was using but there was nothing. my sister started saying that she feels bad and wants to go to sleep. it was only like 8 and we sleep at 10.

she tried to leave but my mom asked for the other phone first. my sister asked if she could take her stuff to her room first and my mom said no. then she asked if she could go to the bathroom because she had to poop. my mom still said no but she ended up going. my mom then tried looking for the other phone in the drawer that we never open. it wasn't there. she started looking for it like crazy and couldn't find it. my sister came back from the "bathroom" with the phone.

she had it in her room. earlier that day, she slept in til like 1 pm because she didn't have school. it was clear that she was actually using the phone in her room. we also had a charger that went missing but we figured out where it went.

my sister finally went to her room and my dad and brother investigated the phone. this part, i couldn't hear so this is what my brother told me.

1. she made an email even though my mom kept telling her that she couldn't (it's not that bad but i had to wait after i turned 13 to get one and my brother got it before he turned 13 and my sister got one illegally when she's 11?)

2. she got an instagram account and uses it at like 1 am for 5 hours a day (i've been asking to get an instagram for months now and my mom barely agreed to let me get one in summer)

3. she made her own apple id (to maybe have more privacy so it won't be linked to my parents' phone)

4. she stole one of my parents' visa card to be able to buy stuff (but the card is synced to their phone so she didn't really think things through)

when i use my phone when i'm not supposed to, i just play pixel art (but when i did have an illegal instagram, i used the website one so i can delete my search history but she actually used the app).

the conclusion, which is basically her punishments.

she's not allowed to have a phone until she's 14. she wasn't able to play on the computer for the whole spring break. i think she can only use and hour and a half now on weekends? (because her grades are terrible. i think her gpa is a 2. something and me and my brother have a 4.0). she's only allowed to use the ipad to watch piano videos.

sorry this is kind of long. i wanted to write this down so i can tell my cousins later but i'm starting to forget all the details so i wrote it here. so this is it. i'll be gone for another century so don't miss me.

0 notes

shirlleycoyle · 3 years

Text

The Tamagotchi Cemetery

This article was originally published on Burials and Beyond. You can subscribe to the Burials and Beyond Patreon here.

“I thought it would be better for him here because I didn’t really want to reset him because it would be like a different thing and I was really close to him. I know that sounds stupid, but I was. But you can bury your pets and if you love something else, you can bury them as well.”

So said young mourner Danielle Perren in 1997.

Interring her pet into the beautiful farmland of Pontsmill, Cornwall, Danielle’s beloved friend was placed into a tiny wooden coffin and buried in a small square grave, there to rest in peace. Danielle’s grief was very real, but her pet? Not so much. That was a Tamagotchi.

In 1996, Japanese toy designers Aki Maita and Yokoi Akihiro debuted the first ever Tamagotchi. The tiny plastic case held the world’s first virtual pet, which, despite being a simple arrangement of pixels, required constant care and attention, lest the creature perish. Released by Bandai, the egg-shaped toy was one of the biggest fads of the 90s, maintaining a surprising popularity over the decades, with over 82 million units sold as of 2017.

The name itself is a portmanteau of two Japanese words; ‘tamago’, meaning ‘egg’ and ‘uotchi’, meaning watch. Considering the product is an egg shaped toy, the size of a watch…it seems to be pretty solid marketing.

Image: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/ Sygma via Getty Images

Those of us who were at school in the 90s will vividly recall a classroom of incessant bleeps and cries of ‘I’ve gotta feed ‘im’, before the eggs were promptly and unsurprisingly banned from schoolyards. From this grew a strange, rarely remembered, sideline in individuals who would take your Tamagotchi into daycare, feeding and washing them (via tiny button clicks) until you could return from school or work. As bizarre as it sounds, after recently discovering a pair of 25-year old Tamagotchi survivors, I believe nothing to be impossible.

The Tamagotchi interface is incredibly simple, with most utilising three buttons, which correspond to care functions of the creature. The pet, should it live that long, is designed to go through a basic life cycle of Baby, Child, Teenager and Adult (with later versions adding a hopeful Senior option). However, the majority of Tamagotchis had brief, fleeting lives before succumbing to death through a child’s negligence.

While many parents bought their offspring Tamagotchis as toys, others thought that a child taking responsibility for a digital creature would be an ideal pre-pet investment, to see if they were mature enough to understand the needs of another living thing. While this is an ideal moralistic exercise, what occurred in reality was a pocket of brief generational trauma where young children woke up to find that, after sleeping though muted midi cries of hunger at 3am, their new toy had perished overnight. You killed your first pet.

Image: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/ Sygma via Getty Images

This culpability for death is one of the strangest qualities in toy history; even the death of shoals of Sea Monkeys failed to elicit such a primal reaction of grief and blame from the very young. In the new world of portable digital pets, they were expected to entertain, but not truly die. This element of blame, guilt and finality was truly amped up in the early Japanese models where a ghost and headstone would meet the neglectful owner. In more recent English-language variants, this cemetery scene was substituted for an angel of death, or a cheery little UFO, popping in to take the Tamagotchi back to its home planet. Once you’ve inadvertently murdered your new pal, the game can be reset and you’re trusted with a strange egg baby once more.

The Tamagotchi in its many forms has never shied away from death, addressing the finality of existence in its cheery little game, but also in its genuinely bizarre cartoon.

In the ninth episode of the original tie-in anime, titled ‘The First Death’, several little creatures gather and weep inconsolably at the bedside of a dying Tamagotchi (Ginjirotchi),after a small yellow doctor with mouse ears (Mametchi) confirms death. Quickly, the soul of the deceased is surrounded by tiny little angels, who guide it to the pearly gates and Tamagotchi heaven, which is mainly pink clouds and sweets. Suddenly, the sweets disappear in a cruel trap and the Tamagotchi is tormented by little bat creatures with forks (Deviltchi), before being rescued once more and taken back into hyper-cute heaven where everyone sits down and has pudding together. The whole affair lasts a matter of minutes and is as brilliant as it is disconcerting.

I never owned a Tamagotchi in my 90s heyday, as my mother couldn’t afford the indulgence. Instead, I had a knock-off variant, a Giga Pet called ‘Compu Kitty’ from Woolworths, with which I was utterly chuffed. (I still have it to this day, unable to part with the luminous yellow crap plastic atrocity.)

I vividly remember crying when I woke up for school one morning and the pixelated cat had breathed its last. But one reset later, those tears dried, and after another six hours came another death. After that, the circle of life seemed rather less majestic and a more predictable cycle of button pushing and bleeps.

In 1996, a pet cemetery in Pontsmill, Cornwall was the first to diversify their interments and fence off a dedicated section for the burial of electronic pets. When CNN reported in 1997, they equated this very modern mourning with the established love that British people have of their traditional, breathing pets.

On January 17th 1997, two teenage girls were in Cornwall to bury their Tamagotchis, named Sid and Arty, two consoles never to be reset.

My first thought was very outdated parental shock, as Tamagotchi’s weren’t terribly cheap when they came out and to bury a brand new toy seems awfully wasteful. Taking another expensive trip to Argos wouldn’t have gone down too well in my household.

However, 14-year-old Danielle was strong in her resolve and placed the little plastic contraption into the earth. She was not alone in her beliefs either, as cemetery owner Terry Squires revealed that many international burials had been carried out in his Cornish field. Tamagotchis from as far afield as Switzerland, Germany, France, Canada and America had all been laid to rest in his pet cemetery, with many more on the way.

However, looking at Pontsmill today, there are no mentions to be found of deceased cyberpets, with the business promoting itself solely as a pet cemetery and green burial site for traditional human interments. I would be curious to know if the rudimentary headstones remain, or if the Tamagotchis and their mournful batteries were turned over or forgotten as many other crazes came and went.

For those who wanted to memorialise their Tamagotchis, but didn’t fancy burying the case in the garden, there were several online cemeteries and memorial sites for dead digital pets, where eulogies, ages and causes of death could be recorded in one enormous late 90s census.

Today, there are a handful of online Tamagotchi cemeteries still functioning, if long-abandoned. However, records of their digital death and memorials remain in sites such as Tama Talk’s Memorial page. These old GeoCities or Angelfire websites are framed in pixelated gifs and solemn MIDI music where you must adjust your eyes to decipher the spidery text against questionable repeated wallpaper. In these simple databases, names and brief epitaphs are recorded; some sincere, some dismissive and some simply odd:

Banjo – Cause of Death: Died taking the biggest crap you’ve ever seen.

Joe the Dinosaur – Cause of Death: Accidental Resetting.

‘My poor Joe. The first born. He had a good life and was taken care of very well It was unfortunate that his life had to come to such an abrupt end, whilst living in a jeans pocket. We shall all miss him very dearly.’

These eulogies and epitaphs are time capsules of young people’s first interactions with death and loss, where an essay can prove as impactful as an unplanned tumble into a bathtub. There’s a certain importance of a digital emotional connection in childhood that deserves to remain memorialised, and not lost to the ether.

The levels of emotional investment that we have with digital media, and computers in particular, has been tracked by researchers since the 1980s. Alan Turing said in his 1950 paper ‘Can Machines Think?’ that we can judge the intelligence of a computer by its performance in conversation with man. Namely, if the computer is able to convince the human subject that they are talking to a fellow human and not a machine, then human-equivalent intelligence can be determined. This test became known as the ‘Turing Test’ and is still studied and implemented today in experiments of navigating artificial technology, or the ability of ‘bots’ to mimic human interaction.

In the intervening decades, it has been noted that people attribute an increased level of personhood to a computer, not least in terms of pre-programmed gameplay. Therefore, if a Tamagotchi was able to incite very real joy and grief from its user or owner, it could be seen as the first great wave of artificial intelligence in the western world.

In more extreme contemporary circumstances, man’s relationship with digital games has snowballed. While in terms of toys, other digital pets like the Furby, Poo-Chi (which I did own briefly, but was swiftly broken by my portly, recently-divorced father screaming into its microphone on Christmas day. I’m over it. It’s fine.) or even NeoPets virtual pet community have not brought about the same primal love and devotion as the humble Tamagotchi. Perhaps it was the inevitability of death that separated our love for the Tama from its immortal digital counterparts.

However, interactions with digital gameplay appear to have moved in two separate directions; ambivalence and devotion.

Today, electronic games and pets are commonplace, providing no new emotional experiences for children who have grown up within the digital age, where entertainment can be accessed at the click of a button and nothing is finite.

On the other hand, there are instances of individuals such as a 27-year old Japanese man named Sal 9000 (the only name he would provide to the press), who was so emotionally invested in the DS Game ‘Love Plus’, decided to marry the main avatar in a lavish, if highly controversial ceremony in 2009. When questioned as to whether he could truly love a digital, pre-programmed woman, he explained that “I love this character, not a machine.” Going on to say that “I understand 100 percent that this is a game. I understand very well that I cannot marry her physically or legally.”

However, his preference for the digital, predictable and placid provoked far more discussion. Explaining that Nene Anegasakiwas better than a ‘real’ girlfriend, he listed her perks, stating that, “She doesn’t get angry if I’m late in replying to her. Well, she gets angry, but she forgives me quickly.”[1]

Sal is not alone in his preference and several others have followed in his stead, marrying digital characters in ceremonies across the world. In 2018, Japan hit the headlines again as 35-year-old school administrator Akihiko Kondo married the hologram of video game character, Hatsune Miku. Whether these marriages will last when the bride’s updates are discontinued is another matter, but our changing relationship with life, love, and death in the digital age is undeniable.

On which note, I’ll thank you for taking this strange journey with me and take my leave. My Compu Kitty needs feeding.

The Tamagotchi Cemetery syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

1 note · View note

stone-man-warrior · 3 years

Text

March 13, 2021: 3:24 pm:

================================================

Terror bastards use the norton security product to hack into my computer, they use these kinds of pop-up graphics somehow to gain access to my computer. They can hack into your computer too if you use Centurylink internet ISP.

That rash on my leg is on both legs now.

It’s changing from one set of conditions to a different set of conditions and is far more painful than it looks.

There is no place I can go to get medical treatment for this condition.

Yes, there are hospitals, urgent care, and clinics nearby.

The problem is that there are no doctors at the hospitals, urgent care, and clinics.

The terror army took over the medical health centers, there are terror soldiers dressed as doctors and nurses, receptionists, and technicians at the hospitals, urgent care, and clinics.

The terror army is using the Corona Virus and COVID as a weapon where citizens are poisoned. they see some symptoms such as that rash on my legs, the victim goes to get treatment, but the hospital, clinic, Urgent Care is hijacked, is controlled by the terror army, but from a distance, and from inside of the medical provider office, the medical providers look as if there is no problem there. The terror army is composed of trained actors. They took over the medical providers by force over the course of many years in preparation for the role out of the Corona Virus Attack on citizens of USA.

That rash is going to kill me.

There is nothing I can do to stop it.

no one will help me.

Chances are that all I need is some antibiotics, but those are not available without a prescription from a doctor.

I was at a “Doctor” on March 3 at Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon, and begged the “doctor” to help me. I was showed him the rash, and also was there the month before that begging for help, showed him the rash.

The doctor only said that I need to go to a different doctor, would not make a referral to one, he left it up to me to find some help on my own, and would not even prescribe some antibiotics.

I have been showing that rash to the same doctor for more than four years begging for some help as the rash has progressed from a small thing to a very large multi-symptomatic thing.

Please send help.

Please send medical services to Josephine county Oregon.

================

Local conditions:

I walked to Jackpine along my driveway.

Monroe terror cell has yet gained another Quad offroad vehicle, a Grey Polaris, a big one with custom wheels.

That makes three very expensive Quad offroad vehicles that they have there, the ones that have been are almost never used, so this third one is a mystery, is there to get some kind of reaction from me.

Also, new guy at 445 across the street was riding a different lawn mower than the one I saw the other day when there was a red riding mower with leaf catcher, now is a new looking black riding lawn mower with some special aparatus that I don‘t know what it is on the back of it. The parked the thing as I reached Jackpine, so I did not get a good look at it, and was about 400 feet or more away when I noticed that the lawn mower changed from red to shiny black.

The color changing lawn mower is also being done to get some kind of reaction from me. The lawn mower only began to be used as I stepped out for a walk. The terror bastards continue to used listening devises that are hidden around my front entry door for doing an attack on me.

I heard an emergency vehicle siren in the distance somewhere on Pleasant Valley Road is best guess while I was walking to Jackpine and back again.

The hood of my car was opened when I went outside for a walk. I don‘t see that anything is missing, but something could have been planted in my car.

The hood to the car only opens from inside the car, so, someone has a key to the car, and that someone is the county sheriff, as the sheriff is the only person who has had my keys in his possession.

I disconnected the battery to the car last night as I have been doing in effort to avoid the terror bastards who have the remote control thing that can operate so many different components of my car, as has been noted on this account elsewhere.

I am frightened of the advance and change in that rash, and that it has spread to my left leg.

I have only peroxide, Neo-sporin, some vitamin E, and Fish Oil available to fight the spread of the effect of the poisons I am subject to in my neighborhood.

Please learn from this account so that my experience can be used as a means to develop a national defense for protecting the people of USA and for preserving the USA and the Freedom we once had in United States of America.

There is no more freedom, in case you have not noticed,

The thing I had been warning about happened, it’s already been done.

I started this account to get some help to stop terrorism, I told that we had until January of 2020 to defend the country.

That time has passed, and still there has been no defense made against the terror takeover of USA.

It’s just a slaughter, no one is fighting back. I am the only person who is defending on behalf of USA, and no one will lift a finger to help me protect their own lives.

===================

Local terror conditions:

I took another short walk, it hurts too bad to go farther than this point right here, where the Monroe Offensive Surveillance Travel Trailer was put there by people associated with the Grants Pass Walmart about three years ago. I am standing on my driveway from where the photo was taken, I have to pass by that trailer to take a walk to get my mail or to leave in my car, there is the trailer, there is the new addition of yet another Quad at Monroe’s that I mentioned. The trailer door is open, and there is at least one terror soldier inside the offensive trailer right now. The Polaris Quad is that thing with the Mr. McGoo Car looking cover over it, Monroe uses those rain shield quad covers for disguising the quads that they have stolen from the US Citizens they kill when the citizens come to Oregon on vacation. That travel trailer is likely to have belonged to a murdered US Citizen who came to Oregon on vacation, as are most of the many hundreds of such travel trailers that are parked in the immediate neighborhood area.

That trailer is not supposed to be used as a residence, this area is not zoned for that kind of installation, and it does not fulfill requirements for a temporary “Hardship Dwelling”.

What happens there, is a variety of terror cells come to Jackpine to kill me. That trailer serves a number of uses, mostly is a place for the terror cell members to see who I am, learn my habits, and that trailer is just about 400 - 500 feet away from my front door, it’s within “Blu-tooth” broadcast range and that is what makes it a offensive surveillance travel trailer. They use that trailer as a staging area, and there is almost always someone there in or around that trailer waiting for opportunity to attack me in my home, or on my driveway, or on Jackpine once I get there on a walk.

I stayed outside for about ten minutes, during that time I could here someone was hiding behind my other house, but I am not able to chase after them and they know I am hurt, that is why there is someone in the trailer now. Injured people are far easier to hunt and kill that healthy ones. That’s why the terror army prefers to hunt and kill elderly and disabled people most.

There were three aircraft flyovers while I was outside.

One was a helicopter, large, about a six passenger, sleek design, grey black & white in color, went south at about 1,200 feet altitude. I did not recognize the helicopter as a local helicopter, is not a regular for this area.

The next one was a small private fixed wing airplane, was old, is a local airplane, is part of the terror airforce, is a regular flyover airplane around here, is one that releases poison gas from the airplane. That one is white & red, has a red tail section and red stripe on the fuselage. That airplane was headed West, got over my property and then turned to the north, also at about 1,200 feet altitude. That airplane is part of the terror airforce that Janice Freeberg of 535 Jackpine, is commander of.

The next airplane was a commercial airliner, was very high, more than 30,000 feet altitude, was going north.

I am not concerned about the commercial jet as far as release of poison gas is concerned, but the red fixed wing airplane is of concern.

Please send help.

=================

6:47 pm:

Local conditions:

Desperate to find remedy, relief from the pain of that leg rash, I have chosen to take short walks in effort to get some blood to flow in my leg. As I have reported, the walking was extremely painful at my calf muscle as it locked up into spasms after about one or two hundred feet of walking. Despite the pain, I found that the walk is the best remedy. I noticed at the Walmart yesterday that if I force myself to continue the walk, to power through the pain, is the best thing, and the pain at the calf muscle has become less with each walk.

I am seeing changes in the skin rash this afternoon when I apply the hydrogen peroxide. The application of peroxide is revealing that infection is bubbling out of each skin pore from my knee to my ankle on the right leg. The left leg is revealing that with application of peroxide, there is no infection present on the left leg. Each skin pore is bubbling in a way that I don‘t think I have ever seen before today. Yesterday, the application of peroxide only revealed infection bubbling from the visible sores in a few places, where today the bubbling is consistent along the surface of the skin in small bubbles on the shin area from the knee to ankle, front side, not calf side.

That tells me that the walking is best. I walked all over the Walmart yesterday, and the more I walked, the less my calf was hurting. Today, I have been trying to take walks, but the Monroe terror cell, and the “new guy” at across the street are making it unsafe to take a short walk in more blatant ways than is usual.

The person in the trailer is someone who I believe is the current leading terror soldier of the Sunflower terror cell. That Sunflower terror cell is located directly behind Chartrand’s terror cell, and is on Russell Road.

The terror soldier at the Offensive Monroe Surveillance Travel Trailer is a female, about 40 years old, about 5′5″, about 185 pounds, has short brown hair parted on the side, looks like a boy, and wears glasses.

She resembles “Pat” from old Saturday night Live episodes sort of.

That terror soldier is working along with one of the “Bad Guy Automotive” terror cell members, a young male, about 35 years old, dark brown hair, about 5′11″, 200 pounds, has a beard that only is on his neck, and below the chin, is a strange looking beard. I saw him in the driveway at Bad Guy Auto yesterday, corner of Three Pines and Russell Road as I left to go to Walmart, now he is at Monroe’s terror cell at 434 Jackpine. Part of the significance of this is that Bad Guy Auto is a Google terror cell, one that is disguised as a neighborhood auto mechanic.

When you consider that Centurylink phone lines do not go where they are mapped to go, are all “spaghetti” because the terror army has the terminal access boxes rigged so that no one other than a few people actually know where the ends of the phone wires go to from the Centurylink HQ ... when you consider that, and add a Google terror cell into the mix, the results of doing any national security surveillance will produce only confusion and dangerous conditions where federal investigative persons are lured into traps because they trust the Centurylink service area network map of phone lines when they do phone or internet use surveillance.

So, that guy with the strange looking beard is the dangerous one, and the woman at the Monroe trailer is bait, is a lure, she is dangerous also, but in a way where she is offensive by playing and looking as an innocent church goer.

The reason for this part of the entry about local conditions is that I need document my need to take a walk to get some relief from the rash, but that woman keeps coming out of the trailer and singing songs very loud as I go for a walk and get close to that part of my driveway. When she starts singing loud, that is when the guy with the strange looking beard comes out of Monroe’s main house to go join the girl who was singing, all that is going on while others from 520 and 598 are hidden in the pole barn and in the creek bottom, and in my yard hiding around the buildings on my property waiting for a chance to shoot me with a cross bow. The terrorists poisoned me from Monroe’s, they block my internet and phone somehow from Monroe’s and other locations on Jackpine, and they prevent me from safely taking a walk in effort to get some relief from the effects of the poisons that they expose me to daily for the past five years or so.

Reminder:

The address at 434 and the address at 520 Jackpine, were both willed to me by my friend who owned both properties, James Nicholas Watson “nick”. He and his wife Kathy were killed by the terror army, but he had willed his properties to me. I was never able to gain possession of the properties, and the Josephine County Courts made arrangements for others to take possession of 434 and 520 Jackpine.

I am being slowly killed by people who stole real estate that belongs to me, from the stolen property address location next door on each side.

On Monday, I have to go to the courthouse for a hearing about a stalking charge made by the “new guy” at 445.

The reality is the situation is “Role Reversal”. Is a standard practice of much of the terror take over of USA.

I have zero chance to survive the court hearing. The court house is a real coury house, been there a long time, the Judges and all of the staff in all of the so called county offices there are all fake, they are all terror soldiers and special terror operatives trained by Screen Actor Guild to play role of Judge, stenographer, Bailiff, and all of the other people who are at the courthouse.

I could say much about experiences I have endured at the courthouse, some of them are already documented on this account, but national security interview I could reveal much more, and that is part of why I have zero chance to survive the fake stalking order hearing on Monday.

Typical courtroom jockeying includes that the time and courtroom number will change one or more times before the hearing begins, I have been to a few hearings, and so far, none of them have happened without the time of the hearing changed, and the court room number changed at least once on the day of the actual hearing. They tend to happen a few hours later, and in a different room number than is posted originally. You have to pay close attention to the electronic schedule they have at the courthouse, so, be advised of the likelihood of a location and timing change of the venue and hearing on Monday.

===============

This observation may be helpful to public safety persons:

Look at the controls at the bottom of the text entry. That pencil, that is the “Edit” button, is what Tumblr users use to make additional comments to an existing Tumblr entry as I am doing now. The thing about that pencil and some of the other controls there is that just now is the first time I have seen that pencil shaped edit button in a long, long, long time. The edit pencil has not been there for quite a long time, I have been making edits a different way, a more involved route to get to a edit button, now, suddenly, the edit button is available the way it’s supposed to be, it’s right there, is easy to access, I don’t have to go to a special URL now, I only need to push the pencil button to make additional comments or to make spelling and other corrections.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

Bad Guy Auto will see what I just wrote, and report to his commanders at Google HQ, then, it won‘t be easy anymore, it will go back to being difficult and time consuming to find the edit button, as it has been this past few months.

=========

9:09 pm:

A little while ago I tried to take another walk outside, but the Monroe Offensive Surveillance Travel Trailer is operating on some kind of super offensive fuel. As I walked and got closer to that area on my walking path, that is when that “Sunflower” terror cell representative started using a PA System out front of the trailer, complete with disco ball, colorful lights all blinking in festive color, and back-up music, she began doing a Karaoke concert and sang “Stand By Me” in the style of Ben E. King.

That is when someone driving the Janice “Jay-Bob” Freeberg grey Cross-Over style car drove by. I think it’s a Nissan Rogue, but I am not certain, those “Cross-Over” style cars are extremely popular with the SDA terror army members especially, all of the car manufacturers make a “Cross-Over” style car, and all of the “Cross-Over” style vehicles seem to look remarkably similar to me, so, to know exactly what kind of car it is, you need to get close enough to read the emblems.

I am almost certain that Janice “Jay-Bob” Freeberg is dead, but someone is driving her car to her house tonight.

I suppose a description is in order, so, she is about 55 years old white female, used to have bright red hair, but is grey now, and is short hair. Jay is about 5′6″ and about 175 pounds. She is visibly bow-legged and looks very “manly” to me. Her husband, Bruce Freeberg is the pilot of the F-18 Fighter jet trainer that I ejected from the day the 173rd air guard in Klamath Falls was taken over by terror soldiers a long, long time ago. Bruce Freeberg worked at Erickson Aircrane in Eagle Point, and that place makes big, powerful, specialized custom helicopters made from Sikorsky chassis. They are shipped all over the world from Erickson Air Crane of Eagle Point Oregon. Bruce Freeberg went into the Pacific Ocean along with the F-18 Fighter jet two seat trainer airplane from 173rd Air Guard. I was roped into joining Bruce for a drive to Klamath Falls one day, and the result was the 173rd Air Guard was hijacked by a whole bunch of terror soldiers. Bruce had gone there to steal an airplane, and he did not know how to read English, so, I convinced him that he needed someone with him to read the gauges for him, and that is how I got onto the airplane with him. There was no time for thinking, I just saw what was happening, and arranged that I could prevent that one airplane from being in the hands of the terror army that was taking over the 173rd Air Guard at Kingsley Field. I got onto the airplane so that I could eject, and I needed to make a phone call while in flight in order to know how to eject. I called someone I used to know, who was a US Military serviceman, and I was given instructions over the phone about how to eject. I specifically needed to know who goes first, passenger or pilot. I arranged that Bruce would stay in the airplane, or that the pilot seat would not eject as it was supposed to do.

It’s been about ten, or maybe fifteen years since I ejected from a stolen US national Guard fighter jet, and to this day, no one has bothered to ask me one single question about what happened that day in Klamath Falls Oregon at the 173rd Air Guard Fighter Wing at Kingsley Field.

no one is interested, though I actually beg for help, there are no people in USA who are interested in US national security. The truth is so overwhelming that the US Military bases are being hijacked by the Canadian terror army, and even if someone has information that could prevent further takeover, and save the lives of the US Servicemen who were attacked at the bases, even if someone begs for an interview, only assassins come in response to the request to say what is known about the terrorism.

That jet is in the Pacific Ocean unless Mike Pompeo went and found it. I am under the impression the jet was destined for Del norte County Regional Airport at Pelican Bay Prison. Pelican Bay is also a hijacked Canadian terror occupied former US possession, but, Pelican Bay Prison is now a secret terror submarine base. I have been begging to say what I know about it, in effort to gain back my own safety, save the lives of my family, gain back the freedom that was lost so long ago, and to prevent what is happening now, the complete and utter dismantling of USA. The terror army is using the Corona Virus and COVID as a cover for attack on US Citizens for taking over USA. It looks as if the plan is a global plan, and nations all over the world are being taken over by the British who are using the media networks and air waves of broadcast frequencies for commanding the terror army in coded mainstream news stories on Twitter for the most part.

Twitter is still active. The terror commands are continuous. There is no one interested in stopping the global takeover. I don’t see any signs of resistance to being systematically exterminated anywhere on earth.

So, Janice Freeberg’s car just went to the Freeberg residence at 535 Jackpine, and Freeberg is of the caliber of terror operative that warrants explanation of what I explained above, yet there is no one interested in that caliber of terrorist. They are only interested in believing false accusations of an senior citizen disabled man with no family or friends stalking a young, healthy, armed, well equipped terror soldier who has a lot of friends.

0 notes

booksaremyoxygenn · 6 years

Text

Ready Player One: Book Review & Discussion

“We’d been born into an ugly world, and the OASIS was our one happy refuge.”

If you love video games and the 80s, you MUST read this book. USA Today’s comparison of Ready Player One to Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory couldn't have been more spot on, but instead of the inheritance of a man who owns a chocolate factory he is playing for the inheritance of a video game creator.

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars

My biggest argument is that because there was so much info and teaching about the 80s and video game references it felt choppy and it was hard to get lost in the book. However I absolutely loved learning all of those fascinating pieces of information. There were surprisingly many great life lessons in this book and I feel like I am walking away more knowledgeable.

Age Recommendation: Well.... it depends on the child. It does curse a few times (but let’s be honest the kids already know the words, the aim isn’t for them not to learn it but to know not to use it.) However there is a bit of a lengthy section on things I would not even want my 13 year old sister reading on 193-194 so I recommend you take their book, rip that page out and then they are all ready to go. They will never even miss it. I think there are great life lessons in this book though for a young teen age group like the importance of logging off and living offline and not getting wrapped up in trying to constantly escape the real world. It talks about how people should be judged by their personality not their appearance. If we could simply choose out skin color, gender, and appearance like an avatar, life would be easier but life doesn’t work that way so accept people the way they are. You may surprise yourself with who your closest friends up being.

Spoiler- Free Review:

Wade just really doesn’t like his lot in life, whether that be in the real world when he’d rather be in a video game or that he is in the 2040s when he’d rather be born in the the 80s, or at the least before the Global Energy Crisis. Though he doesn’t mind living in OASIS soaking up the endless knowledge. The vast source of all books, movies, art, history, videogames, and, most importantly, information on James Halliday. OASIS is like the internet but with VR glasses only 10x more detailed, advanced, and infinite. Wade doesn’t even go to a real school he goes through the virtual reality of OASIS. “In OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.” (pg 57) When James Halliday, inventor of OASIS, dies and leaves his fortune (240 billion dollars) to the first player to find the three keys hidden within his own video game, the world goes crazy in pursuit. Though after numerous years no one had found a single key, until Wade. That’s how the story begins.

I loved that Cline’s writing encourages readers who know nothing about the 80s or video games to read this book. That has been a massive concern for people before they pick up this book, that they won’t understand the references. To be honest, there were many hidden “eggs” in the text that I saw that I knew were references that I just didn’t understand. (Which was still cool and I enjoyed looking them up and learning more.) However, all of the big, important references he explains in the book and he doesn’t make you feel stupid for not knowing but explains it clearly for those of us who aren’t experts. I genuinely feel more intelligent by reading this book and now know a lot more about pop culture in the 80s. Who knows this all may come in handy on Trivia Night? I highly recommend this book for a fun, nostalgic read.

SPOILER Review / Book Discussion:

Isn’t it scary how possible this all could be? With virtual reality continually advancing (in real life) how much longer will it take until people go to school in virtual reality like Wade or before the internet takes on this new form?

Though obviously in Wade’s world as technology has advanced his real world has been given up on. The stacks, while a great concept and super cool looking on the front cover, are atrocious living conditions. Though I must give Wade kutos on his battery powered heater and computer but really just his van in general. It makes me want to make my own Bat Cave inside a van. This was when I knew what his advantage would be in this game, he was a self-teacher, self-motivator, and dedicated his whole life to the hunt.

One of my favorite parts about Cline’s writing was how it was constantly breaking stereotypes and speaking about important topics. I really appreciated the backstory that he gave Halliday. Especially how even though he wasn’t good at school he became a multi-billionaire. I am so tired of the assumption that being good at school has a direct correlation with future success. So many people who have changed the world never went to college, dropped out, or did poorly in high school. Another thing that I loved was the fact that this whole story wouldn’t have happened if Ogden Marrow (Og) wouldn’t have walked over to Halliday when he was sitting alone and invited him to play Dungeons and Dragons. It reminds me how much can change by a simple act of kindness and stepping out of your comfort zone to talk to new people. This whole story wouldn’t have happened, their world may have been drastically different if it wasn’t for Og’s invite. My favorite part though was how he had Asperger’s autism because my older brother has it as well and I could see the connections. Halliday’s lack of desire to express social skills, inability to step into other people’s shoes, and his few unhealthy obsessions were the most common traits. However I wish he wouldn’t have made the connections between Halliday’s crazy side and his Aspergers because that gives a bad name to this type of autism. (I mean you can’t win every battle right?)

One thing that really bothered my is how indifferent Wade was to risking everyone’s lives in the Stacks during his meeting with IOI. Once he realized he wasn’t actually gambling his own life because he wasn’t at home then it didn’t bother him anymore. He was willing to risk that. I understand that his aunt was cruel to him and that there were thieves and rapists roaming around the stacks but that’s not a good enough excuse as to why his conscious was clear about all those people he played a part in murdering. He said that there were no survivors. I understand that his other option was be enslaved to IOI but he is very smart, he could have figured out an alternative where hundreds of uninvolved people don’t die. (pg 146)

I personally love when authors put deep meaning into characters, places, animals and other things’ names. I loved that Art3mis was the greek god of the hunt and that Wade was Parzival. “On the day the Hunt began, the day I’d decided to become a gunter, I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail.” (pg 28) I love when author’s twist different stories together like that and give character’s deeply meaningful names. Like Alaska in John Green’s Looking for Alaska, or Katniss from The Hunger Games whose name is from a plant that is latin for archer. I prefer a bit more meaning than when Rainbow Rowell named the twins in Fangirl Cath and Wren because the mother didn’t know she was going to have twins so she split up the name Catherine. Though I do apprecaite it more than when authors just randomly name thier characters. (Also, Darth Vader’s name is literally Dark Father in Dutch so his name is a spoiler in itself.) I applaud Cline for his good choice in names.

The first task was where players went into the Tomb of Horrors from Dungeons & Dragons to play Joust against Acereak. It was amusing to me but as someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons the references were lost on me. However this line really stuck me as funny..... “It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over controls of a classic arcade game.” (pg 82) The whole time after he met Acererak I just imagined him going from his scary, glowing eyes to his best friend playing a video game and them fist bumping each other. Like I genuinely wanted them to become friends. Haha.

The first gate was where players played Dungeons of Daggorath to open the gate where they had to say and act all the lines of the character David Lightman in the film WarGames. This was my favorite task / gate he had to do and I wish I had my own version for The Hunger Games where I could be Katniss. Anyone else agree? They called them “Fliksyncs” (112) and I genuinely think if they make something like it in real life, it could be my favorite invention of all time. You would get to walk, talk, and live the life of your favorite character, your heroes, or be 1/2 of your favorite OTPs. ( I would gladly be Clary to play besides Jace from The Mortal Instruments... just putting it out there.)

A really important message that spread throughout the span of the book was that the internet (OASIS in RPO’s case) can take over our lives. ”It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote, “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.” (pg 120) How much truer does that get?? Than once Wade won the egg even Halliday admitted that that was one of his biggest regrets, not logging off and living life the way it was meant to be, truly using your senses and awakening your body instead of constantly trying to mute it and hide yourself. “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be. it is also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?” (pg 364) I think that is something people across the globe can relate to. We could all use a lesson in learning when to turn off our screens and fully engage in the world around us.

Another really important message was during that OH MY GOSH! AECH REVEAL!.... which at first I felt like it changed everything but that’s the whole point, it didn’t change anything. She was still the same person she had always been. We see what we want to see in a person when we make assumptions about them from what they look like. It’s just a genuine reminder of how the lines between gender are so fluid and it doesn’t matter what you are born but how you act. I’m not even referencing transgender specifically but just boys being free to like pink and girls feeling free to be obsessed with Star Wars and video games. Though there was another lesson in this which was how she chose to be a white, male avatar, because her mother told her it would help her get treated better, even in the virtual world. “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320) Why is this so painfully true?? I really loved what Wade said after he found out, “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.” (pg 321) Though I will admit I am glad that Cline made Ache a lesbian because I was worried she was going to confess her love to him and then Wade would have to choose.... and there just wasn’t enough pages left in the book for all that drama. Plus I really love when books allow guys and girls to just be friends without every liking each other romantically.

The final thing, that I wouldn’t dream of ending this review/discussion without talking about is... Art3mis. Can we talk about how she started out such a strong character who was a fighter, independent blogger and full time badass who knows exactly how she plans on saving the world with the prize money from the egg. But then as time goes on she transforms more into a love interest than a fierce competitor. I think she sees this as well which is why she leaves him to focus on the competition. Though at the very end when she finally meets Wade in person she does that thing that Reese Witherspoon talks about in her Woman of the Year speech. Where Art3mis, the female, turns to Wade, the male, and pretty much says, what do we do now? This is a phrase Reese says she hates reading the most and is usually written by scripts with no female involved in the writing. She says “Now you do you know any woman in any crisis situation.. who has absolutely no idea what to do?” Reese made a good point in saying that it’s top woman stop playing the damsel in distress because we so rarely are. Art3mis went from this total badass who could carry her own to a self conscious, love interest. However, I am so glad that Art3mis gave up Wade for the hunt in some ways because if she would have given up her passions and her life long goal for a boy, I would have been more insulted. Personally, I just really like strong, female leads and am getting tired of women being accessories to males. I’m also tired of the never ending line of self conscious characters (both female and male) who find their self worth and beauty once their romantic interests informs them that it exists. So thank you to characters like Celaena Sardothien, Alaska Young, and Margo Roth Spiegelman for showing the world that it’s cool to love yourself and know you are amazing. Though I was still rooting for Art3metis because of her strong will and good intentions for the prize.

In the end everything seemed to fall perfectly in place which made me so happy. No loose threads and a beautiful, sappy, happy ever after. The character development for Wade was so great and I felt happy walking away from this book knowing that things were going well for him.

Favorite Quotes:

1.) How the protagonist, Wade, feels about video games is how I feel about books...

"Playing old video games never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple" (pg 14)

2.) Me when I get into a good book series....

“I was obsessed. I wouldn’t quit. My grades suffered. I didn’t care.” (pg 63)

3.) “Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I’d never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before. Not even with Aech.” (pg 174)

4.) “I was watching a collection of vintage ‘80′s commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.” (pg 176)

5.) “And then one night, like a complete idiot, I told her how I felt.” (pg 179)

6.) “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that’s beautiful.” (pg 199)

7.) “I stood outside her palace gates for two solid hours, with a boombox over my head, blasting “In Your Eyes” by Peter gabriel at full volume.” (pg 203)

8.) “Art3mis had led me to believe that she was somehow hideous but now I saw that nothing could have been further from the truth. To my eyes, the birthmark did absolutely nothing to diminish her beauty. If anything, the face I saw in the photo seemed even more beautiful to me than that of her avatar, because I knew it was this one was real.” (pg 292)

9.) “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320)

10.) “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation. (pg 321)

Discussion Questions:

1.) Would you apply for the virtual OASIS education like Wade?

When Wade talks about his classes and how he is able to travel through a human heart, visit the Louvre, Jupiter’s moons and more it makes me think that our education system could be so much better with this technology. For one, he discusses how discipline isn’t a problem, how Wade can mute out bullies, and how even the teachers liked the system so much more. It gives students the ability to do things like Wade did and go to chat rooms with his friends in his free time and hang out with people he likes and avoid / mute the ones he doesn’t. I think there are major problems like affordability and the fact that you miss out on real human interaction that scientists have proven is needed for a healthy mind, body, and soul.

2.) If you were a gunter, would you join a clan or stay solo?

In the end I think that part of the lesson Holliday was trying to teach is that you need other people to succeed. You need help and can’t do everything on your own. Why else would he have made the door only open with three keys?

3.) If you were Wade would you sell out to sponsors, movie and book people, and the Suxors? or would you risk it all on the chance of being the first to find the egg?

4.) What movie would you want to enter into like Wade did for the first gate for a “Syncflik”? Could you complete the dialogue for a whole movie?

5.) Did they fake drink at the bar at Og’s party because they hadn’t ever been able to eat or drink inside the OASIS before?

6.) Has social media become obsolete in their world or is the avatar practically their form of social media? Or instead of trying to impress people with how they went to the beach or the expensive Louis Vuittons they just bought, do they put their energy into impressing through their OASIS accounts?

7.) Doesn’t IOI trying to capitalize on OASIS sound a lot like the government trying to end net neutrality? I think this whole story is a lot more realistic than most of us would like to admit to ourselves. (pg 33)

Movie Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSp1dM2Vj48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scj3wiIcSu0&t=115s

I really hope they keep the Rocky Horror Show scene (pg 179) in the movie because I want to see them have fun and be laid back together. Plus it would be really funny. It was super entertaining in Perks of Being A Wallflower when Charlie has to be in the show. Also, I saw the zero gravity dance floor and the revamped Delorean in the movie trailer and can’t wait to see more of that. (pg 182)

The only thing that would make me immediately hate this movie is if they don’t give Art3mis her birthmark and so far in the trailer I noticed that they have only distinctly shown one side of her face but in the clip where she is sitting in a chair across from Wade you can see most of her face and I didn’t see any scar. What a missed opportunity? Unless they are having her cover it in the first half of the movie with makeup or something. The greatest parts of this book were the lessons learned and I think him meaning that he would love her no matter what she looked like in person because he loved who she was is a crucial part of the story and the birthmark plays a large role in that. It was an opportunity to give people who had similar situations like birthmarks have someone that looked like them in a movie to relate to. I think it really could have been something special.

The other thing that is a bit of a turn off is the body form they gave Ache in the movie because it means that she won’t be able to have that moment talking about how she chose a white, male avatar because of how she felt at a disadvantage as a African American woman and wanted her avatar to be able to escape that. Also the actress they cast is thin so it is another missed opportunity.

Also the choice of the song from Willy Wonka “Pure Imagination” was genius for the trailer. It was beyond perfect!

Side Note:

Also, if you would like to watch part 2 of this book... it’s called WALL-E. There are different characters but it is definitely what Wade’s planet earth is going to look like very soon. They were all absorbed in the internet and forgot about real life and how to make connections, just like this book. I mean Wade even notices his weight gain from being overly absorbed into the game. (pg 196)

18 notes · View notes

berlinner · 4 years

Photo

panic in mouse park (james joyce style)

in the heat of the late afternoon in the midst of sorting out 10,000 idiotic details a) with discmakers for our new badville EP and b) with cd baby so that the ‘mastered for iTunes that bob weston did for us gets properly uploaded I’m on the phone at least 7 times with both companies even though they’re the same company and each time i think i have it all sorted out i hit another snag on another link page and have to call again and wait because the outgoing robot message keeps repeating: ‘we are very busy with calls at this time and we’ll get to you in X minutes and i go through this over and over again just as my computer screen lights up to warn me that the batteries on my mouse are low and i’d better jump on it or i’ll be fucked and a text comes in from work to say they want me in there early and the kitties are staring up at me because it’s feed time and the clock is running out on all this as i spill the batteries from my fireplace slim jim closet onto my desk totally not sure which ones are good and which ones are dead because i’d popped the old ones out of my mouse to replace them in the same spot where the new ones are collecting, glasses on, glasses off to locate the good one as the thermometer in my head climbs higher and higher because no matter which set of batteries i stick in the remote (and by the way where are the old-school mice i used to have lying around?! no amount of standing on a chair in my party closet will turn up an old-school mouse) glasses on, glasses off, glasses misplaced and now it’s getting later and closer to d-day for getting the cats fed and getting pretty for work and the mouse still doesn’t work and my computer screen is frozen and it’s time to call applecare but i can’t access my address book because my mouse isn’t active and there’s no cursor but wait, the applecare number’s in my iPhone so i make the call, more robot outgoing messages and someone answers to direct my call and can i please give her the serial number of my iMac? and i yell at her no, i can’t do that because my mouse isn’t working and my screen is locked and WHATTHEFUCK!!! I’m screaming at her and she is calm like a shrink facing down a madman ‘what is your email address?’ and i give it to her and that does the trick i can hear her smiling as my blood is reaching the boiling point and i get jake or jonah or puck or some handsome sounding kid on the phone and run the whole meghila down all over again for him and he says he’ll be able to help he understands how frustrating this must be for me (my filthy language over the phone confirming this) so we try to shut down and re-start the iMac holding down option/control which i do and nothing changes but then he tells me that i missed phone confirming this) so we try to shut down and re-start the iMac holding down option/control which i do and nothing changes but then he tells me that i missed two additional and essential keys that need to be held down at the same time as command/option and i’m hoping that maybe we’re close on this shit and so i do the hold down of all four keys and it takes a century for the fucking iMac to re- boot, and still no mousey-wousey and no cursor arrow and i suggest could jake or jonah or puck stay on the line while i run across the street to the the bodega in my socks and get new batteries to be sure they are actually new and he says sure i can hear him kinda laughing while my panic has by now upped full throttle and i do it i am the Flash and i zing across centre st and buy four good ones and he is amazed at how quickly i get this done (what he pictures in terms of where i live and what my world must look like to him i can only imagine) he has to have heard the spoons on the cat food plates that i was doling out while the re-boot was taking it’s own sweet time, right? to him i am an insane person but who knows? who cares? i jam the two new coppery duracells into the mouse’s back and try it again and FUCK! it still doesn’t work and he’s looking at some graphic at applecare a blueprint graphic of mice and realizes that there’s a miniature nipple thing just inside the lip of the mouse where i’d put the batteries which at the exact same time i had noticed myself AS he was explaining it to me and i flick it north or south and a tiny green LED lights up and i snap the flat tin piece back in place and DAMN! it works and I’m in business and i say out loud motherFUCKER panic is not a good place to make decisions from and he is laughing and says he concurs and that i was fun, funny to talk to and i finish up the dropbox transfer of mastered for iTunes files and hit the blazing shower and make it a less that normal meditation and the cats are sleepy again in their food coma and i storm off to work and get there just in time and my god it took what? less than an hour to go from massive freak-attack to total nerve calm and maybe i noticed that while it was all going down in the needle center of my ten thousand swarming bee panic i was, strangely, at peace and watching the whole miserable ridiculous episode from a planet far far away.

This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press

About The Paragraphs and how to order

Link to buy

Or here

#panic attack #tech #funny post

0 notes

pogueman · 6 years

Text

Google Clips uses AI to snap pictures of your kids and pets — sort of

yahoo

In its day, Google has produced some truly bizarre hardware products. (Remember the Nexus Q, Google’s “set-top sphere”? Me neither.)

Well, don’t look now, but here comes the company’s weirdest hardware yet: Google Clips ($250).

It’s a tiny, thin camera, about the size of two stacked Triscuits, that combines elements of a spy camera, GoPro camera, and cellphone camera.

Google’s latest hardware product is a strange little AI camera.

The Clips is designed for parents (of children or pets). Of course, we all have perfectly good cameras in our phones — actually, better cameras. But using only our phones presents a few problems:

You’re never in the pictures with your your kid or pet.

Babies and toddlers often stop whatever cute thing they’re doing when they see your phone come out, because it’s kind of big and intrusive.

You can’t predict when your subject is going to do something adorable; odds are pretty good that you’ll miss it.

If you film or shoot enough that you always capture the good stuff, then you’ve got endless quantities of stuff to edit.

All your photos and videos of your kid are taken from the same angle: Your height.

The Clips is just thick enough that it can balance on its edge. It also comes with a rubbery holder/case, which can act either as a kickstand or a clothespin, so you can clip it to things to get cool angles. (The name “Clips” is a pun, involving both the rubbery clip and the short videos that the camera captures. More on that in a moment.)

The Clips comes with a silicone clip case.

When something adorable starts happening, you pull out the Clips; rotate its black lens to turn it on; and set it down (or clip it) between three feet and eight feet from the action.

At this point, of course, there’s nobody pressing the shutter, and there’s no self-timer. Instead — this is the Clips’s headline feature — the camera uses artificial intelligence to decide what and when to capture. Whatever it grabs shows up on your phone, in the Clips app (iPhone or Android).

The camera supposedly learns, over time, who’s in your family, by seeing which faces appear most often. (The camera’s ability to recognize people, dogs, and cats is brought to you buy the AI built into Google Photos. In fact, if you’ve used Google Photos to tag faces with names, the Clips treats those people as familiar faces, and favors them in its photography.)

There’s one button on the camera, too, which you can use to snap portraits manually, as a way of telling it, “This is one of the people I care about.”

Clips and privacy

Once you’ve turned the lens to turn on the Clips, it watches the room for three hours on a charge. An LED indicator gently blinks to tell you that the camera is watching, but you get no indication when it’s actually capturing.

Clearly, there’s a creep factor to a camera that decides on its own what to shoot and doesn’t tell you when it’s rolling. For that reason, Google has gone to extremes in trying to reassure you about privacy:

This camera isn’t connected to the internet — can’t be connected. All of the AI and learning is done right on the camera, not on some cloud servers. (Google says that that feature, building machine learning AI into something this tiny, is a big accomplishment. A camera like this could not have existed a couple of years ago — that much computing power would have eaten up the battery charge in a heartbeat.) The only connection is to your phone.

The photos are encrypted on the camera. If someone steals it, they’ll have no access to what you’ve shot.

The camera doesn’t record sound with its videos.

Man, that one hurts. No sound? So what does it record? Like so much about the Clips, this part requires some explanation.

The app

The Clips snaps bursts of 105 photos, which it insta-stitches together into what Google calls a Motion Photo — basically, a seven-second silent video clip. One that plays a not-very-smooth 15 frames a second. (TV, for comparison, shows you 30 frames a second.)

Weird, right?

What’s impressive is how fast the camera sends fresh recordings to the corresponding Clips app on your phone (it uses a private Wi-Fi Direct connection).

Here’s what else you can do in the app:

See a live preview of the camera’s view, since the camera itself has no screen.

Manually trigger a capture.

Quickly and efficiently scroll through the captures: swipe left to discard one, swipe right to save it to your phone’s camera roll. On the iPhone, it becomes what Apple calls a Live Photo — a still photo that, when hard-pressed with your finger, plays a three-second video clip. (In this case, the Live Photo has a seven–second video clip, which represents some sneaky engineering by Google.) On Android, it remains a Motion Photo.

Shorten or crop a video.

Pull out one frame of the video as a still image, although it’s common to get motion blur in these.

Stills you pull out of the Clips’s videos are often motion-blurry.

Use the app’s own AI to choose a subset of the captures — the “winners” — automatically.

Adjust settings so that the camera captures shots with greater or lower frequency.

The app is really well done. The actual photos are another story.

What you get

Despite the cool idea of an AI camera, the results are disappointing.

The photos don’t look as good as your phone’s. In low light, they’re grainy; indoors, there’s often motion blur.

The camera has a fixed-focus, very wide-angle (130-degrees) lens. As a result, anything closer than three feet is out of focus, and anything farther than eight feet looks really tiny. And anything near the edge of the frame gets bizarrely stretched and distorted.

Note to craniofacial surgeons: There’s nothing wrong with Cody’s head. That’s just something the Clips camera does.

But the bigger issue is that the AI doesn’t work especially well. It captures things, all right, but I’m not sure that its artificial intelligence is any match for your intelligence.

I spent a morning with my adorable five-month-old friend Cody and his mom Lauren. The Clips caught plenty of cute clips — but not always the great ones. At one point, Cody managed to flip himself from back to front. “Good job!” his mom exclaimed. “Did it record that?” she asked me.

No, it did not.

At my own house, I love tossing cat treats for Wilbur the Wonder Cat. He bounds across the slippery floors, chasing it like a cat out of hell, and then pounces on the treat, skidding hilariously three or four feet. I set up the Clips at the right spot for the landing and tossed the treat on target over and over again. The Clips couldn’t get the Wilburdive.

Then there’s also the central concept of trusting the capture. Yes, it’s AI, but what does that mean?

Google says that the camera is waiting for the right combination of lighting, composition, and smiling faces. But do you want photos (or silent video clips) only of the happy moments in your life? Is it possible that you might sometimes want to capture an unhappy moment — say, the tragicomic moment when your 4-year-old’s ice-cream scoop falls off its cone? Google’s AI won’t capture that. (The company says that it plans to offer preference settings for emotional tone in a future update.)

I love the idea of a camera that uses AI to capture the good stuff all by itself. And I do love the freshness of the angles and positions that the Clips’s clip permits.

You can pop the Clips camera into places and angles where your phone would never work.

I just don’t think that much of the Clips’s clips.

You’re paying $250 for a camera that can’t directly take stills and can’t capture video with sound. It doesn’t work as an “ambient camera,” like a security camera that’s rolling all the time. It doesn’t work as a GoPro-type camera, either; its super wide angle means that if it’s clipped to, for example, your body, the video is unwatchably jerky. And its AI-only sort of works.

I’m glad that Google did the Clips experiment, because there are some really good ideas here, and real-world problems to be solved. I just don’t think you should buy it.

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can sign up to get his stuff by email, here.

Why I bought Honda’s plug-in hybrid mystery car

Apple’s HomePod speaker: Either way late or way early

The tiny, 4K Mavic Air crushes other DJI drones

#_uuid:b22051ee-f9ba-3477-bef6-32ecd67d58c1 #Google #Pogue #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #$GOOGL #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #$GOOG #video #Google Clips #_author:David Pogue

1 note · View note

konnl · 4 years

Text

Scrappers Part V

The concluding chapter in the Scrappers story. Follow Angie and Ruggy as they make their grand escape from the stalking Harvesters. The two have a hell of a lot of questions for their operator when they get back to base, presuming they make it out of The Lost alive.

Scrappers Part V continues the sci-fi horror universe that is being developed through short stories. Enjoy the story in written word, audio, artwork and soundscape.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Scrappers Part V

youtube

Time Passing

Time became an abstract concept. I wasn’t sure if I stayed in the abandoned wreckage for hours or days. I preferred it that way. It would be easy enough to turn on the time stamp in the chat thread Ruggy and I had open. I didn’t want to. Watching those numbers go by every minute was discouraging. We knew that the Harvesters would give up on the hunt, eventually. The challenge was knowing when.

The two of us could stay in the dark for days if we wanted. Or we could attempt to return to The Lost, risking our lives, for the Harvesters could be waiting right outside. I was comfortable waiting longer. What was the rush? No one would miss two scrappers back at base.

The harsh reality was that Ruggy and I weren’t anyone special and would never be. Scrappers were disposable, which is hard to believe, considering the diminishing human population. The higherups don’t care. We server a purpose in this new world. We gather the remnants of the old for those deemed better than us.

As the hours – or days – passed, I kept thinking back to the operator that brought us here, operator 43-S3. I’ve never met him. Ruggy says he met the man. A typical computer geek. Fast-talking and poor posture. We need folks like them, though. I just don’t get why they would send us out to a death trap. Operator 43-S3 knew that he was sending us to a Harvester’s crash sight. Maybe he was taking orders from the higher-ups. Maybe he thought we were disposable and only wanted the goods from the crash site to be rewarded. Who knew? We’d get answers when we got back to base. Eventually.

THINK IT IS SAFE TO GO NOW? I typed with swift eye movements, controlling my goggle’s interface.

NAH, Ruggy replied. WE’D BEST WAIT ANOTHER DAY JUST TO BE SURE.

A DAY? HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN IN HERE? I instantly regretted asking the question. Knowing that an answer would tell me exactly how long we’ve been sitting in the dark.

A COUPLE OF DAYS. Ruggy typed. I HAVE ENOUGH CAPSULES TO LAST A WEEK. YOU?

SAME. THE SURVIVAL KIT WAS FULL WHEN I GRABBED IT.

A couple of days. My mind could barely wrap around the fact that I had been sitting in the same spot for that long. The night vision the goggles provided made the dark more bearable. Plus, it was warmer down here than on the surface. I kept staring at the Harvester’s tentacle that I crushed days ago. I knew it was destroyed, but I couldn’t help and wonder if it would pop back up and attack me again. Or perhaps it is like a beacon signal for the Harvesters, and they would come for me. It was nonsense, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. If it were, the Harvesters would have come for me by now.

IF WE’RE GOING TO STAY HERE ANOTHER DAY, HOW ABOUT WE MEET UP? I typed.

WE’VE BEEN THROUGH THIS. THE FEWER MOVEMENTS THE BETTER.

IF THEY CAN SCAN THE LANDSCAPE, CAN’T THEY DETECT HEAT ANYWAYS? THIS IS POINTLESS.

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TYPE OF TECH THE HARVESTERS HAVE, Ruggy typed. WE CAN ONLY MAKE EDUCATED GUESSES. THE WHOLE POINT IS TO SURVIVE THIS ORDEAL.

I WANT TO GIVE THAT OPERATOR A PIECE OF MY MIND. I replied.

TRUST ME, SO DO I, Ruggy typed. THAT RAT KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING WHEN HE SENT US TO THE HARVESTER’S CRASH SITE. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN IT FOR HIM.

Ruggy and I exchanged some messages back and forth a few times, other than that, we didn’t have much to say to one another. We’ve scrapped long enough that we know each other well. No point in small talk. Most of my time was spent evaluating the digital map in my goggle’s interface to try and make a guess as to where I was. The maps were based on the old world. We didn’t have any satellites to map out The Lost, so I could only guess roughly where I was. Based on the map, it was some skyscraper, one point in time, collapsed during humanity’s split.

Exploration

I was careful not to overuse my goggle’s battery life. I couldn’t spend days just browsing around the maps and local documents. These things were high tech for humans but didn’t have otherworldly wonders like the Harvesters have. So, I eventually did get up from my location and wandered the halls. Ruggy didn’t need to know. If he wanted us to wait another day, I wanted to get a better sense of my environment. His reasoning about the scanning tech that the Harvesters have was stupid anyway.

The night vision goggles let me navigate through the crooked, uneven hallways. No light was visible, so I had to be underground still. Some of the halls had doorways that weren’t collapsed, and I could enter the rooms. I walked into a room, cautiously avoiding the walls and rocks. The last thing I needed was to make some noise and trigger a Harvester, or something as simple as a collapsing ceiling.

The room was mostly the same as the hallway. It did have some snapped planks of wood. Some garbage and I think something that was once clothing. Anything we find in The Lost is usually a wreck due to past fires, falling rocks, or deterioration, rendering them useless.

I left the room, there was nothing of value there. The hallways led further into the unknown, but I didn’t want to go too far from my location. I shared the coordinates with Ruggy earlier. In case I had to go back, I didn’t want to hike too far. All I wanted was to get a better sense of my surroundings. Everywhere here was as dead as the closet I rested in.

Meeting Point

The wait finally ended when Ruggy texted, OKAY, LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE. A wave of relief went over me. We’d finally be getting out of this dungeon.

WHERE SHOULD WE MEET? I asked.

YOU REMEMBER WHERE WE SPLIT? SEE IF WE CAN MEET UP THERE, Ruggy typed.

IF WE DON’T MEET THERE?

WE’LL FIND EACH OTHER ON THE SURFACE.

Ruggy’s order sealed the deal. We could return to The Lost. A second thought entered my mind – what if the Harvesters never left? They had probes. They could be waiting for us to tire out and leave our hideouts. We had no way of telling. Ruggy must have finally gotten sick of sitting around like me. Guess we’d face our fate.

I retraced the steps that led me to the dark hideout that I stayed in. Thank God. The mouldy, musty smell was beginning to irritate me. It wasn’t difficult to find my previous locations. The collapsed rubble that separated myself and the Harvester was exactly where I remembered it being. This time, there was no Harvester. I slid my gun under the slit and then moved under to the other side. I eyed the opposite side of the hallway in the opposing rooms, the rooms that Ruggy had taken. He wasn’t anywhere near.

RUGGY, IM BACK WHERE WE SPLIT, I typed.

I COULDN’T FIND HOW I GOT HERE, Ruggy replied. I THINK I’M GETTING CLOSE TO THE SURFACE THOUGH.

COORDS? I asked.

-22.951470, -43.212165

That was something useful. We’d meet up back on the surface. With the new plan in mind, I continued backwards from whence Ruggy, and I first entered the cavern. It was easy enough to retrace, not sure how Ruggy was having a difficult time. It didn’t matter. We’d get out of here, get back to the cruiser, and give a piece of our mind back at base.

The light grew brighter, the closer I got to the cavern entrance. The old world architecture began to be replaced with rocks and rubble – remnants of conflict. A part of me wanted to go deeper into the cavern to see what type of artifacts I could find down there, but it didn’t matter. Our history was partly archived in digital storage. Anything else took up space, and I didn’t need to haul that around.

I found the cavern entrance and hiked out into The Lost. Despite the clouded atmosphere, some light made it through to the planet’s surface. It was daytime. I shut off the night vision of my goggles and scanned the terrain. There were no signs of the Harvesters ground troops and no sign of their ship.

IT’S ALL CLEAR HERE RUGGY, I typed while walking towards the coordinates he provided.

GOOD, SEEMS CLEAR HERE TOO. Ruggy replied. I’M ALMOST AT RENDEZVOUS.

Cattle

A sense of relief went over me. We beat the Harvesters at their own game. Sure, we may have wrecked our cruiser in the process from that beast, but we survived. No one survives a Harvester.

WE HAVE SOME BRAGGING RIGHTS HERE WHEN WE GET BACK TO BASE, I typed.

The coordinates Ruggy supplied weren’t far, and I reached the location. It was an open patch of rubble. Nearby rocks and collapsed towers were a good several dozen paces away, this had to be some sort of park, based on the goggle’s old world map.

RUGGY? I typed, looking around the area. The wind blew past me, blowing some of the dust in my face. No one. There didn’t seem to be any cavern entrances nearby either.

RUGGY, DID YOU MESS UP THE COORDINATES? I’M OUT IN THE OPEN.

No reply. Something wasn’t right, and my instincts told me to get the hell out, yet Ruggy ordered me to come here.

RUGGY, I’M MOVING. I typed.

ANGIE STAY, Ruggie typed.

WHERE ARE YOU? I replied.

Still alarmed, I took my first step back as a humanoid morphed into view. The large being’s form rippled from transparency and into full view. The gunmetal armour shined in the daylight as high-pitched clicking began to project from the being.

“Shit! Ruggy!” I called out, pulling my rifle’s trigger. The gun clacked, firing at the Harvester as it began to walk towards me.

ANGIE, COME HERE, Ruggy typed.

Then, as I continued to fire at the approaching Harvester, I realized that I hadn’t been talking to Ruggy at all. Maybe at one point, I was. I don’t know. The Harvesters hacked out communication port. It was supposed to be a closed-off network, clearly not.

The bullets pinged off the Harvester’s suite as it marched. The sound clicked in a wave motion, moving at faster and slower tempos. I continued to back up in the open space. Glancing back, I saw I could make a run for it. I had to try. Guns were pointless. I sprinted from my battle stance, dashing as fast as I could.

Footsteps thudded behind me. The Harvester picked up its pace. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

RUGGY, ANSWER ME. I typed. I wasn’t sure if he’d get the message. The Harvesters were one step ahead of us. I had to try, though. There was no other way of communicating with him.

ANGIE COME HERE, The Harvester typed.

“Ruggy!” I cried out as a large hand snagged my arm, spinning me around.

I pulled the trigger of my rifle, trying to do anything to save my skin. The bullets pinged off the armour. The Harvester swatted the weapon clean from my hand, knocking it to the ground. It snatched my neck as a spear erected from a small opening in the Harvester’s palm. The weapon expanded into its full form as it sparked to life – humming. An electro-spear.

The Harvester plunged the weapon into my gut, causing my whole body to tense up. The shock erupted through my chest and to every limb in my body. The pulsation hit my head and travelled through the goggles – frying them. The interface was gone. My head spun. I had lost all control of my being. I could see…no. My vision was blurry. I could hear… a little. I felt… nothing. Numbness.

My captor chucked me to the ground as two more Harvesters came into view. The high-frequency clicking multiplied as the beings stared at each other. I tried to fight the electrical current that numbed my body. I had to. No one else was going to get me out of this. I couldn’t.

I felt fear in my mind. My muscles didn’t respond to the stress of the situation. It provided an odd sense of calmness as my captor dumped my body into a large steel crate. Holes horizontally lined the container walls. Airholes to let me breathe. I could hear groans other than my own. The smell of sweat and dirt filled the space. Other humans were in the cage with me. We were cattle, harvested.

#Horror #Sci-Fi #Spooky

0 notes

j-writes-and-suffers · 6 years

Text

NaNoWriMo Day Six

Anxious for his upcoming performance, Philip had struggled to get to sleep. Nonetheless, he got up with an unusually early alarm, remembering his promise to Lucien about being on time. He downed two full cups of coffee to fight the lingering drowsiness before grabbing his bag and heading off towards campus.

By the time he reached the academic hall, Philip was bouncing off the walls. Maybe he hadn’t needed quite so much caffeine. The extra energy was sending his anxiety through the roof, and he found himself pacing nervously to kill time before the poetry slam started. Staring intently at the ground as he walked, he was too caught up in his own nerves to notice Lucien walking up behind him. The older man put a hand on Philip’s shoulder, causing the young blond to shriek in surprise.

“Fuck! How do you sneak up on people like that?”

Lucien shrugged. “Libraries are quiet. It wouldn’t suit me to be a lumbering oaf. What’s gotten you so worked up?”

Philip sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m just nervous to perform. I haven’t actually been in a poetry slam since high school…”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re very animated, I bet your delivery will be excellent.” The lanky brunette rested a hand on Philip’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Besides, I’ll still make you dinner if you bomb.”

“So you think I might bomb?” The younger man asked, wringing his hands together.

Lucien rolled his eyes. “No, that’s not what I said. Stop being so pessimistic.”

Philip groaned. “I’m not trying to! I’m just scared.”

“Most of the people performing are over-dramatic undergrad hipsters that can’t actually write to save their life. I promise, you won’t be nearly the worst act.” Lucien reassured him. “Come on, everyone is gathering.” He led Philip into the lecture hall nudging him towards the front where the other performers were waiting.

The anxious blond fiddled with one of his earrings, bouncing where he stood. Dr. Samuels, the head of the English department, was currently greeting the audience, going off on some long-winded rant about the importance of poetry. When he finally shut up, he stepped aside, calling forth the first student.

About five or six people went ahead of Philip, and he started to relax as he realized most of them were pretty shit. After an absolutely awful love poem finished, he was called up, and he felt his nerves fading a little. He spied Lucien as he scanned the crowd, and shared a brief smile with the older man.

“Hello, everyone. I… I’m Philp Valentine, the new English professor. Here’s a piece I wrote a few years back. It’s… It’s called Late Nights.” He cleared his throat, taking a slow, deep breath before he began.

“There's a monster in my house. He roams the house at night. He screams, he hunts, he breaks things; The house is filled with fright.

No one steps outside their room after the midnight hour. A vicious, violent demon, the monster has the power.

One night, I kept a vigil to face the awful beast. The hour didn't phase me-- I like the dark, to say the least.

I didn't notice anything; I waited till the dawn. The monster always comes at night. Did I do something wrong?

As I went to lie down, I walked by the bedroom mirror. Thinking I saw something odd, I paused to see it clearer.

Menacing and soulless, the piercing eyes glared. Too mortified to look away, I analyzed and stared.

I saw hatred in the face, the scowl angry and bitter. Something seemed to click, so I looked a little deeper.

Somewhere beneath the malice the soul was worn and lonely. A silent plea for what once was: ‘Can't someone find the old me?’

I sank into an epiphany as I rubbed my tired eyes: the demon faced me in the mirror; the monster was inside.”

The audience was silent for a moment. Once the awe faded, a round of applause filled the room. Though Philip was no Robert Frost, it was easily the best piece at the show, and most of the students looked pretty damn impressed. He beamed to the crowd, grinning as he walked offstage. Lucien, however, didn’t seem as happy. His eyes had grown dark a few lines into the poem, and his expression was still dour in its aftermath. As Philip moved to sit down, he saw Lucien’s distaste, and his face quickly fell.

“You didn’t like it…” He sighed, sinking down in the seat Lucien had saved for him.

The older man snapped out of his morose state, turning to Philip and shaking his head. “No, no, it’s not that. It just got me thinking. You’re a good writer. Certainly better than any of the clowns before you.”

“Oh…” Philip perked back up, “It made you think? For real?”

“Of course. It was inspiring. You painted a vivid picture.” Lucien offered a smile.

The younger man blushed, the pink tone highlighting his freckles like a backlight. “Thank you! That means a lot, you know… You’re kind of an expert on literature.”

Lucien laughed, “You hold me too highly.”

“I respect your opinion, you old fart! Don’t brush off my compliment.” Philip stuck his tongue out.

“There you go calling me old again! For god’s sake, I’m maybe ten years your senior!”

“My senior citizen.”

Lucien huffed, rolling his eyes and giving Philip a playful shove. “You’re horrible.”

“Yeah,” The younger man grinned, “but you like me anyway.”

“I know.” Lucien chuckled, shaking his head and turning to listen to more mediocre poetry.

The rest of the slam went well, considering the quality of the poetry being read. Everyone seemed proud of their stuff, even the ones that definitely shouldn’t have been, and afterwards, the head of the English department passed out punch and cookies. The kids got to chattering, some asking questions of the teachers as well. Philip made friendly small talk, basking in the praise the students gave him for his poem. Once the kids were bored of him, he got distracted eating, too busy sucking down cookies to notice Lucien slip away. He turned to make a rude joke, only to realize he was alone. Feeling a little rejected, Philip moved to the corner, shoving another cookie in his mouth.

As the students dissipated from the lecture hall, Philip got up, dragging his feet as he reluctantly helped his fellow English professors clean up. He greabbed a trash can, gathering all the stray cups and napkins that assholes had just left on desks. Once the room was actually clean and presentable again, he walked out of the building, headed towards his apartments rather than the library. He assumed Lucien had finally gotten bored of him, and certainly wouldn’t want to see more of him. He trudged along so slowly that his hour-long walk home took a good chunk of the afternoon, and upon returning to his apartment, he simply dropped onto the couch, turning on some mindless Netflix series to distract himself.

Philip ended up passing out on the couch, sleeping through the night and well into the morning. When he finally woke up, sunlight was already pouring in the windows, and he grabbed his phone to check the time. Getting only the black screen of dead battery, he cussed and hurried to his room, plugging it in and looking at the alarm clock.

1:47.

“Fuck!”

Throwing on a clean shirt and grabbing his bag off the floor, Philip bolted out of his apartment and down the stairs. He had been due at the dodgeball game over an hour ago, and it would take him another hour just to get to the school. He was going to be in so much trouble. Lucien’s warning about tardiness echoed in the back of his mind, and Philip cringed, still feeling shunned after yesterday. By the time he got to campus, the game was long over, the teachers having beat the students 5 - 3. He waved sheepishly at Dr. Samuels, trying to avoid eye contact.

“Heyyyyy….”

“Where were you?” The professor demanded, glaring down at Philip.

The younger man shied away, sheepishly mumbling, “I… I overslept.”

The tubby older man huffed angrily, rolling his eyes. “Don’t let it happen again, Valentine. You’re not making a good first impression.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry sir.” Philip cringed, feeling his soul wither. “Can I do anything to help now?”

“Just go to the parade tomorrow, help clean up after the picnic, and don’t make any more of a fool of yourself. Do you think you can handle that?”

Philip nodded. “Yes sir.” He shuffled away before Samuels could dig into him any more; his self-esteem was frail enough already.

Not having any other obligations for the day, Philip simply dragged his sorry ass back home. He checked on his phone, which had barely charged while he was gone. Ugh. His charger was a fraying piece of shit, but he hadn’t had the time or money to get a new one. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere with it right now, anyway. He curled up on the couch, trying to ignore the growing storm of negative thoughts in his mind. He was such an idiot. Not only had he scared off Lucien, but now his boss was pissed at him, too. God, this week was a mess.

Philip was half asleep on the couch when his laptop started beeping. Who was skyping him? It’s not like he had friends that cared enough. He rubbed his eyes, opening up the computer to answer the call.

“Mom?”

“Hi, honey! How are you?”

Philip yawned, brows furrowing in confusion. “Since when do you know how to use skype?”

“Your brother taught me!” She smiled, “I wanted to see you. So does Callie. Come here, Callie!”

A loud bark echoed through the speakers as a long, furry face popped into view. Philip grinned broadly. Callie was a loving Afghan that had been his best friend since late high school, and he had been missing her tremendously. “Hi, Callie! How are you? Are you being good for mom?”

“Woof!” She replied, clearly just as excited to see him.

“I’m gonna come home and visit you as soon as I can, okay?” Callie barked again, bumping her nose against the screen. Philip laughed quietly, his spirits lifted. “I’m glad you called, mom. I’ve been missing you guys. Is something up? Did you need to talk?”

“No, I just thought I should check in on you. Something told me you could use a smile today.”

“You’re not wrong.” Philip smiled ruefully. “It’s been a hell of a day. I overslept and missed the dodgeball game. Dr. Samuels was piiiiissed.”

“Philip!” She rolled her eyes. “You promised me you were going to be better about your alarms this year.”

The young blond pouted. “I have been, I swear! Yesterday was just a bad day, and it threw me off.”

“Is there something you need to talk about, honey?”

Philip shook his head. “Nah, it’s… it’s fine. It’s nothing important. I’ll get over it soon.”

“Are you sure?” His mother sounded worried, “I’m always here if you need to talk.”

“I know, I know. I promise, I’ll talk to you if it’s serious. This is just dumb drama.” He reassured her.

“Okay, honey. As long as you’re doing okay.” She paused briefly to sniff the air, recognizing the aroma of slightly burning seasonings. “Oh dear, I need to go check on the chicken. I’ll talk to you later.”

Philip chuckled. His mom was just as scatterbrained as he was, with the tendency to forget about something the second he looked away from it. “Bye, mom.”

“Bye honey!” She hung up, running off to pull her chicken out of the oven.

Stretching back out on the couch, Philip closed his eyes. He was more relaxed than before; just seeing his family and talking to someone that actually cared had taken a huge weight off his chest. Besides, it was hard to be upset with Callie around. A faint smile still on his face, he drifted back off to sleep.

#nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2017 #fantasy #modern fantasy #comedy #school #my writing

2 notes · View notes