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system76 · 3 years

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System76 Spotlight with Adam Balla

Welcome to the first of an ongoing series where we get to know some of the amazing people behind System76! This week, we kick things off with one of our newest members, Adam Balla (AKA chzbacon), who has just joined the Marketing Team as our Content Producer. Learn what makes his content creation heart go pitter-patter, and why his electric smoker is his must-have cooking appliance.

When did you first become interested in Linux computer systems?

When my roommate introduced me to Slackware in 1999, he was working as a Linux system admin and he really got me interested in Linux. I was going to the Art Institute of Houston at the time for a Multimedia Design degree, and the thought that you could create your own desktop operating system really appealed to me. I didn’t need to stare at the same old tacky operating system I’d used for years.

I found myself, like many nerds of the era, at a Micro Center in the early 2000s rummaging through the discount software bins, trying to snag up multi-CD Linux distributions. This journey exposed me to several of today’s most popular Linux distros. One of those was SUSE Linux 5.3, of which I still keep the tattered book on a bookshelf as a reminder. I did however finally find my place in the world of Debian, which is where I essentially live today. Honestly not much has really changed other than using Pop!_OS as my main distribution—though like any Linux diehard, I still love to download, test, and sometimes install all the Linux.

When did you start becoming a champion for open source hardware and software?

It was a few years after that. Once I got back from the Art Institute and I was working in the area, we needed a server for the screen printing shop that I worked at. Knowing about Linux at that point, I was able to set up a server using consumer-grade gear that we could store all of our artwork and assets on. Moving forward, I set up a server for the newspaper that I worked at for a decade, which I know is still running to this day. After using Linux in that sort of environment and knowing it was good enough for a business, I knew it was good enough for me and my needs.

How did you get involved in content creation as a career?

My father was an engineer. When I was young I was always, like most kids, into drawing cars and doodles and cartoons, but I was used to having a drafting table at the house. Computing came around, and my father bought an IBM 486 and one of the original digitizing tablets, and so I got to play around with that. Eventually, he got upset because I was on the computer more than he was, so he bought me an IBM 386 to use.

Around 1995, my dad learned from a coworker about Photoshop. I begged him to get me a copy, and he finally did for Christmas. That’s when I started playing around in Photoshop and really fell into wanting to create for a living. Similar to what my father does, but maybe not as stringent in the decision that I make—no building is going to fall down from my creative process.

And that’s how I got into the whole content creation piece. I created a cover for the album of my high school bands and then started doing work for more local bands. Back then, there were no digital art courses, so I learned a lot by doing and trial/error.

What is your favorite part of the creative process?

Working together as a team during the initial brainstorming process. Going through all of the ideas and details, sometimes writing them down, sometimes not, and even laughing at myself at how ridiculous an idea may sound. I love the process of the very first step. I love to set the vision for the project work from there to turn that vision into reality.

How did you first learn about System76?

I first learned about System76 through Chris Fisher and Jupiter Broadcasting. I believe they were reviewing the Leopard Extreme in 2012, on what at that time was the Linux Action Show. That’s when I started to look at System 76 and their offerings and wondered if it would be better for me to build my own Linux desktop, or adopt something and support the open source community. It’s been a little while since then, and I’ve always kept my eye on System76. Then with the release of Thelio, that really pushed me to the point of, “Wow, these guys are creating their own beautiful custom chassis and they’re incorporating different materials together. What a beautiful machine.”

I was speaking to my wife (financial advisor) about purchasing one in 2019, and I spoke to Emma and some other people at System76 about my desire for one, and I don’t know how, but Emma encouraged me not to buy one! And then I was given the opportunity to come to System76 for the Superfan event, where I was fortunate enough to be one of a dozen people who were gifted a Thelio desktop. It sits on my desk to this day; I even bought a larger desk just so I could put it up there and see it every day. I really appreciate the humble beginnings of System76, and I’m so glad to finally be a part of this amazing team.

Let's get into that creative brain. What is your favorite viral video and/or ad, and why do you love it so much?

I have a few ads that I like. I’ve always liked Honda’s messaging and their ads.

I like these ads because of the way in which they go through their history and lineage and the way that Honda itself has marketed its products as “People First” products—very similar to when they introduced their motorcycles to the US with their “You meet the nicest people on a Honda,” campaign. I think that was in 1962, so this was during the height of the motorcycle gang craze. Then comes this little Japanese motorcycle company and markets their products in a completely opposite image from the rest of the industry. They dared to be different and it paid off for them. Selling over 100 million Honda Cubs since 1958. Being given the title of most produced motor vehicle in the world.

This may come as a surprise to some, but I also really love the original Orwellian-inspired Macintosh commercial, which only aired once during the 1984 Super Bowl. Created by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow. In my opinion, these guys really created disruptive advertising, so much so that the ad still resonates today as much as it did then. While I don’t think you need to incite fear to sell a product, it showed that Apple dared to be different.

I’m not sure what constitutes a viral video these days. I’m not sure if it’s having a billion trillion views or just simply infecting one person who saw your video. One that always gives me a chuckle has to be “News Anchor Laughs At Worst Police Sketch Fail”. The honesty on the anchor's face makes me lose it every time.

When you’re not helping to lead the Open Source revolution, what do you like to do with your free time?

I really like going on walks and taking photos. Photography to me is one of the last honest art forms. What you see really is what you get. I love to tinker and make things, I have a 3D printer that my wife and I purchased as a joint valentine’s gift to each other last year. We started using it right when COVID broke out, so we made around 900 face shields which we distributed to schools, day cares, dentist's offices, anyone who needed one. That’s what we did for about the first 6 months when we first got it. Now, my wife loves to print earrings, for example, and I like to build different fun electronics projects.

I also love to cook, especially for large groups. I just got done with an Easter Weekend + Birthday celebration where we cooked 100 lbs of crawfish, 10 lbs of pork shoulder, sausage, and boudin (which is basically rice and pieces of pork that have been mixed together with seasonings and then put into a casing like sausage). One of my main requirements actually for a place in Denver is somewhere I can bring my electric smoker. It’s a must-have for any Texan.

What are you most excited about with your new role here at System76? To help change the computing landscape as we know it today. Into a future where technology is free and open. A world where you're encouraged to break things, fix things, and learn how they work. Aside from changing the world and stuff, I'm really excited to have a chance to work with such an insanely talented group of people.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

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Daniel Michaelson: He Belongs to Himself

(for @whumptober2019, prompt: Recovery, I wrote a piece set during the trial/post-captivity - this is our second Ryan POV. Thanks to @orchidscript for a couple of lines I borrowed from our convo on the fandom version of this universe and to @pinkcupboardwitch for helping me pick my scenario)

TW: Brief reference to suicidal ideation, violence/torture/abuse (none depicted, but referenced)

Ryan Michaelson falls asleep on the couch with the impact statement he’s been working on a flutter of loose papers on the floor, scratched-out starting sentences and half-written paragraphs, occasional little nonsense doodles in the margins where he tried to think his way through this.

They want him to give some kind of speech, before sentencing. His parents provided a couple of videos and photos of Danny before it all happened, but they haven’t come to the trial since the first week and they’re not interested in speaking on Danny’s behalf.

No, just like the rest of his life, their parents will do the bare minimum for Danny and Ryan will step in to try and fill the gaps, to be brother and parents both. It’s so much harder with so little of Danny left.

How do you even explain what it means to have your brother disappear and then return, only it’s not your brother any longer?

He’s been working on figuring out where to even start with the impact statement since before the trial began, since the initial preparation with the lawyers. He writes a draft and discards it - writes another one and tears that one up, too. Cries for a couple of hours whenever he’s alone in his room, then starts again.

They want him to explain what it was like to lose Danny, and Ryan’s got no fucking clue where to begin.

Does he open with the night Danny didn’t come back to the apartment they shared, wasn’t answering his phone? Does he start with the increasingly frantic calls to all of his friends, to the single thread that ran through them - he said he was going to see that guy he’s been talking to - to the realization that no one could get ahold of Nathaniel Vandrum either?

Does he begin with what it felt like when the cops called to tell Mom they’d found Danny’s car with his cell phone in a puddle of blood on the backseat, abandoned in a ditch in Oregon next to the dead body of the owner of the next car the abductor had stolen? Or when the cops explained to Ryan that the phone had been charged and on for nearly a full day - meaning that whoever had taken him had watched Danny’s phone light up with call after call after call, had kept the phone charged just to see it?

Maybe he could explain, in stomach-churning detail, what happened in his mind when a police officer had sat across the table from him and told him that local law enforcement and the FBI had begun thinking in terms of recovery rather than rescue.

He has no idea. All he knows is that there isn’t any way, not really, to explain what it felt like to be told his brother was missing - presumed abducted - presumed the target of foul play - presumed dead - never coming home.

The weird insanity he’d gone through, thinking his brother was dead. Going from a college sophomore with a 4.0 to a junior who nearly had to drop out when his grades tanked and he spent a year trying to drink himself to death, thinking if he did at least he’d see his brother again.

He couldn’t begin to explain his parents strong-arming him into therapy, telling the therapist all his awful thoughts, sharing emotions with someone when he came from a family where you never did any such thing, and the revelation of the therapist just… giving him permission to grieve, when his parents never did, when he felt like a burden, when he didn’t know how to keep going without the older brother that had always been the surest, most concrete foundation of his world.

Maybe he should start with how it felt to get the call that Danny was alive, that Nathaniel Vandrum had simply driven a truck out of the woods in Western Canada like a goddamn soot-smeared pissed-off Wendigo with his frightened brother, a bag of his favorite books, and one hell of a fucked-up story about the last four years.

Did Wendigos even come from Western Canada? Ryan can’t really remember, his Native North American Folklore & Mythology class was during the drinking-to-death time and he doesn’t remember most of it.

It doesn’t matter.

He could start with the way he’d been elated and scared, the way his stomach had dropped when they’d told him that before he could see Danny, he’d have to talk to some kind of expert about what to expect, so he wouldn’t cause extra anxiety during a stressful reintegration.

He could start with the way the trauma expert had held his hand and told him Danny was severely dissociated - a word he’d never heard before that day - and might not even know who he was right away. The expert had tried to make him understand that Danny had been held in captivity by someone who insisted he was a pet and not a person, had undergone something called extreme dehumanization, more words Ryan hadn’t known before that day and knew all too much about, now.

He could tell them what it was like to see Danny sitting at the table, hunched over and looking at everyone from behind wavy red hair grown out a little longer than when he’d left, blue eyes wide and scared that he’d be in trouble for using a chair and not sitting on the floor, begging someone to tell him where Nate was, to bring him back into the room, could someone find Nate?

He could talk about the way Danny flinched away from his touch but ran to Nathaniel Vandrum.

Maybe he could just talk about how fucking weird it was to have your brother’s sort-of-possibly-a-boyfriend be the fellow captive who freed him, who tried to kill a man to save Danny, and who sleeps in Danny’s bed but as far as Ryan can tell does nothing more than kiss his forehead or his face now and then and hold him through his nightmares.

Maybe he could talk about wanting to shout in Nate Vandrum’s empty fucking face that he should have done something sooner, that he should have saved Danny when more of Danny was left to save, just wanting to grab Nate by the shoulders and shake him and scream why couldn’t you have been stronger for him?

He could talk about how it feels to find yourself snapping at a traumatized man because he has the audacity to be very slightly less traumatized than your brother, and because he’s something to take all of his grief and hurt out on.

Because no matter how hard Nate Vandrum’s jawline gets, no matter how cold and flinty his green eyes go, he never, ever fights back against Ryan’s deep well of unresolved anger.

He just stands there, taking all of Ryan’s yelling, like he’s earned it. And maybe he fucking has. Ryan could tell them all about how looking at Danny’s frightened shattered life makes him want to cut Nathaniel Vandrum’s composure apart, because… because how dare he be so calm and collected, when Danny hides in a closet after breaking a glass, begs to be punished, to be fixed?

He’d been up all night trying to figure it out, and he just can’t think any longer. He’s written line after line after line trying to start and the day they wanted him to give the statement was just a few days away now. What would he say? Anything he said, that asshole Denner would be sitting right there listening to it, probably getting off on how he’d wrecked Ryan’s life by stealing his brother, enjoying getting to learn about Ryan’s halting, grudging work alongside Nate to teach Danny how to be human again.

He’ll probably sit there and laugh through the speech, no matter what Ryan says. He doesn’t want to bare his broken heart to that sadistic psychopath.

He doesn’t want to admit that Danny is so supremely, thoroughly broken.

He doesn’t want to admit that sometimes he wonders if recovery is even possible, or if he would spend the rest of his life managing a man two years older than him who can’t remember his own age or that bills are due or the names of the people who used to be his best friends - but who can explain in exacting, excruciating detail the way Abraham fucking Denner made him step in a trap and nearly break his own leg, just to see him do it?

Ryan’s eyes blur, with tears or exhaustion - he’s not sure which - and finally he falls asleep on the couch with Netflix still playing, lets the papers drop to the floor, allows his eyes to close and force him out of his fears and all-consuming rage on behalf of a brother who seems no longer able to access the feelings that boil Ryan alive.

Ryan wakes up sometime later to the gentle sensation of a soft fuzzy blanket being placed carefully over him.

He shifts around, mumbling thanks and starting to drift back away, and for a second it’s like nothing had ever happened, really - like maybe he’s just fallen asleep studying, and Danny will be right there to laugh at him in the morning for not even making it back to bed.

The sound of the papers being shuffled back together wakes him the rest of the way and he groans, feeling the muscles of his back shifting around as he pushes himself up, rubbing at one eye. “Fuck, what time is it?”

If Nate Vandrum just put a blanket on him - if that passive asshole is reading Ryan’s halting attempts to explain the pain and grief he’s spent four years buried in - he might just punch him in the face. We’re not friends, motherfucker - you’re just the only person he’ll willingly touch, and I can’t bear to take anything away from him ever again, he’s already lost so much.

“2:45 in the morning, you fell asleep with Netflix still going,” Danny’s voice says calmly, and Ryan nearly jolts totally upright on the couch in shock.

Danny doesn’t look up, kneeling on the floor by the coffee table with his red hair falling over his face looking nearly auburn in the dark, carefully setting the pile of papers on the table before flicking at a miniscule, invisible speck of dust there. He’s shirtless, just wearing the warm, heavy flannel pajama pants that he’d asked Ryan to buy him, shyly, like Ryan could ever deny him anything he actually expressed a want for.

You were dead for four years, Ryan had said, wanting so badly to hug him, knowing at the same time that Danny would only go stiff in his arms and then suddenly go boneless and relaxed all at once in the awful way he’d been trained to accept any and every touch without complaint. You were dead and came back to life, Danny, I’ll give you anything you want for forever, man, just ask for it and it’s yours.

My name is Red. I-I just want some pajama pants that are really, um, warm and maybe with, uh, fleece on the, the inside-

Of course, of course I’ll get those, I’ll buy you a pair for every fucking day of the week.

Th-thank you for that. I get, um, I get cold a lot now. Thank you for listening to my request, Ryan. Thank you for being kind enough to give me-

Hey, this is just doing something nice. Don’t thank me, Danny.

Red, my name is Red, please, um, don’t call me the other name. When someone does something nice for you, you say thank you. Be grateful for every gift you are given, Danny had recited, he’s tilted, eyes distant. And every breath is a gift Abraham chooses to give.

Even in the darkness, Ryan can see the lines of scarring that run down his brother’s back and wrap up his arms, the oddly muscled shoulders (chopping firewood for hours is a good shoulder workout but I skipped a lot of leg days, Danny had joked one day, and Ryan had been so shocked by his brother showing a hint of a sense of humor that he hadn’t even remembered how to laugh), the ribs that stand out too much and the sharp hipbones showing above the waistband of his pants.

When Danny turns to look at him, the blue eyes are quiet for once, warm and focused right on him instead of fogged-over and frightened. The ring of scarring across his face is less obvious, with only the moon for light.

In those unexpectedly clear eyes he can see Danny, his big brother, and Ryan can’t do anything but stare. Are you still in there somewhere after all?

“What are you, uh, doing up, man?” Ryan rubs at his eyes again, but hesitantly, like Danny might disappear if he does. On the TV screen, Netflix is asking if he’s still watching and Ryan feels immensely, supremely judged by it.

Of course the fuck not, I wasn’t even watching -before- I fell asleep at midnight.

“Dreaming,” Danny says casually, off-handedly, as if ‘dream’ isn’t just a code word for ‘nightmare’ now, because it’s not like Danny has any other kind of dream. “Came out for water and found you on the couch. You look, um, you look cold, Ryan. Is… is it okay? To put the blanket on?”

“Yeah… yeah, of course it was. Thanks for that. I don’t even have the energy to get up and go to bed, I feel totally wiped.”

Danny nods, watching him carefully still. Then he drops his eyes back to the sheaf of papers on the coffee table. “Is that what you’re, um, you’re going to read about me?”

Ryan swallows hard against the lump in his throat and a deep instinctive urge to pull the papers away. Please don’t look at how hurt and scared I was, things were so much worse for you. I don’t want you to feel guilty for this. “Yeah. I suck at this, though, I barely have anything written.“

“You’ll, um, you’ll do good, I know you will.” Danny shifts around on his knees, looking up at Ryan, and it’s just such a welcome change to see him with clear eyes. “You’re not going to do a recording? You’re going to, um, to stand up in the, in the court?”

“Yeah.” Ryan drops his head back, staring up at the ceiling in thought. “I have my suit picked out already - the red one? Looks good with my skin. Funny that I know what suit I’m going to read in but no fucking clue what to actually say.”

“You’ll know when you stand up, you’re always good at speaking to people. Or you used to be.” Danny hesitates, and Ryan thinks again how young he looks, something about the uncertainty in his posture, the wide blue eyes, the mop of wavy red hair that hangs over one eye. “I think you probably still are - I guess I don’t, um, I don’t know any longer.”

If you met Danny and Ryan on the street, you’d never guess Danny was two years older… but you might guess, just by looking, that Danny is profoundly, deeply fucked up - and that Ryan is profoundly exhausted.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m probably the same. I don’t want to do it, but I do at the same time, you know?” Ryan flings an arm over his eyes, wondering why he’s so awake when he’s only even been asleep for a couple of hours, really. “It doesn’t matter what I say, does it? He doesn’t even want to be found Not Guilty. He doesn’t care.”

“Maybe not. But you should do it anyway, for you.” Danny hesitates, and then Ryan blinks and lowers his arm to stare as he feels the barest, nervous brush of Danny’s hand against his shoulder.

He turns to look down into wide blue eyes and a tense half-smile, Danny’s shoulders hunched a little, up near his chin, the curve of the scar along his cheekbone traveling down the side of his face and cutting into his jaw, lit by dim moonlight and nothing else until the red seems paler, more faded.

Danny is more than six feet tall but ever since he came back, he seems so, so much smaller. Something about the way he folds into himself, makes himself less visible and less of a presence in the world.

“… Hey, you, you haven’t, um-” Ryan cuts himself off, afraid speaking it out loud will break the spell.

You haven’t touched me since the night before you disappeared.

“I want you to speak. You’ll do really well,” Danny says with pure certainty in his voice - and it’s his voice, the voice Ryan remembers as the basic building block of his entire life. Danny had been a kid when he was adopted, but Ryan was still a toddler - and he had no memories Danny wasn’t a part of.

Not until four and a half years ago.

There’s a moment where Ryan doesn’t move, just feels the soft weight of the hand on his shoulder - Danny’s hands are sort of ruined, scarred and numb to temperature changes, but the weight of his touch is the same.

The same and so much more, all at once.

“Okay. I will, I promise. I’ll figure it out. You should head back to bed. If Nate wakes up, he’ll freak out if you’re not there.”

“He’ll come out and see I’m right here.” Danny shrugs, looking at him for a moment longer with those calm, thoughtful eyes - the opposite of how he’d looked since they brought back what was left of Daniel Michaelson for Ryan to try and put back together - but it wasn’t really an expression he’d ever worn before, either. “I don’t mind being awake. I don’t need much sleep now. I’ll nap while you’re in court, anyway.”

I know, Ryan thinks with a dip of despair. You sleep in the closet when we’re gone and you think we don’t know.

He fights it back and smiles, a little, reaching up carefully to lay his hand over Danny’s, sure he’ll pull away - but he doesn’t.

It feels like a goddamn miracle, but his brother doesn’t pull away from his touch.

Danny’s hand is cold, under his, and Ryan can feel the bumpy silk-soft ridges of scarring where that fucking bastard had sliced along over the tops of his veins, over and over again, creating a raised roadmap of the torture he’d put Danny through for his own sick entertainment.

“You should tell them about when we got super drunk at the company Christmas party and Mom and Dad caught us playing literal music videos off YouTube in the conference room and laughing at the Meatloaf one.“ Danny’s voice is a little dreamy, wistful.

"Y-you remember that?” Ryan’s voice goes soft. There were rules, Danny has explained again and again. One rule was to never think about Danny’s life before - to forget there had ever been anything else.

Danny’s memory is shot to hell from all the blows to the head and four years of nonstop panic and fear and being trained like an animal, kept like a pet. He barely remembers his own birthday.

But… but he remembers this.

“That was a couple months before I… um, left. I used to think about it all the time.” Danny looked away from him, briefly, and the line of his face, the profile, strikes Ryan all over again.

He took it for granted for so, so long before the morning Danny hadn’t come home and didn’t answer the phone.

Ryan was never going to take it for granted again.

“You never talk this much anymore,” Ryan says softly, marveling at the simple sound of his brother’s voice devoid of pleading or begging or reciting the parade of awful rules Abraham Denner forced him to memorize and live by. “I miss your voice.”

Danny just looks at him, and it’s silent in the middle of the night, the darkest hours. No birds outside, the apartment complex is quiet.

“That’s what you can do.” Danny’s voice is caught, thin and oddly strained.

“What?”

“Tell them you missed my voice.” He is still, so still, and then he seems to propel himself up off the floor to wrap his arms around Ryan, burying his head against his shoulder.

It has been four and a half years since Danny hugged him.

Ryan’s arms are up and around him too, feeling his brother’s chill skin, Danny’s hair brushing his forearm where his arms go around his neck. He can feel the raised bumps of scarring at the top of his back above his shoulder blades, the spots around his neck where Denner made him wear a barbed wire collar for days at a time, the way Danny’s shoulders are heavy muscle with skin stretched over it, without even an ounce of excess.

Danny starts to shake, and it’s only when Ryan hears the softest hissed intake of breath and feels dampness along the neckline of his T-shirt that Ryan realizes his big brother is crying.

“I’m so sorry,” Danny whispers in a broken, cracking voice, and Ryan feels Danny twisting his fingers into the fabric of his shirt just over his spine. The soft blanket slides down and away until it puddles around his waist where he still sits on the couch, holding onto the tall, lanky older brother who once used to hold him like this after his nightmares.

But God, Danny’s nightmare had lasted so much longer.

“I’m sorry,” Danny repeats, his voice shaking and thick with the tears that fall despite his best efforts to hold them back. “I’m so sorry, Ryan, I’m so sorry, I missed you so much… I, I’m sorry that I’m not the same person, that I came back the puppy, I’m so sorry that this is all that’s left, I know it’s not enough-… I’m s-s-so fucking sorry-”

“Sssshhhh,” Ryan says with his arms as tight as he can make them, as though Danny might disappear again if he doesn’t keep him firmly attached to the earth. “Ssshhh, don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault, it’s never been your fault, I love you. You’re my big brother, still, okay?” He pulls back, gently extricating himself from Danny, putting a hand on either side of his face to look right into the blue eyes, still bright with more tears unshed, tear tracks following the line of his scars down his face.

Ryan’s own eyes start to glitter in the darkness, and he tries to blink back the tears but when he speaks, his voice has all his emotion laid bare in it, too. “I never stopped looking for you, not ever. I looked every day. I’d still look every day. I would never have stopped looking for you, for the rest of my life.”

“I never stopped thinking about you,” Danny says tremulously, putting his hands up over Ryan’s. "He, he made me stop thinking about anything but him but he couldn’t hurt me enough to make me stop thinking about you-”

Then they’re hugging again and it’s so quiet in the apartment, so quiet except for the sound of two grown men crying on each other’s shoulders.

“This is enough,” Ryan whispers against the top of Danny’s hair. “It’s enough that any of you came back to me, okay? We c-c-can find the rest, I can help you remember, I can help. This is enough. You’re enough, Danny-” He catches himself and winces. “Sorry. I mean Red.”

There’s a pause, and Ryan can feel his brother’s heart pounding. When Danny pulls back Ryan’s heart drops, but his brother just looks into his eyes and smiles, the barest little hint of one, and says softly, “Danny is, is okay, for now.”

Ryan’s breath is caught somewhere in his throat, and he pulls his older brother back into his arms. “Danny, then,” Ryan says with half-sobbed laughter. “Danny. Danny Danny Danny Danny.”

“Daniel,” Danny says with a shaking voice, as though Denner might simply appear out of thin air to punish him. Then, when nothing happens, Danny repeats it. “Danny. Daniel. My name is Danny. My name is Daniel M-Michaelson and I, I d-don't…be, belong to…”

“You got this, Danny, come on,” Ryan urges. “You can do this. Come on, Dan, we can do this together.”

“M-My name is Daniel Michaelson and I don’t belong to him, I don’t-… I don’t belong to anyone b-b-b-but myself,” Danny says softly, and then he starts to cry again.

Ryan holds him but it’s different this time - his shoulders are back and his back is straight and every sob sounds not like fear or sadness but like pure, unbridled relief.

It probably won’t last - the trauma expert and the therapist both said to expect every two forward steps to come with a step back. He might wake up and want to be Red again tomorrow. He’ll probably go back to not wanting to be touched by anyone but Nate.

But right here and now, in this moment in the middle of the night in the safest place there is for him, Danny remembers who he used to be, and it’s eough.

Suddenly, Ryan Michaelson knows exactly how he wants to start the statement he’s going to read while staring right at Abraham Denner.

A few days ago, my brother hugged me for the first time since 2015. My brother, who was subjected to every kind of twisted violence until he believed that it was too dangerous to even think of himself as human, answered to his own name.

I want to tell you how it feels to be told someone you love has been abducted. I want to tell you how it feels to look and look every single day for four years and find nothing - and be told that you should prepare for him to return in a body bag.

I want to tell you how it felt to learn that, due to the violence, abuse, brainwashing, and trauma he was subjected to, my own brother might not recognize me.

I want to tell you how it felt when they told me Daniel Michaelson was gone.

Then, I want to tell you how it felt when, despite all the odds and every statistic and the efforts of Abraham Denner to destroy my brother down to his very core, I was given the gift of looking him right in the eyes as he came back.

My brother’s name is Daniel Michaelson, and he belongs only to himself.

That might not seem like much of a revelation to many of the people here in this courtroom today - but for my brother, it takes immense bravery simply to believe he is his own.

I have been asked to speak about the impact the last four years has had on my family, and I will. I will speak about every day I combed missing persons’ reports throughout the Northwest Coast for similarities to Danny. I will tell you what it was like to lose him.

First I want to tell you what it meant to me to get him back.

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alyssabethancourt · 4 years

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If you only read one of my project updates, make it this one.

It took most of the day to kick in, for some reason, but the price of the Mornnovin eBook on Amazon has finally adjusted to 99¢. It will remain at that deeply discounted price at least until February 26th. I may or may not be persuadable on the subject of extending the sale for an additional week.

So now that the stress of that unexpected snafu has lifted, I can do a proper update.

It's Friday, five days in, and as of posting this the fundraiser is sitting pretty at $821 or 22% funded. We're nicely on track. The next big goal, obviously, is getting to 25% ($925) and I'm confident we can hit that mark easy-peasy before the end of the weekend. Please, keep talking up this series and sharing the link with your friends, family, and followers.

Trajelon is a special book not just because it's mine and I have to say that, but because it explores issues and themes that I don't think we see often enough in fiction – especially not in the sparkly elf magic genre.

I'm going to get real with you for a minute.

I've talked before about how the version of Mornnovin that is now published is the culmination of thirty years and four versions of telling that particular story. What people may not know is that I'd also written Trajelon once before.

In late 1997, I was 18 years old and I'd made some terrible decisions that I was locked into living with for the foreseeable future, both because of the nature of responsibility but also because of pride. People had tried to warn me, and of course being the age I was, I knew everything. I'd been downright insolent about my conviction that I knew what I was doing.

So there I was, miserable, bridges burned, everything to prove, struggling under the load of several massive responsibilities all taken on at once, knowing that I'd made the bed I now had to lie in. I was also trying to pass my first semester of college as an English major. I can't remember now precisely which combination of events led me to come to this conclusion, but I started to feel that although I was reasonably good at academic writing, my creative writing was a clear waste of my time. I actually went as far as deciding to give it up.

I think, now, that I might have been trying to punish myself.

That take makes sense in hindsight because as soon as I'd grounded myself from the sort of writing I actually enjoy doing, two things happened.

One, at odd moments I started doodling scenes that weren't supposed to be part of anything, so I was free from the feeling that they had to be any good or make any kind of sense or fit within a larger narrative. This would come to be important later.

And two, the scenes I was scribbling down without any commitment to story or quality were all about bad things happening to Loríen.

Because writers have to write, even if they've made bullshit nonsense declarations about how they've given it up, a story idea did eventually coalesce out of all of these snippets. And because of where I was, the story was dark. The finished product was horrible, but it was genuine – a savage cry of pain from someone who believed she had no right to it.

Fast forward ten years. Now it's 2007. I'm still living in that hell of my own making, but it's different because I'm ten years older and time does change things, for better or worse. Now I'm working a crappy retail job and it's killing me. To save my sanity, one day, I pull some blank receipt paper out of the cash register and in tiny, cramped letters I start scribbling some scenes that aren't supposed to be part of anything. They're just junk for my brain, something to keep me alive. Because they're not for anything real, I don't worry about them being any good or fitting within whatever other arbitrary writing rules I have for myself. At night, while the household is asleep, I transfer the cramped letters from cash register paper to computer file.

After a while, I realize they are actually starting to make a coherent story, but it's not canon, I tell myself. It's just some cracky Asrellion fanfiction. Just some mindless entertainment. I keep giving myself permission to tell a different kind of story from whatever I imagine canon to be.

By the time I leave that crappy retail job, I find that in my time there I've managed to scribble onto bits and pieces of receipt paper what amounts to roughly twenty typed pages of... something.

Then I realize that what I have on my hands isn't just something, it's the seed of a new version of Book 2. One that actually has something to say besides screaming in wordless agony. The only problem is, this new book that I can see laid out before me is far too good for the terrible most-recent draft of Book 1 that would precede it.

Then I realize that I'm going to have to write this book, which means that I'm also going to have to rewrite the first book in the series in order to lay the necessary groundwork.

That's the story of how I came to begin my ground-up re-imagining of Mornnovin in 2008.

It turns out to be a good thing that I took the time to do that first, because I wouldn't have been ready then to tell the story that I ultimately had in me in 2016 when I wrote Trajelon over the course of six intense months. By then, I had escaped Hell. By then, I was safe. By then, I had some perspective on what it is not just to live through but to survive trauma and depression.

The first incarnation of Trajelon was what I needed it to be when I screamed it up, all those years ago. It was catharsis. I don't blame it for its darkness or its ugliness any more than you would blame a post-surgical scar for its raw appearance. This iteration of Trajelon is what it needed to be. Almost Athena-like, it sprang fully-formed from the brain of its creator. And it's no longer a cry of suffering. It's... a meditation on living with the suffering that inevitably comes along with the triumphs we experience in life. Living with, enduring, growing from. Learning to discard where possible. Drawing into our identity and building off of where necessary.

No doubt this is scary territory for some readers, but that's exactly why I think it's so important to tell these stories. They can't all be about glorious victories on the field of battle. There are more shades to the spectrum of the human (elven?) experience. I so wish this book had existed at a time when I could have drawn strength from it. Now I no longer need to draw on that kind of strength, but others do. I know they do.

So maybe this was a big old heavy update for a Friday evening, but I hope you don't mind the candor. This book is very personal for me, as you now understand, and that would have become clear anyway as soon as you read it. Because I think that's actually its truest and purest strength, I wanted to be up front about it in this fundraiser. I am pitching to you a fantasy novel written by a survivor of abuse, trauma, and depression written for survivors of abuse, trauma, and depression.

If you, like I do, think that's an important thing to have exist in the world, please help me get the word out and bring it into reality.

And thank you for letting me get real.

Help fund TRAJELON on Kickstarter.

#depression #trauma #abuse #fiction for survivors #fantasy #fantasy fiction #elves #writing #indie author #indie publisher #fundraiser #kickstarter #mornnovin #trajelon #asrellion #alyssa marie bethancourt

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yayee-prsp · 5 years

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I was talking with a friend about this idea I have been having for a while, so i ended writing and drawing about them.

(It is a rough draft and i have no beta so all the mistakes are mine ,,)

The background is blurred from this

That time when Grantaire writes on cups.

Courfeyrac and Jehan have a café.

It is a small thing. Two stories building in a small space, cosy and warm, filled with different flowers every day at the request of Jehan himself. Various paintings and dried flowers are put up almost everywhere. Everything is environment-friendly, Jehan has made sure of it. No straws unless requested, uses paper cups and only a few plastic ones, with recycle bin near. Located in a quieter part of town, only a few people know of this place, but those who discover it will surely come around again for more.

The atmosphere is always warm, no matter how cold the weather is. It might be from the smell of coffee and tea lingering around and in the air at all time when you enter, or because of how welcoming Courfeyrac and Jehan are - or maybe both. Courfeyrac will always greet you with a smile and ask you about your day, while Jehan will always leave a small poem for you on your cup - a cheery little thing for your day.

One of the patrons is, of course, the friends of the owners'. A group of students who called themselves 'Les Amis de L'ABC', or the friends of the abase. They are a group of students who wish to change the world, and the small café is one of their bases.

At first, the idea of writing on cups was only reserved for customers, in which Jehan would write their names in beautiful cursives and end with a few couplets or tercets. However, some customers wanted to request something to write for their friends, namely Eliza, a cheerful sweet girl who stumbles into their café one day and wish to add a few things on the cup for her boyfriend.

Enter Grantaire, who sees this and thinks of an idea.

Grantaire, a man who believes in nothing but still a romantic at heart, wishes to spread his positiveness into the public world by requesting quotes for Jehan to write on the cups. Which, well, mostly consists of cheesy pick-up lines which never fail to at least put a small smile and a headshake from the poor readers' face.

The first customer who gets the cup mumbles to herself: “You look cold. Would you like to use me as your blanket?” A scoff leaves her throat, and she leaves with a small smile.

After that, the victims range from Jehan himself, to Courfeyrac, and some poor random customers - sometimes the friends. He wrote for Bahorel once: ‘You must be a broom, ‘cuz you just swept me off my feet.’ To which Bahorel laughed in an obnoxious volume, and jumped up to literally pick Grantaire up from where he was working on his art. And another time to Joly: ‘Can you help me, Doc? ‘Cuz I just broke my leg falling for you :(’ Which was fun, considering the face Joly made.

The point is, many people had to read his lines, except one. It has, and will never, been Enjolras, Grantaire has made sure of that.

Courfeyrac, however, will not have any of that. So he takes it upon himself to deliberately pick a certain cup for the leader of their little group.

"Do you have a sunburn, or... are you always this," Enjolras reads, "hot?"

Courfeyrac just grins and says nothing, while Jehan laughs and shakes his head.

"An admirer requested it," he replies, “Just for you!”

A small smile plays on Enjolras' face though, so Courfeyrac counts it as a win.

———

Grantaire, however, freaks out.

"Why would you give him that, you traitor!" He whines one day, a cup of hot latté held between his hands, and his face buried into the cold table top. Jehan laughs softly and pats him on the back, while Courfeyrac, too, is laughing. Hard. Apparently Grantaire sulking and embarrassment is kind of funny to him.

"It's alright, R," Jehan tells him, patting him a few times on his head, "Enjolras seems to like it. Plus, he doesn't know who wrote or requested that anyway."

Grantaire sniffles, but he looks up at the poet and considers it. Jehan seems genuine, and Courfeyrac seems to agree.

"Can I write it this time?" Grantaire asks and receives a brilliant smile of Jehan's in return.

——

"Roses are red, my face is too," Enjolras reads, "that only happens when I'm around you?" He raises his brow after finishes. Jehan, a sweetheart that he is, remains silent and replies with only a smile.

"This is not your handwriting," the leader observes his cup of black coffee, holding the weight firmly in his hand while careful not to spill it.

"From your admirer," the poet answers.

Enjolras frowns, but shrugs and turns away. Not fast enough that Jehan misses his smile and a small shake of his head.

If only Grantaire could see.

——

For the next two weeks, Enjolras has a collection of take-out cups with pick up lines on them. Some have 2 or 3 on them since he decides to reuse some of the cups. (He also notes that when he reuses the cups, Jehan would be the one who writes the lines. So whoever it is is not in the café when he is, or they do not wish to be found.) He hates to admit it, but those lines do make his days.

He wonders who comes up with all these cheesy lines, and can't help but think about it. When it comes to, he has narrowed it down to only a few people who could possibly do this. And he thinks he is pretty sure who it is, but he needs more proof.

One day he decides to pay back the kindness and walks up to Courfeyrac. He asks the man for a marker and a cup, and makes quick scribbles of words on it, before returning it to Courfeyrac.

"For my 'secret admirer'," he instructs, earning a raise of eyebrows from the cheery man behind the counter.

Then he waits a while, sitting in the café and pretends to do some work while trying to see if Courfeyrac will slip in the cup for someone. Apparently, the man is loyal because all the day he has been sitting, the cup is not given to anyone. So Enjolras just resigns and packs his stuff. He'll find out, one way or another.

As soon as Enjolras walks out, Courfeyrac springs himself into action. The sound of the coffee machine echoes out all over the room, emitting a pleasant smell of coffee everyone loves.

A few moments later, a cup of iced latté with extra whipped-cream is placed in front of Grantaire, startling him out of his trance. He jumps and glares at Courfeyrac who simply grins at him like nothing has happened.

Grantaire puts his sketchbook and art supplies down on an empty chair beside him. His hands, which are half-covered by his green knitted sweater reach out to grasp the cold drink, all the while saying, "I thought I would never get my drink in this life."

Courfeyrac just keeps smiling, then points to him his cup. Grantaire frowns and looks down before his eyes go wide.

"Apparently you also have an admirer," the barista states happily, before making his way out and throwing a wink over his shoulder, leaving Grantaire to his shock.

He would recognise that handwriting anywhere, and that makes it even worse. Because Enjolras, of all people, wrote, in his quick but neat handwriting, "I would say God bless you, but it seems he already did."

That bastard. Grantaire has lost the ability to focus on his work after that.

——

It goes like that for another two weeks, with Grantaire writing pick-up lines for several people every day, and one reserved coffee cup or a line for Enjolras, with additional doodle of small things on all the cup: flowers, cats, dogs, or whatever it is that inspires Grantaire. Jehan seems to like his addition though, and so Grantaire has become one of the professional coffee cup artists of the café after two or three days or so.

Customers seem to appreciate it since Jehan notices they would smile wider when they receive their cups. However, their little game has to stop when the reputation of their heart-warming café has spread for some reason, and there are more customers than ever. Courfeyrac loves it, and Jehan is more than happy, but it exhausts them every day. So, Grantaire takes the matter in his own hands and volunteers to be a barista.

"And don't you pay me with cash, I just want some free coffee every day and that's that. No argument," he says, dismissing any further complaints from the couple.

Now Grantaire has full-control of everything behind the counter. He spends some times learning how to make basic coffee and how to do it quick. But Courfeyrac prefers to let him station at the cashier, and Grantaire is more than happy to oblige. He loves talking to new people, and being at the cashier gives him the opportunity to write on the cups as much as he wishes. Jehan still comes in and writes beautiful poems at times though. He loves it after all, but making coffee at all time makes it hard for him. So, unfortunately, he can only do that when the customers are not so overwhelming. That gives Grantaire no time to write for Enjolras.

Grantaire wonders if Enjolras notices or misses the small exchange of random cheesy lines. But considering Enjolras, it would be indifferent to him, Grantaire thinks with a twinge of disappointment. Still, he is happy doing this - working and meeting people.

A month and a half after the first time Grantaire asked to write, or a few weeks after getting behind the counter, however, Courfeyrac hands him a latte cup with another line written on it, catching him by surprise.

"Apollo sent for you," he states. And on it, written in Enjolras' usual handwriting: 'No wonder the sky is grey today, all its blue is in your eyes.'

And that just leaves him with a racing heart and a face that can be used as a stove to fry some eggs. And the temperature of the countertop is just so perfect to cool his fave temperature down because damn this is so unexpected. It's been too long since their last exchange and Enjolras has to attack him with this-

He is so caught up trying to calm his racing heart and burning face down that he doesn't question why Enjolras knows his admirer's eyes are blue - or to see a smile of a certain someone just through the window outside the shop.

After a while, Grantaire moves to work at the coffee machine since he has mastered it. Jehan and Courfeyrac are more than delighted to know that he can also make latte art! It is amazing, and everyone loves it.

Grantaire practically works at their little café full-time by now, and Courfeyrac would not let him work for free any longer, so he guesses he's an official employee of this café. It's not that bad after all.

(He tried to refuse for a while but it didn't work anymore. Jehan can be terrifying when he chooses to.)

Even then, Grantaire still tries his best to write some messages on the cups, but since the new shop policy which tries to reduce even more plastic, he has to adapt. Hence, he chooses to write on the napkin or the receipt instead. Jehan seems to adore this idea also.

Enjolras comes to the counter one day, tapping absent-mindedly on the countertop. Grantaire, who takes on cashier duty, raises his eyebrow, holding up Enjolras' stainless tumbler.

"Human to the God of sun, Apollo?" Grantaire calls and smiles with delight when Enjolras snaps his head to frown at him. "Iced coffee like usual?"

Enjolras blinks at him then slowly nods his head. The artist smiles back, before turning away to the coffee machines behind him. Jehan and Courfeyrac are on a break since there are only a few customers and Grantaire declares they deserve a break. So it's a one-man job that Grantaire is more than happy to do.

The machine whirs into action, filling the cosy shop with a constant sound. The smell of coffee slowly swirls all over the shop once again. Grantaire smiles, watching as the liquid pours down and into Enjolras' tumbler.

"Well, there we go, Enj. We don't have straws to preserve the environment - you know the drill. And here's no poem from Prouvaire because he's not here. And since you've paid, you're free to go!" He rambles on with a big smile, handing Enjolras his stainless bottle. He frowns, however. When Enjolras takes it but doesn't move away, "Is there anything I can help you?"

Enjolras bites his lips, looking down at the countertop where he is still drumming his fingers. And - is that blush on the leader's face?

"Since you don't use as much cups anymore," Enjolras begins, looks up to meet Grantaire's eyes. "Would you now say those cheesy pick-up lines to me in person now?"

#enjoltaire #exr #enjolras #grantaire #fic #i guess #and now the rants:#I did want to edit this first but I've become unmotivated #i apologize for any mistake #i'm sorry if this has been done before but I need this-#if anyone wants to write more then please do #i need something

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queenmorgawse · 5 years

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transmigration for dummies

chapter three. mdzs scum villain au. read on ao3 + end notes. credit to @lee-luca, esp as another bit of the comic is mentioned here. previous | first | next

One hour, thirty minutes and two hundred rules into his punishment, Jingyi is as bored as he’s ever been in this life. To top it all off, the System isn’t responding to any of his pleas for company, only responding with oops ): something went wrong when he tries to ping it. Back home, this is about when he would have given up on homework and started scrolling through his Twitter feed instead, but there’s not much he can do without his phone.

Ugh, he’d kill for one of these crappy McDonalds games. Even a Kinder toy would make him happy right now. Instead, he doodles on his torn-up first drafts, on which the ink made blots from his clumsy first attempts to imitate the original text’s elegant calligraphy.

He silently adds bic pens to the ever-increasing list of modern appliances he misses.

When badly-drawn stickmen get boring as well, he starts to think about the original Lan Jingyi in his life. Maybe that’s how it works, after all. Mom sure would love someone who’d actually go to bed early when she tells him to. On the other hand, once he got over the initial shock of modern Jingyi’s life, he’d probably find it pretty dull. High school isn’t about to compare to flying swords and cultivation, that’s for sure.

Opposite him, Sizhui is bent over his own stack of scrolls, poring over rows and rows of tiny characters and absent-mindedly running his fingers along the lines. From the way he hums to himself when he thinks Jingyi is too busy copying to care, he guesses they’re music sheets of some kind. Unlike Jingyi, he looks like he’s actually engrossed in what he’s doing.

Too bad. Jingyi’s reached that point of boredom at which he needs to talk to someone or else he’ll implode. ( Still, he promises himself he’ll stop if Sizhui shows even a hint of genuine annoyance. )

“Hey, Lan Sizhui ⎯ can I call you just Sizhui? Um, sorry I got you stuck here.”

To his relief, the other doesn’t look irritated, just surprised. “Sizhui is fine,” he ventures after a few seconds. A smile breaks out on his face. “That’s good. I was afraid you were still mad me, you’ve been so awkward all day...”

Wait, what? Who’s angry at you? Someone who kicks kittens for fun, probably.

Oh right, me. Maybe he’s the one whose brain needs a reboot. How does he explain that it’s not him who’s mad? Hell, he doesn’t even know what the original is supposed to be mad about. For some reason, it feels weird to ask, just because it seems important enough that admitting he forgot would be insulting.

“Anyway,” Sizhui continues after coughing into his sleeve, “it’s alright, you don’t have to apologize to me. I’ve got to go over these before tomorrow’s lesson anyway, I might as well do it here.”

“Inquiry?” Jingyi ventures, maybe-maybe-not because it’s the only title he clearly remembers from the ones canon mentioned.

“Oh, no. Asking very specific questions is still a bit out of my reach, but Fa...Hanguang-jun wrote down a list of phrases for me, so we’re going to try them tomorrow.” His face softens at the mention of Lan Wangji. If this was a fic, this would be when Jingyi keels over and presses his face into a pillow for a little while.

The chat devolves into musical cultivation. Jingyi muddles his way through it the best he can, feeling like he’s bullshitting an essay out loud, but Sizhui doesn’t seem to find his vague answers all that off-putting. He still pointedly glances down at the stack of unfinished notes on the table from time to time, but since Jingyi’s calligraphy has been getting worse and worse the less attention he pays to it, maybe it’s for the better.

When dinner time rolls around, they eat their bowls sitting on the steps leading up to the Library Pavilion, after Sizhui rightfully points out Lan Qiren would have their skins if they spilled even a drop of sauce on the sect’s precious texts. Gradually, Jingyi feels himself relax.

“So, are we chill?” he asks between two mouthfuls of rice.

Sizhui just stares at him.

Right. No slang. “...I mean, we’re doing good, right? We’re friends?”

Something complicated passes over Sizhui’s expression. It’s too fleeting for him to catch more than a glimpse of it, especially as it’s overridden by his usual calm smile before Jingyi can shove another rice ball into his mouth, but he could swear the other winced.

Well, ouch. It must show on his face, because Sizhui suddenly looks alarmed and adds : “Yes, yes, we are!” Another smile. This time, Jingyi can definitely see the strain. “We’re friends. You don’t have to doubt that.”

“Oh. Great!” Jingyi resists the urge to reach out and gently punch his shoulder. Who knows how it’d be perceived. “We’re gonna spend a lot of time together, if I’ve got to keep copying rules, so...I wanted to make sure.”

【OOC behavior detected : contradiction of backstory despite hints : -20 points. Current balance : 65 points. 】

Shut up! I want him to like me!

“We’re friends,” Sizhui repeats one last time, like he’s trying to convince himself. Then he reaches for Jingyi’s shoulder and gives his robes a tug. “We should get back in there. Two more hours before curfew, you can still get a few lines in. I won’t distract you.”

“Ugh.”

Jingyi makes a face. Sizhui laughs, and the tension from earlier dissolves. “Come on. The more you get done, the faster it’ll be over.”

It turns out they’re both severely underestimating the number of rules Jingyi can break without realizing, and therefore the amount of time they’ll be spending here.

Despite these setbacks, over the course of the next handful of weeks, Jingyi adapts to his new life the best he can. He finds out, with much relief, that even though he can’t access the original’s knowledge and memories, training since childhood pays off even after a body swap. He doesn’t have to think too hard about sparring, just keep a firm grip on his sword, and his muscles can apparently do the rest with minimal effort on his part.

It only works with the actual fighting, though. After going to bed feeling sore all over for a week straight, Jingyi gives up and gives the cold springs a shot. It freezes his limbs off, but the ache gets better after that. It even gets him about a dozen points, which he adds to the rest, gained through menial tasks across the Cloud Recesses and some well-timed mischief.

He also likes to think he gets some progress done with step one of his grand plan to survive this novel. There’s no undoing years of being a pain in everyone’s ass in a matter of weeks, but Jingyi still gives it his best shot - peppered with tasteful cursing at the System when it deducts points for actually following the rules or, you know, not being a dick to everyone he talks to. As a result, he goes from mostly being avoided by the other disciples to tolerated, even if no one but Sizhui goes out of their way to talk to him or invite him to join in on...whatever fun they have.

Jingyi doubts he’s missing out on much, at least where the Lans are concerned. But rumor has it some of the guest disciples snuck out into Caiyi to try some of the local wine, and he’s jealous of that, which is kind of irrational. He doesn’t even like the taste of wine that much, and besides, that may be too much of an infraction for a raised Lan, however prone to rule-breaking said Lan is supposed to be.

( He really can’t afford to slip up again. When he dared chop a solid forty centimeters off his hair after struggling to run a comb through it for the fifth time that week, the System’s alarm blared so loud he almost had an out of body experience. He’d felt the hundred points shaved off his score, though, even if he’d managed to negotiate half of them back. That was the spiritual equivalent of having a car zoom past right as you were about to cross the street, and Jingyi’s in no hurry to do it again...but with that said, it feels great not to have to deal with a bird’s nest every time he wakes up. )

Of course, he can’t just get comfortable with his new daily routine. Something has to happen. This time, said something takes the shape of a summon from Teacher Lan. Jingyi drags his feet over from the Library Pavilion and away from his sixth copy of Gusu Lan rules. His wrist is still complaining every time he bends it a little too far. Fuck corpse powder, it’s carpal tunnel that’s going to do him in.

Speaking of copies, maybe he shouldn’t slump this much. He’s fairly sure there’s a rule for that somewhere in the two thousand and nineties.

Given the circumstances, Jingyi fully expects another lecture from Lan Qiren the moment he sets foot in the communal hall, but quickly readjusts his expectations when he spots the small crowd of disciples gathered around their teacher. Most of them are familiar faces by now, except for the girls, who for some reason live in a completely different part of the Cloud Recesses. Still, he recognizes Lan Fan, the shimei who looks like she could bite your head off but actually gave him some pretty helpful tips on sword stances the other day, Tao Ming, the boy who’d seemed vaguely suspicious of him that first day, and of course, Sizhui in the forefront.

Lan Qiren narrows his eyes at him as he hastily joins the rest of the group. “Late again, Lan Jingyi.”

“Sorry, Teacher. This disciple was busy copying rules when he heard.”

A few of his companions snort, the noise quickly disguised as a sudden and collective bout of coughing. Jingyi can’t blame them ; if he’d heard the same words everyday for weeks on end, he’d be laughing too. Lan Qiren gives a long-suffering sigh, but whatever he’s about to tell them must take precedence, because Jingyi gets away with what might otherwise have been considered cheek.

“Madam Mo of Mo Village has sent us a request for assistance.” Given their teacher’s expression, he might as well said that she’d beaten down their door in the middle of the night and let a donkey loose in the courtyard. “From the servants’ description, it shouldn’t be anything more than a few walking corpses. Nothing a group of juniors cannot handle.”

Yeah, right. Despite knowing he’s supposed to let canon run its course, Jingyi still feels a twinge of apprehension. Why, you ask? He can answer that in two points.

Things Jingyi knows : mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Things Jingyi doesn’t know : how to kill zombies with swords.

In theory, he did spend the last few weeks training, and he didn’t slack off either, thank you very much. Doesn’t mean he’s ever gone up against a corpse before. He’s a coward, okay? Horror movie night was hell, back in his own world. He’s in no hurry to experience it in real (?) life.

“Lan Sizhui will lead the group,” Lan Qiren continues. “I expect all of you to keep your behaviors appropriate and not bring shame onto our sect.” To no one’s surprise, Jingyi thinks, and throws the interested party a small smile. To his surprise, Sizhui blushes and looks down at his boots, looking both embarrassed and pleased. It’s an unfairly cute look on him, but again, most of his looks are.

Right on cue, the System wheezes to life like it just crawled out of a computer from the nineties.【Beginning stage checkpoint mission assigned. Destination : Mo Village. Mission : ensure the protagonist, Wei Wuxian, makes it to Mount Dafan to meet love interest Lan Wangji. Please click to accept.】

Jingyi mentally slams the Accept button.

Ding! 【Mission successfully accepted. Please read the file carefully for mission details and make appropriate preparations. We wish you success. 】

OOC function, here he comes!

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #lan jingyi #zhuiyi #transmigrator!ljy #kim's fics

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