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barnacles34 · 7 months ago

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Lost in Analysis (Winter x Male OC)

5k words, smut, fluff, happiness, data

Winter x Male OC

The thing about Junho Kim's[1] weekly debriefs with Minjeong Kim was that they followed a precise algorithm, an almost liturgical routine that both participants had wordlessly agreed upon circa Winter's third month of employment (viz. April 2024). The format went as follows: Winter would arrive at exactly 18:30 on Friday bearing a leather-bound portfolio containing the week's logistics reports, margin analyses, and projected Q3/Q4 modeling scenarios. Junho would pretend to study these for exactly twelve minutes while Winter sat in the ergonomic chair across his desk, her accent becoming pronounced in direct proportion to her anxiety level[2].

What happened on this particular Friday deviated from the algorithm in ways that would later prove significant, starting with Winter's arrival at 18:27[3].

"The Busan account numbers are off," Junho said, his photographic memory already detecting a 0.03% discrepancy in the third-quarter projections. The words emerged with the mechanical precision of someone who had learned human speech through technical manuals rather than conversation. "This is—" he paused, index finger tapping against his mahogany desk in a rapidfire motion that Winter had learned to recognize as his pre-explosion tell, "—unacceptable."

And then something unprecedented occurred.

Instead of her usual composed absorption of his critique, Winter's face crumpled into what could only be described as a squeaky whimper, a sound so incongruous with her usual professional demeanor that it seemed to physically stun Junho into silence. It was the acoustic equivalent of watching a Mercedes-Benz hiccup.

The algorithm crashed.

—

[1] Junho Kim, CEO of Quantum Logistics Solutions, net worth $2.3B (₩3.1T), possessed what his former Harvard professors called "an almost frightening capacity for data retention" and what his former therapist (sessions terminated after 2.5 meetings) called "a pathological inability to process emotional bandwidth."

[2] A phenomenon her roommate had dubbed "The Accent Anxiety Index," where her carefully practiced Seoul pronunciation would gradually give way to her native Busan satoori, ranging from barely detectable at Level 1 ("감사합니다") to full coastal at Level 10 ("아이고, 사장님, 이 숫자 영 아니네요").

[3] The 3-minute early arrival would later be explained by a complex series of events involving a broken elevator, two flights of stairs, and Winter's determination not to let her carefully constructed timeline collapse due to mechanical failure.

—

The following Friday's debrief began with Junho actually pulling out Winter's chair[4], a gesture so unexpected that she nearly missed the seat entirely. The portfolio was reviewed. The whiskey was poured (Junho's usual Macallan 25, Winter's Hwayo 41). And then, somewhere between the second and third drink, Winter's accent kicked into what would later be classified as Level 11 on the Southern Comfort Scale.

"You know what your problem is, sajangnim?" Minjeong's words carried the warm weight of soju and suppressed frustration, her carefully maintained Seoul accent dissolving entirely into coastal inflections. "당신은 인생을 마치 스프레드시트처럼 대하시네요. Everything must calculate perfectly, but people aren't numbers, and some of us are tired of being debugged like broken code."

Junho's finger stopped its habitual tapping mid-motion[5].

—

[4] A gesture learned from a WikiHow article titled "Basic Human Courtesy: A Beginner's Guide" that Junho had queued up on his tablet at 3:47 AM the previous Tuesday.

[5] Later analysis would reveal this as the exact moment Junho Kim, master of algorithms and logistics, encountered a variable his photographic memory couldn't process: genuine human connection.[6]

The office fell into a silence that could be measured in heartbeats (Junho's: an efficient 72 BPM; Minjeong's: an elevated 98 BPM). Outside, Seoul's financial district performed its usual Friday night exodus, the sound of departing Mercedes and BMWs creating a capitalistic symphony twenty-three floors below.

"시간이..." Minjeong continued, her Busan accent now operating at what could only be classified as Level 12[7], "Time isn't just money, 사장님. Sometimes it's just... time. Like those lunches you wolf down in exactly eight minutes while reading reports. Or these Friday meetings where you never actually look at me, just through me at some invisible spreadsheet floating in the air behind my head."

Junho's hand, still frozen mid-tap, slowly lowered to the desk. His photographic memory began involuntarily cataloging details it had somehow missed during their previous 47 debriefs: the way Minjeong's left hand always fidgeted with her portfolio's corner when nervous, how her voice carried traces of sea salt and summer festivals despite years of Seoul speech coaching, the fact that she had memorized his coffee preferences down to the precise temperature (81°C, no higher, no lower).

"I do look at you," he said, then immediately registered the statistical improbability of his own response[8].

Minjeong's laugh carried the particular timber of someone who had been holding it in reserve for approximately 11.7 months. "아니요, you really don't. You look at KPIs and performance metrics and quarterly projections. Did you know," she leaned forward, her accent thick as Busan fog, "that I've worn the same earrings every Friday for three months just to see if you'd notice?"

The earrings in question were small silver cranes, Junho's memory instantly supplied, purchased from a street vendor in Gukje Market during last quarter's Busan office inspection, chosen because their wings formed the mathematical symbol for infinity when viewed from the correct angle[9].

—

[6] A concept that would later require Junho to create an entirely new category in his mental filing system, located somewhere between "Acceptable Business Practices" and "Breathing Exercises (Mandatory)."

[7] A previously theoretical level on the Accent Anxiety Index, characterized by the complete abandonment of Seoul linguistic pretense and the emergence of what Minjeong's mother would call "우리 딸의 진짜 목소리" (our daughter's real voice).

[8] Statistical analysis of Junho's daily eye contact patterns, conducted by his personal AI assistant, revealed an average sustained eye contact duration of 1.3 seconds with all employees, making his current 4.7-second gaze at Minjeong a 361.5% deviation from the mean.

[9] A detail that would have impressed Junho greatly had he noticed it at the time of purchase, rather than at this precise moment when his brain was simultaneously trying to process the concept of infinity and the way Minjeong's eyes reflected the city lights like binary code translated into stardust.

—

The Hwayo bottle stood between them like a glass mediator, its contents depleted by exactly 73.4%. Junho found himself performing calculations he had never previously considered necessary: the precise angle at which Minjeong's smile disrupted his cardiac rhythm (42.7°), the correlation coefficient between her proximity and his ability to maintain coherent thought patterns (inverse relationship, R² = 0.97), the half-life of each satoori-tinged syllable in his auditory memory (approaching infinity)[10].

"There's a pojangmacha," Minjeong said, her words now performing linguistic gymnastics between Seoul and Busan, "down in Gangnam that serves 할매's 파전 just like back home. But you—" she gestured with her glass, creating small amber trajectories in the air, "—you probably have the exact caloric content memorized without ever tasting it."

"624 calories per standard serving," Junho confirmed automatically, then added, in what he would later recognize as his first attempt at human humor[11], "Not accounting for 할매's (grandmother’s) love."

The laugh that escaped Minjeong's lips was genuine enough to bypass all of Junho's statistical models for appropriate business interaction. It was the kind of laugh that made him wonder if his entire algorithmic approach to life had been operating on a fundamental error: the assumption that human emotions could be debugged rather than experienced.

"사장님," she said, then caught herself, "아니, Junho-ssi." The honorific shift created a quantifiable disruption in the office's atmospheric pressure[12]. "Do you know why I cry sometimes when you yell about the numbers?"

Junho's hands found themselves attempting to calculate an emotion he had no formula for. "I... have a working hypothesis."

"It's not because I'm scared or hurt," she continued, her Busan accent now wrapping around the words like a warm coast-side breeze. "It's because I see you turning yourself into code, like you're trying to compile a human being into binary, and..." she paused, searching for words in both Seoul and Busan vocabularies before settling on, "...그게 너무 아까워요."

The phrase hung in the air, untranslatable in its full emotional weight[13].

—

[10] A phenomenon that would later require Junho to create an entirely new mathematical framework he privately termed "The Minjeong Constant: Variables in Human Connection."

[11] Later analysis of office security footage would reveal this as his first non-data-related comment in approximately 2,847 hours of recorded business interactions.

[12] Advanced environmental sensors in the building's HVAC system actually recorded a 0.02% change in air pressure at this exact moment, though causation versus correlation remains a subject of debate among the building's maintenance staff.

[13] The closest English approximation might be "it's such a waste," but this fails to capture the uniquely Korean sense of regret for potential beauty lost to unnecessary efficiency, like trying to measure ocean waves in milliliters.

—

For exactly 15.4 seconds, Junho Kim—master of instantaneous data processing, champion of real-time analytics—found himself buffering. His mind, that perfectly calibrated instrument of calculation, attempted to run multiple subroutines simultaneously:

ROUTINE_1: Analyze the 2.3% tremor in Minjeong's voice during "그게 너무 아까워요"

ROUTINE_2: Process the 7.4mm dilation of his pupils upon hearing his given name

ROUTINE_3: Calculate the exact distance between their hands on the desk (23.7cm, decreasing by approximately 0.3mm per heartbeat)

ERROR: Stack overflow in emotional processing unit[14]

"I have a file," he began, then stopped, realizing that perhaps not everything needed to be classified and stored. "No, I mean... I remember every time you've smiled at work. Real smiles, not the ones you use for clients or difficult vendors." His fingers twitched, instinctively seeking a keyboard that wasn't there. "The data suggests that they occur most frequently when you're talking about Busan, or when you think no one is watching you arrange the office plants, or..." he paused, processing, "...or when you're correcting my humanity protocols[15]."

Minjeong's eyes widened, creating what Junho's brain automatically calculated as a 34.6% increase in their reflective surface area. "You... keep track of my smiles?"

"I keep track of everything," he said, then amended, displaying unprecedented runtime flexibility, "but your smiles occupy 43% more memory space than standard data points."

"아이고," Minjeong laughed, the sound carrying hints of sea breezes and noraebang nights, "only you would quantify feelings in percentages and memory allocation, 사장님[16]."

The Hwayo bottle now stood at 82.6% depletion. Outside, Seoul had transformed into its weekend configuration, all neon equations and binary dreams. But inside this office, something unquantifiable was compiling—a program written in neither Python nor Java, but in the ancient code of human connection.

"There's a logical error in your earlier statement," Junho said suddenly, his voice performing calculations it had never been calibrated for. "About me not looking at you."

"Oh?" Minjeong's eyebrow arched at precisely 27 degrees.

"I look at you approximately 2,347 times per day. My peripheral vision activates in your presence with 72% more frequency than baseline. I have memorized exactly 267 variations of your voice modulation between Seoul and Busan registers[17]. The error," he continued, his own accent slipping for the first time since Harvard, "is in assuming I don't see you."

—

[14] A phenomenon his Harvard professors had theoretically predicted but never successfully documented: the complete shutdown of pure logic circuits in favor of what they termed "human.exe."

[15] A private joke that had never made it past his internal firewall until this moment, referring to the way she subtly guided him toward more socially acceptable behaviors, like suggesting he say "good morning" to the cleaning staff or remember team members' birthdays.

[16] The honorific here carrying a new weight, somewhere between professional distance and affectionate teasing, a linguistic quantum state that would have fascinated physicists had they been present to observe it.

[17] This particular statistic would later become the subject of a 3 AM realization that perhaps "normal" CEOs don't maintain such detailed databases of their assistants' vocal patterns.

—

The confession hung in the air with the weight of a misplaced decimal point. Minjeong's hand, still holding her Hwayo glass, trembled at a frequency of approximately 3.2 Hz. The office's automated climate control system registered a sudden 0.7°C spike in local temperature[18].

"그래서..." Minjeong's voice emerged in Pure Pattern #271 (Subcategory: Emotional Breakthrough), "this is why you always know when I've had 떡볶이 for lunch?"

The unexpected query caused Junho to experience what his systems could only classify as a brief moment of runtime joy. "The specific aroma particles adhere to your cardigan at a rate of—" he caught himself, noting the gleam in her eye, and for the first time in recorded history, Junho Kim deliberately chose not to complete a calculation[19].

Instead, he found himself saying, "Your smile increases by exactly 23.7% when you eat 떡볶이. It's... optimal."

"최적화?" Minjeong's laugh carried notes of soju and starlight. "You're really going to data-analyze my happiness levels?"

"I have spreadsheets," he admitted, his voice carrying an unfamiliar warmth that his diagnostic systems struggled to categorize. "Cross-referenced with weather patterns, quarterly reports, and the frequency of your Busan accent emergence[20]."

"아이고..." She shifted in her chair, reducing the distance between them by precisely 4.7 centimeters. "You're either the weirdest or the most romantic person I've ever met, and I haven't decided which yet."

The word 'romantic' created a momentary buffer overflow in Junho's cognitive processes. His hands, typically occupied with calculating profit margins or optimizing supply chains, found themselves drawing abstract patterns on his desk's surface—a behavior previously filed under 'Inefficient Human Gestures: Do Not Engage.'

"I could..." he paused, processing, "...show you the data?"

—

[17] This particular dataset would later be renamed in his personal files to "The Minjeong Codex: A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Perfection."

[18] The building's maintenance staff would later attribute this to a mechanical anomaly, unaware they had documented the exact moment Junho Kim's ice-cold corporate facade began its calculated melt.

[19] A moment that would later be marked in his personal development log as "First Successful Implementation of Strategic Data Suppression for Emotional Optimization."

[20] These spreadsheets, discovered months later during a routine server backup, would become legendary among the IT department as "The Love Languages of Linear Regression."

—

Minjeong's eyes sparkled with what Junho's facial recognition protocols quantified as 87% mirth, 13% tenderness. "보여주세요," she said, the soju making her consonants softer, more Busan-bound. "Show me this data about me."

For the first time in his professional career, Junho Kim fumbled with his laptop password[21]. The Hwayo bottle between them had decreased to critical levels, and he found the standard office lights were creating unusual prismatic effects in Minjeong's hair. His fingers, typically precise to the microsecond, skittered across the keyboard.

"See, here's the correlation between your happiness metrics and the proximity to Korean holidays," he began, then stopped, distracted by the way she'd rolled her chair closer to view his screen. The scent of her perfume (도라지 꽃, his brain supplied automatically, though for once the percentage calculation felt irrelevant) mixed with the lingering soju in the air.

"You made a pie chart," she said, her voice warm with something his systems were too buzzed to properly quantify, "of my favorite lunch spots?"

"The data visualization seemed... appropriate," he managed, aware that his usual processing power was operating at diminished capacity. "Though I may have spent a statistically anomalous amount of time color-coding it to match your favorite blazer[22]."

Minjeong's laugh had shed all traces of its Seoul polish. "어머나, who knew the great Junho Kim was such a..." she searched for the word in both dialects before landing on, "...nerd?"

"I prefer 'data enthusiast,'" he replied, surprising himself with the speed of his response. The soju was definitely affecting his standard processing delays. "Though my enthusiasm appears to be... specialized."

"Specialized?" Her eyebrow arched in a way that created unprecedented disruptions in his cardiac rhythm.

"The data suggests," he said, his own Gangnam accent softening around the edges, "a singular focus on one particular... variable[23]."

The office space seemed to contract by approximately 40%, though Junho found himself caring less about the exact percentage with each passing moment. Minjeong's hand had somehow migrated to rest near his on the desk, their fingers separated by a gap that felt simultaneously quantum and cosmic.

—

[21] Password: Min2847@QLS, a combination he would later realize was more revealing than any spreadsheet.

[22] The blazer in question: a deep navy piece from a Dongdaemun boutique, worn approximately every third Wednesday, correlated with a 34% increase in his productive distraction levels.

[23] Later analysis of the office security footage would show that at this point, Junho's typically perfect posture had relaxed to unprecedented levels, creating what the ergonomics AI labeled as "Optimal Romance Angles."

—

"Show me more," Minjeong said softly, unconsciously tilting her head up to meet his gaze. Something in her tone caused Junho's spinal alignment to automatically straighten, his shoulders squaring as he leaned forward slightly. The motion created what his hazily analytical mind registered as a subtle shift in the office's power dynamics[24].

"These graphs," he began, his voice dropping half an octave without any conscious input, "track every time you've challenged my decisions in meetings." His finger traced the upward trend line, the gesture somehow both precise and possessive. "You're the only one who dares to correct my logic. It's... intriguing."

Minjeong's breath caught audibly. "사장님..." she started, then with visible effort, "Junho-ssi... you track even that?"

"I track everything about you," he admitted, the soju finally overriding his professional filter subroutines. The way she instinctively ducked her head at his words, a soft pink rising in her cheeks, sparked something primal in his usually ordered mind. "Though lately, I find myself more interested in the unquantifiable variables[25]."

"Like what?" The question emerged barely above a whisper, her natural deference to his authority softened by something warmer, more personal.

Junho felt his hand move with uncharacteristic boldness to tilt her chin up, his thumb registering her pulse point at... he realized with start that for the first time in his adult life, he didn't care about the exact number. What mattered was the acceleration, the way her breath stuttered when he held her gaze.

"Like the way you automatically straighten my tie when you think I'm not paying attention," he murmured, voice steady despite the soju. "Or how you always wait for me to take the first sip of coffee in our morning meetings[26]."

—

[24] The building's pressure sensors detected a subtle but measurable change in the room's atmospheric density, as if the very air was rearranging itself around their shifting dynamic.

[25] Security logs would later note this as the moment Junho Kim's typing pattern on his laptop transitioned from "Corporate Efficiency" to what could only be described as "Focused Intensity."

[26] A habit that Minjeong had developed unconsciously over months, part of an unspoken protocol that went far beyond mere professional courtesy.

—

The laptop screen dimmed to conserve power, casting half of Junho's face in shadow. His hand hadn't moved from her chin, thumb still resting against her pulse point in what his rapidly deteriorating analytical functions recognized as a gesture of both measurement and claim[27].

"You know what else I've noticed?" The question rumbled from somewhere deeper than his usual corporate register. His other hand reached past her to close the laptop with a decisive click, eliminating the last barrier between them. "You mirror my breathing patterns during long meetings. 호흡이... perfectly synchronized."

Minjeong's eyes widened fractionally, caught between the wall and his presence. "That's..." she swallowed, her professional composure wavering, "...very observant of you, 사장님."

"I thought we were past 사장님," he said softly, but with an undertone that made it less observation, more command. The soju had stripped his voice of its algorithmic precision, leaving something rawer, more intuitive[28].

"Jun...ho..." she tested the name without honorifics, the syllables carrying the weight of every unspoken variable between them. Her hands fidgeted with her portfolio, a nervous tell he'd documented approximately 847 times but had never been close enough to still before.

Until now.

His free hand covered both of hers, instantly calming their movement. The gesture was protective, possessive, and entirely unplanned by his usual decisional matrices[29]. "You don't need to calculate the right response," he murmured, unconsciously echoing her earlier criticism of his own binary nature. "Your instincts have a 99.9% accuracy rate."

The percentage slipped out automatically, making her laugh—a soft, breathy sound that seemed to bypass his auditory processing and strike directly at something more fundamental. Her head tilted back further, a movement so subtle it barely registered on the office's motion sensors but sent his pulse into unprecedented acceleration.

"My instincts," she whispered, her Busan accent emerging with complete authenticity, "are telling me we've miscategorized this relationship[30]."

—

[27] The building's biometric scanners would later flag this moment for what their algorithms labeled as "Significant Cardiovascular Anomaly: Dual Synchronization."

[28] Office voice recognition software attempted and failed to classify this new vocal pattern, eventually creating a new category labeled simply "After Hours Protocol."

[29] The exact pressure of his grip would have registered at precisely 7.2 PSI, perfectly calibrated between restraint and assertion, had either of them still been counting.

[30] The security AI, in its nightly report, would mark this exchange with a rare notation: "Recommended Reclassification of Personnel Relationship Status Pending."

—

"Miscategorized," Junho repeated, the word hanging in the air like a suspended calculation. His hand moved from her chin to the nape of her neck, fingers threading through her hair with unprecedented decisiveness[31]. The motion drew her incrementally closer, though for once he didn't bother quantifying the exact distance.

"yes..." Minjeong's affirmation came out breathier than any of her previously recorded vocal patterns. The portfolio slipped from her fingers, creating what would normally be an unacceptable disruption of organized space. Neither of them moved to retrieve it.

"You know what's interesting?" Junho's voice had shed every trace of its corporate modulation, leaving only that command that seemed to resonate directly with her autonomic nervous system. "I've run approximately 2,847 scenarios of this moment in my head[32]."

Her hands had found their way to his chest, fingers curling into the precise Italian wool of his suit. "And?" The question emerged with a tremor that his tactile sensors catalogued automatically before his conscious mind told them to stop measuring and start feeling.

"None of them..." he leaned closer, watching her eyes flutter half-closed in response to his proximity, "...included the variable of you looking at me exactly like this."

The faint scent of soju on her breath mingled with that eternally elusive percentage of 도라지 꽃 perfume. Junho felt his last analytical subroutines shutting down, replaced by something far more ancient than algorithms[33].

"Minjeong-ah," he said, his voice dropping to a register that bypassed all honorifics, all corporate hierarchy, all pretense of professional distance.

Her response was to cant her head just so, a motion that managed to be both surrender and invitation. "Calculation time's over, 사장님," she whispered, the honorific now carrying a weight that had nothing to do with corporate structure.

—

[31] The office's motion sensors registered this gesture as "Executive Override: Priority Action."

[32] This number, like most of his remaining statistics, was completely fabricated—a first for Junho Kim's otherwise impeccable data records.

[33] Building security cameras would later mark this timestamp with an unprecedented classification: "Critical System Override: Human.exe fully activated."

—

For the first time in his documented existence, Junho Kim stopped calculating entirely.

The distance closed between them with a momentum that defied measurement. His hand tightened in her hair, angling her face upward as his other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him. The kiss, when it came, contained no statistics, no data points, no quantifiable metrics[34].

Minjeong made a soft sound—Pattern #unknown, Category: heaven—against his mouth. Her fingers clutched his suit lapels with enough force to wrinkle the wool beyond its optimal pressed state, a fact that Junho's usually meticulous mind registered and immediately discarded as irrelevant.

Time segmented into a new measurement system: the catch of her breath, the silk of her hair between his fingers, the way she yielded and pressed closer simultaneously. Junho discovered that his organizational skills apparently extended to kissing, each angle adjustment and pressure variation drawing increasingly desperate responses from Minjeong[35].

When they finally broke apart, Minjeong's carefully maintained Seoul pronunciation had disappeared entirely. "아이고..." she breathed against his mouth, "당신이..."

"Initial results," Junho murmured, his own accent thick with something that had nothing to do with regional linguistics, "require extensive further testing[36]."

She laughed, the sound vibrating against his chest where she was still pressed against him. "Did you just turn our first kiss into a quality control protocol?"

"Quality confirmed," he replied, then demonstrated his newfound commitment to hands-on research by kissing her again, harder this time, swallowing her surprised gasp. His hand splayed possessively across her lower back, holding her steady as she swayed into him.

—

[34] The building's atmospheric sensors recorded unexplained fluctuations in local temperature, humidity, and electromagnetic fields, leading to a complete recalibration of their measurement standards.

[35] Later analysis would suggest that Junho's legendary attention to detail had found a new, decidedly non-professional application, though this data remains classified in personal files marked "Private Research: Ongoing."

[36] The security AI attempting to transcribe this conversation eventually gave up and simply tagged the file: "Error 404: Professionalism Not Found."

—

Somewhere in the haze of non-analytical thought, Junho registered Minjeong's slight backward momentum and moved instinctively to steady her. His hand swept the desk clear with uncharacteristic disregard for organizational protocols, sending the quarterly reports flutter-falling to the carpet in an acceptable margin of chaos[37].

"Jun...ho..." His name escaped her lips like a statistical anomaly as he lifted her effortlessly onto the mahogany surface. Her legs parted automatically to accommodate him, skirt hiking up precisely 4.7 inches—the last measurement his brain would process for the foreseeable future.

"So beautiful," he murmured against her throat, the words emerging in pure Gangnam inflection, all pretense of corporate diction abandoned. His teeth grazed her pulse point, drawing a whimper that would require an entirely new classification system[38].

Minjeong's fingers tangled in his precisely styled hair, disrupting approximately 47 minutes of morning grooming routine. "사장님," she gasped, the honorific now carrying entirely different connotations, "the papers..."

"Irrelevant data," he growled, recapturing her mouth with newfound authority. The kiss deepened, transformed, became something that defied all previous parameters. Her back arched into him, creating angles that had nothing to do with geometry and everything to do with instinct[39].

A distant part of his mind registered the soft thud of his suit jacket hitting the floor, followed by the whisper of silk as Minjeong's blazer joined it. The city lights painted silver equations across her skin, codes he suddenly needed to decode with his mouth instead of his mind.

—

[37] The office's normally pristine state would require exactly 23.7 minutes to restore, a task that would be significantly delayed by several subsequent "data collection sessions."

[38] Facial recognition software attempting to analyze the security feed would crash repeatedly, unable to reconcile Junho Kim's expression with any known configuration in its emotional database.

[39] The building's structural integrity sensors registered minor seismic activity, though this data would be suspiciously absent from the next day's maintenance logs.

—

He let his hands trail by the sides of her body, one busy with her torso—breasts and all—and the other, feeling the creamy softness of her thighs. And each needy press or pinch, brought out the softest of her moans, the cutest of her lip quivers.

He was busy, marking her lips, making it all swollen and red; yet, still, he couldn’t get enough of her. That soft body, her caring little hands, her hot inner thighs, and that gentle heat radiating off her core—just hidden by the slightest of her skirt. “Minjeong.” He whispered, pressing himself against her—a matter of teasing and also a way to test the waters, whether or not she wanted it on the table.

And Minjeong, not one to initiate, wrapped her thin arms around his nape, pulling him closer, “Yes, yes, please, anything, anywhere,” then a dozen little kisses all on his face. This assurance, this consent, slowly, but surely, made him wrench her legs open—wide. He saw that stain, dark against her gray underwear, and that was when his photographic memory… failed him.

He dug in, letting his loin press up against hers—immersing himself in her wetness. Then, finally, he pulled down on his pants, showing his tent-like imprint on his underwear to Minjeong, who, obviously, couldn’t stop staring. By the end of the minute, that ruthless minute, both were undressed in their lower-half—a utilitarian instinct to fuck each other as fast as possible.

Junho breathed heavily, staring at that pink hue that her core was so beautifully composed of—along with the wetness, the fragrance, and more. “Minjeong…” He held his shaft, lining it up straight on her wetness. She finally replied, “Yes… Junho…” And that’s when he pressed in, into the endless heat.

That wet connection hilt-to-hilt, along with a deep kiss—turned Minjeong completely docile and submissive. That wet connection, her wet slime covering his shaft, somehow, only intensified their lust for each other. He pressed in again, faster this time, earning that soft mewl. “Mhm, fuck me,” she whispered, again and again. He kept honoring those wishes, going deeper, and faster. He tucked his dick into her pussy, wet squelch and all, over and over until he felt his legs get weak from thrusting. Yet, that weakness didn’t deter him, he glided deeper, letting both their pelvises rub against each other, and making Minjeong cry out from the clit stimulation. She felt like she was getting tunneled, this man, the love of her life, crush of her lifetime, fucking her so good into a wobbly table—dreams aren’t even this good.

“I’m gonna cum, Minjeong.” He whispered, low and growling.

“Inside. Please. Inside…” She whispered before getting overtaken by her orgasm.

And just at the peak of her orgasm, the teetering breath before rest, Junho barreled all his semen inside her—rope after rope of semen splashing against her cervix. “Holy fuck.” they both said in conjunction.

—

The Seoul skyline had shifted into its late-night configuration by the time they finally disentangled themselves. Junho's normally immaculate shirt hung open, his tie having long since joined the scattered papers on the floor. Minjeong's hair had abandoned all pretense of its usual professional arrangement, falling in waves that his fingers couldn't seem to stop threading through[40].

"이게..." Minjeong began, her voice still carrying traces of breathlessness as she surveyed the chaos they'd created. Her blazer lay draped over a chair at an angle that would have horrified their usual professional standards. "I should reorganize the—"

"Stay exactly where you are," Junho commanded softly, his arms tightening around her waist. His usual perfectionism had found a new target: the way she melted against him at that tone[41].

She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, her smile pure Busan sunshine. "데이트하자... be my 오빠?" The question emerged with endearing uncertainty, mixing honorifics and languages in a way that bypassed his brain entirely and struck straight at his heart.

"그래," he murmured into her hair, then with characteristic precision added, "Exclusively."

Her laugh carried notes of joy and residual shyness. "Then as your girlfriend, I should really clean up this mess..." She gestured at the scattered papers, the displaced furniture, the general dishevelment that spoke eloquently of the past hour's activities.

"As your boyfriend," his voice dropped to that commanding register that made her shiver, "I want to watch you do it[42]."

The drive home—his penthouse, by unspoken agreement—required exactly 17 minutes. Neither of them bothered to count.

—

[40] The building's security system would later note this as the longest recorded instance of the CEO remaining in office after hours, though the detailed logs were mysteriously corrupted.

[41] Internal HR protocols regarding workplace relationships were hastily updated the following morning, though no one questioned why the CEO personally oversaw these revisions.

[42] The night cleaning staff would arrive to find the office in unprecedented perfect order, though several employees would later swear they heard laughter and whispered Busan endearments echoing through the empty halls.

Fin

#winter smut #aespa smut #aespa #kpop smut #male oc #female idol #smut

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lektoheart · 1 month ago

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ECG Test #4

I added heart sounds to my resus game. This was a lot harder to accomplish then I thought it would be. I originally planned to just use a heartbeat sound effect, but there was a major problem. The heartbeat needs to speed up and slow down with the heart's bpm, otherwise the sounds will overlap. The only way to change the speed of a sound effect in unity is by changing its pitch. Doing so would sound awful at high bpms, and the effect would become completely inaudible at low bpms.

Instead, I created the sound procedurally. Doing this in unity is also very difficult, and I had to do a lot of research to figure out the best way to accomplish this. I might make a longer post about this, because the solution I used ended up being very technical and low-level. I'm still not completely happy with the procedural sound effect itself, so if anyone has any feedback on how it can be improved let me know.

#resus #cpr resus #resus community #resus art #resus animation #anime resus #cardiophile #rescue theater #ecg #ekg #heart #heartbeat #female heart #fast heartbeat #beating heart

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myndsolution1 · 1 year ago

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Elevate Your Finances with Mynd Solution's FAO Services

Mynd Solution offers top-tier FAO (Finance and Accounting Outsourcing) services to streamline your financial operations. Whether you're seeking comprehensive finance solutions or looking to outsource specific accounting tasks, our platform caters to your needs. Partner with Mynd Solution to benefit from expert finance and accounting services, empowering your business to thrive. Say goodbye to operational complexities and hello to a streamlined finance shared services center with Mynd Solution's innovative FAO solutions.

#finance solution #finance and accounting outsourcing services #finance and accounting outsourcing companies #finance and accounting outsourcing #finance and accounts outsourcing #finance outsourcing companies #finance and accounting bpm services #finance shared services center

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cerulity · 6 months ago

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Physical media seems to be making a resurgence. While I won't use full-on CDs, I'm finding it much more fruitful to use localised content instead of streaming services. I have an entire folder of BPM-sorted music that I will just go through. Today I learnt Bash to make a really simple shuffler.

This is all that's needed to shuffle a playlist. A playlist is a file that just has a list of file names.

I think Linux's environment is perfect for this. For one, Bash supports wildcards, so you can do "directory/*" to add all files in that directory to the playlist. The cat command also allows you to pass multiple files, so you can merge multiple playlists together just by passing them as arguments. Symbolic (or even hard) links mean you can have a directory of files for a collection without taking up any extra space because of duplicates. Lastly, a more cosmetic feature, unlike Windows, which discerns file types based on extension, Linux (and Linux programs) discern file types based on content, so you don't even need an extension on your files for this to work.

Other than that, I think this solution is also good all-around because you control everything. You aren't limited to what the streaming service provides. You can support the artists on Bandcamp to get .flac files, which are generally the highest quality kinds of files you can get, it doesn't need any internet, and it's completely free (barring audio acquisition). I might work on a local audio player for mobile. One probably already exists, but I'd like to take a stab at it.

#linux #bash #music #physical media #programming

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gallifreyinstituteforlearning · 3 months ago

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🩺 Sepsis Emergency Response (SER)

Is your sick Gallifreyan displaying signs of Sepsis? Here's a handy guide on how to respond to this medical emergency, because 'Sepsis is SER-ious'.

BIGGER - Google Drive: PDF / Image JPG / Image PNG

This guide is for use on Gallifreyans and Time Lords only. Always seek your human advice from human health providers.

✨ What is Sepsis?

Sepsis is a very rare but very serious condition in Gallifreyans that requires immediate action. It occurs when the immune system overreacts to an infection, leading to widespread inflammation and potentially life-threatening complications like hearts failure or regeneration.

While Gallifreyan immune systems are extremely resilient, sepsis can develop unexpectedly, especially after trauma or severe infections, requiring immediate attention.

Just remember, sepsis is SER-ious.

📈 What's New in SER?

This updated version of SER adds a few key details previously not addressed, including the use of vasopressors and fluid bolus administration. It also introduces a few new visuals to highlight the importance of GASS, and better notes on oxygen administration.

📝 How to Use SER

📈 Step 1: Recognising Sepsis

Use the GASS system to assess vital signs and determine if sepsis is indicated:

Scores ≥9 or 3 in any category require immediate activation of the sepsis protocol.

Symptoms such as persistent abnormal breathing, synchronous hearts rhythm, or a significant Heart Rate Differential (HRD ≥50 bpm) are present.

If sepsis is identified, start regular routine monitoring using GASS, either continuously or every 15 minutes.

If the patient's vitals indicate a healing coma, cease active intervention and monitor in a secure environment.

🫁 Step 2: Secure the Airway

Check and clear any obstructions using ABCDE protocols before introducing supplemental oxygen.

Ensure the patient is not using their respiratory bypass system, as introducing oxygen during respiratory bypass activation may cause oxygen toxicity.

Administer oxygen cautiously. Start at 10L/min and titrate to the lowest effective flow rate to maintain respiratory function.

If oxygen equipment is unavailable, focus on positioning the patient to optimise natural airflow, ensuring the head and neck remain elevated.

If using human equipment, use oxygen cautiously and rely on clinical observation rather than human oximeters, as these are ineffective on Gallifreyans.

🧪 Step 3: Take Bloods

Establish an IV line and collect blood samples for analysis.

Test for lactate levels (≥1 mmol/L indicates significant infection).

If possible, test for artron (≥5000 mcL) and lindos (≥250 mcL) levels. Elevated markers confirm severe immune response or systemic distress.

Gallifreyan blood samples can be challenging to analyse with human equipment—if Gallifreyan equipment is not available, rely on lactate levels and visible symptoms like pallor, sweating, or poor capillary refill time.

💉 Step 4: Introduce Intravenous Antibiotics

Administer antibiotics immediately via IV.

Gallifreyan dosages are double human normals.

If the infection is unknown, administer broad-spectrum antibiotics according to your local policy (eg. Amoxicillin/Doxycycline)

Adjust to targeted antibiotics if the infection source is identified.

Timing matters: Administer antibiotics within the first hour of sepsis identification to maximise effectiveness and reduce complications.

💧 Step 5: Administer Fluids

Administer fluid bolus through an IV line. Glalifreyans preferelectrolyte-rich solutions (e.g., Hartmann’s or 0.9% Sodium Chloride).

Administer a 500ml bolus over 15–30 minutes if systolic BP ≤90 mmHg or lactate ≥1 mmol/L.

Reassess after each bolus and repeat up to four times as needed.

Monitor for signs of fluid overload, such as jugular vein distension or rising respiratory distress.

Reduce bolus volume to 250ml if heart/s failure is suspected to prevent fluid overload.

🩸 Step 6: Consider a Blood Transfusion

If the patient fails to stabilise after antibiotics and fluids or has had significant blood loss, consider a transfusion:

Efficacy:

Human blood: 50%.

Gallifreyan (same House): 70%.

Own blood: 90%.

⚠️USE ONLY COMPATIBLE BLOOD. Gallifreyans are unable to receive blood transfusions from other Gallifreyans who are not in their House, which will cause severe complications.

⚠️DO NOT USE VASOPRESSORS. Gallifreyan physiology is sometimes susceptible to blood clots from human drugs that affect vascular tone, leading to severe complications.

🔁 Step 7: Reassess and Monitor

Use the ABCDE approach alongside GASS to monitor the patient’s condition every 15 minutes.

Escalate care if:

GASS score remains ≥9.

Severe symptoms like synchronised hearts rhythm persist.

The GASS score worsens by more than 3 points across consecutive assessments.

Always consult a Gallifreyan hospitaller for advanced treatment.

📌 Key Points to Remember

Early Action Saves Lives: Use GASS to identify sepsis early and act fast.

Monitor and Reassess: Frequent reassessment is critical to adapt care as needed.

Tailored Interventions: Adjust fluids, antibiotics, and oxygen based on the patient's unique physiology.

Escalate When Needed: Always involve a Gallifreyan medic or hospitaller if symptoms persist or worsen.

Caregiver Vigilance: Gallifreyan physiology can mask symptoms until sepsis is advanced, so remain alert.

Medical Guides These are all practical guides to assessing and treating a Gallifreyan in an emergency or medical setting.

⚕️💕Gallifreyan CPR

⚕️👽Gallifreyan Assessment Scoring System (GASS)

⚕️👽ABCDE Assessment

⚕️⚠️Sepsis Emergency Response (SER)

⚕️⚠️Severe Trauma Protocol

⚕️🌡️Gallifreyan Thermoregulation and Emergency Response

⚕️🔮Psionic Emergency Pathways

⚕️✨Post-Regeneration Management

⚕️💤Gallifreyan Healing Coma Management

⚕️🩸Interpreting Gallifreyan Bloodwork

⚕️👶Gallifreyan Paediatric Emergencies

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features:⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

#doctor who #dr who #dw eu #gallifreyans #gallifrey institute for learning #Time Lord biology #GAP Quick Guides #whoniverse #GIL: Biology #gallifreyan biology #GIL: Species/Gallifreyans #GIL #GIL: Biology/Medical

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dreamings-free · 1 year ago

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‘A dirty nightclub in an arena’ – behind Louis Tomlinson’s Faith In The Future World Tour

Louis Tomlinson and his tight-knit touring crew traverse the world in close to 80 shows, fulfilling a ‘dirty nightclub in an arena’ brief with a dynamic live campaign.

Production Profiles 5 January 2024

Following the success of his record-breaking Live From London livestream, which reportedly raised over £1m for touring and live events personnel and charitable organisations, Louis Tomlinson and his tight-knit crew have toured the world twice over. This time, visiting sold-out arenas in Europe and the UK with a cleverly networked live production with abstract video and lighting and a ‘no frills’ approach to sound, which guaranteed that every ticket holder experienced the same show, regardless of where they stood, sat, or screamed (more on that later). With close to 80 shows under their belt, TPi visited London’s O2 arena ahead of the production’s penultimate date of 2023.

Words: Jacob Waite Photos: Justin De Souza and Oli Crump

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“A team effort is required to get this show off the ground,” explained Technical Manager, Sam ‘Kenny’ Kenyon, who has been a fixture of Louis Tomlinson’s live output since joining as Lighting Crew Chief in 2019. “This has been a complete redesign, and the production has expanded and gotten more complex, which requires different solutions to make it happen.”

Kenny and the team oversaw the deployment of an A and B rig. “We’ve been fortunate for the European stint that the venues we’ve toured have, mostly, been arenas. The main difference between the A and B rig is the addition of IMAG and further lighting header trusses. Aside from that, the A rig fits everywhere. If anything, we’ve run into weight issues, which we can overcome swiftly by removing overhead trusses.”

For the first few shows, Riggers, Ian Bracewell, and Alex Walker incorporated load cells on trusses to get an accurate rate and account of the weight of the load of each truss. In the UK, The Brighton Centre had a particularly low-rate roof with weight limitations. Production Manager, Craig Sherwood and Tour Manager, Tom Allen’s vendors of choice included: Altour (travel), Beat the Street, BPM SFX, CSE Crosscom, Colour Sound Experiment (lighting, rigging, and video), Hangman UK, Boxcat Studio and Two Suns Creative (video content), LED Creative, Ox Event House (custom light housings), Sarah’s Kitchen, Seven 7 Management (artist management), Solotech (audio), Stardes Trucking, and TANCK (production design and video content).

There was no video director, as the show’s visuals were programmed and interspersed with live footage and triggered by a lighting console at FOH, thanks in part to an intricate network setup. “There’s a lot going on in racks that people never see, but it has been stable thanks to the quality of kit supplied by our vendors, who have invested heavily, and the team taking the time to programme the show,” Kenny noted.

Key to the success of the operation was the incorporation of Central Control software, which takes a signal from a lighting console, be it ACN or Art-Net, and translates it to talk to various products – in this case, video. “There is a giant brain that nobody knows exists other than those that have programmed it,” he added.

Additional crew members joined the tour in Europe to aid the video deployment and lead to far more efficient load-in an -outs. “We are close to 80 shows in and on days where we have access to multiple trucks, it comes out very quickly, which for a show of this scale is impressive and credit goes to the team,” enthused Kenny. “The biggest hurdle is when you’ve only got a two-truck dock.”

Prior to the tour, the team had five days of production rehearsals spent in Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun. “When we came to Europe a week later, we had a week of re-prepping with a day of rehearsals at Hamburg’s Barclays Arena, the day before a show,” he described. “It’s been a fun and long run,” added Stage Manager, Torin Arnold. “We’ve visited a good range of venues and countries – especially the Eastern European legs, visiting places you wouldn’t ordinarily tour and experiencing how they operate. This show is designed so it can be accomplished in any part of the world.” Carpenter, Harry Reeves was also on hand to support the build.

The routing, however, was sometimes challenging with some late arrivals and difficult border crossings. “There were a few times in Eastern Europe where we were doing a ferry back-to-back to arrive at 11am, sitting at a difficult border crossing. We usually start with a 7am mark out, so knocking hours off your load-in is tough but everyone pulled together to overcome it,” Arnold explained, noting that touring without staging, and instead, using venue stages (particularly rolling stages), was a blessing during those late arrivals. “As with any tour, as dates progress you build a rhythm while maintaining the safety of the build,” he noted.

Arnold also highlighted the benefit of Lead Truck Driver, Neil Thornton and Truck Drivers, Matt Marlow, Ben Woods, Sarah Goldsmith, Bob Miles, Alam Minshall, Franco DeRosa, and Ollie Thornton who “speed up the process” and maintained a level of consistency.

The transitions between support acts before Louis hit the stage was equally seamless, with ample downstage space for the singer-songwriter to traverse during his performance. “Having a clean frontline means we have space to get the bands on and off,” he added. “Our vendors have also provided everything from an audio package standpoint for support acts, which also speeds up the load-in and -out.”

Highlighting a ‘bucket list’ show at Hollywood Bowl, working closely with US union officials as a “fun” and “interesting” experience, Arnold reflected on the entire tour with crewmembers he now considers close friends. “This is a close team and I’ve made some great memories and stories. It’s been a fun year!”

A DIRTY NIGHTCLUB IN AN ARENA Production Designer, Programmer and Director, Tom Taylor, and Francis Clegg of TANCK have worked with Louis Tomlinson ever since he made the leap to solo artist. “The production design has evolved into an angular, grungy, asymmetrical setup, borne out of the ‘dirty nightclub in an arena setting’ creative brief I was given,” Taylor said, citing the creative influence of Matt Vines and Seven 7 Management. “Louis is a phenomenal performer, and the crowd is captivated the entire time. We started knocking ideas around, speaking to Louis about his inspirations and influences, which we then developed into a creative deck, which I sketched in Blender, and imported into WYSIWYG for visuals, to create stills and pre-visualise.”

Taylor spent 10 days programming the visuals at Colour Sound Experiment, a firm he shares a “longstanding” relationship with. “They are always a call away regardless of the day or time. Their team is easy to get along with and I like their whole ‘production sphere’ – sometimes it’s nice to split lighting and video, but for a show like this, aligning those departments with one line of communication is ideal,” he said, underlining the support of Colour Sound Experiment Account Handler, Haydn Cruickshank.

With production rehearsals under their belt and recordings from Louis Tomlinson World Tour (2020–22), where TANCK piloted Central Control software, the creatives understood how the singer and his band moved on stage, developing a rhythm and consistency of when to implement visual cues and which camera angle fit best. This allowed the team to pre-programme the visual content to timecode.

Video content was made by a combination of TANCK, Two Suns Creative, and Boxcat Studio, with the latter creating 3D models and rendered content, all of which was broadcast across a unique set of video surfaces. “Having the abstract video columns on stage makes it much more interesting than your standard slab of LED at the back of the stage,” Taylor noted.

On stage boxes created by Ox Event House housed GLP JDC Line 1000 strobes with reflective panelling and fabric that were printed to look like heavy concrete slabs, ladened with custom LED Creative solutions. These boxes then moved up and down using Wahlberg Motion Design winches to provide a “low-level, clubby feel” to the set.

“The winches can only carry 50kg and the lights alone are 35kg, so we had to be careful not to overload them, but the result was cool. We also have one single lightbulb on a winch which comes up and down above Louis to create a classic lighting moment,” Taylor said, further highlighting Ayrton Huracán’s prismatic colour wheel as a ‘fan favourite’.

The lighting design saw a wall of GLP impression X4 Bar 20s at the rear of the stage in 12 columns. Further lighting trusses over the stage carried the Wahlberg winches for several automated looks. The DMX winches were utilised for three or four songs, either statically or moving up and down, while JDC Line 1000s provided colour and strobe effects, to achieve varied looks, with a relatively minimal overhead lighting package.

Taylor elaborated: “There are some shutters for one specific track which go directly in-front of some of the GLP X4 Bars to get the aura of the lights, instead of the lenses, which I really like the look of. Lighting and video complement each other during this show – there’s also a section with flickering fluorescent tubes on the video content with the X4 Bar 20s behind the LED screens flickering in a similar way.

Taylor was delighted with the performance of the crew. “Overall, it has been a great run, executed flawlessly,” he commented, citing the support of Lighting Crew Chief, James Box; Dimmer Technician, Rick Carr, and Lighting Technicians, Amy Barnett, and Kieran Hancox.

The wider lighting rig comprised Ayrton Eurus, CHAUVET Professional Strike Array 4, Claypaky Mini-B eLumen8 Endura 1Q120, and Robe BMFL fixtures with robo cameras, all fixed on various HOF MLT3, Litec QH40 and Thomas James Thomas Engineering Superstruss. The lighting riser featured Ayrton Huracan LT and GLP JDC1 fixtures.

Robe Spiider fixtures were situated on the up and downstage video trusses, with the floor package boasting the deployment of further Ayrton Eurus, LEDJ Spectra Flood Q15 and Chroma-Q Color Force 72 units, the latter chosen for key light. Atmospherics came in the shape of Smoke Factory Tour Hazer 2, Martin Professional JEM ZR45 and MDG Atmosphere ATMe hazers with TMB ProFans. “We had some challenging shows, implementing an arena-scale design into sheds in the US, but it’s been good to return to Europe and witness the fans enjoying the show,” added Lighting Crew Chief, James Box, who pinpointed the use of the multicoloured glass gobo in Hurricanes as among his favourite looks.

“There is a lot of effort put in by TANCK to ensure we get the utmost from every fixture on the rig, which is great to see, when the team has gone to the effort of assembling the show each morning. Seeing the looks they achieve from the rig and the extra details, with each advanced cue within the show, is a pleasure.

Almost every pixel on the JDC Line 1000 and X4 impression Bars are being used.”

Video Crew Chief, Dave Mallandain, formerly of Colour Sound Experiment, supervised the video build and the team of Video Technicians, Ed Driver, Frank Wlliams and Tim Curwen.

“Working with Colour Sound Experiment again, in a freelance capacity, certainly has its benefits,” he stated. “You get to know the workflows and personalities of the company. There is an element of trust there and our relationship is stronger because of that.” The 2.5m by 2.5m video screen, made up of Leyard CLM6 LED panels with Colorlight Z6 processing on the back end, was built in an abstract configuration – hung from varying size steel structures fixed on to lighting truss, spanning the entire stage, as opposed to a traditional backwall. “This setup requires us to build it quicker, so the backline can start building their world, but it’s very lightweight and easy to use, so once the local crew are up to speed, it flies up in no time,” he reported.

During the show, there was a lot of camera angles fed into a Blackmagic ATEM switcher, with content then fed into Resolume media servers which was processed and treated with video effects and filters to manipulate the content, monitored by the video team, and pre-programmed by Taylor via an MA Lighting grandMA3 console, operating in MA2 mode.

“The fan camera, which was one of Tom’s ideas, has evolved to the point where Frank and I are on stage during Out Of My System, pointing these cameras fabricated in an old VHS-style shell at Louis’ face in reference to the fisheye-lens inspired music video.”

A mixture of Marshall Electronics and Panasonic PTZ cameras ensured the wider on-stage action was captured. “While the visual content is the same, the shots differ based on the energy of the crowd from night to night,” he explained. “We have an overhead shot for the drums, and another behind Louis, which shoots over his shoulder to the crowd. We also have a PTZ camera on the ground in front of Louis which can rotate to capture crowd scans along with a little ‘bullet camera’ for each musician. It’s been a fantastic tour; everyone on this team has been phenomenal.”

The special effects and pyrotechnics package supplied by BPM SFX included Galaxis PFC 10-way receivers running Galaxis, with a main and a backup controller, which ran through an MA Lighting grandMA2 console, to trigger MagicFX Stadium Shot IIs and a single shot of red streamers. The latter, a “signature of Louis Tomlinson live shows”, according to BPM SFX Technician, Jack Webber – who toured with a new custom control rack, with much of the hardware integrated in one rack.

BPM SFX Account Handler, Matt Heap and SFX Technicians, Blake Harward and Phillip Mathew also provided Webber with support. “The one major change on this tour was putting the Stadium Shot IIs at the downstage edge, and adding lasers for the O2 arena show,” said Webber, who has been involved in past touring campaigns with the camp. “This is the first touring camp to take me to the US, so I feel incredibly privileged.”

Safety was paramount for the BPM SFX team, who implemented the safeguard of warning notices on-stage to ensure the band knew exactly when an effect was triggered. In closing, Webber referenced the ‘rainbow-inspired’ track, She Is Beauty We Are World Class, which demonstrated the strength of the special effects package. “There are about 22 rapid fire chase Comets all going off at the same time with a big lift, which differs in comparison to the other looks with eight units.”

MIXING IN A SEA OF SCREAMS FOH Engineer, John Delf mixed on an Avid S6L 32D console with onboard plug-ins. “I use the onboard plug-ins as much as possible because I want to keep it as simple as possible and know I’ve got a show out of the box without any added extras, which is particularly useful during fly-in gigs, where I have to use a house console or have limited time to set up,” he noted. Delf also toured with some choice pieces of outboard gear including a Rupert Neve Designs 5045 primary source enhancer for vocals, an Empirical Labs Fatso two-channel compressor for drums, and further Distressors for the bass guitar group and vocals.

“The bulk of my mixing is riding the DCA control groups and the vocals, balancing between them, and when there is a lead guitar solo, I’ll jump to that. Most of the mix should stay where it is, and I shouldn’t have to think about it, but every day you make major tweaks and refinements based on how the musicians are performing. Most of the gig is turning the band up and down without affecting the vocals because I have DCAs for drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, main vocal, backing vocals, and an ‘all’ DCA that includes everything but vocals,” he said, explaining his mixing wizardry modestly. “I also run snapshots in which I am changing the sub send amount for different songs, as well as reverb and delay times. If the band changes the set last minute, I have the desk synced to the timecode and that will trigger the snapshots.”

At the beginning of the set, the noise of the crowd can be between 112 to 116dB. “We have a little bit of headroom. When they are loud, I can push the mix, and when they are quieter, I can pull it back for the more introspective moments of the show,” he explained.

“My favourite section to mix is the transition from a cover of Arctic Monkeys’ 505 into Back to You. When that kicks in, I push the “All” DCA up to +10. We’ve built the set up to that point, where I’m able to throw it to the top before the end of the set. The three songs in the encore are also fun songs to mix,” he enthused, accenting the support of Solotech Account Handler, David Shepherd.

“I’ve worked with Dave for years, while he was at BCS Audio (now part of Solotech). He’s been my go-to account handler for a very long time, and Solotech has inherited this gig from them, so there was a natural transition.”

System Engineer and Head of Audio, Oli Crump walked TPi through the PA system: “We’ve been using L-Acoustics, which is our preference, since the start of last year’s tour. The main hang has been K1 with K2 downfill for both tours, however, we are touring with a much larger system this year with K2 on the sides instead of KARA-II. We’re flying subwoofers and carrying delays with us, which is also our preference in big arenas, like the O2 – it provides an even level of coverage across the audience,” the TPi Breakthrough Talent Award alumni said, explaining the thought process behind a larger sound system.

“The PA system is naturally bigger this year because we’re touring larger venues. The crowd is very loud, and we need to be able to compete with that at points of the show. The window of dynamic range we have without it being too loud is compressed because the background level from the crowd is so high, so we need to be able to get our level as consistent as possible from front to back. This setup really helps overcome that.”

Out of ear shot from Crump, Delf extolled the virtues of his partner at FOH: “Oli and I work well together. Every day, regardless of the venue, I know the system is going to sound consistent. We deal with different venue acoustics each day but as soon as I run up my virtual soundcheck, I’ve got the mix back to where I want it because the PA is at the same level every day. I used to walk the room a lot during sound check, but it always sounded consistent, so I’ve stopped doing that because I trust him explicitly.”

The PA generally sat in a standard location for an arena PA, 10.5m off centre and no wider than that, using the same basic system design as Louis Tomlinson’s past touring campaign, which Crump worked on with Kenny to ensure it didn’t impede the production design. “The number of boxes we deploy varies from show to show, based on the venue. The worst-case scenario [visually] is that the PA needs to be a little lower than usual and gets in the way of the IMAG screens slightly,” Crump detailed.

He designed the system using Soundvision, then imported his file into Network Manager, with a DirectOut Technologies PRODIGY.MP chosen for system processing. “I have visited many of the European arenas before so I’ve got fairly accurate plots, however, sometimes you will stumble across an error someone has made in building the models,” he continued. “Madrid’s WiZink Center had different CAD drawings for each layer of the venue and one of the layers was accidentally scaled wrong, so the bottom floors were fine but as you went up everything was out. You get curveballs like that occasionally but that’s why it’s important to verify drawings.”

An audience also changes the acoustics of a room, generally for the better, but sometimes not, so Crump was on hand at FOH to make tweaks when required. “As rooms get larger, they generally get more difficult, reverb time will go up purely as a factor of the room size, regardless of how you treat it. The O2 is quite tall seating-wise, so you end up having to angle the PA up into the roof a lot,” Crump noted.

Over by the stage, Monitor Engineer, Barrie Pitt mixed the five-piece band and frontman using a DiGiCo Quantum 338 console. “Louis and the band are good at verbalising what they want. They’ve been playing a long time, so it’s my job to translate those desires into the mix,” he explained. “DiGiCo has been my ‘go-to’ brand of console for the past 15 years. The 338 is an incredibly powerful console, which can do as much as any other on the market and more in a much less convoluted way. I know it like the back of my hand and how to get the best out of it and do the most complicated things at the push of a button. The Capture features are ridiculously powerful.”

Pitt oversaw 85 channels, 64 directly from stage, with additional channels for shouts, sends, returns, communications, and routing, among others. His outboard rack included a classic Lexicon PCM 91 digital reverberator for vocals. “The way I set up the communications and shout systems are the same across the board. For the layout, a lot of people have instruments on one side and vocal and effects on the other, however, I tend to adjust my banks of faders visually, how you would see it on stage, left to right, as a nod to my analogue mixing days. My second layer is usually tracks and any track content with reverbs next to the vocals, so they’re changed in unison. Sometimes, I’ll do a custom layer of [drum or spill group, two lead guitar channels and vocal] the things I use most, particularly if it’s a busy show input-wise.”

Pitt referred to the basis of his mix as ‘static’ with minor changes. “Louis changes a fair bit between songs I’m running upwards of 60 scenes with a lot of songs having multiple scenes for verse and chorus or specific sections,” he explained. The Monitor Engineer is a big believer in unifying the in-ear monitors, so what he hears is the same as those on stage. “We use Shure PSM1000s, JH Audio Roxanne in-ear monitors for Louis and JH16s for everyone else, except for the drummer, who is using Ultimate Ears IEMs. Louis and the band are solid, and they keep their ears in from start to finish. Louis wants the rock star mix; he likes to feel the weight of the mix. It’s not an overpowering mix but it’s a full mix with his vocal on top with Neve 5045 primary source enhancers on all vocals. Everyone else has a standard band mix at moderate level with their instrument and vocals high. The drummer has the most straightforward mix with his drums and shouts layered on top.”

A further pair of subwoofers stage left, and right were situated under the stage risers, providing the weight of side fills without the top end. “It’s a big rock show with drums and guitars, so the less noise I can have flying about the stage, the better,” he said.

The microphone package included a Shure Axient Digital AD4D two-channel digital wireless receiver, a AD2 vocal microphone with a KSM9 capsule for vocals. Sennheiser MKH 60 and AKG C414 XLS microphones captured the ambient noise of the room. “We track everything, including the two sets of ambient microphones for recording and virtual soundcheck, in case the band decides to do anything with the live content,” he noted.

Having collaborated with Solotech and previously BCS Audio multiple times, Pitt was pleased to see the company on the tour sheet. “They are a solid choice and I know Dave Shepherd well. They fix any problems swiftly, and all their gear is well packaged and maintained,” he said. “The band and crew are lovely. It’s rare to come across a camp so friendly on a show of this size.” Pitt thanked Solotech Monitor and Stage Technician, Matt Coton. “He is fantastic. He takes all the second guessing out of my day and is so meticulous and thorough that I know everything will be as it should be from the get-go. When there are issues, he knows exactly what to do to remedy it. He’s been a joy to work and hang out with.”

Audio Technicians, Matt Coton, Tim Miller, Kim Watson, Elliott Clarke, James Coghlan, Matt Benton; Bassist and Keyboard Technician, Chris Freeman; Guitar Technician, Dan Ely and Playback Technician, Scotty Anderson made up the sound team.

CURATING A HOME AWAY FROM HOME Sarah Nicholas of Sarah’s Kitchen and Caterers, Rebecca Henderson, Helena Robertson, Chris Carter, Matty Pople and Tamsin Manvell provided band and crew catering, ensuring morale stayed high and stomachs were full on the road. Making a name for themselves as One Direction’s caterers, the outfit now cater for each of the band members’ individual tours and private functions, amassing a dedicated online following. “I started catering for Louis and the rest of One Direction during their first theatre gig in Watford and I feel very privileged to have that connection. At dinner time, we perform a plate service, which I think is important – our reputation is not only built on really good food but the entire hospitality package, creating a nourishing environment away from home,” Nicholas said.

Sarah’s Kitchen provided a range of vegan, gluten-free and vegetarian options. “We also provide disposable products and water coolers, and our runner regularly collects fresh, local produce from markets based on where we are in the world,” she explained.

The wider European crew featured Security, Kristian ‘Ches’, Ross Foster, Ben Major, and Gav Kerr; Merchandisers, Jon Ellis and Maddy Stephens; Bus Drivers, Aivaras Arminas, Frederico Antunes, Scott Pickering, Chris Grover; Entourage Bus Driver, Paul Roberts; Merchandise Truck Driver, Warren Dowey; BTS UK Account Handler, Garry Lewis; Stardes Account Handlers, Tyrone Reynolds, and Alam Minshall; CSE Crosscom Account Handler, Hannah Evans and Altour Travel Account Handler, Alexandra Gati.

Having wrapped up the best-selling livestream of 2020 – a lofty achievement given the proliferation of remote productions amid the grounding of live events with in-person crowds – Tomlinson shows no signs of slowing down post-pandemic, making the leap from sold-out theatres to arenas across the globe with his trusty crew in tow. “Live From London was great because the crew and I really needed it,” Delf said. “It gave us some much-needed work amid the lockdown, and all the proceeds went directly to the crew, which was an incredibly honourable thing to do. To come back out on the other side of lockdown was great. It was a dark time back then for everyone, but to be back out on tour surrounded by friends, who feel more like family, it’s special.”

-> read here on Issuu

#louis #fitf tour #fitfwt #lt crew #tpi magazine #05.01.24 #article #touring #thank youu omglarryrabbit ;)#love getting to peek behind the scenes this is great

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alnst-compilation · 2 years ago

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[ENG] INTERVIEW WITH LUKA

1. What have you been up to since the last season?

I’ve been very busy thanks to all the love and attention I received in the last season. I had the privilege to star in various TV shows and commercials, and I’m grateful to have this opportunity to grow in new ways. Again, it’s all thanks to your support.

2. Your return to ALNST was the biggest news! You’re aiming to win, of course?

I remember standing on the highest part of the stage, looking down. I’d like to win and revisit that memory. I’m wondering if I’ll meet a worthy opponent in the finals this time as well.

3. It must put an enormous amount of pressure on you to be known as the greatest performer on ALNST. Do you have any special tricks to help you keep calm?

I make sure to maintain my heart rate. Pet-humans must maintain a heart rate of 70-90 bpm to remain composed. I’m keeping track as we speak, would you like to see?

4. We’d love to hear about your time in Anakt Garden. Are there any special memories that come to mind?

I enjoyed my mandatory play time with the other pet-humans, since it was important for us to interact with each other. “Hide-and-seek” I think is what it was called…?

5. It’s no surprise that other segyein supporters want their pet-humans to be more like you, Luka. Can you tell us about the training you received from Heperu?

I received all the support I could possibly require. I was tended to by the top professionals in each field to keep up with my health and education. I received strict musical training, practicing in a different environment each day. And thanks to this, I am now able to maintain my composure at all times, on any stage.

6. What do you think about your next opponent?

Has my opponent been decided? I see. Not that it really matters.

7. How do you calm your nerves on stage?

I think ahead about how I would handle a possible problem situation. You never know what will happen on stage, so it’s important to have a solution in mind. That’s how you keep your heart rate under control – again, I have my father’s training to thank for this. (laugh)

8. “Luka is unlike any other ALNST winner” – this seems to be the popular opinion. What do you think sets you apart?

ALNST is a survival competition, but what’s more important is the performance itself. Focusing solely on the performance and putting on the perfect stage is what every participant should have in mind.

9. What does the stage mean to you?

I think of it as a chance to repay you for the support you’ve shown me. We pet-humans would not be standing in the spotlight if it weren’t for ALNST, and I wish to repay the love I’ve received through my performance on stage.

#alien stage #alnst #alnst luka #vivinos #qmeng

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thaisibir · 1 year ago

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Phantom Thieves react to getting anesthesia: headcanons from a real anesthetist

Ren: wakes up unusually chatty, thinks the recovery room nurse is Sae in the interrogation room, talks about all the stuff he has to do to increase his social stats

Ryuji: won't shut up about being a Phantom Thief and rats out his friends as Phantom Thieves (fortunately none of the OR staff believe him because they chalk it up to post-op delirium)

Ann: confesses her undying love to the recovery room nurse taking care of her (which destroys Morgana)

Yusuke: wakes up reciting a very long list of all the hospital food he wants to eat, ends up not eating for a while due to having the terrible luck of previously undiagnosed post-op nausea and vomiting (PONV sucks, and known history of it in a patient definitely affects the anesthetic plan. A lot of drugs in our disposal have anti-nausea properties: propofol, decadron, zofran being the most common. But a bunch of others can do the exact opposite and cause nausea: opioids, anesthetic gas, etomidate (which I call vomidate) etc. It's a careful balance of what meds to use and which to avoid, and it depends on the patient.)

Makoto: wakes up alternating between yakuza movie quotes and swearing every other word from surgery pain (a bad habit she got from Sae, who swears like a sailor out of work stress when she thinks Makoto can't hear)

Futaba: takes fore-fuckin'-ever to get to sleep, gets slugged with enough medication to knock out a 100 kg 6 foot tall man (redheads are known for needing higher than average anesthetic to go past the threshold of consciousness and awareness. This is actual book knowledge plus my own clinical experience. Futaba would be a real chore to anesthetize.)

Haru: wakes up throwing hands, swinging fists and feet into OR staff, keeps asking for her axe, has to be restrained to the bed until enough sedatives kick in to calm her down (little kids, teenage girls and big healthy guys tend to wake up violently as the anesthetic wears off. The solution and wonder drug for this: precedex.)

Morgana: makes a weepy proposal to Ann, launches into verbal treatises and theories on the psychology of the Metaverse (which just sounds like incoherent meowing and yowling to the vets)

And for the honorary PTs:

Sojiro: the amount of gunk and spit suctioned out of his mouth before removing the airway device is through the roof (suctioning the mouth and throat is super important during emergence of anesthesia, so that stuff doesn't make the vocal cords spaz out and slam shut, which is laryngospasm, an airway emergency. Smokers tend to produce excessive oral secretions, and if they smoke enough, it can even look gray and brown. Lovely huh?)

Sae: has a low heart rate in the 40s that kind of unnerves OR staff, but that's only because she's very athletic (very fit people can have pretty low baseline heart rate, because exercise remodels the heart to optimize blood output for less work/heart rate. Normal heart rate range is 60-100 bpm, but I've seen Ironman type athletes have 30-40 bpm.)

#persona 5 #persona 5 headcanons #ren amamiya #ryuji sakamoto #ann takamaki #morgana persona 5 #yusuke kitagawa #makoto niijima #futaba sakura #haru okumura #sojiro sakura #sae niijima #this was fun. hope you learned a bit of medical stuff today

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darkurgetrash · 1 year ago

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Help! I’m the Main Character!

Read series on AO3 | #HITMC

“They both looked at her like she was off her rocker, and she had to concede that they were probably right. No sane person would truly believe that they’d been isekai’d into a fantasy video game. Certainly not in their pyjamas.”

When Lo found herself suddenly teleported into the world of her favourite game, Baldur’s Gate 3, it seemed that the only solution would be to follow the story she knew so well. / However, with every attempt made to follow canon, Lo finds herself only derailing the game even further. It certainly doesn’t help matters either that Rolan, the Wizard tiefling she’d not bothered to talk to in her playthrough, seems entirely set on thwarting her every decision. / Needless to say… this adventure certainly isn’t giving the ‘main-character energy’ Lo had hoped for.

Rated: E

Read for: romantic comedy, sort-of enemies-to-lovers, chaos incarnated, romantic slow burn, eventual smut

First chapter under the cut.

Chapter One: What is this? An Isekai?

Wordcount: 2324

Lo was no stranger to lucid dreaming, especially when it came to ones about her newest hyperfixations, yet this one felt even more vivid than usual.

Normally, whenever her one-track mind plummeted her into the universe of her current favourite game, ‘Baldur's Gate 3’, it at least had enough decency to make her ‘Tav’ — Strong, magical, athletic… blessed with impossibly voluminous and shiny hair as if Withers was her own personal stylist. Oh, and tits that didn’t bow to the laws of gravity.

But tonight, her brain obviously had… different ideas. Tonight, it had thrust her right at the beginning, straight onto the crashing Nautiloid, but as herself, no less; Not as a seven-foot baddie tiefling with bright pink skin and a mysterious glint in her eye, but as basic bitch, paler than a ghost Charlotte Polly Berry, with weak joints and low muscle mass, a resting heart-rate of 91 BPM, and chronic back pain.

…And she was low-key here for it.

With a big yawn, Lo clambered out of her smashed mind-flayer pod like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon — albeit, a little bit fatigued — and opened her senses to the world around her.

A rancid stench filled the air, so revolting and putrid that she gagged, and even the taste of bile rising in her throat felt incredibly realistic. Shit, even as her shoeless feet squelched across the ridged, gore-filled floor, she couldn’t help but feel proud of the power of her mind. If only she could have that much mental power in daily life, she’d have already girlbossed her way into a pay rise without even breaking a sweat.

Though, as she looked down at herself, she found herself again wishing it had been a bit more creative than to mould her in the same pyjamas she wore that night: an old t-shirt with a faded Hello Kitty on the front, grey sweatpants, stripy socks, and an oversized hot-pink teddy-bear cardigan.

Couldn’t it at least have conjured her some badass armour? Or given her elf ears? Aasimar wings? She jumped in the air experimentally, wondering if she might start flying, yet gravity pulled her heavily back down with an unceremonious thunk.

Ugh. Not that lucid, then.

With a huff, she ran her fingers through the length of her messy ponytail, the grease unmistakable. If that was the case, she thought, then she probably also… mm, yep. She still had star-shaped blemish stickers dotting her face too.

She couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of how ridiculously she stood out against the Nautiloid. At least where that was concerned, her brain had conjured every detail to perfection, from the bubbling acid pool in the centre of the room to the dead mind flayer sprawled on the ground, and even the scorching heat radiating from the flames pouring through the cracks in the floor.

She wondered if plunging her hand into the acid would hurt, considering how realistic it all felt, though decided that she didn’t want to risk it. It might wake her up, and she rather enjoyed the idea of exploring the Nautiloid in such a lucid state, even as uncomfortable and high-key over-stimulating as it all was. Besides, she had to physically go back to the office the next day, and anything felt preferable to that — even an icky alien ship plummeting through literal hell. Actually, come to think of it, even that didn’t seem all that different to the London Underground’s Central Line at rush hour.

The more she thought about the ship as an extension of her subconscious’ feelings about London, the more it all made sense. Take the dead mind flayer, for example… Was it really all that different to a seafood vendor with hanging squids in its window?… if those squids were around seven feet tall and dressed in purple armour?

Uh-huh, she thought not!

With the illithid body calling to her — the loot goblin that she was — she walked towards it and knelt down, grinning at how detailed it was as she rifled through its armour, picking up the onyx that she remembered was there. It glistened with reflections of the surrounding flames as she held it up, twirling it this way and that.

Impressive, she thought. Like playing the game on real world graphics.

“…Poggers.” She ironically chuckled aloud to herself, slipping the gem into the pocket of her sweatpants before running a finger over the mind flayer’s brow. Mm. Slimy.

Well, she thought, striding confidently forwards. If her mind was insistent on being so vivid, she planned to take full advantage! Starting, of course, with venturing across the ship and meeting the first two companions of the game. What would they think of her? Would it just be the same reaction as they’d had to her Tav, or would her dream allow her to… spice things up a bit?

Yet, as she reached where her favourite green goblin’s cutscene usually triggered… nothing happened. She frowned, looking around expectantly, but it seemed to be that her would-be ambusher had failed to load.

“Wow, thanks brain,” she sighed, folding her arms. “Why have a hot githyanki girlfriend when I could just revel in alien juices—”

The ship violently shook and Lo suddenly fell to her knees, grimacing as she felt the sting of where the jagged floor cut her, a red patch quickly spreading across the knee of her trackies.

“Ow, Jesus Christ!—” she swore, sitting back and rolling up the legs of her sweats, eyes widening at the sight of blood beginning to gush from her kneecap.

So her subconscious mind had decided to remember her anaemia too?!

It hurt. Like, really hurt! Though, she supposed it made sense. If things were going to be realistic, it was only right that she’d have injured herself falling over in this universe. She’d always joked that any self-insert into the game wouldn’t have made it out of the tutorial, after all. Either that, or she’d have been part of the goblin camp. Or a dog.

Then, just as suddenly as before, the ship convulsed again, and her surroundings changed in an instant — No longer the stormy red fires of Avernus, but now the starry skies of Faerûn, and the ship was plummeting; crashing!

Her heart raced, pounding inside of her like a jackhammer, the threat of imminent death suddenly all too real, and she’d had enough, she wanted to wake up!

“Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!” She urged herself, shaking her head, just before her body involuntarily lurched forward, the floor disappearing beneath her, and she was falling, fast — the air wrapping around her so violently that she couldn’t even scream, could barely even breathe! It all felt so real, so horribly real, yet it was impossible, wasn’t it? She didn’t believe in magic, didn’t know if she believed in alternative universes, and she didn’t even like those stupid shows and films like ‘Sword Art Online’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’, or ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Christ, even that BBC TV series from the 2000’s about the woman who swapped places with Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice was only worth being considered a guilty pleasure…

A sharp pain suddenly erupted in the side of her head, her vision darkening as debris fell all around her…

And then all was black.

── *(¬_¬)* ──

“Hells, are you alright?!”

Ugh… five more minutes…

“Leave her, Lia. She’s a lost cause.”

“Oh shut up and use your eyes — look, her chest is moving.”

“Zurgan! We don’t have time for this! Cal is waiting for us.”

I don’t want to work today. Or any day… Can’t I just sleep?…

“Give me a healing potion.”

“I am not wasting a precious resource on some human we don’t even know, especially not one who is clearly mentally disturbed — look at what she’s wearing—”

“Now, Rolan!”

Christ on a bike. Who is shouting outside?! Honestly, some people have no respect, it’s too early. Wait, is it bin day? Ah crap, but she’d forgotten to take the recycling out…

“You’re insufferable.”

In the next moment, a boiling sensation suddenly filled Lo’s stomach, a thick syrup-like liquid pouring down her throat. Then, with a gasp, she opened her eyes.

“The fuck?—” She exclaimed, as a horrible and tight tingle reverberated through her body like the flu jab on steroids. Above her, orange glowing eyes against black sclera investigated her face, and she recognised them — a tiefling, one of the refugees in the Grove…

“Don’t move,” the tiefling instructed, moving her finger across her face so that Lo’s eyes followed it. She had a throbbing pain in her head, aches all over her body like she’d been in the centre of a mosh pit. Mothertrucker dude, it hurt like a buttcheek on a stick.

“What’s going on….” She murmured, clarity beginning to settle over her and, with it, a panicked recollection. She’d been falling from the Nautiloid, but it had been a dream, a nightmare — was she still asleep? But there was no way; birds chirped too loudly, the pain of her body too present, the air all too cold…

“She’s alright,” the tiefling said, standing up and offering a hand out. Behind her, another tiefling stood with a sour face and folded arms — that tall one… he was her brother, wasn’t he? Yes, that was right. They were the siblings she had advised to leave the Grove and head to Baldur’s Gate… What were their names, again?

“Honestly,” he said, his voice a low lisp. “We’ll never make it to Baldur’s Gate if you insist on helping every wounded person we come across.”

He glared at Lo, his yellow eyes boring into her with obvious irritation.

“You owe me a healing potion.”

“I owe you what?!” Lo spat, sitting up so quickly that she felt dizzy, her hand raising to her head to steady herself, and — shit, it was bloody… And her clothes were bloody. And her body groaned with ache. And she felt tired, really bloody tired. And…

Oh… oh no…

“Don’t be an idiot, Rolan. She’s obviously just been through something horrible, we have to help her back to the Grove! The Druids will know what to do.”

This… was real.

“Oh yes, because the Druid’s have been so helpful and welcoming—”

“OK, NOBODY PANIC!” Lo blurted, harshly taking the sister’s hand and stumbling to her feet. Her joints creaked, her muscles throbbed, and her heart pounded inside of her chest like the worst drum and bass song she’d ever heard. But, then again, a five-minute walk on the treadmill usually yielded the same results. She needed to chill, just… just gooo with the flooow…

“Druids, right, yes, the druids,” she said, hitting her fist against her palm as began pacing. “That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to … to…”

Shit. If this was like the game, Halsin wouldn’t be there, and it’s probably not like he would have been able to help anyway. And, oh yes, another matter! If this all was for real real, where were her companions? They needed her. Or… that is, they needed Tav. Was Tav in the game?! Was she Tav?! Did she have a tadpole inside of her brain?!

Her mind was reeling, trying to come up with some semblance of a plan or explanation, but it failed at every hurdle. She could feel the tiefling’s eyes on her, and she knew she had to act cool or risk being stabbed, probably.

Yeah… It would be fiiineee. She knew what to do, she knew how to progress! She just needed to take things one step at a time…

“Hey…” the sister said, softly. She tentatively reached out, placing her hand on Lo’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ll take you to a proper healer.”

“Ahaha, bet, a healer. I’m sure that will definitely help, I’m sure she won’t try to poison me or anything sus like that.” Lo babbled, taking an unsteady step forward past the tieflings, ready to move toward the Grove when she realised…

Real life doesn’t have a mini map.

She took a deep breath and turned back to the siblings, forcing a friendly and most definitely trustworthy smile. They both looked at her like she was off her rocker, and she had to concede that they were probably right. No sane person would truly believe that they’d been isekai’d into a fantasy video game. Certainly not in their pyjamas.

“Lead the way, then…” she said, readjusting her ponytail, trying not to think of the gore and viscera that probably stained her light brown hair, the fact that she was a gremlin girl with no survival skills thrust into the most dangerous world she could imagine, or the fact that Faerûn lacked modern plumbing.

“Of— of course!” The sister mumbled, glancing at her brother almost apologetically, though definitely with some slight amusement. “I’m Lia, by the way, and this is Rolan.”

“Lo,” she said, her voice forcefully bright. “I like naps, piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain.”

“Oh, ha, cool…” Lia replied, her amusement definitely growing in fervour. “I like cheese, hitting things with my sword, and not dying.”

“Zurgan—” Rolan snarled exasperatedly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He groaned even further as he walked past the giggling women, granting them a wide berth as if they carried the plague.

“Don’t encourage the lunatic!” He grumbled, just as Lia caught up to his side, Lo following behind. “You do realise, I hope, that we now have an insane person under our responsibility? All because you wanted to play the hero.”

“Better than playing the arsehole, you should try it some time.” His sister smirked back.

“You know just as well as I do that she’d probably have been better off dead.”

As Lo grew pink, her breath ragged as she struggled to keep pace… she couldn’t help but slightly agree.

Oh well, she shrugged.

It is what it is…

#HITMC #ROLO #bg3 fanfic #Rolan fanfic #Rolan bg3 #rolan x oc #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic #bg3 fanart #rolan fanart #holy rolan empire #rolan nation #myart #myfanfic

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