#Data Pipeline Development

[aakarshanstar]

Innovative Data Engineering for Strategic Decision-Making

Data Engineering Services at Aakarshan Edge

In today’s data-driven landscape, Data Engineering services are pivotal for harnessing the full potential of enterprise data. The complexity and volume of data generated by modern businesses necessitate robust, scalable solutions to transform raw information into actionable insights. At aakarshansedge.com, our Data Engineering services focus on building high-performance data pipelines, architecting data lakes, and enabling seamless integration of disparate data sources, ensuring your business can make informed, real-time decisions backed by data science and analytics.

Key Components of Data Engineering

Data Pipeline Architecture A well-architected data pipeline is the foundation of a successful data engineering strategy. At Aakarshan Edge, we specialize in designing data pipelines that ensure the efficient flow of data from multiple sources into centralized storage solutions. Our pipelines are optimized for speed, reliability, and scalability, handling everything from real-time data streaming to batch processing. We ensure that data is cleansed, transformed, and enriched at each stage to maintain the highest level of accuracy and consistency.

Data Lakes and Warehouses Enterprises today require flexible and scalable storage solutions capable of handling structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Aakarshan Edge excels in creating both data lakes and data warehouses solution tailored to your business needs. We implement cloud-native and hybrid solutions that provide the necessary storage capacity and processing power to handle vast amounts of data while offering real-time access for analytics and machine learning applications.

ETL/ELT Process Optimization Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and its variant, Extract, Load, Transform (ELT), are the backbones of data integration. We optimize ETL/ELT processes to reduce latency and improve efficiency, leveraging automation where possible. Our team uses advanced tools and frameworks to ensure that data transformation is seamless, whether it’s migrating data from legacy systems or integrating with third-party APIs. This results in reduced operational costs, increased performance, and enhanced decision-making capabilities.

Big Data Solutions As big data continues to grow, businesses must find ways to process vast datasets at lightning speed. Aakarshan Edge offers specialized big data solutions, utilizing platforms like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and cloud-based systems such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Our big data expertise enables us to create scalable infrastructures capable of processing petabytes of data across distributed environments, making data analysis faster, more accurate, and more affordable.

Data Governance and Security Data governance and security are critical concerns in today’s regulatory environment. Aakarshan Edge implements comprehensive data governance frameworks that ensure compliance with international standards such as GDPR and CCPA. We deploy robust security measures, including encryption, access control, and data masking, ensuring that sensitive information is protected at every stage of the data lifecycle. Our proactive approach to data governance helps businesses maintain transparency, reduce risks, and build trust with their customers.

Cloud Data Engineering In the era of cloud computing, businesses increasingly turn to cloud-based data engineering solutions for their flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. At Aakarshan Edge, we develop cloud-native data architectures using leading platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Our cloud data engineering services include migrating on-premises data to the cloud, optimizing cloud resources for data processing, and building serverless solutions that scale effortlessly with your data needs.

Data Quality Management The value of data lies in its quality. Poor data quality can lead to faulty insights, resulting in bad business decisions. Aakarshan Edge employs sophisticated data quality management strategies to ensure that data is accurate, consistent, and reliable. From automated data validation to anomaly detection and real-time monitoring, we maintain high data integrity across the entire data lifecycle.

AI and Machine Learning Integration To maximize the value of your data, Aakarshan Edge integrates AI and machine learning capabilities into our data engineering solutions. This includes building models for predictive analytics, automating data-driven decision-making, and providing advanced data insights. By leveraging machine learning, businesses can uncover patterns and trends within their data that would otherwise remain hidden, enabling proactive strategies and innovation.

Benefits of Aakarshan Edge’s Data Engineering Services

Scalability and Flexibility: Our data engineering solutions are built to scale with your business, ensuring that as your data needs grow, our systems grow with them. We design modular architectures that allow for easy expansion, whether you’re processing gigabytes or petabytes of data. Cost Efficiency: Through optimization of data processing workflows and cloud resource utilization, we reduce costs while maintaining peak performance. Our solutions prioritize efficiency, allowing businesses to achieve more without overextending budgets. Real-time Insights: With Aakarshan Edge’s real-time data processing capabilities, businesses can react quickly to market changes, customer behavior, and operational inefficiencies. This agility helps companies stay competitive in fast-moving industries. Robust Security: Our security-first approach ensures that all data handled by our systems is protected from breaches, leaks, and unauthorized access. We embed security best practices into every layer of our data engineering services. Custom Solutions: Every business has unique data needs, and at Aakarshan Edge, we tailor our services to meet those specific requirements. From custom-built data lakes to proprietary machine learning models, our solutions are designed for optimal alignment with your business goals.

Conclusion Data is the cornerstone of modern business, and mastering it can unlock significant competitive advantages. Aakarshan Edge provides advanced data engineering services that are designed to meet the complex demands of today’s enterprises. Whether you need to streamline data operations, improve decision-making, or prepare for AI-driven innovations, we have the expertise to turn your data into a powerful business asset. Partner with us to drive your data strategy forward and stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly data-centric world. Contact us (+91-8860691214) (E-Mail: sales@akarshans.com)

[casbitchh]

fucking hate engineers

[oddlydescriptive]

Reset, Chapter Seventeen

Series Masterlist

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You didn’t get flown out for the final race. Didn’t get a dress code email for the prize giving ceremony. Didn’t get a hotel keycard left in an envelope at the front desk. You watched the last race of the season from your dorm, curled up on your twin bed with a plate of freezer dumplings and a laptop that buffered at least twice before the stream caught up.

Red Bull won everything, obviously. Verstappen took the final checkered flag like it was inevitable. The team celebrated in a blaze of champagne and perfectly lit content loops. You closed the window before the podium interviews even started.

No one called. No one needed anything.

And honestly, that made sense.

You’re still under contract through December 31st- still, technically, Red Bull property- but AlphaTauri’s already been announced. You’re not just development anymore. You’re not just RedBull Racing anymore. You’re forward-facing. Pipeline material. And while no one has said it aloud, the shift’s been happening for weeks.

They’re phasing you out.

Quietly. Gently. Efficiently.

Your data access had been the first thing to go- little changes, gradual redactions. You still had log-ins, but fewer dashboards showed up when you used them. Then the assignments started thinning out. Weekly reports became biweekly summaries. Dev meeting invites stopped appearing unless someone had a specific question for you. A sim anomaly. A question about a comment you had left on the braking data a few weeks ago. 

It’s not personal. It’s not even cruel. It’s just… logistics. And you got it. You get it. You do.

You’re not their girl anymore. Or, won’t be. Not in the gears-and-axles sense. You got exactly what you wanted. You’ve stopped being a cog. Now you’re something shinier. Something public. A face. A product. A name.

You’d had more access than you probably should’ve from the beginning. More control. More input. They’re only pulling back what they’d loaned in the first place.

Still.

You’d built your entire life around this place since they dumped you on the factory steps in August-  broke, jagged, desperate, hungry for anything more than the Indy career you had torched to the ground. This badge. These halls. The windowless sim rooms and bitter instant coffee and shared dorm showers. It’s become your whole ecosystem.

And now?

Now you’re bored.

Not in the casual, oh-I-have-nothing-to-do sense. Not in the Instagram scroll, maybe-I’ll-go-for-a-run way. You’re untethered. No real tasks. A measly four calendar holds before the end of the year. No Gavin- he’s traveling with the team.  No Alessandro- burning PTO like a matchbook before the winter build surge. No Danny- off wrapping up his last days with McClaren. Stuck, just like you. Stuck, right here in purgatory.

Lying on your back in a sterile little dorm room with your legs curled up like a child and your phone battery at nine percent. Watching the forced-air heating ruffle a stray paper on your desk, trying not to fall asleep before the year-end party even starts.

It’s not loneliness, exactly. You’ve survived worse. Objectively, you have zero complaints.

But it’s quiet in a way that makes your skin itch.

There are big things coming. Huge things. A race seat. Brand deals and sponsors. Points, even, if you play your cards right. But right now? Right now you’re still technically Red Bull. Still on their payroll. Still sleeping under their roof.

You’re not part of the machine you live in anymore. And the weight of that contradiction is making you feel… something. Not numb. Not sad. Not exactly.

Just unmoored. 

The day’s gotten away from you in your spiral- cold gray light stretching thin across the dorm ceiling, your phone buzzing occasionally from across the room and left unread. You should be doing something. Hair. Makeup. Picking out an outfit for this evening’s staff year end party. Anything.

Instead, you’ve just been… still.

You can’t quite name it. The feeling in your chest like a tether’s been cut. The quiet hum of weightless boredom, pressed under the skin like a bruise that never quite blooms.

You’re still training. Still working. You show up to the gym like it’s your job- because it kind of is. Because it’s the only thing that hasn’t shifted beneath your feet lately. The rhythm, the discipline, the ache. It reminds you of the summer. The purgatory of Jos’s house. The hours you carved open just to fill them with movement. With sweat. With anything that kept you from unraveling entirely.

But this has been different.

Since you got here- since the AlphaTauri shook the marrow out of your bones and left you wrung out and trembling for your life in an ice bath- you’ve been training with intention. Not just survival. Not just control. Not just maintenance. You’ve been trying to build.

For the first time in your life, the goal isn’t to disappear.

It’s to expand.

IndyCar never cared if you were strong. They cared if you were light. No driver weight minimums. Junior series, whatever flavor you drove in any given year, same thing. Lighter was faster. Coaches, engineers, principals- always asking the same questions.

How light can you get and still drive? How many days can you go without carbs before your body starts eating your reflexes?

Smaller was better. A decade of conditioning that turned your own hunger into an enemy. Every pound scrutinized. Every calorie accounted for. Racing in those worlds meant being barely there- meant learning to cut yourself down until you fit inside the mold.

The only real advantage to being a woman in that system? You were already small. Naturally lighter. It made the weight targets a little easier- sometimes. While your male teammates were scraping muscle off themselves to make weight, skipping meals and running hot just to cut grams, you were coasting in under the line. Not because it was healthy. Not because it was fair. But because being born smaller meant you starved less.

But now?

Now you’re in F1.

Now there's a minimum. A fixed number. Now it doesn’t matter if you’re naturally small- because every pound you don’t carry is another pound your competitors get to fill with power. With strength. With muscle that helps them outdrive, outmuscle, outlast you.

You’re no longer rewarded for taking up less space. You’re punished for it. So you’ve changed.

You’ve been eating like it matters. Training like it’s math- input and output, time and tension. Your body, for the first time since before you got your first period, isn’t a compromise. It’s becoming a weapon.

You sit up slowly. Peel off your clothes. One layer at a time. Hoodie, socks, leggings, tank. Until you’re just in your underwear and bra. Cotton. Soft. Familiar.

Then you reach for the full-length mirror leaning against the wall and drag it onto the bed with you. Set it up agasint your pillows so you can see yourself. All of you. Up close.

And then you look. Really look. Take stock.

Your thighs are thicker now. Solid. Corded with new muscle, the kind that moves when you shift and flexes without trying. They press together, heavy and warm and proud. They flow into hips that have grown wider, fuller, more anchored somehow. Your waist is still there- narrow, defined- but the curve from rib to hip to thigh is smooth and deep and fucking stunning.

You twist slightly, propping yourself on one arm, and turn your attention lower.

Your ass is outrageous.

You blink. Then smile. Every inch of it earned from loading squats three times a week until you might have cried with exhaustion. It lifts high and round, fuller than it’s ever been. It’s the reason most of your jeans have become… hazardous, lately. You only have a handful of pairs left that fit at all, much less well. The shape is almost surreal- like someone photoshopped you and forgot to undo it. But it’s not fake. It’s earned. It balances the line of your back, the curve of your hips, the strength in your thighs.

You shift your hips again, slowly. Watching the way everything follows. The drag of your skin, the flex and pull of muscle. And it’s not just power. It’s not just the function of it.

It’s beautiful.

There’s a sensuality to it that catches you off guard.

Not sexual. Not quite. Not the kind of thing you’d show off for someone else. This isn’t about being wanted. You haven’t been touched in months. Haven’t been kissed. Haven’t felt the pressure of someone else’s palm against your skin or the heat of a gaze that wanted this body.

And that’s okay.

Because right now, this moment isn’t for them.

It’s for you.

You look at your stomach- still lean, but no longer hollow. Muscle built up through dedication, not revealed by deprivation. Your shoulders roll back as you shift upright, and your back pulls taut, muscles threading together like ropes under skin.

And then your eyes land on your chest.

Your bra- nothing fancy, just plain cotton- stretches over you in a way it never used to. Full. Rounded. Heavy in a way that’s new. Like your body finally got the message that it’s safe to have things now. That you’re allowed to take up space.

You trail your fingers from your sternum outward. Over the shape of yourself. The dip of your waist. The rise of your hips. The flare and the fullness and the heat pooling under your skin, not from desire- but from recognition.

This is not the body you left America with.

Not the one built for hunger. Not the one that fought, that starved, that was sold in sponsorship dollars and calories just to survive. Not the same one that felt powerless and drowned and vulnerable in pits full of men with egos that outpaced their cars.

This one is yours.

All of it. The strength. The softness. The sex appeal.

And yeah, it’s probably a little vain, the way you pose. The way you tilt your chin and arch your back and stare at your own reflection with a smirk you didn’t know you still had in you. But you don’t care.

You love her.

This new shape. This new presence. This walking, breathing proof that you are here. You deserve this space. You are every inch of who you make yourself to be. 

You pull your knees up to your chest, still sitting on the bed, mirror between them, and rest your cheek on your own shoulder, watching the way your arms curve around yourself. 

It’s not lost on you how much trauma lived in the old body. In the bones that didn’t bend. In the skin that always felt too tight. In the way people looked at you like a novelty or a threat or a product.

This body isn’t for them.

It’s for you. For who you’re going to be. 

And it’s perfect.

Eventually… you move. Not quickly. Not decisively. Just… gradually. Like heat returning to numb limbs. You get up, still in your underwear, and pad barefoot across the cold dorm floor to the narrow wardrobe tucked beside your desk. It’s small, just to hold the things you can’t afford to let wrinkle. You’ve only opened it a handful of times since you got back from Brazil.

The contents aren’t much. A few basics. A pressed pair of jeans with a sharp, precise crease ironed down the front. Slacks. A simple blazer. At the right end, your suit hangs crisp in its plastic wrap, the one you wore to push your contract at Helmut, back when the words “development driver” still felt like something borrowed. 

You touch the fabric out of habit. The pants look… impossible. Maybe, if you hold your breath and pray to Sara Blakely and her Spanx gods- oh, and don’t eat all night- but honestly, you’re looking forward to the catering spread. Besides, it’s just the staff party- it’s really not that serious.

You let them hang.

Instead, you let your fingers walk a few hangers to the left. Fingers brush something soft. Velvet. Rich, forgiving, quietly festive. Not ugly sweater festive, but more like ‘yes, we are acknowledging it’s December.’ You pull it forward.

The dress is red. Not race-car red, not attention-demanding. Just… warm. A little saturated. The kind of color that makes your skin look golden and your hair a little darker in contrast. Sleeveless. High-necked. Hits just above the knee. Enough stretch to move with you. To let the body you’ve built exist without apology.

You hold it up to your chest, glance toward the mirror still propped on your bed, and nod once. Quietly. Like you’re letting yourself agree with the version of you that smiled at her own reflection twenty minutes ago. It’s not a statement dress. It’s not supposed to be. 

You pull on a pair of black nylons- semi-sheer, a soft little balance between flirtation and formality. The kind you used to wear for media days in junior formula, when you wanted to look polished but not severe. They slide up with the faintest whisper, snug but not constricting. They feel like intention.

Shoes next- your simple black pumps. Not casual, not party heels. Just clean, classic. You slip them on and they still fit the way only leather can- with loyalty. Like no matter how much the rest of you changes, these shoes will still love your feet. That feels like something. A single, stable detail in a body and world that’s otherwise brand new.

You perch on the edge of your desk to do your makeup rather than move the half-clean laundry that lives on your chair. Try not to sit in your compact while you plan your face.

Nothing heavy. Nothing loud. Just light coverage. A little shimmer. A soft sweep of blush across the apples of your cheeks that makes you look sunlit, even under factory-grade fluorescents. You gloss your lips with something pink and sheer, add a touch of mascara. Pretty. Festive. The kind of face that looks like someone you’d want to talk to at a work party without checking a credential first.

Your hair’s a little unruly from lying around until it air-dried, but it still curls easily under your hands. You twist it up in loose, polished sections, pin it in place, and finish it with a narrow ribbon tucked just above the nape of your neck. The bow is barely anything- thin, dainty. Just a little touch.

And when you finally step back from the mirror and take it all in- dress, tights, pumps, makeup, the slight shimmer on your collarbone- you don’t feel like a driver or a ghost or a PR obligation. Not really.

You feel like a girl going to a party at the end of the strangest, most transformative semester of her life. A little out of place. A little nostalgic for something that hasn’t even fully ended. Quietly proud. Quietly melancholy.

You smooth your hands down your dress once, just to feel the fabric hug your ribs. Time to say goodbye- quietly, professionally, beautifully- to the place that made you feel like someone valuable again. Even if they’re already learning how to do without you.

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The party’s better than expected.

Not flashy, not loud- just the hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, the low warmth of staff laughter echoing against the high factory walls. Someone’s strung lights across the ceiling beams, giving everything a soft golden tint. There’s music playing low from the overheads, just enough to keep the room moving. Food’s decent. Little platters of fussy fingerfoods that strike a balance between upscale and approachable. Drinks are free. Everyone’s at that perfect midpoint between polite and tipsy.

You’re leaned against a high table near the edge of the floor, nursing something red and fizzy in a plastic flute. The dress is holding up. The shoes haven’t betrayed you. And you’re laughing- real laughter, open and soft- because Ollie from dev is holding court like his life depends on it.

“I swear to God,” he’s saying, wide-eyed, one hand gesturing wildly, “the second I mentioned it, he looked at me like I’d confessed to a murder.”

Nicole’s giggling politely beside him- dark hair curling over her shoulders, dress tastefully low-cut, clearly groomed and pressed to the nine- and Ollie is doing absolutely nothing to hide the way he’s looking at her.

It’s not subtle.

He is making full, direct, devotional heart eyes every time she opens her mouth. You’re only half listening to the story at this point. Mostly you’re laughing at the sheer audacity of his infatuation. Like he doesn’t even care that you’re standing right here, clocking every stolen glance like it’s your actual job.

Ollie says something else- something about a lost data package and a RedBull fueled all nighter that left him hallucinating on his drive home- and Nicole tilts her head, clearly humoring him.

“That’s… so wild,” she says, all doe-eyed and glittery.

Ollie looks like he’s going to combust. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing again. You sip your drink instead, cheeks warm. For the first time all day, you feel… present. A little girlish. A little like you belong. And yet, despite the comfort of that- you feel it. 

You can feel Jos moving through the room.

It’s not oppressive. Not threatening. He’s not circling like a shark, and you’re not prey. It’s just… something you’re aware of. Like tracking a storm in the distance. You always know where he is.

And honestly?

You’ve resigned yourself to it.

You know he’ll find you eventually. That’s the nature of Jos. He always does. Always appears at the edge of a moment you thought was yours, all gravel-voiced analysis and heavy handshakes and that particular brand of European proximity that makes everything feel more intimate than it should.

And you’re not exactly afraid. You never have been.

If anything- God, you almost missed him.

Jos is a lot. An exhausting amount. But he’s also sharp. Dangerous in the way only brilliant men can be. Talking to him is like fencing with live wire- strategic, quick, crackling. But you’ve never felt like the target. Not really.

You’re not sure what that makes you.

An ally, maybe.

A co-conspirator.

Because Jos doesn’t talk to you like you’re lucky to be here. He talks to you like you’re a weapon. Like you’re leverage he trusts to understand what you’re worth. Like you’re playing a game with him- and unlike with most men in this sport, with Jos, the game doesn’t end with you losing. You think. Probably. So far, at least.

Still, there’s a sliver of something colder beneath it all. A flicker of discomfort you haven’t fully looked at yet. You don’t let yourself think about that too hard. Not here. Not now.

Instead, you set your drink down and laugh again- high and bright, because Ollie has just managed to turn a telemetry error into a flirtation, and Nicole is playing along like she might just let him win. You play with the ribbon in your hair, glance sideways across the room-  And, sure enough, Jos is watching. Not close. Not obvious. Just… waiting.

You adjust the strap of your dress, smooth your hands down the velvet one more time. Your glass is nearly empty. Nicole’s laughing again, Ollie’s blushing so hard it’s a health concern, and somewhere across the room, Jos Verstappen is waiting for you.

So you decide- fuck it.

If he’s going to find you anyway- if he’s already watching- you might as well meet him on your terms. Even if those terms are flimsy. Even if they exist mostly as a way to keep your spine straight and your voice level and your heart from pounding through your ribs.

You slip away from the table, leaving Ollie mid-laugh and Nicole mid-smile. Neither of them notices you go.

You push off the table and cross the floor without fanfare. Slow, steady, unbothered. Your heels click softly against the concrete. The lights above throw gold over your shoulders, and you hold your posture just right. Not stiff. Not girlish. Just composed. Whole.

You don’t know what compels you, exactly. It’s not submission. It’s not allegiance. It’s something quieter. Resignation, maybe. Or- God, maybe curiosity. You’ve danced around this enough times to know it’s coming. He’ll find you eventually. Might as well see what happens when you make the first move.

Jos tracks you the whole way. He’ss standing near the back, half-shadowed by a pillar and positioned with surgical precision- close enough to be in the mix, far enough that no one casually wanders into his orbit. He’s talking to someone from powertrains, nodding along like he’s interested, but his eyes flick toward you the moment you cross the floor.

Not obviously. Not openly. Just with the kind of stillness predators have right before they strike. Arms folded. Drink untouched. He shifts his weight once, almost imperceptibly, like he can’t believe his luck but is already plotting how to use it.

You keep your shoulders relaxed. You walk like you have nowhere in particular to be.

Jos smiles when you reach him. It doesn’t quite touch his eyes.His gaze flicks over you once- just once- but it’s loaded. Evaluating. Not lecherous, but not empty either. Like he’s cataloging the value of your appearance for some unseen ledger.

“There she is,” he says, low and pleased. “I was wondering when you’d come say hello.”

You smile. Easy. Controlled. “Thought I’d save the best for last.”

He laughs once, a short sound, dry and amused. “I like the dress.”

You resist the urge to fidget. “Thanks. Needed something that fit.”

Jos’s eyes flash at that- just a brief glint of approval, the kind that makes your skin feel seen in a way that’s not quite comfortable. Not inappropriate. Just intentional.

You sip your drink- what’s left of it- and let a small silence settle between you. The music hums along in the background. Conversation rolls across the room like static. You glance over your shoulder once, scan the space like you’re keeping track of exits. Then turn back.

And with practiced casualness, you say, “You hear about anything running this winter?”

Jos’s attention sharpens, just slightly. Barely a twitch in his jaw. But he clocks it. You keep your eyes on the middle distance and take a sip of your drink- mostly for the pause it offers- and then, casually, like you’re mentioning the weather: “I’ve been a little bored.”

Jos tilts his head. Interested. “Is that so?”

���Just... stir-crazy.” You keep your tone light. Bright. “Haven’t been in a real car since they flew Max in for brake testing.”

He gives nothing away. Just waits.

You glance out over the room like it doesn’t matter, like you’re not carefully placing each word. “I was thinking- if anything came up. A testing slot. A rally drive. Anything like that.” There. Gentle. Palatable. No pressure. Not desperation. Not even an ask, really. Just a statement. A floating suggestion.

Your voice doesn’t shift. Your shoulders stay easy. But your stomach coils tight. Because even now- even with this new body, this new deal, this new version of you- there’s still something about asking that feels like folding. Like peeling open your ribs.

Jos’s mouth twitches. Just the corner. “Hm.” That’s it. Just that. But you know him well enough to catch it. That sound- small, smug, delighted. It’s the sound of a trap closing.

Because you came to him. Because you asked.

No matter how subtle. No matter how casual. You asked. And it thrills him. Because Jos Verstappen lives for this.

He hides it well- he always does- but it’s there. The faint shift of weight toward you. The satisfied tilt of his head. The way his eyes sharpen just slightly, like the game he’s been playing has finally started to swing in his favor.

“You want me to make a call?” he asks, smooth and quiet, like it costs him nothing.

You lift a shoulder. “Only if it’s not a headache.”

He hums, looking away for a moment, already flipping through names, contacts, favors- building the scaffolding in his mind. He lets the silence stretch just long enough to prove he holds the reins. Only then does he speak.

“It wouldn’t be a single-seater,” he says finally. “Rally, most likely. Scandinavia. Snow. Cold. Not much exposure. Barely any pay.”

You don’t hesitate. “Send my paycheck straight back to the team,” you say. “Call it a sponsorship. I don’t care what it is.”

That gets his attention.

Jos studies you, eyes narrowing just slightly. Not with suspicion. With curiosity. Like he’s just thrown a line out, expecting it to hang in the water for a while- and you bit down before it even landed.

It was a test. A measure of your grit. Of your desperation. Of your understanding.

And you passed.

He leans back ever so slightly, nodding once, like he’s filing something away. “That sounds like a good time, does it?” he asks, tone dry but edged with something almost amused.

You hold his gaze. Steady. “Yes. It does.”

Another beat. He looks at you for a moment longer- really looks. Like he’s trying to figure out if you’re naive or ruthless, and whether or not it matters.

Then, almost fondly: “You’re smart to ask.”

There’s no threat in it. But there is a temperature. A charge beneath the compliment. He wants you to know you’ve made the right choice. That you’re wise to seek him out. That there’s more where that came from, if you stay close.

Jos smiles again, all teeth and calculation disguised as generosity. “I’ll be in touch. Keep your gear bag packed.”

And just like that, you’ve traded yourself for a favor. You feel it settle in your ribs. Weightless. But not free. The kind of thing that won’t show up in contracts or inboxes, but that you’ll carry all the same. Jos slips away only a moment later.

One minute he’s promising to make a few calls, and the next he’s clapping someone on the back and gliding into another conversation- like he hadn’t just offered you a taste of something sharp and sweet with a leash hidden inside.

You’re left standing near the perimeter of the room, drink still in hand, blood still humming from the conversation. It's not adrenaline exactly. Not fear. Just the slow, uneasy swell of something that feels like a contract being signed without ink.

You can feel him before you hear him. The shift in temperature. The static at your back. Max. Predictable, honestly. That Jos would drop you off right in his periphery. Fitting, truly. Inevitable.

You don’t see him approach- he moves like a shadow under a locked door. Silent. Sure. Unwanted.

But this time? You’re not caught off guard. You’re not off balance. You’re not scrambling to please, or prove, or endure. You’re tired. Bone-deep tired. The kind of tired that scrapes everything polite out of your chest and leaves nothing behind but sharp teeth and sharper instincts.

And you’re not afraid of him anymore.

Max takes position just behind your left shoulder, close enough that the heat of him skims your skin without touching it. Like a dare. Like he wants you to turn.

You don’t flinch.

You just wait. He wouldn’t have stepped forward if he didn’t have something to say. Fucking say it, Max.

“You really going for the full set, huh?” he says at last, voice low and dry. Venom tucked under every syllable like it’s something elegant. “Sponsorship. Seat. Verstappen family holiday invite.”

You blink once. Slow. Unbothered. “Jesus.”

You turn your head over your shoulder- just enough to catch the line of his mouth, the cut of his eyes. The disdain’s still there, as always, but there’s something else now. Something darker coiled just behind it. “Is this your idea of a Christmas card?” you ask.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t have to. The accusation’s already in the air between you. He’s not here to be clever. He’s here to see what you’ll do.

You inhale, sharp and silent. Then pivot on your toe, full-body now, facing him square for the first time. He’s close. Closer than you expected. Closer than anyone should be in a room full of champagne and fairy lights and factory staff pretending they aren’t watching.

You meet him at eye level. No posture. No smile. No spin.

Just you.

“I’m sorry I’m not subtle enough for you,” you say, voice steady. “But some of us don’t have the luxury of pretending we don’t need favors.”

You take a half-step forward. Not aggressive. Not passive. Just enough to reclaim the space he thought he’d filled.

“Look,” you go on, tired and clear and done with it, “I’ve got nothing to sell but my drives and my time. That’s it. So yeah, if Jos wants to hand me a favor, or a drive, or a fucking photo op, I’m going to take it. I’m going to smile, say thank you, and take everything he gives me. Because I’m not in a position to be picky.”

His jaw tightens. Barely. Just enough.

And maybe you should stop there. But you’re so fucking done. With him. With this. With the way he’s hovered all season like a storm cloud and acted like you were the one blocking the sun.

So you don’t stop.

“Seriously,” you add, biting now, “why are you standing here? Why don’t you go find another junior employee to intimidate? Do some scouting for next season. You love that shit.”

Max doesn’t blink. Doesn’t budge.

But his silence isn’t power anymore. Not to you.

In two weeks, you’re out of his factory. Out of his immediate orbit. You’re done tiptoeing through his moods like they’re weather patterns. So you lean in. A breath closer. Just to twist the knife. Just because you can.

“Or maybe,” you murmur, “you want me to yell at you again.” His expression doesn’t change. But his pupils sharpen. You see it. The flash of it. That dark, sick little thing he doesn’t want to name.

You remember it. That day in the boardroom. The way he stood there, watching you unravel like it was art. Practically licking his fucking chops in the blood of a kill. Like he’d finally pulled the right string and the whole thing came tumbling down and God, wasn’t that just so satisfying.

You raise your brows now, almost playful. “Seemed like you loved it.” The air between you tightens.

Not with fear. With something else.

Something heavier. Twisted. Threaded through with adrenaline and ego and the fact that you don’t technically need to be any nicer to him than he deserves anymore- but fuck, you’ll still take the last word.

Your drink sweats in your hand. Somewhere, someone across the room laughs too loud. A champagne cork pops. Max breathes in. Sharp. Controlled. You can see the words on his tongue. You can see the war inside him- the want to snap back. To grab. To tear. But he doesn’t.

He flicks his gaze down your body instead.

Not long. Not crude. Just one slow, scalding drag of assessment. Like he’s not even sure if he’s sizing you up or taking you in. Then he tilts his head. Just a little. Voice flat. “Careful.”

You smile. Not sweet. Not kind. Just knowing. “Or what?” you say, cool and easy. “You’ll call HR? Kick me off the team?” You let the smile grow sharp. “Oh, wait. You can’t. I’m already leaving.”

His eyes narrow- barely. He’s trying so fucking hard not to react. To be cool. Detached. Unbothered. And he almost pulls it off. Almost. Because this? This isn’t a fight.

Not yet. This is play. The sick kind.

Two wild animals circling the same patch of dirt. Teeth bared, tails twitching. Neither of you quite sure if this is about dominance or the last laugh or mutual destruction- but God, don’t you both want to find out.

You take a sip of your drink. Cool and steady.

And Max- quiet, scalding Max- just stands there. Watching.

Your phone vibrates in your clutch.

You wouldn’t normally check it in the middle of a cold war reenactment with Max Verstappen, but almost everyone on your short, carefully curated no-Do-Not-Disturb list is in this room, except your parents and-

You pull it out.

Danny Ricciardo [8:42 PM] bailing on mclaren. headed your way. party still good or should we find a pub? 20 mins out

You blink. And then you smile. It hits like a burst of light- like someone cracked open a window in a room you didn’t know was suffocating you. Danny.

Your maybe-friend. Your only safe person in the entire Red Bull ecosystem. Someone who isn’t looking at you like he’s devastated you’re leaving, or like he’ll forget your name the second the paperwork clears, or like he’s waiting for God to strike you down mid-sentence.

(Max, that last one. That look is all Max.)

You type fast.

You [8:43 PM]still rolling but up to you. everyone here keeps looking at me like a kicked puppy. wouldn’t mind a drink that doesn’t have ‘compote’ or ‘infusion’ in it.

There’s no reply for a minute.

Two.

Five.

Max, then, checks his phone beside you, his thumb hovering just a little too long. You glance at him- because you can’t not- and for the first time, he looks mildly annoyed. That makes you feel excellent. The night does have hope after all. You sip your drink just to keep from smiling.

Your phone buzzes again.

Danny Ricciardo [8:51 PM]let’s go out. I’ll text when I’m close.

You straighten, pulse skipping just once. You’re not going out in this. Not with Danny. Not to a pub. Velvet dress? Ribbon hair? Absolutely not. 

You glance at Max, who’s still scrolling, now with an expression like he’s trying to burn holes through his phone. Good. He can stay here with his bad mood and his weird dad. You’ve got plans. “Bye,” you murmur, not bothering to wait for him to look up.

You disappear through the side doors, heels clicking across tile. Up the stairs. Down the dim dorm hallway that’s somehow still home even when it’s already starting to forget you.

Inside your room, you move fast. Dress peeled off in one motion. You keep the nylons- they add a little warmth, and they make you feel like your legs have a little secret armor- and pull on a pair of shredded black jeans. High-rise, frayed knees, familiar as a favorite memory. A memory that is a little tight over the ass, but it’ll do.

A sleeveless top. Tighter. Cropped just enough to make your waist look like something sculpted- enough that it just barely kisses the waistband of your jeans. Black, because of course it is, but with a slight sheen that catches the dorm light.

You let your hair down. Shake it out. Pin the bow back in, low at the base of your skull.

Quick check in the mirror- yeah. That’ll do. Cute. Sharp. A little youthful. A little fuck-you. A little fuck-me. 

Exactly right.

You grab your jacket. Lip gloss. Your phone. And when you leave this time, it’s not with a sense of something ending. It’s with a thrill in your chest like maybe- finally- something is about to begin. The all black is fitting- like Danny’s come to save you from your own funeral. 

You’re practically skipping by the time you spot the rental SUV idling just past the front doors.

Factory lights still gleam overhead, pooling muted white against the cold pavement. You’re flushed from the party, from the hallway sprint, from the stupid quiet thrill of knowing someone actually wants to see you.

You wave once, already grinning.

Danny rolls the window down, half laughing already. “There she is! Backseat, Hollywood.”

You stop short. “What?”

He grins wider, too casual. “You’ve got the back.”

You blink. There’s a half-second- maybe less- where your brain tries to find a joke there, or context, or anything to make that sentence mean what you want it to mean.

But then you round the side and open the door- 

Oh.

Okay.

That’s fine.

This is fine.

Max is in the passenger seat, half-turned toward the window, jacket collar flipped up like he’s shielding himself from the entire world. He doesn’t even look at you. Your brain tries to recalibrate.

Because you’d assumed. Of course you did. Danny texted you. Danny said let’s go out. Danny is your friend. And for a few fragile minutes, you let yourself believe that meant just you and him. That it would be easy. Familiar. Comforting.

And now- 

Now you’re crawling into the backseat behind the same man you had a little verbal sparring match with not seven minutes ago. Perfect. 

You clamber awkwardly across the console, half-kneeling on the leather, and stretch your arms around Danny in the world’s least ergonomic side hug.

He laughs, warm and immediate. “That’s one way to say hi.”

“You’re lucky I’m flexible,” you mutter, chin nearly in his shoulder.

“You’re lucky you smell good,” he shoots back, arms slipping around your waist just long enough to squeeze.

You pull back, cheeks pink from wind and exertion, and slide fully into the backseat.

Danny eyes you through the rearview mirror. “You look nice.”

You roll your eyes, adjusting your seatbelt. “You say that like you’re surprised.”

“No, I’m saying it like you’re trouble.”

From the front, Max shifts. Says nothing.

You glance at the back of his head. His silence is louder than the engine.

Great.

This is going to be fun.

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

You’re practically folded over the center console, laughing about something stupid- Danny said a phrase wrong, or you did, and now the two of you are tangled in some inside joke Max doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to. You’re taking up space like you live there- laughing, leaning in too close to Danny, warm in a way Max hasn’t seen from you in weeks. Maybe ever.

And it’s not just the posture. It’s the presentation.

Your hair spills over your shoulder, catching the light from the streetlamps overhead. Loose. Shiny. Feminine in a way that makes his throat tighten.

Your shirt rides up slightly at the back, just enough to reveal the soft curve of waist where the jeans cling a little too perfectly- black denim, snug in all the places that would make anyone stare, especially now, with your new body- louder, prouder, stronger than the one Max last saw at a weigh-in this summer. Sheer black nylons that aren’t entirely see-through, but just enough to make his eyes linger before he can snap them away. 

He doesn’t look. He shouldn’t be looking. He isn’t looking.

But he can’t stop seeing.

He tries not to. Shifts in his seat like that’ll stop his peripheral vision from functioning. Like the heat creeping under his collar isn’t his problem to deal with.

He hates this.

Because it’s not just the way you look- it’s the way Danny’s looking at you. The way you’re looking at Danny. All warm and open and lit up from the inside. Like Danny’s safe. Like he’s yours. Like he’s seen something Max hasn’t.

There’s a ribbon in your hair.

A fucking ribbon.

Tied low, trailing down the back of your neck where your curls fall loose and messy, like you meant for them to look that soft. That touchable.  But Max can’t stop looking at it. He hates that bow. He hates what it implies- what it softens. Like you’re approachable. Sweet. Like there’s anything gentle about you. 

And he hates that it works.

Danny said it first- you smell good- and Max hasn’t been able to un-smell you since. Now Max can’t stop noticing. Something soft and expensive and a little sweet, something that clings to the heater vents. Wraps around his throat. It’s subtle. Effortless. Exactly the kind of scent that doesn’t try to draw attention but does anyway. Warm. Light. Clean. A little vanilla, maybe. A little powder. Something soft and domestic and utterly disarming, soaking into the the edge of his patience with every breath. 

He wants to roll down the fucking window.

You look good. And that should be annoying. Just another fucking thing about you that takes up too much space. But it’s worse than annoying.

He hates all of it. He hates how cute it is. Not loud. Not styled to seduce. Just naturally, infuriatingly attractive. He wants to make Danny turn the car around. Wants to shout something just to ruin the mood you and Danny are building without even trying.

Because it undermines everything. The bow, the perfume, the gloss on your lips- none of it belongs on someone like you. Someone who’s clawed her way into every room, swinging elbows, spitting fire, refusing to take a single inch without drawing blood.

But now you’re in Danny’s car looking like this?

Like a girl?

Because for the first time- the first time- Max doesn’t see you as a rival, or a nuisance, or a pressure point to push until you scream.

For the first time, he sees you as a woman.

And he hates it. Hates that it’s you. That it’s now. That it's happening at all. Because you’re not supposed to be this. You’re supposed to be sharp edges and smug retorts. A storm in a Red Bull polo. Someone to fight with. Someone to prove wrong.

You’re not supposed to be cute.

You’re not supposed to be beautiful.

But you are.

And now you’re glowing in the backseat like some perfect fucking contradiction, all honeyed edges and storm-wrought eyes, and Max- 

Max can’t breathe.

Because the same power that makes him want to throw something through a wall every time you talk is the same thing that’s pulling at his nerves right now. That’s twisting under his skin like a wire.

You are so goddamn alive.

Every room you walk into, you change the temperature.

Every time you speak, you rearrange the gravity.

Max clenches his jaw. Because the worst part- the part he can’t admit, even to himself- is that this isn’t new. Not really. That presence you carry, that fire, that thing that pisses him off every time you open your mouth- that’s what this is. You’re a problem. You’ve always been a problem. 

And now he’s seeing what that problem looks like in black jeans and soft perfume and a bow tied at the back of your head like a dare. You’re not just a problem. You’re alluring. You’re dangerous. And Max is hating every single fucking second of realizing it.

When the car pulls up in front of the pub, you unclip your seatbelt with a soft click and glance between the two of them.

“I can check it out first,” you say, hand already on the door. “Make sure it’s halfway subtle. Not filled with factory staff or a Max fan club.”

Danny huffs a laugh, but you’re already slipping out- shoulders squared, leather sneakers hitting pavement with that easy, practiced rhythm that says you’ve never once considered asking permission to take up space.

You cross in front of the SUV, slicing clean through the headlights. And for a second- just a second- Max forgets to breathe.The way your hips move. The way the sheen of your tights catches the light through the ripped in the denim at the back of your thigh. The bow bouncing softly behind your hair as you go.

Danny’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s watching, too. Staring, really. Full tilt. Blatant.

And not in the way Max is- bitter and defensive, trying to smother it before it spreads. Danny’s looking like someone genuinely pleased to see you. Someone who likes watching you walk. Someone who wouldn’t mind seeing you keep going and not come back, just so he has an excuse to follow.

And Max- 

Max hates that, too.

You disappear into the pub, shoulders back, posture casual. And the moment the door swings shut behind you, Danny exhales.

“Jesus,” he mutters. “She looks good.”

Max doesn’t respond. Doesn’t look. Tries not to. But he can feel you out there, just like he’s always been able to feel it- occupying more than your share of the air.

Danny exhales through his teeth, a little laugh catching at the end. “She always like that?”

Max flicks his eyes toward him, annoyed already. “Like what?”

Danny shrugs, eyes still tracking the door you just disappeared behind. “You know. All... that.”

Max doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t know what that even means. The ribbon? The legs? The presence?

Danny glances at him. A little softer now. Still watching the door, but quieter. More careful. “You knew her first, man. What’s her deal?”

There’s a beat of silence.

Max could say a dozen things.

Her deal?

Where would he even start?

He could say you are stubborn. Sharp-tongued. Obsessive. You don’t bend unless something breaks you. You’re exhausting and impressive and sometimes so fucking loud in his head it drowns out everything else.

But the truth is simpler. The truth is worse.

All Max really knows is how much it takes to break you.

That’s it.

How long you can hold your breath in the fire. How much pressure you absorb before something cracks. What your voice sounds like when you’ve been holding back a scream for hours, for weeks. What it’s like to push you into a corner until the only thing left is fight.

It’s not knowledge. It’s pathology.

And it makes him feel a little sick.

He looks away, jaw tight. “I don’t know her.” And it’s the truth, but it doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. Not when Danny’s looking at him like he wants a reason to justify feeling something warm- like he’s hoping Max can explain the thing Danny’s become infatuated with. But Danny doesn’t push. Cuts himself off as your figure comes darting back across the parking lot.

You push open the car door and duck back in, breath puffing in the cold. “It’s decent,” you report, tugging your jacket tighter. “Not a lot of quiet corners, but if we can get y’all to a table fast, there’s a good chance we can get a drink or two in before the whole town realizes Verstappen’s here for pint night.”

Danny snorts and grabs the handle. “Copy that. Deploying cover fire.”

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

The three of you head inside. It’s warm, a little cramped, but charming in that British-pub-on-a-Friday kind of way. Low ceilings, scuffed wood, red walls. A few tables of locals already deep into their second round, but no one looks up long enough to register who just walked in.

You claim a booth near the back- narrow, loud, good enough- and offer to grab the drinks. Danny rattles off his usual, Max mutters his without looking up, and you head to the bar, sharp-heeled and half-smirking as you go.

You come back balancing three pints in your hands, pushing one toward each of them and settling into the seat across from both. Max takes his without thanks. Danny gives you a soft, sideways look that you pretend not to see.

Small talk kicks up, carried mostly by Danny. Easy stuff. You all pretend for ten minutes that the last few months haven’t been a professional and emotional meat grinder. You have problems. Danny has problems. Max has problems. You talk about none of them. Instead, racing gossip. Car updates. A truly unhinged story from Danny about a team principal with food poisoning in Singapore. You didn’t need to know that much about Zak Brown, honestly, but you’re laughing anyways.

And then, half a beer in, Danny leans back. One arm stretched across the booth. His gaze lands on you.

“So.” He takes a slow sip. “Hollywood. You talked to anyone since moving?”

You blink. Oh. “Like… romantically?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Or whatever you call it when it’s mutual.”

You nearly choke on your beer. You cough once, cover your mouth, and wave a hand like it’ll clear the air. “Oh my God.”

Danny laughs immediately. “That bad?”

“That’s hilarious,” you sputter, wiping your mouth. “Genuinely. Peak comedy.”

Max shifts slightly, glass still in his hand but eyes cut sharp across the table. Maybe you shouldn’t talk about your life in front of him, but honestly, there’s nothing to tell. Not really. 

You shake your head. “Danny. I live in a dorm room above the factory. Everyone I interact with is either married, under the age of twenty, or- ” you gesture lazily, without even looking- “him.”

Danny turns to glance at Max and immediately huffs a laugh. “Right. Right.”

Max doesn’t blink. Just lifts his beer and takes a long, steady sip.

You lean back in your seat, finally grinning. “Where do you think I’m meeting people? The break room? Am I supposed to flirt with the espresso machine?”

Danny’s shoulders are shaking now, head tilted back in open laughter. “Listen, I don’t know your life.”

“No. But you should. Because it’s deeply, profoundly celibate. Probably for the best. I don’t really plan on doing the whole distance thing.”

Danny’s still grinning when he gestures with the rim of his pint toward you. “Okay. No distance. Fair enough. So, theoretically- if someone not married, not a minor, and not mean,” he says, throwing a glance at Max that’s almost too quick to track, “were to, say… express interest. Someone from F1. That’d be off the table?”

You raise an eyebrow. “From F1?” The suspicion in your voice is thick enough to chew on. Profound. Amused, because this is a joke, clearly.

He shrugs, feigning innocence. “What? We’re not all emotionally stunted.”

You snort. “Okay. Let’s break that down.”

Danny lifts his hands. “I’m just asking questions.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s fuck one of my new coworkers,” you say dryly, “whose dating pool is a puddle. Like, I have seen more water on the floor of my shower.” Danny nearly spits his beer, but you keep going. You’re on one, now. 

“Yeah, fantastic idea. Let me join the glorious tradition of passing around the same three girlfriends like a paddock carnival prize. I’ll get murdered in my sleep by a group of jealous ex-WAGs and my tombstone will just say ‘should’ve known better.’”

Danny’s howling now, and even he looks slightly ashamed about how funny he finds it. Max hasn’t said a word, but you can feel it- the bristle, the shift in his posture. That thing he does when he’s trying to stay above it and failing completely. Like he does not want to appear to be enjoying this conversation in any manner, yet can’t quite help it.

And then he speaks. Mistake. “They’re not all like that,” he says, quiet but pointed.

You both turn to look at him. Just one of those slow, synchronized movements that would be funny if it weren’t so precise. Danny raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” You just sip your beer, staring at him over the rim.

Because if Max Verstappen- the reigning king of WAG turnover- is about to defend the honor of the grid, you’re going to need another drink.

And you both wait.

And Max?

He says nothing. Because he can’t. Because his most recent ex was literally the mother of his former teammate’s child. Kelly. Kelly fucking Piquet.

She was with Daniil. Had a baby with him. Then moved on to Max like it was a change in season. And Max, to his credit- or to his utter lack of shame- never said a word. Just took what he wanted, like he always does.

The silence stretches.

Danny takes a sip of his beer. You take another.

And the look you both give him- matching, amused, pointed- is louder than anything either of you could’ve said. Max doesn’t flinch. But the muscle in his jaw ticks.

Yeah. That’s what you thought. Down, boy. 

The conversation drifts. Eventually, even Max and Danny start talking- about tire strategy, about something ridiculous Christian said in a meeting last month, about a simulator bug that made the steering rack twitch even under a full shutdown like a haunted marionette. You know the one. You had to unplug the wheel entirely each night just to keep it from scaring the shit out of you after 9 pm. 

You half-listen, sipping your beer, watching the crowd thicken near the bar. Observe the slow turn of a face or two across the room- but everyone goes back to their own beers, their own conversations.

You’re part of the table, but not the conversation. Just a warm body holding one corner down. And honestly, it feels kind of nice. To not be the one driving the story. To let your posture soften, to let your brain go quiet for a minute.

Max is talking to Danny now- something about the setup in Brazil and how god-awful the outside line was that weekend. You’re half-listening, enough to track the rise and fall of his voice, the occasional gesture of his hand, but your mind drifts.

Danny is still nodding along. Still laughing in the right places. But you notice it- once, twice, then again.

His eyes keep darting over to you.

The first glance is quick. Curious, even. The second lingers longer. Long enough that you glance up and catch it. He doesn’t look away. By the third time, he’s full-on watching you.

Like you’re the most interesting thing he’s seen in weeks. Like maybe he’s not just being polite anymore.

You glance down at your drink, the rim of your glass smudged with a faint print of gloss, and try not to fidget. It’s not romantic. Not exactly. But it’s focused. Intentional. He’s looking at you like he forgot what Max was even saying.

And Max notices.

You feel it in the fractional pause in his cadence. The way his voice flattens slightly at the edges. His story loses shape. His next sentence tapers off like he’s forgotten the punchline or just doesn’t feel like delivering it anymore.

There’s a lull- brief but open- and Danny jumps on it like he’s been waiting all night for the gap. Turns to you fully.

“You really are fun, you know that?” he says, leaning a little closer, the kind of grin on his face that usually means trouble- but not in a mean way. Somewhere between beer two and beer three, and all of him just buzzing with charm and distraction.

You blink, startled out of your haze, but smile anyway. “I hope so. Would hate to be boring on top of everything else.”

Danny’s smile softens. His voice drops half a register. “No. Not just fun. Like- bright. You glow when you’re around people you like.” That makes you pause. It’s sweet. Really sweet. And unexpected. You’re not exactly sure what to do with it.

Not in a romantic way. Not really. It’s just Danny being Danny- charming, loose around the edges, ADHD running the conversation like a DJ with a broken crossfader. You’ve gathered that he’s always this side of a flirt, especially after a couple drinks. But still, something about the way he says it lands. The way his attention keeps snapping back to you like a rubber band.

You smile, wide and sheepish. “You’re just saying that because I got the drinks,” you tease, nudging his foot under the table.

Danny laughs. “Maybe. But it’s still true.”

Max, across from both of you, exhales like he’s trying not to audibly gag. And then- because he cannot help himself- he drops the hammer. “Right,” Max says, voice flat. “Just wait ‘til you see her lose it in a meeting. Then you’ll really see her glow.”

You blink.

Danny turns.

Max sips his beer, casual. Lethal. “Full meltdown. Everyone stopped talking. I think someone apologized to her, which was insane, because she was the one yelling.”

You can feel the flush rise up your chest like a fuse.

Because how dare he. You stare at him. Stunned. Furious. You can’t even speak yet.

Because he left out everything.

He left out the weeks of poking and prodding. The whispered digs. The anonymous feedback dropped into your reports. The pointed questions in front of senior staff. The deliberate redactions in your sim notes that made you look wrong even when you weren’t.

The mother-fucking-Diet-Coke.

He left out how he made you snap. Just this. This version. You, unhinged. Overreacting. Embarrassing. And now he’s feeding it to Danny like you’re some unhinged liability who just couldn’t keep her pretty little mouth shut in a meeting.

Max takes a slow sip of his beer. God, he looks so fucking pleased with himself.

But then- Danny laughs. Hard.

You blink again, confused.

Danny’s eyebrows go up. “No way. Her? C’mon.”

He looks at you, grinning. “You? You’re the meltdown type?”

Your mouth opens, words fighting their way up your throat, then closes again. Because what are you supposed to say? That it’s true? That you did raise your voice, that you did storm out, that you did send a stack of paperwork flying over the top of Max’s head and let it rain down like confetti? 

That Max got what he wanted?

Danny leans back. “Nah. Don’t believe it. Not Hollywood. Not our girl.” He says our girl, like Max might share a claim to any part of you but your absolute contempt. 

You glance at Max. He’s still staring into his glass. But his jaw is tight now. Just slightly. Like the moment didn’t go the way he planned. Danny bumps your foot under the table again, teasing. “You’d have to be a menace to get her to snap.”

You lean forward slightly, eyes still locked on Max, voice just loud enough to cut through the hum of the pub.

“Yeah,” you say. “A real fucking menace.”

Max doesn’t flinch. But his next sip of beer is sharp, and silent. But you can’t gloat on it for long, because there’s something about the room, the bar, the energy that’s… changing. You sneak a glance over the boys.

A couple glances from across the pub. Someone nudging someone else. A phone tilted in your direction, not discreetly enough. The laughter from your table a little too loud, your faces a little too familiar.

You’re not famous-famous. Not like them. But you’ve got enough edge now that your name rings a bell. And when you’re sitting across from two men who look very much like Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo on a Friday night, wearing a shirt that fits a little too well and a bow in your hair that people seem to notice more than they should- it adds up.

You clock it before either of them. So you slide your empty glass across the table and say, “Time to go.” No one argues.

Outside, the air is colder than you expect. Your breath fogs. Max shrugs into his coat without a word. Danny smiles, easy and relaxed, spinning his keys once before offering them to you.

“You good to drive? We can get a cab if we need to.”

You nod. “One beer. You guys had, what, two? Three?”

Max grunts. Danny grins, a little shrug, boyish. “I was thirsty.”

You slide into the driver’s seat. Max takes the passenger side without asking, which- yuck. Bad manners. Danny climbs in back. The plan’s simple: drop them off at the hotel. You’ll take Danny’s rental car back to the factory, bring it back to him tomorrow.

Easy.

But when you pull up to the curb, the quiet lingers just a little too long. You put the car in park. Danny leans forward between the seats, voice low and warm.

“You want to come in? Just for a drink. Hotel bar or my room- whatever’s less weird.” You blink. Not thrown off, not uncomfortable- just surprised. Max stiffens beside you. Danny’s smile doesn’t waver. “Just to hang out. You’ve been in factory jail for weeks.”

You glance at him. Then Max. Then back again. “I mean- sure,” you say, casual. “I’ll come in for a little.”

And that’s when Max says it. “I’ll come too.”

You turn.

Danny blinks.

Max’s expression doesn’t change. Still casual. Still detached. “If we’re doing a nightcap. Why not.”

Danny hesitates. Just a beat. “You literally said you were going straight to bed.”

Max shrugs. “Changed my mind.”

You stare at him. “You really don’t have to- ”

Max cuts you off. “I want to.”

And that’s it. Decision made.

You press your lips together, amused despite yourself. Danny sighs, a little dramatic. “Alright. Boys’ night plus you, then.”

You shake your head and kill the engine. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Max’s jaw ticks as he gets out. He’s already regretting all of it. But the idea of Danny and you alone- in a hotel bar with mood lighting, or on a couch, or anywhere near a bed- is worse.

If Danny falls for you, Max won’t survive it. He is not losing custody of his best friend to you.

So tonight?

He’s not letting either of you out of his sight.

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

One drink turns into four.

You’re not even sure how. One minute you’re perched on the edge of the couch in Danny’s hotel suite, shoes still on, sipping something floral and deceptively strong. The next, you’re flat on your back on the carpet, legs splayed out under the coffee table, laugh-crying into your forearm.

You can’t breathe. You cannot breathe.

Because Max- Max- is pacing the room, red-faced and animated, shouting over Danny while they argue about whose fault it was that the side of Max’s caravan sheared off halfway through their marketing stunt at the RedBull Ring five years back.

“No, no, no- you hit me!,” Max says, pointing aggressively with his gin and tonic like it's a laser pointer of truth. “You always do this- !”

“I was being cinematic!” Danny yells, already wheezing. “It was for the shot!”

“For the shot?! It was a caravan, not a drone sequence! You tipped my caravan over!”

You’re howling.

There are tears streaming down your face. Your stomach hurts. You’re half convinced you might actually piss yourself on the floor of a Milton Keynes hotel if they keep going. And you don’t know if Max is actually funny or if you’re just drunk enough to believe he is- but either way, this is the funniest thing you’ve heard in weeks.

Maybe ever.

You manage to lift your head just enough to wheeze, “Please stop talking- I can’t breathe- ”

Danny falls off the arm of the couch, landing next to you in a heap. ““I was winning!!” he gasps again, absolutely beside himself.

Max throws his hands in the air, grinning like a lunatic. “You were going to kill us!”,

You’re laughing so hard now that it’s silent- just your mouth open, body shaking, face buried in the hotel carpet.

You should not be this happy. Not here. Not now. Not with them. But God, for the first time in months, the ache behind your ribs isn’t heavy. It’s light. Not this isn’t terrible, not this is actually kind of enjoyable, but genuine, rib cracking fun. 

You can’t help but think it again, horrifyingly, as he gears up for another round of arguing with Danny. Max Verstappen- stone-faced, growling, rage-fueled Max Verstappen- might actually be funny. The world is upside-down. And you’re just drunk enough to love it.

At some point following drink four, Danny tries to scoot closer to you on the couch.

It’s not dramatic- just a lean-in, knee bumping yours, shoulder dipping slightly in your direction as he cracks open another story. You don’t really clock it. You’re still laughing, still breathless from whatever Max just said about how fucking terrible the sausages they cooked at the end were.

But Max sees it.

Max clocks it immediately.

And before Danny can even shift his weight again, Max moves- fast and thoughtless, dropping down right between you like he’s claiming a spot that was always his. “I mean, you could taste the propane,” he cuts in, reaching across you both for a half-empty can of tonic. “I think that’s when I realized I am an awful cook.”

Danny blinks. His arm is still outstretched where it was trying to find the back of the couch behind your shoulders.

Now it’s hovering awkwardly in midair behind Max’s neck.

You blink too, a little disoriented, because now Max is suddenly close- like really close- one leg pressed against yours, his shoulder brushing yours every time he gestures. He’s not even looking at you, just ranting about how Danny “none of it was the same after he left,” but the space between you has evaporated.

Danny tries again a few minutes later- after he stands to make another round of drinks, another bout of story-laugh-shouting that has you giggling into your wrist, head thrown back against the couch cushion. 

Danny drops on the arm of the couch as he hands you your drink, shifts toward you. Barely. Just trying to close the distance. Maybe bump your shoulder. Maybe nudge his knee next to yours again.

Max leans back.

Elbows wide. Legs spread. Like he’s stretching- only somehow, his stretch ends with his knee fully pressed against yours and his arm slung behind you on the couch. Not quite touching you. But close enough that the heat of him is a presence. Enough to make you stand too, vacate the space Max clearly needed to manspread into, and drop down on the far side of the couch. Max between you and Danny. Again. It’s fine. It’s better even, because you can kick your feet up.

Danny narrows his eyes. Clears his throat. Mate, you are fucking this up for me. 

Max doesn’t even glance at him. Doesn’t notice. Or rather, he pretends not to.  Just keeps sitting there.

Because as far as he’s concerned, he’s just protecting his friend. That’s all. Keeping things in check. Hogging Danny, maybe, but only because he doesn’t want him tangled up with someone who ruins everything she touches.

That’s the reason.

And it keeps happening. You’ve noticed, even through the gin haze.

Every time Danny leans in- just slightly- Max inserts himself like it’s a sport. When Danny shifts toward you on the couch, Max shifts further. When Danny makes a joke, Max cuts in before you can answer. When Danny starts a story, Max finishes it.

You’ve moved to the armrest. Then the cushion beside it. Then leaned onto the floor with your back to the couch.

Each time, Max finds you.

It’s gotten to the point where you’re halfway through a laugh and suddenly there’s a knee pressed into yours and Max is talking again, louder, sharper- about you, at you, through you.

Like just by existing, you’ve ruined something that was his.

You try to ignore it.

Try to keep drinking. Keep smiling. Talk less, if only it means trying to hang onto the little bit of joy left in the night.

But the last straw comes when Danny tosses an arm across the back of the couch, joking about some fucked up F1-themed wedding he saw on Instagram- complete with matching helmets- and Max just has to cut in.

“Hey, maybe you can sell your wedding to SkySports,” he says, all casual menace. “Or maybe not. Wouldn’t want a public meltdown broadcasted when you go full-bridezilla.”

Your entire body stills, because what normal fucking person would ever say that? 

Danny freezes, stares at Max. You stare at Max. Danny stares at Max. You stare at Max. Danny stares like his favorite dog just shit on the floor of the White House. And for a long moment, the room is just… quiet.

Then, you turn your head. Slowly. You speak. Too sweet. “Max?”

He glances over, cocky as hell.

You smile. Bright. Lethal. “I would rather lick the inside of a fucking racing boot than sit next to you for one more minute.”

Danny chokes on his drink. You stand, grab your phone, and type out a rideshare request in record time.

Max shrugs, already halfway smug. “I’m just-.”

You cut whatever bullshit he had loaded up off at the knees. “-you were just shutting the fuck up, thanks.”

You don’t even wait for a reply. Just turn to Danny- softening your expression, letting the warmth return. “Thanks for tonight,” you say, and mean it. “I had fun. I’ll see you around.”

And then you’re gone. Door swinging gently shut behind you.

Danny stares at it. Still holding his lowball glass of ice. Still seated on the couch, still half stuck in the dream where he was supposed to be the one walking you out. Getting a real date set. Maybe a kiss, if he’s being wishful. At the very least, not ending the night like this.

Max exhales. “You’re welcome.”

Danny turns slowly. “Sorry?”

Max shrugs. “You were about to make a mistake. I saved you.”

Danny just stares. “You think she’s a mistake?”

“I know she is.”

“Right.” Danny nods, lets it hang for a moment. “Cool. Cool cool cool.”

Silence.

Max sits back like it’s a game he just won. Like he didn’t just gut the night with a single, well-placed knife between her ribs.

“I liked her,” Danny says, finally. Quiet. Not for sympathy. Just the truth.

Max doesn’t say anything. Because he could see Danny liked you, at least a little. And he did fuck it up. On purpose. He watched Danny lean in- watched him light up like you were something precious- and he couldn’t let it happen.

Not because he wanted you. But because Danny did. And something about that felt too threatening. Too unstable. Too real. So he ruined it.

And he’s still not sorry.

Because in Max’s mind, he didn’t sabotage Danny’s shot with a good thing- he saved him from a bomb that hadn’t gone off yet. He just doesn’t know how to explain that in a way that doesn’t make him sound like the jealous asshole he refuses to believe he is.

So instead, he leans back. Folds his arms. And lets the disappointment settle between them, thin and quiet and heavy as sleep.

════════════════════ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══════════════════

Series Masterlist

A/N: Back from the dead with a 31 pager! Definitely struggling a little bit recently, and I hate that feeling of being 'in debt' to you guys with chapters, so I am going to try to make a push for a few releases this week, don't hate me if it doesn't go accordingly.

On my hands and knees begging for feedback and your commentary on the story as it quite literally is my only mental reward for the hours I am putting in. It makes my little ADHD brain go brrrr

[reasonsforhope]

"Research on a police diversion program implemented in 2014 shows a striking 91% reduction in in-school arrests over less than 10 years.

Across the United States, arrest rates for young people under age 18 have been declining for decades. However, the proportion of youth arrests associated with school incidents has increased.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, K–12 schools referred nearly 230,000 students to law enforcement during the school year that began in 2017. These referrals and the 54,321 reported school-based arrests that same year were mostly for minor misbehavior like marijuana possession, as opposed to more serious offenses like bringing a gun to school.

School-based arrests are one part of the school-to-prison pipeline, through which students—especially Black and Latine students and those with disabilities—are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system.

Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative health, social, and academic outcomes, as well as increased risk for future arrest.

Given these negative consequences, public agencies in states like Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania have looked for ways to arrest fewer young people in schools. Philadelphia, in particular, has pioneered a successful effort to divert youth from the legal system.

Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program

In Philadelphia, police department leaders recognized that the city’s school district was its largest source of referrals for youth arrests. To address this issue, then–Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel developed and implemented a school-based, pre-arrest diversion initiative in partnership with the school district and the city’s department of human services. The program is called the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, and it officially launched in May 2014.

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker named Bethel as her new police commissioner on Nov. 22, 2023.

Since the diversion program began, when police are called to schools in the city for offenses like marijuana possession or disorderly conduct, they cannot arrest the student involved if that student has no pending court case or history of adjudication. In juvenile court, an adjudication is similar to a conviction in criminal court.

Instead of being arrested, the diverted student remains in school, and school personnel decide how to respond to their behavior. For example, they might speak with the student, schedule a meeting with a parent, or suspend the student.

A social worker from the city also contacts the student’s family to arrange a home visit, where they assess youth and family needs. Then, the social worker makes referrals to no-cost community-based services. The student and their family choose whether to attend.

Our team—the Juvenile Justice Research and Reform Lab at Drexel University—evaluated the effectiveness of the diversion program as independent researchers not affiliated with the police department or school district. We published four research articles describing various ways the diversion program affected students, schools, and costs to the city.

Arrests Dropped

In our evaluation of the diversion program’s first five years, we reported that the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia decreased by 84%: from nearly 1,600 in the school year beginning in 2013 to just 251 arrests in the school year beginning in 2018.

Since then, school district data indicates the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has continued to decline—dropping to just 147 arrests in the school year that began in 2022. That’s a 91% reduction from the year before the program started.

We also investigated the number of serious behavioral incidents recorded in the school district in the program’s first five years. Those fell as well, suggesting that the diversion program effectively reduced school-based arrests without compromising school safety.

Additionally, data showed that city social workers successfully contacted the families of 74% of students diverted through the program during its first five years. Nearly 90% of these families accepted at least one referral to community-based programming, which includes services like academic support, job skill development, and behavioral health counseling...

Long-Term Outcomes

To evaluate a longer follow-up period, we compared the 427 students diverted in the program’s first year to the group of 531 students arrested before the program began. Results showed arrested students were significantly more likely to be arrested again in the following five years...

Finally, a cost-benefit analysis revealed that the program saves taxpayers millions of dollars.

Based on its success in Philadelphia, several other cities and counties across Pennsylvania have begun replicating the Police School Diversion Program. These efforts could further contribute to a nationwide movement to safely keep kids in their communities and out of the legal system."

-via Yes! Magazine, December 5, 2023

[television-for-dinner]

WE WON, REMEDYHEADS

Partial release reads:

Alan Wake 2   In the second half of 2024 Remedy released the second expansion of Alan Wake 2, The Lake House, alongside the release of the physical retail Deluxe Edition of the game. The physical Collector’s Edition was shipped to players in December by Limited Run Games. In November, with the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro, Remedy released a Pro-specific update for Alan Wake 2 and multiple updates to improve the quality of the title across all platforms. These actions together support Alan Wake 2’s long-term sales. Remedy has started to accrue royalties from the game sales towards the end of Q4 2024. FBC: Firebreak   Stage gate status: in full production    In October, Remedy announced its first self-published title, FBC: Firebreak, in the Xbox Partner Preview digital event. A gameplay teaser trailer showcased Remedy’s brand of cooperative multiplayer, giving fans a taste of what's to come. The positioning and messaging of the title were carefully considered to ensure as good reception as possible in a competed genre.  In December, the development team carried out a closed technical test with external players successfully. They tested match-making and other technical components of the upcoming title giving the team data and insight to help development and shape the final product.  Control 2   Stage gate status: finalizing the production readiness stage, entered full production after the end of the fourth quarter in February 2025  The project has verified the velocity of asset creation, established production pipelines, and is ready for scaling up for full production.  Max Payne 1&2 remake   Stage gate status: in full production  Max Payne 1&2 Remake is making steady progress in full production. The development progress is heading towards key development objectives together with the game’s publisher Rockstar Games. 

link to tweet // link to full Remedy investors release

[pawborough]

January Check In

Hello, all!

Happy update day, catfolk! We apologize for the late update, but we wanted to share the Beta dates with you in this update. We took extra time to ensure the dates were accurate without risking something not being ready in time or causing burnout for our team. We’ve done quite a bit of internal assessment on the pros and cons of letting ~2,000+ people into the game. 

Our most pressing thought was how to reconcile needing to continue working on key features while getting valuable feedback and play data on all that we already have. There was a lot to consider, in reputation, timeline, and team morale. We did not want to give the wrong impression that we felt anywhere close to a done game, but we have a lot of high fidelity mechanics and playability to share which need high population testing regardless. We’ve finally settled on rolling our sleeves up and opening to testers. At the start, we’ll provide a comprehensive breakdown of everything we’re planning to add over the months of the test, and continue our monthly check-ins on our progress. We’re ready to grind, and we hope you are too! And in many ways, it will be much nicer to get the comprehensive mass testing whenever we have something new to roll out!

We hope you will all agree that this update was worth the wait, as we have exciting news to share with you today, along with our most exciting news yet! :)

Accessory Progress

We are proud to announce that we have 47 unique accessories, altogether with 564 color variations. 

We have just about reached the edge of our odyssey in the first production run of accessories. After 8 months of practice and training for our fledgling team, we’ve improved immensely at our pipeline. What has previously taken us months now takes a matter of weeks. We have one more backer accessory to develop, and any additions in the near future will be small, simplistic items in comparison to our full sets, but I’m very proud of the team for how far we’ve come, and the marvel of quality they produce in good time.

This month’s new progress includes:

Frog Friends

Illustration by Remmie, sponsored by Hag

Protogear Recolors

Recolors by Emma

New decor

We’ve also been busy with decors. 

Argh, matey! 

Macaws by Jersopod, cannon, barrel and newspaper stack by Giulia and Remmie

In addition, style compliant sketches of the original rose decor!

Sketches by Remmie

Archetypes

We’re here to introduce a very exciting mechanic that has been in the works since our initial overhaul. It’s one of my personal favorite concepts, and the primary motivation behind how we’ve structured the cat design system.

Introducing… cat archetypes!

Archetypes are a specific combination of traits which, when fulfilled, mark the cat’s profile with a badge and reward the user as an achievement fulfillment. (If the cat’s traits are changed, the badge will be removed. Cats may fulfill multiple Archetypes simultaneously.)

For example, this badge means the cat fulfills the Ruby archetype, a badge which requires the cat to have the color Ruby in all slots.

Examples of the Ruby archetype include:

To give examples of the specificity, other Archetypes include for example “Leopard,” which must have the following to comply:

A Yellow range Leopard overcoat

Light Greyscale or Light Yellow undercoat

Yellow or Greyscale Claws

None for the second accent

Here are some Leopards!

Owning these cats will give the user rewards, sometimes completely custom to the Archetype. 

What we hope to achieve with this system is a greater incentive to think creatively within the restrictions of our cat builder, and to reward our players for intentioned play in collecting, breeding, and designing a variety of cats. After all, it is the core of the game!

And with each new addition of colors or patterns, we’ll release an onslaught of new Archetypes! We plan to introduce a healthy amount of them, some easy to get, and some harder depending on genetic obtainability and the obtainment method.

This system is already up and running on our servers, and is in its infancy. We’ll get a lot of data from testing it out!

Originally, this system was on the backburner while we focused on bigger picture mechanics, but we’ve fast tracked it so we can bolster and better encourage casual play while the Guild system is still in its preliminary beta state. 

Pelt System

Perhaps the feature we are most excited to see in use and tested is the Pelt System, which we briefly introduced in the 2024 November Check In. There is a frankly insane amount of functionality behind this feature, which includes autonomous user decision and interaction every step of the way. 

First, we were able to implement dynamic layering. This means that Unclipped (top layer) pelts can actually sport layers which are placed behind the cat automatically. Valuable uses for this feature include the inside of sleeves, backs of hoods, and items which you would otherwise always want to go behind anything it’s stacked above.

Users can view their pelts already submitted, see their submission progress, choose to submit more to the pelt, choose to print their pelt themselves, choose to list pelts for buyers to print on demand, and view their pelts on any cat.

There is also a draft system which allows users to store information they aren’t ready to submit yet. 

Users can list pelts as a print-on-demand resource, and are able to control how many copies they will allow to be printed. 

All prints will require a tax which will be dependent on the coverage %, calculated based on the amount of pixels that cover the canvas. This means that small pelts, like a hat or a monocle, will take only a small tax!

AND we have a rudimentary tagging system going as we experiment with this feature! Big news! Once we iron out the kinks, we’ll be able to roll out user filtering and tagging of other content, such as cats or forum posts.

And drumroll please…

As teased at the beginning of this update, we are overjoyed to announce the Closed Beta dates!  Early access launches on February 3rd, with the regular Closed Beta starting on February 6th!

During the Closed Beta, you’ll have the chance to experience many new and polished gameplay features, exciting customization options, and the now refined economy! We encourage all testers to not only find any potential bugs and ui improvements, but also to provide feedback and suggestions on all of our game features and our economy!

All 253 Early Beta, 1940 Beta and Kickstarter codes have been generated, and we will begin sending them out shortly over the next day.

In the coming week, we’ll put out writings on our expectations early on and the features roadmap that we’re currently staring at. We can’t wait to see you all in Kotemara soon!

To summarize: We shared decors, Protogear recoloring, Frog Friends, pelt system showcase, archetypes and closed Beta dates.

What to expect next month: Further asset and development updates. Check-ins for how closed Beta will be going.

[mythauragame]

Development Update - December 2024

Happy New Year, everyone! We're so excited to be able to start off 2025 with our biggest news yet: we have a planned closed beta launch window of Q1 2026 for Mythaura!

Read on for a recap of 2024, more information about our closed beta period, Ryu expressions, January astrology, and Ko-fi Winter Quarter reward concepts!

2024 Year in Review

Creative

This year, the creative team worked on adding new features, introducing imaginative designs, and refining lore/worldbuilding to enrich the overall experience.

New Beasts and Expressions: All 9 beast expression bases completed for both young and adult with finalized specials for Dragons, Unicorns, Griffins, Hippogriffs, and Ryu.

Mutations, Supers and Specials: Introduced the Celestial mutation as well as new Specials Banding & Merle, and the Super Prismatic.

New Artist: Welcomed Sourdeer to the creative team.

Collaboration and Sponsorship: Sponsored several new companions from our Ko-Fi sponsors—Amaru, Inkminks, Somnowl, Torchlight Python, Belligerent Capygora, and the Fruit-Footeded Gecko.

New Colors: Revealed two eye-catching colors, Canyon (a contest winner) and Porphyry (a surprise bonus), giving players even more variety for their Beasts.

Classes and Gear: Unveiled distinct classes, each with its own themed equipment and companions, to provide deeper roleplay and strategic depth.

Items and Worldbuilding: Created a range of new items—from soulshift coins to potions, rations, and over a dozen fishable species—enriching Mythaura’s economy and interactions.

Star Signs & Astrology: Continued to elaborate on the zodiac-like system, connecting each Beast’s fate to celestial alignments.

Questing & Story Outline: Laid the groundwork for the intro quest pipeline and overarching narrative, ensuring that players’ journey unfolds with purposeful progression.

Code

This year, the development team worked diligently on refining and expanding the codebase to support new features, enhance performance, and improve gameplay experiences. A total 429,000 lines of code changed across both the backend and frontend, reflecting:

New Features: Implementation of systems like skill trees, inventory management, community forums, elite enemies, npc & quest systems, and advanced customization options for Beasts.

Optimizations and Refactoring: Significant cleanup and streamlining of backend systems, such as game state management, passive effects, damage algorithms, and map data structures, ensuring better performance and maintainability.

Map Builder: a tool that allows us to build bespoke maps

Regular updates to ensure compatibility with modern tools and frameworks.

It’s worth noting that line changes alone don’t capture the complexity of programming work. For example:

A single line of efficient code can replace multiple lines of legacy logic.

Optimizing backend systems often involves removing redundant or outdated code without adding new functionality.

Things like added dependencies can add many lines of code without adding much bespoke functionality.

Mythaura Closed Beta

We are so beyond excited to share this information with you here first: Mythaura closed beta is targeted for Q1 2026!

On behalf of the whole team, thank you all so, so much for all of the support for Mythaura over the years. Whether you’ve been around since the Patreon days or joined us after Koa and Sark took over…it’s your support that has gotten this project to where it is. We are so grateful for the faith and trust placed in us, and the opportunity to create something we hope people will truly love and enjoy. This has truly been a collaborative effort with you and we are constantly humbled by all of the thoughtful insights, engaging discussions, and great ideas to come out of this amazing community of supporters.

So: thank you again, it’s been an emotional and amazing journey for the dev team and we’re delighted to join you on your journeys through Mythaura.

Miyazaki Full-Time

Hey everyone, Koa here!

We’re thrilled to share some news about Mythaura’s development! Starting in 2025, Miya will be officially dedicating herself full-time to Mythaura. Her focus will be on bringing even more depth and wonder to the world of Mythaura through content creation, worldbuilding, and building up the brand. It’s a huge step forward, and we’re so excited for the impact her passion and creativity will have on the project!

In addition, I’ve secured 4-day weeks and will be working full-time each Friday to dive deeper into development. This extra push is going to allow us to keep moving steadily forward on both the art and code fronts, and with Miya’s expanded role, the next year of development is looking really promising.

Thank you all for being here and supporting Mythaura every step of the way. We can’t wait to share more as things progress!

Closed Beta FAQ

In the interest of keeping all of the information about our Closed Beta in one place and update as needed, we have added as much information as possible to the FAQ page.

If you have any questions that you can think of, please feel free to reach out to us through our contact form or on Discord!

Winter Quarter (2025) Concepts

It’s the first day of Winter Quarter 2025, which means we’ve got new Quarterly Rewards for Sponsors to vote on on our Ko-fi page!

Which concepts would you like to see made into official site items? Sponsors of Bronze level or higher have a vote in deciding. Please check out the Companion post and the Glamour post on Ko-fi to cast your vote for the winning concepts!

Votes must be posted by January 29, 2025 at 11:59pm PDT in order to be considered.

All Fall 2024 Rewards are now listed in our Ko-fi Shop for individual purchase for all Sponsor levels at $5 USD flat rate per unit. As a reminder, please remember that no more than 3 units of any given item can be purchased. If you purchase more than 3 units of any given item, your entire purchase will be refunded and you will need to place your order again, this time with no more than 3 units of any given item.

Fall 2024 Glamour: Diaphonized Ryu

Fall 2024 Companion: Inhabited Skull

Fall 2024 Solid Gold Glamour: Hippogriff (Young)

NOTE: As covered in the FAQ, the Ko-fi shop will be closing at the end of the year. These will be the last Winter Quarter rewards for Mythaura!

New Super: Zebra

We've added our first new Super to the site since last year's Prismatic: Zebra, which has a chance to occur when parents have the Wildebeest and Banding Specials!

Zebra is now live in our Beast Creator--we're excited to see what you all create with it!

New Expressions: Ryu

The Water-element Ryu has had expressions completed for both the adult and young models. Expressions have been a huge, time-intensive project for the art team to undertake, but the result is always worth it!

Mythauran Astrology: January

The month of January is referred to as Hearth's Embrace, representing the fireplaces kept lit for the entirety of the coldest month of the year. This month is also associated with the constellation of the Glassblower and the carnelian stone.

Mythaura v0.35

Refactored "Beast Parties" into "User Parties," allowing non-beast entities like NPCs to be added to your party. NPCs added to your party will follow you in the overworld, cannot be made your leader, and will make their own decisions in combat.

Checkpoint floor functionality ironed out, allowing pre-built maps to appear at specific floor intervals.

The ability to set spawn and end coordinates in the map builder was added to allow staff to build checkpoint floors.

Various cleanups and refactors to improve performance and reduce the number of queries needed to run certain operations.

Added location events, which power interactable objects in the overworld, such as a lootable chest or a pickable bush.

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord.

[tomorrowusa]

Microblogging platform Mastodon is taking steps to make sure it never falls into the hands of some MAGA billionaire like Zuck or Musk.

Founder Eugen Rochko is transferring ownership to a nonprofit entity based in Europe. It is already located in the EU where it is free of any political or legal pressure from a Trump administration. Becoming nonprofit is a poison pill to deter any broligarchs who bend the knee to MAGA.

Mastodon announced Monday that it's shifting its structure over the next six months to become wholly owned by a European nonprofit organization—"affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual." This takes control of the social network away from its previous "ultimate decision-maker," Eugen Rochko. As founder, Rochko initially took the reins to ensure the decentralized platform would never be for sale and "would be free of the control of a single wealthy individual." His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines. The news comes after leaders of other social networks, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have sparked backlash over sudden changes to popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). For years, Musk has drawn criticism for changing Twitter's hate speech policies through his X rebranding. And more recently, Zuckerberg this month defended Meta's decision to relax hate speech policies (permitting women to be called "property" and gay people to be called "mentally ill") by calling bans on such speech "out of touch with mainstream discourse." Mastodon is hoping to provide an alternative social network for users who are potentially frustrated with their lack of control over their timelines and content on other networks.

Mastadon is part of the Fediverse – which takes a little getting used to. And while not small, it doesn't yet have the enormous volume of broligarch-owned social media; though Elon Musk's transformation of Twitter/X into a playground for Nazis and Trumpsters has sparked growth at Mastodon.

Mastodon appears to be betting that even more users will seek alternative social networks in the future as popular apps enact unpopular policies. The blog discussed progress on a "privacy-respecting search tool" that could be used to explore the entire Fediverse, a collection of independent social media networks that Mastodon connects to. That could make it possible to discover more content without depending on a "For You" algorithm mining user data. And perhaps in a nod to Meta's recent changes, Mastodon also vowed to "invest deeply in trust and safety" and ensure "everyone, especially marginalized communities," feels "safe" on the platform.

Dominic Preston at The Verge writes...

“When founder Eugen Rochko started working on Mastodon, his focus was on creating the code and conditions for the kind of social media he envisioned,” Mastodon says. “The legal setup was a means to an end, a quick fix to allow him to continue operations. From the start, he declared that Mastodon would not be for sale and would be free of the control of a single wealthy individual, and he could ensure that because he was the person in control, the only ultimate decision-maker.” In the short term, nothing should change for users. Mastodon will continue to host the mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers and support its federated network. Routine code development and bug fixes are ongoing, though the announcement adds that “changes are definitely in the pipeline.” “Our core mission remains the same: to create the tools and digital spaces where people can build authentic, constructive online communities free from ads, data exploitation, manipulative algorithms or corporate monopolies,” Mastodon says.

What's not to like about a platform for Twitter refugees which doesn't Zuck?

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

I’m confused…. So SHE is restocking and the deal is still HAPPENING?

😵‍💫

It's all PR and semantics - if you're getting confused, that means her plan is working.

So let's dig into it.

Meghan's team is now hinting that the As Ever products will be restocked. That's really what the quote is: "But while the As Ever team has hinted online that the items will be back on sale soon, Meghan also wants to take a step back, gather data from the launch, and figure out exactly what As Ever could be."

Note that that text is linked to this Instagram post:

Suggesting that Meghan's PR is justifying a restock with this vague confirmation of new products.

But new products is not a restock. Hinting is not confirmation.

Which leads to a second source of confirmation: an exclusive to Vanity Fair in which they said "that products for [Meghan's] As Ever brand will be restocked on her website soon."

But soon is not a specific measurable unit of time. Soon can mean anything. I mean, I've been promising y'all updated timelines soon for 6-8 months, and I actually haven't done any work on it.

Now consider these excerpts from the interview:

Meghan also points out that Netflix is not just a financial backer. The company’s consumer packaged goods team works closely with Meghan’s team to manufacture the products. “We are on calls daily, working through product development, SKUs, and inventory,” she says. “We have a field trip tomorrow to look at different manufacturers and suppliers as we expand the brand.”

and

There are some clues about what new items might be in the pipeline. Meghan’s trademark application for her brand includes things like cookbooks, tableware, cutlery, and serving ware. “I want to really focus on the hospitality angle of As Ever, but as we take the learnings, we can understand what the customer’s needs are seasonally,” she says.

None of this actually says or describes work to restock the products. If As Ever actually were planning to restock, they wouldn't be focusing on product development, brand expansion, and new manufacturers. They'd be on the phone demanding current manufacturers get their act together and restock.

Two last wrinkles in this:

First, this update from the Fast Company writer:

"products may be restocked in the future." Not products will be restocked. May, which is a measurement of probability. Like "it may rain tonight." It could rain, or it could not rain. Meghan could choose to restock her products, or Meghan could choose not to restock her products. May is vague and it is not definite. It's the word you use to hedge your bets.

Second, there hasn't been a reason for why As Ever hasn't been restocked. Don't you think that if she hasn't restocked for legitimate business reasons, like supply chain issues or manufacturer delays, her PR would be all over that like white on rice? Just all the attention she could've gotten, crying to People and her podcast about how she's just a new female CEO who just wants to support her fans but big mean manufacturing CEOs are keeping her down?

It's the same phenomenon as her products selling out in 45 minutes - all that product sold out that fast, and the website didn't crash? With all that interest she and her fans are claiming?

Yeah, it's bunk. It's Meghan playing semantics and word games hoping no one is smart enough to pay attention to the details.

I'm not totally sure what your comment about "the deal is still happening" is for, but I think you're commenting about the DM's throwaway that they've independently confirmed Netflix is renewing their contract but without Harry, right?

I can't really speak to that because I can't get to the article - it's behind the DM's paywall, archive.org can't generate a screenshot, and I can't access archive.today links on my devices. But I've seen enough that I believe the DM is quoting "sources." In other words, they haven't actually named anyone.

And until someone is actually and specifically named, or the press release comes from Netflix itself, don't put any stock behind it. For all we know, the DM's "sources" is Meghan and Meghan's hotmail herself (which has actually happened before in the not-so-distant past) trying to manifest a done deal -- the same way she tried to manifest Megxit as a done deal for half in/half out, the same way she tried to manifest the Spencer tiara for her wedding, the same way she tried to manifest being besties with Kate.

Until someone's real, legit, actual name is attached to the scoop, it is imaginary hearsay.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

A new study by researchers at Zhejiang University has highlighted the disproportionate health challenges faced by sexual and gender-diverse (SGD) individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing over 471 million tweets using advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques, the study reveals that SGD individuals were more likely to discuss concerns related to social connections, mask-wearing, and experienced higher rates of COVID-19 symptoms and mental health issues than non-SGD individuals. The study has been published in the journal Health Data Science.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and intensified health disparities, particularly for vulnerable populations like the sexual and gender-diverse (SGD) community. Unlike traditional health data sources, social media provides a more dynamic and real-time reflection of public concerns and experiences. Zhiyun Zhang, a Ph.D. student at Zhejiang University, and Jie Yang, Assistant Professor at the same institution, led a study that analyzed large-scale Twitter data to understand the unique challenges faced by SGD individuals during the pandemic.

To address this, the research team used NLP methods such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models for topic modeling and advanced sentiment analysis to evaluate the discussions and concerns of SGD Twitter users compared to non-SGD users. This approach allowed the researchers to explore three primary questions: the predominant topics discussed by SGD users, their concerns about COVID-19 precautions, and the severity of their symptoms and mental health challenges.

The findings reveal significant differences between the two groups. SGD users were more frequently involved in discussions about "friends and family" (20.5% vs. 13.1%) and "wearing masks" (10.1% vs. 8.3%). They also expressed higher levels of positive sentiment toward vaccines such as Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson. The study found that SGD individuals reported significantly higher frequencies of both physical and mental health symptoms compared to non-SGD users, underscoring their heightened vulnerability during the pandemic.

"Our large-scale social media analysis highlights the concerns and health challenges of SGD users. The topic analysis showed that SGD users were more frequently involved in discussions about 'friends and family' and 'wearing masks' than non-SGD users. SGD users also expressed a higher level of positive sentiment in tweets about vaccines," said Zhiyun Zhang, the lead researcher. "These insights emphasize the importance of targeted public health interventions for SGD communities."

The study demonstrates the potential of using social media data to monitor and understand public health concerns, especially for marginalized communities like SGD individuals. The results suggest the need for more tailored public health strategies to address the unique challenges faced by SGD communities during pandemics.

Moving forward, the research team aims to develop an automated pipeline to continuously monitor the health of targeted populations, offering data-driven insights to support more comprehensive public health services.

More information: Zhiyun Zhang et al, Sexual and Gender-Diverse Individuals Face More Health Challenges during COVID-19: A Large-Scale Social Media Analysis with Natural Language Processing, Health Data Science (2024). DOI: 10.34133/hds.0127 spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/hds.0127

[mariacallous]

I stopped using my cellphone for regular calls and text messages last fall and switched to Signal. I wasn’t being paranoid—or at least I don’t think I was. I worked in the National Security Council, and we were told that China had compromised all major U.S. telecommunications companies and burrowed deep inside their networks. Beijing had gathered information on more than a million Americans, mainly in the Washington, D.C., area. The Chinese government could listen in to phone calls and read text messages. Experts call the Chinese state-backed group responsible Salt Typhoon, and the vulnerabilities it exploited have not been fixed. China is still there.

Telecommunications systems aren’t the only ones compromised. China has accessed enormous quantities of data on Americans for more than a decade. It has hacked into health-insurance companies and hotel chains, as well as security-clearance information held by the Office of Personnel Management.

The jaded response here is All countries spy. So what? But the spectacular surprise attacks that Ukraine and Israel have pulled off against their enemies suggest just how serious such penetration can become. In Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine smuggled attack drones on trucks with unwitting drivers deep inside of Russia, and then used artificial intelligence to simultaneously attack four military bases and destroy a significant number of strategic bombers, which are part of Russia’s nuclear triad. Israel created a real pager-production company in Hungary to infiltrate Hezbollah’s global supply chains and booby-trap its communication devices, killing or maiming much of the group’s leadership in one go. Last week, in Operation Rising Lion, Israel assassinated many top Iranian military leaders simultaneously and attacked the country’s nuclear facilities, thanks in part to a drone base it built inside Iran.

In each case, a resourceful, determined, and imaginative state used new technologies and data to do what was hitherto deemed impossible. America’s adversaries are also resourceful, determined, and imaginative.

Just think about what might happen if a U.S.-China war broke out over Taiwan.

A Chinese state-backed group called Volt Typhoon has been preparing plans to attack crucial infrastructure in the United States should the two countries ever be at war. As Jen Easterly put it in 2024 when she was head of the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), China is planning to “launch destructive cyber-attacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States,” including “the disruption of our gas pipelines; the pollution of our water facilities; the severing of our telecommunications; the crippling of our transportation systems.”

The Biden administration took measures to fight off these cyberattacks and harden the infrastructure. Joe Biden also imposed some sanctions on China and took some specific measures to limit America’s exposure; he cut off imports of Chinese electric vehicles because of national-security concerns. Biden additionally signed a bill to ban TikTok, but President Donald Trump has issued rolling extensions to keep the platform functioning in the U.S. America and its allies will need to think hard about where to draw the line in the era of the Internet of Things, which connects nearly everything and could allow much of it—including robots, drones, and cloud computing—to be weaponized.

China isn’t the only problem. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment for this year, Russia is developing a new device to detonate a nuclear weapon in space with potentially “devastating” consequences. A Pentagon official last year said the weapon could  pose “a threat to satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe, as well as to the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend upon. Make no mistake, even if detonating a nuclear weapon in space does not directly kill people, the indirect impact could be catastrophic to the entire world.” The device could also render Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile shield largely ineffective.

Americans can expect a major adversary to use drones and AI to go after targets deep inside the United States or allied countries. There is no reason to believe that an enemy wouldn’t take a page out of the Israeli playbook and go after leadership. New technologies reward acting preemptively, catching the adversary by surprise—so the United States may not get much notice. A determined adversary could even cut the undersea cables that allow the internet to function. Last year, vessels linked to Russia and China appeared to have severed those cables in Europe on a number of occasions, supposedly by accident. In a concerted hostile action, Moscow could cut or destroy these cables at scale.

Terrorist groups are less capable than state actors—they are unlikely to destroy most of the civilian satellites in space, for example, or collapse essential infrastructure—but new technologies could expand their reach too. In their book The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar described some potential attacks that terrorists could undertake: unleashing hundreds or thousands of drones equipped with automatic weapons and facial recognition on multiple cities simultaneously, say, or even one drone to spray a lethal pathogen on a crowd.

A good deal of American infrastructure is owned by private companies with little incentive to undertake the difficult and costly fixes that might defend against Chinese infiltration. Certainly this is true of telecommunications companies, as well as those providing utilities such as water and electricity. Making American systems resilient could require a major public outlay. But it could cost less than the $150 billion (one estimate has that figure at an eye-popping $185 billion) that the House of Representatives is proposing to appropriate this year to strictly enforce immigration law.

Instead, the Trump administration proposed slashing funding for CISA, the agency responsible for protecting much of our infrastructure against foreign attacks, by $495 million, or approximately 20 percent of its budget. That cut will make the United States more vulnerable to attack.

The response to the drone threat has been no better. Some in Congress have tried to pass legislation expanding government authority to detect and destroy drones over certain kinds of locations, but the most recent effort failed. Senator Rand Paul, who was then the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and is now the chair, said there was no imminent threat and warned against giving the government sweeping surveillance powers, although the legislation entailed nothing of the sort. Senators from both parties have resisted other legislative measures to counter drones.

The United States could learn a lot from Ukraine on how to counter drones, as well as how to use them, but the administration has displayed little interest in doing this. The massively expensive Golden Dome project is solely focused on defending against the most advanced missiles but should be tasked with dealing with the drone threat as well.

Meanwhile, key questions go unasked and unanswered. What infrastructure most needs to be protected? Should aircraft be kept in the open? Where should the United States locate a counter-drone capability?

After 9/11, the United States built a far-reaching homeland-security apparatus focused on counterterrorism. The Trump administration is refocusing it on border security and immigration. But the biggest threat we face is not terrorism, let alone immigration. Those responsible for homeland security should not be chasing laborers on farms and busboys in restaurants in order to meet quotas imposed by the White House.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are giving Americans a glimpse into the battles of the future—and a warning. It is time to prepare.

[reasonsforhope]

"On a blustery day in early March, the who’s who of methane research gathered at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, California. Dozens of people crammed into a NASA mission control center. Others watched from cars pulled alongside roads just outside the sprawling facility. Many more followed a livestream. They came from across the country to witness the launch of an oven-sized satellite capable of detecting the potent planet-warming gas from space. 

The amount of methane, the primary component in natural gas, in the atmosphere has been rising steadily over the last few decades, reaching nearly three times as much as preindustrial times. About a third of methane emissions in the United States occur during the extraction of fossil fuels as the gas seeps from wellheads, pipelines, and other equipment. The rest come from agricultural operations, landfills, coal mining, and other sources. Some of these leaks are large enough to be seen from orbit. Others are miniscule, yet contribute to a growing problem.

Identifying and repairing them is a relatively straightforward climate solution. Methane has a warming potential about 80 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, so reducing its levels in the atmosphere can help curb global temperature rise. And unlike other industries where the technology to decarbonize is still relatively new, oil and gas companies have long had the tools and know-how to fix these leaks.

MethaneSAT, the gas-detecting device launched in March, is the latest in a growing armada of satellites designed to detect methane. Led by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, or EDF, and more than six years in the making, the satellite has the ability to circle the globe 15 times a day and monitor regions where 80 percent of the world’s oil and gas is produced. Along with other satellites in orbit, it is expected to dramatically change how regulators and watchdogs police the oil and gas industry...

A couple hours after the rocket blasted off, Wofsy, Hamburg, and his colleagues watched on a television at a hotel about two miles away as their creation was ejected into orbit. It was a jubilant moment for members of the team, many of whom had traveled to Vandenberg with their partners, parents, and children. “Everybody spontaneously broke into a cheer,” Wofsy said. “You [would’ve] thought that your team scored a touchdown during overtime.”

The data the satellite generates in the coming months will be publicly accessible — available for environmental advocates, oil and gas companies, and regulators alike. Each has an interest in the information MethaneSAT will beam home. Climate advocates hope to use it to push for more stringent regulations governing methane emissions and to hold negligent operators accountable. Fossil fuel companies, many of which do their own monitoring, could use the information to pinpoint and repair leaks, avoiding penalties and recouping a resource they can sell. Regulators could use the data to identify hotspots, develop targeted policies, and catch polluters. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to be able to use third-party data to enforce its air quality regulations, developing guidelines for using the intelligence satellites like MethaneSAT will provide. The satellite is so important to the agency’s efforts that EPA Administrator Michael Regan was in Santa Barbara for the launch as was a congressional lawmaker. Activists hailed the satellite as a much-needed tool to address climate change. 

“This is going to radically change the amount of empirically observed data that we have and vastly increase our understanding of the amount of methane emissions that are currently happening and what needs to be done to reduce them,” said Dakota Raynes, a research and policy manager at the environmental nonprofit Earthworks. “I’m hopeful that gaining that understanding is going to help continue to shift the narrative towards [the] phase down of fossil fuels.”

With the satellite safely orbiting 370 miles above the Earth’s surface, the mission enters a critical second phase. In the coming months, EDF researchers will calibrate equipment and ensure the satellite works as planned. By next year [2025], it is expected to transmit reams of information from around the world."

-via Grist, April 7, 2024

[possumcollege]

NOBODY needs to be defending these people. Major publishers, studios, streaming services, Tesla, Apple, Adobe, Amazon, social media companies- there isnt a single altruistic bone caught in their teeth. Profit from the output of exploited and captive labor IS their product now. When their contacts look like the one in question, the company is clearly stating that shareholders are the customers, not us!

Why else would it be anything but a stupid idea for Amazon to just nuke the majority of Comixology's self-published titles when they consolidated their services? If our experience was really foremost in their minds, why would they repeatedly purge, censor, demonitize, bury, and delete popular accounts with robust followings if not to allay the moral brainworms of shareholders and investors?

Forfeiting rights to our IP is not a "shitty deal," it's surrendering any potential ability to make money off of your own creative work. It's selling your property to a board of accountants to pitch into a portfolio. It's theirs to trot out as long as it's profitable and bury the instant its projected profit dips too close to the cost of maintenance. Hell, we've seen services drop popular series just because their projected profits started to flatten out! Mothballing it also has the added bonus of removing it from the market to further minimize potential competition. Like how there just weren't spider man movies for ages because the owner of the property didn't think it was worth developing but worth too much to sell.

They will make more money from suing you for trying to reclaim IP they mothballed than you did selling it to them in the first place. I guaranteee their budget for lawsuits is a lot deeper than the one they pay their "original" artists from.

By virtue of being a big, profitable, corporation, "their" IP is going to have an astronomically higher value in a court of law than any individual creator. The financial "damage" will be higher for infringing on their copyrights than any amount you can claim on your own. When it becomes theirs, their connections, their infrastructure, their reputation makes it an asset with much more value than you or I can possibly claim. So if you try to steal a bite back from them it's a bite of a *potentially* multimillion-dollar series. In their eyes, they bought the totality of your work, which you agreed was worth the price they gave you. It's value becomes more dependent on who owns it than whether it's even good.

You may not have the same potential to become flash-in-the-pan, short-term succesful without their resources, but you will still own your rights to distribute, alter, preserve, promote, and negotiate your share if you still own your work. That is worth everything as a creator who is passionate about what you've made and committed to protecting it.

The most effective power we can exercise as artists is our ability to say, "no" when someone else wants to pay us a disadvantageous fraction of our worth. You may lose potentially lucrative opportunities but "opportunities" presented by companies like Facebook or Twitter, whose real product is a platform for ads and data collection, with content as bait, are not opportunities to thrive on as independent artists. This specifically is an opportunity for the company to acquire property.

The myth that the publisher's strength is something for us to exploit, without them getting the lion's share is a trap that they feed from at will.

People like the poster up top are opportunists who see the process as a pipeline towards trading low-investment content for financial treats and maybe a share of ad revive. They're stalking horses for companies to exploit more talented but less experienced artists who are facing a daunting and overwhelming market where their work becomes harder and harder to show, let alone sell. A quick deal may feel like a win but it's selling the cow to save money on bottling the milk. Artists like this serve the publisher by making it seem like signing away your rights are just a necessary part of the game. However it's a game they are playing with exceedingly cheap stakes that weren't going to succeed on their own merit. So what if Mr. Business Perspective loses rights to his sexy Mario Bros. parody to a huge company? The point was always to unload it because it's a product, a bartering chip, a trinket. He's a Business Man, so he sees tactics that maximize profits to the business as maximizing their ability to buy whatever shiny tripe he cranks out. The business is his customer, not the reader. The business is his ally, not the creative community. Fuck him and fuck anyone who tells you the exposure is worth a damn if you don't retain rights to your work.

[pawborough]

March Check In

Hello, all! Hope you’re well! Thanks for your patience as we chug along.

Let’s get right into it.

UI Icons

We took a little more time on this update because a large focus this last month went to an effort at icons and style consistency, and we wanted to show you everything we’ve done. We’ve been working on filling out the entire catalogue with UI icons, and we’re basically done!

Though with this update, we’ve moved from pixels, and into an illustrative UI style. The pixel icons will still be available for forums and general decorative use, though the cat emojis got an update!

Art by Hydde.

We reason that this better matches the artistic tone of the rest of the game. We’ll be inputting these onto the UI of the Closed Beta server over the next few days for testers to try out.

Jackalope Fauna

A WIP sketch of a new fauna coming up! 

Art by Remmie.

Decor Sketches

In addition, we’ve been working on decor!

Art by Remmie.

Wardrobe "Sandbox" Functionality

And in addition to general development, we’ve begun work on the next huge functionality push we’ll be doing, which is the “wardrobe” section. 

Users will be able to create designs, save them, and share them with others! Or keep them private!

There will also be functionality to apply any design to a cat from their customize page using items that the User already has in their inventory. 

Development Check-In

We recently performed our first maintenance wipe, and we covered a lot of ground this month. Things are looking good! We did have an issue where updating would break other functionalities, so we’ve taken the time this week to upgrade our testing suite, and this should hopefully mitigate the annoyance. We’re getting a lot of good economic data and have our bearings on what to tweak and where to go next.

We also took the time to update our admin panel, and this should tighten the pipeline for uploading accessory files, mitigating beta trial and error with improperly formatted images. We’re excited to continue improving!

Provided we get a few pesky bugs down, our big goal next week will be to start on Processing functionality; the ability to turn large items into smaller items, and to dye accessories. And in tandem, work on Pelt and Guild issues!

Our weekly report will come soon, otherwise it’s business as usual. 

To Summarize: We shared new icons, a fauna preview, decor sketches, the Wardrobe functionality, and a brief development check-in. What to expect next month: Further asset renderings and development, business as usual while we continue updating Closed Beta

[grison-in-space]

I did a bit of de novo genome assembly way, way back in the day which I have never been able to use professionally because my PI refused to spend $2000 more on getting new read depth. He had ordered the reads before actually learning anything about the pipeline and only about half of the libraries he had ordered were usable in any given pipeline, see. (Some had been for older assembly methods and others had been for newer ones, basically.)

Rather than find the money to fucking get me the reads to do it right, he heard about an open source project called RACA that was some dude's dissertation arguing that you COULD use some of the worthless libraries to fill in the gaps of the assembly and get a functional genome out of it. I spent two years trying to move massive quantities of data through that fuckhead's pipeline on the campus supercomputer to get the assembled genome out, and then I got to the end and found there was no output as fastq files or ant other format recognizable to me.

(Give me a break, I was 23 and had also been frantically learning acoustic analysis, basic electrical engineering, and technical equipment maintenance in the two years since I had started learning to code. Plus I was figuring out what I wanted my dissertation to be. I'd never grappled with anything more complicated than our home-written library of matlab acoustic analysis before, and it simply hadn't occurred to me that anyone would publish a non-functional pipeline to achieve a goal quickly anyone verifying that anyone else had done anything yet.)

Anyway, eventually he collaborated with someone else who ponied up $2000 and a postdoc to get new reads. My name was not on the paper, so that's two years of my life developing a particular and fairly unique skill set that I will almost certainly never use.

In retrospect it's less surprising than you might think that the PhD took eight years and absolutely shattered my confidence.

And the best part is that it was just about impossible to predict at the time that shit would go quite this bad, except that some people handle power well when they're stressed and some people maintain a strong layer of cognitive dissonance over their knowledge of power such that it's never real enough to be responsible about but always real enough to win a dispute.

Anyway I think every student should have two advisors so that everyone in the department should have to immediately know about it when a PI is floundering and have a strong direct incentive to do something about it. A LOT of my problems could have been fixed with one look with a gimlet eye from a senior, more experienced researcher being not impressed at a student under their supervision running on an endless treadmill to nothing. Frankly a lot of my problems could have been solved if my mentor had formal training or literally any supervision that could deliver metrics faster than "how close am I to my previous mentees?"

I know a lot of dual advised students wind up in a tug of war between two advisors, but like: that's the point. If one of them turns out to be insane and malicious then a) the students all have clear lines to bail, b) the other ones all realize quickly that bailing out the chaos and career damage of someone who is fucking it up is way more work than resolving the problem, and c) the one with more tethers to reality has a way bigger likelihood of formally retaining the student when and if a third party has to examine the contract.

Just. It was such a fucking waste. And not because anyone necessarily wanted it to be wasteful, either, or any malice, but because I was... mm, I think the fifth PhD student in that lab and that's actually not that many to be learning on. Systems that set you up to play with decades of people's lives should have more fail-safes and places for people to learn before they get to be the sole director of someone else's career for five fucking years, not less. And yet!

[mythauragame]

Development Update - April 2025

Hello hello, folks!

Content development for what we'll have available at launch is well underway, utilizing all the tools that Koa and Sark have built for us—like a dialogue creator that powers all of our questlines and a map builder that's allowing us to build 2.5D levels for your characters to explore. It's full steam ahead for our team as we continue to prepare for Closed Beta next year.

Sark has built a fishing minigame for Mythaura, which we will explore in this update. We also have the results for the Spring Quarter Ko-fi Rewards, and would like to remind everyone interested in winning some Radiant Wolfwasps for their journey through Mythaura to enter our Wolfwasp Giveaway on Instagram by 11:59 AM on May 31!

Fishing

Mythaura is filled with all manner of bodies of water—lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans. In addition to being able to traverse water by swimming, Sark has created a way for players to explore them in another dynamic way: fishing.

The fishing minigame will be available at launch, with some post-launch additions planned as well.

Mechanics

After acquiring a fishing pole from the Grinning Gar, players will be able to fish along any body of water.

Players will have to keep their lure close to the fish in order to reel it in. The higher the rarity of the fish, the more difficult it will be to reel them in.

Rarer fish yield better effects when consumed and have a higher sales value with in-game vendors.

Fishing Rewards

Fishing does not exclusively yield consumables—there's also the chance to fish up certain Companions as well!

Pictured above are just some of the creatures that you can fish up from the rivers and streams around Talon's Rest.

The Grinning Gar

"Mind your fingers around the Ottergrebe. He's insatiable."

The Grinning Gar is an adventurer's destination for all things fishing-related. Its proprietor, Captain Hawthorne, is always quick with a recommendation and quicker yet with a fantastic tale about the epic battles he has waged with the fish in Lake Lacrima.

The shop was designed by our own lovely Sourdeer and Hawthorne's design was pulled from one of the NPC Design Contest that we held. Thank you for the design submission, Satyrn! 🎣✨

Ko-fi Spring Quarter 2025 Winners

Thank you to all the Ko-fi sponsors who voted for the Spring Quarter 2025 rewards. Next month we will show the finalized artwork for the Frilled Nester Companion and the Bumblebaby Ryu Glamour. Stay tuned!

Radiant Wolfwasp Giveaway

A reminder that entries for our Radiant Wolfwasp Giveaway will close on May 31, 2025 at 11:59am PST. We will use Wask to determine our winners, and will stream the award selection on our Discord on May 31, 2025 at 12:00pm PST.

Prizes

1st place: Wolfwasp Queen (Radiant), Wolfwasp King (Radiant)

2nd place: Wolfwasp Warrior Drone (Radiant) and Wolfwasp Worker Drone (Radiant)

3rd place: Corgbee (Radiant)

How to Enter

Users will just need to follow three steps:

Follow the @mythauragame Instagram account

Like the giveaway post

Tag a friend in the comments

Writing & Design Updates

2/8 bespoke levels created for intro quest

Dialogue trees begun for intro quest

Companion descriptions rewritten: 2/95

Item descriptions rewritten: 2/69

Wind's End landmarks named: 1/9

Talon's Rest primary businesses & landmarks named: 3/13

Map regions named: 1/12

Territories named: 1/32

Mythaura v0.37

Quest System Foundation: Players can now take on structured quests with objectives and rewards.

Lineage Data for Beasts: Lineage tracking has been added to beast profiles.

Repeatable Event Support: Events can now be repeated. For example, being able to harvest apple trees in Talon's Rest once a week.

Player Blocking System: Added functionality to block other players.

Buildings can be added to maps and entered: The player can enter and explore buildings with interiors.

Ability to talk to party: You can now interact with your party members to get context-specific dialogue.

New Game Pipeline: Starting a new game now initiates the first quest and generates a random second starter beast.

Map Editor Features: Dozens of new features were added and refined in the internal map tool.

Active Quest Tracking: The codex now shows your active and completed quests. One quest can be tracked as the main quest.

Dynamic Fishing Lighting: When fishing at night, the assets are darker.

Beast Contract Termination: Players are rewarded from a loot pool based on the tier of the terminated beast

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord.