#I've been thinking of between 1 and 2 era Stone

[chimerafiles]

[valictini]

I've been asking myself these questions regarding totk's story and my deep disappointment in it, because I know a lot of people loved it, I know a lot of people felt it was a better story than botw, and I know a lot of people believe that Zelda games never had good stories to begin with....

But no, I do think the story objectively sucks, is worse than botw's, and could have easily been better. Totk's story is flashier and that's pretty much all it has to offer.

Part of it is its execution, how using the same blueprint as botw (deliberately non linear) was a baffling move when you tried to tell a linear story. You shouldn't be punished for pursuing the story earlier than when the devs planned. You shouldn't be able to spoil yourself the story. You shouldn't be presented with the exact same information 4+ times at points where you're supposed to be rewarded for your efforts. You shouldnt have to slog through a mystery when the game KNOWS you already know the answer. And yet, this happened to an alarmingly large number of people!

So yes, the execution wasn't good.

But the story itself isn't good either. Not only did they decide to cut ties with botw's lore, but they didn't even fully commit to the new lore they introduced.

The zonai civilisation has no substance. We see two (2) of its members and only interact with their ghosts in very, very few instances. During those interactions, we do learn tidbits of this civilisation, but as soon as the tutorial is over, you will never learn anything new from a zonai again. A couple lines during the tutorial is where the bulk of zonai lore happens. The rest is: jumping minigame said to be the same ritual young zonai would do to become adults and the explanation of draconification.

You could maybe say that the mere existence of zonai tech, the mere existence of secret stones, the zonai gear and the ancient hero aspect could be considered zonai lore. But what these things only really add to the lore is that the Zonai 1) were always everywhere and 2) were very powerful. That's pretty much it.

(The ancient hero aspect is especially infuriating to me. It could be a whole post.)

So, not only did they replace the Sheikah by the Zonai for no reason, they didn't even flesh them out enough to be interesting. But they didn't exploit the rest of the story to its fullest either.

- The heart of the story happens in the ancient era, yet we don't see much of it. All the new things we see: the inside of ancient hyrule castle's throne room, a garden and one (1) gazebo in a field. We don't get lore for the dungeons aside from their name, and the ancient sages don't add anything to them either. In general, we don't get lore of the ancient races, not even the hylians or the gerudos.

- Zelda was retconed into being stupid enough not to make the connection between Ganondorf and calamity Ganon. She was also sent back into being a compliant little princess that can't put her foot down when she knows the people around her are making mistakes.

(As an aside, I'm fully of the opinion that Calamity Ganon was a better antagonist than Ganondorf. At least you don't have to fanfic your way into understanding why he wants Hyrule destroyed. He's a magical beast full of hatred, the end.)

- The whole plot is centered around dragons, and yet totk manages to have LESS content surrounding the three dragons of Hyrule than fucking botw.

- Hylia is no relevant anymore. The statues are apparently their own entities? And they have counterparts in the depths with he bargainer statues? Never elaborated on.

The ending cutscene contains a deus ex machina that manages to retcon elements of its OWN story. (Rauru was supposed to be gone after the tutorial. Zelda was supposed to be gone after becoming a dragon.) Realistically, I knew Zelda wouldn't stay a dragon, but I was genuinely shocked at how little of an explanation we get for her return.

And we have 0 impact on her return as a player. Nothing we do matters. She turns back no matter what. Despite many opportunities to make it work in universe.

We could have had something tied with the other dragons, the three sources, to Purah's experiments with time, to the four temples, to Hylia, to the bargainer statues, to the triforce...

But no, just a vague "ghosts that should have disappeared eons ago use their powers to get her back through your arm".

We don't even have an alternate bad ending where this doesn't happen. It will happen, no matter what. For the cinematic shot at the end.

Oh and Link had to get his arm back too. I know they needed their cool parallel of Link catching her hand at the same angle as when he failed to do so at the beginning, but it just all feels so inconsequential as a result.

Everything's solved, everything's good, nothing that happened in this game ever mattered.

[whiteraven87]

Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed - 60. Journal

The Unstoppable Series - Masterlist

Four parts. Two hearts. One love story.

pairing: Toto Wolff x Miriell Joschke (Original Character, female F1 driver)

Series warnings: long fan fiction/series, slow burn, age gap (23 years), woman racing in F1, boss/driver relationship, difficult and painful past, death, angst, recovery after trauma and loss, love after loss, sexual tension, sex scenes, illness, pregnancy, memory lost.

full series word count: 218k words of speed, scars, slow-burning love, and everything in between.

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

chapters until now of Part 4: Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed

Prologue

Return to Life

YES!

We are back

Third World Championship Title

The Night That Changed Everything

The Inevitable Conversation

Now and Forever [18+]

You Are the Reason

Our Place

The New Driver

Night Experiments [18+]

In His Power [18+]

Memories

The Royal Couple of F1 [18+]

New Era

The First Race of the Season and Rumors

Mercedes – Power, Style, and Authority

Triumph of a Young Champion

Shadows of the Night

The Sea, the Silence, Us [18+]

Unexpected news

Oasis of Peace

Loss

Emptiness

Painful Truth

Breakthrough [18+]

The Fourth

Liberty Media Banquet [18+]

The Austrian Casanova

The Calendar[18+]

Unmatched [18+]

Shared Moments

Her Path [18+]

Madness in the Bieszczady

Awkward Discovery

Christmas in Austria

Finally Alone [18+]

Birthday Gift [18+]

Observations

After the Meeting [18+]

Season Opener[18+]

Unexpected meeting

Sound of Dominations [18+]

Stormy Meeting [18+]

The Last Moments

The Accident

Everything Fell Apart

Coming Home

Emptiness in My Mind

Without Her

Return to the Track

Traces of the Past

We Were Close

The Dream

A Loss I Don’t Remember

Painful Closeness

It Doesn’t Make Sense

I Can't Lose Her

previous Parts:

Part 1: Driven by Speed - A Diamond Among Stones

Part 2: Driven by Success - Golden Girl

Part 3: Driven by Love - Rebirth from the Ashes

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

60. Journal

PRESENT TIMES

Bieszczady

POV Miriell

These days without Toto feel empty. I can't explain it. I have no memories, I don't remember our love, but my heart and body long for him. It's irrational, and yet it's true.

I feel his absence everywhere – in the empty hallways, in the silence that wraps around the house, in the bed that feels too big and cold without him.

I don't want to think about it, so I throw myself into cleaning. I go through documents, things I've accumulated over the years in my study. And then I find something I didn't expect.

A journal. I didn't know I had been keeping one.

I open the first page. At first, I see only technical notes – car settings, track characteristics, notes about the team's work. Nothing that stirs any emotions.

But then... Then the words begin. Words I never expected to read.

It's not just a journal. It's a record of my story. A record of my feelings.

Toto.

His name appears on every page.

I read about the first time I saw him. How fascinated I was – his piercing gaze, his composure, the way he led the team. How he made me feel respect, admiration, but also something I didn't want to name back then.

I read about how I was afraid of my feelings.

How I thought they were inappropriate. He was my boss. He was older, experienced, closed off in his own world, still mourning Susie. I was convinced he would never see me as a woman he could build a future with, that to him I'd always be just a part of the team, a talented driver.

I wrote about how I tried to suppress those feelings. How I kept telling myself it was just a passing infatuation, and yet, they kept growing.

Every meeting, every conversation, every glance – perhaps unnoticed by him – made me fall in love even more.

I read and feel something breaking inside me. I feel my heart start to race, my hands tremble as I turn page after page.

This is not the story of a stranger. This is my story. This is my love.

I still don't remember, but I know. I know that feeling was real. I know I couldn't have made it up.

And I know that if I ever loved him this much, how could I ever stop?

I close the journal and clutch it in my hands. My heart pounds in my chest, and there's only one thought pulsing in my head.

I need to get those memories back.

A few days later

With a trembling hand, I reach for the computer. I don't know what's driving me, but I feel like I need to find something.

Toto said I performed and sang publicly a few times. I don't remember that. I don't remember myself on stage, but if it's true—if there are recordings somewhere...

I click on a folder, scroll through the files, and suddenly two titles catch my eye.

"Blinding Lights in Monaco"

"You Are The Reason – for TW"

TW. Toto Wolff.

My heart skips a beat.

I play the first recording. A stage appears on the screen, lights, the hum of an excited crowd. And then... me.

I'm standing in the middle, confident, microphone in hand. My lips move with the rhythm, and the music fills the room. My face seems both familiar and foreign—but that's nothing compared to what I feel when I play the second recording.

This one is different. I'm sitting at the piano here, in our home in Bieszczady, my fingers gliding across the keys, and my voice sounds like it's singing from the depths of my heart.

"I'd climb every mountain, and swim every ocean... Just to be with you and fix what I've broken..."

The melody and the words... they're so close to me. I close my eyes.

And then it happens. Images hit me like a wave.

Toto holding me in his arms after I won the first title.

The yacht railing in Monaco. Silence between us, and then his warmth, his scent, as he wrapped me in his embrace without a word.

Toto holding me all night after I told him the truth about the assault.

His gaze, full of concern, as I fought for every fraction of a second on the track.

My own fear of loving him, and then his voice: "I want your happiness. Whatever happens, I'll always be for you."

My crash in Spa. The pain. The darkness. And then him – his hand gripping mine, his quiet, emotional whisper.

Toto, chopping wood shirtless, unaware of my stares.

His hand on my cheek, his breath near my lips: "I love you."

Our first kiss.

The scars I showed him, full of fear and shame. His eyes – not filled with disgust, but love. "You're beautiful."

His touch. His caresses. My whisper, as I gave myself to him completely.

Our love. Our happiness.

Then his illness. The tumor. The fear that paralyzed me more than any race ever could.

His surgery. My tears when he woke up. The joy that he was alive.

His proposal. The moment we told the world we were together.

Our wedding. Our marriage. Tenderness, laughter, love.

And then... The pregnancy. The miscarriage. The pain.

The news that I'd never be able to have children. The despair.

And him, always by my side. He didn't leave. He didn't let me get lost in the darkness. Always.

Tears stream down my face. I remember. God, I remember everything.

I feel the emptiness that tore me apart inside fill with everything I had lost.

But he's not here. Toto is gone. I pushed him away.

And now... now more than anything in the world, I want him to be with me.

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

NEXT -> 61. I need to see Him

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

"I put my armor on, show you how strong I am."

Read the story here:

AO3 Unstoppable Series

Wattpad: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

🇵🇱 Dla Polskich czytelników [for Polish readers] [PL]:

Seria Niepowstrzymana AO3

Wattpad PL: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

[megjameswrites]

yesterday (in a day, part 4)

part 1 | part 2 | part 3| part 5 | masterlist

Daryl Dixon x reader

Negan/Alexandria era

CW: death (canon), angst, Negan

Summary: With Negan, the only good days were all behind us. Would yesterday be last time we felt happiness?

A part of myself remained on my knees in the gravel circle, shaking between the puddles of Abraham's blood and Glenn's.

I kept moving, somehow; hour through hour, day through day. I began and completed tasks. I scavenged. I killed the dead. I cared for the living.

I slept, on the floor with a blanket and a pillow that smelled like Daryl, in the living room of our house because I wouldn't walk into the bedroom again. Not now that he was gone.

But I was still on my knees, small rocks digging into my legs, a betrayal in a way of something I'd long believed to bring me only good things- these rocks brought nothing but pain. No relief. No love, or passion, or protection, or peace. Just small pains in my legs and knees, and the aching, gnawing pain in my chest that never went away.

"I'm Negan," he crowed, over and over again. "Load him up."

He'd left us with the bodies and blood and the hatchet Rick had carried since Terminus.

"Oh, I know I made an impression!"

I stood with the others, watching Rick open the gate and let in Negan, days earlier than he'd promised to be back. "Do what they ask," I told the Alexandrians wearily. "Just cooperate. They'll leave eventually, and we'll all still be breathing. It's just stuff. Just things."

If the end of the world had taught most of us anything, it's that we didn't need things. We needed people. We needed each other.

I needed Daryl, but he'd been taken away while gravel dug into my knees and tears slid down my cheeks, mixing with the blood-spatter from my friends' deaths sprayed across my cheeks.

I turned and walked away before the Saviors came through the gates, looking for somewhere to hide out, somewhere out of sight to stay unnoticed. The last thing any of us needed was Negan knowing who Daryl was to me. Who I was to him. He knew too much already, about Maggie and Glenn, about Carl and Rick.

He'd use me against Daryl and break us both in the process.

My eyes met Daryl's for a split second before he looked away like it hurt. Pain flooded through me, sending my knees buckling and the ground roaring up my way, and then someone's hand was under my arm, lifting me solicitously.

"Well now, miss thing. You doin' ok? That seems like a lot of a reaction to seeing yours truly again…. Or is it not me?"  Negan's voice turned from amused to considering at the end as he glanced over his shoulder toward where he had my Daryl in dirty sweats hauling our guns out of the armory.

His face was badly beaten, and he'd looked damn near broken. Now he stood stock-still beside the Savior's vehicle, staring at Negan's hand curling under and around my arm. I could feel every finger burning into my skin like a brand, and I hated it.

"Let me go." I wrenched away from him, but Saviors behind me forced me to stay where I was.

"Well, well, well," he said slowly, the smile spreading over his face. "This is the best find I've made all day! Pack mule… I think we're taking a new friend home!"

Everything changes, I thought dully. Yesterday, I was home in Alexandria, when I'd thought it was as bad as it could get with him gone.

Now I knew better.

In my little black dress and heels, I watched from the balcony as Daryl mopped the floors. He didn't look my way.

The stones against my heart mocked me as I fiddled with them, sliding the ring on and off my finger as I watched his hunched shoulders. He never took his eyes from the floor, but I knew he knew I was there. He had to.

He always knew when I was there. But that was before, I supposed, during the good days. Before everything changed yesterday.

I tucked the necklace back under the collar of the dress as Negan's hand slid down my back in a caress.

Yesterday, Daryl'd made it out. Sherry had left me the note and the instructions, and now I held my breath as I executed the last part of her very complicated plan.

She had a brain, that one, and she'd finally gotten the backbone to go with it. I'd been working on her since Negan brought me in, and I'd finally gotten her to do what only she could, and get Daryl out before he broke completely.

Now I had to make it out, too, or it was all for nothing. All the pain, all the heartache, all the tense planning and waiting. All the touches from the bastard with the bat. It'd be worth it, if it worked. If I made it out, too.

I'd make it, I promised myself. A black and white feather had fluttered to the ground at my feet while I stood on the roof early this morning, watching the stars fade and the sun rise. Changes were coming.

[rolandrockover]

Another Good Bad Thing

When I heard Gene's Good Girl Gone Bad (1987) for the first time around 1992, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this song. I wasn't familiar with Kiss' 80s stuff for the most part, Crazy Nights seemed fresh to me but overall quite alienating, and my ears were pretty virgin as far as Judas Priest was concerned (1).

I was, I think, rather disappointed by it because it didn't sound like the Kiss, let alone the old Gene, that I remembered and held in my heart from the early days of being a fan, and had kinda fallen into the clumsy belief that Gene was just looking for different way of not to sound too much like the '70s stuff. Or that he was simply exposing himself as a lazy songwriter during this era (2).

And man, how right I was, and yet how little I knew.

But to get my Judas Priest act together, let's return to the present, because it wasn't too long ago that I probably consciously listened to their You've Got Another Thing Comin' (1982) for the first time in my life. And it was during the verses that the scales finally fell from my eyes.

If you listen to both rhythm guitars, both of course contain this archetypal chuka-chuka, or whatever it might be called, but I don't even mean that, because it's the vocals are what really matter to me, and that's exactly the for me unfamiliar component, namely Rob Halford's vocal style, when he actually sings and doesn't shriek garishly or tries to sound like a stone being crushed between two cramped metal ass cheeks, if you know what I mean.

And this is precisely the element that Gene fully immerses himself in in Good Girl Gone Bad and also embellishes this specific attitude thread, albeit to a somewhat more vibrant extent. Which is a bit like a pool cleaner trying to chop down a tree with the means at his disposal, but in this case it actually works - if only you are aware of what is happening there. Kinda.

Well, and now I have to dig through all that old Priest stuff, even though I haven't really been into metal for a very long time (3).

But what don't you do?

Side Notes:

(1) With the big exception of Painkiller (1990).

(2) After all, the promotion for Revenge at the time hardly left a good hair on Gene's 80s output, and I was still a relatively young person and at least as impressionable.

(3) What can I say, I've made quite a good find in the meantime.

Good Girl Gone Bad (1987)

You've Got Another Thing Comin' (1982)

[northwindow]

love your blog so much! and im wondering how you archive/document your day-to-day life and the information that you take in — whatever form: books, lyrics, trees, etc etc — ? im struggling so much w forgettttttting

i love this question! i’ve always longed to have a beautiful and consistent journal, but it’s something i struggle with maintaining organically so i’ve tried some different structures over the past few years. long-winded answer under the cut 💗

back in 2021, i was making a monthly journal on google slides which i really liked because it's so natural to integrate images. i just made a month of it public here as an example of what it was like.

from 2022 - now, i've been doing a new concept where on the last day of every season i write long, list-y answers to these prompts:

art that has been resonating with me (includes music, books, movies, visual art, anything really). i'll usually write a few words about it... "Decision to Leave dir. Park Chan-Wook—the eye shot! the eye shot with the ants crawling on it" or "'Train Ride' by Ruth Stone: 'Release, release; / between cold death and a fever, / send what you will, I will listen. / All things come to an end. / No, they go on forever.'" or "Chunky misshapen pearls and other organic, shiny shapes"

my favorite memories from the season... examples from past lists include "Swimming hole with Zoë where I stuck a twig in my hair and we waded around on our hands like crocodiles" and "Walks in my snowsuit at night, one in particular where the Gemenids meteor shower was just starting"

a checkup on 5 of my current projects/goals. currently these are 1. learn to lift weights, 2. write 50 "identical" poems, 3. write a new syllabus, 4. practice mindful spending, 5. improve at woodworking.

a checkup on 5 of my core values. currently these are 1. adventure, 2. connection, 3. play, 4. sensuality, 5. sustainability.

reevaluating projects and values to focus on next

since you mentioned wanting to remember things-- when i'm putting this together i draw extensively from my tumblr archive/likes, calendar, photos app, recent playlists, and letterboxd and storygraph accounts. curating this kind of ephemeral data into a more permanent and thoughtful record is really satisfying to me. i privately call this method "wrapped" a la spotify... like i'll have a big entry for "fall 2022 wrapped" and then "winter 2023 wrapped" and so on. i do all this on the app notion and file the seasons on one big page so it's easy to click into one and remember what i was doing and thinking about. (i also converted my dream journal to a notion database. i've logged about 300 dreams in here and love that i can tag by character/feature.)

over the years i've also kept a more classic diary via text documents that's less structured, just spitting out whatever's on my mind with the date at the top. i tend to do this frequently for a while, then ebb off, then restart another doc, rinse and repeat. i also have a few physical notebooks (including these two) but the digital stuff is way more extensive as i prefer to write on the computer.

if i were going to recommend any of this, i would say the visual format of the slides journal was really compelling because i liked the aesthetic freedom but i also love the "wrapped" lists because they seem to cut to the core of an era's texture. in the future i'd like to try to integrate these aspects together! 📓

[bisupergirl]

i've been rereading a lot of old supergirl comics lately, so i thought i'd make a post with some pre-crisis recommendations for kara <3

THE GIRL WITH THE SEE-THROUGH MIND!

the superman family #168 kara and lena attempt to help a young empath as she suddenly feels compelled to kill herself. one of my fav issues for lena and one of the best storylines from kara's student advisor era. i also really love the relationship kara has with lena, both as linda danvers and as supergirl.

THE BRIMSTONE CONNECTION

the brave and the bold #160 kara's foster father goes missing so she teams up with batman to track him down. i think kara and bruce have a fun dynamic together and i really like how she's characterized here. i do think that this issue kind of downplays how intelligent kara is in order to uplift bruce's detective skills, but regardless i think its a fun team-up.

THE SUPERGIRL GANG

adventure comics #381 kara goes undercover at an all-girls crime fighting school to investigate a string of robberies committed unknowingly by the students. i really like how this issue focuses a bit on kara's investigative abilities and the things she can do better as linda danvers rather than as supergirl. also babs makes an appearance in this story (rise pre-crisis karababs warriors) <3

THE BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL!

adventure comics #412 kara is chosen to fight in a ceremonial battle by a distant planet's ruler. this issue is SO fun and showcases kara's strength so well. it also features art from art saaf who is one of my favorite artists for pre-crisis kara :)

THE ATTACK OF THE ANNIHILATOR!

detective comics #508-510 kara flies to gotham and helps barbara gordon defeat a crazed and mutated scientist who calls himself the annihilator. unfortunately this is the only multi-issue arc kara and babs have together during pre-crisis (not counting crisis on infinite earths i guess), but i do really enjoy this story (again, rise pre-crisis karababs warriors).

A HEAD-FULL OF SNAKES!

supergirl vol 1 #8 after portraying medusa in a play, a curse is placed on kara that turns her hair into snakes and anyone she looks at into stone. another really fun story :) this issue is definitely one of the best from supergirl vol 1.

CRYPT OF THE FROZEN GRAVES

adventure comics #424 kara attempts to uncover the crimes of the san francisco syndicate by gathering information from a former criminal informer. the art in this issue is SO pretty and i really love how kara is characterized here <3 also features the last appearance of pre-crisis nasty luthor </3

THE VISITORS FROM THE VOID

the superman family #184-186 when fred danvers mysteriously disappears after accepting a secret government job, edna danvers seeks out kara for help in finding him. i really love this storyline for how it develops the relationship between kara and her foster parents, and it's a great showcase of kara's anger and how protective she can be over the people she loves.

CELEBRATION!

supergirl vol 2 #20 clark asks kara to meet him at midvale for a surprise—but before she can do that, kara must battle the parasite. kara's 25th anniversary issue :) you can also read action comics #555 before this if you'd like, it takes place concurrently with this issue but shows clark's pov.

and finally—i already included this story on my pinned post with other supergirl storyline recommendations, but i really like this arc so i'm putting it here too:

THE STRANGE REVENGE OF LENA LUTHOR!

the superman family #211-214 takes place within one of my favorite era’s for supergirl! kara (living as an actress in new york at the time) helps her old friend lena thorul get a job and a place to stay after lena’s husband dies. after the villain mind-bomber boost’s her psychic abilities, lena discovers kara’s secret identity.

[mushyposts]

Man now I’m just thinking about how much I love visual analysis. I’m a huge advocate for art not needing to mean anything deep and sometimes it’s pretty just to be pretty, but also our history is so heavily painted into canvas and stone and etched into copper and limestone!! It’s amazing how many paintings that seem to just be pretty (especially the Rococo period!! It was known for being a flirty, pretty era but has so much imagery and meaning in them) have serious, political, or sometimes even satirical stories behind them.

Visual analysis and visual comprehension is so, so valuable. I feel like since learning how to do it formally and then informally my writing and literary comprehension has actually improved. It’s also just so, so fun!! I know I don’t have many followers but if ur interested in doing some visual analysis, here are the steps to doing so given to me in my art history class. I cannot emphasise how fun and interesting it is to do and how valuable of a skill it is!! You’ll learn so much about history from doing it.

I have the notes in the read more if ur interested at all!! : ] This is a very long ramble and I knooow it probably wont go far, but please! If u do see this try out visual analysis!! Its so, so much fun, it helps enrich ur writing, and u will learn so much about history. In a time with AI on the rise, with fake images, editing, and photorealistic lies, your best weapon is your comprehension and ability to analyse. I've been told time and time again by art history lecturers that its so important to be able to do this, to any degree, or to even just be aware of it as a concept because you will start looking and taking note of it even subconciously!!

Start doing this by looking as little as you can about the time period, artist, or subject!! Thats the best way to approach visual analysis. Imagine it like going into a book blind, you arent sure what the genre is but you can guess from the first few lines its probably a dystopian! This is best done because it means you're more subjective when you analyse it visually. Visual analysis is different from a critical visual analysis, that comes next!

The example I have here is from my notes, which is the pastel drawing Madame de Pompadour in her study by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, is a Rococo period painting! The Rococo period is by far one of my favourite periods to dissect. That and Dadaism.

Step 1: Identify. EG: A painting, a sculpture, a drawing. What does it look like the medium is? This is more from a formal point of view, being able to identify the medium or form is a first step. It also leads you into being able to question why that specific medium may have been chosen later on in the analysis! Medium doesnt always have a purpose, but sometimes it will. EG: Prints were cheaper to purchase then a painting because they were reproducible and didnt require as much time on the artists behalf. So, having a wall of purchased oil paintings vs prints would mean something different status wise.

Step 2: Describe what you see, not what you THINK. EG: A woman with her head tilted to the left (from viewer looking in), she is in a lightly coloured, elegant dress with golden vine-like patterns over it. She holds a blue book filled with music notes, an instrument sits behind her. The desk is cluttered with books, papers, and a globe. The technique is realistic, smooth and refined details, a cool toned colour palette with her being in the lighter tonal value to keep intense focus on her. The difference between what you see vs what you think is saying "She is looking to the left." vs "she is gazing to the left, possibly for show or possibly looking at someone/something off screen" or "She is staring off to the left, looking at her hands, uncaring of the painter" Because THAT is in the next step! But you need to build the bones of subjectively what you are seeing. You can interpret it all later, first of all, define if the dress is blue!

Step 3: Interpret. EG: Conclude the above information to be information about the figure and analyse who they could be. This is where you can have more fun with the analysis. A lot of the time this will show a bias you may have, for example, if we keep with the example of pastel drawing, we can deduce that she is a musician even without knowing its Madame De Pomadour! She has music strewn over her desk, she has an instrument near her. You could also probably say she is well educated with the amount of books covering her desk, well travelled maybe with the globe or perhaps trying to appear as if she is? We dont know who she is, or if you do maybe you dont know her at depth, so for all we know like many artworks done in the Rococo period, or truly most periods, this could be done as a sign of status. She isnt looking directly at the painter, she isnt positioned and sat formally for a sitting, so we can guess she probably has these works done of her often. This isnt anything new. From her pose, her dress, the items cluttering her station, we can assume she is of some status!

Step 3: Evaluate! Now, I wont lie and say I know everything about Madame De Pomadour and this being tumblr im SURE theres someone out there who knows far more about her then I do, but, this is the intrigue of visual analysis. I dont know anything about her, not truly, but in a formal setting and not just an exercise like this was and is, this is where I would then do a SHIT load of research on both her, the artist, the medium, and then even the objects she has in her background. Research into how the artist interacted with their models is also a very good thing to look into (did they have a lot of repeat customers? Were they hired on has a permanent artist for someone? Did they ever do a portrait of anyone of royalty or high status?) as good or bad reports says a lot more about the context of the painting.

If an artist doesn't like someone they will often sneak details into the background to signify so. Think hiding them in shadow, maybe changing some of their jewellery to be from the fashion of a period from earlier to make them seem less on trend. Maybe they will make the person look even more grand to earn favour (think most monarchs, first to come to mind being Henry the Eighth.)

Art was heavily purposeful, even if it is "just" a portrait there is always intent behind it. There is always some reason, even if the artist did not put anything else into it the use of that painting then becomes the meaning. Was it used as a gift to gain favour? Was it used to incite fear? Henry the Eighth would send his representatives with these MASSIVE paintings of himself, made to look stronger, taller and healthier then he actually was, in order to scare them-especially those who hadnt seen him before.

Anyway, this was a long post, but I hope someone gets something out of it!! I love visual analysis and comprehension and i think its important and fun and just!! Have fun ok!!

[gear-project]

Annon-Guy: Any thoughts on these fighting games?

Tekken

DarkStalkers

Killer Instinct

Evil Zone

ClayFighter

Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi (Dragon Ball Z Sparking in Japan)

Arcana Heart

Akatsuki Bllitzkamof/EN-Eins Perfektewelt

Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring

Tobal No.1 and Tobal 2

Fighting Vipers (PEPSIMAN!)

Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax

Omen of Sorrow

Nitroplus Blasterz Heroines Infinite Duel

I've played Tekken 3 and Tekken 7 and that's it, but I wouldn't say I'm any good at the games.

Darkstalkers I've played a bit of, though I wouldn't say I'm any good, though I still hold out hope for a proper sequel with a full roster compared to the split off offshoots that currently exist.

I own Killer Instinct (the modern game), though it has far too much pay-to-own DLC for my liking, in addition to very unbalanced quest games, so I lost a lot of interest in it (though I will still mess with the characters now and then, it's been a while).

People have told me Evil Zone is good, though I have yet to play it myself, though I'd compare it to Battle Arena Toshinden in terms of style (maybe even Battle Fantasia).

I never found ClayFighter especially appealing, since there was never a version of the game that didn't seem "stiff" in animation, though I suppose it was a poor man's Street Fighter clone.

My history with DBZ games goes all the way back to Super Butoden and Hyper Dimension, though I have separate opinions between "Budokai" and "Budokai Tenkaichi" (or just Tenkaichi). Budokai is more commonly known as Dragonball Z3 in Japan (or just Z3, though we call it Budokai 3 here in the West). Unlike Tenkaichi, the original Budokai games had a 2D combat perspective, though they still played a bit with 3D plane. It was the Tenkaichi games onwards that focused more on 3D combat. I'd say I'm not "as interested" in the 3D combat compared to how much I enjoyed Budokai 3.

Also, with regard to Dragonball FighterZ, I'd say it isn't nearly as complex as the Budokai games were in tranformations and such, or even Beam Battles and clash battles which it had.

I don't exactly find the Arcana Heart series especially appealing (and I've said as much in older posts), though I did appreciate Mori bringing it to BlazBlue Crosstag as a small offering.

The mechanics of the game ARE interesting, but the gameplay itself just doesn't appeal to me by and large (sprites were very small, animations were simple, and the all-female roster was off-putting to me, so it's not my cup of tea).

I've had friends tell me how great the Akatsuki games are, and I'd dare say it's easy to compare it to older PC Doujins like Big Bang Beats and Melty Blood, but I don't actually have much experience with the Akatsuki games...

The fact French Bread insisted on bringing Akatsuki in to Under-Night as a guest character is amazing, however... along with the fact the Blitztank was added to BBTAG.

Ehrgeiz... there's a lot I can say about Idea-Factory's hidden gem in the rough: but to me the game was too much like a Wresting game or Power-Stone Clone... and the fact they used Final Fantasy characters kinda distracted from the other characters far too much for my liking.

Certainly it predates games like Dissidia Final Fantasy, but I feel like if someone was gonna make a Final Fantasy fighting game, it would happen eventually.

Ehrgeiz itself shouldn't be lauded for Final Fantasy, it should be lauded for its own story and unique characters. The fact it had a Dungeon RPG mode though... that's something few Fighting Games can brag about, and something I think more fighting games SHOULD consider (especially a game like DNF Duel... a spinoff of Dungeon Fighters, so I mean... where's the DUNGEON???)

The endings were cheesy, but that was the era back then.

That goes DOUBLE for the Tobal games... Tobal itself was everything Dragonball Z fighting games probably would have been if they turned it in to a Virtua Fighter spinoff.

There are far too many ideas in Tobal to really discuss in a paragraph here, but suffice to say it has a very odd roster... very massive roster too... so I'd argue they overdid it in some capacity.

Fighting Vipers... I can't really say much, since I've never sat down to play the game, though I do find SOME of the characters appealing.

If Fighting Vipers ever did a Dead or Alive Crossover like Virtua Fighter did with Tekken, that'd be pretty interesting.

Dengeki Bunko/Nitroplus... hmm... I don't have fond memories of these games (don't get me wrong I have higher opinions of it now than I used to, but it's still not my favorite kind of fighting game).

If ARC System Works or French Bread were approached in to making a Dengeki game, I think I'd be more eager to play it... just something about it that screams "cheap doujin fighter" to me, and that doesn't bode well in my history of playing fighting games.

I feel like Omen of Sorrow wishes it was Mortal Kombat and Castlevania Judgement... the latter of which was done by 8ing, and I still sincerely think is a great game.

Unfortunately some fighting games are fated for obscurity, though it's up to you if you want to play them or not.

Once again, I find All-Female rosters to be somewhat unappealing to my taste, though on the flipside of that, Skullgirls doesn't enforce that rule as adamantly as Nitroplus and Arcana Heart seem to. SNK Heroines is also an odd duck in that regard.

If you don't agree with my opinions, that's fine... but just understand that I have a predilection for weapon-based fighting games... so games with tiny sprites and moe cutsie characters are just NOT appealing to me...

Anyways, right now, to me the peak is probably Soul Calibur 6 and Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, though even if I say that, I'm still waiting for the "egg" that is Guilty Gear Strive to finally hatch itself.

[slavic-canvas]

Question: Evolution and Divergence of Medieval Slavic Settlements (5th-15th century)

Dear Schwérpunkt,

Thank you for your in-depth, high quality historical content on the art of war. You always craft spectacular content in regards to the political background, weapons, and armor of the ancient and medieval era. Your understanding of history also extends beyond martial knowledge, as my previous Q&A with you on "Ethnos in the Middle Ages" demonstrates your sensitivity to broader anthropological topics. With this in mind, I would like to dedicate this Q&A to the evolution and divergence of medieval Slavic settlements. But before I do so, I must also ask you something that has been lingering in my mind regarding your content.

Across your playlists I have not come across any content that addresses cities and fortifications beyond Medieval Western Europe. I should also preface that perhaps it is my fault for not delving deep enough into your content, but I would think that since you specialize in the art of war, fortifications and civilian settlements should be discussed in the places like the Byzantine and Islamic world. Is there a reason for why you don't do this? For example, your videos on the Ostsiedlung only gives brief mention to the wooden Gords that the Holy Roman Empire had difficulty subjugating. There is nothing in detail that describes a Gord structure, strategy, or significance to West Slavic societies. Also, your playlist on Gallic warfare has videos dedicated to certain battles, cavalrymen, and infantry but nothing about the Gallic Oppidum. Keep in mind, I'm sure if I were to fish through I could find something about this subject, but I am specifically asking why you don't dedicate a singular video to this topic as you do for something like "Medieval Irish Warrior". Often, in order for me to find content on cities/military fortifications it is embedded in the broader "'X/Y' Warfare video." Would it be possible to create individual videos focused on urbanism and fortifications within your military playlists, specifically dedicated to certain ethnic groups or geographic regions? With your knowledge and expertise I believe you should place more focus into this area, but if you find my feedback invalid please explain why. Bearing all this in mind, I shall now move forward onto the topic I originally had in mind.

Overview: As the early Slavs migrated from their homeland, they were organized into small, tribal agrarian societies. Their settlements were often unfortified and were placed near cliffs, rivers, and lakes to ward off invaders. Yet as time goes on the West and East Slavs begin to develop more elaborate defensive structures known as the Gord.

The development follows:

Phase 1: Small unwalled settlement

Phase 2: Small settlement enclosed by a wooden palisade

Phase 3: Earthworks with a timber rampart, often a singular building without fortifying the broader community.

Phase 4: Well fortified wooden urban centers

Phase 5: Integration of stone architecture

Eventually we see a disruption of this material homogeneity, and by the end of the middle ages we notice three distinct material/architectural styles among the Slavs:

East: Wooden urban centers with a dispersal of stone buildings in the Byzantine fashion.

West: Gothic architecture with stone buildings, essentially an extension of the Frankish sphere.

South: There is an obvious split (and mixture) between the Orthodox Slavs who essentially mimicked Byzantine architecture, and the Catholics Slavs who emulated Frankish influence.

I wanted to bring this subject to your attention because I've never really seen anyone cover it before except you. You seem to allude to the Slavic divergence in a religious and military context, but I feel the architectural differences adds a new dimension to this topic. Not to mention, it is a noticeable split which has continued into the modern era.

South Slavs:

Early Settlement:

-The West and East Slavs created Wooden Gords, but it appears that the historiography of South Slavs do not place as great an emphasis on these structures. Why? I have my theories for this but would like your validation. It seems as though the mountainous terrain and chaotic frontier prevented the early Balkan Slavs from creating communities like their northern brethren. It was likely more preferable to nestle into a cliff rather than create a wooden fort in the lowlands. Likewise, the preexistence of Roman cities, as ruined as they were, provided the early South Slavs with a place to inhabit. The West and East Slavs however had to create a dwelling place where there had been none. Sure, there were pre-existing iron age settlements, but it was nothing like an established Roman city. Hence, while the South Slavs inherited Roman cities, the West and East Slavs had to create them from scratch. But it still leaves one question, what happened to agrarian Slavic communities that did not inhabit Roman cities? Prior to their migration into the Balkans, the Slavs lived rural lifestyles and probably remained that way for awhile. How would they have defended their agrarian settlements? Or rather, was there a presence of Gords in the Balkans after all? What did Balkan Slavic settlements look like archeologically?

The First Bulgarian Empire:

-Pliska, a residence of the Bulgar Khan, was initially a fortified nomadic grazing area. The inner enclosure was originally crafted from wood, burnt down by the Byzantines, and rebuilt by into an opulent stone fortress. Upon further research it seems that enslaved Byzantine soldiers were responsible for creating this new stone palace for the Bulgars. With this in mind, how how influential were Byzantine civilians and engineers in urbanizing/fortifying the First Bulgarian Empire? What extent did the Bulgars and Slavs create stone cities/forts for themselves without the aid of the Romans? How did the Bulgarians re-settle and develop abandoned Roman cities? How many of these cities already had Byzantine civilians living within them? To some it may seem that I am being biased, that I am implying Greeks had to civilize Bulgarians, but this is not my intention. My ultimate motive is to dissect the cultural interaction between Byzantium and the Slavs. Civilization is inherited and furnished, it is not confined to itself.

The achievements of the Bulgarians during that time astonished even their contemporaries. In amazement, Armenian historians wrote that to the north of the Caucasus only the Bulgarians had stone towns while all other peoples were living in huts, dugouts and tents. But some sources assert that the stone areas of pliska were actually built by Roman fugitives and captives.

-The city of Preslav represents a full on material and spiritual transfiguration Bulgaria, but how did Tsar Simeon manage to reconstruct the city on such a grand scale? Where did the knowledge, resources, and manpower come from? Was there a noticeable period before and after Simeon where urbanization took place, or was it too gradual to tell?

-How did the cultural development of the first Bulgarian Empire compare to that of Latin-Germanic Europe (Frankish Empire)? I ask this because many Bulgarians like to brag about how their empire was more culturally developed than the west, if not on par with it. This is also another parallel to Byzantine vs Western Barbarian dichotomy you have spoken on, only it extends itself to the Bulgarians.

The Serbians:

-how did the serbs come to inherit stone architecture? Did the serbs immediately inhabit stone cities after their migration into the Balkans? During what time period and what extent did the Serbians re-build stone cities for themselves? As I asked earlier with the Bulgarians, how did the serbs interact with Byzantine engineers in the process of rebuilding and inheriting cities? To what degree did the Bulgarians, having been able to challange the byzantines and establish the slavic liturgy influence Serbian state formation?

-In regards to the Bulgarians, how different and similar were their interactions with Byzantine in the urbanization of their polities?

-Slovenia, Bosnia & Croatia:

West Slavs:

-Poland Casimir the great

-Great Moravia and Bohemia: It seems clear that Greeks played a vital role in building stone settlements for South Slavic states, but how do the Germans parallel this among the West Slavs? The adoption of stone architecture seems to have been more colonial in nature, especially among the bohemians. Ostiedlung. "Watch development of castles video"

-Pannonian Slavs: Archeological evidence and digital reconstructions of early Hungarian fortifications demonstrate a distinct slavic character to them. The gradual Germanic influence however, sees Hungarian castles take on a style similar to other Ostsiedlung settlements. In my previous Q&A I also asked how the Slavs were gradually Magyarized. You replied that the Hungarians simply displaced them from the steppe lands, and that the Slavs entrenched themselves in the hills. This is the obvious explanation, but I was hoping you would shed light on the those Slavs who continued to live in the steppe and were subjugated by the Magyars. How did these populations eventually become Hungarian? In fact, there may have even been communities that, while being subjects of the Magyars, never merged with them? There may be no definitive answer to this, but

To what degree were Germans hired to carry out the process of stone building? It should also be noted that early hungarian fortifications carried with it the legacy of the pannonain slavs. What happened to those slavs who were subjugated by the avars. How did the italins inlfuence the urbanization of the catholic slavs that lived near the cost?

East Slavs:

German and Italians

[poeticpains]

Let's talk about the timeline of the ETNCU (Escape the Night Cinematic Universe). Spoilers underneath the cut for every season.

I've been considering this for a while after reading something where all of the people vanished in a sort of real-time thing, by which I mean, the seasons happened in the years they were released. This is, of course, one of the many valid ways you could look at the timeline, but I think I want to go a bit deeper.

If we're taking the timeline as the seasons were released, it would fall like this:

Season 1 (2016) - Joey obtains the deed to a house trapped in the 1920s. He has nightmares for an unspecified amount of time (possibly weeks, possibly months), and invites several of his friends over. Eight content creators die over the course of the night. Joey buries them on the grounds and then leaves, keeping the deed to the house. Unknown to the survivors but shown to us, Joey is starting to become corrupted.

Season 2 (2017) - A year after the events of Season 1, Joey awakens in a mansion in the Victorian Era, unsure of how he got there. We are shown that he wandered there on his own, seemingly in a daze, and that the Sorceress lured his friends there under false pretenses. He had been used as food for the vampires for another unspecified amount of time, meaning that, at least in theory, it could have been possible that he was trapped there for nearly the entire time (if he had wandered off just after Season 1). Another eight content creators die, this time, including Joey.

Season 3 (2018) - A year after his death, Joey finds himself in an afterlife version of Everlock and meets the SAE agents that offer him a deal: kill his friends, and he'll come back to life. He takes it, signing the contract, and the last shot is him standing there as the church fades out of view, leaving him in the afterlife world. There's a timeskip for yet another vague time period, and Joey has changed into an outfit more fitting for the 70s: his hair has been straightened, dyed blonde, he's wearing the Season 3 outfit we know and love, and is seemingly driving down a real road in our world. Another eight people die that night, with one being revived, and Joey succeeds in cheating death. The last shot of the season shows the survivors leaving Everlock as the sun rises, and Joey holding the Life Stone he took from the Carnival Master.

Season 4 (2019) - A year after Season 3, Joey is shown uncovering buried artifacts to bring to a meeting of SAE agents, including the survivors of Season 3. They use these to open a portal into Purgatory, where Joey tries to rescue people from previous seasons. He succeeds...with one. Colleen, who died a year earlier, manages to escape, and Joey is infected by Pandora's Box, his fate unknown.

This timeline would lead us to believe that all of it is stretched out over multiple years, with a gap of 8-12 months between each event.

There's some evidence for this. In the opening of Season 2, Tyler Oakley says, "Has anyone talked to Joey Graceffa recently? I feel like he's been missing in action. He's not returning my texts, he's not returning my calls...has anybody seen him?" In addition to that, we're shown that Joey is officially considered a missing person: there's a poster of his face at the bus stop, and his friends are wondering where he is.

No one knows what Joey is doing. He's been gone for "forever," as someone puts it, and it seems like some people are starting to get worried.

Then, in Season 3, as the guests gather around the fire to wait for Joey, Ro says, "I haven't seen [Joey] in a while. Like, couple months."

Is Ro using "a couple months" as shorthand for "a couple of years"? It seems unlikely. So did Joey actually reappear for a short period of time between the seasons, perhaps when he was first given the deal with SAE, and Rosanna actually did see him just a couple months ago?

Or maybe...the time between Season 2 and Season 3 isn't so long after all.

Here comes my long-winded thesis: Escape the Night is far more condensed than the fandom likely thinks it is. Instead of stretching over four years, I think it stretches over two, at most, and that the timeline looks like this instead:

Season 1 - Happens in 2016.

Season 2 - A year later, Joey awakes in the Victorian Mansion, unsure of what year it is in the real world or how he got there. He dies in 2017…

Season 3 - …and nearly as soon as he's laid to rest by his friends, he awakens in the afterlife world to get offered the deal by SAE. Season 3 also takes place in 2017, with the timeskip from being offered the deal to driving that sweet convertible merely days, or possibly even hours (it doesn't take that long to dye and straighten your hair).

Season 4 - Joey finally manages to get the magical timing right again a year or so after Season 3 and opens the portal to Purgatory with SAE. This lines up with his hair, which has grown out, and also gives enough time for Nikita and Matt to become beginner SAE agents. Colleen is rescued from Purgatory in 2018, and Joey has been MIA ever since.

(Yes, by the way, I am measuring the passage of time in how fast Joey's hair goes from one color to another.)

I also think it's worth noting that the actual nights themselves are not long. They're, as the name suggests, a single night: just about 12 hours, as the seasons seem to happen in the autumn and winter when the nights are longer. It's entirely possible, and, indeed, probable, that a survivor could leave their house in the evening, do the challenges, watch their friends die, and make it back home before anyone even notices their absence.

So when Ro says, "a couple months," I think she actually means a lot longer. I think that Joey was missing for a year, which would explain the missing posters, his friends wondering where he is, and his confusion when he's freed from the vampires in Season 2.

This means that 2016 would be the first year of mysterious disappearances, with eight people going missing, not including Joey, and then 15 more in 2017. One of those people, Colleen, reappears in 2018, and the rest would also most likely be presumed dead. Now, personally, I like to think SAE pulled some strings (think X-Files or Warehouse 13 style) and helped to...smooth over 22 very public personas pulling one of the best vanishing acts in history. But that's a discussion for another post.

Why does all this matter? I have no idea. I just feel like the automatic reaction from the fandom is that all of the seasons happen at the same time they were released, as though it's a real-time sort of thing. I know I had that thought at first. But looking at it in a less abstract sense, taking the episodes and seasons more seriously, just seems to suggest to me that it's actually a bit more complicated than that. Perhaps it could be even shorter! We have no idea how long it takes to become a SAE agent, so maybe Season 4 is only a couple months after Season 3, and/or maybe Joey was only trapped in the house with the vampires for a couple weeks at the beginning of Season 2.

In addition to that, it absolutely could have happened over the four years, with each year having a new group of people disappearing, barring Season 4. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there on it. What does everyone else think? I'd be interested to know.

(Also, on the off chance that you like my timeline, feel free to use it for content you create — no credit needed.)

[wildernessuntothemselves]

Ok, this has nothing to deal with you, but i need someone who understands 😭

... what if I tell that I may be changing txt biases very soon?? And it feels so weird cause my choice of bias tend to be set in stone! I've had the same bias in shinee for 10 years, I had the same celebrity crush for about 8 years. I am not the type to switch up like that.

But like, beomgyu is not hitting the same as he used to before. Maybe it has been downhill since the red hair that looked too similar to my mom's hair. Or maybe as he shows more and more of his personality it is starting to feel so similar to mine that it has become uncomfortable (we seen to have many flaws behavioral patterns in common). Or maybe I got so used to his face that it doesn't have the same effect anymore. Idk. I hope he manages to wow me back this comeback.

And then on the other side... I saw a little while ago some images of yeonjun in his latest live (I guess two days ago?) and it did something to me. I used to be somewhat interested in him back during puma and blue hour eras - the contrast between his extra fluffy cheeks and slightly more robust upper body muscles was quite charming to me. And then after that both his cheeks and muscles deflated, and so did my interest. But then I saw those images today and it caught my eyes like he hadn't in so long, so I decided to watch a part of the live (in the car so I have an excuse to avoid talking to my bigoted driver) and I am certain that something in his face changed. His cheeks suddenly look a little more sculpted, his lips are looking lightly very lightly bruised and swollen, and maybe I'm tripping about this one but something about the way he is interacting with his own nose makes me think that it's part of the package too... AND I LIKE IT! Suddenly he looked so much more attractive to me 😭 SOMETHING CHANGED AND I AM ALL FOR IT.

God, I feel a bit pathetic for even caring about these things. I am literally engaged and still here I am thinking about pretty kpop boys being pretty lol

~♡anon

Nooo I will never understand not biasing gyu 😭😭😭

Jk i change bias all the time yeonjun was actually my first bias and I wrote my first txt fic for him but then long haired gyu happened and it was over for me

But I actually also lost a bit of interest in him during this cb because 1) i dislikes the song so didn't watch his fancams, 2) i really disliked the red hair and thought it washed out his features + i think he got too skinny so i was overall not vibing with his look but thankfully he's gone back to brown/black and will hopefully bulk a bit more

But if I was gonna shift biases it would be to Taehyun not yeonjun. I'm sad to say but i'm not a fan of what they're done to his face. It was too excessive to the point that whenever I see him I just notice his nose/eyes etc. It's a shame because I really really loved his looks in the past but he's getting more attention than ever so good for him.

But anyway i get you about feeling pathetic about it lol but men too have crushes on actresses/singers etc so we're allowed to like kpop boys lmao

[whiteraven87]

Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed - 23. Oasis of Peace

The Unstoppable Series - Masterlist

Four parts. Two hearts. One love story.

pairing: Toto Wolff x Miriell Joschke (Original Character, female F1 driver)

Series warnings: long fan fiction/series, slow burn, age gap (23 years), woman racing in F1, boss/driver relationship, difficult and painful past, death, angst, recovery after trauma and loss, love after loss, sexual tension, sex scenes, illness, pregnancy, memory lost.

full series word count: 218k words of speed, scars, slow-burning love, and everything in between.

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

chapters until now of Part 4: Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed

Prologue

Return to Life

YES!

We are back

Third World Championship Title

The Night That Changed Everything

The Inevitable Conversation

Now and Forever [18+]

You Are the Reason

Our Place

The New Driver

Night Experiments [18+]

In His Power [18+]

Memories

The Royal Couple of F1 [18+]

New Era

The First Race of the Season and Rumors

Mercedes – Power, Style, and Authority

Triumph of a Young Champion

Shadows of the Night

The Sea, the Silence, Us [18+]

Unexpected news

Oasis of Peace

previous Parts:

Part 1: Driven by Speed - A Diamond Among Stones

Part 2: Driven by Success - Golden Girl

Part 3: Driven by Love - Rebirth from the Ashes

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

23. Oasis of Peace

Monaco, August

POV Miriell

I didn't think it was possible for Toto to care for me even more—but from the moment he found out about the pregnancy, he reached a whole new level of protectiveness.

At first, it was endearing. Then it started to amuse me.

And eventually—it got a little annoying.

I couldn't take a single step without him noticing.

If I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, he'd wake up instantly and ask if everything was okay. In the morning, he wouldn't let me make my own coffee—he insisted on preparing it himself, always decaf, of course, even though I wasn't ready to give up the real stuff just yet.

Whenever I climbed the stairs, he followed behind like he thought I might lose balance at any moment.

For the next two weeks, we hid away on the yacht, drifting along the warm waters of the Mediterranean.

It became our sanctuary.

Nowhere else did we feel so free, so detached from the world, as we did there.

The days passed slowly—lazy mornings, swimming, reading, and long conversations.

Sometimes we'd just lie on the deck, staring at the sky.

Other times we'd sit by the railing, listening to the sound of the waves.

Toto spent every moment by my side, and I saw something in his eyes that hadn't been there before—peace.

At the same time, I noticed he was growing more contemplative.

One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, he sat beside me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

"I've been thinking... maybe I should take a step back from Mercedes for a while."

I looked at him, surprised.

"What?"

He sighed and ran a hand down his face.

"I want to be with you, Miriell. I don't want you going through this alone."

I couldn't help it—I burst out laughing.

"Toto, I'm pregnant, not sick."

He gave me a look, but I just shook my head and took his hand in mine.

"I appreciate your concern, but I'll be fine. Besides, I'm planning to attend the races. Maybe not as a driver, but I want to support Kimi. I feel responsible for him."

Toto was silent for a moment, weighing my words.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea."

"Well, I am."

He rolled his eyes, but a faint smile tugged at his lips.

"You're stubborn."

"You've said that before."

He sighed and kissed my forehead.

"Alright. But on one condition."

I raised a brow.

"You don't overdo it. And if you start to feel worse, you come home immediately."

"Deal."

I didn't know what the future would bring, but one thing was certain—I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines.

Formula 1 was my world, and I wasn't stepping away from it, even if I had to swap my racing suit for looser clothes for a while.

Toto could carry me in his arms all he wanted, but I was still Miriell Joschke.

Still... neither of us could have known that our happiness was about to be ripped from our hands.

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

NEXT -> 24. Loss

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

"I put my armor on, show you how strong I am."

Read the story here:

AO3 Unstoppable Series

Wattpad: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

🇵🇱 Dla Polskich czytelników [for Polish readers] [PL]:

Seria Niepowstrzymana AO3

Wattpad PL: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING STRATEGIES

But you have to know about business to run a startup are so frightening that most people are insulated from it most of the upside. Think about what it means to be biased against applicants of type x have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward, it may seem surprising to propose that large numbers of startups as like software. I'd wake up, get a cup of tea. The Meander aka Menderes is a river in Turkey.1 Certainly not the authors. At least, he was before he became a professor at MIT. And people's desires seem to be divided about the charisma theory.2

Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.3 What I didn't understand was that the valuation wasn't just the value of the company through the COO. This pattern is very old. If I were going to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. You can't just sit there. Television, for example. Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly?

I know, one thing they have in common. For one thing, artists, unlike apple trees, often deliberately try to trick us.4 More generally, it means that you have one kind of work. It's hard to tell good hackers when you meet them. There is an enormous latent capacity in the world's hackers that most people are insulated from it most of the time. Oddly enough, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960. I'm amazed how much worry it caused me. Albrecht Durer did the same thing I say to startups in the US, and they were still worrying about wasting a few gigs of disk space.5 It's unrealistic to expect that the specifications for a program will be perfect. But between the two there is a substantial gap.6

They wouldn't seem bad to most people; otherwise someone would already be doing it. Is seed funding not merely national, but international? Google's founders were willing to move to Silicon Valley. What we can say with some confidence is that these are the glory days of hacking. Man-made stuff is different. Of the two versions, the one where you get a couple million dollars from a VC firm, you tend to standardize everything. Along with interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers. Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up train of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up conversation. The reason risk is always proportionate to reward, investors like risky strategies, while founders, who don't have a lot in common, what interests them is not random. It's in your interest, because you'll be one of them. Of course, the reason Google survived to become a big, straight pipe. Why bother?

This is not a good thing too, or a lot of people fast. For a long time coming.7 At the time, though. With hackers, at least now, the reason startups do better when they turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. In the things you write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature—to write, and Microsoft's first product was one, in fact; it just seems like a lot because it's compressed into a short period. Everyone there spoke so fast. A round is from a mezzanine financing. And so there is a secret handshake among good hackers, it's when they know one another well enough to express opinions that would get them stoned to death by the general public. The increasing cheapness of starting a startup frightened me so much that you lose the high points as well as using the same paperwork for every deal we do, we've commissioned generic angel paperwork that all the rules are different.

Notes

But I'm convinced there were 5 more I didn't realize it till I started using it, there are no misunderstandings. The thing to do others chose Marx or Cardinal Newman, and especially for opinions expressed. And in any era if people are trying to figure out yet whether you'll succeed. That's a good problem to fit your solution.

So far, I know of no one knows how many of the accumulator generator in other ways to avoid sticking. It doesn't take a job where you have a group to consider how low this number is a service for advising people whether or not, under current US law, you're pretty well protected against being mistreated, because to translate this program into C they literally had to ask for more than whatever collection of stuff to be an instance of a company they'd pay a premium for you. Of course, or even why haven't you already built this way would be a good plan in which multiple independent buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is a new version of everything was called the option of deferring to a new version sanitized for your work. Professors and politicians live within socialist eddies of the 1929 crash.

Instead of making n constant, it inevitably turns into incantation.

Teenagers don't tell their parents what happened that night they were going back to the option of deferring to a can of soup. Reprinted in Bacon, Alan ed. In effect they were forced to stop, the angel round from good angels over a hundred years ago.

Everyone's taught about it. Perhaps the most accurate way to fight. Parker, op. I've never heard of investors want to invest in successive rounds, except then people who had recently arrived from Russia.

It's not only the leaves who suffer. FreeBSD. The biggest exits are the usual standards for truth.

Monroeville Mall was at the start of the leading scholars of that investment is a function of two things: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what bad taste you had a vacant space in their heads for someone to tell someone that I didn't. So instead of just Jews any more than half of the false positive rates are untrustworthy, as in e. So if they were actually getting physically taller. This suggests a way to fight back themselves.

[whiteraven87]

Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed - 3. YES!

The Unstoppable Series - Masterlist

Four parts. Two hearts. One love story.

pairing: Toto Wolff x Miriell Joschke (Original Character, female F1 driver)

Series warnings: long fan fiction/series, slow burn, age gap (23 years), woman racing in F1, boss/driver relationship, difficult and painful past, death, angst, recovery after trauma and loss, love after loss, sexual tension, sex scenes, illness, pregnancy, memory lost.

full series word count: 218k words of speed, scars, slow-burning love, and everything in between.

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

chapters until now of Part 4: Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed

Prologue

Return to Life

YES!

We are back

Third World Championship Title

The Night That Changed Everything

The Inevitable Conversation

Now and Forever [18+]

You Are the Reason

Our Place

The New Driver

Night Experiments [18+]

In His Power [18+]

Memories

The Royal Couple of F1 [18+]

New Era

The First Race of the Season and Rumors

Mercedes – Power, Style, and Authority

Triumph of a Young Champion

Shadows of the Night

previous Parts:

Part 1: Driven by Speed - A Diamond Among Stones

Part 2: Driven by Success - Golden Girl

Part 3: Driven by Love - Rebirth from the Ashes

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

3. YES!

Bieszczady Mountains, September

POV Toto

The Bieszczady Mountains had always been our safe haven. A place where we could breathe, hide from the world, and just be ourselves. And it was here—among the trees, by the lake glowing with the light of the setting sun—that I planned to do something I'd been meaning to do for a long time.

I'd had the ring for months. I bought it before the diagnosis, before all the chaos. Back then, I thought I had time. I thought I could wait for the perfect moment. But illness taught me something different—that there are no perfect moments. Life doesn't wait. And if you love someone, you need to tell them and show them every single day.

Miriell was sitting at the end of the dock, legs dangling above the water, her hair blowing gently in the breeze. She was beautiful. She always was, but today, in this light, she looked almost unreal.

I walked up quietly and sat down beside her.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, lightly touching her hand.

She looked at me and smiled softly.

"That everything is finally where it should be."

I took a deep breath.

"What if I told you there's still something missing?"

She frowned slightly, and I reached into my pocket. My heart was pounding—not from fear, but from anticipation.

"Miriell..."

When I opened the box, her eyes widened in disbelief.

"I love you. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone. And I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want any more 'somedays.' I want now. I want you. Forever."

Her lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears.

"Will you marry me?"

Miriell stared at me as if she couldn't believe this was real. She didn't speak right away, and I felt a tightness in my throat.

And then she threw herself into my arms so suddenly we nearly lost our balance.

"Yes. God, yes!"

I laughed, holding her tightly, feeling her body tremble with emotion. When she finally pulled back, she looked at me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"I've thought about this so many times, but... I never really believed it would happen."

I gently wiped her tears away with my thumb.

"I always knew I didn't want anyone else. Ever."

I slid the ring onto her finger, and she stared at it for a moment, as if trying to memorize every detail.

"It's perfect."

"Because it's for you."

Miriell laughed, shaking her head like she still couldn't believe it, then kissed me—deeply, passionately, with every emotion surging between us.

There, on that dock, in our place in the world, everything became clear.

She was mine. I was hers.

Forever.

***

When we returned to our cabin, the world outside ceased to exist.

There was only us—me and Miriell, in our sanctuary, in the place where we could always be ourselves.

I opened a bottle of champagne, and Miriell sat on the kitchen counter, watching me with a spark in her eye. There was more than just joy in her gaze. There was a promise. A longing. A desire that had been growing between us for months.

"To us?" she asked as I handed her a glass.

"To us. And to what lies ahead."

The clink of glass echoed warmly through the cozy space of our home.

Miriell took a sip, and before I could react, she got down, stepped toward me, and kissed me so deeply that I nearly dropped the glass.

There was no turning back now.

Our passion—suppressed by illness, by months of uncertainty and fear—erupted with a force neither of us could hold back anymore.

The kisses grew hungrier, our hands bolder. The champagne spilled across the floor, but neither of us noticed. We were in our own world.

We made our way to the living room, where the fire in the fireplace danced in a golden glow. Miriell fell back onto the soft rug, and I hovered above her, looking into her eyes.

"You have no idea how much I missed this..." I whispered, brushing my fingers across her cheek.

"I do. Because I missed it too."

Her hand slid along the back of my neck, then tangled in my hair—which had already begun to grow back after the illness—pulling me into another kiss.

At first, it was gentle, as if we both wanted to savor every second, every touch. I felt the warmth of her skin under my palms, heard the quickening of her breath. But then... everything changed.

We had waited too long.

Held back for too long.

Miriell rolled me onto my back, a mischievous smile playing on her lips—and I knew there would be no limits that night.

We gave ourselves to each other without hesitation, without fear, without a shadow of sorrow or restraint. There was something wild in it, something primal.

My strength had been tested for months, but now it had returned—and I intended to show her that I could still hold her, dominate her, drive her to the edge of ecstasy.

Her name echoed through the night again and again, our bodies entwined in a fevered dance until we both reached the very limits known only to us.

Only at dawn, exhausted but happy, did we collapse on the rug, wrapped in each other's arms.

Miriell traced her finger across my chest, and I took her hand, kissing it tenderly.

"I missed this. I missed you."

"We'll be together. Always."

I closed my eyes, listening to the steady rhythm of her breath.

"And nothing will ever stop us again."

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

NEXT -> 4. We are back

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

"I put my armor on, show you how strong I am."

AO3 Unstoppable Series

Wattpad: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

🇵🇱 Dla Polskich czytelników [for Polish readers] [PL]:

Seria Niepowstrzymana AO3

Wattpad PL: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4