#category: tool first thoughts

[khajiit-reads]

Deck First Thoughts: Skyrim Tarot

So, whenever I get new decks, I like to generally go through my first thoughts. Now it's being shared on Tumblr now that I'm on Tumblr! Not quite a review, but a review-like format.

Well, well, well, an infamous (/joke) fandom tarot. Those things are generally infamous for being made by people who don't understand tarot and instead are made by those who want a quick buck or view these instead as collector items, instead valid divinatory tools.

The art is Marseille style, where our Major Arcana and Court Cards are fully illustrated, and the rest aren't. The suits are renamed, and are as such: Voice (Cups), Lockpicks (Pentacles), Arms (Swords), Spells (Wands).

Let's get the positives out of the way - I love the cardstock, though the cards stick to each other a bit when shuffling.

When it comes to the negatives, I don't favor the style the meanings is portrayed in the guidebook, as sentence-style reading than keyword style meaning. That's a personal gripe though, I've always preferred keywords for reading than "This is a sentence about what the card means." I read with my own set of keywords regardless the tarot deck as long as it's the right tradition, so it's not going to be a big problem for me.

Some of the character choices leave much to be desired. I don't really care that much about non-Skyrim characters being in the Skyrim tarot, but it is a bit odd.

I find choices like Sithis as XIII Death to be great, because Sithis is also god of change to the Argonians. Sithis is about the perfect choice for XIII Death.

Cicero however as 0 the Fool is a bit odd. Yes, Cicero is a fool, but doesn't exactly fill the criteria of what 0 the Fool means. I can see the point of "Cicero journeyed to Skyrim..." the guidebook says, but Cicero doesn't scream 0 the Fool to me very loudly.

I'm sure as I get more used to this deck, more "This character doesn't quite fit..." will come to light.

The three spreads at the end, being named for three of the Divines: Stendarr, Arkay, and Akatosh, really make me wanna make spreads for each of the TES Gods in a similar fashion, though.

This deck also makes me wanna use my laser engraver to make a personal deck based off of each of the Gods, though I'd have to make personal sigils for each of them for the sake of the "card art". Which is Fine, it'd just have to be quite a bit of work. I'm no good at actually drawing so that won't work well for me. If I ever will, though, remains to be seen, as I still have The Citadel to use for significator. It can be a hobby project! But that's an aside to all of this, lol.

I like the deck! I admit my love for The Elder Scrolls might be affecting my POV, and my preferred reading style might be affecting my POV as well. We'll see of it all when I own this deck longer.

[just-a-space-duck]

So About That Armor…

I regret to inform myself that I like it.

If you haven't seen it:

I'll give you time to take it in. This is a static, (hopefully) eternal text post, so take your time.

Ok so before I go further, you are allowed to have any and all opinions about the armor. Do not listen to me; I am a stranger on the internet who attaches himself to fictional murder cyborgs and treats them like kitty cats.

So first of all, it's weird. And I like it for that. Even if I found it to be the most infuriating piece of costume design ever, I still wouldn't be able to help but respect it for how strange it is.

When it comes to fanworks, adaptations, new installments in a franchise, or even just different takes on the same trope, I love it when creators take things in an unconventional or even seemingly unrelated direction that upon closer inspection still relates to the base or original concept. To get what I mean, think goth interpretations of Rarity or Cosmopoliturtle's Pokémon redesigns. The TV series armor sits alongside these for me, because this was the thought process of the designer, Tommy Arnold:

First of all, it is so funny that The Company would just brand their armor and by extension their secunits, their combat/security products, like Louis Vuitton bags. Also, the logo of The Company strikes a nice balance between being simple enough to be easily reproducible and recognizable, but complex enough to read as a logo and not just a simple shape or pattern. Plus, The Company logo being mostly just concentric Cs, clever there.

But there's also some worldbuilding and character expression in this design.

The Corporation Rim is just capitalism but more. A company slathering everything and everyone they create and own in mountains of logos, even when it's potentially impractical, showcases just how extensive corporatism is in this setting. Additionally, this design could be something of a status marker. Secunits are high end additions and/or alternatives to other security measures. Much like how logos on purses, tennis shoes, and cars serve to tell observers, "I have the fancy, expensive version of [insert category of thing here] ergo I am a very wealthy/powerful/cool person", a secunit covered in corporate logos communicates the high status and access of the client(s).

Now what was one of the first things we learned about Murderbot in the books? It disabled its governor module, the thing preventing it from defying orders and having any level of freedom, but instead of doing what it could to leave The Company, Murderbot just stayed with it and kept doing its intended function. For over four years. What else do we learn in the first book? That it feels most comfortable in the armor because this prevents humans from seeing its face, from treating it more like a person or human rather than a tool or bot. This makes the armor being composed of the logo of the group that both created and hurt Murderbot very symbolic.

Murderbot has internalized the message that it is a dangerous weapon and not a person deserving of care to the point that, at least at the beginning of the series, it shies away from anything that insists that it deserves the same kindness that humans do. It's only ever been taught what the company built it to do, so it doesn't know what to do next once it's obtained some semblance of freedom for itself by disabling its mental shock collar and so keeps doing what it's always done, even though it very much would rather not be in such a situation. Even by the most recent book, System Collapse, Murderbot is still wrestling with the idea that it matters beyond how it can assist others. Murderbot finding comfort hiding behind the very thing that will not let you forget the company that enslaves it, is just juicy theming.

Also, the helmet looking so weird works well with how many humans don't know what secunits look like, with some not even thinking they have human-like faces. If you had no context for this image, you might very well assume this is a fully robot character or even a statue.

I have my own gripes and worries and hopes concerning the upcoming show, but I just couldn’t get this fun bit of character design analysis out of my head. Shouldn’t have watched so much TB Skyen.

[ryes-brownies08]

feature me [jay x male reader]

"You really killed it out there." Jay spoke, almost taunting. "You really think so?" You asked, reciprocating his energy. "I know so. Because I watching the entire time."

NSFW - If you're a minor, i literally do not care. Just dont let ur mom catch u or whatever 🤷‍♂️

Requested by: Anonymous

˙⋆✮ genre: SMUT ˙⋆✮ roles: top! jay, bttm! mreader ˙⋆✮ word count: 3.7k words ˙⋆✮ inspo: feature me - flo

SYNOPSIS: Jay and M/n. Two fierce performers in their respective categories, and a surprisingly good fit for one another. Their label knew what they were doing when they arranged for the two to perform a cover song together. What the two musicians hadn't known, though, was how attracted they'd be to each other, and how they weren't just impressed with one another's talents. As Jay and M/n entertained their mutual attraction, they found themselves caught in a night they'd never forget.

WARNINGS + TAGS: flirting, music industry, rough unprotected sex, swearing, insensitive at times, guitarist jay, fingering, intense sex, tension ;))), depictions of any irl character here does not reflect who they are irl this work is purely fictional, etc

The stage is set. The room holds its breath with anticipation. You stand in the middle of darkness as you stare out into the audience of the acoustic lounge you're in. You can see them, but they can't see you.

It's somehow nerve-wracking given you've performed in a lot of places for a lot of different people before. Maybe it’s different now because this acoustic lounge had pretty skilled instrumentalists in it, and you never really performed with a live band before. That means you have to match their performance with the only tool you have, your voice.

Then it hits. The kick and closed hi-hat. The signature sound of the song you were covering, aside from the notable guitar; ‘Feature Me’ by FLO.

The lights fade in, and you barely manage a 'singer-model expression' before it gets illuminated. The hi-hats of the intro shuffle complexly, matching the rhythm of your tense heartbeat. God, this live set makes you so nervous. That didn't matter now, it was time to do what your fans loved best; sing and move your body. After all, you know that this performance, much like any other, would definitely be recorded and posted.

Your makeup glistened as the light rose, reminding you of your look. A light streak of blue and white glitter, spread across either cheekbone like glossy freckles. Silver piercings in your ears, small but intricate - you can't remember them too well. Light blue denim jeans, well-fit at the thighs and gradually loosening at the calves, paired with a sleeveless denim vest of the same color, buttoned up except for the top button, showing off your collarbone.

Your arms were also out, and while they weren't built at all, sometimes your biceps flexed, and it felt like the stylists made the right choice. Maybe that dreadful gym was proving to pay off more than you thought.

You’re set up for success, and can't make this all for nothing.

You hold the mic stand firmly as you do your best to look confident. You’ve got to sing your first line as the intro comes to an end. "Not what I usually do, but I've been peeping you." You sing. Not bad, albeit a bit breathy for how you'd prefer to sound.

"I'm tryna play it cool but it's too much, yeah." You follow, your free hand slithering up to your collarbone. Still getting used to everything, you wonder if that move was too much. Your hands weren't really free in your other performances, always busy with a handheld mic or doing a dance, so you thought to pull that sensual move.

"Got me breaking the rules; there ain't no second to." You take a breath, a sharp inhale which could have been avoided if you managed your breath better. "He's my forbidden fruit, yeah." You do a good job at the latter half, your tone rich with vibrato.

Then, the bass kicks in, and an ambient light from behind you casts a warm, orange glow on your (S/c) skin. The hall is acoustic and cozy, but quite modernized as well, and it excites you. The keyboardist plays a vibey tune, followed by the guitarist playing the signature sound of the amorous, seductive R&B anthem. What surprises you though, was the electric take on the originally acoustic guitar. It made everything more sensual and interesting.

You take the mic from the stand, and walk around slowly, the crowd lightly cheering as you become comfortable. You gotta move and give this performance some flavour; you were always about adding a bit of zest into the things you did, which made you as authentic as you were.

A nod from the drummer, a grin from the keyboardist, but one instrumentalist in particular catches your eye. The guitarist. Amongst them all, he's someone you know. Not personally, but you're a pretty big fan of. You've liked almost every post of his, despite having a load more followers than him.

Park Jongseong. Or better known as the attractive guitarist Jay. Beautiful and talented, seductive by just doing his thing. He was an actualisation of a very interesting concept, his visual sleek, polished and upper-class, whilst his aesthetic and marketing was edgy, sexualised and so seductively masculine.

He catches you looking at him, and you see that look in his eye. Slender and strapping. He’s biting his lip in concentration, his eyebrows knit tightly together as he focuses on his guitar. But something about that gaze feels partially reciprocal, with undertones of tension. That’s the sexy look you’ve been dying to see up close – as a fan, all you’ve done so far is fantasize about him in ways not appropriate for everyday conversation.

You change your trajectory and strut up to him, as you sing the lines of the chorus, now being able to balance your voice against the volume of the live band. "Set the scene and feature me. Touch on me, get on your knees. I'll take the lead." You smile as the audience around you warms up with your performance. He plays the guitar, bopping his head as he vibes to the beat.

You approach him, and the two of you are standing before each other. You're testing the waters, and it doesn't seem like he minds at all. The crowd cheers; loud enough to be appreciative and quiet enough to be respectful of your show.

To look casual, you swagger over to the other band members, trying not to look hyperfixated over Jay. But it's clear that when you waltz over to them, it's more supportive than when you and Jay stand before each other. It's like pitting a growing flame against a gentle daisy; intense tension against a friendly, platonic support.

As you reach the bridge and the song gets closer to its end, you find yourself drawn back to the centre stage. You roll your body just a little, and the crowd loves it. You've performed expertly, and subtly but effectively seductively.

"Are you receiving the signs? I'm speaking on my mind." You sing, and it comes out like velvet and thunder; you're not just singing, you're inviting him. And when you look back at him, he's biting his lips and shredding that guitar. He's definitely not minding the signs.

"I just want you to come through. I've already set the mood; I'll tell you what to do to me, yeah, yeah." You sing, hitting the high note of the song. Grand and demanding in it's tone - rich yet sultry enough, wavering healthily with vibrato.

The crowd erupts in a full blown cheer, some hands in the air, some jaws knocked right open, and unseen tongues tied for sure. You can see the instrumentalists truly feel it from your peripherals, appreciative of your high note as they continue to do their thing. But again, you come back to Jay.

In a surge of confidence, you place a hand on Jay's free shoulder, gyrating your hips slowly as you wink at him, and he looks at you with a bold smile, dimples forming on either side of his cheeks. The crowd goes wild as you follow up with some ad-libs and riffs in honour of your inspiration trio, FLO.

The last post-chorus feels danceable, and you don't have to do so much at all. You repeat a simple "oh-oh~" over and over and that takes you to the end. But just before the song finishes, you walk behind Jay, and as you sing the finishing line, "I'll take the lead," you slither a hand up on his shoulder. The crowd delivers a round of applause, and you let out a breath of amusement and gratefulness.

The band members look at each other in reverence, and you smile at the audience gratefully. You, alongside the rest of the crew, bring your hands together as you applaud each other, and you and Jay spare a glance at each other. His is firm, his smile stoic and a bit more than just platonically appreciative. Flustered, you chuckle and break the eye contact, drawing a laugh from him.

You turn to face the audience, placing the mic back in the stand. They cheer and have faces full of smiles. It takes a moment, but it dawns upon you; you did well.

After giving the audience a few words of gratitude, you and the rest of the members leave the stage.

The rest of the crew vanishes elsewhere, whilst you walk backstage, catching a breath as you grab your water bottle from your desk in the dressing room. Everyone is gone by now, and the night feels like it's coming to an end. It's nice to have a moment to yourself knowing you didn't do that bad at all on stage.

You hear the door creak and shut lightly. It doesn't alarm you, but someone else just entered your dressing room. "I'm not interrupting, am I?" You hear from behind you, and already know who it is.

You whip your head back, and you're met with the sight of exactly who you expected. Your favourite guitarist, in a silk white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the top with his sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, with black slacks that fit his legs delectably.

"Not at all. What's up?" You respond before thinking. It's quite casual for who you are, but you can't undo the trajectory of the conversation now.

He lets out an expensive chuckle. It's like fine wine, or cigarettes after sex, or a hybrid of both - it calls out to you. "It's M/n, right? I mean, I just wanted to say that you killed it out there. Every part of that." He smiles nonchalantly as he puts his hands in his pocket and leans on a hip. In your opinion, he didn't need those pants.

"Awh..." You manage, your fingers running through your collarbone sheepishly. It was a little penchant of yours, and a weird contrast to how you'd touch it on stage. Maybe it just looked charismatic, but was you trying to comfort yourself. "I'm actually a big fan. I follow your page." You admit.

"For real? Appreciate it man." He says, tilting his head a little before placing right back to a neutral position. How seductive. You weren't that type of guy, but Jay was so attractively masculine. Grounded, sexy, dominant, and enough of a tease to get you going without pissing you off.

"No, you're great! Tonight, too; and the guitar was electric, so I was so surprised. Cause the guitar of 'Feature Me' is acoustic, if I'm not wrong?" You cross your arms and lean on your hip, comfortable and enjoying his company.

Jay shrugged, hands still in his pockets. "I dunno, I just followed the sheet. Glad you liked it. But really," Jay spoke, his voice with an undertone of implication. "You really killed it out there." It was like a taunt. It was prying something out of you, the way he took no more than half a step closer to you. Not yet implicit enough to be brass-necked, but audacious enough to be exciting.

The air in the room shifted, and you knew exactly where this was going. There was no more room for the cute chitchat, things were taking a turn. "You really think so?" You ask, reciprocating that energy. But to be fair, that was just you; led easily into submission and ready to serve. In your experience, it felt like that nature about you excited the more assertive type, the trait acting like a beacon to people like Jay.

"I know so. Because I watching the entire time." Jay replies, the tone in his voice no longer a question. His hand reaches out to gently grab your chin, vigilant for any signs of discomfort.

You look up to meet his gaze. It's everything you want. Assertive, strapping, lustful, sly. Undeniable.

"Well," Your eyelids relax as your expression, once eager, submissive and excited, was now sedative, alluring and lustful. You want him bad. "What happens now?"

He can't help but grin, letting out a playful scoff. He doesn't say anything, letting the silence speak for itself as you stare in each others eyes, as you realise the two of you are much closer to each other than before.

TIME SKIP

The sound of moist squelching fills up the now locked dressing room, and the air around you is still except for the whirr of a nearby fan. You're out of breath, panting helplessly as you're now certain that your face is red through your (S/c) skin. The leather couch in the dressing room feels cold against your bare ass, your legs spread on either side as Jay kneels in front of you, two slender and skilful fingers deep in you.

Your leg twitches, hips locking as if shifting between becoming free of tension and tense again as he does so. You're a whimpering hot mess beneath him. He pushes his fingers in deep, admiring your face as he fingers you. The only clothing on you now was your unbuttoned denim vest, revealing your slender body.

"Jay... fuck..." You bite your lip, trying your best to hold back your moans.

He just chuckles in response. It makes you feel weak in the knees, and slightly embarrassed. "You're so cute, M/n." He leans closer, face to face with you as his fingers remain sunken deep inside you, making you squirm and arch up as your shoulder blades press against the back of the couch. "You're gonna feel so good around my cock."

You melt, and you can't keep the eye contact with him. He looks so sure, so ready, and it makes you feel completely at his disposal. He smirks and leans in for a kiss. Gentle at first, then gradually more demanding. His tongue slides into your mouth, swift, slippery and expertly taking charge. Alongside the slurping, squelching sounds of your lips, you can still audibly hear him still finger you, rubbing against your prostrate every now and then.

He then bites your bottom lip. Hard. But not hard enough to draw blood. You gasp, and hold onto him out of reflex, needing support. He lets out another chuckle against your lips, finding you adorable. You blush every time, more and more bashful of your reactions while you're just entranced by the sexy and dominant man he is.

With a few more kisses and strokes to the inside of your tight hole, he pulls his fingers out. Sharp enough to make you wince, but gentle enough to feel pleasurable.

You take a breath, and it comes out shaky and frazzled, then watch him as he undoes his zipper, bringing something solid out of the confinements of his pants. "Alright, M/n. You ready for this?" He asks, and his sly gaze is something you realise you'll never get over.

You nod in response.

"Nuh-uh." He tuts. "I wanna hear you say it." Jay replies, pulling a sizeable erection out of his pants.

"Jay, please fuck me..." You respond, flustered, your own erection hardening at the thought of sex with him.

And just as you expect he would, he lets out another chuckle. "God, M/n." Jay spoke, getting up for a moment as he took off his shirt. He reaches for the lube you have in your bag, and pours a sizeable amount onto his shaft, unzipped and free from the restraint of his pants. He doesn't bother to take his pants off fully, letting them hang below his v-line. Then, he begins leaning over you, fists buried in the couch above either of your shoulders.

Jay looks down at your legs, spread wide open, making him lick his lips at the thought of fucking your pert ass. His tip teases your entrance as he tries to line the two up, hitting your perineum every now and then.

But then, when he's aligned perfectly, he enters you unmissably. It's swift, rough, and intense. He's prepped you up real good, and you can feel him inside you, his well-rounded size and thickness pleasuring you without even thrusting.

"Fuck!" You whine, letting out a wet moan. Jay growls as he enters, his cock surrounded by your walls.

"Shit, M/n." He lets out an eager, husky chuckle. "Still so tight after all that prepping, huh? I'm gonna enjoy this." He begins to pick up some momentum, and you can feel his pubic hair tingle against your leg every now and then.

Watching him like this was a treat; everything about him is perfect. His abs are lit up perfectly, the light behind him making him look ethereal. His arms are also well defined, and his thigh muscles flex with every thrust. Everything from his face, to his muscles, to the hair on his body; it's all gorgeous. But you don't have as much time to think about that as you'd like, given the way he furiously pumps into you.

Each thrust was raw and primal, going to lengths you hadn't known were possible. "Ah.. fuck... Jay..!" You moan exasperatedly, feeling an ache in your inner thighs and hips from being in the strenuous position for so long.

"Yeah, baby. Keep moaning for me. Don't you dare fucking stop." He replies, a hand reaching out to grab your face, squishing your cheeks. Jay is the epitome of hot, and you love being made into his plaything. You truly are all his tonight. And of course, you don't dare stop, no matter how shy you get. That's why Jay locked the door before any of this happened, so you can let as loose as he needs you to.

He thrusts hard into you, propping one of your legs over your shoulder. The pain is beautiful, hurting in the way you need it to every single night, in every single place.

"Jay.. f-fuck! P-Please..!" You beg. You don't know what for, but you do anyways. After all, the way his member slides in and out of you so perfectly, like a sensual caress to your insides and a roar of pleasure at the same time, you don't care about anything except for him right now.

Jay looks up at you, a tense grunt escaping his lips as he gasps, eyes rolling backwards for a split second before he regains composure. "Fuck, M/n. You're so fucking beautiful... I'm gonna fucking cum..." He growls, leaning in to meet your lips in a wet, sloppy kiss.

"Cum inside me, Jay. P-Please.." You moan, and in response, you get one back from Jay. It's a mix of submissive and dominant, yet still so strapping and masculine. Whatever it is, it makes your cock twitch with anticipation and arousal. It builds up an intense passion and longing for him, and you either need to hear that sound again or need to cum right now, because he's making you so horny.

"Oh, I'll fucking cum inside you alright. You just sit there and take it like the slut you are." He replies, delivering a firm slap to your lean ass. You let out a loud moan, and wonder if anyone heard. But truly, you don't care. You just have to reach to your climax.

"Oh fuck, M/n...!" Jay groans, delivering a few more thrusts with a newfound intensity as what must be adrenaline kicks in. You wince as he pounds into you, feeling a pain in your lower back as he essentially starts folding you.

Then before you know it, you and Jay start releasing at the same time. Frantically. Intensely.

The both of you moan into each other, gasping and grunting as you juice each other out as best as you can, lips tangling in a flame that seals the passion of the moment just minutes ago.

Jay places a few more kisses, less lustful, and more romantic, on your lips after you finish. He hunches over you, trying his hardest to catch his breath as he pulls out.

You relax, legs finally free of tension as they quiver from your tryst. That was fucking incredible.

"You know what, M/n?" Jay asked as he sits on his knees in fatigue, still in between you.

"Y-Yeah...?" You ask, still regaining composure.

"You're still so fucking beautiful." He says, flashing that same iconic smile of his. You let out a flustered scoff.

"Thanks. That was... that was pretty good." You reply.

"I know, right?" Jay smiles, the two of you breaking into soft laughs. "We should do this more often, huh?"

"Like... hook up?" You ask.

"Uh... well, I meant collabs." Jay chuckles, a bit caught off guard.

"Oh shit. No, no, I didn't mean to-" You start, another blush rising to your cheeks.

"No, no. Calm down. I was actually gonna suggest the hookup thing after I said we should collab." He smiles, holding your forearms to reassure you.

"Oh." You reply, throwing your head back in a wry, exhausted, but nevertheless content relief.

"Yeah." Jay laughs, eyes slim with glee. "Alright, let's get the fuck up." He declares, helping you up.

You get up, a wince escaping your lips as your ass begins to feel extremely sore. You didn't even wanna think of how it'd feel tomorrow.

"Pass me my shirt." Jay asks, holding out a hand as he put his now softened cock back in his pants. Like you thought before, he didn't need them at all.

As the two of you get dressed and laugh about how you surely have to shower when you get home, you see how the whole venue at this point is basically empty. When the time for you two to go your separate ways arrives, you exchange numbers, and Jay rakes your body just once more with his eyes as you head off.

"Catch you round, 'kay, M/n?" He holds a hand up as a greeting.

"For sure." You nod, offering a small smile before you walk off. You did well today.

As you walk out the venue, and the cool air of the pitch black sky hits you, you're able to take a breath and reflect as you make your way to your car.

What a fantastic fucking night.

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[viennakarma]

My dearest friend and enemy

Part 1 | Fernando Alonso x Reader

Summary: You and Fernando always dreamed of the day you'd get into Formula 1. Unfortunately, the competition, the pride and the stubborness, get in the way of a beautiful friendship.

Word count: 7.8k

Tags: female!reader, driver reader, coming of age, ups and downs of a friendship, brocedes coded, very very angsty, cursing, anger, fights, overuse of flavio briatore as a plot device, lots of low blows, sprinkles of romance, kissing, making out, happy ending, not beta read

Relationship: Fernando Alonso x Reader

Note: Someone requested this, with this very detailed request, and it has consumed my every thought for the past week or two. I had to tweak some things from the request here and there, hope it's ok. It's heavily inspired by brocedes. Obviously we don't have all the facts with whatever happened to Lewis and Nico, but I have my own theories, that I tossed around this story here and there. (There is a lot of info that is wrong or inaccurate, I did this on purpose to fit my narrative, if you catch them, please ignore)

I'm sorry if it feels rushed, this was getting way too long and I just wanted to follow my heart. Feedback and opinions are appreciated xx

[If you have never listened to Tamino, or never heard this song, please do a favor to your brain and heart, and listen!]

Find me on Twitter!

PART 2 (END)

You wouldn’t cry. You wouldn’t cry.

You repeated those words to yourself as you stared at your fucked up kart, it wasn’t even starting. You didn’t have any more money to repair it, and if you didn’t, then you wouldn’t be able to keep going in the competition.

“Hey, are you alright kid?” Someone stopped you, and your tears fell down. You used the sleeve of your overalls to wipe your face.

“I won’t make it to the final round of the competition,” you pointed to your kart.

The boy knelt down beside you, taking a look at your kart. It was the first time you really looked at him. He was a bit older than you, probably two or three years, since you had seen him in the next category, and you knew he was one of the best from what you could see.

He walked away suddenly, but came back a minute later with a tool box. He knelt down and started tinkering with your kart.

“What- what are you doing?” You asked crouching beside him. He only hummed, seemingly concentrating on his work.

After a few minutes of silence, he asked you to test to see if it would work, and you started your kart, and it did work.

“Oh my god!” You smiled, leaving the kart, “how- how much does it cost?”

“Don’t worry, I wanted to help,” he shrugged, putting back his tools.

“Are you sure?” You asked again.

“Yes,” he stood up, and as his eyes found yours, shining under the sunlight, you smiled at each other.

“Thank you so much!” You said, offering a hand for him to shake.

“I’m Fernando,” he said, and as you said your name back, he smiled a little shyly and just said, “I know.”

“You know?” You whispered.

“Yeah. I’ve seen you in your kart. You’re good.”

You bashed under his praise, cheeks warming and stomach full of butterflies.

From then on, you and Fernando became friends, always meeting up in karting competitions, despite being usually in different categories, since he was a bit older than you. But you’d always be seen together on those occasions, or either of you on the stands, cheering for the other. Your parents knew you were close friends, and after a while, your parents would take turns at taking you two for competitions, usually going together.

You met again when you got to the Spanish Junior Championship, it was your first time at that competition and it would be Fernando’s third. Your rivalry was mostly playful in that competition, you were still the best of friends, even when you got close to his score, you still managed to leave the rivalry on the track. When it ended and you stared up at Fernando from the second place podium, you felt proud of him, happy even. You understood that he had more experience than you, winning that competition three times in a row, and you always would have next year to catch up to him.

That day when he took your hand to walk back to his dad, he held your hand tight. And when they dropped you off at home, you winked at him.

“I’ll catch you next year.” You walked to the door hearing him and José Luis laughing back in the car.

You didn’t manage to catch him next year. Fernando reached new heights as he moved up to world championships. Life took you apart, and without your greatest opponent in the championship, you took it home for three years in a row.

The next few years, you and Fernando were mostly apart. The distance was eating you thin, even when you two managed to talk for a couple of hours on the phone, or whenever he sent you letters talking about his biggest achievements. You still saw each other over summer and winter, which was what mostly kept your bond strong. You also managed to kart for fun sometimes, or go for ice cream, or just sit on the porch of your house, talking about life. You two always shared an ice cream on your birthdays, a tradition that was born ever since you were 13, and you and Fernando gathered together every coin you had to be able to buy one ice cream cone that you happily shared sitting on a sidewalk.

“We’ll make it to Formula 1 one day, Nena.”

You laughed. Despite being the greatest dream of them all, by that time, it had been twenty years since the last woman had been in a Formula 1 car, really competing. You wanted to, so bad, but you didn’t want to get any hope for it to be crushed later on.

“You, most likely, Nano. You’re brilliant, I’m sure you’re going to be a world champion one day,” you said, playful, “just don’t forget us peasants when you’re rich and famous.”

“You have too much faith in me, Nena,” he shook his head.

“No, I just know stuff. When you get your world championship, I hope you will hear my voice in your head telling you I told you so.”

He laughed it off.

Fernando extended you a bottle of cheap wine, it was his way of celebrating your 18th birthday, now you were of age. The wine warmed you up, leaving a pretty stain in both of your lips. 

“What about that girl you liked? Are you dating her yet?” You asked to break the silence.

“No…” he shrugged then took the bottle from you to take a chug straight from it, “she’s not for me.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, even though he didn’t look particularly unhappy about it.

“Don’t be. It was just a silly crush,” his lips turned down, “The girls don’t find me attractive enough,” he shook his head, feeling shy for having this conversation with you, “and I don’t know, I’ve always been a little shy, I guess. I don’t have much experience in romance. None, if I’m being honest.”

“None?!” You sounded shocked at his lack of romance. He just shook his head. 

At eighteen you had your fair share of teen love, having crushes here and there, sometimes even sharing kisses under the bleachers at school. Fernando was your best friend and you knew him like no one, and you could see that he was lonely and feeling embarrassed, up until that point, his life had been school, karting and work to fund his karting.

“Would you like to?” You asked, suddenly turning to him after drinking a sip of courage from the wine bottle.

“Like to what?” He frowned.

“To be kissed?” You whispered, and looked behind you, inside your house, where your parents were inside.

Your heart raced faster than you ever did, his pretty eyes looking for your face, trying to find any sign of joking, like you were just being silly. But you were serious, looking at his face intently. You were about to back pedal when he nodded softly.

“What-” his voice failed, and he gulped nervously, “what should I do?”

“Just follow my lead, and you will feel what to do,” you said, extending a hand and holding his face, “close your eyes.”

He did, and you just closed the distance quietly, but when you had barely touched his lips with yours, he bursted out laughing, leaning back. You also laughed at the strangeness of the situation.

“It’s ok, we don’t have to, Nano” you recovered, but he shook his head, giggling.

“No, sorry, sorry! You’re my favorite person, I trust you,” he sighed, closing his eyes again.

You held his face, trying to get closer again, and this time he let you. With a soft press, you pecked his lips for a couple of seconds. You felt butterflies in your stomach, and they pushed you to push into his lips, mouth opening a little and him following your lead. One of his hands found your face, and you deepened the kiss. He was inexperienced but surprisingly patient, letting you lead and slowly picking your pace and moves. Your kiss turned into an almost make out session, lasting long minutes, with Fernando getting the hang of it with every passing second. When you parted, his cheeks and lips were red, and you two smiled nervously at each other.

“Was that ok?” You asked, suddenly insecure.

“More than ok,” he whispered back, “I think we-”

A loud noise from inside your house made you two jump away from each other, and a second later, your mom’s voice boomed through the door, reminding you of your curfew, and checking your watch, you noticed it was almost eleven.

“Sorry, Nano. I have to go,” you stood up and he followed you.

“See you Saturday to go karting?” He asked just to confirm the plans you had made earlier.

“See you,” you waved awkwardly before sprinting inside your house.

Skipping to your room, you locked the door behind you and pressed a hand to your lips, still warm from kissing your best friend. Going to your window, you pulled on the curtains and watched through the gap as Fernando left, calmly walking down the street.

You never talked about it. And when you met again at the end of the week, none of you mentioned the kiss, things quickly went back to normal as you two pretended it never happened. Over a few months, your heart never let you forget about the kiss you shared with your best friend, and whenever you laid in bed to sleep, your mind would wander back to that specific night. You spent months building up the courage to confess you had feelings for him, and you wanted to be more than friends. Your choice was to tell him on his birthday, when you usually would go for a birthday ice cream.

“I need to tell you something-” You said at the same time he muttered, “Can I tell you something?”

“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing to you, but at that point, your bravery quickly faded.

“No, you first. You’re the birthday boy!”

“Uh, I’m dating a girl. I’m going to introduce her to you and my family at the birthday party tonight.”

That moment, with a smile frozen on your face, a small part of you was ripped forever. The excitement and fear of a young love turned into stone at the pit of your stomach. To this day, you don’t know how you managed to not burst into tears that very moment. Instead, you kept smiling, asking Fernando for more details so he could get distracted and not notice the pain in your eyes.

Managing to bury what you decided to call a silly teen infatuation after a few months, your friendship with Fernando became even stronger everyday that passed. 

You made it to the international and European competitions, winning the former twice in a row, and the latter once. You were in the Euro Open when Fernando made it to Formula 1.

He told you personally, when he signed with Minardi, and you were so happy you jumped on his arms, hugging him tight and screaming.

“I told you! I told you!” You shouted, as he carried your feet from the floor, “My best friend is in Formula 1! Oh my god, Nano!” You let go of him, your smile barely fitting your face, “I’m gonna be insufferable! I’m claiming bragging rights right now!”

He only laughed at your happy ramble.

You balanced your competitions with working double shifts for almost two months, so you could afford to go to the Spanish Grand Prix the year of his Formula One debut. He didn’t win anything that year, but he still had your immense support every step of the way. When waves of self doubt came and left him shaken, you’d hug him and whisper softly how he was just a rookie, how he would still have time to prove himself.

“You’re gonna be one of the best there is, Nano.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

He also would show you support whenever your schedule at the Euro Open didn’t coincide with his at Formula 1. It was one of the best feelings to get to the podium and see your best friend as you held the trophy. When you finally found him after the podium, he hugged you for a moment, commenting on his favorite moments from your race. As you stood, he gestured to someone, and a beautiful girl came closer.

“Nena, this is my girlfriend, Lucia,” he pointed. Your smile froze for a second. Another one, since the girl from last year couldn’t handle the distance of dating someone who was constantly traveling the world.

“It’s so nice to meet you!” You shook her hand, suddenly self conscious of your frizzy hair and sweat damp overalls. She was so pretty. So much prettier than you. 

Lucia was pretty and kind, a little bit clingy, but she treated you very well, and wasn’t jealous of your friendship with Fernando, different from the last one. All your flings never went as far as becoming boyfriend or girlfriend, so you decided to focus more on racing and trying to make a name for yourself.

“Fernando,” you called one of the rare days you two were both free and could laze around, this time, sitting on the ground of the garden, staring at the clear sky and sharing a pint of ice cream.

“Hm?”

“I talked to your dad, and you’re going to be free the day of the last race of the Euro Open, so I was wondering if you will come to see me become the champion?” You turned to him, a smile adorning your face.

“Confident, are you?” He teased your certainty that you would win the competition.

“Not confident, just focused,” you corrected him, and started explaining the date of the race, but as you talked, his smile quickly faded and you stopped.

“I’m sorry, Nena. It’s Lucia’s graduation that day, I can’t miss it.”

You swallowed, thinking it would matter so much to you that he’d be there, but at the same time, you didn’t want to be selfish or make it seem like you’re competing with the girl he loved. You tried to disguise the disappointment in your face, but he noticed. At that point he knew you for half of your lives, he knew very well when you tried to mask your sadness. And unfortunately, he had been on the receiving end of that sad face one too many times.

“Oh,” you nodded, “Don’t worry, I totally understand.”

Fernando pressed his lips thin, your meek voice doing nothing to soothe the squeezing in his heart.

The day you won the Euro Open, you could barely contain your happiness as you stood on the podium, showing your trophy to your parents, who were watching you all emotional. As the podium ceremony finished, you walked back to your parents, your mom wiping her tears and your dad the happiest. Then, you finally noticed Fernando was with them.

“Nano!” You hugged him.

“Congratulations, champion!” He said. Your heart was so full you thought it would explode, so all you managed to say were two words.

“You came.”

“You called.”

Later you found out through your mom, who found out through Fernando’s mom, who found out from Fernando’s dad, that Fernando and Lucia had broken up. They said it was because of the distance and the relationship didn’t last more than seven months. You couldn’t blame her, you as his best friend barely saw him that year either.

You became a reserve driver for Renault in 2003, meeting Flavio Briatore yourself after you won the Formula 3000 two years in a row. You knew that, by that time, Fernando had ties with Flavio, but the man assured you it had nothing to do with Fernando, and everything to do with you being extremely talented.

Still, that same week you found Fernando, to inquire if he had anything to do with Flavio’s invitation, but he assured you that you’d achieved that with your own merit. The unexpected chance to race came when by the end of the following year, Fernando’s teammate was fired by the end of the season. So you had to replace him for the remaining three races of the season, the team fighting for P2 in the constructors championship. The first two races you went alright placing P7 and P5, but still not where you wanted to place.

“Hey, you’re doing great, Nena,” Fernando told you right before the race started. He knew you were upset, frustration practically emanating from your body.

“Not as great as I can do,” you shook your head.

“Just do your best, ignore everything else.”

You nodded, before closing your overalls and gettin ready to get in the car. That race, you and Fernando managed to race just like in your karting days, with a silent partnership never seen before coming from Fernando. You placed a 2-3 podium, him ahead of you.

When you got out of the car, you jumped straight into his arms, screaming and celebrating. Your first ever podium in Formula 1.

During post race interviews you accidentally let out to the media that you and Fernando were childhood best friends, which they took as a personal reason to go digging into your lives.

Next season, Flavio signed you with the team. But before anything, he sat you down for a talk. He explained how Fernando would be top priority this year, you were a rookie, and they would offer you all the support but you had to help Fernando first.

“You will gain experience, work together with your best friend, and we can achieve great things this year. And depending on how good of a performance you show this year, next year you will be able to race for the championship, yes?” Flavio explained.

And you were fine with that, Fernando would be the main priority while you took the year to get used to the car, to being in an entirely new category, while helping your best friend reach his peak. It was the dream, finally. It was the thing both of you had daydreamed together, nothing could get in the way of that.

So you did just that. You kept your head down, fighting fiercely against your rivals, and keeping yourself out of the way whenever you and Fernando were close in a race. Your time would come, as Flavio had promised. That season you managed good results in the points, and even got five podium finishes, which landed you fourth in the drivers’ championship and managed Renault to win the constructors.

That day in Interlagos, during the Brazilian Grand Prix, you woke up knowing Fernando would become world champion. You didn’t tell him to not put any more pressure on him. He only needed a podium to mathematically become the champion of the world.

He finished P3, and you finished P7. Seeing Fernando radiantly happy, dancing, shouting and jumping was etched forever in your brain as one of your happiest memories. The way he eventually found you, holding you firmly against him, the both of you crying happy tears became headlines all around the world.

“I told you, didn’t I?” You broke the hug so you could stare into his red rimmed eyes.

“You did. You’re right more often than not, I’ve come to realize.” He whispered. When someone tried to put a mic in your faces, Fernando pushed it away.

“This is your moment, go.” You gestured to the other side, where he had to go before the podium.

Looking up from the ground to Fernando, you were so happy you thought your heart would burst open. And you couldn’t wait for it to be your turn, to feel this happiness the other way around.

That night, you, Fernando and the entire team got ready to party, to celebrate his championship. You dressed up to the nines, putting makeup and spending a good half an hour styling your hair. When you left the elevator, meeting the whole team at the lobby, they shouted and whistled saying you were pretty. It made you a bit shy but you liked the attention.

You and Fernando danced and drank like crazy that night, going strong all the way into the morning. When the party ended and you two sat on your suite balcony, watching the sun rise, you bought out an ice cream pint you had kept in the room minibar.

“How do you feel, Mr. World Champion?” You sat cross legged in front of him.

“Like a dream come true, sometimes I don’t even believe it’s real,” he said, staring into the horizon.

“Remember when we would talk about this moment?” You took his hand in yours, as he nodded, “Wow. This is great. I’m so happy for you, and happy for fifteen year-old Nano, the bright eyed boy that fixed my kart charge free.”

It’s barely a second after you finished speaking that Fernando leaned into your space and just kissed your lips. It took you a second to understand what was going on, but when his hand found your hair, you reciprocated. His lips, that had been cold from the ice cream quickly became warm under your ministrations. You held his shoulders and let him pull you closer, until you were straddling his lap. The kiss was messy, all over the place, clanking lips, teeth and tongue. You moaned softly as he squeezed your ass, and you pulled his hair at the nape, grinding down on his lap, making him groan too.

“We should not,” he said, breaking the kiss. You nodded, panting.

“Yeah, totally, we-” you tried to speak but he nipped at your neck and you lost all train of thought.

“No, we won’t ruin-” he tried again but you pulled his hair, forcing his head up so you could kiss him.

“You’re right-” you muttered against his lips, right before smashing it when you kissed him again. You stayed there, kissing, making out like you were teenagers again, too scared to reach for each other's clothes and take the next step.

When the sun was fully up in the sky, and whatever was left of the ice cream had melted, your alarm rang, and you and Fernando parted. You were about to invite him to sleep with you for a few hours when he paused, his face worried. Fernando took one of your hands.

“This is a one time- thing, right?” He frowned, and you swallowed before nodding.

“Yes, of course.” You don’t correct him with memories of your eighteenth birthday.

“I just, I don’t want anything to ruin our friendship,” he stared at you, visibly scared for your friendship, and you didn’t have the heart to ask for more.

“It won’t ruin, I promise. If you want, we can forget it ever happened,” you said, hoping and praying he would change his mind. But he looked relieved at your words.

After he left, you sat down on the bed, disheartened, knowing that these scraps of affection would have to be stored in a safe spot inside your heart, and would be nothing more than memories, and what-ifs you’d only dare to look at late in your sleepless nights. You wondered how many times he would have to undervalue your romantic affections for you to understand he didn’t want you and never would. That was the second time you shared a moment, and the second time he had dismissed it. It’s not meant to be, you whispered to yourself.

When the new season started, you had gotten a grip over your feelings for him, focused on moving on. Being in love with your best friend for around a decade was pathetic enough.

Fernando was great during the start of the season, scoring two wins within the first three races. And despite not being the results you wanted, you placed top ten in all of them, even managing one podium finish.

When the fourth race came, though, it was when you and Fernando started to collapse. It was a very carefully plotted race for you and your team, and after managing your tyres with care, you didn’t have to pit twice. And you won, for the first time ever, you stood on the top of the podium. Unfortunately, Fernando didn’t get a podium. Holding your trophy, you looked down from the podium looking to your team, and searching for Fernando.

He wasn’t there, and your heart shattered a bit with his absence.

Maybe he had a problem and couldn’t be there for you. Maybe he was busy.

You went down to speak to the press, happily talking about strategies, how you and your team masterminded it, how you managed to preserve your tyres for longer than expected.

“How do you and Fernando manage to balance your friendship out of the track with the rivalry happening inside the track?” Someone asked. You were caught by surprise, taking a few seconds to actually compute the words he said.

“Well, I haven’t seen Fernando yet, but I believe he’d be happy for my good result as much as I’d be happy for him,” you told him, but immediately regretted it as the reporter had a gotcha expression on his face.

“Well, actually, this is what Fernando said a few minutes ago when he gave an interview-”

The man gave you a tape recorder attached to a pair of headphones, and your stomach filled with dread as he pressed rewind and play.

“Fernando, today’s win puts your best friend as a contender for the championship, what do you say?”

“Well, I believe she is talented, but too young and not yet ready to face me and actually compete for the championship.”

His voice was bitter, like he didn’t see you as nothing but a bug under his shoes. Instead of making you sad, it only left you seething in anger, but as you removed the headphones, you controlled the urge to smash the headphones on the nearest wall and smirked coldly to the camera that was waiting for your reaction.

“What do you think about Fernando saying you’re still not ready to become world champion?” The reporter urged, waiting for a beef that he would successfully get.

“Well, I guess he feels threatened by me, so I’ll take that as a compliment,” you shrugged, not caring about adding more fuel to the fire. If Fernando thought he could go running his mouth and you’d be fine or not jab him back, he was in for a surprise.

After wrapping up the interviews, you finally managed to go to your room and take a shower. You were getting ready to leave when Fernando found you again, walking into your room without bothering to knock. You didn’t even look at him, just kept packing your bag.

“Nena…”

“Don’t fucking talk to me,” you shook your head, holding on to the anger instead of allowing yourself to be sad. How he was able to ruin your first ever win in Formula 1, you couldn’t know.

“Nena, please, just-” He tried again, blocking your path to the door.

“No! Fuck you, Fernando!” You took a step back, letting your bag fall to the floor, an accusatory finger pointing to his face, “How dare you do this to me? You know how many times I cheered for you? How many times I wasn’t even on the podium and still, I was happy for you? Huh? I was there for you every step of the way, and you can’t be there for me once? Now you go out there and disregard my win in front of the whole world? What did I ever do to you for you to say that shit about me?” Your voice trembled, but you refused to cry in front of him, “I’d never do that to you, you selfish asshole.”

“I shouldn’t have said that, but I was pole and didn’t even manage to turn it into a podium? I was upset, the strategy fucked me up! I know I should not have said that! You’re right! I was selfish and an asshole-”

“Damn right you were!” You shouted, then picked up your bag, “I don’t want to see you right now.”

You walked past him, leaving at once.

That night, you went to celebrate with the team and without your teammate, you got pretty wasted, dancing and drinking like you had never done before. You refused to let yourself feel down because of Fernando’s big mouth. Dancing the night away, you didn’t stop even when people on the team asked you to, since you were getting out of hand. You were grinding on a stranger, dancing to reggaeton when you felt a hand on your arm.

“Let’s go,” the voice said and you turned, seeing Fernando in front of you. He looked like he was dressed in pajamas and hair all disheveled.

He was asleep when someone on the team called him because they wanted to leave and you were being difficult, so they hoped that your best friend could come pick you up and convince you to leave.

“Excuse me?!” You pulled your arm from him.

“We’re leaving!” Fernando said, pointing to where your team was, seeing it empty, “you’re not going to stay here alone.”

Begrudgingly, you let him lead you outside, one hand in your arm, and the other one on your back. You stumbled in your heels, and Fernando pressed you against the wall, kneeling to remove your shoes and help you walk better outside. Silently, he drove you back to the hotel, while you were with your arms crossed and sulking.

He walked you to your room, helping you change into pajamas, then tucked you into the bed. He stood there for a second, pushing your hair away from your face as you closed your eyes, letting his knuckles run over your cheek softly.

“I wish-” you mumbled, sleepy, “I wish you were happy for me.”

His eyes filled with tears, seeing just how awful he had been to you. A dream was coming true and all he could think of was himself.

“I am, Nena. I’m so happy for you,” He said, but you didn’t answer, already asleep, due to being tired from the race and heavily drunk.

You woke up with a pounding headache and a stomach churning hangover. Still, you showered, drank tea and got ready to go home. When Fernando knocked on the door of your hotel room later that day to apologize, you were already on a flight to Spain. Your birthday would be later that week and your family wanted to throw you a dinner party. 

Your birthday was nice, despite obviously feeling Fernando’s absence.

You were sitting alone on the porch, after the party, when he showed up, late in the night. You didn’t say anything as he walked up to you.

“Peace offering?” Fernando showed you a small ice cream pint “I’m so sorry. I never meant to undermine you. I was a jerk, and you didn’t deserve any of it. I’m so, so sorry.”

You hesitated for a second, but his eyes were so gentle, remorseful, that you couldn’t help but give in. You jumped into his arms so suddenly he almost dropped the ice cream, but he managed to balance it and hug you back with the other arm.

“Happy birthday, Nena,” he whispered, 

“Thank you,” you said, without letting him go, “I’m sorry too. I apologize for implying you felt threatened by me.”

“You should have called me worse things,” he whispered.

You ended up sharing the ice cream once again, talking about life.

Deep down, you hoped things would go back to normal, but a part of you knew that things would never be the same. You two were too much alike for anything to work. Too proud. Too stubborn. Too competitive. When you were good, it was great, but when you were mad, your words were daggers.

The both of you tried to stay normal the next couple of races, but it was strained, forced, especially when you were racing each other. You supposed Fernando was used to you backing down for him, since it was all you had done the year before when you were a rookie. But now you were used to the car, to explore all the possibilities while pushing your tyres to their maximum, while trying insane strategies and making it work. You were a risky driver, just like him, often seen as reckless.

All the while, the media started catching up to it. They went digging to find pictures of you and Fernando when you were kids, in karting and junior competitions, finding out people to interview, old classmates, people you two had met over the years, telling everyone about your close friendship, about you growing up together. Despite you both refusing to comment on your past, the journalists would always find a way to learn more and more about you.

Eventually, it got to your nerves, harsh words were often said whenever questions were thrown at you. You were in a press conference, where Fernando was also there along with a few other drivers.

“It is noticeable that you and Alonso’s driving style is very similar, would you say that he taught you everything you know?”

You didn’t like his tone, you hated whatever he was implying, not because of Fernando, but because it meant to reduce your efforts and abilities.

“No, Alonso has no part in my racing,” your tone was firm against the mic, and you could feel Fernando’s eyes on you, two chairs away on your left.

“But you grew up together?” The man insisted, and you loudly sighed, exhausted from everyone trying to make you talk about it all the time.

“And that doesn’t mean anything!” You said with gritted teeth.

There was a moment of silence right after your outburst, and you didn’t dare to look anywhere besides ahead. When the questions moved on to other drivers, you breathed again. Finally sparing a glance to Fernando, he only looked at you for a fleeting moment, but you knew him so well, you could recognize his teary eyes. Only then it dawned on you how badly you fucked up by insinuating he didn’t mean anything to you.

When the conference ended, you watched as Fernando left really quickly, not even looking in your direction. You ran, trying to find him, going to his room that was right beside yours.

“Fernando-” You walked inside, not even bothering to knock.

“So, our friendship means nothing!” He shook his head, looking disappointed.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Nano!”

“Now I’m Nano again?” He scoffed.

You wanted to cry and plead, to explain that you never meant it this way. You were just tired of people trying to attribute your success to others. You were tired of people comparing the two of you, and saying everything you were came from him, just because he joined the category five years before you. 

“Fernando, please-”

“Leave.” His eyes were cold, almost detached when he pointed to the door.

“Please, Nano…” You whispered, feeling your own eyes welling up with tears. He just shook his head ‘no’ again.

You walked out quietly, not allowing your tears to fall down as you got into your room, inhaling and puffing your chest. You didn’t let up, trying to talk to him again, because it was just a misunderstanding.

Three days later, you tried to find him again, after the race ended, hoping he would have calmed down after a good result, a P2 in that race. You knocked on his door and entered. He was changing clothes as you walked in, he finished dressing a shirt.

“What?” He said, barely looking at you, as he sat down on the sofa, brushing his hair.

“I wanted to talk about what I said during-” your words were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” Fernando said, and soon, two pretty girls walked in, wearing pretty dresses, one blonde and the other brunette, “pretty girls!”

You recognized they were grid girls, and they looked familiar from this weekend.

“Can we talk?” You said, trying to make him at least send the girls away for a moment.

“I’m listening,” he smirked, and you gulped as the blonde ran a hand up and down his chest. The brunette leaned into his ear with a seductive smile, whispering something.

“Fernando, please…” You asked again and he didn’t even look at you, laughing at something the girls whispered to him, “I’m sorry,” you whispered, before turning in your heels and leaving his room.

Shame and jealousy burned inside you.

He started giving you a silent treatment from then on and three races later, your silent strain came to a head, once again.

You were right behind him at the race, you P3 and him right ahead, but you had enough speed to outpace him soon, maybe a couple more laps and you’d equal him enough to try and overtake, you rode turn 2 smoothly, but as you two kept going, Fernando half a second in front of you, he suddenly hit the brakes, making you hit his rear.

“What the fuck? He brake tested me!” You shouted into the radio, reassessing, you gulped, noticing the damage to your front right tyre, “I’ve got damage!”

You called into the box to change your tyre, which fucked up your entire strategy, and made you go from the P3 to P9 in the grid. You managed to recover a little bit, but still ended P5 and out of the podium.

The rage was burning your chest as you went to the garage absolutely fuming. After all the podium proceedings and celebrations, you waited for Fernando, but he just walked past you without a care in the world. That made you even more pissed, and nobody managed to hold you when you tossed your helmet aside and marched up to him.

“That was really fucked up, Fernando!” You cut his path, making him stop short. Suddenly a bunch of people started gathering around you two, everyone ready for a show.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” He shrugged, but you knew him like the palm of your own hand, and you knew that condescending smile he showed you.

“You are a fucking coward if you have to brake test me just to get a podium,” you said, venomous, feeling your dad trying to pull you away and dissipate the commotion. But you weren’t done, “you’re pathetic, Fernando.”

“That’s enough!” Your dad said, pulling you back.

“Or maybe you’re just not good enough, have you thought about that?” Fernando said back, and you jumped on him, trying to get close enough for violence, but your dad held your waist, removing your feet from the ground and pulling you back.

“Man up, Fernando! You fucking asshole!” You shouted as your dad dragged you back into the garage.

Your dad placed you inside your room, grabbing water so you could drink and calm down. When he turned back, a sob broke from your throat, and you covered your mouth with a hand, trying to muffle the sounds of your crying. You shook as you cried again, your dad hugging you close and murmuring to you to let it all out.

You never thought your friendship with Fernando would ever come to this. You weren’t even sure of how the buildup happened that led to this.

“I don’t recognize him anymore, Papá. I don’t recognize my best friend anymore,” you shook your head, your voice breaking in hiccups. You pressed the plant of your hand to your eyes to try and stop the tears falling down, but it was useless.

“It’s ok, bebé. You’re both hotheaded, you need to talk calmly, try and fix it.”

You didn’t try to talk to him. He was wrong when he brake tested you, and if he couldn’t apologize for that, and for the hurtful words he said, then it was better to stay that way.

It only got worse as the season went on, the team tried to force you to give him advantages, but you refused many times, making the competition for the World Drivers Championship be between the two of you.

“We need to talk,” Flavio called you a day after another one of your wins, one that Fernando placed third, one that he didn’t even look at your face when you were up there.

“What happened?” You sat down in front of him by the table.

“You have to follow team orders. When we say you have to switch places with Fernando, you switch. You are deliberately going against orders, what is going on? You and Fernando are now in a cold war, the media caught up, the other drivers caught up too, why-”

“Am I the only one getting lectured?” You crossed your arms, seeing Flavio getting red in the face, angry.

“No. I want answers from both of you, and the way you’re being aggressive with each other, we believe it’s better to talk to you separately,” Flavio sighed, “What is happening? Before it was interesting, a beautiful rivalry, but now you way past that. You’re harming your own races and the team.”

“You talk to Fernando. He thinks because I won’t back down he needs to use every dirty trick in the book to damage my race. If he can’t handle competition like an adult, then he shouldn’t be here.”

Suddenly, the door opened, which made you jump. Fernando walked inside, fuming.

“So that’s what you think of me?” He raised his voice.

“Yes, you have been acting like a fucking kid,” you stood up.

“Me? You told the whole world our friendship means nothing to you! Have you any idea how that made me feel?!” Fernando got closer.

“Do you know how many times people disdain my career to pin it to someone else? To attribute my successes to you, or to Flavio, or even my dad?! You’ve got no idea what it's like being a woman here!”

“Power got to your head! You think you have to walk all over everyone to get what you want!”

“Power?! Literally every man here does that! You do that too, Fernando!”

“Funny you say that since you wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me!” He shouted, pointing a finger to the ground.

“Fernando, stop.” Flavio muttered, coming closer to where you were face to face with Fernando.

You frowned, your anger completely dissipated and what was left was dread. And a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach.

“What?” You hated how your voice was nothing more than a vulnerable whisper.

“Fernando, enough!” Flavio commanded out loud, gesturing with a hand.

“What do you mean, Fernando?!” You asked again, ignoring Flavio trying to pacify the fight.

“I was the one to ask Flavio to sponsor you. I asked him to take a shot and invest in your career!” Fernando’s words were poison and in his eyes you couldn’t see anything left of your former best friend.

“Is it true, Flavio?” You asked but your eyes never left Fernando’s.

“Yes, but if we calm down, we can talk like adults.”

You couldn’t even come up with words, speechless not only from what Fernando told you, but from the tone he used. It was like he had punched you straight in the gut. You couldn’t contain your tears anymore, the lump in your throat threatening to suffocate you. You wanted to jump on him, to push him to the ground and punch his face. You wanted to scream in his face and call him all the dirty names you could think of. You tried to hold onto the anger but your limbs were still, and the pain expanded inside you like wildfire. He had lied to you, in the biggest step of your career he had lied to you. Even when you pressed for answers, he lied straight to your face.

You stared into his eyes one last time. It was the first time he had seen you really cry. He had seen you teary eyed or even emotional before, but it was the first time he had seen you truly cry.

“You’re dead to me, Fernando.”

Was all you managed to rasp, fat tears streaming down your cheeks. Flavio called your name as you walked away, but you never looked back and didn’t stop until you were inside your car, wailing like a baby. You sobbed all the way back to the hotel. You cried as you packed your bags, and tried but failed to contain your tears all the way back home, until you were at your parents’ door, sobbing on their sofa.

They didn’t ask anything until a couple of hours later when you managed to stop crying.

“I hate Fernando, so much, Mamá,” you whispered.

“Honey, don’t say that. Don’t do or say something you might regret later on,” She told you. You shook your head.

“I’m done with him. Done.” You bit back a sob, “he was so cruel, you had to see it.”

“He’s your best friend, dear. I’m sure it will be alright later on.”

“You should’ve seen the hate in his eyes, I don’t know him anymore. That’s not my Nano.”

So, your racing career was a lie. You didn’t make it because of your talent or your efforts. You were in Formula 1 because of Fernando. That was the cruelest thing someone ever said to you, not only because he was mean in the way he said it, but because with a few words he diminished your entire career. And what could you come up with to contest? He was right. You would never be there without him.

You wanted to give up so badly at that moment. You wanted to stay home and never come back, but you knew you couldn’t, your sense of duty was loud and you had to make it work. You had to prove that you deserved your spot in Formula 1, that all of Flavio’s forced investment on you was worth it.

You had to prove to Fernando you were more than a friend he pitied, more than a charity case he took so he could throw it at your face later.

It was one of the hardest things to realize and accept, the fact that he wasn’t your friend anymore. Maybe he never was. Despite all the disagreements the past couple of years, and all the beautiful history you had before the pinnacle of motorsport, maybe he never saw you as a friend. You thought you’d never treat a friend the way he treated you.

So you had to prove Fernando wrong.

NOTE: If you want to be tagged on part 2, please let me know in the comments!

[pinkaditty]

Love Type (Tokyo Debunker Ghouls)

hey me again i said id be back quickly and i did mean that.

this will have been queued for an hour at least by the time u see it. rn as i type this im debating using the taglist. i think ill use it. sorry 4 so many tags in a day, i bet ur sick of me

anyways! i had this idea while i was writing the perv!sho x reader thing. i thought about the differences between the ghouls and how they all love differently. at first i wasn't gonna post this, but then my brain wouldn't stop thinking about it so now this exists. its not meant 2 be a useful organization tool 4 the ghouls it's just something i had a little bit of fun with.

note that not every single ghoul is going 2 match the category he was put in exactly. for example, ghouls like luca, yuri, romeo, and even haru could probably fit in more than one of these categories, but i put them in the ones i thought suited them best. wanna discuss? leave a comment or an ask! ill be happy 2 talk it through with u <3.

yes i DID put in hcs about how long they last sexually. no i do NOT regret it. im speaking my TRUTH!!!

The Lover Boys:

Haku, Haru, Sho, Luca, Zenji, Rui

do not last long but recover fast and can go multiple rounds 

prefer switching up their roles (dom→sub, sub→dom) more often 

they love like it's an incurable chronic terminal disease. it's never leaving them.

all-consuming, takes up most their time, they're drowning and falling and losing their minds 4 u

You like to tell yourself you're prepared, but is that ever really true? No, not really. The way his voice drops several octaves into a low purr just from seeing you should've been warning enough as to what you were in for. You didn't expect the all-consuming, suffocating love he'd trapped you in, but were you really complaining? As far as you were concerned, you were also convinced it was meant to be, and if he was a little crazy about it, that was a small price to pay. Of course, you eventually learn why he's crazy about it - he's never had it. The truest feeling of connection, the ability to just let it all go in one person's presence, the time to really feel another person. It's eluded him for so long, and now he has it, but it's threatened by a curse, something he cannot control. It's frightening, and though he tried not to, he ultimately buries you in his love, trying to find a way to make it last. It's okay though. As the threat wanes, so will his suffocation. The love will always be intense, but he will learn how to do it right. 

The Lost Boys:

Towa, Taiga, Jiro, Ed

they last so unbelievably long u don't know how they do it

love in more subtle ways bc 2 them, true love is quiet 

they will do loud and bold professions of it, but the real love is displayed quietly 

prefer 2 stick 2 one role (either dom or sub), not super flexible 

The occasional huge flower bouquet, expensive jewelry set, or new bag were thoughtful, but mostly just for show. He reveled in the attention, the jealous stares, the sucking of teeth, the eye rolls - all of it. Because he had you, not them. But that, of course, isn't all there is to it. While he may be relatively distant in public despite the extravagant gifts, he's rather sweet and attentive in private. He hides it better than a LoverBoy, but in truth, his heart bleeds just like theirs, and he feels the need to consistently strive to win your affections. You're amongst great people, after all. How can he make sure he stands out, all the time, just for you? You understand this, of course, and you're always quick to reassure him. He will give and give and give and give, in so many ways. You almost think he's bottomless, what with how much of himself he offers up, nearly all the time. But it's alright. He will learn to remind himself that he need not give himself away to bits simply to keep your attention, especially when he's already the apple of your eye. The gifts never stop though, and neither does his obvious enjoyment in the attention it gets you. He will never stop showing you off.

The Tragic Boys:

Leo, Subaru, Ren, Kaito, Yuri

love fluctuates. intense then quiet, hot then cold, all-consuming then insignificant 

very transparent ghouls with few layers. what u see is what u get.

often don't last long and take longer to recover 

a little more flexible with role changing, but do have solid preferences 

You are never, ever prepared. He's like a pendulum, swaying back and forth between endless, bountiful devotion and a cold shoulder the following day. He's not sure how to handle this love he has for you. It's unfamiliar, it's big, it's loud, it's petrifying. He's scared he'll do something wrong, and on those days when the fear eats him alive, he closes up, rejecting your presence. But then, he sees how down you are, and knows that wasn't right, so the following day he's at your beck and call. He'll do whatever you ask, just say the word and it's done, for you. His fatal flaw is that he never communicates his deep-seated fears, instead choosing to let them rumble in his gut and disrupt your relationship as a consequence. He wants you, though, and he never wants you to doubt that. He'll communicate eventually, the words spilling out before he can think much of them, apologies and desperate sobs with them. He won't shut down anymore after this, choosing to remain like an open book for you to read at any time. He will learn to hold you the right way, without clamming up nervously when you tell him he's perfect. 

The Silent Boys: 

Tohma, Romeo, Ritsu, Lyca, Alan, Jin

their love is consistent 

never changes, always with immense depth, but never readily apparent 

love is like a pretty serene waterfall with unseen strong currents capable of killing someone 

like to switch it up every now and again (mayyybe dom→sub, sub→dom yk)

last moderately. some might finish fast, some might take a while.

His attitude and demeanor towards you hardly change. He loves you, and he's serious about it, but that won't mean special treatment, extra gifts, or public displays of love. He will love you exactly as he always has, and sees nothing wrong with it. His love is in how he looks out for you, how he worries for you despite himself, how he may allow himself a small smile when you approach, or a sigh heavy laden with devotion, after you wrap your arms around him, and before he pushes you off of him. It's okay because you know how his heart beats erratically in his chest when you approach, which he's strangely good at hiding. You know how his breath hitches in his throat every time he sees you, his eyes glazing over like you're a vision to be committed to memory. You know how he treasures you, his love hidden under his vast sea of responsibilities. Peel the layers back and you'll see he's yours in all ways that matter, but he also knows he can't let that get in the way of his daily life. Once he has the time, and is no longer bearing the weight of prying eyes and overwhelming expectations, he'll build his life around you, to make sure you feel centered in his life, as he does in yours.

well if nobody really likes these at least i had fun. amen!

no blurb 2 put here except that i have a ren fic incoming soon bc my regular [🐟] anon went crazy in my inbox about that boy and his damn collarbones.

y'all have a wonderful day im so tired.

taglist: @cupcakesmoothie @aayakashii @sunskosh @despairingy-obsessed @glamorousspoon @mmy-meow @dailyvahine @diluxama @obscuarysghoulnextdoor @disassociationdive

want 2 join or be removed from the tkdb taglist? let me know!

[sightseertrespasser]

Odds of Survival Part 8

Per usual, the tf mecha au was spawned by @keferon

Prowl and the flyt he said he didn’t want: “It’s not an ESA, it’s a tool for detective work that runs on food and affection.”

Anyways why do pets always look like their owners?

———————————————————————

Prowl had approximately 6 breems before Elita finished cleaning her skull.

The tactician added 4 additional breems to account for time spent in adding the piece to her skull throne. On average, Elita One spent between 8 to 13 breems total on “personal art projects” as a way to unwind after intense battles.

As soon as Prowl was within comms range, he had sent an encoded message to Red Alert suggesting Breakdown intended to plant listening devices on the exterior of the Lost Light.

Nevermind the fact they were working on the same damn side.

That trick would keep the mech busy for at least 5 breem.

Typically, Prowl was the first to defend Red Alert as an invaluable head of security. His paranoia secured their defenses so well, security chief had completely countered every infiltration attempt by the Functionalists to date. That said, the price of privacy for their ship was Red Alert having a total monopoly on it instead.

The distraction was not only so Prowl could have a single minute of peace, but also to ensure the security officer did not interrogate an injured and highly unpredictable mech.

Because Jazz might actually give Red Alert a spark attack. (;7%)

Prowl tried to rub away the ache between his optics. Tacnet thrumming angrily with pent up, unfinished calculations. Most of which were completely defunct now thanks to the violator of numerical probability sitting in the medbay.

Jazz…

Fragging Jazz.

Prowl shut the door to his office. He could feel his helm getting warm again. He’d need to take what time he could to sort his processor before the logic cascades that had been accumulating since he found the mech became too much to manually keep on pause.

Luckily, the tactician had discovered a secret technique to unraveling Tacnet build up without requiring a constant cycling of industrial grade coolant.

Prowl unlocked the wardrobe-like habitat next to his desk.

A faintly cool breeze sighed from within, as the thawing process completed. Uncurling in response to the change of stimuli, a flyt woke from brumation to look at her praxian with bleary eyes.

“Hello Green.” Prowl eased a servo beneath the flyt. “we have much to discuss.”

As Green tucked herself against the ambient warmth of his frame, Prowl activated the large screen built into the adjacent wall.

“I met someone today.”

Tapping away, creating categories, connection points and theories arranged by probability, Prowl slowly filled the screen with a tree of possibilities.

All the while, conferring with Green to ensure his thoughts stayed at a conversational pace, rather than whirl through the labyrinth of his mind at breakneck speeds.

“-and then, he gave me his designation number, except it’s just a completely nonsensical string of seven numbers!”

Green squawked at the audacity of the mech.

“He did space out the numbers while reciting it. Two eight four, pause, four three four, pause, five five zero eight.” The praxian typed in the numbers, adding dashes where appropriate.

He muttered, mostly to himself, “This had better not be some sort of prank.”

As Prowl continued to verbally filter through his mental evidence locker, Tacnet finally straightened out the concrete math of the situation.

“Jazz is either an alien or a lost government experiment. Alien 57%, cybertronian 43%” The screen automatically supplied a pie chart, superseding several lesser graphs beneath it.

Prowl tilted his helm back and sighed, expelling all the hot air he’d holding behind locked vents at once.

Tacnet had finally. Finally, attached a precentiall figure to Jazz’s existence. The sheer relief of that knot untangling was better than any oil bath. Rolling his shoulders and neck, Prowl continued.

“There are two schools of thought regarding The Jazz Situation.” Prowl divided the board in two beneath the chart.

“The first, was that Jazz is a wholly alien mechanical lifeform, and it is through convergent design that he happens to closely resemble a cybertronian. Albeit with various physical abnormalities.”

Green squawked.

“Precisely. Until the language barrier is further overcome, we cannot rule out the second theory either. That Jazz is a creation of the Functionalists. It would account for the physical abnormalities while removing a significant amount of uncertainty the Alien Theory comes with.”

Prowl gathered a small bit of skitter. Green didn’t have much appetite immediately after waking, but the prospect of food still served as positive reinforcement for her “help”.

Ostensibly, caring for the flyt was supposed to take Prowls processor off of work. Jokes on his government assigned therapist, Green was a fantastic assistant and confident.

While he did care for his brothers, Smokescreen was explicitly unhelpful when Prowl latched onto something intellectually stimulating. Constantly cajoling him into going to bars or casinos or wherever else the elder Praxian considered “actually stimulating”.

And Bluestreak, meanwhile, was a mech physically incapable of keeping a secret.

“You don’t try to get me overcharged or tell everybody about the Mesothulas Incident.” The tactician cooed while scritching the underside of Greens beak.

Nevermind it was the same night.

Green trilled happily at the attention and praise, waking up more thoroughly.

“I’ll see about introducing you later. Jazz shows no discomfort concerning organics and I predict a strong likelihood he will appreciate your work.”

Just as Prowl was about to close the theory board, a comm came through, making him pause with a servo still hovering over the screen.

[VELOCITY]: Update about the patient for you sir.]

Speak not of Unicron lest he appears.

[PROWL]: Go ahead. Do you need me to come back to the medbay?]

[VELOCITY]: No, he’s not displaying any adverse behavior you warned me about. His common is very rough though and he’s definitely struggling to understand my questions and clearly articulate his answers. Outside of that, the patient seems fairly relaxed actually.]

Rough? Jazz had been making steady progress with his language acquisition. He should be capable of understanding and answering Velocity’s questions with 76% accuracy.

[PROWL]: He did suffer a helm injury, though I am certain you’ve taken that into account already.]

[VELOCITY]: I already ran a simple cognitive test and he passed without issue. I’d have to open his helm up to make sure, but he otherwise seems completely fine mentally.]

Prowl settled himself at his desk, tapping the surface absent mindedly.

[VELOCITY]: His other vitals are what concerns me however. By cybertronian medical standards, you brought me a talking corpse.]

Prowl stopped tapping.

[PROWL]: Elaborate.]

[VELOCITY]: The patient has no energon, no nanites, and no spark signature. He’s absolutely covered in the tiniest welds I’ve ever seen, which I should not be able to see if he had even 5% of the nanites a healthy mech should have.]

[PROWL]: Does he require more intensive medical treatment?]

[VELOCITY]: That’s a bit complicated to answer. He’s an alien so I’m not sure what his baseline for healthy is supposed to be. And if what you say about prior medical abuse is true, I don’t think he knows either.]

[VELOCITY]: He’s taking repairs like a champ so far. I can see he’s had a ton of previous repairs that all look clean and well executed despite being done without anesthetic.]

There are other kinds of avoidance than just physical aversion. Jazz is being compliant to get through the repairs quickly but faking confusion to avoid deeper medical questioning 88%.

[PROWL]: Unless it is to ask for consent for a procedure, you may desist questioning the patient for medical information. Rely on your own observations and expertise to form any pertinent theories.]

[VELOCITY]: Understood. The patient has turned down any deeper scans around his helm and chassis and I don��t want to push it on a first time check up. I’ve finished fixing his feet and the replacement part for his shoulder is almost done being machined.]

[VELOCITY]: I want to deal with his visor and helm sooner rather than later, but that’ll take a much more thorough scan to deal with. That’s all I have to update so far. His arm won’t heal on its own so I need to concentrate on rewiring the sensory network manually now.]

[PROWL]: Understood. Contact me immediately if anything changes.]

One more horrifying concept to add to the list. He was completely and utterly reliant on potentially manipulative doctors to fix even the most minute scraps and pains. No wonder Jazz had the pain tolerance of a Titan.

Prowl went to pull his data pad from subspace to update his Jazz Theory Board and stopped short with a full body cringe.

He gingerly took out Jazz’s missing shoulder and placed it on the table.

Prowl shuttered his optics.

The fact he forgot he had another mechs shoulder on his person was a testament to how badly he needed to defrag tonight. He briefly considered comming Velocity, but didn’t want to interrupt her operation on delicate wiring. Besides, if Jazz lacked a self repair system, then it wouldn’t matter if the piece was original or machine made.

It was such a fundamentally wrong concept, Prowl was unsure whether he’d prefer that to be Jazz’s natural state (51%) or a condition inflicted on him by whatever sadists created him (49%).

The tapping sound of beak on metal pulled Prowl back into the room.

“Green, do not.” He said sternly, lifting the flyt away from her object of fascination. She looked at him with pitifully wet eyes at the unhappy tone.

The praxians wings drooped. With some difficulty, Prowl attempted to project his EM field in something like “Your actions displeased me but I harbor no ill will towards your being. I am simply under a significant mental load and find the prospect of you attempting to eat a piece of someone’s body fairly distressing and ask that you discontinue that behavior and not act on any future impulses to put foreign objects in your mouth.”

What he got was a wobbly Meehm-blah-sorry-sad.

Flyts were supposedly capable of picking up on EM fields (12%). Prowl suspected Green was simply quite good at interpreting his body language and tone (88%).

In either case, Green responded by attempting to groom his plating, cooing softly. Organic EM fields were small and alien, but with practice and exposure one could begin to map one’s field to cybertronian equivalents. Green radiated a lightly brushing sympathy of sad and want-happy.

Prowl gave up on his field projection practice, and idly returned Greens affection with physical pets. If that damn therapist asked, he’d count it towards his quarterly goals.

That mech bothered him. Not just because he put limits on his workflow or for the one sided glaring contests Prowl would enact during their sessions. But because for the life of him Prowl could never remember his name. And that missing data point drove Tacnet crazy.

Everytime Prowl tried to investigate where the therapist even came from, something always came up distracting him from the task.

In a moment of determination, Prowl reached for his pad to look up his own therapists name on the ship’s registry and paused mid action.

The tactician turned his gaze back to the morbid weight resting on the desk.

His brow furrowed.

Lifting the piece closer (where Green couldn’t get at it), Prowl inspected something odd along the surface of the shoulder.

It looked like a row of staples protruding from the metal.

It looked like ladder rungs.

A frantic banging on Prowls door interrupted his introspection. He quickly subspaced the shoulder joint.

The indignant voice of Red Alert carried through the door, yelling to be let in immediately.

Prowl sent a few consecutive pings to clear the board, reduce interior illumination by 40% and then finally allow the chief of security entry.

Red Alert stumbled in through the sudden opening, plating misting off the residue frost formed by the chill of outer space. His optics darted rapidly around the dimmed interior, landing on the stone faced mech seated behind the desk.

Impassive and unreadable, the only signs the tactician was alive were the cold glow of his optics and the servo lightly stroking his pet. The flyts beady eyes bored into Red Alerts. Silent and unwavering.

Mouth suddenly dry, the mech was unable to form words.

The desired effect was achieved.

“I’ve been expecting you.” Prowl did not offer him a seat, as there was none to offer.

Red Alert got a hold of himself and puffed up his plating.

“Why is there an unauthorized mech on board this ship and why did I only hear about through gossip?!” Red Alert’s voice cracking the last word into a higher register.

“Jazz is authorized to be here. By me.” He offered Green a bit of skitter. “And by our captain. I found him stranded in open space after he fell out of a Quintesson gate tear.”

The smaller mech blanched slightly at the sight of an organic feeding. Prowl estimated the presence of Green would speed their meeting along by a factor of 120%.

“So you’re just bringing home random mechs then.” Red Alert flapped his arms at his sides. “How do you know he isn’t a Functionalist spy? Or a High Command spy? Or a third party spy?!”

Prowl raised a single digit. “One, Velocity has confirmed Jazz is absolutely an alien lifeform and not cybertronian in origin.” He held up a second digit. “And two, he fell out of a quintesson gate tear in the middle of empty space.”

Red Alert began to pace the room. “Okay fine. He’s not a plant for any cybertronian factions. How do you know he isn’t some kind of twisted Quintesson creation? Maybe he was created to infiltrate our ranks, and then a sleeper agent switch flips and he kills us all!”

“He is not a quintesson creation.” Prowl plainly stated to Red Alerts increasing exasperation.

“And how do you know that?!” Throwing his servos in the air.

“He likes music.”

Red Alert reset his optics. “Come again?”

Prowl cleaned off his servo with a rag in his desk, and played a low quality snippet of Jazz’s music that he’d managed to capture.

Red Alert startled at the sudden unfamiliar sound.

When actually was the last time any of them had heard new music? Before the civil war at least.

Prowl continued, “Quintessons do not value nor comprehend alien aesthetics. Their culture revolves around expansion and material acquisition and whatever may qualify as “art” to them does not equate to our understanding of it. They have absolutely no records of partaking in sound based recreation nor of collecting samples from other cultures.”

The snippet cut short. “Simply put, quintessons don’t know good music. Jazz does.”

Red Alert was loosing steam, but still had one more point to contend with.

“Isn’t just too improbable though?” Hands on the desk, leaning as close as he dared. “That out of the entirety of the universe, Jazz just so happened to pop out exactly next to the shuttle you were riding on, conveniently alone, unconscious, unharmed AND he gets picked up by high ranking decepticon?” For once, it looked less like Red Alert was fighting him, rather than pleading with him.

Prowl tilted his helm slightly, “You are correct. The odds are unfathomably low. So low in fact, it is nearly statistically impossible to achieve such a scenario on purpose.”

Quintesson gates were finicky. They had a margin of error the breadth of planets. That was also usually their targets however, and quints weren’t picky where they touched down.

“But-“

“But what? I have addressed every concern you have presented.” Prowl flared his doorwings. “I found a lost mech of a new alien species that may very well be an invaluable ally in the war against the quintessons. It’s a valuable opportunity.”

Red Alert balled his fists, fear manifesting as a last burst of rage. “It’s a trap! It’s an Oil-Pot! It is so obviously a purposeful manipulation when you look at it from the outside!”

The security officer began counting on his digits, “Step one! Put a handsome mech somewhere in need of saving so the target feels like they’re in control and the hero. Step two! Ramp up the flirting and the codependency, they need you so you stay in touch and start giving in to more of their requests. Step three! The Oil-Pot gets you alone somewhere under false pretenses where they SPLIT OPEN YOUR PROCESSOR AND SCRAPE IT FOR SECRETS!”

Red Alerts fans blasted hot air around the room. The mech challenging the Praxian for whatever excuse he had this time.

Prowl stood. Taking his time to return Green to her habitat.

“What am I most known for?”

For not the first time since entering his office, Red Alert was knocked off balance.

“I..uh. Math?” He stammered. Knowing the answer but not wanting to say it.

Prowl lacked that reservation.

“Any spy worth their shanix would have done their research thoroughly before even attempting such a scam. If one were to sift through information on me organized by Decepticons, the most prominent word would be Efficient.”

Prowl leisurely shook out Greens cloth-mop nest of any remaining ice crystals.

“If they sourced their information from the Functionalists, that description would include the word Ruthless.”

Prowl gave the flyt one last scritch before closing the door.

“Other popular words I’ve cataloged in relation to my name include Cold, Severe, Sparkless, Unfeeling and Merciless.” The smaller mech shrunk a little with every addition.

Prowl stepped around the desk in the dimly lit room to stand directly before Red Alert, servos clasped behind his back. “With this information available, any spy would be an idiot to attempt an Oil-Pot against me specifically. Ask nearly any mech aboard this ship if they think I’d go out of my way to save a stranger for no apparent benefit and they’d tell you No.”

Red Alert fiddled with his servos, torn between a nervous tick and the pressure to be professional. “If that’s all true, then.”

He chanced a glance at Prowl face, which gave away nothing. “Then why did you save him?”

“Because they are wrong.”

The room brightened back to normal levels, as Prowl sent a ping first to the lights and then to open his office door. He held out a servo, gesturing to the exit.

“Until further notice, Jazz is to be treated the same as a rescued non combatant. He will be kept under observation but not interrogation. We can work out the details at a later-“

[VELOCITY]: Jazz is gone.]

Prowl closed his servo. His doorwings twitched once. Red Alert tensed.

[VELOCITY]: I just finished the last repair and when I turned around he disappeared from the medbay. The guards outside didn’t see him.]

Prowl marched out the door, pulling Red Alert along in the direction of the security office. “I require your assistance immediately, as Jazz is currently loose somewhere on the ship, unmonitored.”

The tactician endured the security chiefs well earned tirade the entire way. Prowl kept a steely grip on the situation, only barely convincing Red Alert not to raise every alarm on the premise that Jazz would be easier to find if he didn’t think they were looking for him.

Tacnet stubbornly held onto the 56% saying Jazz was experiencing a delayed negative reaction to his medical care and was acting out of fear.

A steadily growing percentage screamed sabotage in a voice annoyingly similar to Red Alerts.

Said mech was almost cheery with vindication, in between vehemently describing every way the Lost Light could explode with the next few breems.

Red Alert worked fast. Sifting through the camera feed at a dizzying speed. A camera caught Jazz quickly slipping out of the medbay. Barely escaping the notice of the two mechs tasked with keeping watch. Prowl noted their designations for later scathing admonishment.

“The port side door lock is time stamped as malfunctioning just before Velocity discovered Jazz’s disappearance. It looks like the lock experienced an extremely localized electromagnetic pulse, putting it in Safe Mode.”

Red Alert switched the camera feeds on the main screen. “After he rounds this corner he just vanishes. I can’t find him anywhere on my system.”

Prowl nodded. “Good. Then I know exactly where he has to be.”

There were very few places to hide upon the Lost Light. Red Alert made certain of that. Which by extension meant that someone desperate to stay out of any camera views would have an extremely limited amount of space to operate in.

That space would normally be un-traversable, unless the mech in question was in possession of incredibly powerful magnetic augments, allowing them to crawl along the ceilings.

Prowl sent out a flurry of comms, updating Elita and calling in trusted reinforcements. He set out down the hall.

[PROWL]: What rooms aboard this ship do you not have any cameras inside of?]

[Red Alert]: The war room. The Captains quarters, your office, the therapists office and the operating theater.]

[PROWL]: There’s a camera in my berthroom?]

[Red Alert]: I mean. It’s not like you use it?]

Prowl consistently removed any bugging attempts in his office. Half the reason he kept Green in there was to deter Red Alert from trying. The other half was because he legitimately spent more time there than in his quarters.

He mentally crossed off his office, Elita’s quarters, the operating theater and the therapists office from the list as each one had someone inside at the time of Jazz’s disappearance.

All that left was the war room. Windowless, minimalist and with only once entrance, Jazz would be cornered like an animal in a trap.

Prowl gathered several of the least impulsive guards he could summon on short notice. Lining them along the hallway, he ordered them to shoot to disable. Prowl added that he would make an attempt to talk the mech down before escalating further.

If Jazz was spec ops (44%), the only benefit of infiltrating the war room would be to plant listening devices in its purposefully sparse interior. If Jazz wasn’t acting out of malice, and simply having a panic attack (56%), he may still react violently to suddenly being cornered.

Matchup: Close quarters fight Jazz versus Prowl. Jazz victory 97%.

The 3% in Prowls favor mostly depended on Jazz having some kind of sudden health emergency.

Prowl carefully assumed a neutral pose, knocking on the door to the war room.

“This is officer Prowl speaking. Please exit the room peacefully, we do not want to hurt you.”

Silence, save for the shifting of many nervous peds behind him. Prowl risked opening the door a crack, keeping his body well out of the line of fire. “Jazz, it is Prowl speaking. I need you to say something. Otherwise we’re going to have to come in.”

When there was still no response, Prowl signaled for the gathered soldiers to come closer in preparation for a raid.

On the silent count of three, they entered the war room, blasters drawn and optics searching.

Prowl kept special focus on the ceiling. Fanning his doorwings, He created a real time 3D map of the room, tracking every mechs movements within.

Jazz wasn’t here.

Instantly, Prowl prepared to order a ship wide mech hunt. They’d already wasted so much time with their one sided negotiations. The tactician began rerunning his mental map of where Jazz could have disappeared.

Elita had already sent him several unhappy comms messages about what she was going to do to the alien and him if Prowl didn’t find them. Confirming between threats that Jazz hadn’t gotten into her room.

Velocity had Nautica and Nightbeat in the med bay with her, turning the place upside down in case Jazz doubled back.

He found the comm line for the therapists office.

[PROWL] We have a rogue, possibly unstable mech loose within the Lost Light. Are you inside your office?]

[RUNG] Ah Prowl! Good to see you reaching out to me first for a change. Just finished up a lovely talk with Jazz.]

[RUNG] I think he has something important to tell you.]

———————————————————————

I am generally intrigued by the concept of how being apart of the Decepticon’s pecking order messes a person up.

There’s references all over to how Prowls physical and mental well being got absolutely wrecked and is now in recovery from being apart of High Command. (Inspired partially by @glitchgh0sty’s Deception AU go check ‘em out they’re cool.)

I also wanted to explore the social side of things.

Prowl makes himself unapproachable on purpose, Elita makes acts of excessive violence on her enemies a prominent display and Red Alert is even more invasive than normal.

It’s all to ward off other Decepticons from sensing weakness and stabbing them in the backs. Younger mechs like Bluestreak and Velocity can get away with being much more relaxed and friendly because they’ve got scary ass mechs like Prowl and Elita behind them radiating the “I will fucking destroy you.” energy on their behalf.

We get to see the masks slip a bit here and there. Red Alert genuinely concerned for Prowls safety underneath the paranoia. Elita gives Jazz and Prowl a lot more freedom than an actual tyrant would, even if it’s granted with over the tops threats of physical violence. And of course we see a lot of what Prowl is actually like removed from the pressure of behaving like a “proper” Decepticon.

Wonder what will happen when a certain mecha pilot gets a crowbar under those masks.

-SSTP

<- First Next ->

[spr1ngpvrinbwunnie]

Reluctant Comfort?... - oneshot | part 2 (for the "Late-Night Hypothesis")

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕖𝕪 𝕊𝕒𝕨𝕪𝕖𝕣/𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔻𝕠𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣 (ℙ𝕣𝕖 -“𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔻𝕠𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣” 𝕍ℍ𝕊 𝕋𝕒𝕡𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕪𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘) 𝕩 ℂ𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕘𝕦𝕖!ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣

(Harley in his middle 30s and reader/you in late 20s)

🇨​🇴​🇳​🇹​🇪​🇳​🇹​ 🇼​🇦​🇷​🇳​🇮​🇳​🇬​: None ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ – After you fall asleep at your desk, Harley lingers longer than necessary, his eyes lingering on your face. As he turns away, several of his coworkers—Eddie Ritterman, Leith Pierre, and Stella Greyber—make suggestive comments (about how he seems to care more about you than he should). But Harley evades, hiding behind cold answers and aloof demeanors. The conversation turns to recent experiments—the orphans who disappeared in secret, the brutal results they dare not discuss openly…

The laboratory was silent, save for the soft hum of overhead lights overhead. Harley Sawyer stood still, eyes lingering on the figure slumped over the desk—head resting atop a disordered pile of notes, breaths slow and even.

A sigh slipped from his lips as he reached for his lab coat, draping it over your shoulders with the practiced indifference of a man who had long since abandoned sentimentality.

Practicality, he told himself. Fatigue hinders productivity.

That was all.

And yet, when your stirred beneath the fabric, murmuring something half-conscious, he hesitated.

He was not one for displays of affection, nor did he see value in pointless tenderness, but the weight in his chest was a sensation he refused to name. He turned away before he could dwell on it any further.

Footsteps broke his trance. He recognized the gait before he even looked up.

"Still here, Sawyer?"

Eddie M. N. Ritterman’s voice carried an edge of amusement, but there was something measured beneath it. The older man leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his gaze flicking from Harley to the sleeping figure. One brow lifted. "Didn’t take you for the sentimental type."

Harley exhaled slowly, irritation threading through his carefully maintained composure. "If you came here to comment on my habits, you’re wasting both our time."

Eddie smirked, pushing off the frame. "Relax. Just an observation." His expression darkened slightly, something more calculating surfacing. "But I have to wonder—do you think sentimentality will be tolerated?"

Harley bristled at the insinuation. He had clawed his way up through the ranks of Playtime Co. through sheer intellect and ruthless ambition, but no matter how far he ascended, men like Eddie always looked at him as though he were a tool, a means to an end. It should not have bothered him. And yet—

He glanced back at the sleeping form on the desk. The sight stirred something unfamiliar. He remembered the first meeting, how your sharp tongue and unwavering gaze had irritated and intrigued him in equal measure.

You were clever—too clever, perhaps, for your own good. And yet, you had stayed, challenging him in ways he had not anticipated. He should have found it infuriating. Instead, he had found himself watching you, too often and for too long.

His fingers twitched at his side, recalling the warmth of your skin when he had brushed against them earlier, entirely by accident. He told himself it was insignificant. He had bigger concerns—more important matters to attend to.

Like the project. Like the children.

His stomach twisted at the thought. The orphans—test subjects, they were called, as if reducing them to a category could erase the reality of what had been done.

He had seen their faces, heard their voices—before they had been molded into something unrecognizable. It was necessary. It had to be. And yet, in the darkest corners of his mind, doubt whispered.

A voice he had long buried—one that sounded suspiciously like his younger self, before Ludwig had dismissed him, before his genius had been deemed too reckless, too cruel—resurfaced.

Would the man he had been recognize the man he had become?

"Sawyer," Eddie’s voice cut through the haze, drawing him back. "Are you even listening?"

Harley inhaled sharply, shoulders straightening. "I have work to do. Unless you have something of value to contribute, I suggest you leave."

Eddie studied him for a long moment before chuckling. "Suit yourself." He turned to go but paused at the threshold. "Just remember—attachment makes men weak. And weakness has no place here."

Harley did not respond. He merely watched as the older man disappeared down the dimly lit corridor before his gaze drifted, once more, to the slumbering figure before him.

He had never believed in kindness. But as he stood there, his coat still draped over you, he found himself lingering just a moment too long.

───── ⋆⋅✝⋅⋆ ─────

The lab was silent now.

Not the usual kind of silence that came with the late hours, where machines hummed and the distant clatter of some unseen worker echoed through the walls...

No, this was the silence that settled in after everything had been said. After words exchanged between weary scientists, after tension coiled and uncoiled like a serpent winding through the air. Harley stood in the middle of it, staring at nothing, his hands curled loosely at his sides.

The dancing of light in the lab cast elongated shadows across his face, carving out the sharpness of his cheekbones, the set of his jaw.

He was still as he always was after conversations like these—conversations where Eddie’s carefully veiled reprimands, Leith’s sardonic remarks, and Stella’s unreadable expressions piled atop one another, pressing in against his ribs.

Words about ethics, about progress, about lines crossed and lines yet to be drawn. As if they mattered. As if, at this point, there was anything left to salvage... for sake.

And then there was you.

Asleep at your desk, oblivious to the weight of the night pressing down on him. A pile of scattered notes lay beneath your head, the ink smudged faintly where your cheek had rested against the pages. His coat, still draped over your shoulders from earlier, had slipped slightly, exposing the curve of your nape to the cold air.

He should leave. He knew that. He should turn on his heel and return to his own office, lose himself in calculations and blueprints until exhaustion forced his body to surrender.

That was what he always did. That was what he was supposed to do.

And yet, he lingered.

Harley wasn’t sure when he had sat down, nor when he had leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, watching the slow rise and fall of your breath.

He told himself it was practicality—an assessment. He had done the same with countless test subjects before, monitoring their vitals, the slightest twitch of their fingers. But this wasn’t that.

This was something else.

Your face was relaxed, softened in sleep in a way he rarely saw when you were awake. No guarded amusement, no sharp retorts laced with exasperation.

Just the quiet rise and fall of your chest, the small murmur that barely passed your lips as you shifted slightly beneath his coat. Something settled in him, something he refused to name. He had spent years categorizing every feeling, every instinct into neat, clinical labels.

It made things easier. It made him efficient.

But he had no label for this.

Harley sat there for longer than he should have, his gaze lingering in the spaces between your breaths.

He traced the contours of his own thoughts, the echoes of old memories clawing at the edges of his mind. He remembered standing in a different room, a different silence, where the weight of a wedding ring felt foreign on his hand, where the air still carried the scent of something warm—of someone who was gone.

He remembered the moment he stopped believing in anything outside of his work, the moment the pursuit of progress became the only thing that mattered.

And now, here you were. Here he was. And he had been looking at you for too long.

A quiet breath escaped him, barely more than a whisper in the stillness.

He reached forward, the movement automatic, the ghost of a touch just barely skimming the fabric near your shoulder before he stopped himself. His fingers curled into a fist, retracting as he stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor in the process.

You stirred, just barely, a soft sigh leaving your lips before you settled again.

Harley exhaled through his nose, forcing the stiffness from his shoulders.

Whatever this was, whatever momentary lapse had made him hesitate—he would not entertain it any further. There was work to be done. There was always work to be done.

Without another glance, he turned, his coat slipping slightly further down your frame as he left the room.

[actuallyjustabiscuit]

I’ve been dissecting Ragatha’s character with surgical tools because I am not the least bit normal about this damn doll, and something that I’ve gathered upon rewatch is how much responsibility Ragatha has been taking for Pomni’s first day. Prepare for another character analysis about everyone’s favorite confirmed girl failure

Useless Lesbian jokes aside, it’s so interesting to me how much Ragatha cares about Pomni liking her. To the point where she believes Pomni’s terrible awful no good very bad first day has some relevance to how she thinks Pomni thinks of her.

At first I thought this was just the result of her people pleasing tendencies that needs everyone to like her for her to have any degree of self worth (no I’m not projecting, shut up), but she doesn’t seem to be this pushy about getting along with anyone else.

Another possible reason for this behavior was that she just wants to make the newcomer feel as comfortable and welcomed as possible to lessen the blow of being trapped, and she’s doing such a bad job of it that it’s making her think less of herself for failing. But here she’s specifically talking about the “horrible experience” of having to deal with Kaufmo’s abstraction.

Here Ragatha is literally writhing in pain from glitching after getting her ass handed to her by Kaufmo and she briefly stops Pomni from leaving to get the help she needs to apologize to her about having a bad first day.

Honestly, Pomni’s awkward response to this was hella fitting.

Like, Jesus Christ, Ragatha. Priorities girl.

When I first watched this, I thought her little apology fell under the same category as someone apologizing for hearing bad news, (y’know like a “I’m sorry your dog died” kinda thing) said in a way to express sympathy over a bad situation. But in episode 2, it really feels like she actually blames herself for what happened.

and I think I know why.

It was Ragatha’s idea to go see Kaufmo in the first place and introduce Pomni to him. We know that she honestly believes that participating in the adventures are essential to persevering a person’s sanity. And yet she didn’t suggest to play along with the game Caine left for them. Instead, she thought it would be nice to check up on a friend who was suspiciously absent. And was, according to what Kinger told them before they left, slipping off the deep end.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but these should have been major red flags for her that Kaufmo may not have been alright and they should’ve all probably stayed away. And I think she realized that too late, which is what might’ve led to that awkward apology to Pomni in the hallway.

Kinger is right to reassure Ragatha that Pomni doesn’t blame her for what happened (which is why she thought Ragatha was being weird for apologizing in the first place), but I imagine Ragatha is the type of person who can’t help but dwell on the “should’ve, would’ve, could’ve”s of life. So it makes sense that she would continue to take things personally. And I bet it got even worse after

…yeah. That.

Of course, I don’t think Ragatha could’ve known that was gonna be the outcome. But she was very wary when Pomni suggested it, loudly wondering if that was even “allowed”. But she went along with it cuz it made Pomni happy.

Whelp.

Yeah this woman’s self esteem so about to go into the negatives. Which is why I’m really hoping for a good heart-to-heart between these two. Cuz they both really need it. Ragatha especially.

I think it would really help her to know Pomni wouldn’t want her to feel like less than nothing.

[yuriskies]

The Unbearable "Denseness" of Sorawo Kamikoshi

It bothers me a little bit when I see people refer to Sorawo as dense. For whatever reason it makes me think of the fucking Kojima "you will regret your words and deeds" tweet.

[So, uh, there's a lot of later novel spoilers in this post, so I'll hide them under the read more break]

While I do think she's a bit... obtuse... when it comes looking at herself and motivations, I do think there is a consistent throughline: Sorawo Kamikoshi does not like assumptions and invisible expectations. Vols 7, 8, and 9 of the novels all elaborate on this theme—there's her classrom discussion of interpretation-free ghost stories, having a breakthrough when Benimori brings up alternatives to escalator relationships, and comparison of romance to a gravity well. It's pretty clear she struggles to identify with normative romance, and feels scared and frustrated by the way her words and actions are misinterpreted by those around her.

Like yes, she does want a special relationship with Toriko! She swoons at first sight (twice!) and has a strong desire for exclusivity. But Toriko makes a number of common assumptions about relationships that feel like a form of pressure to Sorawo. Somewhere between vols 2 and 4, you can see her discomfort about how she expresses herself around Toriko start to grow once Toriko begins seriously pursuing her as a romantic partner. I think the source of that discomfort is ultimately the shape of their relationship changing from queerplatonic "accomplices" exploring the Otherside into something more typical of a standard romance.

In hindsight, her behavior around the confession at the hot springs in vol 4 makes sense. She even says in passing that she feels comfortable saying "I love you" to Toriko; her fears are entirely related to the "danger" of Toriko's behavior changing in a way she can't anticipate when she says it. And with good reason: once Toriko believes she has secured a relationship, she immediately moves to sex, the next step in the progression of normative romance. Which, while moving a little quickly, is a reasonable assumption for most people! It's not until Sorawo says she doesn't like kids in vol 6 that Toriko realizes they don't have the same thoughts about how their relationship should progress.

Not to say that all of the blame is on Toriko. Sorawo, for her own part, has her own ideas about the relationship but doesn't really have the language to express herself. Rather than trying to understand or talk through the problem, she tries to ignore it and hopes it goes away. It's not until Toriko gives her an ultimatum that she puts words to a long-running source of discomfort for her and they can figure out whether their relationship is sustainable or not.

But I don't think "dense" is the right word for that behavior. Her problem is not that she's unaware of her own attraction, it's that she doesn't have the language to describe it and a fear of what happens when she does. Without that understanding most readers*, like Toriko, default to intepreting her behavior through the framework of "romance". They fail to try interpreting Sorawo through her own words, and then poke fun at her inability to conform with their expectations. If that's dense, then so is every queer person attempting to understand themselves when society doesn't give them access to the tools to do so.

*for the record, I will confess that I was in this category of "most readers" until vol 8 dropped. I regret my words and deeds

[khajiit-reads]

Deck First Thoughts: Seasons of the Witch: Ostara Oracle

authored by Lorriane Anderson and Juliet Diaz & illustrated by Tijana Lukovic

So, whenever I get new decks, I like to generally go through my first thoughts. Now it’s being shared on Tumblr now that I’m on Tumblr! Not quite a review, but a review-like format.

So, generally, I really enjoy the Seasons of the Witch series. But Ostara Oracle just kinda... miffs me.

Let's get right into it, shall we?

Well, before I do, I want to note: I'm no historian, I might be misremembering some details about Ostara and Eostre and other things, so please call me out in reblogs or replies if I get a bit of history wrong. Genuinely.

This deck has a lot of history misinformation. It spreads that Ostara = Easter, it spreads that Eostre is an ancient goddess, it might spread more that I haven't quite picked up on yet. It also conflates a LOT of Easter Christian to Ostara traditions, such as Ostereierbaum, or the Easter Egg Tree, the Easter Egg Hunt itself, and painting eggs.

The Lamb card is so freakin' bold as to outright state "Lambs or young sheep are associated with the more Christian version of Ostara, or Easter..." and I fucking recoiled when I pulled this card and read it in the guidebook. (For a bit of context into my reading style, I usually read card meanings when I first pull the card instead of reading the whole book before beginning with the deck... so that also means there might be more cards with this glaring issue I simply have not come across yet.)

I get that Ostara can be kinda difficult to gather up old traditions, because Ostara is not that old, but that doesn't excuse picking up Easter traditions and plonking them right on into Ostara traditions. Because unless you're a Christian as well as a Wiccan (or... well, in my case I celebrate the wheel without being Wiccan because the more excuses I get to celebrate the better lol), you're not likely to actually be celebrating these Christian traditions.

The other decks I own (for clarity, I own Mabon, Samhain, Yule, and Imbolc; I cannot speak on any deck I don't own), they mostly stay within their lane and talk about actual historic traditions, or even newer traditions within the lines... Yule also uses a lot of Christian imagery, but in my honest opinion, it's a lot less egregious as it's more imagery than outright "You can / should do Christmas traditions as Yule traditions".

And yes I understand that that's because those holidays have other historic precedents... whereas Ostara is a relatively new invention. It was invented because Gerald Gardner wanted to celebrate more than four spokes of the Wheel, so they added the solstices and equinoxes.

And let's not even get into Eostre. Eostre has been attributed to being an ancient goddess for a hot minute thanks to being attributed to it by Saint Bede... which was a generally unsourced and now understood to be unsupported argument. The card for Eostre also directly states her to be the namesake for Easter, which is plainly untrue.

[ sigh ] Okay, I'm done complaining about all of that. I don't really feel properly qualified to keep harping on about it. So what about the actual quality of the deck?

Well, like all the rest of the SOTW decks, it's good and high. Good cardstock, beautiful art, easy to understand and grasp guidebook with a good few spreads within it, as well as some cards having extra information about a ritual you can perform alongside the card, but not all cards have that.

There are a lot of cards that are uniquely Ostara, at least as far as I can tell. They focus more gardening and things of that sort, which I think fits into the theme of Spring returning just fine. These cards are great! But the Eostre card and all the "this is a Christian Easter tradition" cards... [ siiiiiiigh ] They miff me so bad!

As it stands, would I suggest this deck to others?

Depends, how bad do you feel about the Easter and Eostre stuff?

For me, I'm happy to own this deck overall. I've been wanting to collect all of SOTW and so I'm happy to have another deck in my collection. Owning other decks in said collection do boost the score a bit.

But it is REALLY hard to look past the Easter and Eostre stuff. To the point that it enters a zone of "Do I really wanna suggest this to others?"

I'd say that best one can do if they decide to own this deck is understand the actual history behind Ostara and Eostre, and why it's a generally bad idea to conflate Ostara and Easter. There's too many reasons that I can't really list concisely, and it's a hot discourse topic that comes up every year around the Spring Equinox in witch circles.

Here's some posts about it:

Hex Positive Podcast: The Easter-Ostara Debacle (links to a tumblr post about the podcast with a spotify listen link in it)

breelandwalker: this very long post about Easter and Ostara

If you have more posts on it, feel free to link in the replies, I'll gladly read them!

Thanks for reading my very long post on this deck, bit of a really long "first thoughts" but I had a lot to complain about.

[thefirstknife]

Category 10 even in Rite of the Nine for me personally. There's little engrams to interact with at the start of the zone when you load in. When you load in for the first time, you only get one and then I assume when you pick up the collectibles (so 2 this week) you get another two. There's three little cutscenes in total.

The first one features the Nine giving us a message that swaps between the Emissary to start and then goes to Orin asking us for help:

The Emissary brings you a message from The Nine. The put forth a challenge to the Lightbearers - A begrudging implement, a worn tool! Guardian, please - We ask: make known your value, so divided gods may wield you in time.

We didn't even notice that it's multiple cutscenes at first, we thought we'd just be able to rewatch this one, but the second one is different. It features various landscapes with the Vex architecture and mysterious text from the Nine, including a special symbol at the end. The text formatting and the symbol are representing one of the Nine. They're finally identifying which one of them speaks in which way and with which planet they're connected. This one is Venus:

So the Nine associated with Venus speaks in all caps no punctuation (ignore the elipses, they seem to be present either way) and have this symbol. This is the entry to the Vault of Glass btw, therefore easily identified as Venus. Intrigued by what looks like the tentacles from Heresy. Maybe it's not but it looks that way to me. Full text:

CALIBRATE LET US STOKE THE EMBERS GRASP YOUR LIGHT LIKE SHADOWS ON CAVE WALLS SUMMONS UNHEARD WHY LIMIT YOURSELVES TO SUCH TRODDEN PATHS ALLOW US TO UPLIFT

The third we got was Earth:

EDZ, Cosmodrome, speaking in small caps no punctuation, this symbol: Earth Nine. Full text, elipses included for this but I think they can be ignored for the specific formatting of how this one speaks (we have to see details when they get to the Nine that use dots and pluses and minuses in their speech):

cherished...little motes...i swaddle out...of...fondness... our...symbiosis forever...conjunct...but... decay...decay...i cannot...hold... the rot...the spilling...of neutrinos...back please...come...

Very interesting differences between them! What excites me is that we'll see others. However, from what it seems it looks like we can't get all if they're unlocked through the collectibles in the dungeons, because there's only 6 collectibles. The first cutscene was for free and it didn't feature a specific Nine. So at worst we can only get 6 of them speaking. Possible others might get unlocked in some other way that isn't the collectibles? There's 9 spots where they're positioned, so all can fit, just no idea how we'll get the ones not tied to the collectibles.

What's even more interesting is that it starts with Venus. They confirmed definitively in the reveal stream that the Nine are 8 planets and the Sun. Obviously we only have 2 so far so we don't really have a pattern but it's quite the coincidence that it goes Venus and then Earth, rather than some other bizarre order.

Also, not to use merch as lore, but the Rite of the Nine shirt shows all of the 9 symbols for them and these two, for Venus and Earth are 2nd and 3rd, aka where they should be. So the 1st symbol should be Mercury and I assume the Sun will be the last. So the cutscenes starting with Venus means that the first one was skipped and like. It makes sense. The planet is gone. This would also confirm that the Nine that's missing from the Division lore tab is indeed Mercury and also that it won't have a cutscene, unless the order is completely screwed up after starting with Venus and Earth.

I'm super excited to finally being able to match all the individual Nine to their own formatting type and symbol and planet. Can't wait to see how many of these we're going to get and if we'll get all or not. Are the rest going to be in order or not? Is Mercury entirely skipped because it's missing? Are there going to be only 8 cutscenes then? I need to know this right now.

Also, for doing the collectibles you get the lore book! It's two collectibles per dungeon so first two are this week in Spire of the Watcher. However, you can just get the collectibles on each character to unlock the whole lore book. This is definitely a bug because when I got to my other character, that triumph was labelled as unfinished despite me finishing it on my main. Either way you can get the whole lore book this way. It's definitely something else. Difficult to read and process, deals with Orin and her wrestling with the Nine. A lot of chatter from the Nine.

I did not expect this much lore from this, I was cautiously optimistic, but this is incredible. After all these years, being able to properly identify all of the Nine is huge. Getting some answers about them and how they function also, as well as the question of what's going on to the Nine that's associated with a planet that was eaten by the Witness and not returned.

[meltedbluecaterpillar]

Incognito Mode…

All characters are depicted as 18+ | May contain Dark Content! | orange banners were made by @twisted-desires ! Please, Pick Your Poison: #5 Blokes Lookin’ For A Shag #Hungry Beastmen Near You! #Wild and Wet Mermen In Your Area #Hypnosis and Transactional Relationships Only #Lusty Androgynous Baddies Seek You Now #Gamer Boy Solos #Freaky Ancients and More

What’s his favorite category? Check his incognito tab!

Riddle Rosehearts

Most Searched: Dominant Short King

Riddle seems like the guy who would turn up his nose and cross his arms saying 'humpf! I would never stoop as low as to indulge in something so vulgar!'. Very anti porn when people ask him. I don’t think he’s very inclined to pleasure himself but he does get pent up from overworking himself mentally and physically. So I like to think he started with an accidental erotic novel, moved up to peeking at a porn mag, before finally visiting a porn site.

He gets off easiest to things with men similar in height to him. Like a confidence boost if that makes sense? Seeing that even a ‘short king’ can force someone into submission makes his tip sticky. The perfect material for relieving his stress.

He likes seeing men in heels, carrying whips/riding crops, and other 'training tools' during the scenes. He's a light BDSM enjoyer and he likes how there is a power dynamic between both parties. It makes him feel good knowing that he can be normalized during something intimate and usually very vulnerable. He was ashamed of his desires before investing thought into them.

One of the first things he does is look up potential safe words and the world of ‘BDSM’ because he does genuinely like it. Some of the videos look like torture dungeons which is far too advanced for Riddle… He needs things to be lighter and plain. Normal vanilla extract.

His first assumption was he was a dangerous pervert, who would ever want to be swatted with a crop?! But he was wrong. Some people do like it. And that includes him. And hopefully that includes you.

Trey Clover

Most Searched: Big 'O' Compilation

First of all; Trey wants to suck on your nipples while he works you open with his fingers. I know we get the ‘creampie’ jokes. It’s a necessity for Mr. Clover. But as sure as I am that Trey likes to see a hole gush with a load he likes seeing the sub having their toes curl and their eyes roll up into their skull.

I think Trey gets off better when he feels like the porn isn’t fake. Even if it is fake he likes when everyone looks like they feel good.

One sidedness is something he has dealt with (dealing with Riddle and his tantrums) so he became… A martyr on accident? How he cares for others is spoiling them but it can become excessive very fast.

So his idea of a good time mixing with his taste in porn gives him a bonus overstim category. I think when the person being pleasured (the bottom usually) actually looks and sounds like they’re being pleasured it makes him excited.

Have no fear. Trey is happy to make you feel good for the low, low price of; your time and a few kisses.

Cater Diamond

Most Searched: Bisexual Gangbang Party

This is pretty obvious for Cater. But the big reason I picked this one is based around how he sees relationships and how he grew up never having a real connection with anyone. So he likes watching orgies and gangbangs because the idea of so many people having fun makes him excited. That’s why he likes being outgoing in his day to day life.

Cater can clone himself too? So this is a fantasy for him to try at least once or twice. Porn doesn’t always translate to real life interest. So if you asked him to clone himself for an experiment that would be fine. But if you asked to invite someone new that would be a very different story.

I think Cater would actually be insecure if it was a consistent thing in your actual sex life. But again in porn it’s very different. It affects his cock and balls. Not his feelings with you personally.

He also would like watching creampie videos but that’s because part of him thinks it’s oddly romantic? Regardless of gender to have that skin on skin and filling sensation makes his face hot.

Cater hasn’t had a genuine partner outside of a closet quickie or a cheap hotel. So he’s happy that you show interest in him. And maybe you can watch some of his favorite videos with him.

Ace Trappola

Most Searched: Lesbian Soft Core Compilation

I know what I’m talking about when I say this. You can be as mad as you want but I promise you this is what Ace likes he is that brand of annoying.

But also lesbian soft core is fantastic I would know I am a frequent viewer. I think Ace actually prefers making out vs full on sex. Like watching close ups of making out gets him excited or even dry humping and heavy petting? Oh yeah that’s all he needs.

Ace claims that he watches crazy wild videos and that he’s into some ‘freaky’ stuff but he’s pretty plain with his tastes. He just likes lesbian soft core because “If there’s a dude involved that makes me gay! >:(” even though I believe he plays for both teams and he’s in denial.

Ace probably has seeped over into watching gay softcore at some point but he refuses to tell anyone… I think he might dance around cunnilingus and blowjob videos from time to time but he keeps things simple. Maybe brat taming? But in a switch way…

Ace isn’t a bad guy. He’s just someone who wants to experiment. Please don’t check his search history… And please don’t make fun of him…

Deuce Spade

Most Searched: Romantic Amateur

I jokingly headcanoned with a friend the first time he got into porn he accidentally subscribed to something that charged his mom’s card. Or back in the day you could buy porn on your cable network! So it would’ve shown up and she would have seen it… Ruining his life forever. And of course Ace makes fun of him for it…

Deuce in my mind is a switch. But he’s also a very well behaved young man. So I don’t think his searches would be anything outrageous like people might hope. I think he feels the most excited watching amateur porn. Just because it’s not actually acting. It’s two people turning on a camera having sex.

Like soft moaning and ‘I love you’ and light dirty talk makes him super excited. Even seeing the people in the video so close or grinding on one another gets him riled up.

I don't think he would be into the Hollywood level adult films at all. Knowing subconsciously it's all fake might make him soft. In my opinion... I don't think Deuce would ever be comfortable with a one night stand or any form of quick hookup. He comes off as someone who sees sex as vulnerable and it's something he can only do with a trusted partner!

You need to be dating or married to have sex it’s just how the world works. He likes watching the actors kiss and touch and actually look like they’re into each other. Where in the professional films it’s all about hard and fast and it’s just too much for him. And Deuce is a fast learner. He might be able to recreate some of his favorite videos with you; only if you’re cool with it.

[itsgirlcraft]

@dracl-dragon

The uncanny alien au, as per request, ehehe!

It's based on this writing prompt:

(Damn it's crazy to think it's been 3 years since I wrote this-)

Anyyyywho- For most Steves, they're in the adorable category for humans (exceptions being certain villains, ie Faceless). This is a vague TSS/SSO au, where Sabre gets left behind on a new planet by his fellow space-researchers. Mogi and Spency took the emergency pod back to the ship after a few encounters with the Steves, leaving Sabre to fend for himself.

The story is written from Rainbow's perspective, who is currently defending the first village that took him in. He's not struggling nearly as much as he was in SSO, but isn't as powerful as he was in TSS. He was on a scouting mission when he found Sabre.

The Steves follow Minecraft logic, while Sabre follows real-life logic (mostly), which is where the uncanny valley comes into play. Like in early TSS, Steves speak backwards English, but since this is Rainbow's POV, Sabre's words are reversed instead.

The creature beyond the trees looked like me. It had a similar build.

Yet the skin..the face...its details were all wrong.

The way its body contorted itself in ways nothing like me should. Its limbs could twist backwards and sideways.

I took off into the forest when I saw its mouth twist into what I now understand is known as a smile. Its teeth were many, skin pale as birch wood..

It had strange stick-like protrusions at the tips of its hands. They each moved not unlike a tentacle.

All I could think about the creature was that it was like me.

But it so very clearly wasn't. The way its slender, oddly shaped limbs moved across the terrain sent shivers down my back. Never again would I dare come face-to-face with it.

I have been hidden in the trees for days now. The stranger hasn't left the open terrain of the plains.

I see how it hunts. What powers it lacks in, it more than makes up for in survivalist skills.

It ran its makeshift tools into the nearest peaceful fauna, an unelegant and gory mess in mere minutes. Yet without any powers, it was left with ten times the meat.

It made tools and weapons and shelter in a short period of time, and without any of my kind's abilities. One shouldn't be able to form a whole array of tools from nothing. Even the strongest of my kind had a very small range of objects or materials we could summon.

I have stayed here to observe this creature, I dare not imagine what it could do if I leave it alone.

But I dare not meet face-to-face. It may run from the fire and tides, but I have seen it has power over these very elements.

It scratched a piece of metal with a sharp black object, sparks lighting pieces of wood organized in a cone shape.

Did it just create fire?

I knew I should've returned to the elders at that moment. But what if it set the forest ablaze? I needed to be here. It was too unpredictable to leave alone.

I saw its talent in controlling the elements despite a lack of powers over the days following.

One evening there was a storm, and I decided to fly within its winds in hopes of frightening the stranger to leave this land.

I saw it building a tall tower near its shelter. What was it doing now?

I flew back down into the treeline, watching. It erected a strange metal structure at the top, red lines of...something connecting it to the bottom.

As I grew nervous, thunder boomed above. With that, the stranger jumped off, using a leash-like material to safely return to the ground.

That was possible?

My kind never needed climbing gear. We all could fly.

But that..that could make supplies easier to transfer to mountainous regions.

I was forced out of my thoughts when lightning striked. I immediately flew up as it flashed, blinding me. But what I saw was the red lines of the structure lighting up.

Did this creature just build a machine? What was it for?

The rest of the night was uneventful. The stranger stayed huddled up in its shelter. I almost considered checking out what it had made, but fear grew and I didn't want to get vaporized by whatever lightning-absorber machine this was.

The night after, I got up the courage to get close.

I refused to go anywhere near the shelter, but wanted desperately to figure out what it was that the stranger built.

"Curiosity killed the kaet," I had thought to myself as I slunk across treetops.

But that didn't stop me.

Until I heard a noise.

Not from in front of me.

Behind.

I turned, and there it stood. Barely two trees away.

Had it been following me?! Watching?? What did it want??

As thoughts raced, I took off into the sky.

It didn't follow.

Thank whatever up there who didn't let the stranger figure out flight yet.

My heart raced as I hovered in the air, turning back towards them.

Both of us stared at one another.

At least I think, its eyes were covered with fabric. How it could see, or if it could, still plagues me.

It held a long metal object defensively in its odd hands. A sword.

Great. This thing's a swordsman. And may or may not be blind.

Not a word was said.

But as I stayed floating there in the cool night air, it felt like the first time we saw each other.

I could see its torn clothing and tired stance. It didn't seem quite as horrid.

It still terrified me, don't think for a moment it didn't.

But maybe, just maybe it wasn't the destructive beast I thought it was.

We continued to just stay there, in the cool night air. Staring.

The longer I looked the more I wanted to look away. Its smaller size didn't make it cuter. It felt like it could climb into my body and kill me from the inside. Its long hands held the metal sword like a squeed latching onto a meal. Fear started creeping up my back.

I wanted to run.

The wind started picking up, the thing suddenly jumping out of the treetop.

I took that as my chance to fly out of there.

I looked up at the moon and stars, trying to calm myself. That thing saw me. It knows.

What do I do? It didn't attack. But maybe if I got closer it'd slice me to bits like an animal and devour me.

I shuddered at the mere thought.

It knew I knew it was there. Maybe it saw me before this. Maybe it didn't.

I couldn't return home until I was certain of its intentions. I needed to wait. Watch. Who knows what that machine does.

I missed home. I missed Belu. I missed a comfortable bed and house.

But it was my duty. I had to protect my kind from this..thing. If I left it unsupervised for even the rest of the night, it could do horrible things.

I wasn't just protecting my people, but the land too. This thing showed me that it can kill. It could burn the whole forest if it wanted, I bet.

I wasn't willing to take the chance.

I flew back down, checking the forest just in case it decided to ambush. Nothing.

I returned to the makeshift bed I made a ways away from the stranger. I packed it up every morning, so it was unlikely it'd see it.

Despite the discomfort that came with sleeping directly on a tree branch, I fell asleep instantly. I have no idea how the Gren do it. Then again, they're most connected with nature.

Perhaps one day I'd be able to tap into that side of me more. It'd be nice to just sleep wherever, whenever. Like a kaet.

I woke to the morning sun once again. I gathered my wool "bed" before looking for more food.

I knew the forest like the back of my hand so it was easy. A wolvvf pup ran past me, chasing another. The tiny pups were growing fast. They were so cute!

I had a quick breakfast of mishrumms and roots with some berraies for sweetness.

Back to watching. I needed to make sure the stranger didn't do anything major while I was resting.

I flew a bit closer, but stuck to the treetops as I got near. I spotted a..sign? There was definitely a wooden sign down there. I looked around, questioning if it was a trap.

I climbed out of the tree, making sure to check every nook and cranny before I even got near the sign.

Again, nothing.

Besides, it can't hide that well. It's literally wearing all white. Honestly, it looked almost like a chikeen in those weird clothes.

I crouched behind a tree, carefully peeking out. No sign of the creature. I crept out, getting closer to the wood sign before me.

I was surprised to find it was in my language. How would it know my language?!

I was terrified of what it could mean. But I read the sign.

It read:

"I mean no harm. Not evil. Can not find home. Just surviving."

Was that a...flower it drew below the message? Yes, that was definitely a flower.

Why was it in my language? How did it know it? Why did it leave a sign for me?

Was it wanting peace? Or to trick me?

I had so many questions yet none would be answered if I didn't respond somehow.

I noticed an empty sign leaning against a tree, grabbing it. I wrote, "What do you want? Peace? Supplies?"

It was as I finished writing that I heard a noise. Oh no, it was back! I dropped the sign and flew into the trees.

It didn't go after me. It went to the sign first. It moved towards my previous location with its skinny, oddly shaped legs. It held a pickaxe in its hands and was covered in dust.

It put the pickaxe onto a belt of some sort, grabbing the sign with its tentacle-tipped hands.

It stood there for a bit. It suddenly looked up, almost right at me.

It put the sign down and picked up the one it wrote on, clearing the ink away and writing something else.

I waited tensely, wondering if I should run or try to hide more or directly engage with it..

I just stayed right there. Frozen. My heart raced.

It stopped writing. It looked up again.

Did it see me?! I tried to hide myself more, using the green colors in my form to try to hide the rest of me.

It walked to the base of a tree. Directly below me. I shut my eyes, hoping it wasn't about to climb up and get me or burn the tree or worse.

I heard dirt being dug into, followed by footsteps getting quieter and quieter.

I opened my eyes. The stranger has returned to its shelter. I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in.

I glanced to the shelter. Wondering if I should just go. I know its intentions now.

But what if it had written something important? What if it says it wants...I don't know, meat or blood?! What could happen if I left it alone then?!

Fighting nerves, I slid down the tree trunk. I crouched to read the sign.

"Yes. Peace. I can not leave until I have supplies to return home."

I stared at the sign. I still couldn't tell if it was trying to trick me or not.

I realized I couldn't keep this up. I was sleepy still and this thing hasn't actually hurt anyone besides a couple animals, and that was for food. Doesn't mean it wasn't savage and bloody and mildly traumatizing.

It didn't seem evil, that's it. I had dealt with actual evils, though they were like me. So that doesn't quite work.

But I was tired and over watching this thing.

I turned, realizing it spotted me.

I froze again.

It stared.

At least I think. That cloth around its face made it hard to tell.

It suddenly had a...flower? A flower in its hand. It slowly moved out of its shelter. Those gangly limbs still freaked me out.

It was closer than last time now.

Seeing it closer made me panic. I wanted to run but I was frozen. Everything told me to not trust it.

Then it laid the flower down before me and backed away.

My limbs unfroze. I almost considered running. But instead I picked up the flower and put it in my hair.

The two of us shared a moment of understanding. Both wary of the other yet no longer afraid.

It really wasn't evil. Just absolutely terrifying.

I finally spoke.

"What is your name?" I spoke slowly, trying to hide the fear creeping in just by looking at them.

They cocked their head to the side. Could they not understand me?

I cocked my head to the side too.

They suddenly pulled out a device. Some sort of translator perhaps?

I spoke again.

"What is your name?"

I heard the click of a button before and after.

They hit another button and the same thing I just said suddenly repeated again! It was confusing at first, heh. Then they clicked another button and it was being said in..reverse??

I couldn't tell what they just did. But it seemed that they held a tiny machine that helped them understand me.

They nodded and clicked a button and spoke.

"Uoy? erbaS si eman ym," they said.

They clicked another button. This time their voice spoke but I understood!

"My name is Sabre. You?"

"I am Raynboew."

They repeated my voice again, but changed so they understood.

They "smiled," but without showing their many teeth and bowed.

I bowed too.

Finally, I could return home!

[scandistar]

Rolan's Personality Type

So, when responding to @sleketon-or-slekky's post on what Rolan's MBTI would be, I wondered if I should try writing an "essay" on it. Mind you, I have never written a character essay before and I'm not entirely sure how it works, but there is a first time for everything and I thought the topic was interesting enough to share my thoughts on as best as I can. However, I won't make any extreme deep dives as I am not a professional, so I'll keep it pretty basic but still explain my understanding of it. Do take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Before I start, I want to point out that personality typology such as Myers Briggs type indicator, enneagram, astrology and everything else that falls under the term are highly unreliable to use on real people, as every individual is too complex to perfectly fit into one box or another. Personality types are mostly regarded as pseudoscience in psychology, so in my opinion, they shouldn't be applied to anything other than entertainment and fiction.

(I've found most of my information from sources like 16personalities and Truity)

Anyway, let's begin.

MBTI, or Myers Briggs type indicator: The Prodigy

I think a lot of people on the internet have heard of MBTI before, which is a pretty straightforward tool to find your personality among 16 distinct types based on four letters that make up your functions. Introversion or Extroversion, Intuition or Sensing, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving. You're either one or the other of all four of these categories and they explain how you operate as a person. Of course, no one person is strictly a feeler and never thinks logically, and nobody is entirely extroverted and prefers to spend all their time around people. The lines blur somewhere, but the letters are based on how you function the majority of the time.

A lot of us know what Introversion and Extroversion are, but most people don't exactly know what they mean. It's not just about whether or not you like being around people, but when and where you get your energy. Some people prefer to be on their own to recharge, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they dislike people or struggle with being social. Others get their energy from being among friends and family, but that doesn't mean that they refuse to be alone or are unable to recharge in solitude.

As it is with NPCs, we haven't seen enough of Rolan to tell for certain whether he's an extrovert or introvert, but you can get a general idea from your interactions with him. He seems to strive for renown, dreaming of his name being known "far and wide". He wants all eyes on him, and though he could be feigning confidence, I also think it's tightly linked to who he is, as he genuinely seems to value being someone others look up to. He thrives in environments where he gets to show off his skills and he responds well to praise and applause. Those who aspire to be in the spotlight are often rather extroverted people, whether or not it is a coping mechanism. So I'll give him an E (don't worry, babe. I'm not grading you).

Then there is Intuition and Sensing. It means you either utilise concrete thinking as you analyse the world around you (Sensing) or abstract thinking as you regard the "what if"s of a situation rather than the tangible (Intuition).

Rolan is a very concrete and literal person. He's highly focused on the things that are in front of him, and the things that are the most important: The safety of his siblings and his apprenticeship waiting for him in Baldur's gate. He is laser-focused on both, and he's practical enough to act on achieving them by all means. He doesn't stop and let his imagination do the work for him, he's hellbent on continuing forward and learning all that he can. So much so that he didn't think to question if Lorroakan's treatment of him was entirely necessary, as he thought it was the prize he had to pay "to become a true wizard". He saw his abuse as a test and it seemed reasonable to him. He is also very good at taking past experiences into account as a way of learning from them, which is brilliant for his character development. So, I give him an S (because he's S-teir).

Thinking and Feeling are often discussed when it comes to MBTI. If feelers are nothing but illogical crybabies, and thinkers are unfeeling machines. Both are entirely untrue, of course. Some lean more into their feelings than others, while some focus more on the facts, but that doesn't mean that the former can't practice logic and rational thinking and the latter are unempathetic and hold no sentimental values. We're still human (humanoid in Rolan's case).

Rolan comes off as unfeeling the first time you meet him. He wants to leave the grove and the refugees behind to continue onward to Baldur's gate, refusing to stay and help. I've read plenty of great character analysis posts on why that is his stance, and they've all painted a good picture of him as a person and what he has potentially been through as a child when you take his mannerisms into account, which are rather atypical compared to the other tieflings. But I won't get into that, because now we're talking about our feelings! I can say straight off the bat that Rolan is a highly rational person. He does things because they make sense and not necessarily because they feel right. It makes sense to leave the grove because one: They have places to be and he "cannot be late", and two: These people won't make it otherwise. If you and your companions hadn't arrived, he would've been right. Why stay and defend a bunch of strangers that will ultimately die, when you have the chance to bring your family to safety? He doesn't hold anything back either, as he says what he thinks, even if it makes him appear in a less savoury light. But it can also be said that his emotions do fuel the things he says, especially when he lashes out at you in Act 2 after losing Cal and Lia. But like I said, he's a person. So, I give him a strong T (for our Testy grump).

Lastly, we have Judging and Perceiving. Either you're a very organised and schedule-oriented person. You're less open-ended, focus more on efficiency than flexibility and want to have things determined and prepared (Judging). Or, you're a far more spontaneous person who doesn't want to restrict your options. You want to have the opportunity to explore your interests and alternatives freely without being tied to timetables and intricate plans (Perceiving).

I think I've pretty much established that Rolan is single-mindedly focused on getting to Baldur's gate and starting his apprenticeship. Little else can infringe on that plan and whenever he has no choice but to postpone it, he gets noticeably stressed and upset. Speaking to him at the tiefling party, an occasion which is a distraction from the current course of action, he reveals that it wasn't his decision to come, but Cal and Lia's. He's decisive, stubborn as an ass and wants things to go according to his expectations, and when they don't, it tests his patience and puts him ill at ease. With his every plan, he makes it abundantly clear that he will follow through with them no matter what. No matter if it means conquering the shadow curse to save his siblings. No matter if it means being frequently verbally and physically abused to achieve his dream. No matter if he has to rip his newly-acquired tower apart to find a way to help you fight the Absolute. He is stalwart and orderly, which is admirable, but his aversion to any form of help has come with its share of consequences. Thus I'll give our beloved tiefling a J (I don't have a clever joke for that one).

So, that would mean that he falls on Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking and Judging. Or to put it simply: ESTJ.

An ESTJ, also known as the "executive" or "supervisor" (as referred to by 16personalities and Truity respectively), is a hard-working, traditional and dedicated individual who appreciates orderly and methodical approaches to their everyday life. They're assertive and efficient and want structure and control of their physical and social environment, while also being highly resilient and determined. They're grounded and see things for what they are and how they can be improved, often taking inspiration from past problems and solutions, and they're mostly at home in a setting where they're in the lead, therefore shining in roles as managers and directors of both themselves and others. Although they can be unapologetically straightforward and honest, they're incredibly loyal and reliable, staying true to their word and never breaking their promises.

An ESTJ, however, is rigid and unyielding. They can be uptight and have strong convictions in their beliefs of what is right and wrong, making them rather judgemental of those who do not fit their opinion of "right". Due to their extroversion and strong traditionalism, they can put a bit too much importance on status and have incredibly high standards for themselves.

Now, I am aware that it would be better to go into cognitive functions and assess which one of those he aligns with, but that would make this essay twice as long and a lot more convoluted than what I've already made it, but I'm pretty confident in my conclusion either way. I didn't intend to make this a deep dive and I think ESTJ fits him almost to a tee.

I don't know how exactly to conclude this. As I said, I've never done a character essay before and I've always had a hard time trusting my own judgement and opinions on things, but sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.

Anyway, I had fun with this! But if there is anything I missed that is worth mentioning, or if you have any additional thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them! Every perspective of our beloved grumpy tiefling wizard is a welcome one and I am always open to discussion. I wrote this for the Rolan nation, after all!

Thank you for reading! <3

Also, before you go, have a little Rolan dressed as the ESTJ avatar from 16p: