#like I'm just having the worst week but then I logged on and saw an ask about my favorite subject and then it was just like

[livwritessometimes]

Enough For You - Lando Norris

: Lando Norris x Reader

: All Y/n wanted was to be enough for Lando

: Series Masterlist

: Main Masterlist

: Author's Note - I had been so busy with work that this kept on getting delayed but anyways it's finally here! lmk what you think.

…

liked by landonorris and 72,393 others

👤: landonorris

Yourname: Running around the city with my favourite papaya boy (Osc yk it's always you he paid me to say that)! At this point I deserve an award for how many years I've put up with your antics <3

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oscarpiastri: Wow so this is what betrayal feels like (It's okay i know I'm your favourite, let little Lando Norris have his fun)

-> landonorris: i- bitch please I'm older than you

-> yourname: @/landonorris shhhh let the grown ups talk

*liked by oscarpiastri*

landonorris: oh please you love it!

-> yourname: do I now?

-> landonorris: 😏

-> User73: THIS SEXUAL TENSION AHHH!!!!!

-> User21: And then they say "we're just friends" ya just friends my ass

User93: Hmm so Lando spent his only day off during race week with y/n....interesting

Y/n waved as she watched Lando drive away from her doorstep. Today had been like a fever dream. When Lando called her, asking to spend time with her, Y/n was over the moon. It was like wishing for something and having it come true. As she entered the house, she got a text from Lando:

Lando 🧡: I had a lot fun! thanks for keeping me company today!

Smiling to herself, Y/n made her way into her bedroom. There at the vanity mirror was a photo of her and Lando from when they were 18 years old. It was the night they both went for a bonfire with some of their friends. It was also the first time Y/n realised that she was madly in love with Lando. She doesn't know if it was the melted marshmallow that he somehow managed to get in his hair or the fact that he noticed her getting cold amongst so many people at the bonfire and offered her his hoodie, a hoodie that she still wears to this date, but somehow, surrounded by friends, all Y/n could see was Lando, sitting on a wooden log, looking back at her from between the flames that rose from the wood. 

As she got ready for the night Y/n got another text from Lando:

Lando 🧡: Just got home

Lando 🧡: Again thanks for today, everyone I called was busy or just didn't want to go. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been there

And the bittersweet feeling was back again. For Y/n, Lando was the sun; he was the center of everything. There was not a day that went by without him not being on her mind - their impromptu coffee runs, their inside jokes, their stolen glances. Yet every time Y/n let herself believe that something was going to happen between them, she was always met with disappointment. It seemed like she was always a convenient option for Lando. Someone he'd come to when he had no one around but would easily disregard when he found someone more exciting. Y/n thinks about all those times she spent crying because she felt used. About the time when Lando threw her a birthday party and then proceeded to spend the entire night hitting on almost every girl present at the venue. The worst part is that Y/n wasn't even mad; instead, she was sad about the fact that she wasn't one of the girls. All she would ask for at every birthday wish, every 11:11, every rainbow she saw was for Lando to finally see her.

Y/n could feel herself get emotional, so she decided to browse through her phone, when she got a notification on Twitter.

liked by User32 and 87,989 others

👤: landonorris

LN4Updates: Lando Norris in today's twitch stream!!

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User32: hmm ok let me quickly just go and bleach my entire head 🏃🏻‍♀️

User43: He does seem like he would like blondes more

-> User51: What do you mean?

-> User43: Idk blondes are prettier, they seem to have more fun and lando is the kinda guy that enjoys that ig

Yourname added to their story!

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| User93 replied to your story

-> are you perhaps maybe idk just taking a wild guess here could be absolutely off dying your hair b****e??

One thing that Y/n was extremely grateful for in her friendship with Lando was being able to befriend George. Over the years, he had become like a brother to her, and because of George, she also got to know Carmen. She was like a breath of fresh air, and Y/n doesn't know how she would manage her life now without Carmen by her side. The moment they met, it was like they had known each other their whole lives. Carmen was always protective of Y/n. All those times that Y/n found herself crying over Lando, Carmen was always there with her, consoling her. She knows that Carmen wants the best for her and that she's disappointed that Y/n is dying her hair to make Lando like her more, but how can she not? The boy of your dreams likes blondes more, and she would do anything to make him like her. Looking up at the mirror, Y/n stared at her tied-up brunette locks. In the reflection, she caught sight of a book kept on top of her table. She let out a bitter chuckle, remembering the time Lando had posted that book and talked about how impressed he was with it. Like an idiot, Y/n got that book and read it word for word, in hopes that Lando would think that she is smart and that they have more in common than he might think. Instead, Lando barely even registered her comment about the book; he was more focused on the waitress who was taking their order. 

liked by landonorris and 4,92,372 others

👤: yourname

whowhatwear: In this month's cover story, we uncover all the aspects of Y/n L/n's personality we don't get to see on the internet. From starting her modeling career to being heavily involved in Formula 1 ("I got into F1 because of a close friend of mine and since then I have done everything I can to support women in motorsports"), we discuss life struggles, personal growth and more in this month's cover at the link in our bio.

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Yourname: Thank you so much for having me!!! I can't wait for everyone to see this month's edition <3

*liked by whowhatwear*

User88: umm hello since when did you go BLONDEEEEE 👱🏻‍♀️

-> User02: I swearrr! i screamed so loud when I saw thisss

carmenmmundt: SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!!

*liked by Yourname*

-> Yourname: Ahhh thank you Carrr 💕

-> User66: I want what they have!

landonorris: You look absolutely breathtaking in this one @/yourname

*liked by Yourname*

User09: I feel like I have died and reached heaven <3

User69: Serve queen 👸🏼

landonorris: Can't takle my eyes off this post!!! Running to get the copy 🏃🏻💨

*liked by Yourname*

liked by landonorris and 76,730 others

👤: landonorris

yourname: Did someone say tanning season ☀️

view all 68,488 comments

User88: And then they say "we're just friends"

-> User02: I swearrr

landonorris: Prettiest blonde I know

-> yourname: 🙈🙈

User93: @/landonorris whatever you're recording over there, we better get that clip or else

landonorris: The sun came out pretty good didn't it 🤭

-> yourname: It did! I wonder who the artist was

-> landonorris: Must be someone amazing, I mean mad skills right there 🔥

-> User43: HE DREW A SUN ON HER!!!!!!!

liked by yourname and 102,832 others

👤: team_quadrant, riabish

landonorris: SPEEDCO is out now on quadrant.gg check it out!!! Also watch me and ria slay

view all 85,925 comments

riabish: Letsgooo 🙌🏻

riabish: The best looking duo out there!!!

-> landonorris: you know it 😏

User62: you guys look soo goood togetherrrr

-> User55: ikrrr like date already!!

landonorris added to their story!

seen by User06 and 91,298 others

| User06 replied to your story

-> Love Party Boy!Lando 🍾

Lando quickly posted a story before he kept his phone back and continued to talk to the girl in front of him. George, Lando, Charles, and a couple of other drivers had decided to go clubbing before race week, and so here Lando was surrounded by friends, enjoying himself. So lost in his conversation, Lando did not notice three pairs of eyes on him. From afar, Y/n, Carmen, and George watched Lando interact with some blonde girl. The three of them had decided to come together for the club.

Y/n felt like laughing at her fate; no matter what she does, he still won't pay attention to her the way she wants him to. Even with her now blonde hair, he was still talking to someone else. Lando made his way towards the trio with the girl from earlier. "Hey, mate, how's it going?" he asked George before turning towards Carmen and saying, "Carmen! It's always a pleasure to see you. You look fabulous, by the way." Lando turned towards Y/n and gave her a nod before taking a sip from his drink, not bothering to say anything else. 

"Good mate, don't you want to, say, compliment Y/n too?" George asked, having seen the look of hurt on Y/n's face when Lando didn't say anything about her. "Nah mate, yk it's just Y/n; she's not the compliment type," Lando said before laughing and throwing an arm around Y/n's shoulder.

Pain, hurt, and embarrassment. That's all Y/n felt under Lando's embrace. She could see the girl from earlier smirking at Y/n after Lando's comment. Suddenly she felt hot, the kind of hot that makes you want to disappear entirely. Carmen saw right through Y/n's fake smile after what Lando had just said. She knew Y/n needed a moment alone, away from this scene and, most importantly, away from Lando. "Y/n I wanted to go touch up my makeup. Would you accompany me to the restroom?" Carmen said and grabbed Y/n's hand, pulling her towards the restroom. 

George and Lando went to the bar to get another drink when George said, "You know, that was kinda mean back there." Lando looked at George, confused. "What you said to Y/n," said George. Lando just shrugged and said, "Yk, how it is with me and her, we're always like this." "Do you know she likes you, like more than a friend?" George couldn't help himself; he knew he'd hear from Carmen and Y/n about this, but he just couldn't control himself. "What?" Lando looked at George, a little shocked. "Ya man, she does. Idk why you keep on chasing these meaningless girls when you have someone as amazing as Y/n by your side, and what for some hours of pleasure?" George said this before he took a sip of his drink and looked at Lando. "Why didn't she say anything?" George just shrugged at that. Lando's mind went back to all the interactions they've ever had, trying to piece together a moment that might confirm this theory that George had just blurted out. 

Meanwhile, in the restroom, Carmen was trying to calm down Y/n "He's just stupid; don't listen to him. You know how many people have come up to try to talk to you today. Don't let him ruin your night," said Carmen. Y/n running hands through her hair, "Ya, but none of them were him, and now he just went ahead and embarrassed me in front of everyone like that." Taking a deep breath, Y/n said, "I think I want to go home. Ya, I'll see you tomorrow for the practice." With that, Y/n rushed out of the restroom and towards the exit. 

Lando saw Y/n leave in a rush and followed her. "Y/n,"  "Y/n wait up." She heard Lando's voice but continued to make her way towards the exit to book a cab for herself. "Wait up, where are you going? And are you booking a cab? It's not safe to take a cab this late," Lando said as he caught up with her at the exit. "It's okay; I'll manage just fine. You can go back to the party now," Y/n replied bitterly before typing in her address. Just as she was about to confirm the cab, Lando took her phone from her hand. "WHAT?" Y/n said a little louder than she had intended to, making a few people look their way. "I'll drop you; please, let me," Lando said before he took her hand and led her to his car. 

The journey was filled with silence; not a single word was exchanged between the two of them. Not even a single glance—well, not from Y/n at least—because Lando kept looking at her every few minutes or so. Growing tired of this weird air in the car, Y/n asked, "Do you want to say anything?" Lando just looked back at her without saying anything. "If not, then please stop looking at me again and again," Y/n said. "I can't help it; you look absolutely stunning," said Lando. Y/n scoffed at that comment before saying, "Oh, why the praise? I thought I wasn't the compliment type." Lando internally regrets saying that now. "Look, I know that you like me. George told me," Y/n felt her heart drop, waiting for Lando to continue, to tell her that he was not interested in her and that she could never be his type- "And I want to give this a try," said Lando, breaking her from her thoughts. "Whatt?" Y/n, not believing her ears, asked again. "What do you mean by you want to give this a chance?" Lando stopped the car at the traffic light before turning to look at Y/n. Taking a hold of her hand, he said, "I want to see where this goes. We have such great chemistry, and everyone else also seems to think the same. I want to give us a try." "So, what do you say, Y/n, L/n? Will you date me?" Lando looked at Y/n, expecting her to answer; what he didn't expect was for her to pull him in for a kiss. It was only when the car behind them started honking that they pulled away from each other. Lando drove Y/n back to her house. The car was filled with silence again, but this time, rather than tension, it was filled with this newfound excitement. 

liked by yourname and 182,822 others

👤: Yourname

landonorris: Another week, Another race!! let's make the most of this one 🧡

view all 85,925 comments

User22: Ummmm so are you not gonna talk about how YOU'RE KISSING Y/N

User01: Ofc betrayed by my favourite driver 💔

Yourname: Let's get podium this week

*liked by landonorris*

-> mclaren: Yess let’s goooo 🏆

*liked by landonorris, Yourname*

liked by User22 and 101,282 others

👤: f1

Formula1Updates: Sebastian Vettel bids farewell to Formula 1. Lewis Hamilton organized a celebratory dinner in honor of the legendary Vettel. All drivers gather together with their wives/girlfriends to celebrate the fantastic journey of Seb. Here is a photo of all the drivers outside the restaurant. Click the link in the bio to learn more!

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User22: The end of an era!!!

Y/n looked around at all the people that had gathered here to celebrate Seb. She had not known him for that long, but when she needed him; he was there for her. It is funny how they first met; it was the race after Y/n's birthday, and Lando had invited her to the paddock as a way to make up to her for ignoring Y/n during her birthday party, which he threw. Y/n was so excited to spend time with him, but all that excitement died down when she got to know that Lando had also invited some of his other friends. Still, she tried to get along with everyone for Lando's sake but it was of no use. Lando barely exchanged a few words with her, instead he spent his entire time with his other friends, which included a bunch of models from Instagram. Y/n remembers how she had gone for a walk in hopes to make her self feel better when she ran into Seb. He just had a way with people, upon seeing her Seb immediately knew something was wrong and what was meant to be a quick 5 min walk to clear her mind turned into a 2 hour ranting session for Y/n. Rest is all history, since then Seb sort of took Y/n under his guidance, always giving her advise when she needed it.

Y/n felt someone stand next to her, and when she turned, she was face-to-face with the man of the evening himself. "Not getting bored, are you?" Seb asked Y/n while giving her a little nudge. "Of course not, just sad that I won't get to see you in the paddock anymore," Y/n said as she let out a sign. Gently pulling her in for a side hug, Seb said, "I see you got the guy!" This caused Y/n to turn her attention to Lando. There he was, the boy she had fallen in love with a long time ago, falling in love with her too. It was as if he could sense her gaze, because at that moment Lando turned to look at Y/n and smiled at her before going to talk to more people present at the party. "Yes, now you no longer have to listen to me mope over him, huh?" Y/n said as she smiled at Seb. "Just know that if he ever breaks your heart, I'll slash his tyres," Seb playfully threatened as he took a sip of his drink. Y/n laughed at his comment before excusing herself to go talk to Alexandra and Carmen.

After a while of chatting, Y/n started to wonder where Lando was. Making her way around the room, she saw him talking to some brunettes. So many people were invited that Y/n had no clue who most of them were. As she made her way towards Lando, she saw the girl raise her hand to fix his hair. Y/n could feel jealousy brewing in her. Quickly making her way towards him, she threw an arm around his waist and greeted him. "Hey, babe, where have you been? They are about to serve dinner; I thought I should come and get you," Y/n said as she looked at the girl in front of her. "Oh yeah, let's get going. I'll talk to you later, Luisa. It was lovely meeting you here, and again, you look amazing. Have a great night," Lando said as he wrapped his arm around Y/n and started walking towards the dining area with her.  Y/n forced herself to smile; she told herself that it's okay; Lando is with her now. All these meaningless compliments to other girls are not going to do anything to change that. At the end of the day, she gets to go home with him, not them, and that's enough. Y/n knew there was no point in dwelling on this; it was not going to do her any good, and if she brought it up, it might cause a fight between them. So instead, Y/n turned her attention to the food in front of her and the people around her. Taking part in their conversation, so she could forget the thoughts plaguing her mind.

liked by landonorris and 76,730 others

👤: landonorris, carmenmmundt

yourname: Too many memories, too many people to tag! What a dinner it was Lewis! Gonna miss having Seb around 🫂

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sebastianvettel: Gonna miss terrorizing mclaren with you @/Yourname

*liked by Yourname*

-> mclaren: 😟

lewishamilton: Thank you Y/n <3 Really glad you we're able to make it

*liked by Yourname*

carmenmmundt: It's you and me against the world 💕

-> Yourname: Forever and ever 🤞🏻

*liked by carmenmmundt*

User68: Okay but way hasn't Lando commented???

liked by yourname and 120,732 others

👤: maxfewtrell, luisinhaoliveira99

landonorris: Had one of the best trips in Dubai!!! Can't wait to visit again 🌵

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maxfewtrell: Best part was when you fell from the camel 😂

-> landonorris: what the hell mate!! you were supposed to keep that a secret

User01: Shirtless landooo 🤤

User48: Omgggg Lando and Luisa look so cuteeeee

-> User03: Dudee he has a gf why would you ship him with her??

-> User48: Honestly I think they look better together

Y/n felt hurt and disappointed. Boys trip! That's what Lando had said, so when she saw him post pictures with Luisa, she felt her heart sank. For a moment, Y/n was still ready to ignore this; maybe she was there at the same time, or maybe they did plan to go. Who cares? She trusts Lando, and that's all that should matter. But all the comments under his post talking about how he looks better with Luisa and how Lando and Y/n should have never gotten together made her question everything.

Unable to think straight, Y/n called Lando:

Lando: Hey, babe (he greeted cheerfully)

Y/n: (For a second, Y/n wanted to forget about all of this and just not make things worse between them) Hey Lan, How was the trip?

Lando: Oh, it was great. I had so much fun; the boys and I went on a safari and all too!! It was just amazing

Y/n: Oh, did the boys have fun?

Lando: Yes, it was honestly one of the best trips I've ever been on

Y/n: Why was Luisa with you guys? (Y/n went straight to the topic, tired of beating around the bush)

Lando: (hesitant) What do you mean, she came on the trip with us?

Y/n: You never told me she was also going. Why did she go anyway? I thought it was just an "all boys trip," or is Luisa one of the boys now?

Lando: What do you even mean? Of course not. Luisa came because I invited her. That day at Seb's dinner, we had such a good conversation that I asked her if she wanted to come with us. I mean, what's the big deal anyway?

Y/n: What's the big deal? The big deal is that you failed to mention to your girlfriend, who is still me, that you were going on a trip with another girl who, by the way, you met a couple of weeks ago. And now you're telling me you invited her?? Do you see why I am having a hard time trying to wrap my head around this?

Lando: Honestly, you're making a bigger deal than it actually is. Ya, so I invited her. It's not like I fucked her or anything, and forgive me if inviting a friend on a trip is a crime.

Y/n: A friend I'd still understand; she's not your friend Lando, and if anything, you should have asked me to come and not her!

Lando: Is that what the problem is—you're jealous I didn't invite you? Honestly, Y/n that's just pathetic, even for you. Your constant need to be around me 24/7 is so annoying sometimes. Do you ever think that maybe I invited Luisa because I can't stand this clingy behaviour of yours? But, of course, you'd never think about how you might be at fault here. I just feel like you can never be satisfied, like ever. Every time I talk to a girl, you have an issue. I mean, if it's such a huge issue, then let's just end things. That would make things a lot simpler for the both of us.

Y/n: No, wait, I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry if you felt like that. I had no idea that you were feeling like that. I swear, I don't have an issue with you interacting with other girls. It's just all these comments online that have been getting to me.

Lando: You know, they always say random things. People ship me with any beautiful girl they see me with, but that doesn't mean that it will come true. You should be so easy to control that even meaningless comments get to you.

Y/n: Ya, I'm sorry

Lando: It's okay. Now, what are you doing tonight? There is a party I want to attend, and I wanted to know if you'd like to come with me

Y/n: Oh, nothing, I'm free. Pick me up at 8?

Lando: You got it! Anyway, I should get going.

Y/n: Bye, I love yo-(Lando hung up before she could finish)

Signing to herself, Y/n opened her chat with Carmen

Y/n: Hey, sorry to inform you at the last minute, but something came up and I won't be able to make it tonight. (Y/n felt guilty about ditching Carmen on their movie night. She knew if she told her the real reason, Carmen would be extremely upset with Y/n, but more than that, angry at Lando)

Carmen 🤎: Is everything okay??

Y/n: Ya, ya, everything is fine. I just remembered this thing I had to complete that I forgot because I kept on procrastinating.

Carmen 🤎: Ofc you'd do that 🤦🏻‍♀️ How many times have I told you to use the planner I gave you? It would make life so much simpler for you

Y/n: Ikkkk I'll use it again next time!! I swear 🫶🏻

Carmen 🤎: Good 😌

Yourname added to their story!

seen by carmenmmundt and 73,028others

| carmenmmundt replied to your story

-> You're out partying again??

Yourname: Ya! Lando got invited to this club so now we're here patyinggg

| landonorris replied to your story

-> Where did you gooo?? come backkkkk i msisss youhhh

Yourname: are you drunk?? lol ok I'm omw to find you <3

liked by User82 and 81,728 others

👤: landonorris, luisinhaoliveira99

LN4Updates: Lando Norris and Luisinha Oliveira were spotted in the Mclaren vicinity. The two previously went on a trip together to Dubai. Fans on Twitter are convinced that these two are seeing each other and that Norris and Y/n L/n have broken up, but there is no confirmation from all the parties involved. From what we can gather, Norris and Oliveira seemed to have a friendly conversation. Some fans present at the race claim that they saw Norris being a little more affectionate towards Oliveira, but nothing can be said for certain. Is this the end of Norris and L/n, or is there more to the story?

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User20: NOO don't tell me they broke up!!!

User82: Honestly I kinda knew this was gonna happen. I mean Y/n is not really Lando's type. I was really surprised when they had announced they were dating

-> User08: Okay but who asked you for your opinion?? They are perfect

-> User77: I'd have to disagree. Lando and Luisa are more compatible you just don't want to accept the fact that lany/n are not that great

Y/n was fuming. She felt as if someone had slapped her right across the face. Even after letting Lando know about her concerns and reservations about him hanging out with Luisa, he went ahead and did it again. Was this the reason why Lando urged Y/n to take a break from the constant travelling? So that he could have Luisa in the paddock with him? Y/n was disgusted; she felt used and discarded. She changed everything about herself—her hair, the way she dresses, the way she talks—hell, she even started to go to his stupid parties with him to make him like her more. There is always a breaking point in everyone's life, and Y/n had reached that. 

Y/n could feel hurt and anger taking over when she heard the front door of her house open. Lando was home from the race. Without wasting a second, Y/n barged into the living room, only to find Lando relaxing on the couch. "How dare you!" Y/n screamed at Lando. If she wasn't so mad, she would have laughed at Lando's confused expression. "What? What do you mean?" asked Lando. "Don't play dumb with me. I told you how I felt about her, and yet you still invited her to the paddock." Y/n could feel tears pricking her eyes. "What? Luisa? How many times do we have to go through this? At this point, I might as well date her. Because clearly, that's what you think I am doing anyway. You might as well make your wish come true," Lando finished. "I hate you, Lando Norris. I fucking hate you so much. I changed everything EVERYTHING for you. I wanted to be like all those girls you usually like. I changed the way I wear makeup; I changed my freaking hair color because you said you liked blondes more in a stupid stream." Y/n let out a shaky breath before continuing. "When you told me you wanted to give us a try, I was so happy. It felt like the universe had finally heard my prayers. I was so happy that I spent the entire night lying on my bed with a huge smile on my face. You know, I always feared that this would happen. I knew that you'd leave me the second you'd find someone more exciting," Y/n said as she wiped the tears streaming down her face. "I had no idea you felt like this," Lando said. For a second, he almost sounded genuine, like he finally saw how his actions had affected Y/n. "I'm sorry you felt that way," Lando said as he looked back at her. "It's a little too late for sorry now, Lando. You have done the damage," Y/n said. "I said I was sorry. Why can't that be enough for you? What do you want me to do? Stop talking to every girl I ever see." Lando said, getting frustrated with how things were going. "I should have known that this was just a waste of time. I would have had such an easy life if George hadn't opened his big mouth and blabbered about how my life would be much better if I just gave you a try and stopped chasing after meaningless pleasure. If only I had known that I was just choosing one meaningless pleasure over another," Lando said as he finally let his frustration take over. Y/n couldn't take it anymore. "Get out! Just get the hell out of my house. I don't want to see your face ever again. I regret the day I met you. I regret it with every fibre present in my body," Y/n said as she watched Lando leave her house, but not before slamming the front door shut. 

Y/n broke down, sinking to the floor. She took her phone out to text Carmen.

landonorris added to their story!

seen by luisinhaoliveira99 and 91,298 others

| luisinhaoliveira99 replied to your story

-> ❤️‍🔥

liked by luisinhaoliveira99 and 100,789 others

👤: luisinhaoliveira99

landonorris: Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years 💕

view all 71,873 comments

User02: Wait does this mean that Lando and Y/n are no longer together??

-> User54: Did you not see the story Lando posted the other day?? I think that was enough to confirm that 💔

User98: He used lyrics from loverrr!!!! this boy is down bad

luisinhaoliveira99: Can we always be this close! Forever and ever <3

*liked by landonorris*

User82: I'm happy that he is happy but isn't this too soon? like he just broke up with Y/n. I mean the least we can do is wait for a month or something not just a few days!!!

-> User66: That's so true! I was thinking the same thing. I mean unless....This has been going on for a while! That's the only explanation cause why else would he jump into a new relationship so quickly??

-> User82: I mean it could be! Do you think this is why George unfollowed Lando??

Y/n saw Lando's post, confirming that he was with Luisa. Y/n hated that girl. She had everything Y/n could have wanted, and she didn't even have to change herself to get Lando's attention. Tired of feeling sorry for herself, Y/n made her way to her bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, all she could see was a part of her that she no longer liked. A pathetic part of her that tried everything just so she could get a boy to love her longer. Frustrated, she got into her car and drove to the salon she always goes to. It was about time she felt like her old self again, and the easiest step in that direction was getting rid of the sad blonde locks that covered her head.

Yourname added to their story!

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| User93 replied to your story

-> Yessss the queen is backkkkk 👑

liked by User22 and 101,282 others

👤: Yourname, shawnmendes

F1Gossip: Bye bye Lando! Y/n L/n, the former girlfriend of Lando Norris, was spotted getting cozy with singer/songwriter Shawn Mendes. The two reportedly first met when they were doing a campaign together for Tommy Hilfiger. Ever since the announcement of Norris's new relationship, L/n has become radio silent. Apart from posting a single story and work-related content, L/n has left her fans guessing about what's been going on with her life. Neither Mendes nor L/n have commented on the paparazzi photos that captured them looking anything but friendly. Is there a new couple on the block or are they "Just Friends?" Stay tuned for more updates on this situation!

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User11: Ohhhh not the "Just friends" shadeeee 🫢

liked by Yourname and 143,086 others

👤: Yourname

shawnmendes: Nothing to see here, just me, my beautiful girlfriend, and our little baby 🦮

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Yourname: The most perfect family I could have ever asked for <3

-> shawnmendes: ❤️

*liked by Yourname*

carmenmmundt: When do i get to meet the most handsome boy in the world???

-> georgerussell63: what do you mean? I just saw you

-> Yourname: 😀

-> shawnmendes: 😀

-> carmenmmundt: 😀

-> georgerussell63: 😌

georgerussell63: The baby in question is a grown ass dog that tried to chew my shoes the other day

-> Yourname: Your fault, should have just let him bite you instead 😒

-> georgerussell63: 😨

-> mercedesamgf1: please give us our George back safe and sound 🥺

User33: Omggggggg Y/n looks so hapyyyyyy and they have a doggggg together!!!! my hearttttt

liked by User22 and 68,028 others

👤: f1

AllthingsF1: Trouble in paradise? Lando Norris and Luisinha Oliveira were seen engaged in a heated argument right before today's qualifying. This comes at a time when Norris has been going through a rough patch these past few races; from constant crashes to DNFs, Norris can't seem to catch a break. Is this off-track drama affecting his performance, or is this simply a coincidence? Some also believe that this could also be the result of Y/n L/n announcing her new relationship. Could this be the downfall for Lando Norris, on and off track?

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liked by User22 and 101,282 others

👤: landonorris, mclaren

F1Tea: Lando Norris is out of the race again! After yet another crash, the chances of Norris and McLaren doing well in the championship seem to be decreasing, race by race. Many fans blame Norris for getting distracted and not performing at his best. Some believe that this poor performance is the result of issues Norris has been facing in his personal life. After his breakup with Luisinha Oliveira, Norris has not been coping that well. Norris also seemed to like a few tweets (now unliked) about his relationship with Y/n L/n. Norris broke up with L/n a few months ago, after which the two have not been in contact. He also immediately got together with Oliveira after their breakup. It's about time that Norris gets out of this slump he's been going through if he wants to hold on to his Formula 1 dream.

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Y/n closed her phone when she heard the front door open, following which she heard a loud bark, and before she knew it, through came her little fur baby, ready to give her all the cuddles in the world. She looked up from her spot on the cough and saw Shawn enter the room holding up a bag of muffins. "Blueberry?" Y/n asked with a hint of excitement in her voice. "You know it! I saw it on my way back and knew how you were craving these. So I got a bunch of them," Shawn said as he kept the baked goods on the counter and made his way towards the couch. "What happened?" Shawn asked, noticing how Y/n looked a little distracted. "Nothing; I just got a text from Lando," Y/n said before looking back at Shawn. "Why? Did he say anything stupid? If so, let me know, because then he'll have to deal with me," Shawn said as he stroked Y/n's leg. "No, he just said he misses me. You know, if I hadn't met you and realized what being in an actual relationship is like, I actually would have gotten back with him," Y/n said as she petted their dog, who was exhausted and almost asleep after a morning run with his dad. "But I am glad that I found you. I have never felt more like myself than when I am with you. I just want to say that I love you so much and I love our little family," Y/n finished. Shawn quickly got up from his place and tackled Y/n. "I love you too. So much, you won't believe it, and I can't wait to expand our little family," Shawn said, smirking at Y/n before he started peppering her face with kisses. Laughter was the only sound that filled the L/n-Mendes household as they spent the rest of the afternoon talking and watching old movies.

Yourname added to their story!

🎶 I Like Me Better by Lauv 🎶

(I knew from the first time, I'd stay for a long time! I like be better when I'm with you 🩵)

seen by landonorris and 93,842 others

| shawnmendes replied to your story

-> 💙

Lando looked at Y/n's story, and all he felt was pain. Not only did he lose a person who truly loved him, he also lost one of his best friends. Being with Luisa was exciting; it made him feel young and full of life. The idea of settling down seemed so foreign back then that Lando couldn't have cared less about how his actions might have affected Y/n. He knew it was wrong to flirt with multiple women, even though he was in a committed relationship, but all of that felt like nonsense to him back then. But as he lay in bed, sad and alone, Lando realised just how much of an impact Y/n had on his life. He lost the girl, and now he's on the verge of losing his career as well. Lando felt a tear roll down his face. One became two, two became four, and before he knew it, he was full of tears. There was nothing Lando could do; he laid the bed with all his actions, and now he has to sleep in it. Tired of it all, Lando finally let sleep take over him, hoping that when he wakes up later, his heart will feel a little lighter.

[bon2bonn]

Weathering Your Storm

22!F1 grid X female!driver!reader

° Venture your silent sea

Part 2.2

Words count : 2.3k?(excluding the texts).

It's finally done!

Warnings : grammar,not edited, not proof read.

*it's long and packed , and I hope you enjoy reading it .

F1.grid masterlist

...............

Two weeks gone by and now she had her mind was made , she had her time to think and evaluate her career in new light away from the pressure of actually driving and having her view clouded with the rush of her hectic schedule with no time to breathe . So she took a step back , not complete letting go of hope but to process what she's doing and what to come .

She went off the grid but her dad as always found his way to her , not that she minded but she felt the weight of thinking that she failed him somehow , he didn't say anything after she told him what went on that weekend , expecting some sort of a grand reaction but he just looked at her and asked " are you okay?" She wasn't sure how to answer but she shrugged " I don't know yet" , he nods and went on with collecting firewood as they were doing before she stopped abortly to tell him not expecting this , it was like ripping a bandaid and I felt like one .

Hours later they both sat at the fire side by side in a content silence, she took a look at her father finding him lost in thoughts staring at the fire ahead and before she could stop herself she asked " are you disappointed?" He glanced at her hunched form , knees up to her chest and her hands around them , he saw that little girl trying to act tougher than her heart is . He asked back "about what?" She gave him a quick glance picking a dry branch to doodle on the dirt before her " disappointed in me" he scratched his growing stubble in thought " and why would I be?" She cleared her throat " you know, I basically got fired mid-season with no seat for next season or even a chance in the reserves " he gave her a knowing look asking bluntly " and why would that make you think I'm disappointed in you?" She rubbed her forehead " cause I feel like I failed " he gave her a long look , gathering his thoughts and turning in his foldable camping chair " I already told you , and I'll keep on doing so until you accept it. You are never going to disappoint me, I'm beyond proud of what you've done and what you'll ever do because I know how hard you worked to reach where you are now , and with a seat or non I'm still proud of you . Yeah I'm saddened that you won't be out there driving to your heart content for now but it's not your last race" she cuts him " but you don't know that, so far no team reached out and they know how chaotic it'll be to give me a seat , they won't take the chance , not after this" giving her a shrug he kept going " I just know , the same way I knew you're destined for great things when you drove your first race , hard headed and determined, holding your head high and beating all those taller boys with their mean dads" they both chuckled at the memory, as he added " it's will take time " she lowered her head " but what if I never get any seat ? , what if I got a seat and it turned up worse than last year ? , what if I stopped racing?" He sighed heavily before answering " for the worst and the best cases I'll be there for you , and if you wanted to quit I'll still support you and still be as much proud of you , it's your journey to fulfill it the way you see fit and no matter what remember it's yours so don't let anyone or their words or decisions makes you forget that . You hear me ?" She nodded in understanding giving him a determined smile as he ruffled her hair up laughing as she groaned in annoyance smacking his hand away before pulling on her cap and tying her hood up covering her head and pulling the strings to secure it around her face .

Both basked in silence watching the wooden logs crack in the fire but got startled as his phone pinged with a new message

(from Max's pov 🤭):

He chuckled quietly cause her to raise an eyebrow in suspicion " What got you laughing?" He shook his head turning off his phone before leaning towards the fire his elbows on his knees and he turned his face to her in a serious manner " have you thought about what I proposed?" She nods with a groan " I did and I might take your offer " he gave her a knowing smile " it's only till you get a seat and it might be sooner than you think , but you'll have fun and still travel whenever you want aaaaaaaaand" she tilted her head in question earning a huff from him before he explained " you'll get to be your own boss !" She gave him a side eyes " if it's soo great , why are you dumping it on me? " He leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head sighing dramatically " I want to live my life too, I'm still young , I'm going out to date again , find me a ...." She cuts him with a disgusted face " DAD! Ew no ! I don't want to know about you romantic life , last time was traumatic enough!" He laughed at her face throwing a punch of dry leaves at her " oh ! Grow up, be grateful I'm not snooping into your nonexistent love life!" She gasped in offence " Wow! Just wow! My own dad is bullying me!" She stood up dramatically ", you know what!? I quit! Find you a new person to run your business" he held his hand to his chest as he kept on laughing " I didn't even hire you yet!" She only groaned louder sitting back down and chucking a wrap paper at him as he kept laughing, joining him eventually as the both spent their night with her relieved that a weight is off her shoulder.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Two days later

Settling back home in Monaco after your trip turned you back to the stressing atmosphere, as days gone by and it now settled in that you've got no seat for the rest of the season, let alone next season or the one after . Getting back home was both the best and worst thing to do right now . Still got piled stacks of paperwork to do , piled forms to sign and things to move , but staying in your bed looked more appealing than doing anything else so that's what you choose for now .

The news is yet to spread , but it's only a matter of time before it gets leaked , your face blastered on every sports site and every gossip magazine , you can already see the headlines . the slander and rumours of why would a team like Mercedes suddenly drop their driver mid-season ? Speculations and allegations of every absurd theory under the sun would make appearance , But that's for future you to worry about, now you just want to sleep in and let shit happen .

Glancing at your phone on the bedside table , having it turned off for the past two day after ignoring calls and emails asking about your whereabouts . It'd only take sometime before someone figured out where you dipped to or Danny might fall under pressure and snitch on you and come barging in dragging you out of your so called hibernation . You made a note to come up with a way to tell the guys later . telling them rather than them finding out from media or worse George himself , so you gotta make the most of the quite atmosphere as possible.

But That didn't last long , half hour later and someone's already bounding on your door , opting to ignore it as whoever is knocking is bound to get tired or think noone is here and leave . But that didn't happen , 10 minutes and they won't leave , you huffed removing the pillow off your head and getting up shoving the covers aside sliding out and blindly heading to see who's trying to break your front door down , throwing on the first thing you found on your way out , one of Danny's old hoodies you've stole and claimed as yours , covering your messy hair with the hood and trying to wipe the sleep out of you eyes , Praying silently to every higher power there is to not be one of the guys .

Groaning quietly as whoever is knocking covered the Peep hole ,so after contemplating for a second before swinging the door open startled by who stood before you , he smiled at your stunned face " you're a very hard person to reach Y/N " you kept looking at him in confusion before snapping out as he asked" would you mind if I came in? " .

•••••••••••••

~~~~~~

The guys showed up as promised all concerned about you but as well relieved to finally see you before them , easing their minds for moments as they anticipated your words .

They settled in around after dinner , no one was joking around as usual or starting a conversation, all waiting for you somberly to say what's in your chest as they waited patiently , Daniel gave you a reassuring smile squeezing your shoulders as he sat on the single chair by the window along with the rest , all except lando who kept shaking his leg up and down nervously so you decided to put him out of his misery as you stood before them " I just wanted to wait to tell you face to face instead of you finding out from the media or someone else, well , I basically no longer have a seat " they looked at you in silence still not processing what you've just said, so you elaborated " I'm no longer part of the grid formation" the first to respond was Max who shook his head in denial " No" you sighed at his response , next to him was lando looked at you in guilt not finding the courage to say anything in fear it'll make the situation worse so he opted to keep his mouth shut , Carlos was spacing out so you opted to let him process it more before snapping him out , Charles looked very confused as he asked " why? " , you shrugged at him sitting down as you spoke again " I honestly don't know, they wanted me out and here I am " Carlos snapped at this " what about your contract?" . You shook your head " already terminated " they all looked bewildered , various " what!?" Sounded around the room " they already signed another driver for the second half of the season " Charles whispered " you're not even finishing the season?" You shook your head in answer .

Max stood up hands balled up and shoulders tense " who signed?" You refused to answer so he looked at Danny who sat back not having the same shocked reaction like the rest of them " you knew , so tell me who they signed for that fucking seat?" He looked at you before turning to him in defeat " It's not my place to tell " max scoffed at him before turning to you again " why ?" You glared at him " cause I know you won't hesitate to go up and fight him over it , I won't let you do something that stupid " he challenged you " well whoever that bastard is he deserves what's coming for him" you pinched between your eyebrows " No Max, he doesn't" he tilted his head asking " so you just give up to him , you've worked your ass for them and now they just swiped you aside and signed someone else!" Charles stood trying to calm him " Max, hey , calm down for a minute " he ignored him , still irritated so you know he needs to get it out so you let him " I'm not calming down! Why should I ?" Carlos spoke up next " cause you are not the only one who's upset about it " Danny agreed " we all are beyond pissed believe me" you added next " but you have to remember 'never take anything personally in this sport' , yeah i lost my seat so what !? It's not like It's the end of the world " and before he could argue you stopped him " here's the thing all of you can be pissed as much as you want here in this room you can scream and yell as much as like to get it off your chest , but the moment you step out it stays here , cause out there it won't affect you as it'll me , I'm already out so what can they do more ? , But you're not, you still got your season to finish, so you have to promise you won't do anything out there because I won't be there to smack any sense back into you brains " .

He stared back at you folding his arms challenging you " I won't promise you anything until I know who is he " you glared back not fazed " I won't tell if you won't promise " you both started each other down before Carlos groaned smacking you both to cut it out " fine I promise!" You gave him a deadpanned look " George" Charles asked with wide eyes " Russell!?" Daniel nods " the one and only" Carlos turned to Max who got eerily quite compared to earlier " Max ?" He just nods curtly before sitting down not uttering a word for the rest of the night .you clapped after a beat of heavy silence " so! , who's up for desert?" .

[qsmp-yaoi-island]

I'll say the admins' decision that purgatory 2 is as canon "as the ccs want it to be" is awful and going to cause so many problems.

I think it's perfectly fine to have CCs choose to be out of character for their own lore because then they don't have to commit to rp all the time, but you absolutely cannot do this with the MAIN plot of the story. One of the main reasons is that not everyone will pick and choose what's the same as canon.

A perfect example is just a few days ago, Phil was involved in a main story point of protecting Luffy who escaped. Luffy told Phil that he was looking for Tubbo/Bagi, and of course, because Phil was not informed of anything going on, he told them that they went back to purgatory. Even though Bagi and Tubbo said their purgatory isn't canon. So now imagine Phil is panicking about Luffy not finding the people he's looking for only for tubbo or bagi to show up randomly and confuse the plot even more.

I will say that I don't really care about how the story should be perfectly consistent because I know that's impossible, but it's more about how it's ruining the rp choices of others. Phil did such incredible rp stressing over how everyone left for purgatory again, but for them to show back up without a care or explanation? Undermines all of his emotions and effort into making it feel real.

Another point is how it's effecting the CCs efforts for consistency. Tubbo gets kidnapped IN FRONT OF HIS FRIENDS EYES, but logs in the next day and gets attacked by a code. So now you face the confusion of either believing he was taken and how that effected the characters rp around him, or believe that the code is back as a main story element. You can't believe both because they directly contradict eachother, so you end up wasting a good plot point for another. For example, Fit has canon separation anxiety and seeing tubbo go missing in front of him could have made for good character development.

Baghera was asked to stay off the server for the past few weeks because the admins had lore planned out for her. She expressed that she missed being on and seeing her friends but trusted in the admins that her return would be worth it to wait for. So some characters are allowed back and immediately cause inconsistenties but some people have to wait? It sucks for CCs like Baghera, Slime, and Pol who express how they want to get back on but are committed to their lore. But I also can't entirely blame the people who came back from purg2, even though I do think its a bad rp choice on their part, because the admins specifically told them they could.

Finally, the worst part is how it demeans the story being told. Imagine after purgatory 2 ends all the people coming back could talk about the hell they went through, the people they met, the fate of Cellbit and Baghera. But instead Bad's "1/4" came back and immediately told Pomme he saw Baghera. Isn't that lame? Doesn't that feel like a waste of good exposition? Hell even Foolish was there and just chose to ignore it because, hey, there's no canon reason he should know that!

That's the problem now is that no one knows what to tell eachother anymore, because it will only be inconsistent with what others are saying or doing. The stories is slowly losing its integrity because it's doesn't know what is important to take seriously anymore. Should you worry about the code attacks? I don't know, it happened to someone who wasn't even technically there. Hey I saw this missing person but I'm also supposed to be missing too, so should you even believe me?

It's confusing, it messy, and it will absolutely ruin story lines down the road.

I love the story of the QSMP. It's what drew me into the server and made me love it ever since, and to see it get pushed aside for a competitive event really sucks. With the way the server has been so rp and lore dependent for the last nine months, it just feels so strange for it to not be the focus anymore. Purgatory was fun, Purgatory 2 looks even better, but I would not trade them for the fandom toxicity, story inconsistency, or divided attention on gameplay it created.

I know with time the story will pick up again, people will return, and it'll be well throught out and planned again. I just think it's important to be critical of these decisions now so they don't get repeated in the future. If there ever is a Purgatory 3 or some other event, all I would hope for is that it has a clear and defined plot revelvancy so you don't have to scramble to tie up all the loose ends later.

[orangepeelshortbreadcookies]

Hello!!! sorry i jum in here but i saw many post of your as a polin pen hater. You can hate what you want of course but its necessary to lie just to hate a character because of her body??? it wasnt that bad, she was not mean.

yes, what she did telling the ton marinas secret was not the best choise but it was what she thought it was the only way. Do you all wish for colin a marriage with not love?? and in a more practical way this is fiction and we all now he was going t end with pen , they are end game and thi is romance, its suppouse to be romantic that theu found each other, and for me it is. She didnt told marina secret because she wants colin for herself , she never thought she cold have him. maybe yo dont understand this but we, fat girls who are foung unattractive NEVER expect love or having a man, even less somone like colin. I think you, as many sadly, jugdge Pen actions too strong and deep down its all becuase of how she looks. Depp down i know you judge her action strongly becuase you can't accept that a woman who looks like that get something. I know you will keep hating, just want to say my opinion

(2) I saw you ask once why we ( pen fans) are mad when people hate her like you do if we got everything, saying like she happy and get married and LW. i will answer that from my perspective. Im fat, people is mean and that herats and yes, maybe it not a good things but it nice to have a revenge for all that suffering , but beside that i feel represented FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME in a romance show, ALL THE ROMANCE FEMALE LEADS AND THIN WOMAN and for the first times she looks like me but everyone is hating her becuase of how she looks and the worst is anyone accept its becuase of that, you all write long essays jugdging her actions but as i said, Were her actions that bad???? think about it fr......

Others please also refer to this post for more context.

I did not intend to answer this ask, because honestly, I'm really very lazy. Since there are only so many ways I can make my argument against the same accusation over and over again, especially to someone who clearly doesn't want to listen, I figured ignoring was the right decision. I'd rather spend my creative energy and efforts on my own writings, instead of figuring out another elaborate wording on how being critical of a character's actions does not equate fatphobia, and that personal adversity does not equal a 'get out of jail' free card for repeatedly inflicting pain on other people on a mass scale. I've talked about it in depth in my own blog, as well as reblogging other eloquent, well thought-out posts from others, Polin fans and anti-Polin fans alike. You can just scroll through my blog to see that. But I don't think you have come after me, time and again, to be convinced.

Even now, I still think ignoring you would have been the smarter, or at least, easier course of action for me. But I digress. Maybe it's one of those days where I feel more confrontational, maybe my ADHD is acting up and my meds are not hitting as well today, maybe after weeks of stress-filled personal achievements I'm feeling talkative seeing someone trying to disturb my peace. Nontheless, since you've made diligent efforts in seeking out my response, today's your lucky day, once and for all.

Something my mutuals and followers might have learned about me, is that I, being pretty fucking lazy, don't post/write a lot. To remedy this, when I do post, oftentimes I try to be as thorough as I possibly can. So, in the spirit of being thorough, here's a little log of the things I have received in the past weeks, on this site as well as on AO3, some of which, @cherryblossom970sblog, I have reasons to believe came from you

So you feel represented by character. Awesome. Good for you. You should celebrate it with like-minded people. You think nobody likes Penelope the way you do? Find the ones who do. I can assure you, they exist. I saw them daily on my dash. Read fics that bring you joy. Don't read the ones that don't. I have seen way too many Penelope/Anthony, Penelope/Benedict or even Penelope/Gregory fics, or fics where Penelope just straight up abused Colin that are celebrated in the comments. I don't like those and you know what I do? Scroll past those fics or click out of those and not read them. You know what I don't do? Go after the writers, try to police their writing, and accuse them of bigotry for not catering to my preferences.

Accept the fact that it's not going to be a 100% percent approval rating. And that's fine. That's part of life. I'm a primary Benophie fan, I've seen people wanting Benedict to end up with different people. It's their prerogative, I leave them alone. I have mutuals who have different takes on actions of Kate, Edwina, and Anthony, with varying degrees of feelings regarding how season 2 ends, and I have my own opinions. Personally, I find all three parties were wrong in that triangle, especially Anthony, and the sisterhood between Kate and Edwina in that season ought to have been handled with more respect and care. And my mutuals and I have civil, nuanced discussions about such things and ending those with still different opinions. That's okay. They're fictional characters and their actions are up to character analysis. It's fine.

What ISN'T fine is obssessively stalking inboxes of strangers, REAL people, unleashing insane level of hate and prejudices in defence of a FICTIONAL character, and accusing them of crimes they OBJECTIVELY did not commit, all because they don't share your opinions. I know you don't think this kind of behaviour is okay, you said so yourself that it's not a good thing. You've experienced fatphobia, you have my sympathies for that, but it doesn't give you the right to be shitty to other people. Your own bad experiences do not entitle you to disrespect, dismiss, invalidate and insult the people you harassed, including me, many of which are WoCs who have valid concerns regarding how their own experiences are represented and treated on the show. My struggles of being a bisexual, Asian, immigrant woman does not excuse me from being toxic to people who have done me no harm. I will not be vindicated in demeaning someone who have criticisms against the actions of fictional character who share my traits, criticisms that I just happen to disagree with.

And frankly, I find reducing the nuances of a character or person to only their bodies, to contribute (as either condemn or excuse) their actions to be only the result of their bodies, fucking insulting. It's infantalising and dehumanising.

Have a nice day and happy shipping. Leave us alone.

[secretgamergirl]

Do experience systems do more harm than good?

Earlier today I saw someone talking about the common wisdom that you can't make an RPG without SOME sort of system where after you finish a session (or maybe an adventure), the GM gives you some sort of points that, whether automatically or based on assigning them, makes your character better at doing stuff. Not only do I strongly disagree that that's something every game needs, I'd like to present the argument that even in games you'd have a hard time imagining without them, experience points might actually be doing more harm than good.

Before I even get into this, let's take apart the obvious perks to having experience systems:

1- It helps maintain longterm interest in keeping a campaign going when the players are getting some sort of regular reward.

This is true of certain campaigns, but I don't think I'd really ever want to be in one. In a good campaign, everyone involved should be having a fun time just hanging out with each other, putting themselves in the shoes of the characters, building up a story and a world together, and generating cool memorable scenes. That should be more than enough incentive to stick with a game, and if you don't have those things going on, you should really stop and work out what's going wrong, not try and pave over it by powering everyone's characters up. I don't need to boost some Watcher Score when I marathon through a good TV show or a movie, and I'm not even getting to influence how those unfold, you know?

This is also one of those many things where what we have today is sort of a twisted ghost of what was originally conceived back in the early days of D&D. I had an old project on this very blog where I was reading through the books for 1st edition AD&D with a critical eye, and a huge takeaway from that was that Gary Gygax seems like he was just the absolute worst kind of GM (also backed up by reading message board posts of his, and various accounts). Back in his day, leveling up wasn't the expected inevitable progression as a game went on necessarily. You'd roll your stats, with some harsh restrictions, be forced to play what you had, roll your HP too, and the game was just kind of inherently hostile to the PCs, so you had a good chance of dying in a given session. Not only that, but when you did, there was no real coming back from it, you make a new character, starting from scratch, with 0 experience, and see if you can keep this one alive long enough to get up there again.

And aside from the carrot of maybe getting one of those elite high level characters if you stuck with it, there was the stick of characters partying their gold away. Seriously, by AD&D 1e rules, characters would just kinda burn through... I want to say it was 100 GP per level per day. And not in-game day. Real life day. You'd better show up for every session, because a week from now, your character's going to have 700 less gold in their pocket whether you show up to play or not.

We don't really play that way anymore. At least nobody I know does. Leveling up is planned out in advance by GMs, characters level up at the same time as everyone else even when the player misses a session, and if you need to make a new character or you're just joining the game late, obviously you come in at the same level as everyone else. I don't even want to dignify the arguments against doing that with discussion. It's even common for people to start games at levels other than 1 because people just don't like low-level play.

And you know, this is way outside the scope of what I was sitting down to write, but I've gotten into the jobification of video games before, right? Where people keep doing stuff like daily login rewards and weekly challenges just so there's a sense of obligation to log into games every day? That crap doesn't actually make things more FUN, it's in there to keep players compelled to play regardless of how much fun they have, and that's... literally the argument behind experience as an incentive to keep a game running.

2- It good when number go up!

Funnily enough, this is the hardest one for me to refute. There is some basic direct release of the good brain chemicals when you have numbers, and they go up. And I mean... sure, but in a tabletop game you're not generally seeing a number climb on its own, you're getting points thrown at you that you have to jot down or mark off or otherwise track and do math with, and like... there's plenty of other results from playing the game good to release the good brain chemicals. You don't explicitly need this one.

3- It's cool when you can have a story where like some dorky little kid starts off barely able to do anything and all unconfident and then gradually gets it together and gets more confident and competent as time goes on!

Oh yeah, everyone loves that sort of thing, and there's a strong case to be made that this is the primary reason people feel the need to put an experience system in basically every RPG, but those systems are all kind of just the worst at actually delivering on that, is the thing.

D&D and its derivatives are the absolute worst with this. The way I put it in this earlier conversation, you start out all, "I am a poor peasant child, barely able to afford the clothes on my back, a length of rope, a week's worth of food, and this dagger here" and then a few months later "I am basically a god and any amount of money less than 1,000,000 times my starting net worth isn't even worth stooping over for." And when I made this point someone corrected me that if you really go by the expected pacing, a campaign without big stretches of downtime between adventures with the recommended combat pacing is going to get you to level 20 in a month.

Now, I don't want to completely spit on the D&D power curve here (the economic one though can absolutely go to hell, stop making me a billionaire as a side effect of killing monsters and do all that bookkeeping). I do enjoy the eb and flow, campaign to campaign, of playing the same characters as wimpy little nothings and demigods over however long it takes my regular group to finish a campaign. But as far as having characters with arcs to them? It is AWFUL!

First off, it's just too damn fast and abrupt. When our little ragtag band heads off into the swamp to deal with those goblins or whatever, we're going to come home from even that little speed bump of an adventure tougher than all our neighbors and absurdly wealthy, to a point where it feels almost inevitable that you leave your old life behind completely and look down on everyone you grew up with.

It's not IMPOSSIBLE to have some sort of long or medium-term personal quest to avenge my parents or show I'm better than some bully, but it takes a real delicate touch to do it right, since you really have to decide up front when exactly I'm going to have that confrontation, make the villain something of an appropriately challenging nature for the level I'm going to be when I settle things, and that I don't manage to arrange that confrontation much earlier or later than planned, because again I'm pretty quickly going from dealing with food rationing, animal attacks, and slippery ravines, to taking down monsters four times my size without breaking a sweat, to like changing the course of history and rivaling evil gods. There's a very small window where it makes sense for me to get back at that owlbear who put me in the hospital or whatever.

And that's not even getting into the problem of how I've got these other three humble little kids from home experiencing all this rapid growth at the same time. Can't really have a wise old mentor if we're using experience as experience. We're either never going to catch up, or we're going to leave them in the dust if they're not leveling with us.

Now, again, D&D is kind of a huge exception here. Most RPGs I've played instead go with a starting setup where you don't start off as some starry-eyed youth who can't do anything, but instead have some skill-based system where every character is an expert without peer in a handful of skills that fit some archetypical theme, and for anything else, they need outside help, either from fellow PCs, or making arrangements with NPC experts. Standard with this is a little drip-feed of extra skill points, but this... really doesn't work for what we're looking for here. If I want to be the party's hacker, I'm going to start off as an excellent hacker. I'm not going to put all my points into shmoozing people and then expect the rest of the party to put up with me looking for the any key over a dozen adventures before finally working out this make or break ability.

4- You gain new abilities as you level up!

So... first off this actually isn't generally all that true. If you're playing a wizard in D&D, sure, every couple levels you get access to a new tier of spells, and hey that's a big game changing deal maybe. Most level-ups though are just about numbers going up. All of them in most games. Hitting harder, more often, in bigger areas, maybe. Skills and abilities work more consistently. You maybe get more HP.

For now though let's focus on when you do level up and get cool new abilities. One moment you're some kid with a stick, then you bonk the magic number of goblins with it, and now suddenly you can make all your friends fly, unbound by gravity, or you can read the thoughts of everyone around you, or you can teleport home where it's nice and safe no matter what the situation. Well that actually really sucks for the GM!

Let's say I'm doing what everyone ever making an 8 or 16-bit RPG did and lifting plot concepts shamelessly from Laputa. We've got our big floating continent. Maybe we've got some kinda evil emperor up there, raining terror down on people or something. Nobody can get there and confront him... until they hit level 7 or whatever and have access to the fly spell. I better get any air superiority based adventures out before then. Also anything where there's a tower that has windows, or dangerous terrain, etc. Better get mysteries and hidden agendas taken care of before that mind reading. Better not think about trapping the party or them getting word of an attack somewhere else before that teleporting. And that's assuming I'm being on the ball about that sort of thing. I might have this whole thing planned, where the party desperately needs to get to that flying continent, and it's this whole quest hook where maybe they have to befriend a dragon or help build an airship or get some kinda rubber bones potion and access to a powerful cannon. Whole adventures about getting that power of flight, and any of these might just totally fizzle because oh whoops, the party leveled up and they just do that now.

Less dramatically, what if we're playing of those skill point games. I'm already a super great seductive femme fatale sneaking past laser sensors and stealing keys off people I'm charming right from the start of the game, and hey, cool, that's a nice simple archetype, everyone knows what I'm good at, we can plan missions around me being all sleazy over here while someone else sets up in a sniper position and someone else is in the basement hacking and all that. Several adventures down the road, well, I have all these skill points, I haven't been able to put them into the stuff I'm good at, so now I'm also a combat monster. The original combat monster can also hack. The original hacker can also charm the pants off everyone. We're starting to develop a lot of redundancy, but that's not necessarily bad? But then we play a bunch more adventures. Those secondary concepts capped off, we're working up more. Nobody is unparalleled at the thing they originally did. Have the party is equally amazing at a given thing. If we keep going like this, eventually everyone is going to loose all sense of unique identity, and there isn't really a strong in-game reason we need this whole ragtag crew anymore. Anyone of us can take on any problem solo, really.

5- The power fantasy of being super amazing.

This is kind of a point I've already hit but I'm stuck with this format, but the thing with experience is, again, sometimes sure you gain new abilities, but usually all your various numbers go up, and that actually kinda sucks in practice. First off, it's a lot of tedious bookkeeping, in basically any system you can name. It also doesn't generally really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

I'm level 3. I've got a +7 to hit, doing 15 damage a hit, and an AC of 18. I'm fighting some orc with 40 HP, 15 AC, and attacking at +5. I level up a few times. Now I'm level 7. I've got a +13 to hit, doing 30 damage, and an AC of 24. I'm fighting crustaceanoids now, with 80 HP, 21 AC, and attacking at +11. Objective numbers wise, crustateanoids are way way tougher than orcs, but in my experience this is the EXACT same fight. I hit on an 11. I need 3 hits to take something down. It's bad news for me if my enemy rolls a 13 to hit me. All we've done is a bunch of annoying math refactoring with nothing to show for it but cosmetically reskinned mooks.

Now here, interestingly enough, I ONLY have the D&D type example here. Again, most other RPGs I have don't have that same sort of rampant power creep. You start out absurdly skillful at whatever your specialty is, and there's little if any room for growth, numbers wise. So here, if we go from orcs to crustateanoids to hellborn cyberdragons as enemies, not only is this technically a set of progressively scarier enemies to have to deal with, they actually ARE more meaningful threats to the party. Maybe those orcs were all show, they never really hurt us because we're awesome secret agents or something, but now things are getting serious because these crustaceanoids are just as good at sick flips and firing machine guns in two different directions as we are, so we have to take them much more seriously. And oh damn, after this we have to deal with a hellborn cyberdragon? Those are so scary if we all just rush in we're probably all gonna die. We need to come up with a whole complex plan to avoid directly engaging that if at all possible, and run for it if that doesn't pan out, or something.

And hey, we don't need something even more epic than a hellborn cyberdragon to top that. One of those is still going to be harrowing no matter how late in the campaign we bust it out. We can establish a power balance early on and keep it relevant like that. PCs gotta get more innovative and clever not just kill most monsters until demigods are easily punchable.

6: Revenge of 3- Well character growth is still important!

So, I really shouldn't be trashing experience points' ability to deliver cool character growth if I don't have some alternative to it, right? We need some way to change things up so the game doesn't stagnate. Well sure, but we can do better than experience there.

Just off the top of my head, how about we go with plot relevant respec-ing? Like at any given time a character's got their main spotlight thematic kit. Your best of the best at being a hacker or wizard or whatever. Maybe also a secondary skillset. And then definitely some number of slots for stuff they're into but it's not their main thing. Maybe we have a few variant minisets for those. Like if someone just unlocked their psychic powers and haven't fully figured them out, you have access to this here set of abilities. Once you have your big dramatic power mastery moment, that becomes their main thing and we demote their previous main thing to a secondary thing... and if we don't like this psychic stuff in the end, we demote it back down and fill a tertiary slot with like Lost Psychic Powers, where you still get to be all knowledgeable about how this sorta crap works and maybe have some battles of wills but your cool telekinesis is all locked away. At least for now.

I don't want to sit down and fully design a game at the tail end of a blog post here, but feel free to try this out with whatever system you like. Just pick whatever level feels like the good one, build characters with that as their basic kit, let'em have a few dips into secondary and tertiary angles, do a lot of getting thrown out of orders and taking major injuries and getting temporarily possessed or infused with mystery things. And you can do the plucky young kids in over their head thing with this sort of system easily enough. Start off with just the tertiary interest/mini-skill-packs, and once whatever you want to grow into starts coming up, rapidly grow into that over the course of a few adventures, no needing some big dramatic status quo change like this usually calls for.

Oh and I haven't been talking about video games here, but kill experience there too. If I'm not doing the whole Metroidvania/Zeld'em Up thing to pick up new powers as I explore, just gimme the whole kit from the get-go. Have traditional difficulty curves. We're good. Leave the skill trees and the level-grinding out of it. What are you holding back for, replayability? It's been raining free big-name big commitment games for years. Quit demanding that much of our time.

Oh and I keep forgetting to beg for money while I write these. I went 24 hours here without eating because I was just out of food and couldn't afford to go to the store. Someone took pity on me and hand delivered a big bowl of soup. Things are getting real bad. Patreon link.

[brittie-frog]

There was a theory a while ago I saw that the eggs weren't meant to last this long and was meant to help them/spy on them originally but because the players cared so much for them and protected them, they lasted.

And with the way that the new tasks and sweets are it seems that they want the eggs to die again. But if they wanted that why give them their lives back before?? And what was the point of adding Chunsik if he's just gonna die in a few weeks. It's just forcing the players to have to be on everyday again and starting on a week when a lot of them can't/won't for their own mental health/social life.

Like even Em's admin thinks it's unfair and she's gonna die because Bagi's not here the rest of the week, Mouse and Tina are variety streamers that have the awards this weekend and Niki basically only streams once a week. Like the best bet is that Mouse logs on in the next few days because she doesn't have to physically be at the awards as a vtuber so has no irl 'obligations' to hang out with friends like Tina. But Em also needs to be awake because all of them need the 'baby' to be there and she's sick and slightly burnt out after today so might not be up for the constant dungeon tasks they get - the admins are tired, what about the players who also have other responsibilities and irl lives aswell.

There has to be another option. It's the perfect mix in that it's bonding tasks to get the sweets but it's the worst way possible. If they can't be on to do the eggs tasks or can't do enough of them do you think they have the time to be doing bounties to be able to pay the extortionate price for emergency cookies?? And at least with the original cookies you could get massive excess to help each other but now like Philza would be able to get barely enough to save Chayanne and Talullah nevermind help out Sunny while Tubbo's dead. And yes BBH is addicted and bound to do them all but he won't have excess enough to help Leo or Pepito if their parents don't log in or Chunsik if Acau can't complete enough on Sunday. They're gonna have to lower the amount required especially if it's still that non-parents have to feed double because that's impossible with only 36 tickets/18 cookies available this week and 42/21 in a normal week since they skipped Monday. It would just be slightly better if the tasks weren't dungeons but collecting stuff still and they all lasted till Sunday night.

Apparently Chayanne's admin has said that everything will be fine but knowing all this information it was fucked from the beginning so there must be a lore reasons and nothing bad is going to happen because if Em permentantly dies from being "lassoed and beaten to death" in a split second and "neglect" (because her parents have busy irl lives for one week) I'm deleting everything and it would be on par with Trumpet dying from "neglect" which was in no way Maxo's fault and I wasn't even there for that one.

[magpies4nights]

GUYS DONT PRESS P ON THE TITLE SCREEN WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE (Dev log #15)

AT LAST, SUMMER IS HERE!!!!! I am so excited I can finally rest I- oh right. Summer classes. Sigh. Well, they don’t take up the whole day thank god and I don’t need to be there, but It’s still not exciting. Oh well. Maybe I’ll play the sims 4 again and check on how my poor little torture victims are doing/j Jk jk, I don’t torture my sims. Unless you consider naming them things probably EA wouldn't approve of, then yeah I guess I am a horrible person.

But yeah, on the week I released the demo (which by the way, thanks for the 58 views!!!! thas crazy) I was putting up with finals. Some of my classes had to be pushed to the next week, and that was INFURIATING. It was kinda agony because I just wanted everything to be done and over with and I was practically exhausted. Like sleeping at 7 pm exhausted. Yeah......Well, should I even talk about how my life is going? I flunked the review for my major. Thank god, honestly. I mean, I didn't do it on purpose, and I am sad in a way that I flunked it, but I didn't want to continue on the route I was going on. I feel kinda stupid for even trying but I guess it's ok to make mistakes in your early 20's rather than your 30's... for some reason.

Ok, dev time. I decided to take a break from making sprites for a bit. So I worked on a part of the game that I would have left a secret, but I think it’s quite funky hehehe

I like old computers. I would have replicated the windows XP thing because I have so many memories of it, but I'm scared Windows might snipe me or something. I once was lying on the couch my parents turned into a bed (I think I was sick at the time), and it was late at night, and the computer was shutting down (it played this sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb2jGy76v0Y) and for some reason the noise absolutely scared the absolute living shit out of me (I think I was like 4-5 years old and I was terrified of bassy sounds). I do not remember ever having any positive relationships with computers before I turned 6 lol. I’m pretty sure I used to think I could live without them. Oh you poor bastard. If you saw me now not only would you not understand a single word I’m saying, you would be incredibly disappointed with how dependent I am on computers. I think once I'm done with that I'll try to fix whatever is going on outside scene, because that's the only scene that causes the game to crash. I'm pretty sure it's because there's too many objects, because when I turned off the animations and the visibility it still took forever to load (like, nearly 2 seconds. The scene takes 4 seconds to load, and normally a scene would take me less than a second to load). soooo, uh yeah, I'm trying to find an occlusion culling equivalent to solve this because that's a 3d game thing, and this is a 2d game lol. I'm thinking of turning off visibility for when they're outside the viewing frustrum (player's line of sight, or more like rectangle) because it cuts down half the time for when the scene loads. If nothing works I guess it's just deleting and re-adding the child back into the scene every time the camera is on them... sigh. If it ticks me off too much I'll probably return to doing sprites because there's still a lot to do lol.

Well.... I so far got no other ideas for references in this game, so I guess I'll put in the inspiration of the outro (which is the Portal outro)

(not my video)

I know, I know. Cheesy. BUT instead of it being in the antagonist's view, it's the protagonist's view instead. I tried singing for the song, but every time I do I make Jojo Siwa sound like a professional vocalist (I don't even know why she still sings. Didn't she bust one of her vocal chords already? Or is that a rumor? Either way that's already gotta be a sign that you probably shouldn't continue on the route you're on.) I literally had 5 attempts on my computer and they all sound horrible. I'm not going to put them on the internet for my sake and your sake too. So yeah, no vocals. But the lyrics will still be there. They won't have the typing effect though.

I once had a strange dream that I was looking through the itch.io comments and someone kept spamming about how they headcannoned Xandra to be a trans man and were like honestly I don't know how my brain combined those several factors together but I find that funny.

yes its the caseoh meme. no i will not apologize

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I always have a moment, if I hear a comedian mention the word "Tumblr", of briefly panicking, as I remember that technically they use the same internet as I do and apparently are allowed to see this website. I usually relax if it was before 2015, though. Lots of people knew Tumblr existed before 2015. For some reason, around 2015, maybe slightly later, everyone believed that Tumblr stopped existing. So if it was before that, I figure it's fine. These day they are probably one of the many people in the world who assume Tumblr doesn't exist.

I'm sort of joking about this - as in I do genuinely have a moment of freaking out from hearing them say the word "Tumblr" because I briefly and irrationally somehow feel like they can see me, but I also know there's no need to be genuinely worried, as in real life just because they mentioned a website's name doesn't mean they're on here searching their own name. No one's doing that on Tumblr. It really is why I love this website. No one is here. No one is looking at us. It's not like Instagram where you're posting on the same site where the celebrities you're talking about have their own fucking account.

Except for David O'Doherty, who does have a Tumblr account that he must log into regularly because it has his tour list and that's kept up to date, but he hasn't made any new posts on there in years, I'm pretty sure he just updates the tours and then goes away. It's probably fine. Oh, and there is another comedy-adjacent person who has a Tumblr account and whose name I'm not going to write because I know he does Google himself, he once emailed me to tell me so, and I freaked the fuck out for like a week straight because apparently sometimes in real life they can see us. But it's all right, I'm pretty sure he only looked at one post, took a video off YouTube, moved on, it's fine. It's absolutely fine. It's absolutely fine and I'm not worried about it. No one's looking at me. That guy does have a Tumblr account of his own that was actually updated regularly, though, so that's a bit different. That might explain how he ended up finding my post that mentioned them on here. Most of them don't so they wouldn't come across my posts. (That guy was also very very nice when he emailed me and I love his work and think he seems very cool, which I'm adding on the infinitesimal chance that he's somehow reading this again, extremely unlikely but I'm vaguely paranoid - I'm also saying that because it's true though, he's great and I still listen to his stuff a lot, it's fine, he was nice, I'm just horrified at the idea that any famous people would ever know what I say about them, that's why I hide in this corner over here.)

So there was that incident. There was the day I discovered DO'D's blog, which did freak me out until I saw how long ago it was last updated. There was one time when Russell Howard referenced a Tumblr post on TV, which freaked me out for about half a second before I remembered that it just means one of his writers found a Tumblr post and put it in the script, Russell Howard doesn't personally write that whole autocue. Russell Howard is probably too important to even run his own Twitter account. He's not here.

The worst scare I've had - besides the time a guy actually emailed me - was when I heard Daniel Kitson in 2018, which was far too recently, say the word "Tumblr" to say he disliked someone who had a Twitter blog and a Tumblr blog dedicated to how great he is. That actually did seriously freak me out for a few days (he wasn't talking about me or anything, I made this blog in 2020, but still, didn't love to hear that Kitson apparently searches his own name on Tumblr and gets mad about people having blogs about him), though I felt better when I first heard his most recent show, in which he promises us he hasn't Googled himself since 2019. He wouldn't lie, right? It's probably fine. It's probably fine.

Anyway. As far as moments where I'm listening to a comedian I have posted about on Tumblr and I hear that person say the word "Tumblr" and for a split second my blood runs cold as I think "What the fuck do you know about Tumblr?" - as far as moments like that go, this sure is one. Brief panic, followed by moment of "it's 2014, it's fucking fine, I'm sure they've all forgotten we're here by now", followed by "Jesus Christ, Ian, what the fuck have you been reading, that side of Tumblr is not meant for your eyes", followed by "actually, I still haven't been able to find a list of air dates for their radio episodes but I have a document where I'm saving all the context clues in the hopes of narrowing it down enough to label all the episodes with dates, the fact he described that particular post as 'new' can be a context clue if I go to that blog and dig up that post and find exactly when it went up", followed by, "Jesus Christ this section of the internet should really not be for anyone's eyes, what the hell, look at all those things people wanted to do to David Mitchell, but yep, found the post, it's from late February 2014, that tracks with everything else, I think I'm in the right ballpark on these air dates."

The work of a comedy archivist is hard. Sometimes you have to go through some trenches to get a context clue for an episode air date. You do what you have to do.

[madphantom]

Brand new Susan's Hell Sprint snippet incoming

Log of Susan Adams, written December 1st, 1973

Aunt Dot passed away in October. Unfortunately, it wasn't really a peaceful or natural death. Well, I don't know about the peaceful aspect. She drank an entire bottle of wine, then wandered out into the woods and fell asleep face down in a roadside puddle. Someone heard her dog howl in the woods and found her the next morning.

It's a strange feeling, to know she's gone. I enjoyed Aunt Dot's company. She was a small, chatty woman with once black hair and freckles on the bridge of her nose, a sweet, gentle soul with a great appreciation for life in all its forms, and a great storyteller. She always had a lot of ghost stories from the valley she lived in - she had this house she built in the fifties, in the middle of the woods, near a lake. The place looks like it's straight out of a fairytale, especially in the mornings, when the fog looks like spirits wandering through the long grass and spindly trees.

After Aunt Dot's death it was me who inherited the house.

I had been there before as a child, two or three times. It really was a beautiful house, but one that left you with a somewhat uneasy feeling when darkness fell upon the valley.

And I had the worst dreams of my life in that house.

There wasn't a single night when I did not wake up sobbing at some point, calling out for Aunt Dot until she came running over to the guest bedroom to calm me down. What happened?, she would ask. What did you dream about? And I would curl up, a shaking mess, and stutter something about a burning house, or a woman in red hanging upside down in a tree and staring at me, her burnt cindered face twisted into a grotesque, horrifying grin. Those nightmares were freakish. That's why, eventually, I stopped visiting and she began to stay with us in the city every summer.

Before selling it, however, nostalgia got the best of me, and I decided to return one last time. For old times’ sake. I think some part of me just wanted to see if it really was as spooky as I remembered it. Morbid curiosity. It's a little bit silly.

But anyway, I traveled to the house. I planned to stay for a month; I ended up staying for a week. I dug through the house, found old photographs, postcards, notebooks, letters, all kinds of memorabilia. I immersed myself in the history of that house.

In the end, I left it unsold. What I found creeped me out too much.

But back to my visit. I arrived in the nearest village on the evening of October 26th, a week after Aunt Dot’s funeral. I planned to go to the funeral, but I didn't get the day off at work. I quit my job after that, by the way. I'm currently looking for another one.

The weather was terrible. It was gradually getting darker on the train ride, and by the time I arrived it was absolutely pouring. Murky knee deep puddles stood on the roadside and rainwater ran down the streets. The emptying trees stood in the dark like starved giants. There were only a few lights on in the village, and out by the woodside I saw the flickering orange glow of a lonesome window.

I was thirsty and to be honest, a bit lost, so I walked into the nearest pub to look for directions. The place looked like time had stood still there for a long while. It was mostly empty, but it was still early in the evening.

I sat down at the counter and the friendly bartender poured me a beer. “So, why are you here?”

“I’m uh, Susan, the niece of Dot Wilkins,” I awkwardly explained, cleaning my glasses on my shirt. “I inherited the house and I uhhhhhh wanted to come visit it.”

“Oh dear, poor Dot. She was a lovely woman.” He shook his head in disdain. “Such a shame, what happened. Where are you staying?”

“Uhhhhhh the house in the valley.” I laughed nervously. “But I don't really know the way, it's been years since I was here.”

The bartender tilted his head and leaned forward. “Between you and me - you're going to have a hard time finding someone who’ll accompany you to that house after dark. There are a lot of stories about that place.”

“Oh.” I hesitated, running out of things to say. “What now?”

“You could ask Rory. He really doesn't have any issues with going there.”

“Rory?”

“He lives down by the woodside. Bit of a strange guy, but you can trust him. He actually got along quite well with your aunt.”

“Oh, that sounds nice. Is he coming here?”

“Oh, he's here every night. One of my favourite patrons.”

“That's nice.” I awkwardly played around with my sleeves.

The door opened behind me and a gust of cold air entered the pub. The bartender's eyes lit up. “Speak of the devil, there he is!”

I turned around.

Rory was a tall and slight young man in a green turtleneck, who would have looked like a girl that looked like a boy if not for the slight ginger stubble on his chin. He had shoulder-lengthed flaming red hair, with bangs so thick they completely covered his eyes. His nose was Roman, his cheekbones sharp and he had dimples, and I think I fell for him, just a little.

“Hi Stevie!”, he greeted the bartender and grinned. His sharp teeth gave his smile something foxlike, just the tiniest bit uncanny, almost like a snarl. “How's it going?”

His voice struck me. It sounded like birch trees in the wind, like green woodpeckers calling to each other in the treetops in the mornings, somehow light and deep at the same time, young and old, timelessly classy, somehow, inexplicably fascinating.

“Hi Rory. Same as usual?” Stevie reached for a glass and grabbed it as soon as the young man nodded. “Not much special. Say, would you want to take a walk out to Dot’s house tonight?”

Rory tilted his head. “Tonight? In this weather?”

“This lovely lady here is Dot’s niece.” Stevie patted me on the shoulder. “She inherited the house and she's planning on staying there.”

“Oh dear.”

I smiled nervously. “I have to admit, I'll most likely sell it. I visited a couple times as a kid, but I always get nightmares in that house, so…”

“Hm.” Rory sat down next to me and folded his hands, his rings clicking. “Why'd you come here then?” He must've seen how anxious I was, because he quickly added: “Sorry, I'm not being hostile, I'm just curious.” He chuckled.

I shrugged. “Nostalgia, I suppose. I haven't been here in years, but it is kind of a childhood memory, so…”

He nodded. “Ah, I get that.”

The rain came down like it was the end of the world. We sat in that pub and talked and talked, and laughed and laughed, until finally it was almost midnight and Stevie wanted to close the place. Shuddering, the two of us found ourselves in front of the door. When I looked up I saw barely illuminated droplets fall out of the void that was the night sky.

“Alright,” Rory said and smiled at me. “Let me just get my jacket at home. You can come along.”

“Thank you.” I awkwardly trundled along down the street. The lights in the windows became fewer and fewer, and when we reached the last house on the street it was almost pitch black.

“Maybe I should get a flashlight as well,” Rory suggested and I laughed nervously. “Sounds good.”

He clicked his tongue and pulled his keys out of the pocket of his jeans. With a slight ta-chick he opened the door. “You can come in for a moment.”

I stepped inside. It was warm and comfortable. The corridor had green wallpapers and a faded movie poster from fifty years ago stuck to one wall. Rory grabbed a scratched up brown leather jacket and grinned at me. His white teeth glinted in the dark. “I'll go get the flashlight upstairs. Be right back.”

“Okay.”

I awkwardly waited while he jogged upstairs. I listened to his footsteps and him mumbling something under his breath, then rummaging through what I assumed was a drawer. Then, finally, I heard a triumphant “Ah!” and then he came back downstairs.

“Took a bit of searching,” he explained. “Let's go.”

The wind roared quietly in the treetops when we set foot into the forest. I was glad that I didn't pack more than a backpack for the trip. Carrying an entire suitcase along would have been an absolute disaster.

“So, how come everybody's so spooked by the valley?”, I asked after we had walked in silence for a while.

Rory glanced up. His damp hair stuck to his face, completely hiding his eyes, but he didn't bother to brush it away. “Ohh, that.” He chuckled. “It's a long story.”

“I think we have time, don't we?”

Rory smiled. “I suppose we do. It is a ghost story though. What are your thoughts on ghost stories?”

“They scare me. Though I think that's the purpose, haha.”

“The valley has set the scene for a lot of tragedies in the past two hundred years or so,” he began. “Over and over, people died here. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes with a bang. But they died, over and over, and for all kinds of reasons. Drowning, falling from trees they climbed, freezing to death, burning to death, murder - of course -, the list is long and, dare I say, creative.”

“Oh.”

I hesitated when I saw something white flickering among the trees. When we got closer I saw that they were ribbons tied to a wreath of flowers. Rory paused.

“Is…this where it happened?”, I asked.

He chewed his lip. “Yeah. Shame, really. I liked your aunt. She was a wonderful person.”

“Yeah, she was.” I felt a bit lost for the moment. “Did you know each other well?”

Rory continued walking and I hopped after him. “Everyone knows everyone here. Though, I suppose you could say we were friends. Personally, I believe it was our mutual lack of respect towards the valley.” He chuckled. “She was never afraid of whatever is going on here. She had many stories to tell about it.”

The flashlight hushed across an opening among the trees. We were leaving the woods and stepping into a field.

Rory pointed into the distance. “The house is over there. Do you see it?”

I squinted and barely saw the contours of it, like a pale giant sleeping in the long grass. “Yes.”

“Well, then let's go.” He smiled.

[rahullkohli]

Hi, Annika. I just saw your last post and I wanted to check in and see if you're doing okay. I am sending you my best.

jesus christ this is two months old, i am so sorry. thank you so much for checking in on me, it's honestly so nice to log in to see. i appreciate it so much. i'll just put explanation under a cut because it's all just a lot. you don't have to read, but at least i can use it to dump my brain for what's been going on, because i don't have anyone to talk to about it.

but ily for caring about me, i truly was scared to log in and find that no one had noticed i was gone and that people just forgot i existed.

so basically, my dad was in the hospital with a blood clot in his eye at the beginning of december, which fucked up his sight a lot. and everything was just so heavy with christmas being the worst time of the year for me, and then on top of that last year was absolute hell for me so i just fell heavy into the depression.

then on january 4th or sth my dad had another blood clot in the brain, which brings us to the ninth blood clot in his brain in about two years. this time around was the worst hit so far, and he now needs so much help. so i'm basically his primary caregiver again. he has a nurse that comes a couple times a week, and social health workers coming every day to make sure he eats, do some cleaning, help with stuff like laundry and such, which is a huge relief. but there's still so many other things he can't help with, and that all falls on me. like going to his hospital appointments with him because his memory and eyes are basically worthless at this point.

on top of that my depression is just getting worse and worse. except for when i go to help my dad, i don't see anyone socially. my dad never asks me about how i'm doing, how my life is, or anything like that, neither does the rest of my family. i only hear from them when they ask about our dad. so i am more or less just a tool for them.

and tumblr just started feeling like such a negative place. most of what i saw was people telling others what they were allowed to like and not like, and if you didn't adhere to those rules you were told you were a monster. and most stuff i saw on my dash seemed to be new things i didn't have the energy to engage with (i still haven't watched wednesday even though i was so excited for it). and it was a lot of all the bad crap happening in the world, and tumblr didn't feel like an escape any longer, it just felt like it was amplifying my depression, and speaking into the catastrophe thinking side of my OCD and anxiety, and it made my intrusive thoughts hit a level i honestly haven't experienced before, and i was genuinely afraid of myself.

and i'm just exhausted. the past three months i have been in bed when i haven't been doing stuff for my dad. the only thing i have for myself to keep me sane atm is running twice a week, yoga once a week, and song lessons once a week. the support person i got switched to after my old one quit is on sick leave now, so i have a temp, but i can't really talk to her because all of my shit is just such a heavy baggage and i don't know where to start, especially since i'm hopefully only seeing her for another month.

i'm just tired. if i didn't have cas to take care of, i think i would have asked my doctors about options for psychiatric hospitals for a while. i feel like a zombie most of the time, and i only keep going because there's not really any other alternative. so i guess that's that.

at least i was able to work things out with my vet bill, and i'll be paying the last installment next month, and cas is strong and healthy as if nothing happened.

also, i'm using pedro pascal to cope.so that too.

[spearheadrampancy]

every time i come back to fandom spaces - like, the concept of A fandom at all - it seems like everyone is just so... hostile.

and yes some of the things that people are getting riled about are legitimate concerns and stuff, but it seems like everybody is just at each others throats more and more. feels like fandom is less a community and more a kind of label that some people present as some army rank or something.

i dont know. there's just something really sad about it. to log on and see shit like "if you think the princess would ever dare to wear a PURPLE 🤢🤢 skirt instead of the PINK one she is always seen wearing then you should kill yourself and i mean that genuinely." all the time. from all fandoms. from fandoms you didnt even know existed. from fandoms youve been entrenched in for years.

over the last couple of weeks i had started to wonder why i slowly felt less and less comfortable with being in fandom territory over the last 10 years, and i saw a post today talking about how tumblr itself is generally just hostile in the worst way and it clicked. it isnt really a fandom specific issue, it just happens to be prominent in fandom. it's not just a tumblr issue, or even an internet issue though. people on a day to day basis talking to their friends make jokes that are genuinely so aggressive and violent; there's some level of normalisation at play. i'm not sure where it comes from. there's something to be said about how it probably isnt healthy that we're constantly surrounded by news of Yet Another Moral Failing somewhere in the world, how there's a latent anger at everybody and anybody in every direction.

i'm not saying we're in the wrong to be angry at the world. i just think its sad that we've turned art and appreciation into a battleground for some reason.

fandom used to have rules like "dont yuck someone else's yum" and a whole litany of other phrases. but now everyone is just hostile all the time. it sucks. makes me want to stay far away.

[kissthesun-gvf]

A Kiszka Carol

@safety-sam posted a while ago about reading something like this, and now that I'm home for break I actually had time to write it! There were about a million paths I could have taken this down, but I like how it turned out and I hope you do too :)

POV: Jake makes the decision to work over the Christmas holiday, and has his eyes opened to what's truly important

It had been a long day. Maybe a long week. Screw it. December had been the longest month of Jake’s life. The album was being finished, and despite the rest of the guys heading back to Frankenmuth for a much needed break, Jake had decided to stay behind in Nashville to get as much done as possible. And just to add a log to the fire, Jake’s lack of presence at family Christmas had sent him into the worst twin argument there had ever been. Even Sam and Daniel had gotten involved, and both Jake and Josh had shot words to each other that were neither holly nor jolly. So when he got home from the studio in the late hours of Christmas Eve, he had dozens of texts from his family saying they missed him and that they wished he would just set work aside and come home. He sighed to himself and set his phone on the bar, pouring himself a drink and heading to the bedroom, clicking off the lights on the way. If he had been at home, the hallways would have been lined with Christmas lights, but his Nashville apartment was starkly contrasting. He tried his best not to think about everyone gathered in his parents’ home, singing carols and being merry. Blocking it from his mind, he stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over him, his exhaustion quickly creeping in. Maybe it was the whiskey, or perhaps it was the hours he had just spent in the studio, work still unfinished, but there were hours of tossing and turning before Jake finally made it to sleep.

Suddenly, Jake shot up in bed to the sounds of yelling coming from outside the door. His brows furrowed in realization: somehow, he had woken up in his childhood bedroom, and he recognized the voices as those of his parents. Surely this was just a dream, but somehow it felt so real that Jake felt the need to bring his hand to his face, lightly slapping himself to wake up, to no avail. He stepped out of bed and opened the door, creeping down the stairs to listen to the heated conversation happening in the living room. “Samuel called last night, he isn’t going to be able to make it back. He said work is just too busy right now,” Jake heard his mom say, sounding defeated. “So what, we only have two kids home for Christmas?” His dad shot back. “No, I already told you, Ronnie couldn’t get a ticket home. So it’s just Jake.” What about Josh? Jake thought to himself. “There is no Josh here.” Jake jumped and looked to his right, noticing Daniel next to him. But it wasn’t quite the Danny he knew. He was dressed differently, looking ethereal in his own way: Dressed in all black, yet almost glowing- otherworldly, perhaps. “What the fuck, Danny? You’re here too?” Jake questioned. “In a way, yes.” Jake took a moment of silence, still trying to wrap his head around the situation he had found himself in. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You have to see what you really have, Jacob,” Danny continued, Jake still looking completely lost. Danny huffed and continued explaining, realizing that Jake was too stunned to put any pieces together. “You didn’t go home for Christmas this year, right? You stayed behind to finish the album. And that started a fight with your brothers…” Jake nodded. “So I’m here to remind you of the amazing life you have. And maybe,” Daniel gestured to the scene continuing to unfold at the bottom of the stairs they stood on. “You’ll get a glimpse at what life would be like without.”Jake felt a shove from behind him, spinning around to see… It couldn’t be. Jake saw himself walking down the stairs to his parents. He looked different, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. All he knew was that the man he was looking at wasn’t him. “Okay, so that’s me,” Jake glanced at Daniel, who nodded. “Without Josh?” Another nod. Jake gulped, nervous to see what this dreamland had to show him. “Wait,” the other-Jake said. “I’m the only one here for Christmas?” “I guess so, Jacob. Apparently your siblings didn’t see this as a priority,” his mom sighed, sinking into the couch. Dream-Jake pulled a phone from his pocket- “Well, I’ll come back after my show and we can do gifts and dinner, I guess.” His parents nodded and he made his way out of the house, Daniel following and turning to Jake from the bottom of the steps. “Well, are you coming or not?” The lump in Jake’s throat grew as he thought of what else he was about to see. 

The pair reached the front door and stepped out into the Michigan cold, and Danny turned to face Jake. “Well this is where I leave you.” “But you said we still have more to see?” Jake asked. “You do, but I won’t be the one joining you.” Suddenly Jake felt a hand on this shoulder, turning around to see Sam standing behind him. Much like Danny, Sam looked slightly different as well: he was clean-shaven again, with long hair, and his outfit consisted of a plain cream colored jumpsuit. “Dude, what’s up with you guys coming out of nowhere??” Jake jumped. “Perk of the job, am I right Daniel?” Sam laughed. “You know it,” Danny smiled, snapping his fingers and instantly disappearing. Jake slowly blinked, accepting that understanding what was going on would not be something he could wrap his mind around. “Well then, let’s head out, shall we?” Sam asked, putting his arm out for Jake to take. The pair suddenly flashed their way to the town music store where Jake had spent many hours growing up. “Larson’s?” he asked Sam. “So I need to pick up something for the band?” Sam didn’t answer, just shaking his head and leading Jake into the building. The “other Jake'' stood behind the counter, re-stringing a guitar. A few customers milled around, but the store was otherwise quiet. A man who Jake recognized as the owner of the store joined him behind the counter, handing him a piece of paper. “We’re down for this quarter, Kiszka. We need to start making more sales if you want those paychecks to keep clearing,” the owner told him before stomping back off into the office at the back of the building. “God, this is depressing… let’s speed things up,” Sammy mumbled, raising a hand. Jake looked around the room and watched as customers and himself moved around at high speed. Sam noticed him watching and grinned. “Pretty nice, huh?” Jake nodded, still trying his best not to think too hard about how any of this was happening. Sam lowered his hand, bringing things back to normal movement. The office door opened, Jake’s boss poking his head out. “Why don’t you head home early Kiszka, I’ll close up here.” Jake watched himself pick up his phone, assuming he would be calling his mom. “Hey, Kyle,” Jake heard himself say. “I’m off of work early, so I’m heading over to the bar now.” “The bar? On Christmas Eve?” Jake mumbled, following Sam to the door. “Just you wait, my friend,” Sam replied as Jake braced himself for their new method of travel.

The bar in Frankenmuth was where the guys had played many shows at the beginning of their career, before they started touring. It was a great starting point, but they had all been thrilled to move on to bigger venues with more enthusiastic fans. Jake and Sammy stepped in to see the usual group of Frankenmuth residents in the dark and dingy space. Jake turned to the small stage, expecting to see his brothers there with “him”. “Wait, what the hell?” He turned to Sam, confused as ever. “Do you not remember, Jacob? There’s no Josh here, so…” Jake’s heart dropped into his stomach looking at the scene unfolding in front of him. The “band” was composed of himself and three guys he went to school with, rather than his brothers. They began playing, but the energy was nowhere near the level of energy the band usually had, even then. “No offense dude, but y’all kind of suck,” Sam laughed, shoving Jake, who was white as a sheet next to him. “Yeah,” he gulped. “I think I’d rather…” He began another comment, but stopped himself. “No,” Sam said, “Say it, Jacob.” “I want to say I’d rather have no band at all, but I have a feeling you’d show me, and I don’t know if I want to see it…” “Well at least you’re catching on, then.” Sam smirked, holding his arm up again to take Jake to their next destination. 

Jake opened his eyes to see a building where he had spent far too much time as a teen. “We’re at high school?” Jake furrowed his brows. “Yes, you actually never graduated. Without your little brother to help you with your homework, they held you back.” Sam said, his face dead serious. “Jake gulped. “Not actually, but that’s my last joke you’ll have to put up with,” Sam smiled. “Wait, I don’t know where I’m going, Sammy,” Jake blurted hurriedly. “Well I’m not leaving you alone, obviously,” Sam pointed behind Jake. He turned to see his twin at long last, and unlike the other two, he looked strangely more like himself. He wore a long gold cape, similar to what he would wear on stage, and familiar eye makeup to add to the ensemble. “Well, someone had to steal the show,” Sam mumbled under his breath, but before Jake turned to reply, Sam was gone. 

“My brother! Let’s head inside, I have much to show you,” Josh held out an arm towards the front doors, and the pair made their way inside together like they had many years ago. They found themselves in the science wing, and Jake heard a familiar voice booming from one of the classrooms. “And don’t forget about the quiz on Friday!” Just then the bell rang, jolting him, and he realized the hallway would soon be swarming with teens. “So um, what exactly are we here for, Josh?” Jake yelled over the din surrounding them. “Well, why don’t you take a look in here,” Josh pointed to the room nearest to them. Jake walked through the door to see himself, this time older and looking equally exhausted as he does during tours. He sat at the desk in the front of the room, tiredly flipping through a textbook and clicking on the computer in front of him. “Well you look just thrilled, don’t you?” Josh chuckled. Jake gulped, lacking words. “This is supposed to be if we never started the band, right? No music, no brothers, no…” he trailed off, unable to continue. The uncomfortable silence was broken by a student entering the classroom. “Mr. Kiszka?” they asked, and Jake #3 turned to face them. “I’m just here to get my phone back, if that’s okay…” “I suppose,” Jake replied. “But I better not see you with it out or messing around with those earbuds in my class again. I can’t control what you do in your free time, but you know I don’t tolerate music in my classroom. All it is is a distraction.” The student nodded, quickly leaving the room as soon as their phone was back in their hands. “Seems like the kind of teacher we would have hated in high school, hmm?” Josh whispered to Jake, then leading him back into the hallway. “Have you learned your lesson yet, my other half?” Jake nodded, unable to catch his breath or form a coherent sentence. The pit in Jake’s stomach was growing by the second; over the course of this dream- if that is what it was- he had seen his life without his brothers, without his band and their success, and without music at all. And nothing could have made him regret his decision to miss the family Christmas more. “I guess I have let things get a little out of hand…” he mumbled to himself, looking at the floor. “Lucky for you, there’s still a few hours left before everyone else wakes up…” Jake heard Josh’s voice reply, but his surroundings became blurry and Josh’s voice sounded further away. He blinked, and suddenly was back in his bedroom in Nashville, jolting up in bed to get his bearings. Was he awake? Was it all really just a dream? He glanced around for his phone, grabbing it off of the nightstand next to him and checking the time. 1:11 AM. If he really tried, he could get back to Michigan by the early morning. If he was lucky, before anyone had woken up to open gifts. And he was going to make it, if it was the last thing he did.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Backlogs and IT Issues

Well, if this is the setting for the next two weeks, I'm in deep shit.

Scruffman, our office manager, is on leave for the next two weeks. I had a feeling that things were going to get a little ... problematic. Goblin has a "when the cat's away, the mice will play" mentality and has a habit of chatting in her usual "I Hate Everything" way whenever she gets the change - read: "when Scruffman isn't at his desk". This monopolises the time and attention of everyone in the office, so less work gets done. That's not even counting the whole thing where Temp will dodge all the longer work - with Violet on long-term medical leave, that still leaves me to do the lion's share of it, because Milady tends to take over Scruffman's duties when she's away and so she's busier than usual for the next two weeks (when not sucked into Goblin's Grumble Vortex)

In addition to this, we had some changes to our transcription software recently and it has not been particularly well implemented. Having to tag our typing with our initials is bad enough, but the window on which we have to do so is slow to come up at the best of times, so that's a fair chunk of time wasted. Again, that's under the best of circumstances right now.

Logged in today and the queue was at 375 and climbing. We were backlogged as far back as Saturday (because of course the various doctors and techs are still coming in on the weekends), and all the ones left from Saturday were - you guessed it - the long and complicated bullshit that Temp doesn't want to touch. But yesterday's typing was effectively untouched when I logged in.

The queue when I logged out for the day was approaching 400. Barely anything got typed unless I typed it (except for seeing Milady take one fifteen minute long monstrosity, for which I am very grateful because I got something like three 10+ minute bits of dictation on top of the ones that don't take long to speak but do take long to type because of having to deal with the formatting - it's a thing). Most of the urgent cases got done - but not all; the longer ones of those were left behind as well when I logged out. I just hadn't noticed because I was busy with all the long dictation and the stuff from the more difficult doctors and techs. I barely saw anything taken out of the queue, and when I did, it was in bits and snatches of shorter pieces of work between the longer, complicated stuff. And like I said - not that much of that got done either.

Of course, some of this might have something to do with the transcription software, which was at its worst today. It crashed seven times, and hung for at least five minutes a dozen more times over the course of the day, at least for me. It's possible that people got slowed down because they were having the same problem, but I don't know because no one keeps me updated when Scruffman's not around. I'd bet good money that they didn't try to talk to IT about it and just used it as an excuse to relax and futz about all day, but at least it's sort of an excuse. Ish. Kind of. I mean, I was slowed up, but I wasn't slowed up that much...

If we're still in this mess when I log in tomorrow (and I honestly expect it to be much worse tomorrow), I may actually have to pull some overtime. I have spoken to Scruffman about doing so if it becomes necessary, because at least I don't have to commute, but I'm honestly not sure I have the spoons for that kind of thing. Thing is, we need to at least get partway caught up. This reflects badly on all of us, but the others don't seem to fucking care. Scruffman's away, so they can do what they want, apparently. And it's leaving us massively behind.

So tomorrow is going to be a day. If our transcription software is still a mess of hiccups and crashes, I'll be emailing IT and asking what the hell is going on. If the queue is still obscenely long (and I would wager, knowing the doctors' work patterns as I do, that it'll be approaching 500 cases when I log in, if my colleagues in the office keep on the way they're going), I'm going to have to log some overtime to at least get us so that we're only one day behind and not two. I'll obviously keep a record and email Scruffman about it, but I can't just let this stay like this. And I can't make Goblin and Temp get a fucking move on - hell, I couldn't do that even if I was in the office.

Fuck. Just ... fuck. Two whole weeks of this bullshit? Are you kidding me?!? Scruffman is obviously entitled to use his annual leave, but we're already massively understaffed because no one hired a replacement for Sunshine and Sid, so if Goblin and Temp refused to pull their respective fingers out, we're going to end up so deep in backlog that we'll end up with calls from clients asking what the fuck is going on. Most of this stuff is fairly urgent. It's histology. It's people being investigated for potential cancer in a lot of cases! I don't necessarily expect miracles, but I expect at least the kind of work ethic that doesn't involve turning the office into a chat-and-coffee corner the minute the managers' backs are turned. If I have to keep the whole place afloat for two weeks, I WANT A FUCKING RAISE. Or at the very least overtime pay.

Thankfully my own week's holiday comes pretty much as soon as Scruffman comes back from his fortnight. I'm going to need it. Especially if I have to pull overtime.

*flashes back to typing queue when I logged out before*

...When. Especially when I have to pull overtime. UGH.

[vodid]

Hey, dream pal again….

I am okey, sorry if the “worst week of my life” coment freaked you out, im cool.

I did walk through a forest, but funny enough I had walked in it many times irl and was around said forest when the dream happened, so I just assumed this is why I dreamed about it. I was with Jazz there and here is were I lost the short guy and found “you”... I wasnt sure about the oak trees since I am not a fauna guy but after looking up how they look, huh, guess what? there were in the dream too.

One of the things that really haunted me about the dream is that I know and I have been in all the places of said dream while awake… Even the store you drew has a strong resemblance to a store I know, but again… no mural which I find so intriguing.

I do remember talking to the girl I found while Jazz was still in the store. I don’t remember much of the conversation besides comments on Jazz, the death environment and someone saying that it was going to be okey (I trully don’t know who said that). I remember getting angry, but not the reason why I got angry.

The dream doesn’t end in the store for me. After the store we hit the road, and I sat on Jazz’s passenger seat as I looked out of the window, I wasn’t alone in the car, and I know more than one person was on the car, but I dont know if it was the same girl from the store. I know they *looked* white (it could be the cappibara lady, who knows), but we where quiet all the way.

In the dream I knew there had been an apocalypse and I knew Jazz was the only Autobot I could find, but I was also aware (to a small degree) that is was a dream. Who knows maybe this is why I got angry when we left the store.

This is so freaky… The dream doesn’t end on the road either, at least not for me (who knows, maybe the car passenger NPCs logged into a different server)… But after that I was alone.

I have to ask, in the forest did you happen to see other animals (a mule/ donkey)? or a small cabin?

Dude Imagine I end up finding the other people in the dream… that would be, creepy ngl.

The dream pal,

- R

i'm happy to hear that! <3

oak trees are pretty common but they felt very prevalent enough in the forest i walked through that it was worth noting. usually, where i live, they're a bit more sparse and mixed with tons of other trees.

and before i continue, this got EXTREMELY long and detailed so i'm placing everything under a cut hsdfsdfs

the forest in my dream was one i walked through many times irl too!! it was heavily based off the forest right behind my house at first, which has a small creek in it (that's where i started off in my dream actually. went into my backyard, saw a capybara and followed her into the forest) but the path and size were different, both much larger. the path went straight instead of turning left, there were more slopes around it, a thicker canopy, and the creek i passed through was further in and running perpendicular instead of parallel (it was more reminiscent of a wider part of my creek downstream, but the location was all wrong) there was also a small hill just before or right after the creek. around that point, it melded with a different forest i've walked through only a few times before: the forest behind my high school, which had a mf maze for its trails that we hiked on a few times and a very large river in the deepest part, to the left. the desire path i walked on in the dream was a lot more like those ones. perhaps, if you were the girl, you walked on a different trail until we bumped into each other? (tho i don't particularly remember there being any forks in the path)

the supermarket was a lot like a regular ol walmart but it doesn't particularly remind me of any i know. most walmarts here are part of a strip mall/near one and i don't remember if there were rly many other buildings in the plaza from my dream. probably all got destroyed. not sure, the details of the plaza are fuzzy besides a very, very dusty and crumbled parking lot. very large lot, but i'm not sure how large, and how much had dirt and grass had grown over it

the mural i'm sure is something straight out of horizon forbidden west. there are holograms in the game of the heroes of the apocalypse? called "ten." the holograms had a couple graphics that the mural was most likely based off of, mainly the orange and yellow background (stole this pic from ign)

after seeing the mural, jazz didn't move or speak in the rest of the full dream. he just sat on the rubble next to the mural. i would've loved to have hit the road lol but i guess he needed time. i really wish i remembered more about what happened towards the end, but i do know that, alongside the worry and the sympathy, there were feelings of dread and a slight urgency. we weren't in active danger, but we could be. that place was abandoned for a reason. (it felt as though jazz was the one in danger, but he found the girl to be in more danger than he was. classic guardian syndrome i guess LOL)

that's so wack tho. we both in some way knew we were dreaming (usually i am not aware of that in mine) and everything i bumped into was some amalgamation of a place i have been to before, even if the general area was a bit more rural than where i live lol there wasn't a cabin tho. mainly just feelings of there being stores and more houses (i live in the suburbs) around us. the houses kind of had the feeling of... being very recently built or still under construction? obviously they're not new now but back then, before the apocalypse, whenever that was, they would've been brand new. not sure if that's an important detail lol

i don't remember bumping into any animals besides the capybaras and maybe a chipmunk or squirrel but i did collect vegetables/fruits?? there were like. bright red tomatoes, cabbage and fresh peaches i picked up from around tree trunks (reminded me a lot of things like breath of the wild) and i tried to give them to the mother/child to help them, since it was clear they were looking for food, but the mother did NOT trust me. she didn't want to be near me and i'm not sure why i kept following her. she looked like she felt a bit uneasy around me as she did not speak english at first, so it was easy to misunderstand my intentions

anyway i decided to give the general area of my dream a go, so let me know if anything in it reminds you of something. it's hard to nail every detail exactly, since you know how dreams like to do good ol switch-a-roos on things but this should be at least a little true to my dream

it's very possible the forest trail was longer but i do not have a solid concept of the time i spent on it. mainly just the beginning. also not sure if jazz and the woman appeared before or after the creek. it was a very shallow but wide stream (honestly i do not remember really walking through it. i just remember seeing it but i KNOW it ran through the trail) anyway, don't be fooled, this whole place i drew is MASSIVE. imagine it's close to a mile long from top to bottom. the forest was huge, the parking lot was huge, the area beyond (north-northeast) was huge with powerlines that felt like they ran parallel to the street but looked like they went perpendicular ...not sure how that worked. they had a field with lots of overgrown tall, dry grass tho

either way, i hope something looks familiar! dreams are so weird with how much context they can provide without needing to actually see it? so i hope you can trust my word on this lol i built purely off what i remember feeling in my dream. and honestly, if i had to say, definitely felt like that sort of area would've had a donkey LMAO or maybe more so deer, but i did not see any nor feel any from the given context

also wondering, how tall are you? and a little more obscure, but do you own or have owned any shirts like this? it's a regular long sleeve, waffle knit shirt with some sort of magenta heather pattern (thanks google for making me have to draw it)

it's probably not important but thought to ask anyway on the off chance you do

[coulsonlives]

Hi, how's it going? I just saw your post about spoons and how people in this RPC act like you're an ableist asshole over it, and holy shit do I relate, because it's literally happened to me too. Rant incoming, but I thought I'd pass some validation your way... I have a lot of feelings about this.

Like you said, tumblr users have become absurdly brazen with the "you're ableist" accusations towards people with disabilities who are just trying to enjoy a hobby, and trying to ensure their needs are met by making them clear/upfront in their rules. Like, jesus christ... If you have depression or low spoons, and you easily burn out from high partner/character turnover, or if you don't spend a lot of time online, or if you get really disoriented if you log on once a week and see a lot has changed re: your partners' blogs and such, that's a valid concern. It's not being fucking "ADHD ableist" to say you burn out if partners have a high turnover with their blogs or characters, so you prefer to follow people whose blogs and characters are more stable. It's not "ADHD ableist" to say you prefer writing longform posts rather than one-liners. It's not "ADHD ableist" to say you have memory issues, so you can't manage when threads or characters change a lot. That last one about memory is very ironic, because ADHD can literally affect working memory too, sometimes you need to take the exact same approach with it! Anyways, long story short, there's no "right" way to roleplay. My approach to roleplaying isn't going to be compatible with everyone else's, that's just the way it works. But some assholes don't understand that at all, and they throw fists over it, and I just? Stop.

We're not saying "if you roleplay this way, you suck ass", or "this way of roleplaying is better than the rest", or "if you read these rules, you must do as I say because I'm a bossy controlling high-maintenance bitch", but that's literally what the Reactive Outrage Crowd seems to interpret from our rules... Which we've put upfront out of courtesy, before people even interact with us. And I'm sick of it. I've seen it happen to my friends, and it's happened to me, I'm sorry to hear it's happened to you, too, ugh. You can be the nicest person, and you still get shit because people take screencaps out of context or whatever, and they think their disabilities and ND traits give them full license to order us to conform to their own specific needs, which they wrongly believe is the only "right" way to roleplay, so we must conform to them, and them only.

What the hell happened to, "we are fundamentally incompatible as writing partners, so instead of trying to force each other to fit into a mold, which is only going to lead to frustration, let's acknowledge we are too different, and find partners who are more compatible"?!

Honestly, these last few years.

The worst part, in my opinion? How tumblr's RPC is full of petty-ass roleplayers who like to pretend they're inclusive, and understanding of people who are ND or who have disabilities, but as it turns out... They're only accepting if you're the "right" kind of ND or disabled, fuck you if you're anything else.

Are you autistic, and do you have very blunt or direct rules that are formatted in bullet points? Maybe you'll hear, "wow, if I wanted to apply for a job and check off boxes, I'd go on indeed, lmfao" (I wish I were kidding, this has happened). Have health problems and need to explain the specific ways it affects your writing or blog organization, which involves a lot of tag lists and explanations? "Wow, these rules are so long, nobody with ADHD is going to read a textbook, lmaoo." (Yes, I've also seen this.) Prefer not to follow people who are super into one specific fandom, because you don't want to hear about it, or because you don't want a higher likelihood of seeing that content on your dash (due to accidental untagging or something)? "Lmao, this person sounds like a wet napkin".

Are you kidding me?

Some people are so ready to shit on rules and posts that do literally nothing wrong. The only things these rules and posts do is show incompatibility with the person's own roleplaying style, in a totally non-judgmental way. But people equate these rules and posts to ableism and rudeness, because they've gotten it into their heads that their own way to roleplay is the "only way", and then they start stirring up the Outrage Porn mobs. Hey, look everyone, here's the latest in "shitty ableism," let's all stare and wonder wtf is wrong with this person who's done literally nothing even remotely offensive! Like that's not a super fucked-up form of entertainment. And why is it always "ADHD ableist", like you said? I feel bad for the people with ADHD who genuinely don't give a rat's ass about people's rules or finding faults in everything, and who just adhere to the live and let live mindset.

Like… Come on, people. There is nothing wrong with ADHD, or with preferring high-turnover threads or short rules and things... Just like there's nothing wrong with the alternative. Just shut the fuck up with the rules bullshit, regardless of your disabilities, and stop acting like you know what's best for all people and their own disabilities. People who are clearly incompatible with you don't owe you shit, especially if they're not hurting anyone or forcing you to do anything. You need to stop being so entitled and learn how to walk away like an adult. And stop calling everything ableist without it warranting it, because not only are you hurting ND/disabled people more often than not when you use it (sometimes without even realizing it), especially on a website like tumblr, but you're grossly watering down the term, and that's going to bite all of us in the ass one day. You shouldn't be proud of that, you should be ashamed.

Okay, I'm done lol.

(Shit like this is why I don't go on tumblr anymore, for the record.)

This needs to be framed and displayed in the tumblr rp museum of excellence, thank you for saying it

[iseldomunderstand]

Locking in

Sometimes it's weird how you surprise yourself not having realized the time flew by while you were having fun. If I recall correctly it's called flow. When you're so focused on one sole activity that you forget about the notion of time. I would experience it all the time when I was younger, I'd play MarioKart on my DS, the grey kind, back in the days before the lite version was released, and I could spend a whole day not even having noticed the sun had set. Then I would feel very hungry because I'd been so focused I'd forgotten to eat.

Those days are behind me, now, I'm lucky if I can stay focused on one thing for more than thirty minutes. It's a weird change of pace. It feels like I get interested and need to know all about one thing for just a moment before the mere idea of it leaves me completely unmoved. I don't know when the shift happened but boy it sure is noticeable now! I'll play a videogame for some time, get bored, play another one, quit before I launch a run because suddenly it's not appealing anymore, so I log on YouTube and find a video to watch while I crochet and that keeps me busy but then I have to go to the restroom and then I feel hungry and then I cook lunch and then I do the dishes and then I get back on my computer... And I've lost interest in the video and the crochet! So my work will just sit in a corner of my desk or in an organizer before I suddenly get hyperfixated on it again in a month or so.

I have had a plushie of Mimikyu in the making for the past five years. It sits on a shelf above my head with pins in the embroidery's place as I write this. I can't for the life of me find the will to finish it. If I lay my hands on it, it takes all the strength in me to go and fetch my embroidery floss, my needle, my thread cutter and get to work, each stitch feels like agony, and then I think about how I'd much rather vacuum around the room, so I do that, and then I go and run a laundry cycle and then I dust up the shelves and then—

And the worst thing is, I would LOVE to have this plushie finished so I could properly hold it without fearing getting pins into my hands or even worse my forearms, and just for the sense of accomplishment alone, but I just CAN'T bring myself to finish it.

It's a ceaseless run for interest, I've got to get it while it's hot, if I'm not interested in my studies or my larger scale projects and plans I will just not progress them until I either get the sudden urge to do them or I get an adrenaline boost coupled with a flush of guilt for not doing it sooner and I do it last minute, and that's on a deadline, when I don't have one, we get Mimikyu. Everyday I'm thankful for not being this way with hygiene and housekeeping as well as social projects, but everyday I curse that I'm this way at all.

Lately, I haven't even had the time for entertainment, it's been all obligations, from rise to fall and dawn 'til dusk I eat the same bread, and the bread tastes like cheap copy paper. It oddly works for me because I certainly don't have any interest in the accursed thing but being immersed in one sole topic 24/7 at least during the work week keeps me into the grind, it's not painful to get into the flow if you never get out of it, which is bleak, but it works, and I don't have any alternatives to bring to the table so it will have to do for now.

My friends on the spectrum keep telling me that I should see a psychiatrist, get a diagnosis and start micro-dosing meth but if I had the strength to get into the months-long process of getting a mental health appointment I wouldn't need to take the funny focus pill in the first place so it's a vicious cycle. The problem is, it's happening for non mental health appointments as well and that's another can of worms, I could have a 30 minute attention span all my life, I'd make it work, but I have been wanting to see a dentist for three years and I never saw it through, the fact I have a grand total of 2 available hours for myself per week that are compatible with a dental appointment don't help.

So for now I'm just locked in for the following six months and I have just sort of accepted that I will essentially sit here in pain until I get weeks to myself and pray that I can pull it together and get help. Keeping the ball going once I get back in the grind will be another story altogether.