#8 might not be the correct amount

[molliemoo3]

Not to be sad and bitter, and i get the point of f2 is to try and get to f1, but MP having full posts for former driver, but Dennis gets like 2 sentences is making me sad

[boiohboii]

The Royal Way 《Pt.2》

(Leclerc!reader x Prince of Monaco!oc)

After his older sister marries into the Monaco Royal family, Charles knew he would be treated differently, to his surprise (and his sister's disappointment) his F1 team, ferarri, treated him the same way.... and that did not sit well with the new princess of Monaco

or

in which YN Leclerc uses her new familial connections to fuck up ferarri just like how they fucked up her baby brother's hopes and dreams.

N.B: so, this was supposed to be longer and the last part, but it's currently 3 AM and I have classes at 8 AM thus me splitting this little fic into a trilogy. Hopefully, I will have time tomorrow to post the third and final part! Thank you for reading and let me know what you think!! WARNINGS: NOT REALISTIC AT ALL!! if you are looking for a realistic revenge sort of plot, it is not here, I tried as best as I can to search up what the whole electronic system does and it's relation to the DRS, BUT I AM BY NO MEANS AN EXPERT NOR HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE, SO EXCUSE THE POOR RESEARCH. The car designs are from Pinterest... Some swear words (fuck, bitch, etc...) Let me know if I missed anything else please!

Faceclaims:

yn leclerc --> anya taylor joy

Prince Thierry --> louis partridge

Masterlist // part 1

Liked by ferrariisdone, charlesthefrench, leclercfam and 716,920 others

F1_updates_live: Prince Thierry and Princess YN Leclerc heading into the Ferrari motor home in LA. Neither of the Royals look ecstatic to be in this position and it's no doubt to do with the statement released by Ferrari's Formula one media team, where they had essentially blamed the newly wedded Princess, YN Leclerc and their own driver, Charles Leclerc, for his DNF in the previous GP.

username: let them cook

username: the amount of bodyguards they have is insane

username: they do not look happy

username: yeah, no shit sherlock, ferrari basically said that it was yn's fault that Charles is distracted

username: ferrari blaming everyone but themselves

LEAKED AUDIO FROM LAS VEGAS GP, FERRARI'S MOTORHOME: tensions rise in the Ferrari garage as the young royals of Monaco, Prince Thierry and Princess YN Leclerc, threaten Fred Vasseur of taking him to court after buying out the rest of Charles' contract with Ferrari.

(Princess YN Leclerc,Prince Thierry, Fred Vasseur)

"It has been proven time and time again that the team is so incompetent! Why won't you do any changes?"

"Do you think that it's easy? These are people's livelihoods we are talking about"

"You do realise you are talking to a princess, right? She is well aware of how to run a business and a team, unlike you."

"I am just saying that I can't just fire people because Charles can't manage the car!"

"CAN'T MANAGE THE CAR? Are you out of your fucking mind mr. Vasseur? There is evidence, very strong evidence for your information, that the problem was from the electronic system. Do you have any idea how fucked up your engineers and strategists have to be to send out a car with failed electronic system?"

"Correct me if I am wrong my darling, but don't the electronic system control the DRS?"

"Mmhhmmm"

"And if the DRS opens in a corner it might result in a crash, am I correct mr. Vasseur?"

"The DRS was fine, there was-"

"My husband is asking a yes or no question Fred."

"Yes."

"So basically, Ferrari's Formula one team had, intentionally and with their knowledge, put a member of the monegasque royal family in direct danger."

"But Charles isn't a member of the royal family! He is only YN's half brother!"

"PRINCESS YN MR VASSEUR! YOU WILL DO WELL TO REMEMBER THAT!"

"Charles is my brother, and you dare put him in harm's way. I am princess YN Leclerc of Monaco, I can and I will hold you accountable as the principal of this team."

"You can't do anything! Carlos had the same car-"

"Carlos did not have the same car and you know it!"

"We already know Fred, we have had professional inspections done on both cars, it's quite deceiving really, telling a driver that he's the priority and still disappointing him every single time."

🔊 a thud is heard 🔊

"This is the amount of money to buy Charles out of Ferrari, but don't spend it Fred, we will be getting it back in court."

"YN WHAT WE-"

"PRINCESS YN FRED! *sigh* it seems like no matter what you are still convinced that you and your workers did no wrong, we will see about that."

"There is only one race left, there will be no team to take in Charles now!"

"Oh, we are not looking for a team to take him in, we made a team for him."

{Taglist: @phillydilly @f1ln4dr3cl16mv33 @omgsuperstarg @formulas-bitch @brakingboundaries @kyuupidwrites}

[twistedmionn]

Twisted Wonderland iceberg

Explanations ahead (slight spoiler warning)

Tier 1:

everything is self-explanatory, I think

Tier 2:

Haruhi = the protagonist of Ouran High School Host Club. She's a girl who dresses up as a boy (correct me if I'm wrong) and many players who have a female MC consider theirs to be like Haruhi. [EDIT: Thanks for the anon pointing out that I misspelled the name!]

Tier 3:

self-explanatory

Tier 4:

A fair amount of people headcanon Vil as a trans woman because he presents androgynously/feminine and doesn't care about gender roles. This has also caused discussion in the fandom because breaking gender roles ≠ trans.

Tier 5:

People sometimes wish TWST was more like a dating sim and had character/dorm routes.

Some people headcanon that Silver is based on Prince Philip (from Sleeping Beauty) and/or is a prince himself. I haven't played all of book 7 yet (only the parts out in the ENG server) so idk if the theory has been proven right.

Lilia is old and hints at dying soon.

Hot NPCs, such as Deuce's mom and Sebek's grandpa.

Ace and Deuce have expressed interest in Yuu at various points in the game.

Genshin VAs: Leona/Alhaitham, Silver/Kazuha, Idia/Razor are the ones I can think of

Tier 6:

A beastman (I think it was Jack) has stated that he has problems talking to animals, and Ruggie's talent at it is considered something special.

The tweels are considered intersex by some due to eel anatomy (I'm no eel expert).

Kalim is considered the real villain by some due to never really bothering to help Jamil.

Epel's backstory/attitude has many elements that a fair amount of trans men relate to.

There are theories that Lilia and Sebek are twisted from Peter Pan characters. I'm unsure about Silver, but I think I've read something about him being from another movie, too!

Tier 7:

Some people headcanon that Ace has experienced domestic abuse.

There's a theory that Ace will betray Yuu.

Cater has two sisters who boss him around, which is a resemblance to Cinderella.

Malleus might have two pps because well... dragon.

Epel and Deuce had a whole ass beach date. Deuce constantly cares for him and broke the school rules in order to make Epel feel better. Their scenes together (the settings) looked straight out of a shoujo manga. If Epel were a girl, this ship would be considered canon by most.

I'm not sure EXACTLY which languages Jade's VA speaks, but I do remember that he knows German.

In one of his Halloween vignettes, Ruggie — as opposed to Lilia — has indirectly expressed that he has no interest in romance/relationships.

Tier 8:

UH.

[lookingforhappy]

Noticed that Elliott has the arrival dates of Luther (3rd event), April 10th 1962, and Allison (2nd event), June 29th 1961, pinned to his wall, and figured I might as well try and calculate how old everyone is..

(Elliott's date for Diego is wrong, placing him at Sep 17th, when he arrived on Sep 1st.)

These are not perfect dates but they should be fairly close? and I'm not very good at maths so please correct me!

Hargreeves' ages in age order:

Five

Disappears at 13 yr, 1 mo, and 9 days old.

His new birthday in the apocalypse is now: 22nd February

+ 45 years in the apocalypse + an unknown amount of time in the commission makes him at least 58 yr, 1 mo, and 9 days old at the start of s1.

+ 8 days in s1 makes him at least 58 yr, 1 mo, and 17 days old at the start of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes him at least 58 yr, 1 mo, and 25 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes him at least 58 yr, 2 mo, and 2 days old at the end of s3.

From s1 - s3 he has aged 23 days.

Using this estimate (his minimum age) Five's new birthday in the reset universe might be: 5th February

Klaus

Travels to Vietnam at 29 yr, 5 mo, and 26 days old.

(Klaus leaves Vietnam on February 21st, supposedly arriving in Vietnam on April 21st) His new birthday in Vietnam is now: 25th October

+ 10 months in Vietnam makes him 30 yr, 3 mo, and 26 days old when he returns to March 28th 2019.

+ 3 days to finish s1 makes him 30 yr, 3 mo, 29 days old at the end of s1.

(Klaus arrives in Dallas on February 11th) His new birthday in Dallas is now: 12th October

+3 yr, 9 mo, and 4 days in the 60s makes him 34 yrs, 1 mo, 3 days old at the start of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes him 34 yrs, 1 mo, 11 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes him 34 yrs, 1 mo, 18 days old at the end of s3.

His new birthday in the reset universe is now: 20th February

Allison

Allison is 29 yr, 6 mo old at the end of s1.

(She arrives in Dallas on June 29th) Her new birthday in Dallas is now: 29th December

+ 2 yr, 4 mo, 17 days in the 60s makes her 31 yr, 10 mo, and 17 days old at the start of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes her 31 yr, 10 mo, 25 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes her 31 yr, 11 mo, 2 days old at the end of s3.

Her new birthday in the reset universe is now: 6th May

Luther

Luther is 29 yr, 6 mo old at the end of s1.

(He arrives in Dallas on April 10th) His new birthday in Dallas is now: 10th October

+ 1 yr, 7 mo, 5 days in the 60s makes him 31 yr, 1 mo, 5 days old at the start of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes him 31 yr, 1 mo, 13 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes him 31 yr, 1 mo, 20 days old at the end of s3.

His new birthday in the reset universe is now: 18th February

Diego

Diego is 29 yr, 6 mo old at the end of s1.

+ 2 mo, 14 days in the 60s (2 mo, 5 days in the asylum) makes him 29 yr, 8 mo, 14 days old at the beginning of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes him 29 yr, 8 mo, 22 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes him 29 yr, 8 mo, 29 days old at the end of s3.

His new birthday in the reset universe is now: 9th July

Viktor

Viktor is 29 yr, 6 mo old at the end of s1.

+ 1 mo, 3 days in the 60s makes him 29 yr, 7 mo, 3 days old at the start of s2.

+ 8 days in s2 makes him 29 yr, 7 mo, 11 days old at the start of s3.

+ 7 days in s3 makes him 29 yr, 7 mo, 18 days old at the end of s3.

His new birthday in the reset universe is now: 20th August

Lila

her age is completely unknown. we can guess she's around the same age as the umbrellas but otherwise she's a mystery.

Ritu Arya, her actress, was 32 in 2020 when s2 was released so that's as close to canon as we know right now, (except, the majority of the cast are older than their on screen counterparts, except for David who was actually born in 1989 and Aidan in s1 as he was 13 when he was cast).

The only other information we have on her age is that she was orphaned and kidnapped at 4. and that she spent 3 months in Berlin between s2 and s3.

Sparrows

All of the Sparrows are 29 yrs, 6 mo, 1 day old at the start of s3:

Marcus dies at 29 yrs, 6 mo, 1 day old.

Jayme and Alphonso die at 29 yrs, 6 mo, 3 days old.

Fei and Chris die at 29 yrs, 6 mo, 6 days old.

Sloane goes missing at 29 yrs, 6 mo, 7 days old.

Sparrow Ben enters the reset universe at 29 yrs, 6 mo, 7 days old.

Ben and Sloane's birthday's remain as October 1st

i think? please do correct me if im wrong!

tua s4 speculation under the cut

if s4 is 6 years on then the ages we have are:

Five is 64 in a 19yro body

Klaus is 40

Allison is 38

Luther is 37

Diego is 36

Viktor is 36

Ben is 36

Lila and Diego's kid is probably turning 6 yro.

Claire could be anywhere between 17 and 13 since she seems to be a teenager?

[yandere-sins]

"König is just too afraid that something might happen", I can see him overthinking A LOT about his platonic darling.

What König thinks will happen if darling cooks for herself:

What König thinks will happen if he leaves his darling with a chromosome XY for 0.1 second:

König cooking for darling:

Ghost seeing König clinging on to darling 25/8;

König's overthinking and clinginess leads to isolation, and I can honestly see König being very protective especially when darling is around other men. König sees you as pretty and precious despite your status, and it's proven right because a certain British lieutenant is attracted to you :(

Hence, I can imagine darling being unused to physical touch with other men because of König. Even if darling's the physical touch type, everything changed since König is platonically obsessed with his darling. König hoards your affection, no matter what form it is (physical touch, quality time, etc) so darling becomes unused to romantic advances from other people.

OH YEA remember the Ghost getting a few hours with his darling? You mentioned that Ghost plays the long game so do you think that Ghost is patiently "training" darling to get used to HIS physical affection? Darling is unused to physical touch from others due to König so I can see Ghost using baby steps approach like getting his darling used to headpats and hand holding, or copies König's physical touch like headpats and hugs because darling is familiar with it.

Have a nice day/night!

Gosh I love these memes, you're so right, especially with the König cooking for darling and it's just the most basic thing in way too much quantity because he's so worried they won't eat enough unless there is extra extra much of it, lol!

To be honest, Ghost is a bit of both, direct and indirect. He gets the darling used to his touch/presence until they start to long for it.

There are instances where he simply pulls them to the side by the waist when they almost run into another soldier, but drops his touch right away, leaving only a tingle and a confused darling behind. Or he places his hand over sharp edges for them so they don't hit their head on the cabinet above the kitchen counter or the table. He does that proactive boyfriend thing where he says it's no big deal when they thank him, but the darling grows increasingly confused since König would prevent them from even getting into this situation, while Ghost lets them figure it out and is supportive. He'd give them a hand into the helicopter while König would simply lift them up and not even attempt to let them climb in on their own. It's like you said before, the minimal amount of independence that Ghost gives them back.

And then there are the times when he intentionally pushes their buttons. Correcting their stance at the shooting range doesn't really need him to move his whole body against them—he does it anyway. Complete with whispering in their ear and praising them for a job well done when they hit the target exactly where they are supposed to. Or when he pulls them into a container to hide, locking them between his arms and telling them to be quiet while König stalks around outside, looking for them. He doesn't need to brush his body against theirs, the heat and friction between them palpable. It's a fucking container they are in; they could be five feet apart, no problem. Ghost is not subtle, however, lol. 

And then, of course, all the in-between (sometimes even in front of König just for the fun of it): head pats while they meet in the hallway, a quick pat before he just continues walking, or gripping their hand when they are about to eat something with their fork and directing it into his own mouth instead—thanking them for the meal before leaving. Correcting how they put on their equipment and picking up their luggage when they struggle with it. He's trying to be really nonchalant about it, but the effect it actually has is that the darling starts to notice him much quicker. Ghost can be a quiet shadow, but they'll be the only one to be able to pick him out from a hundred other soldiers without looking. His presence just gets ingrained in their mind, and before long, they will also start to be more defiant against König's treatment of them, knowing now what alternatives they have. 

Darling wouldn't even know why they let their gaze wander until they found Ghost across the hall. It surprises them both when Ghost isn't even looking at them, yet they search for him out of their own free will. 

And snap goes the trap. 

[guardianlioness]

Watching Kafka and Reno’s interactions at the beginning of the Kaiju No.8 anime hits differently after catching up with the manga.

Reno protesting Kafka’s carelessness with his Kaiju form is a fun gag early on in the story, and his decision to stick with Kafka during the exam is endearing—but it’s amplified and almost sad in retrospect.

Manga spoilers from chapter 101 onward below the cut.

We learn in Ch. 101 that Reno has suffered a huge amount of loss in his life.

He lost his parents and brother. He lost the familiarity and daily routine of attending his existing school. He lost emotional security, witnessing his grandmother’s struggle with their mutual grief. He lost faith in the idea that someone might help.

Only for Kafka to trip headlong into correcting that belief.

Despite Reno’s disrespect, Kafka fully embodies his senpai title by teaching him the tricks of the trade. He looks out for and helps him without hesitation, and he brushes off any jabs or insults with a quick, internal wince.

And then Kafka absolutely shatters his core beliefs by shoving him out of a Kaiju’s path.

This guy—a guy Reno barely knows, a guy that he insulted seconds into their first meeting—is willing to die for him without hesitation.

Is it any surprise that Reno really would rather not lose him?

All of those reminders and all of that fussing is to keep Reno’s only hero from being scrapped for literal parts.

For the first time since the death of his family, someone steps between Reno and tragedy. Of course he’s going to do everything in his power to keep that savior alive.

[mangoshorthand]

Inspired by this post. When your daughter is eight years old, Five organises a family trip to County Clare, Ireland. His reasons why are completely transparent.

The Changeling | Five Hargreeves/Reader, Five Hargreeves & 8 y/o daughter Words: 7.7k

GIF by: @seance

It was Aoife’s first flight, and it was only through Five’s gentle persuading that you were convinced that it would be safe. At eight, he said, she was more than old enough to listen and control herself.

Still, just before you boarded, you knelt down in front of her and took her by the elbows. 

“Aoife, listen to me, honey.”

She blinked at you with Five’s eyes. She looked the picture of innocence, and if you didn’t know better, you might have been taken in.

“You cannot blink on this flight. You can’t blink on this trip at all unless it’s just me and Daddy in the room, but you especially can’t blink on the plane, okay?”

“Okay Mommy,” she said, sulkily.

“Seriously,” you said, giving her a gentle shake, “If you misjudge it by just a tiny amount, you could end up outside the plane. You could fall and die.”

Aoife looked up at Five for backup but didn’t find it. He put a hand on her shoulder with a stern look that was uncharacteristic when aimed at her.

“Your mother’s right, cara. This is life and death. And even if you try it and don’t die, we’re going to go straight back home again as soon as we land. There will be no trip at all. You hear me?”

“I didn’t even do anything yet!” she said, indignantly.

“Yes, and I’m sure you won’t because you’re my good, sensible girl,” you said, hoping she’d live up to the label. 

“I’m just making sure you understand what’s at stake here, kid.” Five said, “ Non sto scherzando . Now, repeat it back: tell me what’s gonna happen if you blink.”

“I’ll die,” she said, with petulant impatience.

“And if you blink but don’t die?”

“No trip,” she repeated.

“Correct,” Five said, “we won’t even leave the airport. We’ll turn right around and get on the next flight home.”

“I know you’ll be a good girl,” you said, kissing her on the nose, “you always are, aren’t you?”

You kissed once, twice and three times until her pout was replaced with a smile. 

As it happened, once the initial excitement of being airborne had worn off, Aoife fell asleep almost immediately, the early morning catching up with her. She was leaning against you, chest rising and falling slowly, and would remain so for all but the last hour of the flight. 

Five was also quiet, staring out of the window at clouds in the odd light of changing time zones. 

Ever since suggesting the trip, he’d been a closed book. He was still himself - still loving, and still every inch the husband and father you knew -  but he was more insular, more like he was before you got married; keeping the internal workings of his mind under wraps. 

With Aoife against you, you couldn’t reach out to offer him any physical affection, so instead, you spoke to him over her head.

“You okay, sweet guy?”

He looked over at you and plastered on a smile that didn’t hide his impatience with the question.

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

You pulled a face at him, one that told him you weren’t an idiot. He didn’t exactly need to tell you for you to guess what this trip was really about. 

Five couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed by your knowing look. It was galling to know he no longer held any mysteries for you. He leaned his head against the plane’s wall and closed his eyes. 

It wasn’t that he was shutting you out, it was more from a strong sense that this was something he had to do alone. 

It came up in therapy a couple of times. Maybe it was his age, or maybe it was being a father, but he found himself coming back to this idea of history. Aoife’s family tree on his side was more of a hedge: extremely wide but only one generation tall. He wanted to give her an anchoring in this world beyond a strange experiment by a billionaire that resulted in her mentally unstable father.

On his mentioning these feelings, Dr Daley asked him whether it was possible he was projecting, but Five dismissed this.

To him, being Irish by birth didn’t mean much. It might explain his liking for Guinness, but that was about it. And who didn’t like Guinness? 

No. If he’d grown up in Ireland, he’d be a completely different person, as alien to him now as anyone else. For better or worse, Five was the sum total of his experiences. If Reginald was his father along with the harsh life he’d offered, then the apocalypse and all its horrors may as well be his mother. 

The woman who’d birthed him sold him for a couple of grand. He couldn’t imagine it as he glimpsed Aoife out of the corner of his eye. The first time he held his newborn daughter was transformative. He’d felt his entire world crash down and reform around her. He knew she was his on an animal level that left reason entirely behind. His very skin cried out for her.

And yet…childbirth was a bloody, agonizing mess. He’d watched you go through it, and it wasn’t exactly trauma free, even after months of mental preparation.The idea of it happening, all in the space of a few minutes, to women who had no mental preparation was nothing short of horrifying. Now he thought about it, it was amazing that so many of the other October 1st children seemed to have been kept.

But still, when he looked at Aoife, he couldn’t help but wonder. 

He looked up again, and caught your too-understanding eyes. This time, he smiled at you,  irritation giving way to affection. Over ten years you’d grown to know him better than he knew himself. You’d been there for every step as he tried to rebuild his mental health, every tough therapy session, every new drug, and every addition to his laundry list of diagnoses.

You’d known what this was about as soon as he mentioned the trip.

“Can you get the week commencing the 12th October off work?” he’d said, over his cereal one morning, around six months ago.

“I think so,” you said, surprised, “why?”

“We’re going to Ireland.”

“What?” you said, and then, “What about school?”

“They’ll be fine. Call it an educational trip,” he said, “We’ll have Aoife do a project or something.”

“What brought this on?” 

He shrugged, and the way he looked down at a newspaper on the table gave you the distinct impression he was trying to avoid your eye.

“I’ve booked seven nights in County Clare, staying in this huge castle. Dates back to the 17th Century. Aoife’s gonna lose her mind.”

You studied him for a few moments as he sipped his coffee, eyes stock-still on the newspaper, not really reading it.

“Weren’t you born in County Clare?” you asked, gently.

“Mmhm,” he replied, blandly, turning a page.

You waited, and when he didn’t elaborate, you just stuck out a hand and laid it on his forearm. *** When you arrived at Shannon airport, it was raining. It rained like a veil of mist, pin-pricking your faces in a moist cloud of chill wind. It was mid morning, though the foggy skies made it indistinguishable from any other time of day. It made Five glad of his coat, and he paused outside the terminal to zip it to his chin. 

Aoife rubbed her eyes and looked around at the gray, concrete parking lot

“Where are we going?” she asked, in sleepy confusion.

“Not far,” you said, squeezing her hand as Five wheeled your luggage.

The rented Skoda estate was comfortable enough, although not what Five would prefer to be driving. Still, it did the job. As you helped Aoife strap into a booster seat, he had to concede that, on unfamiliar roads, it was more important that style give way to safety.

The thought made him smile to himself as he loaded the luggage into its roomy, sensible trunk. Sometimes it still seemed odd to find himself having such daddish thoughts. It was odd, but good too. 

The environs of the airport faded into the misty rain behind you, and you very soon found yourselves in country that more naturally sprang to mind when you imagined Ireland. 

The landscape was mostly flat and green, damp fields stretching out to the horizon on every side. Short but lush trees and hedges lined the dual carriageway, occasionally leading to taller trees and more advanced woodland, but it mostly served to insulate the surrounding farmland from the road. 

“Do you think there are fairies in those woods?” you asked Five, conversationally, eyeing Aoife out of the corner of your eye. 

“Hm,” Five said, playing along, “It’s possible.”

“Fairies?” Aoife said, her interest piqued as you intended. 

“That’s right,” he said, “there are lots of stories of fairies in Ireland.”

“Will we see some?”

“Probably not,” you smiled, “but it’s fun to pretend.”

As you got deeper into the countryside, stone walls ran along the roadside. Every few miles or so, the fields gave way to the occasional, squat house; all rendered in white with gray slate roofs. They were small, asymmetrical; clearly built for function over form. Once or twice a chimney smoked, bringing with it the smell of peat smoke on the air. 

As you traveled, the sun started to cut through the haze, although the rain didn’t let up, coming down in those same misty clouds. The trees began to thicken, until the land on one side of the road was completely obscured with woodland. At last, you came to a grand iron gate. 

“We’re here.” 

Aoife shuffled excitedly in the booster, trying to peek out from behind the passenger seat to see ahead.

You passed a gatehouse, and soon the thick trees gave way to a simple avenue, leading you up a drive surrounded by lush lawns, upon which small brown rabbits were dotted, those nearest the drive lolloping away from the skoda as it crunched along the gravel.

Aoife was predictably excited by these, and it took some stern words from you to stop her removing her seatbelt and blinking from the car to chase them.

But as you rounded a corner and Ballycarnane castle became visible across the small lake surrounding it on two sides, the rabbits were completely forgotten.

“Look!” she said, in high-pitched awe, “It’s a castle!”

“So it is,” Five said, as if only just noticing it.

It was huge, robust, and square in formation, built with solid gray stone with battlements topping sturdy towers on rising ground. Fountains, trimmed hedges and perfectly mower-lined lawns decorated its immediate environs. At the top of the tallest tower, an Irish flag flew. 

“Is there a princess in there?” Aoife asked, breathlessly, kicking the back of your seat in her glee. 

“Ci sarà presto, cara.” Five said, quietly, a smile playing about his face. 

“Are we staying near here? Can we go visit? Please?”

You looked at Five. He was loving this, you knew, as much as he tried to hide his self-satisfied smile. He gave you the nod to deliver the final bombshell. He was always sweet that way: his daughter’s glee was all the reward he needed. He didn’t need to take the credit too.

“We’re staying right here.” you said. 

“IN THE CASTLE?”

“That’s right,” you chuckled.

Aoife exploded, letting out a series of shrill shrieks that made both you and her father wince.

“Ouch,” you said, at the redoubled kicks to the back of your seat. 

“ WE’RE STAYING IN A CASTLE!”

“Esatto, principessa,” Five replied, pulling into one of the parking spots, “and it’s a very fancy place, so best behavior, okay? You gotta act just like a real princess.”

“CAN I WEAR A PRINCESS DRESS?”

“We’ll see,” you said, “now calm down , sweetie.” *** The next couple of days passed in a blur of sight-seeing, fairy-hunting and princess games. You and Five made excellent ladies in waiting, or else the king and queen, knights, or whatever else Aoife decreed.

Always unable to resist giving his daughter anything she asked for, Five bought not one, but two princess dresses from the ridiculously overpriced boutique attached to the hotel. He also returned with a beautiful, pure silk dressing gown for you, although you suspected this was partly to buy you off after spoiling Aoife.

It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday, you and Five stood on the lawn watching as Aoife tripped over her grass-stained skirts as she climbed a tree stump just for the joy of jumping off. 

“I think I’m going to walk into town,” he said, casually.

You looked at him. 

“Into town?”

“Yes.”

He caught your eye, and his expression was unreadable enough to be perfectly legible to you.

He stood a little apart from you, hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers. He looked unlike himself, standing there in sturdy walking boots and a thick, oversized cable knit sweater over a flannel shirt. His hair played around his face in the slight breeze, masking and then revealing his face. 

He looked into your eyes, and you saw the grim determination there.

“Do you want us to come with you?” you asked.

“No,” he said, calmly, “you enjoy yourselves here. I’ll be back before sundown.”

“Are you sure?” you asked, approaching him and putting a hand on his upper arm.

“Yes darling,” he said, calmly. 

You understood. Five’s tendency to try and face things alone was a habit born of the apocalypse. He was insular; self reliant to an unhealthy degree, but you suspected that this wasn’t like this. 

This was no impending apocalypse, this was something intensely personal. Processing it himself was no bad thing. This was about him, and part of you knew that he was only standing here at all because he had the security of knowing you’d be there, whenever he was ready to let you in; be it tonight, tomorrow, or months from now. 

“Okay,” you said with a reassuring smile. *** It was a four mile walk from the castle itself into Ballycarnane. He walked almost as the crow flew, across fields; down farm lanes and public footpaths; through wooden gates that creaked with age. The rain spat occasionally, and even the hood of his coat couldn’t keep it from blowing into his eyes. 

As he walked, he couldn’t let his mind drift: it was caught in the features of the landscape, keeping him present in every step. He was struck by the wilderness of it all, even as its habitation was constantly declared by the presence of tarmac and the occasional lonely dwelling.

He tramped over damp gorse and heather, taking detours whenever the ground became too marshy to walk on. His walking boots were good quality and supportive, but that didn’t mean he needed to brave the outskirts of a bog when he could retreat to serpentine, single track roads. 

He’d thought the land was relatively flat when he arrived yesterday, but no sooner had the marshy areas fallen behind him as he walked into rugged, rocky countryside, dotted with pine woods.

This might have been his home, he mused. He might have been familiar with this environment, these roads and the ever-present stone walls, as sturdy as they appeared ramshackle. How might he have spent his childhood? This rain on his face, these clouds above him. Green as far as the eye could see. 

Gradually, more and more signs of habitation sprung up around him: the roads became fractionally wider, the houses more varied and frequent as he approached the outskirts of the town. Now he was on streets, the hedges neatly kept, and there were road markings too, single tracks leading onto dual carriageways. 

At last, he passed a sign welcoming him to the town proper, and he began to pass others bustling around him, speed humps, housing estates, white vans and churches. A woman with a stroller thanked him quietly as he stood aside off the sidewalk to let her pass.

He passed a convenience store, an undertakers, a shop selling fancy cheese and wine, and then he saw it: across from a pub was a butcher’s shop. 

Though many of the shops and houses on Ballycarnane’s main street were painted in bright colors, and many other buildings were of the dull concrete variety he’d grown used to back home, the default building style in this area seemed to be those single story, white rendered buildings with those gray roof tiles. His mother’s butcher’s shop was one of these, with a large window displaying wares. 

Below the building’s blue gables, a mural on the outside of the building depicted a cow, sheep and pig. To Five’s mind, they looked inappropriately happy to be depicted, given the context. Above them, in hand-painted italics read: ‘ Jones Family Butchers’, beneath them, ‘ Est.1979’.

He knew her name was Efa Jones, but seeing the name was odd. He was here. *** “Okay, princess Aofie,” you called, as Five’s figure retreated down the gravel drive, “we’re going to get started on your school project.”

“But Mooommy,” she said, gesturing to the tree stump as if there were depths to its joys she had as yet not discovered. 

“What if we did it about the fairies of Ballycarnane?”

Aoife still looked skeptical.

“You remember John from this morning?”

Aoife nodded. She had exchanged a hearty conversation about the rabbits and deer that roamed the grounds with the old man working as the hotel’s senior concierge.

“Well, he told me there’s a fairy fort nearby. You want to go?”

“Yeah!” she said, enthusiastically, jumping from the tree stump one final time, bounding towards you taking your hand. 

“And,” you continued, setting off, “he said once we’d been to go and find him, and he'd tell us a story all about it. If you write his story down and draw some pictures, that can be your project to show Mx Leyton.”

*** Five finished his third Guinness. 

He’d been nursing the beers for over two hours, looking out of grimy windows into the butcher’s shop across the way. He could see movement within, but no detail. Only two or three customers had been in and out in all the time he watched. 

The pub was a spit and sawdust kind of place. The Weaver’s Inn had a cheap paneling on the walls, mismatched dark wood chairs and a carpet that looked like it hadn’t been changed since before the butcher’s shop was established. 

On a Wednesday daytime in October, there had been only one other patron when he arrived, an old man who looked at him with slight suspicion as he entered, but now, as five o’clock drew nearer, people began to trickle in, and there were over five tables occupied. 

He looked into the bottom of his glass. It was now or never.

He recognised her from the newspaper clipping he found as soon as he walked into the store. She must have been pushing seventy, only five or six years younger than himself. 

Her back was bent into a painful curve over her butcher’s block, though she scrubbed at the salted wood with her metal-bristled brush with more than enough vigor. As his entrance caused a bell above the door to give a little trill, she looked up. 

Her wrinkled face was dominated by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, white hair scraped back beneath a hairnet. Her brown eyes were slightly misty with the beginnings of cataracts.

“It’s just the pre-cut now,” she said, nodding towards the block, “you’ve left it late.”

“No problem,” Five said, watching her lay down her brush with the air of one not keen to be interrupted. 

He approached the counter slowly, forcing himself to look down through the glass at the meat on display. 

“What’ll you have?”

She exuded a stern, no nonsense attitude. Customer service might be in her job, but not in her nature, it seemed. 

“Uh,” Five said, uncharacteristically unsure, “steak,” he said, suddenly.

“What type and how much” she prompted, approaching the counter. 

“Uh-” he said again.

“Tourist, are you?” she said, shrewdly.

All the Irish accents he’d heard until now were lilting, but hers lilted differently. 

“Is it that obvious?” Five smiled, looking back down at the counter.

“American?” she asked, as if it were an accusation. 

“Yup.”

“Staying at the castle, I’ll bet.”

“Correct.”

“Sure. You’ve got that silver-spoon look about you.”

Five let out something halfway between a chuckle and a scoff.

“Well, you might say I landed on my feet.”

“You telling me they let you cook steak in those fancy bedrooms?” she asked, skeptically.

Five shifted uncomfortably. She was inconveniently shrewd. 

He guessed he knew where he got it from. 

“We’re self-catering,” he lied, and then, as it came into his thoughts, “I’d say you’re not local yourself, Efa.”

“How d’you know my name?” she asked, suspiciously. 

Shit.

“The bartender at the Weavers Inn,” he said, with a tight smile - she had him on his toes in the way few people could manage - “I told him I wanted a good steak and he said you were the lady to talk to.”

She rolled her eyes. 

“That’s as nice as Liam Moore’s been about me in thirty years,” she muttered “So my beef’s good enough for out-of-towners but not good enough supply his dive of a pub?”

 But then, in answer to his question:

“You’ve got a good ear. I was born in Caerphilly.”

“Wales?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise.

“Wales indeed,” she said briskly, “Now, I’ve got a nice rib-eye, fillet’s only thirty-five euro per kilogram today, and this sirloin’s nicely marbled. What will you have?”

Five didn’t process this, “You’re Welsh?”

“Half.” she said, slightly perturbed, “Mam was Irish, Dad was Welsh. We came here when I was ten.”

It all clicked into place. 

“Efa’s a Welsh name,” he said, coming to the conclusion out loud, “That’s why you’re not Aoife.”

“That’s true,” she said, “I was named for my father’s mother.”

She watched him curiously as he cast his eyes back down to the counter. 

“My daughter’s name is Aoife.” he said, in an attempt at off-handedness.

There was silence then, and Five lowered his eyes. 

“And what’s your name?” she asked.

He swallowed. ***

You warmed yourself in an armchair by the fire, while Aoife’s cheeks were still pinched red from the cold outside. 

John sat beside her on one of the couches in the hotel foyer, flanked by two suits of armor.  He was smart in his gray waistcoat, a gold name badge catching the light at his lapel. His white shirtsleeves were immaculate, his thin, white hair combed over his bald head. His bright blue eyes seemed permanently crinkled into a smile.

“Before we begin, I wonder if I can arrange a hot drink for you both? Will you have a cup of tea, coffee? Hot chocolate for the little one?”

“Can I have marshmallows?” Aoife asked you eagerly.

“She has to have marshmallows, Mammy,” said John, twinkling at you.

“Of course,” you said, “And I’d love a coffee, thanks.”

“A baileys coffee?”

“I shouldn’t,” you said, though very willing to be persuaded.

“You’re on your holidays,” John said, waving aside your diffidence. He caught the eye of one of the junior concierges, motioned him over and made the order.

“Now,” he said, resettling himself, “this is rather a recent fairy story,” John said, “One my mother said happened when I was only a lad, going on for fifty years ago, I’d say.”

You looked at Aoife. Predictably, she looked astonished. To her, fifty years previously may as well be prehistory.

“This story’s not for the faint of heart,” John continued, “Can you handle a spooky story, little one?”

Aoife nodded, wide eyed, her pen poised ready to take notes over a freshly bought notebook. You looked quickly over at him with a small, doubtful grimace. 

He smiled and nodded back at you, taking the hint. 

“Just be assured that this is only a story, now,” he said to her, “It’s not real, it’s just something to tell one another for a bit of fun, alright? I was sixteen when my Mam told me this, and she acted like it had only just happened. It was just to scare me out of walking home late at night. You understand?”

“Yeah,” she said, eager for him to begin.

“The fairies you might have heard about before are not like these fairies. Our fairies are not gentle or very kind. They don’t grant wishes and they’re not to be tangled with.”

Slowly, Aoife wrote down a note in her large, uneven cursive. 

“Fairy forts like the one you visited today are supposed to be where creatures from the fairy realm gather. Did you see any there today?”

Aoife shook her head.

“I thought not,” he said, “they’re supposed to gather at night. And that’s when the story starts. Mam said there was an old man walking home to Ballycarnane and he walked too close to that fairy fort.”

John paused as Aoife laboriously copied down what she’d heard, watching her write and offering the odd prompt to aid her memory. The drinks arrived in this interval, and you sipped your coffee gratefully as you watched them.

“Now this fella wasn’t local, you see,” John continued, “he lived nearby but he wasn’t born around here, so he didn’t know you needed to give them a wide berth. And then the poor fool was confronted by a banshee, wailing.”

“What’s a bant-shee?” Aoife asked.

“A banshee ,” he said, “a terrible fairy. Always a bad omen. They look like women with long hair, and they appear to people, screaming and crying. The story goes that if you see or hear a banshee, it means someone you love’s going to die.”

Aoife scribbled this down, mouth hanging open slightly.

“Remember it’s not real though,” he added, reassuringly, adding a little cold milk to cool her hot chocolate for her, “that’s just what they say.”

“What did the man do?” Aoife asked, too transfixed to take the drink from him when he offered.

“Well, he knew what a banshee was, alright, and he knew what it meant. So he tried to beg her not to take his wife or daughter, only it was too late. The banshee wailed, ‘oh no, you’ve disturbed us, so now you’ll pay the price: either you choose a death, or you’ll give the fairies a newborn child of your blood before the sun goes down tomorrow’. ”

He paused to allow Aoife to write down this last, and then pushed her drink towards her. 

“Drink up, pet.”

Aoife took the hot chocolate from him and took a gulp, leaving foamy residue around her mouth, still watching John with wonder in her eyes. The cup wobbled in its saucer, and you leaned forward to help her put it back on the coffee table, lest her princess dress get covered in even more dirt. 

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“Well, this old man and his wife were too old to have any more children, and their only daughter was grown, and she certainly wasn’t going to have a newborn baby so soon, so he thought he had a chance of beating that banshee.”

You could tell even from several feet away that Aoife’s writing was becoming more and more illegible in her haste to hear the rest of the story. You sensed that some translation and aiding of her memory might come in useful when she came to write up the project.

“So the old man agreed. He said, ‘you can have a newborn of my blood before the sun sets tomorrow,’ thinking he could cheat the fairies out of their due. And what do you think happened next?”

Aoife shook her head, unknowing.

“Well, that man fell into an enchanted sleep, and woke up by the fairy fort at mid-afternoon the next day. No sooner than he woke up did he hurry home to check on his wife and daughter.”

Aoife wasn’t even writing notes anymore, hanging on John’s every word.

“And he found a terrible scene.” John said, ruefully, “While he slept, his daughter had given birth to a changeling, though she certainly hadn’t been pregnant the day before.”

You sat up. 

“What’s a changeling?” Aofie asked. 

“A baby the fairies leave when they steal a human one. They’re supposed to be cursed children, sometimes they’re evil and naughty, and sometimes they have strange powers.”

You leaned forward and opened your mouth to speak, but John spoke before you could ask him anything. 

“And then, the old man realized what he’d done: when there was no newborn to take, the fairies took away his daughter’s future firstborn instead, forcing her to birth the changeling in its place.”

“What happened?” you asked. 

John looked over at you, surprised by the sudden seriousness in your tone.

“Well, the old man and his wife died without any grandchildren. Their daughter never married, and their line died out.”

“What happened to the changeling?” you asked. 

“Nobody knows,” John said, returning his gaze to Aoife with a smile and mysterious tone. ***

“I’m Five.”

There was a long silence. He chewed his lips as he looked down at the meat, not willing or able to meet her eyes.

At last, just to say something that might break the tension, he motioned to a pile of beef.

“That brisket looks good.”

She didn’t answer immediately, but when she did, her no-nonsense voice was firmly back in place.

“It’s the best in the county,” she said briskly, “you can’t beat Irish beef and won’t find a nicer cut, especially when it’s slow cooked.”

“Sounds good,” he said, awkwardly.

“Will you have a piece of that instead of steak?” 

“Sure,” Five said, relieved to have the decision made for him.

“To serve how many?” 

“Just three,” he said, watching her hands as they reached into the display of meat. 

They were just like his. The same long, bony fingers. The same bones and tendons standing out on the back of her hands as her fingers flexed. 

“This piece will do you,” she said, decisively.

Five risked a look up at her, and her brown eyes met his green. 

He must have got his eyes from one of his grandparents, he thought, and then Efa looked away from him quickly. 

“I have a secret recipe for brisket” she said, as she took the beef to the scale and weighed it, “Falls apart in the mouth. It was my mother’s, and I only got it out of her on her deathbed, she prized it so much.”

Five couldn’t resist this opening. He had to know:

“Will you pass it down to your kids?”

She paused for a mere fraction of a second and then she turned to ready brown paper in which to wrap the meat.

“I don’t have children,” she said, firmly, her back still to him, “I was never the marrying or the mothering type.”

As she folded the first layer around the brisket, Five blinked rather rapidly. There was a tight fist somewhere in his abdomen. 

When he mastered himself, he spoke again.

“I understand.”

She nodded, still facing away from him, wrapping the brisket carefully in brown paper, still facing away from him at a plastic table.

“Still,” she said, quietly, “it seems a crying shame that nobody should taste my Mam’s brisket after I’m gone.“

She stuck a label to the wrapped beef, holding the paper in place. Then, from behind her ear, she pulled a stubby pencil, knife-sharpened into a rough, angular shape. 

She tore another small portion of brown paper and began to write with the sort of fevered energy Five himself used to write equations on the concrete walls of the Argyle public library. 

“Now, this is to serve six or so, but you can scale as you like.”

Her pencil clicked smartly along the paper.

“You start with a rub. Dark brown sugar, onion powder, mustard powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper and salt. Mam would usually leave it there, but I’ve had success with paprika too.”

She looked up at him, pausing in her writing, eyebrows raised imperiously.

“Only you make sure it’s smoked paprika, alright?”

“Of course,” he said, slightly taken aback at her forcefulness. 

“Good,” she said, “And the key is to leave it coated in the rub for at least twelve hours in the fridge. Then, when you cook, a lot of recipes would have you use beef stock, but for my Mam’s recipe, it’s beer or nothing: a nice ale. None of that crap excuse for lager you lot try to pass off as beer.”

“Got it,” Five said, catching her flow, “No American beer. Would Guinness work?”

Efa pulled a face.

“You can try it, I suppose,”

She fell silent as she jotted down the final instructions. 

Five watched her as she worked, jaw set, and eyes intense. She finished the recipe with a flourish, folded the paper and handed it to him smartly across the counter. 

“Thank you,” he said.

“And that’ll be thirteen euro forty-five.”

He reached into his pants pocket and handed her the money as she placed the parcel of meat in a paper bag and handed it over. As she searched in the cash register for the change, he watched her lined face, the rim of her glasses obscuring her eyes.

When she put the coins in his hands, her cold fingers brushed his.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

He looked at her, trying to do…he knew not what. He only knew that if he was going to drink her in, now was his opportunity to do so.

“Goodbye,” he said and, with it, there was finality. He wouldn’t come back here. This was the first and last time he’d see her. 

His mother.

“Goodbye Five,” she replied, and her lips twitched into the first smile she’d given him. 

It was small, sad, and spoke no love, but it spoke good will just as clearly.  *** Five arrived back at the hotel just before seven. You were sitting on the four poster bed in your new robe, reading a book. Aoife was already asleep in the suite’s adjoining room, the hangings of her own bed drawn around it. 

“Hi,” you said, as he entered. 

“Hey,” he replied, as he closed the door behind him. 

His boots were muddy, his hair damp and windswept. 

“I hope you don’t mind, I already got Aoife dinner. She’s tuckered out. Long day.”

“Me too,” he said, heavily. 

He turned back to the door and the coat hook on its back. He made as if to take off his coat and hang it with the rest. But instead, he sagged and leaned against the door, his forehead against Aoife’s coat.

You sighed sadly, placed down your book and crossed the room towards him. 

“Come here, sweet guy,” you murmured.

You wrapped your arms around him from behind and laid your head against his, occasionally planting kisses at his hairline. Five let out a sigh of his own at this, and you felt him relax into you slightly.

“How about I run you a bath? I’ll order us room service and a bottle of wine.”

“That sounds nice,” Five said, voice muffled against Aoife’s bright blue raincoat.

You helped him off with his own coat - oddly heavy, you noticed - and put down on the bed. 

“I’ll go run the bath. You get those clothes off okay?”

“Thanks dearest.”

When you returned from the bathroom, where a piping hot bubble bath was already running into the claw-foot tub, Five had stripped to his underwear, sorting his laundry.

“Will you order the pinot noir?” he asked.

“Still don’t trust me to choose wine?” you asked, amused, returning to his coat, “not even after ten years?”

“Never,” he said, smiling.

“Why do you have almost two pounds of meat in your pocket?” you asked, having fished out the brown paper bag emblazoned with: Jones Family Butchers, Est.1979.

“Long fucking story,” he mumbled, “just put it in the trash. I don’t know why I bought it.”

“And what’s this?” you asked, finding the piece of folded paper.

“Nothing,” he said, simply, removing his underwear and putting them in with the dirty clothes, “can you just put it with our passports?.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

And with that, he disappeared into the bathroom. 

Ignoring his request to put in the trash, you put the meat in the fridge that contained the extortionately-priced minibar, thinking you’d deal with it in the morning.

You opened the folded piece of paper as you went to hang his coat. At first, you thought the handwriting that recorded the recipe was his: there were the same bold lines, the same frenetic energy in the triple underlining of the word ‘smoked’ in ‘smoked paprika’, but the more you looked, the more differences you saw. This wasn’t his handwriting.

You refolded it, opened the room’s safe and filed it along with your passports and boarding passes. *** The helpful voice on the other end of the phone informed you that dinner itself would arrive in around forty minutes, while the wine would be sent straight up. Just enough time for you to place Five’s pajamas on a radiator to warm before a knock at the door announced its arrival.

Bottle and glasses in hand, you joined Five in the bathroom, settling on the low bench beside the shower, fogged up with the heat coming off the bathwater.

Five’s eyes were closed, lying with his head against the rim of the tub, breathing the steamy, fragranced air deeply.

“Wine,” you announced.

“Mm,” he said, contentedly. 

He opened his eyes, his submerged left hand surfacing to receive the large glass you’d poured him.

“Thanks beautiful,” he said, looking up at you, eyes lingering for a moment at the cleavage visible where your robe met at the chest. 

You raised an ironic brow. Clearly he wasn’t totally cut up over this. 

As he took his first sip, he let out a small moan.

“Good?” you asked, amused.

“Heavenly,” he muttered, closing his eyes again.

He might not be so distraught that he couldn’t appreciate a nice view of boob, but he still needed this. You scooched your bench closer so that you could run your fingers through his hair.

He hummed appreciatively as you petted him, and you sat that way for several minutes, watching him unwind and fall into gentle repose. 

Who could give him up? With that smooth skin, that dimple on his cheek, his parted lips, his keen eyes, framed by lashes as thick as his soft hair. 

Not you.

At last, when he had worked his way sufficiently down his glass, you topped him up and asked:

“So, how was it?”

“I’m not sure,” he said thoughtfully, “it turns out I’m a quarter Welsh.” *** The sun came out for the last couple of days of the trip. On your final full day there, you were taking a few hours in the hotel spa. Five, however, was to be found being chased around one of the lawns by his daughter, he laughing, she screeching in delight.

“Come back!” she said, in mock outrage, “you need to have YOUR SHOTS!”

He barked, back bent and arms out in front of him like forepaws.

“Never!” he yelled, deploying a perfectly executed commando roll to evade her. 

Unfortunately for him he commando-rolled straight into a large rhododendron bush.

“IF YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR SHOTS YOU WILL GET SICK AND DIE, YOU BAD DOG.” yelled Aoife, holding a small stick clasped in her fist like it was a knife she was about to go full-psycho with.  

“But I don’t want to!” Five whined, trying to disentangle himself as Aoife advanced upon him, “you’re a big meanie vet! Woof!”

“I’M A BIG NICE VET, ACTUALLY.” she said, as he wriggled away from her once more, “YOU’RE JUST A BIG BABY.”

“I’m a big baby who’s getting away!” Five grinned, looking back over his shoulder and sticking his tongue out at her as he darted away.

And then he tripped over a tree root and fell with a thud onto the soft grass. He flipped over, laughing, as Aoife approached. 

“A-ha!” she said, triumphantly, taking advantage of his compromised to jump on top of him, stick raised. 

“Oof!” he said, winded as she straddled his waist. He tried to grab her wrist, but it was too late: she managed to poke the stick into his upper arm.

“There.” she said, “Now what was all that fuss about, little dog?”

“Owwww,” Five cried, pouting and whining like the dog he was supposed to be. 

“Pull yourself together!” Aoife said, affecting a clipped, professional voice, “Or you won’t get a candy.”

“I'm a dog, I'm not allowed candy! I want a treat!” Five replied, indignantly. 

“WELL YOU HAVE TEN MORE SHOTS FIRST.”

“Surely this is unethical?” Five expostulated, his childish affect replaced by a more adult one as she held his arm down and ‘injected’ him (stabbed him repeatedly through his sweater).

“I am NOT un-effable.” 

“Unethical,” Five corrected, rarely able to stop himself from taking advantage of any teachable moment, “it means morally wrong.”

“What does morally mean?” she said, with a small roll of her eyes.

“Ouch. It means how you behave. If you’re morally wrong then it means you’re behaving wrongly.”

“Then you’re being unethable!” she said, triumphantly, “because if you don’t get your shots then you’ll make other doggies sick too.”

“But do the ends justify the means?” Five mused, grinning. 

“What?”

“Nothing. Thank you for my shots. I’m feeling much better, even if my immune system has eleven different attenuated pathogens to deal with.”

Daddy, you always talk funny,” she said, sounding equally amused and irritated with him. 

He put his arms around her and pulled her down onto his chest. 

“E’ vero, cara.”

He kissed where her hair parted at the crown of her head, feeling the deep damp of the soil beginning to soak into his sweater, but not caring at all.

“Usi sempre parole così grosse,” she replied, and he could hear you in her tone, the loving mockery in it. 

He held her to him tighter and kissed her again, harder this time.

“I love you,” he said, feelingly.

“I love you too,” she replied, smiling down at him, her chubby cheeks dimpling as she did.

He felt his chest heave as he looked at her, and when he spoke again, his voice wasn’t quite his own.

“Being your Dad is my favorite thing about myself. And it's my favourite thing to do.”

And it was. He’d saved the world for the love of his adopted family, but perhaps he’d fought so fiercely because some part of him longed for this. Being a father and husband felt intrinsically, cosmically right, and made more sense than any mathematical logic. 

Perhaps his daughter was always written there, deep in his DNA. He didn’t believe in fate, but still, some part of him knew he was supposed to be here, his daughter in his arms and days upon days of rain soaking from the earth, through his sweater and onto his skin. 

He rocked her slightly, there on the grass, one hand in her hair and the other at her back; his baby girl, no matter how much she grew. 

This was what he needed. You and her. You were both his reward and privilege to love.

Aoife considered his words, slightly taken aback by his sudden affection and not really understanding his intensity. After a moment, she spoke thoughtfully:

“Mine is my hair.”

“What?” he asked.

“My favorite thing about myself. I like it because it's curly but not too curly.”

Five laughed, and she laughed too as she was jostled by the movement of his stomach. She shuffled up his body, causing him to flinch away from a potential knee to the balls but, thankfully, she avoided that. 

Instead, she crawled so that her head was level with his, grabbed him by each ear, and kissed his face.  *** At dinner that last night, Aoife coloured the pictures she’d drawn for her project, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she tried her best to color within the lines. The pencil crayons you chose for the job were tactical: unlikely to mark the pure white tablecloth. 

The waiter brought your drinks. As he did so, he caught your eye and nodded conspiratorially towards the door, where Five couldn’t see him. 

You looked over subtly. John stood in the doorway to the kitchen, motioning to you that the prepared surprise would be only two more minutes.  

“Can we see the menu?” Five asked. 

The waiter hesitated.

“I actually ordered for us all,” you said.

“Hm,” Five said, looking curiously up at you, “what are we having?”

“Thank you,” you said to the waiter, dismissing him for now. 

You turned back to Five, and he was watching you with curious eyes. You caught his significantly, and spoke to him now with lines under your words. 

“It seemed a shame to throw away that brisket you brought back the other day.”

He drew in a breath through his nose. You could tell he was unsure how to feel. You placed your hand over his.

“I copied the recipe too,” you said, softly, over the scratch scratch of Aoife’s pencil and the quiet chink of knives and forks on plates, “I thought you should try it before we go home.”

Five looked down at the tablecloth and put his other hand on top of yours. When he looked back up at you, his jaw gave a slight tremor.

“Thank you,” he said, quietly, “truly.”

You smiled, relieved.

“Are you happy?” you said, checking nevertheless.

Five gave one slow outward breath, and in those green eyes that low light sometimes disguised as blue, you saw an intensity of feeling that was hard to witness without bringing tears to your own eyes.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he said, so earnestly that Aoife looked up in surprise.

He wasn’t just talking about the brisket, you knew.

You smiled, losing the battle and swiping away a tear as you and Five squeezed each other's hands. 

“Good,” you said, sniffling, “because I tipped the kitchen way too much money to make this happen.”

Taglist: @nevbrooke-555, @fiannee, @abeeabee6969, @chalametabingbong, @lolawassad, @icantpickanamefromonefandom, @kaybreezy3000

Megalist

Request info + rules

NOTE:

I take Five requests, I'm fairly versatile in what I write (fluff, smut, angst, psychological character study- I'll try it all) but I will consider them on a case by case basis. See request info + rules for request status and more.

Disclaimer: As an English person, I was conscious of the potential for unintended xenophobia as I wrote this, especially given the fast and loose attitude I've given to folklore. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any Irish sensitivity readers before posting this though. I have a lot of Irish family and have visited many times in my life, but I'm aware I have blind spots just by nature of being English. If any Irish folk want to discuss anything that made them uncomfortable, my DMs are open :)

[persevereforahappyending]

Luck Runs Out |Part 10|

Pairing: Mabel x Reader

Summary: When your luck runs out you unknowingly drag Mabel back into the life, she's so desperate to escape.

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 2.4k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Epilogue

Mabel paced around her apartment. You had just left not too long ago, left to go meet a bunch of drug dealers who would put a bullet in the back of your head the second they got what they wanted. She hated you; you were a selfless self-sacrificing asshole. She didn’t know what to do with herself, she would never know for sure if you were alive or dead, she’d never know if you suffered. You almost kissed her, she wanted nothing more than to close the gap, but you pulled away, going that extra distance would have meant something, she didn’t think she could handle it meaning something if you were just going to go off and die.

She kept glancing at the clock, every minute felt like hours. You might not have even been on the boat yet, you had to walk, so there was a chance you were just getting to the dock. Mabel kept glancing at her keys, it would be so easy for her to hop in her car, drive down there and pull you into the safety of her vehicle. Doing that would just mean, she, you, Charlie, and anyone else connected to any of you would be in danger.

Unable to take the unbearable silence Mabel grabbed her keys and jumped in her car. She turned the key and just sat there, the sun had just begun to rise, the rest of the world still wasn’t awake yet. She smacked her steering wheel until the palm of her hand began to sting. She really hated you for what you were making her do. She let out a scream that turned into more of a groan and let her head flop onto the steering wheel. Mabel lifted her head, putting on the familiar emotionless expression she used to always use before flipping on her turn signal and pulling out of her parking space.

Mabel drove, her surroundings a blur as she passed them. She didn’t even bother turning on the radio, her thoughts were solely filled with you. God, she really hated you, she hadn’t known you for very long and yet you had effortlessly worked your way into her heart. Part of her really wished she had met you before, then maybe the two of you could have been something, maybe the two of you could have lived out each of your dreams. Part of her felt that way, the other part of her was glad she met you when she did. If she had met you before, she probably wouldn’t have given you a chance. She would have written you off like every other dealer she’d known, like she almost did.

She glanced out the window at the condo complex and she parked her beat up red car on the street. She sighed, looking up at the tall building, even if she got her dream job, she still wouldn’t have even been able to dream about living some place so nice. The doorman glanced at her, wrinkling his nose as she yanked open the door to the lobby but didn’t otherwise so much as attempt to stop her. Mabel glanced around the fancy lobby as she waited for the elevator, seeing the leather couch and chairs by the window that didn’t look like they had ever been sat in.

Even the elevator was fancy, soft music playing as it lightly hummed, as it took her to the floor she wanted. A robotic female voice lightly crackled through the speaker, informing her when she arrived at the floor, then told her to have a nice day. When she stepped out, she looked from side to side, seeing a handful of doors stretched out on each side. As Mabel made her way to the correct door, she noted how the space from one door to the next was bigger than her entire apartment.

Mabel let out a sigh, shaking her hands as she put her game face on. She raised her hand and knocked on the door, her knock sounding louder than ever as it echoed through the quiet hallway. Mabel looked down the hall as she waited for an answer, the amount of people living in the building, and she doubted any of them knew each other. She wasn’t friends with her neighbors, but they all knew each other, these people probably couldn’t pick their doorman out of a line up let alone tell someone his name.

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes when she finally heard the click of the lock being slid out of place. She knew the condo had to be big but that didn’t mean it had to take three minutes to answer the door. Mabel had a snarky remark at the ready, but the words quickly died in her mouth when the door opened.

“What are you doing here?” The doctor asked, glaring at Mabel. He stood in his doorway, using his body and the door to block her from seeing into his place.

Mabel stared up at the doctor, her mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. “What the hell happened to you?” Finally left her mouth.

The doctor’s face looked like it had been beaten in. There were dark bruises around his eyes and cheeks, his nose was smashed, he had a split lip and more bruising. He somehow looked even worse than you. Mabel might not have spent much time with the doctor, but she had never seen so much as a scratch on him. People begged to work with him, they bent over backwards to please him, he wasn’t some lackey on a random gang's payroll.

“Come to get an up-close look at what your little friend did?” he sneered.

Mabel furrowed her brow, she didn’t have any friends, she definitely didn’t have any that knew the doctor, besides Charlie, but she knew there was no way he had done that. “Y/N?” Mabel’s eyes widened.

“Nearly broke my fucking hand,” he said through gritted teeth.

He held out the hand he had originally hidden on the side of the door. Mabel’s mouth dropped open. The doctor was a surgeon, his hands were basically everything. His right hand wasn’t in a cast or even wrapped up, but Mabel could still see the impression of a boot. There was bruising all across the back of his hand, if whoever stepped on it had pressed down just a bit harder then surely, they would have smashed his hand completely.

He pushed off the doorway, leaving the door open as he walked back into his apartment. “Or did you come to finish the job?” he called out.

Mabel slid her foot forward, almost crossing the threshold into his apartment. In the hallway she was safe but if she crossed into the apartment anything could happen. Before she could think through her decision and why it was a bad idea, she stepped into the apartment.

“What happened?” she asked again. She looked the doctor up and down, he was favoring his left leg as he made his way to the kitchen island to poor himself a drink, despite it not even being eight in the morning yet.

The doctor spun around, drink still in his hand, tilting his head as he watched Mabel. “You don’t know?” he asked, letting out a humorless chuckle.

Mabel could only shake her head. You visited the doctor, but you had barely even met him, she didn’t know how you could possibly know where he lived or worked. You beat the shit out of him, Mabel hadn’t even seen people who were late on payments suffer such a beating. Maybe you knew the doctor from before, because clearly this was personal for you. Mabel didn’t think you were much of a fighter, not in that way, but she hadn’t known you very long, so many the truth was she didn’t know you at all, maybe this was exactly who you were.

“Your friend,” the doctor spit, Mabel could hear the disgust in his voice. “Paid your debt.” He chuckled loudly, sloshing his drink as he waved his arms around.

“What?” Mabel whispered, her eyes widening at the implication of those words.

“Your debt,” he said bitterly. “Paid off!” he threw his hands in the air, sloshing more of his drink, not that he seemed to notice. “Warned me to stay away from you,” he pointed at her. “Completely paid everything,” he pointed across the room. Mabel followed his finger to a duffel bag next to his couch. “Said if I ever contacted you again, they’d kill me.” He threw his head back, downing the rest of his glass.

Mabel ignored him as she walked to the duffel back. She held her breath as she slowly unzipped it. She pushed the bag apart, her eyes landing on stacks upon stacks of money. She brought a hand to her mouth, the only way you could get access to that much money that quickly would be if you used your savings, the money you had been saving to get a sailboat so you could follow your dream.

“When?” Mabel asked, turning back to the doctor.

“Yesterday,” he said, shrugging. “Had to use my vacation time. Now, get out,” he pointed towards the door.

Mabel didn’t need to be told twice; she was out the door before the doctor could pull himself away from the kitchen island. On her way down to her car she kept trying to figure out how you knew about the doctor. Mabel had never told you about her debt to him let alone mentioned how much she owed him. She didn’t tell you because though you were the one he was helping it wasn’t your problem, she was the one who called him.

Based on the timeline you had visited him before going to see your boss. You grabbed your life savings and paid Mabel’s debt before you went to try and save the life of her ex and his friends. You really were selfless, god she really hated you. When she got in her car, she turned her key and sped down the road, already knowing where she was going. If you thought you could just go off and secretly pay her debt and then go get yourself killed, you were wrong.

Mabel sped down the street, ignoring most traffic laws, she didn’t have time to stop at things like red lights and stop signs. She slammed on her breaks when she got in front of her destination. She got out of her car, slamming the door before she started her march up the walkway, to the house she had become very familiar with in the last year.

“What are you doing here?” Charlie asked, coming out the front door before Mabel even got to the first step. “Did something happen? Are you okay?” He rushed down the steps, reaching his arms out as if he were going to touch her but stopped before he could.

“We’re going to rescue Y/N,” Mabel said.

“What?” Charlie took a step back, his eyes widening.

“Call Tommy,” Mabel gestured impatiently. “We don’t have a lot of time, they’re probably already on the water.”

“Are you insane?” Charlie held out his arms, his eyes darting all around Mabel’s face.

“They paid my debt.” Charlie scrunched his eyebrows before his shoulders relaxed, his mouth dropping open at the reveal. “I can’t just let them die.”

“What do you expect to do?” Charlie asked softly. Mabel clenched her jaw, it took everything in her to not snap at Charlie, she knew he was just looking out for her. “These guys are bad news, you said that yourself. What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know!” Mabel ran her hands across her face and through her hair. “But I can’t just do nothing! Please,” she begged, looking up into Charlie’s eyes.

Charlie held her gaze, his eyes searching for something before they widened slightly as if realizing something. Charlie nodded but there was a small frown on his face. “Okay,” he sighed. “Okay.”

Charlie called Tommy from the car. Mabel didn’t waste time as she sped her way down to the docks. She caught Charlie out of the side of her eye as he argued back and forth with Tommy until he tossed his phone onto the dashboard when the conversation was over. Charlie had his elbow resting on the door and his head propped up in his hand. He looked focused, his eyes never leaving the road.

“Tommy letting us take the boat?” Mabel asked, she quickly flicked a glance at Charlie, trying to gauge his reaction.

“Yeah,” Charlie sighed. “He’s already there, we’ll be ready to go as soon as we arrive.”

Mabel nodded, opting not to say anything else. Charlie called Tommy and he was willing to come with her and help try and save you. Charlie’s mood was close to how it was after they broke up. Mabel couldn’t be sure what Charlie saw when he looked into her eyes but whatever it was it seemed that he finally accepted that they were truly over and that she was ready to start moving on.

Mabel whipped into a parking spot, slamming on the breaks as soon as she could. She didn’t even look to see if she was between the lines before she jumped out of the car and ran down the ramp to the docks. She heard Charlie right behind her as they rushed to the boat, seeing Tommy on the deck, Nunes, and Costa beside him. Costa grabbed her hand, helping her onto the boat.

“This is stupid,” Tommy said, locking eyes with Charlie.

Charlie shrugged. “We can’t just do nothing.”

Tommy rolled his eyes, adjusting his hat before flicking a glance at Mabel then back at his brother. “You better have a plan,” he shook his head.

“Figured we’d gameplan on the way.”

Tommy grumbled something incoherent before making his way to the helm. Charlie tapped Mabel’s arm, nodding at her to follow along. Mabel joined Charlie, Costa, and Nunes around a table behind Tommy and began planning out exactly how they thought they could save you while also taking on a bunch of drug dealers.

Tommy put in the location they found originally and used weather patterns to determine where and how far you drifted from, giving them a solid area to start heading towards. With Tommy at the wheel, they began making their way to your location, Mabel was just hoping she had moved fast enough and that you wouldn’t already be on the ocean floor by the time they got to you.

[rayroseu]

twst jp players noticed something strange about Crowley's card stats.... His HP amount is too big for his card type Balanced... It feels like Crowley is more fitting as a Defense Card bcs of his high HP ✨✨👀

usually Balanced Cards in TWST, their HP amount is around 8-10k... Idk which card has the highest amount of HP in the Balanced type, but they are often max 11k,,, but Crowley who's a Balanced (supposedly) has 13-14k HP!! ✨✨

The highest HP I know rn in the Balanced type are Star Deuce and Halloween Silver,,, But they're still starting quite low (~9k) in comparison to Crowley starting at 13k lol

Its like his amount of HP is more fitting as a Defense card

Pls correct me if I'm wrong I'm not into game stats I just think this is so intriguing considering that LILIA VANROUGE has cards that is often Defense in SSR....

*some cards have incomplete stats bcs they're only available in TWST JP rn-- BUT STILL. You can notice how its much more fitting to place him as a Defense card bcs of his HP...

Still His attack power, 6k is alot 👀✨✨Its like telling us that like Crowley's magic element (Cosmic) his magical power also has no weaknesses such a "he's low on lifespan" or "he's weak at attacking"... Its like how Malleus described his magic as having "no strengths and weaknesses-" which is fitting because he's also a Cosmic user-

TWST often leaves character nuance in their cards, considering that Lilia had "so much life" (Defense card that is heavy on HP) because he was instructed to defend Meleanor and Malleus- What if that's the same as Levan if he's Crowley? He's heavy on HP because he was also a general and is tasked to defend-

I asked about @prince-kallisto long ago that crowley might be passive/defensive magic user since he rarely casts magic in the story... Now that his unusual stats got released, why do i feel like General Lilia who was tasked to defend, is also like Levan (the left general and if he's really Crowley) also heavily focus his magic casting on Defense🤔🤔

Then this might be another clue to their relation? But considering that Lilia and Meleanor considers Levan to be quite pacifist, I wonder if he forced himself to be "balanced" in both attack and defense in order to uphold the peace he was trying to promote yk as Malleus said, you cannot make anyone obey you in Briar Valley if you're not powerful

Levan (Crowley) is still powerful, but I feel like he's naturally a Defense card... with just a powerful attack magic because of his training as the Left General✨✨😳😳☝🏻☝🏻

I'm so excited to see him in Battle I'm actually shaking KSHKSHS I hope he summons his army of corvids once he appears lol

[tiny-brass-bot]

Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

[indierpgnewsletter]

What is XP for?

It feels like there’s been a recent spate of discussion in RPG circles about the role of incentives (usually just referring to experience points, or XP). While a lot of that discussion has been mean-spirited (with a lot of conflating preference for “the only correct way to do things”), I would like to contribute by try to describe the role of XP is in modern tabletop RPG design, using Blades in the Dark as an example. If you’re a designer or a player, hopefully this helps you think about the role of a mechanic like this.

1. XP paces out advancement

This is probably the number one reason that we have XP in games. Historically, in this hobby, games have offered players to way to advance their characters, letting them grow in a way that makes them more powerful or interesting. For example, in Blades in the Dark, by requiring 6-8 XP to upgrade your character, the game paces out the process of getting new abilities to around every 2-3 sessions or so. By tweaking the amount required, it could’ve made this process shorter or longer.

The primary critique of this use of XP comes from people who question whether advancement is necessary at all. These usually come from folks who are who are either perfectly happy with their character “improving” in non-mechanical ways (like buying a house in-game) or people who prefer changes rather than improvements (getting a cool scar rather than getting better at punching).

2. XP as recap procedure

As Judd Karlman mentions on his blog, having an end of session xp procedure is a way to give everyone an opportunity to “think back on when they were kicking ass or being cunning – remember it and celebrate it while ticking off a box”. The idea is that the end of session procedure becomes a kind of ritual to share your favourite highlights from the session, aiming to deliver a good note for the game to end on.

3. XP as incentive

Some games use XP to encourage players to do things that they might not ordinarily do. This is quite common in the kind of games that I play. For example, in Blades in the Dark, you get XP when your character is in desperate situations. The game is trying to encourage players to take risks as opposed to playing it safe (because they might be coming from games where taking risks was less fun).

These kinds of incentives are usually criticized for two main reasons. One, it is unnecessary, i.e., it encourages behavior that needs no encouragement. Two, it has a negative effect on freedom of roleplay by pointing at a “right way to play”.

Stepping back for a second, I think these are both good criticisms that can be more or less valid, depending on the specific game or style of play. In my experience, in general, they’re least valid when they are theoretical, armchair criticism and tend to be most valid when they come from direct play experience.

With Blades in the Dark specifically, I think XP for taking big risks does lead to players shifting gears and playing differently. Not by itself though! It works because it fits within a whole system meant for that kind of story. The XP is just a tiny little signal.

As for narrowing the realm of roleplay, I think this is broadly true of hyper-specific storygames. They are a kind of game that actively tries to provide constraints - but in the same way a writing prompt is a constraint. It’s hard to be creative without them! Some of these games - not all - tend to involve some amount of discovering who your character is, rather than coming in with a specific idea.

That said, it can be frustrating in Blades in the Dark to pick a playbook with a particular character concept in mind and find that you’re out-of-sync with the game’s XP triggers. This kind of misalignment can happen, for sure, and it is a limitation of Blade’s specific design. The solutions tend to be some form of hacking or just switching playbooks. But even with that frustration, I would hesitate to say it’s a problem with XP as a mechanic though.

Though XP doesn’t actually need much defending - like so much of game design convention, the main reason games will continue to include it is because games have always included it. Players have come to expect it! But at the same time, I think XP can always do more and be more (or less!) than it's currently doing. I’m excited for people to look at these functions of XP and innovate, keeping what excites them and finding ways of changing the rest.

(This was first posted on the Indie RPG Newsletter.)

[togetherness23]

The model steam engines of the Western Diorama from Night at the Museum*

*only across the four movies. I don’t know whether other NATM media (ex. the novels) mention them.

NATM folks might recognize my sideblog where I’ve been focusing on that series overall -> @here-comes-moonshine. This is my main blog for talking trains. I’m not a particularly knowledgeable railfan (and any of y’all are free to correct me on anything said here). However, I’ve seen little discussion about the locomotives in this series (even the wikis are lacking in that regard), so I want to put a spotlight on them!

I’m not 100% sure what exactly the diorama is trying to represent, but I’d guess that it takes place in the latter half of the 19th century, somewhere in the West/Southwest.

The Western Diorama has had a consistent layout of two tracks: one on the upper level that appears to stretch all the way across the diorama (with a bridge portion); and one on the floor level that runs more than halfway across the diorama and appears to be under construction. Both of them have tunnels on the sides with the walls. For the original live action movies, r/modeltrains’ consensus (w/input from the apparent builder of the scene!) is that the lower track is G scale/G gauge (1.75 in, or 45 mm).

Now for the engines:

Union Pacific No. 119

Appears in Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

UP 119 is the model engine that is seen in the opening sequences that showcase the Western diorama and in subsequent scenes taking place in that setting. From the viewer’s POV, she is the one on the upper track close to the tunnel on the right; and it appears to stay in that spot facing left in all of its appearances.

——

Union Pacific “American” 4-4-0

Built: 1868, by Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works

Gauge: Standard gauge (4ft 8.5 in, or 1435mm)

Power type/fuel: Steam/Coal

Relevant information for the time period: It is famously known for being one of the two engines that met up at the famous Golden Spike ceremony. Other than that, it worked in the Utah Division of the Union Pacific Railroad as a freight engine (WY and UT) until it was scrapped in 1903.

No. 4, The ‘Eureka’

Appears in Night at the Museum

The Eureka is the model engine that was used to ram Larry’s head. From the viewer’s POV, she is the one on the lower track facing right; and she isn’t visible until she comes out of the tunnel on the left, runs forward, and then derails after failing to kill him. According to one image of the diorama, it might also have its own coach?

——

Facts about the real Eureka:

Baldwin Class 8/18 C 4-4-0

Built: 1875, by Baldwin Locomotive Works

Gauge: Narrow gauge (3ft, or 914mm)

Power type/fuel: Steam/Wood

Relevant information for the time period: It first worked on the Eureka and Palisade Railway (NV), hauling both goods and passenger trains to and from the cities Eureka (for the silver mines) and Palisade (for connecting to the Central Pacific Railroad) until 1901.

The New South Wales C32 class locomotive?

Appears in Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again

I’ve asked around, and it’s definitely not an American locomotive. If @/angryskarloey’s guess at the engine’s class is right (thank you a TREMENDOUS amount, Ajax), this is actually a locomotive that was put into operation in Australia, and decades after the former two engines would’ve been built.

This engine is the only one that is visibly seen in the diorama, seemingly taking the place of UP 119 on the upper track. It also remains still and faces left throughout its appearances.

——

(Assumed) New South Wales C32 Class 4-6-0

Built: Beyer, Peacock & Company, Baldwin Locomotive Works, Clyde Engineering, Eveleigh Railway Workshops (1892-1911)

Gauge: Standard gauge (4ft 8.5 in, or 1435mm)

Power type/fuel: Steam/Coal

Relevant information for the time period: This locomotive was notably versatile, being used in goods, mail, and passenger/express services.

Fun facts:

Some American locomotives around the transcontinental railroad period were named after Greek or Roman deities. One of Eureka’s surviving sister engines was named Jupiter. Jupiter was also the name of the other locomotive that met up with UP 119 at the Golden Spike ceremony. (Pssst, Roman diorama!)

Both UP 119 and Jupiter were not the original engines chosen to pull the special trains for the Golden Spike ceremony! Both of their stories of how they ended up being the ones to replace their respective engines to go to the ceremony are rather fortunate.

The Eureka was bought by Warner Bros in 1939 and featured in many western movies. (The irony of its model engine counterpart in NATM is not lost on me.)

Eureka is one of three remaining engines of her class! Ironically, she herself is privately owned, while both of her sister engines are on display in museums— Sonoma in the California State Railroad Museum and Jupiter in the National Museum of American History. (That’s a Smithsonian Institution!)

Not-so-fun facts:

The original UP 119 shares a similar fate with Jupiter of being scrapped for $1000 despite their historical significance. Replicas of both engines still exist today at the Golden Spike history museum.

In 1985, the Eureka was damaged by a fire in Old Vegas, where it was on display. It was, fortunately, restored a year later after being bought by Dan Markoff, who currently owns it.

[andmaybegayer]

it's really wild that they still use so much wood for homebuilding in the USA. Is it a cartel thing? I can't imagine why you'd want to use a material that is so variable and flammable for home construction. Like yeah sure it's great in the pre-industrial era but now you can excavate and process gravel and cement and clay and iron and aluminium.

Wood isn't exactly cheap! Supply is variable and very sensitive to all sorts of weird things and it simply cannot correct very quickly. Steel is taken out of the ground and we make huge amounts of it, it's much more stable.

Maybe the amount of wood isn't that high? A fair amount of a house is gypsum board which you do actually dig out of the ground.

Still, I'm surprised that steel studs haven't completely outcompeted wood. Does it require more work to assemble? It might just be an industry momentum thing, you'd have to find builders who know how to work with metal framing, which presumably isn't a lot of people. You jump straight from wood framing and drywall to curtain walls on steel skyscraper frames.

There were some Construction Physics articles on this that I missed because I was busy hang on.

This article shows that the material and labour cost of framing are both the largest single costs within their own class, at 8% and 11% of the total cost of a home respectively, so it is expensive, and presumably that makes your homebuilding very sensitive to price spikes in wood.

This is from the last wood pricing spike and yeah, wood pricing can seriously affect the overall cost of a house, but it's also shockingly stable for a while there for being, you know, wood.

But yeah it feels like it's a significant fire hazard. It's not bulk lumber that can char without burning, it's all 2x4's and framing beams.

None of what I say is meaningfully correct.

[lover-of-mine]

this episode was SO INCREDIBLE!!! if season 8 keeps up like this, it might be my favorite season yet! just absolutely incredible storylines, pacing is wonderful, the characters actually FEEL like themselves, and somehow funny and dramatic at the same time!!! i was so impressed with how much i was hooked on this episode since 85% of the episode was just extras, but WOW, they deserve their flowers, it’s honestly prob my fav episode they’ve done in a long time!

I KNOWWWW. I'm playing a dangerous game here saying this, but if 803 is as good, this opening arc is gonna be close to the tsunami and that's saying something. The characters are on point, the pacing is perfect, just the correct amount of 911 nonsense to get you hooked. They did an amazing job getting us invested in everyone on the plane and it was incredible. Following that with how good 801 was? This is looking promising as HELL. I am so so so excited.

[oscconfessions]

[10:17 AM 10/4/24]

As a member of the OSC for 8 years now I think I’ve learned a lot about the community and I have some things to share:

It’s so refreshing to not interact with the fandom.

It feels really nice to just enjoy shows like AB and ITFT without people screaming in your ear about how “AB is unfunny I don’t even know how people enjoy it.” It’s so much more fun to watch the shows with an open mind and getting to form my own feelings on my own.

2. Learning to Ignore

This applies to all fandoms but the OSC needs to learn to ignore things that upset them unless it’s an actual problem. The BenjixScarlett BFDI songs are a perfect example of this, the only reason he made and WILL CONTINUE to make more songs is because you guys kept giving it attention, giving him a reason to make more. If you see something you don’t like, just ignore it, no point in getting worked up over it.

3. Immaturity is a huge problem with this community.

I’m going to sound like a broken record saying this, but people in the OSC REALLY need to grow up. I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve seen people overreact to things in object shows that really do not warrant such a big deal. I understand people might not like a character because of their actions. I understand people have their own opinions on certain characters. However, the fact that some of y'all are adults and are having genuine fits and meltdowns about fictional objects is really embarrassing and weird. It’s crazy that people still haven’t grown out of the whole “mean character is bad and doesn’t deserve forgiveness” that’s plagued the OSC for years. Not every character is going to be a morally correct character because that is boring.

I do not care how much you enjoy a character, hate a character, or even think you’re a character irl, it does not give you the right to be sending death threats to or threading people (or even characters like wtf) who may not agree with you. Grow up and DEAL WITH IT. Calling out problematic headcanons / ships is one thing, but people really do not need to be acting this way. It’s so gross and unnecessary.

That’s all honestly, if I had to say anything else it’s that romance and affection im object shows really needs to stop being treated as taboo. It’s not the end of the world if a character say “I love you” (I’m referring to the kids who overreact to scenes like these in object shows, not people who don’t like romance if that makes sense)

I hope people understand what I mean by these points, at the end of the day I’m just a viewer.

Anon HiveVoid 🐝🌑

Not going anonymously anymore cuz I have my tumblr set up again. I still wanna keep the tag.

.

[nogacheloveka-blog]

The Bad Sanses somehow ended up in the Backrooms. №9

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This is the translation of the another post from Russian to English. I understand English, but it is very difficult for me to write in English, so I asked chat GPT to help me. I have corrected some parts, but there still may be mistakes.

I encountered an organization called "To Be Determined". It inspired me to create this drawing. In this organization, there are 6 people who trade highly nonfunctional and peculiar items. I immediately imagined it as a shop run by lost Temmies (Flowey and Bob) from different AUs within Backrooms.

I noticed that there aren't that many prepared posts about bad guys in the backrooms - maybe two or three more. A couple of weeks ago, I started a new job and haven't been drawing much.

I think these posts about bad guys will be once a week, on Saturdays.

Please wish me inspiration =)

The new rooms were similar to Level 0 in their structure. Clusters of office rooms, with and without office furniture. But now there was a pleasant addition in the form of windows. The closed door of the previous place, as before, disappeared behind them when they passed through it. Nightmer seemed calmer without the negative water supply. (Again, being able to clearly distinguish the auras of his wards was definitely pleasant)

After some wandering, Nightmare sensed another presence nearby. Within seconds, everyone heard a distant

“HOOOOY!”

This exclamation certainly wasn’t what Nightmare wished to hear, yet if these were Temmies (or something like them), then they might provide information — even though their brains seemed similar to confetti made of narcotic flakes.  At the same time, the place where the Tems might live cannot be too dangerous.

Following the sound, the group found themselves in a medium-sized office room. Soft bean bag chair (Error felt nostalgic for Antivoid) and strange objects, presumably for sale alongside an old cardboard box, occupied one corner. Something resembling Flowey danced as if trapped in an animation loop near merchandise, becoming slightly animated upon seeing customers. Two monsters dressed similarly to Temmies sat nearby. Bob stood apart, his expression frozen, suggesting he had eaten Temmie Flake.

As it turned out later, two more monsters from this group were missing, busy gathering supplies and goods for the little shop. They all seemed to come from different AUs.

Here were also computers, many of which were operational. They tried to access the Undernet and various sites. They couldn't. Instead, they entered a sort of knowledge base. A local Wikipedia or something similar. The browser already contained open tabs, but they couldn't open new ones - there was no network connection. Someone had left the browser open, he took the equipment with him. And, oh, it seemed they had found gold while looking for copper: by reading the text, they understood that the author of the notebook was making notes from this knowledge base. This was easy to understand by the style. There were about a hundred open tabs: items and entities, but mostly levels. From the amount of new information, their heads were spinning. Some levels were described in an unusual way, requiring attention to details to extract additional information. And nothing about exiting from here. There were levels-dead ends, levels-traps, but nothing about a real exit from here.

However, on the other hand, it became evident that there weren't many people in the Backrooms, and they moved individually due to the nature of how many levels was work. Almost everything here seemed to be trying to kill them. But it appeared that not even the dimension-killer could do anything against their DETERMINATION.

Temmies struggled to provide clear answers regarding humans; instead, they simply told strangers, "Temmies too pieople," and strangers treating them like quirky yet harmless folks. How could such a system work? Perhaps these humans were slightly mad. Or perhaps very tolerant towards others' differences. Either way, avoiding contact would be wise.

The presence of monsters in these places brought some comfort. The Bad Guys weren't the only ones who had a rough time. That was good. But the fact that some other monsters they encountered were distorted beyond recognition - like the Smilers - raised serious concerns. It was nerve-wracking.

While Error, Cross, and Dust were exploring the local equivalent of the internet, others used the suddenly freed-up time for themselves. For example, they tried to trade. They all had some amount of monster gold and items to exchange, which Temmies agreed to accept. Horror bought a "Strange Amulet," sweets, and some food to diversify their diet. Almond Water was certainly good, but it was getting boring, and they never tried to cook Greasy Marshmallow. Considering the amulet useless for himself, Horror gave it to Dast.

Strange Amulet ATK: 10 DEF: 10 Made from butterflies in the stomach. It smells of hopes and dreams turned to dust. Allows forming new friendships.

Killer bought numerous boxes of Temmi Flake and Flowey Seeds, several paint cans, and countless small parts of mechanisms along with some mysterious steel scraps, strange red shavings - it seemed he enjoyed them. He also tried planting grass, but Horror stopped him.

Temmie Flake Restores 1–10 HP and sanity *represented by cut yellow wallpaper soaked in Almond Waters

Flowey Seeds Restore 10 HP *represented by seeds coated in Greasy Marshmallow

Nightmare didn't particularly need any products, but somehow excitedly Temmies looked at his tentacles (too much positivity) and offered a discount. Eventually, he purchased a notebook containing maps of certain stable levels from them. Unfortunately, those maps were unsigned. Since he wasn't sure if damaging traders would be beneficial, he decided to go the honest route this time around. After all, merchants held a special status across worlds.

The group stopped at this location for a couple days to record all the information from the site that could be useful to them. It turned out that sequential exploration of levels was only possible up to level 12. Beyond that, entrances and exits from levels led randomly, and any movement scheme resembled a pot of spaghetti. But in theory, they needed to explore this entire pot to find a way home. There were levels that looked like a one-way ticket, empty, unexplored, strange, surreal, remote, and destroyed. Overall, they could work with this.

Temmies didn't mind their company. Soon returned two departed collectors - underfell!Temmie and Temmie in "Temm Armor". They were surprisingly normal compared to the other merchants and shared some information:

People here can also be dangerous just like Fallen Child of Dungeons;

Many who live outside bases and settlements are mad to varying degrees especially those who haven’t drunk Almond Water for long;

Monsters can safely trade with lone humans;

People at outposts and bases usually think rationally and may attack if they realize you are not human. But even with them, you can negotiate.

Nightmare belongs to Jokublog Killer belongs to RahafWabas Dust belongs to Ask-DustTale Horror belongs to Sour-Apple-Studios Error belongs to CrayonQueen Cross belongs to JakeiArtwork