#They won't be done really until somewhere around 2025

[nymphrasis]

Are you trying to bankrupt my wallet )-= ? Lord in Christ i need the Snorvee so bad,,,

I'm not trying to make other people wallet's empty, aaaaa 😭 I am glad ya love the Eevee x Snorlax fusion ( Assuming that's what ya meant ) ;w;. Just please keep in mind that these will take a pretty long while to complete, as I want to make this one huge batch >w< Really, I do appreciate knowing that others are liking the Eevees so far ;;w;;. Hope that, once completed, y'all would like the execution of the designs >w<

[optimysticals]

TL:DR - Our van was stolen again. She's been found, but we need financial help to get her fixed and home from California. Links to help at the end.

Hi friends.

We're sharing this because 2025 is making it clear that we need help.

This last weekend Adrian was in L.A. for Gallifrey One, and on the way to the show Sunday morning he and his helper planned on stopping by our van.

Only, our van, the Iris, wasn't there.

The Iris has been stolen twice before, during the 3 years she was also our home, so Adrian immediately went into a panicked trauma spiral.

His amazing friends at the convention stepped in. His helper and another friend opened the booth while he talked to hotel security confirming the van was removed from the closed lot at about 3am.

They continued to run the booth while he went across town to the closest police station to file a police report (because you can't do it over the phone). Since the van was registered to Mikka he had to video call so the officer could confirm Adrian was allowed to have been driving it and could file the police report. There was also the fun of California not being able to access Oregon's DMV information.

Intermittently during the filing process Adrian was able to secure a rental van so that when the convention ended we had somewhere to put all our stock and displays, and a way to get home. It came out to $1750.

Adrian's friend went to get the rental after he got back from the police station.

Word had gone around the vendors and our booth neighbor took up a collection. We often say Gally is family, and this was absolute proof of that fact. The collection took a chunk out of the rental cost and really made it feel less hopeless.

The Monday plan was to start driving back to Portland, and when they got home then planning could start for how to get our booth to ECCC.

Shortly before Adrian stopped for the night Mikka got the call from the LAPD that the Iris had been recovered, and impounded.

So now while Adrian finishes driving home we are coordinating a mechanic to fix at minimum the door lock and ignition that had both been drilled out, but also possibly other damage that we won't know until the mechanic can get to it.

The mechanic can't get to it till Thursday, which means we have to pay impound fees for 4 days, plus the tow to the impound lot, and the tow to the mechanic. The estimate for that portion is $500-600.

Assuming the Iris isn't horribly damaged the repairs should be done by Monday. We can get Mikka a flight down to LAX for between $50-$250, depending on what's available when we book it (we don't want to book until the mechanic has looked at the Iris and confirmed they can fix everything).

From there Mikka will just need to drive our van home and cover about 3 tanks of gas.

We're looking at anywhere from $850 to $1150 before repair costs (and not including the $1750 rental), which we figure could be $150 or could be $1000 (who even knows with car repairs). And we need to do this all in the next week so that the Iris is home and safe for ECCC the week after.

And it sucks but we need help. We got about $300 from our lovely vendor friends, and that really did help. But were hoping our wider community might be in a position to help as well.

We just don't have the spoons to do a gofundme so if you can help our CashApp is $AdrianElliot, PayPal is wonderwoman@optimysticalastudios.com, Venmo is @AdrianElliot13, and you can also buy stuff from the website if you want goods in exchange for coin. And if you're not in a place to help financially, sharing this will help too.

[vixstarria]

On the off chance that anyone is wondering what the hell happened to me

Hello. Hi. Yes, I'm still here. Never left and don't intend to.

I am currently balls deep in planning and working on a winter-themed fic for the BG3 Winter Big Bang event (sign-ups are closed, just linking for reference). It's going to cover an alternative timeline for Astarion and Asmodea, but will otherwise still be very much in the same setting as Bloodbang. It won't be posted until early 2025 though.

Once I've written a chunk of the winter fic (I don't have a name for it yet, so 'winter fic' it is, for now), I will be returning to and updating Bloodbang Chronicles - it is my baby and I have not abandoned it. Don't ask me for a time estimate for an update though. 😅 Chapter 13 is about halfway done, however.

The winter fic is going to be fairly lengthy, spanning somewhere around 10 chapters, but it will actually have a beginning, middle and end, for a change. That may sound like a given, but it's actually a very new concept for me - because although I did initially have a plan for Bloodbang, it's ended up gaining a mind of its own and completely running away from me in terms of its plot. If anything, it's a running sitcom, and that's fine, and I'm happy to leave it as such. Sometimes you just want to take your blorbos on endless adventures, no?

Anyway, I'm really excited to be working on the new project, and I hope you like it when it comes out.

More Bloodbang Chronicles soon.

...And ah fuck, and I never finished Kinktober, did I? ...Ahem. Sigh, there's just 6 prompts left, I suppose I can still be extremely fashionably late with those.

Thanks for reading, love you. ❤

[livefastdriveyoung]

Recap of the Adrian Newey Rumors:

Approximately two weeks after the Horner scandal broke, rumors that Newey was not happy with the investigation and behavior internally broke. At the time, many speculated that he would finish out his contract, and then potentially go wherever Max goes.

Four Weeks ago, Aston Martin was rumored to have put 100 million dollars over four years on the table in an attempt to poach him.

Somewhere around the same time, Newey was seen landing in Italy, relatively close to Maranello. At the time it was waived away as him racing some cars, which he did, but there's this concept you see a lot in politics, where a candidate isn't "campaigning" they're in the area for a trip and happen to stop off to give a speech to unions or farmers. Newey very well could have done the same.

Two weeks ago, it was rumored for the first time that Newey's discontent was two-fold, the first being Horner, the second being that he was being pushed to focus on 2025, not just 2026, and that was significantly impairing him.

This morning, (25/4 - 4/25) it breaks in the German Auto Motor Und Sport, which is the German syndicate that has had a bead on all thing Red Bull for years, that Adrian Newey has officially declared his intention to leave. Ideally it would be at the end of 2024, before his contract is technically up.

Several news platforms cite to this article with the term "report" so as not to have to backtrack if wrong.

Then, two hours ago, BBC Sport drops their article, the first to be an official claim. They claim to have verified with "independent high level sources close to Red Bull and Newey."

This immediately gets traction from sports reporters like Adam Stern and others. Which likely pushes Motorsport, who has never liked to post anything without a source, to finally publish.

An hour ago, Motorsport published the following "The news of Newey's impending departure was first reported by German outlet Auto Motor und Sport and has since been confirmed to Motorsport.com by sources with knowledge of the situation."

Fine. Game on. Motorsport doesn't indicate how high up these people are, but whoever these sources are, they're either the same as the BBC, or this really truly out there.

Then within seconds, Autosport is launching the same statement, "The news of Newey's impending departure was first reported by German outlet Auto Motor und Sport and since been confirmed to Autosport by sources with knowledge of the situation."

This is because it is the same authors, as a reminder these days a lot of sports editors especially, freelance.

Ok so he's going right?

Well, approximately 15 minutes ago, Planet F1 states that a Red Bull spokesperson tells them that "Adrian is contracted until at least the end of 2025. We are unaware of him joining any other team."

But then again, this was the same thing that went down with Lewis when he moved to Ferrari.

So here are my thoughts:

I don't know if Adrian is leaving, but the threat of him going is probably enough to send Red Bull upper management into a panic. Stock holders love Max, but they know that Adrian is the brains behind the car. If he goes somewhere else, they're not going to be as competitive. So likely someone from his camp is leaking that he's got the contract, and very likely, he's going to go unless they can give him what he wants.

Whether or not that is time to work on 2026 or to get rid of Horner, I don't know.

If he does go, there is gardening leave. He won't be at any team in 2025 probably. But if he can design the 2026, and he can do it the way he wants, that might be enticing enough to take a year off.

If he isn't leaving, then someone in Red Bull is going on a mole hunt. And I wish them luck because the BBC and Motorsport aren't giving up their sources, so you better have known exactly who you told this to.

Game on.

[othernaut]

Character Creation Challenge 2025, Day 4: Corp Borg

Image Archive B6-96 doesn't exist. It isn't located on the second floor of the Southern Watchtower, between Compliance Archive II-01 and the Domain of Ceaseless Summer. No pneumatics travel there; emails never arrive. There certainly isn't a trolley full of proprietary images that have been allowed to rot in stock for six months, lacking anywhere to rest.

Jazz isn't worried. Her department, slashed to a single head, can function just fine, just like this. The lack of managerial direction after the culling doesn't concern her one bit. She hasn't been forgotten. This'll work out just fine.

(They keep finding them in drywalled offices, the bodies. Support for software that's been sunsetted for decades. Withered, single-man departments without responsibilities, without oversight, without food, without air. They drag the groaning things out into the offices by their fingernails. Security still has to walk them out, regardless of whether or not they can stand.)

Just sit back and collect a paycheck. Live the dream. But she can't even effectively freelance - can't create, can't do anything for herself - due to the clause in her contract that owns any work done on company time. And now that everyone else is gone, now that she IS the department, overtime is effectively infinite. Live the dream - unless you can't go home. Until they notice you. Until they remember you can still perform.

Trolley full of proprietary images to B6-96, which doesn't exist. The pencils have been rattling all morning in a soft and subtle earthquake that won't stop. All she has is her own initiative. And she has to make this look good.

Sneakers crunching across the old brown basement carpet as she wheels the trolley through the corridors. Techs are in today, hefting desks and drafting tables out of old offices, wheeling in server racks and PC banks pre-loaded with the latest generative image software. You can still see the long scratches on the walls where the old heads - the layout artists, the physical media guys, the ones who worked in ink and paper - were pulled screaming from their ratholes. A wisp of magenta lurches from the trolley, flickers the fluorescents neon pink for a moment; a pattern of primary color shapes, rods, and squiggles asserts itself momentarily over the carpet. There's a reason you don't let the images pile up for too long.

A heavy jolt hits the building. The lights flicker in their housing, gypsum dust rattles from the walls. Something crashes in an adjacent room; someone curses, automatic and rapid-fire, and it lasts until the lights go out for good.

A low moaning from somewhere far, far below. Motes of light, ketchup red, rise from the carpet around her sensible shoes.

She runs, barreling the trolley ahead of her like a battering ram.

Crowd around the elevators, clustered muffled bodies staring at the blinking emergency lights. Someone cracks a joke about early lunch; sensible chuckles. One of those bodies sinks wordlessly into the unlit floor, black into black, and no one even notices they're missing. Jazz thunders on, riding the inertia of her now-unstoppable snap decision. The task she had appointed herself has become her sole focus, beyond the safety training videos drilled into her year after year. Freight elevator. Her department relegated to the basement for so long that she knows the way by heart. Red light pulsing above the doorway, emergency power - still power. She skids the trolley to a slow, rumbling stop and taps the elevator open.

Inside, another person. Old winter wear, pink windbreaker, battered ski boots - possibly rentals. Wraparound mirrorshades lift to reveal terrified eyes, red-rimmed doe-leather brown. Sheer terror when Jazz eases the trolley into the elevator. He speaks something like modern Swedish, though fucked up and archaic in a way she can't really place. Seems grateful when she hits the button for the lobby. Keeps repeating that he needs to get out, get away, she thinks - she can relate. Snow melts on his shoulders as the freight elevator rumbles upwards. She can't show him the way out, not now, but she does the best she can to guide him to the front doors from the lobby. Eyes watering in a childlike confusion and gratitude, like a baby that's never been struck.

Doors ding open. Security is there, four of them, and they rush in plain and quick and efficient. Taze the stranger in a single motion and lope him out of the box, twitching and groaning. Jazz holds the elevator open with her foot, waiting for them to vacate. A wisp of an old jingle rises out of the compressed art blocks on the trolley, a memory of when there was more soda than just the one, more options than just this.

Nearly crunches over the guy's dropped wraparound shades on her way out. Something weird in the neon blue reflection: not the ceiling, a cloudy sky. Edge of a mountain. Snow coming down. She pauses, just a little, and picks them up. The perspective shifts to a ski lift rising up the edge of an otherwise familiar mountain. A quaint little lodge, winter-frosted, sits right in the heart of what would be Nekker Bell HQ main lobby. Like here, only quieter.

There are figures in the reflection, distorted and small. A snowsuited man fixes skis onto a tiny, overdressed, potatolike toddler. A smiling woman slides by, ear to an old beige-brick cellphone with a thick, wobbly antenna. Some animal leaps around in the snow, golden-furred in little booties and a knitted sweater, like a hellhound with dark, teary eyes and no miasma of hellish stench.

Snowy, achingly prosaic. Mundane.

Another rumble. The freight elevator shifts a few centimeters; something whines in the overhead mechanism. Jazz wheels the trolley through the doors, out into the overlapping shadows and light of the lobby floor. Tucks the shades into her T-shirt, glass in, cold against her feverish skin. A trio of first responders lean against the curve of the front desk, trading indistinguishable gossip, plain and casual, with two of the five receptionists even as the floor shifts and shudders.

Still got shit to do.

*****

Savings: 111¤ Role: Designer Works for: Nekker Bell Traits: Knowledge 20 (3), Flexibility 13 (1), Integrity 13 (1), Hard Skills 7 (-1), Soft Skills 15 (2) Hit Points: 4 Undos: 1

Assets: Just a shirt and jeans (no damage reduction, -2DR for Flexibility tests), Pen (d3 weapon, at max damage it embeds, Flexibility or Hard Skills DR12 to pull it out and do 1 bleed for 1d4 rounds), Backpack (7 items), Bag of coffee additives, 26-day-old sandwich (it's fine) Incantations: Intern Descend (Summon d4 faithful interns, no armor, d2 scratch, worthless) Artifact: Sketchbook (sketch a location to teleport there, roll a d6; 1-2 the sketch is bad and it doesn't work, 3-4 the sketch is okay and it teleports somewhere else, 5-6 the sketch is workable and it functions as intended)

Complicated past: Family curse (soul's mortgaged from birth) Yearnings: Purity (longs to do ART, ACTUAL FUCKING ART) Reason to work in corporation: A grave mistake (artist wants paycheck, the beartrap closes) Reaction to stress: None (just another day in paradise)

Name: Jazz (like the old dixie cup pattern)

*****

I do like a bit of corporate horror. Severance got hold of me hard for a bit; I've always liked the bits of the SCP Foundation that focused on the odd interactions of the anomalous with a normal office building. Corp Borg files that mundane inhumanity into the framework of Mork Borg, and at first it looked like an awkward fit, making nostalgic and, at times, hilarious Mork Borg's ever-present feeling of grinding, inescapable doom. But as someone who's put time in the customer service mines, "grinding, inescapable doom" is a sensation that well fits the vibe in every modern office. And hey, we like lateral moves, here at the reeling edge of culture.

Corp Borg looks and rolls pretty much precisely like Mork Borg; the colorways are identical, the flashy zine-style aesthetics, the assumption that you know what the hell the book is on about when it says "d6 laptop, 50% chance to inflict code-madness for d3 rounds". Fresh new vinyl flesh poured onto the skeleton of Mork Borg; if you know Mork Borg, you know how this thing works. Which sounds on first blush like a faint condemnation, but Mork Borg is a masterpiece of design, and saying that a thing looks and feels just like it is plaintext praise.

That said, the vibes are... kind of off. Corp Borg can slide too hard into the "horror" side of "corporate horror", treating the fluorescent lights and open-plan offices as set dressing for the capitalist demons that carry the weight of the thing's professed awfulness. Part of what appeals to me about corporate horror is that the corporate part is in every way exactly as horrific as the horror part, only in an insidious, achingly slow way - the horror not of a monster peeling off your skin but of willingly lining up, day after day, to have it abraded down to the muscle layer by the gentle scrub of the office-standard belt sander.

(The reason I got out of the customer service mines was that I had one real, good conversation with a co-worker where she revealed a lot about herself and her personality. We had a lot of similar tastes and opinions; she said I reminded her a lot of herself when she started. She had been ground down to a cynical nub, immediately expecting everyone she met to be stupid, irrational and stubborn. She accepted that her day was going to be misery and the paycheck was just enough of a balm to keep her in it. There was no life in those eyes. Two weeks submitted days later.)

That said, there's enough stuff in Corp Borg that you can assemble the pieces into whatever flavor of corporate sundae you're after - if you think coffee Madonnas and stapler fights are too ridiculous, you can play around with endless overtime, with the slow grinding shift of the mutation tables, with the end of the world delivered by email daemon hot and fresh every morning (and please do not reply).

One thing I will unconditionally laud is the starter adventure in the back of the book (which is excellent, and banks on impostor syndrome as its main mechanism of fear, which I adore) and, crucially, beautifully, the solo play rules. I am pleased beyond expression that not only are solo play rules included right in the book, but that it's comprehensive, well thought out, and comes with delightful flowcharts, exceptions and thematic justification. This is a thing I want to praise loudly until it blossoms into a trend, and it's the thing that elevates Corp Borg from a "huh, neat" to something I'm probably going to reference over and over again on bored work nights.

Next up: A careworn dream of the future.