#Though I've since changed my name

[uniquecrash5]

The GURPS Cyberpunk and seizure of Steve Jackson Games' computers was a part of an FBI initiative called Operation Sundevil if I recall correctly.

I was a playtester for GURPS Cyberpunk. I half suspect my name is on an FBI list somewhere.

There is another section from the song "Gamers", and I'm curious if it refers to a specific incident.

I'm a live-roleplayin' gamer, I used to play out in the woods. Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, I'd play whenever I could. I'd put on my costume, shoot tin cans, and make firecrackers fly. Then my front door got kicked down again -- This time it was the FBI.

They stole my guns, my video tapes, every book I’d ever read, And a couple of bags of fertilizer out of the garden shed! They told the press I was a terrorist, who planned to blow up half the town. They called me a right-wing militia nut, and a neo-nazi clown.

The details are not the same, but I think this is a reference to a well known incident in 1990, where Steve Jackson Games, best known these days as the maker of the Munchkin card game, were raided by the Secret Service under suspicion that their game product, Cyberpunk, a roleplaying game, was actually a manual for computer crime. Agents literally walked out of the building holding the game company's computers.

Because this story is so well known to gamers, and spread at a time when word of mouth was so potent, there are many details that are altered by the telephone game. Many say it was the FBI instead of the Secret Service, for instance, or it was Cyberpunk 2020 that was raided (which was put out by R. Talsorian Games, not Steve Jackson).

To quote Steve Jackson:

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be "a handbook for computer crime." They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn't exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was "This is real."

"Careless, illegal, and completely unjustified," the raid happened because author Loyd Blankenship ran an irreverent, anti-authority computer USENET BBS dedicated to computers and yes, hacking, and Steve Jackson was struck through guilt by association. It's exactly the kind of overreach that happens when the malevolent Eye of Sauron that is federal law enforcement fixes itself on you. In the course of investigation, the Secret Service justified its own warrant by saying that they would find evidence to justify the warrant, which is circular reasoning.

Due to the raid, Steve Jackson Games had to lay off half the staff and was close to bankruptcy fighting the charges. However, for once, they were able to countersue the Secret Service, because several committed technology lawyers, partially in response, formed the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This is not the first time this happened. In 1980, a decade earlier, TSR was raided because of the spy game, Top Secret, due to suspicion of aiding international terrorism in Lebanon (!)

[stardestroyer81]

Happy fourth anniversary to... well, me! It was four years ago that I signed up for tumblr under the now all-familiar StarDestroyer81 name, and to celebrate, I come bearing some particularly exciting news I've been waiting a few months to announce...

⭐I HAVE A REDBUBBLE STORE!!! ⭐

Shirts, stickers, pins— you want it? It's yours, my friend; as long as you check out the above link! If you've ever wanted to directly support me— or would just love to have select works of mine on merch of your choice— I highly suggest giving my store a look as I put so much work into prepping it for my blog's fourth anniversary! 💙🏳️‍⚧️✨

[hey-scully-itsme]

got to go on a trail ride yesterday and one of the guides asked if i rode (as in, rode currently) and when i said i used to she was like 'i figured, i could tell from your seat' and it's not a huge deal given i rode enough in the past that it'd be surprising if i didn't stand out in a group of beginners, but also i will be riding (haha) that high for the next week

[nanshe-of-nina]

Someone on AO3 copied a story you posted on your blog

I just thought you might like it to know

If you’re talking about the parody I wrote about of all the drama and stupidity that went down during the production of Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar, I appreciate your concern, but Zarinaea on AO3 and I are the same person.

[alchemiclee]

you've heard of cat in the hat, now get ready for

[project-sekai-updates]

『プロセカ放送局 #10』 番組冒頭の「ボカロミュージックのセカイ」出演者決定🎉

書き下ろし楽曲を担当したボカロPと一緒に、最新のVOCALOID楽曲の紹介や、書き下ろし楽曲についてお話するコーナーになります🎤

今回はr-906さんが登場📣ぜひご覧ください🌈

[Google Translated Vers.]

"Project Sekai Broadcasting Station #10" The performers for the "World of Vocaloid Music" segment at the beginning of the show have been decided🎉

This will be a corner where we will introduce the latest VOCALOID songs and talk about the newly written songs together with the Vocaloid producers who wrote the songs🎤

This time, r-906 will be appearing📣Please check it out🌈

[nexus-nebulae]

found my ancient mp3 player recently. finally found a charger for it and plugged it in. and remembered i found a yt playlist of the whole httyd movie chopped up into like 20 videos and i downloaded the mp3s of all of them to listen to on the school bus. which is why i can effortlessly quote the whole first movie now

[running-in-the-dark]

after I restarted my phone earlier it changed my lockscreen picture (to a random photo that I saved at some point) and I almost get a heart attack every time I see my lockscreen now 🙃

[antonblastdeluxe]

Now that I've slept on it for two days, I think my thoughts are clear enough to finally formulate my words about the whole situation with a certain pig. Actual final post on this unless. Idk something worse happens but given that pizza discord was lifted up like a nasty rock I sort of doubt it.

I've been seeing a lot of takes lately given the pizza game. I agree with a large chunk of them that boil down to 'don't make playing this game a moral thing'. I don't agree with sentiments that are akin to 'this was years ago', or 'you're all just trying to cancel him because the game got popular'.

I was in that discord. I had most of the channels muted, but I'm pretty sure I left it in 2020ish. I only didn't see the grossness people are outlining firsthand because I only looked at the dev update chat at the time so I can see what he was implementing. One of my dearest friends had a very, VERY bad experience with it. It's not my right to exactly describe what happened to them, but... Yeah. It was awful. I get that all official discords become cesspits when they get thousands of people in there, but there's no excuse for what happened in there.

I can confirm that the discord was always full of redditor-like types and worse, which is why I muted all of the talk channels to begin with and didn't even glance at the fanart I was really there for. You may notice, if you're a long-timer that is, a lot of early Pizza T0wer artists didn't make fanart again when the game came out. The reason is a lot of them were treated like garbage in the discord. Sure, you had your usual types of people who stupidly make comparisons like 'oh your oc looks like (canon character)' thinking that's a good thing to say to a random artist who may or may not be ok with that, but many of them were just... Outright hostile.

Moderation was never good. I can't exactly recall how the mod team was cycled, but most of them didn't-- Or couldn't do their job because of the vast amount of people flowing in pre-release. It is legtiamately no wonder why it's had so many issues upon release. What I'm getting at here is the discord server was an awful idea. Even if it was patreon only a lot of the patreons made this sort of gross echo chamber. The reason why the stuff with pig both surprised me and didn't surprise me was because of the other half of the publishing company, Sertif.

Sertif to me is the most baffling part of all of this. Not because they did anything wrong, no, the exact opposite. They're arguably the most squeaky clean part of the team, being a far cry from whatever slop pig spewed. Which makes the fact that pig said all of that stuff lowkey worse to me? I don't know if they forgave him for that, or they were somehow unaware. Sertif is also the reason why I can't fully hate the game even with the flaws sprinkled throughout.

It's just upsetting. I can't blame people for reacting the way they have, but at the same time people have gotta stop making excuses. I think it's completely valid to say 'hey you're still allowed to enjoy the game and characters, just don't defend the stupid ass pig'. I think a lot of people put it aptly that the game has already gotten traction. It's your choice if you still want to make fan content or not, it probably won't have a heavy effect on the game's sales at this point. It's sort of people trying to boycott pkmn to a much lesser extent-- People are still going to buy it because they're not engaged with online couture or multiple other reasons.

I do indeed have zero respect for people rubbing their hands together like flies like 'finally I have an excuse to dislike popular thing'. Like, really??? That's where your priorities lie? You can dislike the pizza game. You could've still disliked it if the pig was squeaky clean. But this exact same thing happened to two fixations I heavily fell out of, that being 0mori and f//nf. They gained traction, and people dug stuff up on the creators.

I'm not going to claim that people only dug this stuff up because the game got popular. I won't assume bad faith despite many people assuming bad faith out of others becoming a trend nowadays. People have a right to know what the hell creators did before deciding to get into a game. But claiming people are a bad person for liking a piece of media...

...For the love of god, at least confirm if they do or do not condone the creator's actions.

It's very easy to say 'no media is perfect', sure, but I think most people have gone through the song of dance of 'thing I like was made by an awful person!' there are rare white whale situations where you really should drop the franchise (cough) bad wizard franchise (cough), but expecting everyone to just... Drop a piece of media like a sack of bricks?

Please think realistically. It's great that you're informing people, but expecting people to drop media... You don't know their history with it. You don't know how much comfort it brought them or anything else. Demonizing people for liking pieces of media with flawed creators is really just a waste of time.

I won't ever undermine what pig has said and done. I hope he properly apologizes and hell, takes the extra mile, adjusting those questionable enemies and donates to a few charities or something to show he gives a shit. The very little credit he's done is he admitted what he said was shallow. I know the bar is in hell, but it's good that he isn't trying to double down and go 'bluh that was funny though' (I can imagine his cesspit of a discord echochamber has tried to say this. No way in hell I'm going in there to check and I wouldn't encourage anyone to go into that place with a ten foot pole).

I know I don't need to defend myself nor am I a bad person for acknowledging the creator is a shithead and still enjoying the game and the fan content around it. I have a lot of friends who like fn4f who hate Scott. I wouldn't be friends with them if they defended him. People trying to say this and that about this stance is... Bizarre.

I understand how Pizza game can make people uncomfortable now (always have given the long running history of the bad discord), and people have their full right not to engage with me because they are uncomfortable. At the same time, they shouldn't accuse me of being a bad person because I like something made by a bad person.

A lot of music artists, or hell, artists in general are pretty bad people but people will still admire the artist's ability. A lot of people online who hostility attack people over their interests probably have one of their own pieces of media that isn't squeaky clean.

Please save yourself the mental trouble and stop making people feel 'bad' for liking media. In most cases, you can just block them and mute the tag. It's a waste of everyone's time to hunt people down over this sort of stuff.

Stay informed, don't make excuses for content creators. That's all I ask.

[girlitfeelsgood]

right after my dad finished buying my second set of tickets I got through on my mum's computer too so the whole process was less horrible than expected

[theabstruseone]

I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.

The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.

The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.

The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.

Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.

The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.

Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".

He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

Edit to add further developments:

Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.

Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.

The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.

The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.

The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.

TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).

This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".

This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")

X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.

Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.

The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.

One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.

Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.

[arolesbianism]

I have obtained a new oc and in the process I've already signed myself up for needing to make at least 3 new ocs for his story which he now has despite me initially Intending for him to be a side character for a different side character to hang out with. My townhouse has over 200 characters on it.

[fogsnatched]

WOULD ANYONE LIKE A STARTER from yui, yoichi, adam, elodie or felix?? i'm especially brainrotting about post-escape threads right now but threads where they're still stuck in the entity's realm would be really cool as well... so i'm down for whatever you're all feeling! just please specify a muse if you have a preference so I know who you'd prefer to get c:

[akajustmerry]

plenty of Palestinians from Gaza including Bisan Owda have already spoken about this but ICYMI please don't stop sharing and donating to evacuation campaigns just because the IOF have destroyed boarder crossings and stopped aid. even though they are unable to leave right now, Palestinians in Gaza are still needing and using those funds to buy food and necessities that are price gouged due to limited supply, as well as purchasing e-sims for communication, and raw materials required for rebuilding and providing shelter.

please, don't ignore these campaigns just because their primary goal is escaping. sharing and donating to these funds still helps Palestinians and their families survive day to day. the 5 dollars you give might not get someone across a boarder but it could help a mother buy baby food, get a family a tent, provide a battery, buy a day's supply of water, buy material to repair clothes. it still helps. many of the families I've spoken with say the price-hiking on resources in Gaza is why they've had to change the goal of their campaigns. So, keep sharing, even if you can't donate, and donate when you can.

With that in mind, I'd like to spotlight Fatima's campaign, which is currently at 9.1K/10K goal. Occupation forces destroyed Fatima's family's livelihoods and home, and they have been fleeing on foot and displaced 17 times since October 2023. All funds go towards helping the survival of Fatima and Bilal and their young family of five kids. Please, help them by sharing and/or donating. Follow them @save-fatma-gaza3093

[cat-madhouse]

Saw a post going around that said "use this picrew to make you now + you as a kid" and I thought it was fun :)

[leclarifies]

letters (MV33)

✰ max verstappen x childhoodbestfriend!reader ✰

summary → it was confusing, even though you were continents apart, you never understood why max never responded to your letters, until you attend the belgium gp to finally get the answers you were looking for. inspired by the prompt, "why did you never reply to my letters?" "you wrote me letters?"

genre → fluffy, the fluffiest fluff i've ever fluffed.

word count → 4.4k

author's note → i have worked on this non-stop for two days, and i loved the way it turned out, maybe one of my favorite works. enjoy reading this as much as i enjoy writing this!!

SECOND PART

she was always around max, either from the sidelines or the first person max ran to when he won a race, it was always her. not even his father, even though he held his father to the highest regard, but it was always her.

the little wrinkles on the edge of her eyes when she smiled at him, the way her lips would curl up, or the way she would giggle every. single. time. that he would come and hug her after every race finish. he remembers it all. and the way he would snuggle his face in the crook of her neck and asked her softly after he would win a race, 'did you see me win, schatje?'

she would always smile back with a laugh, 'of course i did maxie.'

it was always about max, her life revolved around him, whether he liked it or not. she adored him and maybe he adored her a little bit more. they were childhood friends, they were inseparable since they were little babies, their mothers being friends made it even harder for the both of them to not be attached at the hip.

she loved being in his presence and he loved her.

the divorce between jos and sophie was hard on max, he blamed himself and his career but she was always there to tell him that it's not his fault. that their decision was their own and she never forgot to tell max that it wasn't his fault, no matter how much they told him that it was.

she saw the way jos had pushed max to his limits, get physical with his own son and his way of escaping that life was run to her arms, she was there tending to every bruise, every wound whether physical or emotional. she was his rock and it was final. nothing anyone could ever say or do would change his name.

"schatje," max had gently woken her up from her slumber, and she stirred awake from his soft voice, she noticed where she was and finally remembered what happened.

max had finished lower than expected and jos had thrown hurtful things about max, she was there on his mother's couch, comforting him and had fallen asleep that way, with max on her lap, "are you sleepy?"

she shook her head, not wanting to admit that yes, indeed she was sleepy, but if max needed comfort then that wasn't a big deal to her, "what's wrong maxie?"

"nothing, you can sleep on my bed if you're tired. i can sleep here," max had brushed a stray strand of her hair behind her ear but she refused, she hated taking his bed because she knew how uncomfortable the couch was, she wanted him to sleep well.

but he wouldn't allow her to take the couch, so they both slept on sophie's couch almost cuddled with eachother because they were both stubborn.

max was necessarily content with how he was living his life right now, but she made it better and that's all he could ask for. was it her smile? maybe her presence? max didn't care. the first memory he could remember from his early childhood was her, and it was etched into his memory like stone.

she was content with being max's rock, she was there to keep him grounded and she too only had memories of him from her early childhood. she wouldn't replace him for the world, he was too precious for anything in this earthly world.

but there was one day, it felt like a bomb dropped on her. her father had told her that he would have to move to korea to continue work, and she didn't know how to break the news to max until a few days before she had to leave.

she knew it was wrong to keep something this big away from max, but she was so stricken with anxiety that she never got the chance to until max came over to her house and saw all the packed boxes with their belongings.

"why didn't you tell me sooner?" max was angry, she could tell, by the way he was pacing around her room, looking at the packed boxes around. max thought he meant more to her than just a measly friend, he felt frustrated— betrayed almost. why wouldn't she tell him? why would she keep something as big as this away from him?

"why didn't you say something before? why now? why before you could see me race this weekend?" max was raising his voice now, and she didn't know what to do. her eyes turned glassy and those doe eyes max loved so much just looked so sad.

she stayed quiet, a guilty look on her face. she knew max would break from the news, and she knew that it would affect his performance, but she didn't know how to stay, how to convince her father that she didn't want to go, so yet again, she stayed silent in important moments of her life.

"schatje, can you say something? say anything?!" max yelled and she flinches, she didn't know what to say or what to do, she wanted to say something, say anything. but nothing would come to her lips. it was so hard for her when he was angry like this, it reminded her of his father and his father was deathly scary when angry.

a sigh escapes max's lips when he sees her flinch, coming close to her to wrap her in a hug. tears escaped from her eyes as she held onto max tight, "i didn't know how to tell you," she whispers into max's ear but max didn't say anything to that, just held her even tighter and he did not want to let go.

"it's okay schatje, i'm not mad at you. i could never get mad at you, i'm sorry for raising my voice. i just don't want you to go," tears started to escape max's eyes too, he didn't want to see her go. he wanted her to stay, and she did too. but the universe was pulling them apart and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

the ride to the airport was tough, being only fifteen and sixteen respectively. max held her hand the entire time, not wanting to let go, he didn't want her to leave, she was his biggest support system and he couldn't imagine her gone like that.

she was the most scared of the two of them, what if her father never returned to belgium? what if she was stuck there in korea forever? what if she never got to see his pretty blue eyes anymore?

max was the one to ground her, no longer lost in her thoughts, "can you promise me we'll keep in touch? or maybe visit from time to time?" max was holding onto her hands tightly, she felt like they would bruise, she could only smile and nod.

her mother had called her over, it was time to go. she looked at max for what it felt like the last time and left her life in belgium.

dear schatje,

hi, this is the first week that you're gone and it's bene been so hard without you here with me. i forgot that you weren't here anymore and i was expecting to see your face, but when i didn't, i may or may not have almost cried.

i miss you so much. tell me how it is in korea, is it cold? do they have bears there? what about the food? is it good? can you eat it? i heard there's a lot of spiy spicy food there? honestly i don't care about what they have there, i just care about you.

when can you visit again? can you tell me if you're ever coming back? i'm so worried about you there, i miss you... so much schatje.

written with a lot of love, your maxie.

max always handed off his letters to his father, telling his father to hand it off to his mother because apparently they kept in contact and wanted to send it off to the post office on behalf of him.

he just wondered how she was doing there.

it's been months and countless of letters max had sent, and none of them replied. he was starting to lose hope, he didn't want to think that his best friend would forget about him so easily like that, but he held out hope. he knew that she wouldn't magically forget about him now that she was there.

jealousy bubbled within him when he realized that she would be meeting new people, what if she met someone like him? who enjoyed karting and wanted to steal her attention?

no, he couldn't be thinking like that. he loved her and he knew she loved him as much as he did, so he told himself to just be patient, maybe letters to korea took months to reach?

the naviety was almost laughable but he was fine with it. he just wanted to hear back from his pretty girl.

"i do not understand why you keep writing letters to that stupid girl, she doesn't reply to you and all it does is distract you," jos had reprimanded his son, but max was stubborn. he didn't care what his father had to say, he loved all of her, even when she was thousands of kilometers away. he wanted to talk, even when she never replied.

max was in the process of writing another letter, but he never listened to his father, not about her. not about how much of a distraction she's been to his career, he didn't care. he used it as motivation to get better on the track, so the next time she saw him, he would be a world champion, that's what he silently promised to her.

it had been two years, and he hadn't heard a peep back. slowly, he was starting to lose hope but he couldn't lose hope, every single time he would send off the letters, he told himself that maybe it got lost in the mail.

max kept writing though.

max's debut in f1 was explosive to say the least, his interviews would absolutely go viral by the things he was saying in them. he didn't understand why, he just said what was on his mind.

what was truly on his mind was her.

was he not good enough for her? was him being in f1 not enough to impress her? why wouldn't she write back?

oh god how he missed her.

he still wrote to her weekly, it was religious at this point. he never forgot and he always told his father to send them off to his mother and the week after that was always disappointment because he wouldn't hear anything back.

little did he know, she never received those letters.

max had slowly stopped writing letters as he got into f1, he didn't see a point in it anymore. she never replied. she didn't care. letters didn't take years to reach korea, and he finally lost hope.

winning his first championship felt empty, the pretty girl who used to be waiting for him wasn't there for him anymore. of course, he was happy to win such an impressive feat, who wouldn't? but it just... lacked her.

max indeed lost hope that she would ever write back, but never lost hope that she was out there, somewhere, watching him race every single week and beat the shit out of his rivals. she loved watching him race and that's what he intended to do until the day he died, he wanted to impress her, maybe that was his ulterior motive to becoming a formula one driver.

all just to impress his best friend who had lost contact with him for a decade now.

"you need to stop figdeting so much," her mother had scolded her, she could only laugh nervously and stop fidgeting around. she wondered why max never wrote back to her, she had written him letters. did he hate her for moving out to korea and not coming to visit belgium?

she shook the thoughts out of her head, she was here now. for his home race, and for the rest of her life. her father had now decided to move back to belgium, because and i quote, 'i don't want my daughter to lose touch with her culture'.

she was 26 now, and she had guessed that he turned 27 not too long ago. it's been so long since she talked to him and she hoped that the spark that she had been yearning for had not been lost to the passages of time.

getting the paddock passes was not easy, it was a war and a half but she managed to snag some for herself and a friend that wanted to visit belgium and would arrive later on in the week.

"how did you even manage to get paddock passes for us?" heejin, her friend that wanted to visit had asked, she could only laugh and explain how she got them, it was a war and a half. heejin laughed along with her as they both arrived and scanned their passes at the entrance.

"i'm gonna meet my best friend here— well it's complicated. i don't think he considers me a best friend anymore, but i still do," she had softly told heejin who was a big formula one fan even before meeting her, heejin raised her eyebrow when she said that.

the both of them were walking down the paddock, passing all of the different team's hospitalities. heejin raised her eyebrow at her friend, who shrugged.

"who's your best friend?" heejin had asked as they pass by the red bull hospitality, she stopped which signalled heejin to stop as well, she looked at the redbull in awe. she hadn't been to a formula one race yet, the closest she'd been was to karting but that didn't bring on the feelings she felt when standing in front of this red bull building.

"well, he's driving the number one car."

"YOUR BEST FRIEND IS MAX VERSTAPPEN?!"

"YOUR BEST FRIEND IS MAX VERSTAPPEN?!"

max had heard a girl yell, he slowly turned his head. he was confused, he didn't have a best friend— well not anymore. she had moved to korea, all memories of her stuck in his head being replayed all over and over again.

that's all he had left of her.

the other girl shushed the girl who yelled, and that's when it dawned on max. the other girl looked awfully familiar, he couldn't quite place why she looked so familiar but she looked like her, like his best friend.

"shh! you can't just yell that out in public," she clamped a hand on her friend's mouth, "they're gonna think i'm insane!" then the both of them giggled, it did sound ridiculous but now he was curious.

was she back? was that her? who was she with? is that her new best friend? is that her?

as they both walked away, max wanted to run up to them, to ask that one particular girl what her name was. what she was doing here and who she was with but all of that died when he got approached by his race engineer.

then he forgot all about that familiar girl that he saw in front of the red bull hospitality.

max would only get another glimpse of her when it was race day, they were walking through the paddock in a similar fashion, but max promised to himself that he would approach them, that he would ask but there was doubt in his heart.

what if she forgot about him?

she couldn't, right?

and so approach them he did, tapping the girl that he felt was so familiar to on the shoulder, she had turned around and they had locked eyes.

it was as if she never left.

the sparks, they all came rushing back and then his heart started beating out of his chest, he wanted to ask so many questions, why she was here, who she was with, when she came back— why she came back, why she never wrote him back.

but the only thing that left his lips were a simple, "hi."

heejin was freaking out, she could tell. she knew that heejin was a big red bull fan too, always talking about how the team was dominating and they had the better car. she had heard all about it. but the little dutchboy she left all those years ago was standing in front of her and not-so little anymore and all those thoughts about her girlfriend was forgotten.

he looked the same, but grown and decked out in red bull merch. she wanted to laugh at how innocent he looked when he tapped her on the shoulder to get her to turn around, he looked stupid, stupidly cute.

all of those feelings from when she was back in belgium came back, she almost forgot what it felt like to be around max— her max. he looked like he was going to cry when he got a good look at her, that he finally realized that yes, it's her. the one that left him in belgium all those years ago.

and maybe she could cry too.

"maxie?" a familiar nickname slipped from her lips and she didn't get a response back, but a bear hug in return.

god, her scent. it was everything to him. he fucking missed it— miss her.

"i thought... i thought you forgot about me," max buried his face into the crook of her neck, she too wrapped her arms around max and buried her face into his chest. his voice was so vulnerable, all she wanted to do was curl around him and tell him that she would never.

she shook her head as she sank into the hug, "i could never forget my maxie," she mumbled into his chest, he held onto her tighter. he never wanted to let go, not now, not ever. she was where she was finally supposed to be, right in his arms.

once they got time alone after his race, max had stolen her away from her friend and dragged her into his driver's room, locking the door and pushing her against the wall, slamming his lips onto hers. he had been dreaming about this for so long, his lips on hers.

he didn't want to so sexual with her, no not yet. being in the small driver's room where they couldn't be free out of the public eye wasn't a good place. he just wanted to touch her, hold her, love her, make sure that she knew how much he had missed this.

missed them being together.

her hands instinctively went up to hold onto his shoulders, holding on for dear life as he kissed her softly. the feelings going through him were a mix of nostalgia, longing and love. he loved her for so long and it was so like her to show up when it mattered the most.

he won it for her today, to show her, that the little max she knew still had it in him to win and to impress her even with a world championship under his belt.

she felt the softness and the gentleness that max was touching her with, she knew how much he loved her. how much he care, how much he longed for her touch and she did too, only so much more.

she had so many questions in her, on why he never replied to the letters she sent or why he never sent any himself, not knowing what happened with her letters and why they never arrived properly.

but she didn't care at the moment, all she cared about was that she was safely in his arms, never to be let go ever again.

safe to say, her lips were to the point of bruising that night. max had forbade her to go back home, or to be away from his sight. he had kissed her silly, not wanting to let her go and there she was, settled nicely in his arms.

it's not like she wanted to go anywhere anyway.

the movie in the background was long forgotten, max's lips felt like they were molded for hers. he had waited for her for so long, waited to feel her skin after so long and this just felt right, it felt right when he was with her.

"maxie— mmhh— my love, stop," she had to talk in between kisses, max didn't want to let her go, his fingers were basically imprinted onto her waist. she was straddling max as he sat upright and kissed her, so softly. like she would break if he was any harder, even though he absolutely did want to kiss her harder.

max released her from the kiss with a pout, his pretty lips were red and swollen from all the kissing they did. everything in the world just seemed to fade into the background when they were together, like everyone else in this world was so insignificant for their time and they were the only people worthy of each other's time.

"but why? i wanna kiss you, i miss you. i have waited for you for ten years, the least you can do is let me kiss you until you're sick of me," max mumbled against her lips and all she could do was giggle.

god, her laugh, he loved it.

she shook her head and left a final peck on his lips, "because i want to talk maxie, we can't just kiss whatever questions we have for eachother away," she told him but he seemed to think otherwise, she had moved back to put a bit of distance in between them, to make sure max didn't go in to kiss her again.

"oh yes we can, i don't care about the questions, schatje. i just wanna be with you, just like old days, but now it's so different because in those ten years without you, i finally realized what i felt and how i felt for you and i can't wait any damn longer to finally kiss those pretty lips of yours, so please. just let me do this for another three hours and we can talk," max begged as he pulled her closer.

she couldn't imagine kissing for another three hours as they spent the last hour doing it, but with him? she would do it for another life-time if she could.

the both of them later had the serious talk when they were done kissing each other, now wanting answers from eachother. their legs were tangled and intertwined with each other's, not wanting to let go from their skin to skin contact.

"first off, why did you never reply to my letters? i wrote you so many. so many that i lost count, i would always write to you but you never replied, why?" max's voice came out strained, all of the painful feelings from the last ten years of his life were coming out, her doe eyes looked up from where she was, laying against his chest.

"you wrote me letters? i wrote you letters, you never replied. i thought you got too busy with your karting career to reply—"

"i could never get too busy to reply to you, but i never got any of your letters, schatje," max murmured against her forehead, kissing it gently after he spoke. she hummed a response before it dawned on her, she had always sent the letters to his father's address and she knew that his father wasn't fond of her, even offering her a huge lump sum of cash just for her to stay away from his son but she never accepted it, always choosing to be beside max, no matter what happened.

she looked up and sighed, she knew what happened now, she connected the pieces, "did you send your letters off to your dad?" she asked, and max nodded before it dawned on him too.

"that fucker hid the letters from you and never sent mine..."

she could only nod sadly, but it didn't matter now. all that mattered was that they were reconnected now.

scattered around them were the countless of letters max had written to her and all of the letters from her that he never received, the years of pining, longing— all of them tucked neatly away into these little envelopes that held all of those unsaid feelings.

a soft sigh escapes her lips, she looked at all of them, there were hundreds maybe. all of them posted to where she stayed in korea but never sent, always kept in a big box where all of his letters were and hers were stuffed in there in a similar fashion.

her heart clenched when she saw how many there were, there were far more many than whatever she sent, even though she did send quite a big sum.

when max had found out, he stormed into jos' house and demanded to ask why he never sent out the letters that he wrote and a big fight broke out, she had to hold of max from physically harming his own father. then they left after given the big box filled with letters.

"there's so many..." she watched in awe as all of them were sorted by date, from the latest to the earliest, max looked up at her with those big blue icy eyes of his, he looked really sad. stuck in his feelings almost, not understand why his father would do whatever he did in the past.

max held her hand gently, pulling her into his embrace, "i have always loved you, even when i was a little kid. i just didn't understand what those feelings were, i just acted on how i felt and being away from you... i just couldn't. so i sent you my love in the form of these letters."

she left a lingering kiss on his cheek, she felt sorry for having to leave all those years ago. she should've fought, should've stood her ground on how much she wanted to stay but she was just a 16 year old kid who didn't know how to, "i know. i'm sorry i had to leave all those years ago."

"don't apologize, schatje. i have never blamed you for leaving me. i have always held love for you in my heart, even if you didn't know it."

"i always knew max, and i still do."

very willing to do a part 2 to this btw, will only do it when requested tho. not proofread, excuse grammar mistakes.