#and i'm seeing it play out today on twitter and tumblr

[waitmyturtles]

I’m going to be binging Step By Step after I wrap up Make It Right 2 tonight. I’m so here for it. I really thought I couldn’t do it with work and life commitments, but I’ll make it work. In the words of @shortpplfedup​, I’m ready to watch a show made by adults, for adults, about adult topics. 

But also -- today’s Big Commentary about BL fans complaining hard enough about their fake ships to get an actual show edited is just....

Some of them need to go back to school for art comprehension lessons. Learn to read between the lines. Lemme just leave this here.

[jungkoode]

死 KKANGPAE | #03 死

† breakfast and training †

"His eyes are the kind of dark that makes you forget there was ever light in the world. And you hate that you're starting to notice details about him."

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⚔ chapter details ⚔

word count: 5.4k

rating: mature

content: training violence, weapons, strong language, sexual tension

☠ author's note ☠

HELLO MY FELLOW SLEEP-DEPRIVED CREATURES. Welcome back to another episode of "Kiki makes questionable life choices and writes fanfiction instead of sleeping"!

Can we talk about how I wrote like three different versions of the gun scene before my perfectionist brain was satisfied? And by satisfied I mean "fine whatever just post it I guess." Don't @ me about gun accuracy, I play Call of Duty sometimes that's research enough (ㆆᴗㆆ)

Also yes, I am absolutely living for the whole "oh no they're training together" trope. Sue me. Or don't, I'm broke. All I have is caffeine and the ability to make my characters suffer. Speaking of which - Jeon in combat mode? chef's kiss My boy is out there being all professional and grumpy while Y/N is just trying her best not to get shot. We love that for them.

PSA: The whole "Cookie" thing was totally self-indulgent and I regret nothing. V is here to cause chaos and honestly? Goals.

Special shoutout to my cat who watched me write this at 3 AM and judged me silently. You're the best beta reader a girl could ask for, even if your only feedback is knocking my coffee over.

See you next Tuesday, you beautiful disasters! Remember: sleep is for the weak and fanfiction is for life.

crawls back into writing cave while mainlining espresso

Kiki

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tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode

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Mornings in the castle hit different. Through your window, the sky's doing that thing where it can't decide if it's still night or already dawn—all soft blues mixing with hints of gold. Everything's quiet, like the world's holding its breath.

Then your alarm goes off.

"Why did we agree to this again?" Yunjin whines from her bed, fumbling to shut up the annoying buzz. Her pink hair is a mess, splayed across her pillow like cotton candy gone wrong.

"Croissants," you remind her, stretching until your joints pop. "Fresh, buttery, heavenly croissants."

"Not hungry." She burrows deeper into her blanket cocoon. "Too early for hunger. Too early for existing."

You swing your legs off the bed, bare feet hitting the cold floor. "What happened to yesterday's 'new me, new goals' speech?"

"That was yesterday's Yunjin. Today's Yunjin chooses sleep."

With a snort, you pad over to her bed. It's literally two steps away—your shared room is cozy like that, with just enough space for two singles and matching bedside tables. You give her shoulder a gentle shake.

"And what's tomorrow's Yunjin gonna think about that?"

"Tomorrow's Yunjin's problem," she mumbles, death-gripping her blanket. Smart girl. She knows your next move would've been stealing it.

"Then it's tomorrow's me problem too!" You can't help but laugh, and it finally gets her to peek one eye open.

She lets out the longest, most dramatic sigh. "Fine. Fine. You win."

Your shared laughter is soft, comfortable. It's weird how quickly Yunjin became your person here. Maybe because she's as new to this as you are—no pressure to measure up to badasses like Chaewon or keep your guard up around intimidating figures like V and Jeon.

She joined two months before you did. For her, it meant saying goodbye to having her own room, but she says it was worth the trade-off. Girl's a mess when it comes to sleep schedules, but she keeps your shared space spotless and her determination is s̶c̶a̶r̶y̶ impressive. Like, you've seen her practice seduction techniques until 3 AM, and now here she is, dragging herself up at dawn for... well, croissants and self-improvement.

There's something genuinely good about Yunjin. She's always there—to help, to listen, to just be. Five months in and everyone in Seduction already adores her. Yeah, she's clumsy as hell during physical training, but her mind is sharp. Nothing gets past her—it's like she's got a built-in lie detector.

After yesterday morning's... incident, you're extra grateful for her company.

You both grab your digital cards from your bedside tables—can't go anywhere in this place without them. They're basically your whole identity here, determining which doors open for you and which stay firmly shut.

The castle corridors feel endless this early. Most members are probably still sleeping or doing whatever gang members do at dawn. Your footsteps echo softly as you and Yunjin make your way to the cafeteria, keeping the conversation light.

"Have you had breakfast here before?" you ask, watching her stifle another yawn.

"Once." She nods, her pink ponytail bouncing. "Got up at 10 though. Wasn't worth sacrificing sleep for."

You can't help but smile. "Early breakfast hits different. You'll see."

When you reach the cafeteria, Yunjin taps her digital card against the scanner. The light blinks green, and suddenly your nose is filled with the heavenly smell of fresh pastries. Inside, only a handful of early birds are scattered around the massive space. Makes sense—most people here prefer their beds at this hour.

Your eyes do their usual sweep of the room, casual and practiced. But then something pulls at you, like a magnet finding true north. Your gaze locks with dark, piercing ones.

Jeon.

"Oh, that's Jeon, right?" Yunjin's voice cuts through your thoughts. "Guess he likes mornings too."

You nod, still watching him from the safety of the doorway. Something about the distance makes you feel almost safe. He's got that thing about him—that unmistakable aura of authority that even 6 AM can't dim.

"Damn," Yunjin says after a beat, blunt as ever. "He's hot."

"Let's get food," you mutter, rolling your eyes and heading for the pastry section.

You and Yunjin load up your plates with a bit of everything, especially those famous croissants. Finding a quiet corner, you settle in to enjoy both the food and each other's company, pointedly not thinking about piercing dark eyes or brooding corners.

You try to look casual as your eyes drift back to Jeon for the hundredth time.

He's sitting there, both hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee like it's his lifeline to sanity this early in the morning. The sight of those tattooed fingers curled around plain white ceramic does something to your brain that you'd rather not examine too closely.

"You know, I heard something interesting about him." Yunjin's voice makes you jump. S̶h̶i̶t̶ Great, she caught you staring.

"Oh?" You tilt your head, hoping your voice sounds more curious than guilty.

Yunjin leans in conspiratorially, her pink hair falling forward as she drops her voice to barely above a whisper. It's kind of unnecessary given how far away Jeon is, but there's something about him that makes everyone speak in hushed tones.

"Apparently, he's got this whole... ritual thing going on. Every single morning, without fail, he makes sure he's the first one to get fresh coffee. Like, the first cup from a fresh pot."

Your eyes track back to that cup held between ink-covered fingers. Now that she mentions it, you've never seen him drink anything else in the mornings. The way he's savoring it, eyes closed and expression almost peaceful, makes you think Yunjin might be onto something.

"Every day? He's literally the first one here?" The mental image of Jeon lurking outside the cafeteria doors, waiting for them to unlock, is both hilarious and weirdly endearing.

"From what I've heard. Maybe it's a power move?" Yunjin suggests with a soft laugh. "You know, asserting dominance through caffeine consumption."

The idea of someone as intimidating as Jeon—co-leader of the Assassination Division, member of the Council of 9, literal professional killer—climbing the ranks of one of South Korea's most dangerous gangs just to secure his morning coffee makes something bubble up in your chest.. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing too loud.

"Imagine that being his master plan all along," you snort. "Join gang, become assassination chief, get first dibs on coffee."

You both dissolve into quiet giggles, but the moment shatters when something shifts in the air. It's like thorny vines suddenly wrapping around your lungs, making it hard to breathe. You don't need to look to know who it is.

"Mind if I join the fun?" V's voice slides over your skin like honey laced with poison, playful but with that edge that makes your hair stand on end.

His arms drape over your shoulders without warning, caging you and Yunjin in what should be a friendly gesture but feels more like being trapped. Your muscles tense automatically. There's something about V that keeps you perpetually on edge—like admiring a rose only to remember it's got thorns that could draw blood.

Yunjin manages a wobbly smile, but you can tell she's as unsettled as you are by his sudden appearance. "We were just... talking about coffee."

"Coffee?" V drawls the word like it personally offends him. He pulls back, throwing his arms behind his head in that carelessly graceful way of his, but stays close enough that you can smell cinnamon. "Boring. Now, this new training program? That's something worth discussing."

His eyes glint with mischief, reminding you of a cat playing with its food. "I'm keen to see what you girls bring to the table. Should be... intriguing, don't you think?"

The way he says it makes your skin crawl. There's nothing overtly threatening about his words, but the undercurrent is clear—the Assassination Division isn't known for playing nice, and V seems to view the upcoming cross-training as his personal playground.

"I'm sure it will be enlightening," you say carefully.

V's energy is infectious, but not in a good way. More like a disease you're trying not to catch.

He chuckles, and those thorny vines around your lungs squeeze tighter. "Oh, I'm sure it will be. And don't worry, yours truly will be there to add a little spice to the mix. Can't let things get too dull, can we?"

Before you can respond, his attention snaps to something—or someone—across the cafeteria. With a dismissive wave that somehow manages to feel both elegant and insulting, he strides off as suddenly as he appeared.

You exchange looks with Yunjin, both of you sagging with relief once he's gone. She looks as drained as you feel, like V's presence alone sucked all the energy from the room.

"Well, that was... something," Yunjin says, and you could write a whole essay about everything packed into that single word. Her pink hair is still slightly disheveled from where V's dramatic entrance messed it up.

"That's one way to put it." You try to shake off the phantom feeling of thorny vines around your lungs. V's presence leaves you feeling like you've been through some kind of emotional washing machine—tumbled around and wrung out.

"But oh my god." Yunjin's whole face suddenly lights up like she's remembered something amazing. The whiplash from her mood shift almost gives you vertigo.

"What?" You ask, though part of you already knows where this is going. Yunjin might be shy and perceptive, but she's also a total simp when it comes to pretty faces.

"He is SO handsome?" Her voice rises with genuine awe. "Everyone kept saying he looks like a prince, but I thought they were exaggerating. They were not."

You raise an eyebrow, wondering if you were even in the same conversation just now. Sure, V's gorgeous—that's kind of his whole thing. The dangerous beauty, the dripping poison. But after feeling his aura wrap around you like a boa constrictor, 'handsome' isn't exactly the first word that comes to mind.

"Did you miss the whole creepy vibe?" You keep your voice low, even though V's long gone. Some habits die hard in this place. "He talked about the training program like he's planning to turn it into his personal episode of Squid Game. With popcorn."

"Yeah, but like..." Yunjin waves her hand dismissively, "have you seen his face? Those cheekbones? That jawline?"

"The way he's probably plotting our deaths as we speak?" You counter, but you can't help the smile tugging at your lips. Trust Yunjin to focus on the aesthetics while completely ignoring the red flags. It's kind of adorable, in a concerning way.

"Doesn't change the fact that he's eye candy," she says with zero shame, stabbing her fork into her breakfast. "Like, premium, expensive, imported chocolate level of eye candy."

"True," you admit, finally taking a proper bite of your croissant.

And it is true—V's got that whole ethereal beauty thing going on, like a masterpiece painting that happens to be slightly cursed. The kind of face that belongs in museums but also probably comes alive at night to terrorize security guards.

But even as you acknowledge V's obvious appeal, your eyes betray you, drifting back to that other corner of the cafeteria. Back to dark eyes and hurricanes.

Back to Jeon.

It's not like you mean to look.

It just... happens.

Like your gaze has some kind of magnetic programming that keeps pulling it in his direction.

Which is s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶ inconvenient because the last thing you need is to get caught staring at one of the most dangerous men in Kkangpae while you've got croissant crumbs on your face.

The rest of your morning slips by without V popping up again to make your skin crawl. You try to focus on getting ready for what's coming, but your mind keeps drifting to the upcoming training.

Working with Jeon and V's division? Yeah, that's not anxiety-inducing at all.

When you step onto the training field outside the castle, the change of scenery hits different. After being cooped up in the gang's concrete maze, the open space and towering trees feel almost surreal. The cold morning air bites at your lungs—a wake-up call you didn't ask for but probably need.

Today's not just another training day. It's your first cross-training with the Assassination Division, and the tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with one of V's knives.

Your stomach does this weird flip-flop thing as you walk towards the gathering crowd. Working with Jeon after... that incident? Not exactly on your bucket list. The memory of your last encounter sits heavy in your chest, making each step feel like you're walking through mud.

The Assassination Division is already there when you arrive, looking like they stepped out of some action movie poster. Some look ready to murder, others look ready for a nap. But it's Jeon who catches your eye—impossible not to, really. It's like the air itself is swirling around him like a storm about to break.

He's got that look on his face—you know the one. All business, no bullshit, could probably kill you with his pinky finger.

No sign of V though.

Makes sense, when you think about it. Those two aren't exactly besties—more like two wolves forced to share the same territory. Their whole approach to killing is different as night and day.

Jeon's all about precision. Clean shots, minimal mess, maximum efficiency. He's the type to plan every detail, calculate every variable. Need someone taken out from two buildings away without anyone even knowing what happened? That's his specialty. The human equivalent of a surgical strike.

V though? He's chaos incarnate. Gets up close and personal with his kills, leaves a message written in blood if he feels like it. He's the guy you call when you want someone dead and don't care how messy it gets. Planning? Fuck planning—V works on pure instinct and improvisation.

The crowd goes quiet as Jeon steps forward. The atmosphere shifts, less like a raging storm now and more like the heavy air before thunder breaks. When he speaks, his voice does that thing where it demands attention without actually raising in volume. And despite everything—despite knowing better—you find yourself leaning in slightly to catch every word.

"Your state of mind is everything in this line of work," he says, dark eyes scanning the crowd like he's reading everyone's potential in real time. "A calm, collected mind can mean the difference between life and death."

The task he lays out seems simple enough: shoot the cardboard target, hit the center, don't mess it up. But as you watch others take their turns, that knot in your stomach keeps getting tighter.

The gun feels wrong in your hand. Not that you haven't held one before—basic training covers that—but this is different. This is him watching, and somehow that makes your palms extra sweaty.

Then your turn's up.

Walking to the mark feels like crossing a minefield, every step measured and tense. Your heart's going so hard you can barely hear anything else.

Focus. You need to focus.

But Jeon's standing right there, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Your finger hovers over the trigger, but doubt creeps in like poison.

The target blurs in and out. You can feel Jeon watching, that heavy gaze picking apart every flaw in your stance. The pressure builds in your chest until you're sure something's gonna snap.

Just a bit longer. You need to be absolutely sure before taking the shot.

It's not like Seduction gets much practice with actual weapons—your arsenal usually involves batting eyelashes and strategic flirting, not bullets and gunpowder. So it's no wonder the gun starts slipping through your sweaty fingers.

You tighten your grip. A surge of determination hits you like a shot of adrenaline. Come on. It's just cardboard. You've handled way worse situations than this. You can do this.

Your finger starts to squeeze the trigger—

BANG.

That... wasn't your gun.

You flinch, turning toward the sound before you can stop yourself. Through the corner of your eye, you catch smoke curling from Jeon's pistol.

He's standing there looking bored, arm extended like this is just another one of his daily mornings. The gun fits his hand like it was molded for him, an extension of his body rather than a weapon.

When your eyes snap to the target, there it is—perfect shot, dead center, because of course it is.

A̶s̶s̶h̶o̶l̶e̶ Show-off.

You lower your gun, lips pressed tight. His gaze sits heavy on your shoulders, hurricane pressure bearing down until you want to scream. His face gives nothing away, but those dark eyes say plenty—and none of it's good.

"If you're not quick enough, you'll get killed." His voice cuts like ice. "Let that be a reminder for everyone else."

The words hit like a slap. Heat rushes to your face—anger, embarrassment, frustration, all mixing together into something that makes you want to either punch something or crawl into a hole. Preferably punch him, but you're very aware of everyone watching this little show he's putting on.

Both divisions are staring, and you've never felt more like a fish in a very small, very exposed bowl.

Your eyes meet Jeon's, and suddenly breathing gets hard. His stare hits different—those dark eyes boring into yours like he's trying to read your soul, pupils blown wide in a way that makes your stomach do weird flips.

That silver lip ring catches the light when his mouth twists into something s̶e̶x̶y̶ condescending. He opens his mouth—probably to tear into you some more—but then—

BANG.

Everyone drops like puppets with cut strings. Pure instinct.

It's instant chaos. Voices rise into a crescendo of shouts and commands, bodies moving with practiced urgency.

It's kind of beautiful, in a messed-up way—how quickly personal beef gets shelved when shit hits the fan. One minute Jeon's looking at you like you're dirt on his boot, next second he's barking orders to keep everyone safe.

Your heart's in your throat as you scan the crowd for a flash of pink hair.

Yunjin.

But Yunjin's nowhere.

The sea of faces blurs together—no Kazuha, no Eunchae, not even Sakura. Even Chaewon's vanished, which is weird because she's usually got this sixth sense about danger.

Another shot cracks through the air. Your fingers tighten around your gun until your knuckles go white. Your eyes keep drifting to the treeline, where shadows dance between patches of dark green.

A calm, collected mind can mean the difference between life and death.

His words echo in your head, which is ironic considering how not calm you feel right now.

Fuck it.

You're moving before you can second-guess yourself, legs carrying you toward the forest. Maybe it's stupid, but you need space to think. To be calm, like he said.

Plus, the trees might give you cover—an advantage you desperately need right now.

The forest swallows you up. Sunlight filters through leaves overhead, painting everything in shifting patterns of light and shadow. Every step crunches on dead leaves, making you wince. So much for stealth.

V wouldn't be happy.

The chaos from the training ground fades the deeper you go, replaced by normal forest sounds—birds chattering overhead, small animals rustling in the bushes. It's almost peaceful, if you ignore the whole possible death situation.

You spot it then—a ridge overlooking the training ground, hidden behind thick bushes. Perfect vantage point, if you can reach it. The climb makes your muscles burn, but you manage. Up here, you force yourself to breathe slow and steady, trying to quiet your racing heart. Your fingers trace the gun's cold metal like a lifeline.

Your back hits the tree with a thud. The bark scrapes against your spine through your shirt, but you barely notice. Every nerve in your body is focused on that rustling sound behind you.

Footsteps.

Your breath catches. They're quiet—too quiet to be some random person stumbling through the woods.

No, these are the steps of someone who knows how to move silently. Someone trained.

Adrenaline floods your system as you press yourself flatter against the tree. Your fingers tighten around the gun until your knuckles go white. Through a gap in the leaves, you try to catch a glimpse of whoever's approaching, but the foliage is too thick.

Friend or foe?

The question pounds in your head with each careful footstep drawing closer. Your mind races, too many possibilities—it could be an enemy, could be another member searching the area.

Could be death or salvation walking your way.

The steps are almost upon you now. Your breathing goes shallow, controlled. You might be exposed up here, but they don't know that. Surprise is your only advantage right now.

Shoot or strike?

The dilemma tears at you. A gunshot would alert everyone to your location. And if it turns out to be an ally... F̶u̶c̶k̶ No. Hand-to-hand is safer. Quieter. Less explaining to do if you're wrong.

Your muscles coil tight as a spring. When the footsteps are close enough, you launch yourself from behind the tree in one fluid motion, aiming to take them down hard and fast.

Instead, you slam into what feels like a brick wall.

Oh.

It's Jeon.

His reflexes are insane—before you can even process who he is, he's already moving. The air sweeps around you as he twists, disarming you with embarrassing ease. Your gun hits the ground with a clatter that seems to echo through the whole forest.

Recognition hits you both at the same moment. That flicker of shock in his eyes quickly turns to his usual look of disdain, because of course it does.

Then—a misstep.

Your ankle rolls, sending white-hot pain shooting up your leg. You stumble, sucking in a sharp breath. His grip on you loosens just slightly, and something that might be concern flashes across his face before his usual cold mask slips back into place.

"You okay?" His voice is gruff, like the words are being dragged out of him against his will.

"Just perfect," you snap back, because fuck his concern when your ankle feels like it's on fire and your pride hurts even worse.

He just stands there, staring at you with those dark eyes that see too much.

"What the hell were you thinking?" A pause, one eyebrow lifting. "You have a gun, don't you?"

You almost laugh. Because of course. If you'd shot at him, he'd be lecturing you about trigger discipline. Attack hand-to-hand, and suddenly you're an idiot for not using your weapon.

You seriously can't win with this man.

"Well, good thing I didn't use it on you then." The words come out lighter than you feel, dancing between playful and pissed. "And what are you doing here anyway? Shouldn't you be back there playing commander?"

"That's what deputies are for." The casual way he says it makes your teeth grind. "Besides, I dispatched a team to check the gunfire. Just my luck, running into you instead."

"Pleasure's all mine, chief." You load the title with all the sarcasm you can muster.

"And you?" His dark eyes study you like you're a particularly puzzling target he can't quite line up. "Any reason you're out here instead of following orders?"

"Didn't get any orders to follow." You cross your arms, ignoring how his presence makes your skin prickle. "And that ridge over there?" You jab a finger toward the overlook. "Perfect vantage point. I was trying to be strategic before you showed up."

He actually grimaces at that, like your logic physically pains him. But before he can open his mouth to deliver what's surely another lecture, you add:

"Just my luck, running into you instead."

The words—his own words turned back on him—hit their mark. His eyebrow twitches just slightly, and satisfaction blooms warm in your chest.

Score one for you.

But before you can inwardly celebrate, he grimaces. He actually grimaces before he opens his stupid mouth again.

"That?" His voice drips with condescension. "You think that's prime real estate for observation?" The asshole holds back a laughter. "Alright." He says, and you ponder the merits of hitting him with a rock.

But then he begins walking, and you trail after him, partly because s̶c̶r̶e̶w̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ he's wrong and partly because... well, where else are you gonna go?

"Remind me again—which one of us specializes in persuasion and observation?" You can't keep the annoyance from your voice. His arrogance is starting to give you a headache.

"And which one of us is known for sniping?" He tilts his head just enough for you to catch the silver flash of his eyebrow piercing. "You think I don't know a thing or two about picking vantage points?"

"Just because you can shoot from far away doesn't mean you know the best places to shoot from." The words come out sharper than intended. "What works for a sniper might not work for surveillance. They're different skill sets."

"How so?" He doesn't even bother looking back now. "A lookout's a lookout, smartass."

Your hands find your hips. "You know what? Ask me that again when you sit in on our cross-training. Might learn something useful."

"Learn from an ensign?" His tilt is mocking. "No—learn from you?" He lets out a low chuckle that makes your teeth grind. "Pretty sure it works the other way around."

"Forgot about Flower?" You can't help the snark in your voice. "She's a chief too, and I'm sure she'd love to put you in your place."

The exhale he lets out is so exaggerated it has to be for dramatic effect. "You're insufferable."

"Feeling's mutual, chief."

You trail behind Jeon through the darkness, trying to ignore how his mere presence makes the night air feel electric against your skin. The silence wraps around you both, broken only by your footsteps until—

A rustle in the underbrush.

Before you can react, his hand clamps around your wrist. No warning, no words—just the firm press of tattooed fingers against your pulse point as he yanks you behind a massive rock. You crash against him, bodies colliding in a mess of limbs and s̶h̶i̶t̶ startled breath.

You open your mouth to tell him exactly what you think about being manhandled, but his finger presses against his lips. Shut up. His eyes scan the darkness beyond your hiding spot, focused and lethal.

And suddenly you're way too aware of him.

The moonlight paints him in silver and shadow, highlighting things you've never noticed before. Like how his eyebrow piercing catches the light—two tiny beads of silver that draw attention to the way his brow furrows in concentration. Or how that lip ring glints when his mouth sets in that stern line you know too well.

There's a scar on his left cheek—barely there, really. Just a whisper of a mark that makes you wonder what story it tells. Your eyes drift lower, catching on the small mole decorating the left side of his neck. It's such a delicate detail on someone who radiates danger, like finding a flower growing through concrete.

But it's his eyes that f̶u̶c̶k̶ y̶o̶u̶ u̶p̶ catch you off guard. Dark and deep, framed by stupidly long lashes that flutter when he blinks. They're beautiful in a way that makes your chest tight—and isn't that just f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ fantastic? You didn't need to know that about him.

This close, you can see the tiny lines at the corners of those eyes. They speak of sleepless nights and heavy choices, of burdens carried too long alone. Watching him like this—he feels different now, less like a storm trying to drown you and more like standing in summer rain.

The realization hits like a punch to the gut: you're seeing Jeon. Not the cold-as-ice division chief or the intimidating Council member. Just... him. Human.

Complex.

His fingers are still wrapped around your wrist like an iron band. If anything, his grip's gotten tighter, and you're caught between wanting to yank free and being weirdly aware of how warm his hand is against your skin in the cool night air. It's hard to tell if you're feeling trapped or protected.

The footsteps draw closer—deliberate, confident. Not someone trying to hide.

You watch a muscle tick in Jeon's jaw, the kind of tiny detail you wouldn't normally notice if you weren't pressed so close to him. It's fascinating, in an annoying way, how he can look so calm while radiating such intense energy.

His eyes flick to yours for just a second, but it feels loaded with... something. Like you're suddenly partners in this mess, whether you like it or not. It's more communication than you've had in all your previous conversations combined.

The rustling gets louder. You hold your breath. Jeon's gone statue-still beside you, but you can feel the coiled tension in him. His dark eyes snap to a spot in the trees, then back to you with unnerving intensity.

"Shoot there."

You stare at him like he's lost his mind. "What?"

"There." His voice is barely a whisper, rough with urgency. He jerks his chin toward whatever he's seeing that you're apparently missing.

"You want me to shoot a tree branch?" The skepticism in your whisper could cut glass. "Seriously?"

"Just do what you're told." The words rumble out of him like distant thunder, crackling with impatience.

You give Jeon a look, but arguing isn't an option right now.

The gun feels heavy as you line up the shot. Your finger finds the trigger, and for a split second, everything goes quiet. The bang echoes through the trees, making your ears ring. You watch as the bullet hits exactly where Jeon wanted—that innocent-looking branch that apparently wasn't so innocent after all.

A net explodes from the darkness like some kind of ninja trap, shooting toward the approaching figure. But whoever it is moves like water—fluid, impossible, beautiful in a terrifying way. The net hits empty ground with a sad little flutter while your brain tries to process what just happened.

Beside you, Jeon goes still. If you weren't pressed so close, you might have missed that tiny hitch in his breath—the only sign that this wasn't part of his plan. His eyes narrow just slightly, that crack in his perfect mask making your stomach do weird flips.

He pushes you back against the rock, putting himself between you and whatever's coming. The stone digs into your spine, cold and rough through your clothes.

Then everything happens at once.

A shadow vaults over your hiding spot, moving with deadly grace. Gunshots crack through the night, and suddenly Jeon's shoving you down, his body covering yours. The world spins into a blur of motion and sound, your pulse drumming so loud you can barely think.

When reality settles back into focus, you watch the figure reach for their mask. Your fingers tighten on your gun, waiting to see what kind of threat managed to dodge one of Jeon's traps.

The mask comes off.

Oh for fuck's sake.

V's grinning like the cat that got the cream. "Paintball night!" he announces with way too much glee for someone who just scared the shit out of you.

Relief and irritation war in your chest. Of course it's V. Who else would turn a simple training exercise into their personal dramatic performance?

You watch Jeon's shoulders drop, but the annoyance is written all over his face. His jaw's so tight you can practically hear all the curses he's not saying.

Always the professional, even when he's irritated.

V's eyes dances with delight as he watches Jeon simmer. "Don't look at me like that, Kookie," he coos, lips curling into that signature smirk that makes you want to take a step back.

Cookie?

You blink, trying to process that nickname. Looking at Jeon—all dark clothes, silver piercings, and intimidating tattoos—the last thing that comes to mind is anything remotely cute or sweet. The mental image of him buying cookies from some terrified boy scouts makes you bite back a laugh.

Now that's a story you'd pay to hear.

Jeon's eyebrow shoots up in that way that somehow manages to say f̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ more effectively than actual words. His tongue pushes against the inside of his cheek, jaw working like he's physically holding back whatever he wants to say. He's irritated.

"I'll give you some advantage," V sighs dramatically, thorny vines wrapping around your lungs even from this distance. "No fun beating you when you're unarmed." The words drip with amusement, like this whole thing is his favorite game. "See ya."

With one last unsettling grin, he melts into the darkness. Because of course he does. Dramatic asshole.

You're still sprawled on the ground, processing what just happened. Leave it to V to turn a regular night into some twisted paintball training session. The man's idea of "improving stealth skills" is giving everyone heart attacks.

Beside you, Jeon's muscles finally uncoil from their battle-ready stance. He looms over you, and you can't tell if the expression on his face is more annoyed or relieved.

"You gonna get up or what?" The words come out gruff, but there's something else there. Something that might be concern if you squint.

Then his hand appears in front of your face. You stare at it for a second, surprised. It's weirdly bare compared to his tattooed arms, and you hesitate before taking it. His grip is firm but careful as he helps you up.

The whole night feels surreal —one weird training session bleeding into another. You glance at Jeon as he stretches, working out the tension in his shoulders.

The mystery of "Cookie" tugs at your curiosity, but one look at his face tells you now's not the time to ask.

Some mysteries are probably better left unsolved.

next | index

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@cannotalwaysbenight @livingformintyoongi @itstoastsworld @redcherrykook @somehowukook

© jungkoode 2025 no reposts, translations, or adaptations

[king-bull-002]

To Derek Kage, with lust

It is no secret that I had this page before. Many years ago. Back then, I talked to a pretty boy who would become Derek.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember this, but I can't forget his submissiveness and how hungry he was. And when he sent the first picture, I thought it was a catfish, because damn, that boy was hot and pretty. A few chats, and that was it.

Then I left Tumblr, Tumblr banned porn, and I was back on Twitter (no X here). To my surprise, that boy found his way back there too, now being BigJockTinyCock. And that name was perfect for him: still hungry, in need to serve, and locked. All those muscles, that little black cage... so hot.

We chatted again, more this time, and I wasn't sure if this was a genuine side of him or a bit played (and who doesn't play a little online?). But he was submissive and incredibly hungry, so in need to serve and be used. Still very hot.

Later, that account vanished, and he became who we know today: Derek Kage. Best name for him, I thought.

And now he's out there, being a big porn star, fucking men and women, exploring all sides of himself. I was a bit surprised, but hey, glad to see him enjoying himself (and he sure looks like he does). The best part was hearing that low pitch, moaning, and begging for more. Even hotter.

All of this to say: keep doing what you love, DK. Glad you could grow so much and enjoy all that life can bring.

Not sure you remember any of this, but I do, and it warms my heart (and my crotch) every time I see you back in that cage, because that's how I met you and my favorite side of you.

And I hope you see this. Or that someone makes this cross your way somehow.

Keep making everyone cum.

With lust, KB86

[bri-the-nautilus]

Come To the Dark Side, We Have Hot Guys: A Star Wars Story

Spoilers below for S1 of Ahsoka and the first six episodes of The Acolyte.

I'm writing this with The Acolyte most of the way through airing its first season, with episode 6 having released earlier today. Say what you will about the show, but it's really brought out a lot of the uglier sides of the Star Wars fandom. Everyone and their mother has seen videos or Reddit threads dunking on the Critical Drinker or SWT and their mouth-breathing misogynist audiences at this point, so I don't feel particularly compelled to retread that ground. Instead, I want to talk about the... other side of the fandom, the hypocrisy therein, and how we're all being played for absolute fools by the creative team at Disney Lucasfilm.

Yes, this post is about Qimir.

Now I want to say that I have no problem with villain simping/shipping. Far from it. Most of my posts on this account are me simping for Shin Hati (we'll talk more about her later) or various Soulsborne bosses. Hell, my mutuals and I have a running joke about me having a weakness for evil blonde women. While I personally am too gay for my own good and couldn't care less about men as a concept, I absolutely see the appeal of characters like Qimir and Kylo Ren. I absolutely get why people thirst over them and love making fandom content for them. I think Qimir/Osha has the potential to be a really fun ship, actually. The point I'm making here is not "simping for these characters is wrong and bad," and I want to make that crystal clear before we continue.

That said, let's talk about Qimir, and how the landscape of the show and its surrounding discourse has changed since his reveal. Again, I'm ignoring the chud sphere here, partly because their little corner of the Internet has remained remarkably stagnant since then. The podcast bros still think it's woke, fucking Shadiversity is still whining about fight choreography (which as someone who actually has done HEMA/stage combat, Shad annoys me to no end, but that's an entirely separate can of worms), and it all seems to be business as usual over there. No, the most marked changes have been on the Acolyte-positive end of the fandom space. Here's what the top posts in "hashtag TheAcolyte" on Twitter look like tonight:

You get the idea.

Again, no hate to any of these people. This is tumblr ffs, we've all engaged in a little simping for a morally dubious hot person. I love seeing fans having fun engaging with something, and again I kinda dig the Osha/Qimir ship.

Anyways, if you were around for the Acolyte-positive discourse before the Qimir reveal, and especially the show's marketing and the reponse to that, you'll have noticed a marked difference.

Fans quickly began to see The Acolyte as " the gayest Star Wars ever." Showrunner Leslye Headland is an out lesbian, and her wife was cast as Master Vernestra Rwoh. Archetypical girlboss Carrie-Anne Moss was cast as Master Indara, immediately drawing comparisons to her role in the Matrix movies. Leads Osha and Mae Aniseya are played by the nonbinary Amandla Stenberg. The lesbian witches of Brendok were talked about in press releases before the show aired. Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon) stated in an interview that she portrayed the short-haired, serious Theelin as having a crush on Osha, something that fans were picking up on in their first interactions in the premiere before Keen even gave that interview. While Headland said in a post-premiere interview that she didn't set out specifically to make "a capital Q Queer show," it's an objective fact that no Star Wars movie/show has had as much potential in that area, and fans (especially the queer community) took notice. (For what it's worth, in the same interview Headland commented that she was proud of creating something that so many queer fans identified with.)

The show came out, and Master Indara was killed off in the first sequence, which I'm honestly fine with. It was a good scene and works on a lot of levels. Headland's aforementioned interview came and went. Episode three aired. The lesbian witches turned out to be even gayer than was previously thought possible, and people ate that shit up while the Critical Drinker's brain suffered a major cascade failure. Jecki became a runaway favorite in the premiere and episode four, as did lovable himbo Yord Fandar and the wise, paternalistic Master Sol. In Acolyte-positive circles, this was basically how it went. People thought Brendok was cool, the Yord Horde became the show's biggest social media sensation, Jecki and Sol cultivated devoted followings alongside Osha and Mae, there were a wealth of different ships involving various combinations of Jecki, Yord, and the twins... you get the idea.

Then episode 5 happened.

The writing was really on the wall when the Brendok coven was abruptly wiped out. Introducting such an interesting (and queer) Force-wielding culture only to exterminate them in the same episode was certainly a choice that somebody made. But episode 5 was a shock to the system for many fans, as the show's resident Sith revealed himself and killed Jecki and Yord in some of the most brutal recent onscreen deaths in Star Wars. To be clear, I think this was a great sequence. Two beloved main characters being suddenly and gruesomely killed off was a masterfully executed shock to the system, especially after viewers were lulled into a false sense of security by all the redshirt deaths in the previous scene.

This, understandably, completely changed the landscape of the Acolyte fandom. Virtually overnight, much of the simping and shipping involving Jecki and Yord dried up, and once the dust had settled as far as the "rip blorbo, gone too soon" posts went, what remained were the usual Sol/twins offerings and a wave of Qimir hype. Which is understandable. He's a badass emo Sith boy with a cool helmet who brutally murdered fan favorite characters in front of us and has palpable tension with the female lead. Who wouldn't love... wait a minute.

This feels familiar somehow.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

And just like that, "the gayest Star Wars" is all about the (straight) sexual tension between an edgy, murderous Sith boy and a light-side girl plagued by dark thoughts whose friends said boy just killed. This is all eerily similar to how the Sequel Trilogy focused on Rey and Kylo while abruptly dropping Finn and Poe's character arcs. Even the fandom discourse is the same. I mean Reylo was so ubiquitous back in the day that it became a derogatory catch-all for good girl/evil boy shipping. Multiple authors now have either gotten their initial start/fame writing Reylo fics, or straight up published legally distinct Reylo fiction after the fashion of Netflix's After. You had the occasional person piping up to say "hey they kind of just left Finn and Poe hanging after TFA, it would've been cool if they got together but at the very least don't relegate them to being side characters/comic relief in separate story threads," and that was it. The same thing is going on with The Acolyte now, only the sequel trilogy wasn't marketed on the strength of being a queer story by a queer creative team. The Acolyte is, which makes it all the more baffling that by the midway point of the first season, all the gays have been buried and the show seems to be heading straight for Reylo 2: High Republic Boogaloo. And the fans are eating it up.

As an interesting aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to contrast the Kylo/Qimir pattern with the broader fandom's treatment of Shin Hati (told you we'd circle back to that), and the ship between her and Sabine Wren. On paper, Shin is very similar to Kylo and Qimir. Villain? Check. Edgy-looking armor? Totes. Emotionally damaged/stunted in some way? Sure looks like it. Tension with the heroine? You betcha. If anything, the only major difference is that Shin isn't as evil as the others. Compare her actions in Ahsoka (clearing out part of a light cruiser with Baylan and making repeated attempts on Sabine's life) to Kylo (oversees multiple war crimes, kills his fan-favorite dad) or Qimir (orchestrates the murders of several Jedi before brutally executing two fan-favorite characters). She's definitely bad, but I struggle to see her as on par with Qimir, let alone fucking Kylo, in terms of evilness.

Which makes it all the more interesting to me that the Shin/Sabine ship has received so much more mainstream skepticism/criticism than the Osha/Qimir or Rey/Kylo ships. "They have no chemistry!" "She's an evil murderer!" "She's a blank slate!" "Sabine is taken!" I may be a touch biased, but from where I sit a large part of the fandom, even the ostensibly progressive side, seems to look down upon Shin/Sabine shippers while swooning for heterosexual variants with far more evil villains.

This isn't a monolith, and I can't stress that enough. I'm not trying to start shit here. Villain shipping is awesome. We support women's wrongs in this house. You do see the occasional person decrying Reylo or Osha/Qimir as toxic, which I think is fairly unnecessary. Like yeah, maybe it's a toxic dynamic, but these are fictional characters. For these specific characters, part of the crowd appeal is the toxic badboy side of things. I don't think we should really spend much energy attacking any fictional ship (between adults, mind you) as toxic, which is why it puzzles me that an as-yet-unconfirmed lesbian ship in a niche show receives such a large proportion of this sort of criticism compared to the canon relationship between two main characters of a blockbuster trilogy.

At the end of the day, this whole affair has been rather sobering for me on both Disney Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom. For all the support the Shin/Sabine ship has received from Ahsoka cast members Ivanna Sakhno (Shin), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger, the other character people like to ship with Sabine), and Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), I'm rather sour on the prospects of it becoming canon. The sequel trilogy dropped the ball on what many saw as a promising chance for an MLM romance between Finn and Poe in favor of trotting out the "why do good girls like bad boys" dynamic, and The Acolyte, "the gay show" overseen by a lesbian, has seemingly shifted to center a similar dynamic after killing off most of its prospects for a queer relationship among the main cast. Simply put, I think that Disney as an international company based in the frighteningly divided United States is reluctant to commit to anything beyond lipservice in terms of LGBT representation in their movies/shows, which again doesn't leave me feeling optimistic about WolfWren's canon potential. And the fandom takes the bait. People love the damaged evil badboy/good girl dynamic, and when the queer fandom suggests the possibility of a queer ship taking center stage in a show with no other extant relationships, even the more progressive side of the fandom tends to either ignore it or actively push back on its basis in reality until Disney Lucasfilm inevitably puts the kibosh on it. The amount of times I've heard people dismiss WolfWren for the same reasons they now like Osha/Qimir and liked Reylo (before that ship was fleshed out/canonicalized, anyway) is ridiculous, but at the end of the day you kinda feel stupid for expecting anything else. Again, I think Qimir is a cool character and I'm as much of a sucker for villain romances as the next girlie, but seeing how easily the fandom lets dangling heterosexual carrots lead it away from Disney Lucasfilm's broken promises of queer rep is a sobering ordeal.

[ofmdrecaps]

11/01-02/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; David Jenkins; Rhys Darby; Darby Foster Kittens; Taika Waititi; Kristian Nairn; Vico Ortiz; Nathan Foad; Samba Schutte; Leslie Jones Guz Khan; Anapela Polataivao; Erroll Shand; Adam Stein; Boris McGiver; NSFW: "DILF Awards"; Fan Spotlight: BabyKittenTeach; Love Notes;

= David Jenkins =

David's been reposting more fan tweets! This time this lovely cloud that absolutely DOES look like our boys.

Source: David Jenkins Twitter

Also too, David answers the hard questions, and yes, I agree, definitely 'Boy'!

Source: David Jenkins Twitter

= Rhys Darby =

New Full length episode of The Cryptid Factor (Episode 99!)! You can access it on The Cryptid Factor Patreon

The Cryptid Factor Patreon

= Darby Foster Kittens =

Apparently Bumbles and the Dog are literally breaking the Darby Foster kittens out of their room and then they're all breaking into the food.

Source: Rosie's Instagram

Source: Rosie's Instagram

= Taika Waititi =

Our friends over at @adoptourcrew brought this great article to everyone's attention! Agreed! It is VERY natural looking and good god is he hot in it! The wig department deserved an Emmy.

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Twitter

= Kristian Nairn =

Kristian's on his way back home!

Source: Kristian's Instagram

= Samba Schutte =

More halloween Shenanigans from Samba!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Samba Schutte (@sambaschutte)

Source: Samba's Instagram

Are you going to be attending Samba's class on Saturday the 9th? If so, Momentus has sent out the recipe list! If you didn't get it for some reason, reach out, I got you!

Source: Samba's Instagram

= Nathan Foad =

Nathan reminiscing about Lucius and then showing us his gorgeous mug for today!

Source: Nathan Foad's Instagram

= Leslie Jones =

Leslie is going to be LIVE in Los Angeles on Nov 6th! Get tickets here!

Source: Leslie Jones Instagram

= Vico Ortiz =

Some fun from October with Vico!

Source: Vico's Instagram

= Anapela Polataivao =

More Auntie at the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts!

Source: Gaby Solomona Instagram

= Guz Khan =

Guz out in Instanbul!

Source: Instagram

= Erroll Shand =

Our Prince Ricky, Erroll Shand's show 'One Night' will be streaming on Netflix starting this month in Australia!

Source: Screenmedia_NSW Instagram

= Adam Stein =

One of our beloved writers, Adam Stein is in a production of Waiting for Godot at the Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles. Nov 6 thru Dec 15 2024!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Geffen Playhouse (@geffenplayhouse)

Source: Adam Stein Instagram

= Boris McGiver =

Father Bonnet has some BTS of his show Teacup, finally getting to see him smile-- it's so lovely!

Source: Instagram

== "DILF" Awards" ==

Well, apparently the "DILF archive" results that were going on, really left many of our crew frustrated with where our dear cast fell. Seven_sugars on twitter has rectified that issue and was kind enough to make some Our Flag Means DILF awards for our various D's out there!

Source: Ashley (Seven_Sugars) Twitter

== Fan Spotlight ==

= babykittenteach =

Idk if you've see it yet but there's an ADORABLE picrew that our dear @babykittenteach created, where you can make some pretty fantastic Ed picrews! I had such a blast with them-- it's so cute and fun, and thank you dear for sharing it with us all!

https://www.tumblr.com/babykittenteach/766039915755683840/hi-i-made-an-ed-picrew-and-you-can-play-with-it?source=share

Source: BabyKittenTeach's Tumblr

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies. I wasn't sure if I was going to get these done in time tonight... what with how behind I am. I know that a lot of us are all very worried about what's going on in the world, and specific in the US with the presidential elections about to happen. No matter what the results are, I know it doesn't just affect the U.S., it affects the whole planet. So many of our crewmates from around the world have been sending support and love, and I'm so very thankful to have the honor of knowing you all. Just remember, that no matter what happens tomorrow the 5th, you all are just as strong, and resilient and beautiful as you were yesterday. We are going to make it through whatever happens. Remember to lean on your crew if you need help, we're here okay? We are stronger in numbers, and we care about you <3 Additional love note tonight from our friend @illustoryart with Nadja!

Source: @illustoryart's Instagram

[bluebunnysart]

Fanart of my own fanfiction (Chimera Teto x Android Miku)

Good news! When I woke up and looked at my art again today, I liked it, so here's the uncolored version! I trust you tumblr people, so here you go! You may view. This technically means I've drawn UTAU Teto (here) and SynthV Teto, but I really want to color this and take my time doing so, so here are the lines before it turns into something else hahaha 😂😂😂 Read More for the stuff I wanted to write last night but was too tired to (also the art time lapse)

I showed like two WIPs of different ideas on Twitter but none of them were this LOL (just goes to show how much I wanna draw and see of these two specifically) but the reason I decided to go with this is 'cuz that fanfic I wrote in like one day really got me excited and it made me really want to draw them as I was imagining more stuff about them. Here I'll talk about what I had in mind

I love chimera Teto, especially her majestic wings, and what I drew here is basically inspired by that! Teto's basically the only "living, sentient" thing around Miku so far (I dunno how to approach adding more creatures just yet), which makes Miku extra interested in her. But basically Miku likes Teto's wings and tail too and is very fascinated by them.

I had an idea where Miku is just holding or playing with Teto's tail out of nowhere and complimenting the heck out of her, and that was condensed into this piece. It was too crowded on Miku's side to have Teto's tail there as well, but the reason Teto's embarrassed (tsundere is nice, aint it xD) is 'cuz Miku is indeed praising the heck out of her. Calling her cute and saying how cool her wings are and whatnot.

The dialogue kinda goes like, "Your wings are so cool! And I really like how expressive your tail is! I wonder what I would do with a tail. It's so cute! Actually, now that I think about it, all of you is really cute!!" (Teto, embarrassed: "Stop talking now.") wwww

Miku does have a kinda tail actually! It's the chain on top of her skirt. As an android, I was thinking it works as sort of a battery plug or USB or something. I can show off more of that later (since it's really small here lol) but she can use it to receive electricity and recharge herself, I guess~. (Note to self: make it bigger?)

I haven't shown off much of my art style, but most (normal) characters usually don't have pupils. (See: this Teto, who's a living breathing creature.) As a result, I decided to give Miku pupils (kinda robot-like) to make her seem like more of a robot. She also wears the thing (headphones) over her ears, of course, which I can also use to make her seem more robot-like. There's no green flashing of code in her eyes right now but I might draw that sometime too, after my loads of other ideas...

Teto's wings aren't fragile. They're probably firm, hard, and could even be scaly/rough (up to my own whims or the reader's own preference). Her letting Miku touch her (wings) is probably a huge display of trust/confidence. Teto's wings are strong enough to carry her far distances and even allow her to fly in bad weather, I think. It's up to Teto herself how much energy/desire she has to do things like that though.

This is mentioned in the fic too, but Teto probably folds her wings a lot so they don't get in the way. She's kinda like a bird. I think her silhouette against the sun or moon, with full wingspan, is probably majestic (I'm imagining the Batman symbol for some reason lol). I know some people color Teto's wings as purple, but I specified black in my fic to match her tail. ^^

In order for her wings to breathe, there are probably holes in the back of her outfit to accommodate them, but they're only big enough for the wings (ellipses/ovals probably): she either tears/cuts holes into the shirts she wears for her wings or they already fit her wings so there's no problem. I wonder if Teto made her UTAU outfit herself in this setting. xD (A girl has to pass the time SOMEHOW plus she's probably at least a little bit handy when it comes to clothes and stuff (survival).)

If, while I'm coloring, I need to make adjustments to the seating and lineart and all that, I will, but I figured I'd show off what made me stay up 'til 5 AM last night and then get embarrassed to post 'cuz I thought I wasn't finished yet. I woke up and I liked it, so I'm just gonna put it in this here blog. c:

I don't know how to color, so coloring will be a trip 😂

[dearheart42regenerated]

MOTORCITY SEASON 2 MASTERPOST

once upon a time, over 10 years ago, just a few months after the announcement that Motorcity was officially canceled...the creators of the show took pity on their heartbroken fandom and gave us several glimpses of what season 2 might have been like. they saw how much we loved Motorcity and gave us every scrap of info they could at the time, so that we could use those scraps to imagine our own personal "Season 2" - whether it continue on in our fics, our fanart, or simply our own heads.

I'm making this masterpost so that none of this material will be lost or forgotten, and so any fanartists/fic writers still hanging around today can use it for inspiration. if there's any related material I've missed, PLEASE feel free to add it in a reblog or let me know in my inbox! I want this list to be as complete as we can make it! :)

--

The Season 2 That Never Was: A Comprehensive List

Motorcity Season 2 Rough Intro "Scratch audio by our very own Chris P." (x)

-> backup download

--

Season 2 Writer's Wall posted (and later deleted) by @chrisprynoski on twitter, and shared on tumblr by @peopleofmotorcity, these pictures of the writer's wall showed us a "rough sketch" of what could have been, and gave our imaginations SO many fun theories and possibilities to play with. every blurry sticky note was a treasure to us. :')

-> original tumblr posts: x x x x x x x x x x x x -> image masterpost -> google drive folder

--

Chris Prynoski's Fan Interview + Tumblr Q&A's this whole interview on youtube is a delight to listen to, and Part 2 in particular has some interesting bits about season 2. (skip to 17:10 for some good stuff about Texas and Chuck's backgrounds!)

-> Part 1 -> Part 2

Chris P also answered several juicy season 2 questions on tumblr. sadly his blog is deactivated now, but you can still read through all of them at the links below!

-> image masterpost -> google drive folder

--

Capri Chilton - Mike Chilton's long lost big sister! I can't remember where or when it was first revealed that they were considering giving Mike a secret older sister, and I haven't been able to track down the origin. that being said, when it was revealed, the fandom loved the idea so much that they begged the creators to make it canon. Chris P busted out the "magical canon stick", gave us this delightful concept sketch, and "Capri Chilton" was born!

--

The Motorcity Series Bible "To help you all understand what it is you are reading, this is the material that Titmouse used to help pitch Motorcity, and it was also a tool for writers to use when coming up with episodes to help understand who the characters were before there was any other reference. That being said, this was one of the very first documents about Motorcity, so many things have changed or evolved from these early concepts." (x)

-> original tumblr posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 -> image backups -> PDF download

EDIT: the COMPLETE series bible has now been leaked by Lost Media Busters on X (Twitter) and helpfully shared by @waksworldrebooted!!

--> here is a google drive download for the full PDF file!

--

Motorcity Series Bible - Redacted Version (Pages 1, 2, 17, 19, 20) funfact: @peopleofmotorcity was the official? unofficial? tumblr blog for Motorcity, and it was run by a guy named Mac - an animator for the show who loved to tease and joke around with the fandom. before revealing the actual first 13 pages of the series bible, he posted this censored version as a prank - a mix of truth and trolling! it's up to the fandom to decide which is which. ;)

-> original tumblr posts: 1 2 17 19 20 -> image backups -> PDF download

--

MTV Era Motorcity Masterpost a fantastic collection of glimpses into the original pilot/pitch trailer that would evolve into the show we know and love today, found and compiled by @waksworldrebooted. "In 2000, Chris Prynoski pitched a cartoon called Motorcity. He made a card and a website promoting the show, which wouldn't see the light of day until the Walt Disney Company got their hands on it."

--> tumblr masterpost (including wayback links to the old website) --> twitter sources from Chris P himself :)

--

Motorcity Unaired Pilot - 2009 Disney Version Originally aired during Comic Con 2012, the pilot was recorded and then posted on YouTube by Allison Simmons in July of 2012, later being privatized in 2022. The video was re uploaded onto VKVideo 22 days after its original posting to YouTube and is still currently available to watch online. (x)

--> backup download --> also viewable here!

--

if I find more material, I will add it here! :)

[vladdyissues]

Do you have any opinion on the pompous pep fans who are hiding? I mean, they like art and writing but they always have to be anonymous and never save or upload anything for fear that the they judge

(💞💞💞puffy aww, Thanks for uploading that)

We all do fandom our own way. I respect any fan's decision to participate in fandom however they please. The measure of a fan isn't how much ''''content'''' they produce or how much merchandise they own or how active they are, though all of these things have their own merit. Being an artist/writer/gif maker/horse wrangler doesn't automatically make you "more of a fan" than someone who just reads fic and enjoys art. If you like something, you're a fan. Period.

Lurkers, community mods, fandom event organizers, artists who never post their work outside Discord, writers who only publish Anonymous fics—we're all different and we're all valid. Some of us are loud and proud, some of us are shy or have social anxiety, some of us make a living through art and want to keep our work and fannish lives separate, and some of us just don't have the energy to deal with drama, so we avoid hubs that attract quarrelsome, contentious people (like Twitter). I don't fault anyone for wanting to play it safe, nor do I condemn anyone for being gregarious. We all bring something different to the community.

I think the specific issue with pompep fans being afraid to post may be because they're new to the fandom (or Tumblr) and no one has reached out to them yet. I've never been shy about joining fandoms, but I'm also from a different time. I understand how someone might be wary in today's fandom environment. But once they see how many of us there are and what a huge, long-lived, friendly community is waiting for them, I think they'll lose that fear very quickly. My ask box is always open if anyone wants to reach out.

[marta-bee]

Chris Hayes, one of the MSNBC hosts, recently wrote a book about what he calls "the attention economy" - basically the way social media and most other things besides are vying for our attention and crowding out space for us to be alone with our own thoughts. It sounds a bit luddite when I put it like that, but hearing him talk about it, he's clearly thought it through and has something intelligent to say about it all.

At least one of his points is we should carve out time away from our phones and other screens. Like, take a twenty minute walk and leave your phone, your MP3 player, all that at home and just Be with ourselves. Which is a really good idea, actually. Fanfic authors know how easily Tumblr can kill the muses. It's like the scrolling taps into a very different part of my brain than what I need to actually tell a story. They pull against each other, and honestly, the easy fun of the Tumblr scroll usually wins out.

But the media landscape being what it is, the conversations so quickly turn to the evils of kids and screen-time. Or how The Algorithm (TM) blasts our mental health. Or the way we're alienated from our real-life communities because Twitter (or whatever) is Right There.

My whole life, so much of the relationships I value the most play out over a screen. Growing up, I had a hard time with the family I was born into, but was close with a particular part of my extended family in Germany, and between visits my cousin and I would write just absolutely mammoth amounts of email and chat on AIM every day. The Kid is in a different city than me, and though we can and do call, chatting and texting is so much easier. And more generally, growing up I just never really connected with people in person the same way I did with geeks online. But, like, specific geeks. The same specific geeks over years, to the point I knew their kids' names and visited a few of them in real life.

There's just something about having something in common that I cared about, and also having the time to think about what I wanted to say and how to say it. Maybe that's the little neurodivergent person I've always had in me. Maybe it's being a bit anxious and not easily understood by the people in my offline life. I don't know. It's clearly not the same, but it felt Real all the same.

Don't get me wrong. The algorithm really is evil and damaging, and the push to just keep scrolling needs to be reckoned with. I manage it by using RSS rather than the Tumblr dash, which takes a lot of set-up work and limits who I can follow, but also means I'm looking at and enjoying specific posts rather than trying to keep up with whatever people are posting. It makes it easier to do it for a certain time and then step away and do something else, knowing the new posts will still be there whenever I check back. And the news is the worst! We really do need to keep ourselves informed, but also set limits so it doesn't overwhelm our whole day. When I'm good, I check into Google news once or twice a day for maybe 15 minutes, and increasingly I'm seeing it as one more water-drop in a larger bucket rather than fresh outrages every damned time. On good days.

So, yes, there are dangers that need to be managed. I worry for teens who don't yet have the skills to do that. Heck, I worry for a lot of adults I know for the same reason. I actually agree with Chris on quite a lot of what he's said in those interviews. But also, I worry about that twelve-year-old Marta, if she hadn't been able to find people she was actually comfortable with on Prodigy message boards and listservs. And I certainly wouldn't have come out so well if my parents were always monitoring what I said and did. I needed that, and I'm sure other people did, too.

I don't know the solution. God help the parents and the teens navigating this all today; it really is a much less safe world in so many ways than the one I grew up in. But I worry for the little geeklets, and hope they find a comfy corner to grow up into proper geeks. Somehow.

[lotusarchon]

Might go on a hiatus, but not sure currently. This is an impulsive ass post, and an impulsive ass decision, and I have bad habits of sticking to my plans. For now, yeah, it's in my mind. I might uninstall Tumblr too...

Respectfully, please do not send me any type of ask. The only reason I'm keeping my ask box open is for the aesthetic (cough), but I prefer for it to remain empty until I remove myself from this "hiatus."

Yes, I will still be writing, but overall I'm going to stick to AO3 for the time. Maybe return to Wattpad too but yeah.

tw vent under the cut. not important and not vital so don't feel obliged to read, i just gotta get it out.

I...I've tried, man. I've tried a lot to feel better, and pretend, but it's not. Working. Nothing works.

I..I'm just a really bad person, I think. People are gonna argue, "No, you're not a bad person!" You don't know that. You don't know what I feel inside to think that. I went out of my way to harass someone, on their Twitter and Tumblr, just because I was fucking drunk and upset and lonely. I went out of my way to bother them despite being the one attempting to put distance. I..stressed out, people. Stressed them out, because my behavior was borderline obsessive and holy fuck, seeing that message still hurts because of how right it was.

I'm such. I'm such a bad person. I'm horrible. I fucked up my own relationships, and now I'm never gonna get it back. I'm never gonna be able to talk to that person again because of my own selfish stupid ways and it hurts so bad.

And I'm trying. I'm trying to stop thinking about it, and I'm trying my hardest not to care but I can't. Fucking stop. And it's suffocating and it hurts and I'm so stupid. For everything. Everything hurts, everything really hurts and I just don't know what to do.

I've always been told to talk to a trusted adult. I wish people understood that I can't. The closest to an adult I can trust is myself, and I'm dumb so that's fun.

I don't know what to do anymore. I'm trying. I'm not...gonna drown my worries in alcohol again. Definitely not, nor am I gonna try to...overdose, at least. Or cut, owch. Not a fun way to die. Too scary, and waaaay too painful.

I still want to die though. I still feel the need to die. I feel awful. I'm so horrible, I'm so fucking awful. I screw up everything, then I want things back but I can't get it back. Not this time around.

And I just feel like there's just no more point in doing this. Playing this game of live today, wish to die tomorrow. There's no point.

I. I wish I was a better person. I wish I didn't fuck up every single one of my friendships, and hurt the people I care about. I wish I didn't. Exist. I wish I hadn't join Tumblr, because then I wouldn't have met these people, and my life...would be easier. Because I'd be lonely, but at least I was happy.

I'm tired, and I want. To sleep forever. Because at least in my dreams I'm a better person. At least in my dreams, I don't fuck up every thing.

...

I'm not saying I'm gonna actually kill myself yet, though lmfao. They're thoughts but I'm not acting on them.

Not yet, anyway.

I'm gonna be active on my AO3, or try to be, but if I stop posting or don't post, then these are my final words.

You bitches gay. Love y'all though. Hopefully I don't die and I come back to beat you guys up, but eh.

In case I'm not back. Bye bye! Thank you all for the support and niceness. I'm sorry to the ones I've hurt, harassed and annoyed. From the bottom of my heart, I'm super sorry, unintentional or not. I'm sorry. To this one specific person, you're my cool lil bro, and I'm happy to have met you and I hope life gets better for you. And offer my apologies to you know who still, I hope one day they'll forgive me but if not...blegh.

Also I was the number one Erlang fan.

If I come back though, you guys are gay and also I'm beating you all up and there's nothing you can do about it okay byeeeeeeeeeee

[centurieslater]

knowing your partner well can potentially make wriitng together a lot easier . . . ( REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG )

name: i've only ever referred to myself as b in the rpc! it's the letter of my first name.

pronouns: she/her.

preference of communication: for individuals i just met i usually prefer ims, but discord is where most conversations happen once i have established a friendship with someone.

name of muse(s): well, this is a multi-muse. so, i have quite a bit! this is my carrd. i write in many fandoms, but my favorite universes to write in would have to be dc/marvel, cobra kai, and final fantasy.

platforms you've used: i started roleplaying on tumblr and that's where i've been for the most part, but i have dabbled in twitter rp but only through established groups found on tumblr. i know actual twitter rp is different and probably not my cup of tea lol.

best experience: writing @/stcrgirl was by far the best experience i have ever had roleplaying on tumblr. i was a marvel girlie, but i fell in love with dc's stargirl comics when i was nineteen and when the show came out i just had to write courtney. she's been a comfort muse of mine for years and i even met brec, the actress who plays her, back in 2022. a lot of the friends i have today i met through her blog and being apart of that fandom. i was afraid to interact with people out of character prior to writing her. so, having her as a muse definitely broke me out of my shell. she just has a very special place in my heart! for many reasons.

rp pet peeve / dealbreakers: i have a high tolerance and so it takes a lot for things to bother me, unfortunately, i'm a overthinker and a worrier. so, it’s tough when i can’t tell exactly what someone’s feeling or trying to say, and it makes my mind go into overdrive. clear, honest communication is key! and it’s frustrating when people don’t just speak up directly. it's just way easier to navigate situations when people are upfront about things instead of letting their feelings out in cryptic or indirect ways.

fluff, angst, or smut: i like everything except smut. it's hard for me to write intimate stuff like that especially with people i don't know all to well. i'll personally never write it, but kudos to those who can and do!

plots or memes: i'd say memes just because i'm a bit shy and introverted so it's harder for me to approach people for plots, but i love those who can just pop in and spark up a conversation. you guys make roleplaying on here a whole lot easier!

best time to write: there's never a best time to write for me. i could do a reply right now or at 3am. it really just depends what mood i'm in.

are you like your muse(s): a lot of my muses i write because i see bits of myself in them, but i don't think any of them are exactly like me. i'm not as cool, clearly! i am known for writing optimistic / up beat characters, but there are quite a few muses i have that are the polar opposite. but i do think i can relate to most of them.

tagged by: i stole it off the dash :) tagging: @proveagain, @compunctions, @moonache, @innocentsbled, @nicisversion, @alcrescendo, @mskwtz, @taughtdefense, @taughtpain

[sonicenvy]

An AO3 app? -- The next installment in my AO3 posting.

I'm going to preface this by telling you that I don't entirely understand the urge or need to have an app for everything, but then again, I am closer to 30 than 20, so maybe that's the difference. Moving on.

So I've seen a lot of people saying that they wish there was an AO3 app. Presumably these people read AO3 on their phones or tablets. The thing is, there is NO AO3 app. If you see an app in the App Store or the Play Store claiming to be an AO3 app, it is fake, and you should not download it.

Say it with me kids:

"ao3 does not have an app and will not have an app."

The thing is, there's a really good reason why it will never happen. If you've been on this site (tumblr) long enough you'll either remember or have heard about the great tumblr porn ban (aka the ban on "female presenting nipples"). Believe it or not there was time where the tumblr (official) policy on adult content was "go nuts, show nuts. whatever." <-- actual quote btw.

A big reason why the tumblr porn ban ever happened was because of the tumblr app, specifically, the tumblr app for iOS. Apple decided one day that they thought that the tumblr app contained too much "sensitive content" and they banned tumblr's app from the Apple App Store, until such time as tumblr took what they believed sufficient corrective action for this "issue." Apple also believed that tumblr's app was hosting CP, which they considered a violation of their TOS.

So, in response to Apple banning them from the app store (which did not effect current users of the tumblr app, only potential new tumblr users), tumblr rolled out the adult content ban, so that they could get re-instated on the App Store. Like many other new "features" and "updates" to this site, the roll out was clunky, badly done and deeply unpopular. It was easily one of the worst changes for this site, in no small part because of how clunky it was; lots of innocuous posts were incorrectly flagged, and many bloggers found their entire blogs flagged, with little recourse in the initial wake of the ban. Critically, this event saw a great many users on tumblr leave this platform for twitter. How this affected site culture is up to debate.

Why am I telling you this? Well, as I am sure you, as an AO3 user are well aware, AO3 hosts a great deal of "adult content," of many persuasions and forms. They are explicitly against censorship of any kind. The app store is NOT against all censorship. These are two conflicting values. Since AO3 (and by extension OTW) has no interest in purging content from their site on behest of a megacorp (which btw is also why they rely on donations only and don't serve advertisements), they have no interest in developing an app, given the potential for restrictions.

Besides, AO3's website is simple, clean, and mobile responsive. Why fix something that ain't broke??

But, wait, if you're the target audience I'm hoping to reach with this post, you still want an app for AO3 on your home screen!

Never fear, my app loving youngsters! There is a way for you to create an "app" icon on your iPad or iPhone's home screen for AO3 (or any other site you like really) Apologies Android users; I don't have an Android, so I can't show you something analogous to this on Android, and don't know if they have it. Ditto on Kindle Fire.

This tutorial will use both safari and Firefox*. I won't show you Chrome (derogatory) because I don't have it and don't use it.

*Side note, switching to Firefox today is a great thing that you can do for yourself. You can easily import all of your Chrome bookmarks if that's what worries you.

In Firefox:

Step 1. Visit AO3 in the Firefox browser.

Step 2. Tap the hamburger menu in the right hand side of the top ribbon to reveal the browser and page settings and options menu, and locate the "Share" option (highlighted in blue below):

Step 3. In the "share" menu popup, locate and tap the "Add to Home Screen" option (highlighted in blue below):

Step 4. Give your new "app" (secretly just a bookmark) a title. You can leave it as the default, but I suggest shortening it so that the entirety of it shows on your home screen. You can name it whatever you want.

In Safari:

Step 1. Visit AO3 in the Safari browser.

Step 2. Tap the share icon in the right hand side of the top ribbon and scroll down until you find the "Add to Home Screen" option (highlighted in green below). Tap this option.

Step 3. In the "add to home screen" pop up, type whatever name you want in the name field (highlighted in green below). You can leave it as the default, but I suggest that you change it to something shorter so it displays in full with the icon on the home screen.

Either way, you should end up with an icon on your home screen that looks like this:

This is not an "app" BUT it is an icon on your home screen. When you tap the icon, it takes you to the home page of AO3, in whatever browser you created the bookmark in. You can move it around however you'd like, just like a real app, and put it any folder you'd like.

So that's all I have for this chat.

See you again next time I get inspired to write an ao3 chat/tutorial post for newbies!

Final note, If any of my followers have Android devices or Kindle Fire devices and want to add a photo tutorial for this on those platforms to this post, please feel free to, since I don't have any devices with either of those OSes, and thus could not do that myself.

[slugdragoon]

Hello there!

I see that you do a lot of devlogs here on Tumblr. May I know if that's helped you with getting people interested in your game? I'm a beginner game dev and I currently only post my devlogs on Twitter/X. I only put long discussion-form logs in here once in a while.

Do you think it's worth putting my shorter devlogs in here as well?

Good question, one I ask myself while I'm doing it, and I think most people would give the advice that devlogs are more for other developers than potential players.

They, for most people do not serve as effective marketing, but it depends on what you're after. I personally have put out 16 video devlogs as well as 3 longer form pixel art tutorial videos since I've started 5 months ago, and I always post them here, on Twitter, and my Ko-fi page. The result is that I have almost 100 subscribers on YouTube, a dozen or so regulars that like my posts on Tumblr, and on Twitter excepting a few small interactions it mostly seems like people looking to trade promotions for their own games. So a very small following after 5 months.

The reason I do it now is that the best time to plant a seed was yesterday, the second best time is today. Better to have 100 followers excited when they see my prototype morphing into a real game down the line than try to show it off for the first time. The second reason is, even at small numbers I personally find it motivating. I feel accountable to even a small number of people that leave nice comments, and I want to make something new week to week to show them. In terms of sheer numbers no, you have to be a bit crazy to do this.

I'm also in a unique situation where I've been unemployed since the end of a contract, looking for a programming job but the market is shot, and I have a wonderful parter that encourages me to just be a stay-at-home parent for a while and take my one shot at building a game until I get another employment opportunity.

It's a balance though, I used to try to hit a devlog each week, but that was unsustainable. Recording and editing a video 1 out of every 7 days cuts seriously into dev time, so now I try to hit every 2, sometimes 3 weeks to try to make enough substantial changes to talk about. I started also by making a lot of posts about other RPGs while I was journalling my thoughts on class and party designs, and I thought I would go deeper into that, but those have dropped off.

Also, I haven't posted in longer than usual, but I'm a dev making a game directly inspired by Shin Megami Tensei - so you know Metaphor Refantazio has me locked in hard. I don't play as many games since starting my own, but this one is "research".

[andymakesgames]

Balatro-Inspired Spinning Card Tweetcart Breakdown

I recently made a tweetcart of a spinning playing card inspired by finally playing Balatro, the poker roguelike everybody is talking about.

If you don't know what a tweetcart is, it's a type of size-coding where people write programs for the Pico-8 fantasy console where the source code is 280 characters of less, the length of a tweet.

I'm actually not on twitter any more, but I still like 280 characters as a limitation. I posted it on my mastodon and my tumblr.

Here's the tweetcart I'm writing about today:

And here is the full 279 byte source code for this animation:

a=abs::_::cls()e=t()for r=0,46do for p=0,1,.025do j=sin(e)*20k=cos(e)*5f=1-p h=a(17-p*34)v=a(23-r)c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6u=(r-1)/80z=a(p-.2)if(e%1<.5)c=a(r-5)<5and z<u+.03and(r==5or z>u)and 8or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 g=r+39pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)end end flip()goto _

This post is available with much nicer formatting on the EMMA blog. You can read it here.

You can copy/paste that code into a blank Pico-8 file to try it yourself. I wrote it on Pico-8 version 0.2.6b.

I'm very pleased with this cart! From a strictly technical perspective I think it's my favorite that I've ever made. There is quite a bit going on to make the fake 3D as well as the design on the front and back of the card. In this post I'll be making the source code more readable as well as explaining some tools that are useful if you are making your own tweetcarts or just want some tricks for game dev and algorithmic art.

Expanding the Code

Tweetcarts tend to look completely impenetrable, but they are often less complex than they seem. The first thing to do when breaking down a tweetcart (which I highly recommend doing!) is to just add carriage returns after each command.

Removing these line breaks is a classic tweetcart method to save characters. Lua, the language used in Pico-8, often does not need a new line if a command does not end in a letter, so we can just remove them. Great for saving space, bad for readability. Here's that same code with some line breaks, spaces and indentation added:

a=abs ::_:: cls() e=t() for r=0,46 do for p=0,1,.025 do j=sin(e)*20 k=cos(e)*5 f=1-p h=a(17-p*34) v=a(23-r) c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6 u=(r-1)/80 z=a(p-.2) if(e%1<.5) c= a(r-5) < 5 and z < u+.03 and (r==5 or z>u) and 8 or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 g=r+39 pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c) end end flip()goto _

Note: the card is 40 pixels wide and 46 pixels tall. Those number will come up a lot. As will 20 (half of 40) and 23 (half of 46).

Full Code with Variables and Comments

Finally, before I get into what each section is doing, here is an annotated version of the same code. In this code, variables have real names and I added comments:

[editor's note. this one came out terribly on tumblr. Please read the post on my other blog to see it]

This may be all you need to get a sense of how I made this animation, but the rest of this post will be looking at how each section of the code contributes to the final effect. Part of why I wanted to write this post is because I was happy with how many different tools I managed to use in such a small space.

flip() goto_

This pattern shows up in nearly every tweetcart:

::_:: MOST OF THE CODE flip()goto _

This has been written about in Pixienop's Tweetcart Basics which I highly recommend for anybody curious about the medium! The quick version is that using goto is shorter than declaring the full draw function that Pico-8 carts usually use.

Two Spinning Points

The card is drawn in rows starting from the top and going to the bottom. Each of these lines is defined by two points that move around a center point in an elliptical orbit.

The center of the top of the card is x=64 (dead center) and y=39 (a sort of arbitrary number that looked nice).

Then I get the distance away from that center that my two points will be using trigonometry.

x_dist = sin(time)*20 y_dist = cos(time)*5

Here are those points:

P1 adds x_dist and y_dist to the center point and P2 subtracts those same values.

Those are just the points for the very top row. The outer for loop is the vertical rows. The center x position will be the same each time, but the y position increases with each row like this: y_pos = row+39

Here's how it looks when I draw every 3rd row going down:

It is worth noting that Pico-8 handles sin() and cos() differently than most languages. Usually the input values for these functions are in radians (0 to two pi), but in Pico-8 it goes from 0 to 1. More info on that here. It takes a little getting used to but it is actually very handy. More info in a minute on why I like values between 0 and 1.

Time

In the shorter code, e is my time variable. I tend to use e for this. In my mind it stands for "elapsed time". In Pico-8 time() returns the current elapsed time in seconds. However, there is a shorter version, t(), which obviously is better for tweetcarts. But because I use the time value a lot, even the 3 characters for t() is often too much, so I store it in the single-letter variable e.

Because it is being used in sine and cosine for this tweetcart, every time e reaches 1, we've reached the end of a cycle. I would have liked to use t()/2 to slow this cart down to be a 2 second animation, but after a lot of fiddling I wound up being one character short. So it goes.

e is used in several places in the code, both to control the angle of the points and to determine which side of the card is facing the camera.

Here you can see how the sine value of e controls the rotation and how we go from showing the front of the card to showing the back when e%1 crosses the threshold of 0.5.

Drawing and Distorting the Lines

Near the top and bottom of the loop we'll find the code that determines the shape of the card and draws the horizontal lines that make up the card. Here is the loop for drawing a single individual line using the code with expanded variable names:

for prc = 0,1,.025 do x_dist = sin(time)*20 y_dist = cos(time)*5 ... y_pos = row+39 pset( (64+x_dist)*prc + (64-x_dist)*(1-prc), (y_pos+y_dist)*prc + (y_pos-y_dist)*(1-prc), color) end

You might notice that I don't use Pico-8's line function! That's because each line is drawn pixel by pixel.

This tweetcart simulates a 3D object by treating each vertical row of the card as a line of pixels. I generate the points on either side of the card(p1 and p2 in this gif), and then interpolate between those two points. That's why the inner for loop creates a percentage from 0 to 1 instead of pixel positions. The entire card is drawn as individual pixels. I draw them in a line, but the color may change with each one, so they each get their own pset() call.

Here's a gif where I slow down this process to give you a peek at how these lines are being drawn every frame. For each row, I draw many pixels moving across the card between the two endpoints in the row.

Here's the loop condition again: for prc = 0,1,.025 do

A step of 0.025 means there are 40 steps (0.025 * 40 = 1.0). That's the exact width of the card! When the card is completely facing the camera head-on, I will need 40 steps to make it across without leaving a gap in the pixels. When the card is skinnier, I'm still drawing all 40 pixels, but many of them will be in the same place. That's fine. The most recently drawn one will take priority.

Getting the actual X and Y position

I said that the position of each pixel is interpolated between the two points, but this line of code may be confusing:

y_pos = row+39 pset( (64+x_dist)*prc + (64-x_dist)*(1-prc), (y_pos+y_dist)*prc + (y_pos-y_dist)*(1-prc), color)

So let's unpack it a little bit. If you've ever used a Lerp() function in something like Unity you've used this sort of math. The idea is that we get two values (P1 and P2 in the above example), and we move between them such that a value of 0.0 gives us P1 and 1.0 gives us P2.

Here's a full cart that breaks down exactly what this math is doing:

::_:: cls() time = t()/8 for row = 0,46 do for prc = 0,1,.025 do x_dist = sin(time)*20 y_dist = cos(time)*5 color = 9 + row % 3 p1x = 64 + x_dist p1y = row+39 + y_dist p2x = 64 - x_dist p2y = row+39 - y_dist x = p2x*prc + p1x*(1-prc) y = p2y*prc + p1y*(1-prc) pset( x, y, color) end end flip()goto _

I'm defining P1 and P2 very explicitly (getting an x and y for both), then I get the actual x and y position that I use by multiplying P2 by prc and P1 by (1-prc) and adding the results together.

This is easiest to understand when prc is 0.5, because then we're just taking an average. In school we learn that to average a set of numbers you add them up and then divide by how many you had. We can think of that as (p1+p2) / 2. This is the same as saying p1*0.5 + p2*0.5.

But the second way of writing it lets us take a weighted average if we want. We could say p1*0.75 + p2*0.25. Now the resulting value will be 75% of p1 and 25% of p2. If you laid the two values out on a number line, the result would be just 25% of the way to p2. As long as the two values being multiplied add up to exactly 1.0 you will get a weighted average between P1 and P2.

I can count on prc being a value between 0 and 1, so the inverse is 1.0 - prc. If prc is 0.8 then 1.0-prc is 0.2. Together they add up to 1!

I use this math everywhere in my work. It's a really easy way to move smoothly between values that might otherwise be tricky to work with.

Compressing

I'm using a little over 400 characters in the above example. But in the real cart, the relevant code inside the loops is this:

j=sin(e)*20 k=cos(e)*5 g=r+39 pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)

which can be further condensed by removing the line breaks:

j=sin(e)*20k=cos(e)*5g=r+39pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)

Because P1, P2 and the resulting interpolated positions x and y are never used again, there is no reason to waste chars by storing them in variables. So all of the interpolation is done in the call to pset().

There are a few parts of the calculation that are used more than once and are four characters or more. Those are stored as variables (j, k & g in this code). These variables tend to have the least helpful names because I usually do them right at the end to save a few chars so they wind up with whatever letters I have not used elsewhere.

Spinning & Drawing

Here's that same example, but with a checker pattern and the card spinning. (Keep in mind, in the real tweetcart the card is fully draw every frame and would not spin mid-draw)

This technique allows me to distort the lines because I can specify two points and draw my lines between them. Great for fake 3D! Kind of annoying for actually drawing shapes, because now instead of using the normal Pico-8 drawing tools, I have to calculate the color I want based on the row (a whole number between0 and 46) and the x-prc (a float between 0 and 1).

Drawing the Back

Here's the code that handles drawing the back of the card:

h=a(17-p*34) v=a(23-r) c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6

This is inside the nested for loops, so r is the row and p is a percentage of the way across the horizontal line.

c is the color that we will eventually draw in pset().

h and v are the approximate distance from the center of the card. a was previously assigned as a shorthand for abs() so you can think of those lines like this:

h=abs(17-p*34) v=abs(23-r)

v is the vertical distance. The card is 46 pixels tall so taking the absolute value of 23-r will give us the distance from the vertical center of the card. (ex: if r is 25, abs(23-r) = 2. and if r is 21, abs(23-r) still equals 2 )

As you can probably guess, h is the horizontal distance from the center. The card is 40 pixels wide, but I opted to shrink it a bit by multiplying p by 34 and subtracting that from half of 34 (17). The cardback just looks better with these lower values, and the diamond looks fine.

The next line, where I define c, is where things get confusing. It's a long line doing some clunky math. The critical thing is that when this line is done, I need c to equal 1 (dark blue) or 7 (white) on the Pico-8 color pallette.

Here's the whole thing: c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6

Here is that line broken down into much more discrete steps.

c = 1 --start with a color of 1 low_dist = min(23-v,17-h) --get the lower inverted distance from center val = low_dist % 5 --mod 5 to bring it to a repeating range of 0 to 5 val = val / 3 --divide by 3. value is now 0 to 1.66 val = flr(val) --round it down. value is now 0 or 1 val = val * 6 --multiply by 6. value is now 0 or 6 c += val --add value to c, making it 1 or 7

The first thing I do is c=1. That means the entire rest of the line will either add 0 or 6 (bumping the value up to 7). No other outcome is acceptable. min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6 will always evaluate to 0 or 6.

I only want the lower value of h and v. This is what will give it the nice box shape. If you color the points inside a rectangle so that ones that are closer to the center on their X are one color and ones that are closer to the center on their Y are a different color you'll get a pattern with clean diagonal lines running from the center towards the corners like this:

You might think I would just use min(v,h) instead of the longer min(23-v,17-h) in the actual code. I would love to do that, but it results in a pattern that is cool, but doesn't really look like a card back.

I take the inverted value. Instead of having a v that runs from 0 to 23, I flip it so it runs from 23 to 0. I do the same for h. I take the lower of those two values using min().

Then I use modulo (%) to bring the value to a repeating range of 0 to 5. Then I divide that result by 3 so it is 0 to ~1.66. The exact value doens't matter too much because I am going round it down anyway. What is critical is that it will become 0 or 1 after rounding because then I can multiply it by a specific number without getting any values in between.

Wait? If I'm rounding down, where is flr() in this line: c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6?

It's not there! That's because there is a sneaky tool in Pico-8. You can use \1 to do the same thing as flr(). This is integer division and it generally saves a 3 characters.

Finally, I multiply the result by 6. If it is 0, we get 0. If it is 1 we get 6. Add it to 1 and we get the color we want!

Here's how it looks with each step in that process turned on or off:

A Note About Parentheses

When I write tweetcarts I would typically start by writing this type of line like this: c=1+ (((min(23-v,17-h)%5)/3) \1) *6

This way I can figure out if my math makes sense by using parentheses to ensure that my order of operations works. But then I just start deleting them willy nilly to see what I can get away with. Sometimes I'm surprised and I'm able to shave off 2 characters by removing a set of parentheses.

The Face Side

The face side with the diamond and the "A" is a little more complex, but basically works the same way as the back. Each pixel needs to either be white (7) or red (8). When the card is on this side, I'll be overwriting the c value that got defined earlier.

Here's the code that does it (with added white space). This uses the h and v values defined earlier as well as the r and p values from the nested loops.

u=(r-1)/80 z=a(p-.2) if(e%1<.5) c= a(r-5) < 5 and z < u+.03 and (r==5 or z>u) and 8 or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2

Before we piece out what this is doing, we need to talk about the structure for conditional logic in tweetcarts.

The Problem with If Statements

The lone line with the if statement is doing a lot of conditional logic in a very cumbersome way designed to avoid writing out a full if statement.

One of the tricky things with Pico-8 tweetcarts is that the loop and conditional logic of Lua is very character intensive. While most programming language might write an if statement like this:

if (SOMETHING){ CODE }

Lua does it like this:

if SOMETHING then CODE end

Using "then" and "end" instead of brackets means we often want to bend over backwards to avoid them when we're trying to save characters.

Luckily, Lua lets you drop "then" and "end" if there is a single command being executed inside the if.

This means we can write

if(e%1 < 0.5) c=5

instead of

if e%1 < 0.5 then c=5 end

This is a huge savings! To take advantage of this, it is often worth doing something in a slightly (or massively) convoluted way if it means we can reduce it to a single line inside the if. This brings us to:

Lua's Weird Ternary Operator

In most programming language there is an inline syntax to return one of two values based on a conditional. It's called the Ternary Operator and in most languages I use it looks like this:

myVar = a>b ? 5 : 10

The value of myVar will be 5 if a is greater than b. Otherwise is will be 10.

Lua has a ternary operator... sort of. You can read more about it here but it looks something like this:

myVar = a>b and 5 or 10

Frankly, I don't understand why this works, but I can confirm that it does.

In this specific instance, I am essentially using it to put another conditional inside my if statement, but by doing it as a single line ternary operation, I'm keeping the whole thing to a single line and saving precious chars.

The Face Broken Out

The conditional for the diamond and the A is a mess to look at. The weird syntax for the ternary operator doesn't help. Neither does the fact that I took out any parentheses that could make sense of it.

Here is the same code rewritten with a cleaner logic flow.

--check time to see if we're on the front half if e%1 < .5 then --this if checks if we're in the A u=(r-1)/80 z=a(p-.2) if a(r-5) < 5 and z < u+.03 and (r==5 or z>u) then c = 8 --if we're not in the A, set c based on if we're in the diamond else c = 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 end end

The first thing being checked is the time. As I explained further up, because the input value for sin() in Pico-8 goes from 0 to 1, the midpoint is 0.5. We only draw the front of the card if e%1 is less than 0.5.

After that, we check if this pixel is inside the A on the corner of the card or the diamond. Either way, our color value c gets set to either 7 (white) or 8 (red).

Let's start with diamond because it is easier.

The Diamond

This uses the same h and v values from the back of the card. The reason I chose diamonds for my suit is that they are very easy to calculate if you know the vertical and horizontal distance from a point! In fact, I sometimes use this diamond shape instead of proper circular hit detection in size-coded games.

Let's look at the line: c = 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2

This starts with 8, the red color. Since the only other acceptable color is 7 (white), tha means that sgn(h+v-9)/2 has to evaluate to either 1 or 0.

sgn() returns the sign of a number, meaning -1 if the number is negative or 1 if the number is positive. This is often a convenient way to cut large values down to easy-to-work-with values based on a threshold. That's exactly what I'm doing here!

h+v-9 takes the height from the center plus the horizontal distance from the center and checks if the sum is greater than 9. If it is, sgn(h+v-9) will return 1, otherwise -1. In this formula, 9 is the size of the diamond. A smaller number would result in a smaller diamond since that's the threshold for the distance being used. (note: h+v is NOT the actual distance. It's an approximation that happens to make a nice diamond shape.)

OK, but adding -1 or 1 to 8 gives us 7 or 9 and I need 7 or 8.

That's where /2 comes in. Pico-8 defaults to floating point math, so dividing by 2 will turn my -1 or 1 into -0.5 or 0.5. So this line c = 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 actually sets c to 7.5 or 8.5. Pico-8 always rounds down when setting colors so a value of 7.5 becomes 7 and 8.5 becomes 8. And now we have white for most of the card, and red in the space inside the diamond!

The A

The A on the top corner of the card was the last thing I added. I finished the spinning card with the card back and the diamond and realized that when I condensed the whole thing, I actually had about 50 characters to spare. Putting a letter on the ace seemed like an obvious choice. I struggled for an evening trying to make it happen before deciding that I just couldn't do it. The next day I took another crack at it and managed to get it in, although a lot of it is pretty ugly! Luckily, in the final version the card is spinning pretty fast and it is harder to notice how lopsided it is.

I mentioned earlier that my method of placing pixels in a line between points is great for deforming planes, but makes a lot of drawing harder. Here's a great example. Instead of just being able to call print("a") or even using 3 calls to line() I had to make a convoluted conditional to check if each pixel is "inside" the A and set it to red if it is.

I'll do my best to explain this code, but it was hammered together with a lot of trial and error. I kept messing with it until I found an acceptable balance between how it looked and how many character it ate up.

Here are the relevant bits again:

u=(r-1)/80 z=a(p-.2) if a(r-5) < 5 and z < u+.03 and (r==5 or z>u) then c = 8

The two variables above the if are just values that get used multiple times. Let's give them slightly better names. While I'm making edits, I'll expand a too since that was just a replacement for abs().

slope = (r-1)/80 dist_from_center = abs(p-.2) if abs(r-5) < 5 and dist_from_center < slope+.03 and (r==5 or dist_from_center>slope) then c = 8

Remember that r is the current row and p is the percentage of the way between the two sides where this pixel falls.

u/slope here is basically how far from the center line of the A the legs are at this row. As r increases, so does slope (but at a much smaller rate). The top of the A is very close to the center, the bottom is further out. I'm subtracting 1 so that when r is 0, slope is negative and will not be drawn. Without this, the A starts on the very topmost line of the card and looks bad.

z/dist_from_center is how far this particular p value is from the center of the A (not the center of the card), measured in percentage (not pixels). The center of the A is 20% of the way across the card. This side of the card starts on the right (0% is all the way right, 100% is all the way left), which is why you see the A 20% away from the right side of the card.

These values are important because the two legs of the A are basically tiny distance checks where the slope for a given r is compared against the dist_from_center. There are 3 checks used to determine if the pixel is part of the A.

if a(r-5) < 5 and z < u+.03 and (r==5 or z>u) then

The first is abs(r-5) < 5. This checks if r is between 1 and 9, the height of my A.

The second is dist_from_center < slope+.03. This is checking if this pixel's x distance from the center of the A is no more than .03 bigger than the current slope value. This is the maximum distance that will be considered "inside" the A. All of this is a percentage, so the center of the A is 0.20 and the slope value will be larger the further down the A we get.

Because I am checking the distance from the center point (the grey line in the image above), this works on either leg of the A. On either side, the pixel can be less than slope+.03 away.

Finally, it checks (r==5 or dist_from_center>slope). If the row is exactly 5, that is the crossbar across the A and should be red. Otherwise, the distance value must be greater than slope (this is the minimum value it can have to be "inside" the A). This also works on both sides thanks to using distance.

Although I am trying to capture 1-pixel-wide lines to draw the shape of the A, I could not think of a cleaner way than doing this bounding check. Ignoring the crossbar on row 5, you can think about the 2nd and 3rd parts of the if statement essentially making sure that dist_from_center fits between slope and a number slightly larger than slope. Something like this:

slope < dist_from_center < slope+0.03

Putting it Together

All of this logic needed to be on a single line to get away with using the short form of the if statement so it got slammed into a single ternary operator. Then I tried removing parentheses one at a time to see what was structurally significant. I wish I could say I was more thoughtful than that but I wasn't. The end result is this beefy line of code:

if(e%1<.5)c=a(r-5)<5and z<u+.03and(r==5or z>u)and 8or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2

Once we've checked that e (our time value) is in the phase where we show the face, the ternary operator checks if the pixel is inside the A. If it is, c is set to 8 (red). If it isn't, then we set c = 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2, which is the diamond shape described above.

That's It!

Once we've set c the tweetcart uses pset to draw the pixel as described in the section on drawing the lines.

Here's the full code and what it looks like when it runs again. Hopefully now you can pick out more of what's going on!

a=abs::_::cls()e=t()for r=0,46do for p=0,1,.025do j=sin(e)*20k=cos(e)*5f=1-p h=a(17-p*34)v=a(23-r)c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6u=(r-1)/80z=a(p-.2)if(e%1<.5)c=a(r-5)<5and z<u+.03and(r==5or z>u)and 8or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 g=r+39pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)end end flip()goto _

I hope this was helpful! I had a lot of fun writing this cart and it was fun to break it down. Maybe you can shave off the one additional character needed to slow it down by using e=t()/2 a bit. If you do, please drop me a line on my mastodon or tumblr!

And if you want to try your hand at something like this, consider submitting something to TweetTweetJam which just started! You'll get a luxurious 500 characters to work with!

Links and Resources

There are some very useful posts of tools and tricks for getting into tweetcarts. I'm sure I'm missing many but here are a few that I refer to regularly.

Pixienop's tweetcart basics and tweetcart studies are probably the single best thing to read if you want to learn more.

Trasevol_Dog's Doodle Insights are fascinating, and some of them demonstrate very cool tweetcart techniques.

Optimizing Character Count for Tweetcarts by Eli Piilonen / @2DArray

Guide for Making Tweetcarts by PrincessChooChoo

The official documentation for the hidden P8SCII Control Codes is worth a read. It will let you do wild things like play sound using the print() command.

I have released several size-coded Pico-8 games that have links to heavily annotated code:

Pico-Mace

Cold Sun Surf

1k Jump

Hand Cram

And if you want to read more Pico-8 weirdness from me, I wrote a whole post on creating a networked Pico-8 tribute to Frog Chorus.

[tommymllrr]

coffee shop cowboy [ch. 2]

agent whiskey x barista!reader (coffee shop!au)

summary: if you were being honest, you’d had an absolute garbage day. up until the moment he strode through the front door of the cute little café that you worked at in those stupid cowboy boots.

rating: Explicit, 18+ (MINORS DNI)

word count: 6.1k

warnings: cunnilingus, oral sex, blowjob, vaginal fingering, soft!agent whiskey, lot of kisses

notes: here's chapter 2!! reader is afab, but no pronouns or gendered terms are used so it can be read as gender-neutral. also i'm not super active here so find me on twitter if you're interested in seeing me talk about my upcoming fanfics and talk about pedro pascal and oscar isaac. :-)

chapter 1 on tumblr // read fic on ao3

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

The months went on and Whiskey showed no sign that he had gotten sick of the coffee shop - or more specifically, you - yet. 

Sure, there had been a few times where he’d gone almost a full week without visiting, but he always turned up one day with a smile and a more-than-generous tip. The two of you made light conversation while you worked the register or, during days you were behind the bar making drinks, after he’d gotten his coffee, leaning an arm on the bar so he could talk to you. Your co-workers, especially the ones you were actually friends with, teased you incredibly hard for it, always leaving your cheeks burning in embarrassment. One of the newest hires at the café, a very sweet girl named Angie, had asked during a slow morning shift how you and your boyfriend met. When met with your confusion, she’d simply replied, “That cute cowboy guy I’ve seen you with. He’s your boyfriend, right?” Your entire body was on fire as you told her that no , you were just friends , and then had spent a good five minutes in the walk-in cooler pretending to stock items while you recovered.

You had thought about making a move by asking if he’d like to get coffee from your favorite place that’s just outside of the city (you refuse to be one of those people who comes into their job to order something on their day off), but the one time you’d tried to ask him, he’d looked at you with those big, gorgeous brown eyes of his and you’d chickened out, instead sputtering something about how the weather outside was nice today. You’d called your best friend on Discord that night feeling absolutely miserable and they’d teased you gently, but reassured you it was okay and that the universe had its way of sorting everything out.

You had no idea how right they would be.

It was unusually busy for a random Thursday morning, but you were managing just fine (even if you were dragging a bit because you’d stayed up way too late last night starting to play The Last of Us now that the TV adaptation of it was coming out soon). And, because your luck happens to be absolutely terrible sometimes, a steady line of customers at the register had started in the minutes before Whiskey strolled in. You gave him a small smile and a wave while the customer in front of you finished paying for their coffee and he tipped his hat to you in response. After getting through the few customers ahead of him, Whiskey was in front of your register, grinning down at you. He had already reached into the pocket of the leather jacket he was wearing to grab his wallet.

“You know what, sugar,” Whiskey said. “I’m feelin’ like a latte today. Can ya make me that one ya always get for me?”

“Yeah, I can do that!” You looked to the people in line behind him and the smile slid off your face. “Actually… I know I always make it, but it’s busier than usual today and I don’t wanna throw off Aubrey by stepping in just to make one drink,” you said apologetically.

“Darlin’, it’s fine. Just promise you’ll be the one to make it for me next time.” He gave you a wink as he handed you a twenty to pay for his latte. Warmth spread through your whole body and you were grinning so big you knew you probably looked like an idiot to the half-dozen people who were behind your favorite customer. Whiskey stuffed the handful of bills you’d given him as his change into the tip-jar and shuffled out of the way. The customer behind Whiskey rattled off a couple of pastries he wanted and, out of the corner of your eye, you could see Whiskey talking to Aubrey at the bar. You don’t know why you suddenly felt anxious, but you did. Aubrey knew all about your crush with Whiskey – hell, she was the person teasing you the most about him – but you trusted her to keep your secret.

You put the two’s interaction out of your mind and went back to focusing on helping the people in front of you. While pouring a cup of coffee for a stern-looking businesswoman, you turned and saw Aubrey finally hand Whiskey his latte. Whiskey was about to walk away but you saw Aubrey lean in and say something, but you couldn’t make it out. He looked down at the cup and you watched as a slow smirk slid onto his face. Whiskey nodded his head toward your co-worker and he made his way out of the coffee shop.

The businesswoman you were pouring the coffee for snapped at you for taking too long and, immediately, you were brought back to what you were doing. You snapped the lid on her drink and apologized profusely while you cashed her out. 

A couple hours later, when it had finally died down enough that you weren’t swamped with people, you sauntered over to Aubrey, who was drinking her usual iced vanilla matcha latte and scrolling through Instagram.

“Hey, uh, what was that whole thing with Whiskey earlier?” you asked. Her eyes flicked up from her phone to yours before shooting back down to stare at her screen. You knew her. And right now, she was desperately trying not to look suspicious.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, trying to sound as innocent as possible. “May wanna check your phone though.”

You pulled your phone out of the back pocket of your jeans and clicked the button on the side to turn on your screen. A couple notifications from Twitter, a handful of new emails, an alert that your favorite podcast had posted a new episode… 

And a text message from an unknown number. 

You felt your heart stop as you hurriedly typed in your passcode to unlock your phone. There was no way. You were imagining this. Or today was all just one weird, very realistic dream and your alarm was going to go off any minute now. Opening the Messages app, you clicked on the message.

Today, 10:37AM Hey there sugar ;) Finally got your number.

Your pulse quickened. There was no mistaking whose number that was. There was no way. Unless this was some absolutely insane prank that Aubrey was currently pulling off with the help of your coworkers. But you didn’t think your coworkers were that cruel. So the only thing you were left with was that…

“Aubrey, you fucking did not give him my phone number ,” you hissed. She gave you a shit-eating grin and took a big sip from her matcha latte, slurping it way louder than necessary.

“Wrote your number on his cup. You can thank me later.”

Your eyes widened. “ Aubrey ."

“What?!” she said with mock offense. “Look, I know you’re too embarrassed about your little crush to actually do something yourself. If you get a date out of this, you owe me lunch for a week, bestie.” You groaned and covered your face with your hands. Honestly, with how chaotic Aubrey is, you shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest that this happened. But that doesn’t mean you were prepared for this to happen.

You decided to wait until after work to text Whiskey back, but the rest of your shift had been a blur. Even an inkling of an idea of what to say eluded you, even as you were walking through the door to your apartment. Pulling out your phone, you opened the Messages app and stared down at the two lines Whiskey had sent. You eventually just said “fuck it” and typed out a quick text.

Today, 3:43PM god i am so sorry for aubrey if you dont wanna message its totally cool i mean we barely know each other  and my coworker thought it’d funny to give you my number just don't wanna make things weird between us

You flopped back onto your bed and covered your face with your hands for the second time that day, wishing you could sink down into the earth. God, why were you cursed with being so fucking awkward?

Right as you were wishing you could go back in time and say literally anything else to come off as more smooth, your phone pinged with the notification sound of a new text. With slightly shaky hands, you unlocked your phone and stared at the message Whiskey had just sent you.

Today, 3:46PM Darlin, I’ve been wantin’ to get to know you more for a while now. You’re real sweet and funny. Comin’ to get coffee is the highlight of my week.

You stared at your phone, your eyes wide open. Holy shit. Before you even knew what you were doing, you started screaming into your pillow so as to not scare or disturb your neighbors. Your entire body was burning with warmth as you typed out a reply to him. 

Today, 3:54PM oh! im really flattered honestly i’ve wanted to talk more too just been too anxious to say anything

You stared at the screen for what felt like forever until you saw the three little dots inside of the bubble that told you Whiskey was in the process of typing something back. Your heart raced with what he could possibly say. Then, your phone pinged with a new message notification. His response was here.

Today, 3:58PM Oh, really now? Well, if you’d be interested, sugar, I’d like to invite you over for dinner. Could show you a good time. ;)

“Oh my god,” you breathed. You hurriedly typed out a response, too excited to speak, your heartbeat and your mind racing.

Today, 4:04PM consider myself very interested! give me a time and date and i’ll be there, cowboy ;)

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

You may have taken one or two wrong turns and gotten stuck in traffic along the way, but you finally made it to the address Whiskey had given you. 

The date he’d given you to come over for dinner was a few days away from when he had asked you and you couldn’t have been less anxious about it if you tried. Shifts at work seemed to go by even slower than usual and Aubrey could sense something was up when you worked with her the morning after your text conversation. You didn’t dare breathe a word about it to her, though, you didn’t wanna give her a big head about the whole thing. No, she could wait to find out until after your dinner with Whiskey, even though you have her to thank for this whole situation anyway. (Also, you definitely didn’t need her on your ass about buying her lunch for a week yet.)

As you drove down the path that your GPS was telling you to follow, you realized his house must be at the very end of the street he lived on. A few more minutes passed before your phone said you had arrived at your destination. Despite the map saying you should technically be in his front yard, you could barely see Whiskey’s house from behind a massive wrought-iron gate. A little silver box on a pole was sticking out of the side of the road, so you pulled up and pressed the small black button on the device.

“Hey, darlin’, that you?” you suddenly heard Whiskey’s voice ask. The buzzer must have a speaker in it somewhere. His voice was a little crackly, but you still could tell it was definitely Whiskey.

“Yeah! I’m outside the gate,” you called back. A loud buzzing sound came from the box and, suddenly, the large iron gate in front of you opened so you could drive through. Following the long gravel driveway, you finally made it up to Whiskey’s house.

And your breath was instantly taken away the moment you saw it up close. 

It was an absolutely gorgeous ranch-style home, one that you definitely would have seen on one of those TV shows about people showing off their fancy houses and the thousands of dollars they had poured into making their house look as fancy as possible to impress other fancy people. Whiskey’s car, a gorgeous classic Bronco that was black with white trim, was parked just up the driveway, so you pulled in a few feet behind him. Right as you were getting out of your car, you heard the front door open.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” he called out. He was leaning up against the doorframe, a glass of amber liquid in his hand and a wide grin on his face. He was wearing his usual blue jeans and cowboy boots, but he had swapped his usual leather jacket for one that was made from dark blue denim and had a bit of a high collar. “Glad you found the place okay. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

“I got a bit turned around a few times but I made it. Did have some reservations about you leading me out to the middle of nowhere, though,” you teased. Whiskey let out a chuckle as you approached him.

“Sugar, this is probably one of the safest places you could ever be,” he said with a smirk. “But I’m delighted that you’re here.” You felt yourself start blushing as Whiskey stepped aside to let you in. He closed the door behind you and, as you took in the living room around you, Whiskey fiddled with a security system panel on his wall.

The interior of the house was exactly what you had expected from Whiskey, if you were being honest. Brown leather couches and armchairs were circled around a massive stone fireplace in the living room. A large wooden coffee table, one that looked like it could have been handmade, was in the center of the room and on top of a Western-looking rug. The walls were also covered with paintings, one of a river in a forest with a mountain range in the background and one that you immediately recognized as the exterior of the Statesman Distillery. You could also catch a whiff of the delicious smell of roasting meat somewhere towards the back of the house. 

Whiskey muttered something about needing to check something and walked off, leaving you by yourself. You were a little hesitant at first, not wanting to look creepy or trying to pry, but you couldn’t help but look around.

As you looked around to take everything in, your eyes landed on a wall-mounted glass display case. 

Inside was what looked to be a whip with a loop at the end that had been tied to make a noose. When you stepped a bit closer to inspect it, you could have sworn you saw a flash of blue light somehow. You were staring at it when Whiskey cleared his throat behind you. You whipped around to face the older man and you instinctively took a couple steps backward as if you’d somehow been caught red-handed.

“That ol’ thing caught yer eye, sugar?” Whiskey said. His voice was quieter than usual, softer. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and came over to where you were standing. And all you could do was just look at his face. He had this look that you couldn’t quite decipher what it was supposed to mean as he stared at the whip. But if his stare was a laser, he would have cut through the glass and the wall behind it by now with how intently he was looking ahead of him.

“Yeah,” you replied. “Why the hell do you have a whip in a display case? Not that you can’t do what you’d like with your design choice, but it’s… certainly interesting.” You tried to sound light-hearted, attempting to diffuse this situation you didn’t know you had entered into, but Whiskey sighed deeply. 

“Don’t even know why I put this up. Hate looking at it most days,” he muttered. Suddenly, his head snapped to look at you, as if realizing he’d just said that out loud. He spun on his heel and walked back toward the kitchen. “Well, dinner’s almost ready, so you can head on in here. Got everythin’ all set up for tonight.”

You watched him turn the corner and head down the hall, frozen in place until you realized you should follow him. You quickly followed after him and you were suddenly in the biggest kitchen you’d ever been inside of. There was a giant kitchen island in the middle of the room with a built-in sink and a dark marble countertop. You could see two steaks cooking in an iron skillet on the stove to your left and Whiskey was in the process of pulling what looked to be some roasted vegetables in a pan out of the oven.

“Everything smells amazing, Whiskey,” you complimented as you took a seat on one of the barstools that was at the kitchen island. “Didn’t realize you were hiding a knack for cooking from me.”

Whiskey let out a loud laugh. “Oh, darlin’, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I can’t cook worth a lick,” he replied. “Favorite steakhouse on the other side of the county helped me out. The owner’s real friendly and was willin’ to sell me a steak dinner for two that I could finish in my own kitchen. Will have to take you there sometime.” He tossed a wink your way while he fiddled with the stove and you felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest.

After a few more minutes, Whiskey announced the food was ready and he escorted you into the dining room where a table big enough for the two of you to sit at and intimately enjoy dinner was set up. The meal Whiskey had got for the two of you was absolutely delicious and your mouth was already watering at the prospect of being able to eat it again, but this time in the actual restaurant itself. The two of you talked about your day at work and Whiskey even told you a couple stories from his days as a bartender. He had you laughing so hard your sides hurt at the time he had a guy who tried to pay for his tab with his prized chicken.

Whiskey brought out a plate that contained a massive slice of triple chocolate cake for dessert and, despite you insisting you couldn’t eat another bite, you dug your fork into the giant confection and almost moaned at how rich and amazing it tasted. About halfway through the cake slice, you leaned back in your chair to look Whiskey in his eyes.

“Whiskey, this was incredible, thank you so much for having me over,” you said with a smile. The older man smiled back and gently reached out to hold your hand in his. He hesitated for a second, as if he was worried that you didn’t want the touch, but when you scooted your hand a little closer, he laced his fingers with yours. It was the first time he’d touched you all evening and it made the butterflies in your stomach go wild.

“Real glad you decided to take a chance on an old guy like me,” he replied. “I… I’d been wanting to ask you out for a while now. Was worried how it’d look, what you’d think of me.” 

You squeezed his hand gently, feeling emboldened by his confession. “I, uh, actually thought about asking you to come to my favorite coffee shop with me. The place I go to when I want coffee on my days off,” you said bashfully. “But I… I chickened out at the last minute.”

“Darlin’, I’d go anywhere you asked me to,” Whiskey stated. “Say the word and I’m there.” If you weren’t currently holding hands with him, you felt like you might collapse right then and there. He would have taken you out with his words alone.

“O-Oh.” That was all you managed to get out. You were sure he could see how hard you were blushing. Whiskey let go of your hand and made his way into the kitchen with your plates from dinner. You stood and followed after him.

You watched as Whiskey set the plates in the sink before he turned back to you and walked over to where you were standing in the middle of his kitchen. His large hands settled on your hips, making your heart beat faster. Whiskey’s lips connected with yours in a passionate kiss.

The scratch of the stubble of his chin felt rough against your skin, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. After months, you were finally kissing the man you’d been pining after for so long. Whiskey let out a soft noise as your hands came to rest on his chest, bunching the fabric of his jean jacket in your hands.

“God, baby, you’re incredible, so gorgeous,” Whiskey groaned after pulling back from your kiss. When his mouth returned to yours, his tongue licked into your mouth and it felt so good, it was threatening to make your head spin. In between kisses that had you desperately needing more as soon as possible, he started to guide you towards the back of his house. Whiskey opened a door and you both entered the main bedroom of the property. It was a massive room with an extra-large bed and a door off to the side that was open just wide enough for you to see that it was the primary bathroom. 

The older man pulled back from your intense make-out session to look at you. His large hands were settled on your waist, rubbing the material of your shirt softly. “Please, sugar, tell me you want this as much as I do,” Whiskey said through slightly-grit teeth. “You’ve been runnin’ ‘round my head for weeks an’... I’ve been a patient man, but you bein’ here in my house is doin’ somethin’ wicked to me.”

“I do, I really do, Whiskey,” you replied with a grin. “I want you.” You leaned in to kiss him again, but his eyes drifted downward as he opened his mouth and it made you stop your advance.

“It’s… It’s Jack,” he muttered, turning his face away, suddenly interested in the carpet floor of his bedroom. It took you a couple seconds for your brain to process what he said. You gently cupped his face in your palms, the stubble on his jaw tickling your skin, but the touch made him look back at you. You met his eyes and you could see a little anxiousness hidden behind them.

“Jack…” you repeated. A wide grin broke out on your face as you breathed out his name again. “Jack.” His name fell from your lips and the man in front of you immediately softened. You watched the nervous expression, the tension of letting you know his name, not the moniker he was given during his time with Statesman, bleed out of his body. 

You pressed a kiss to his lips before you pulled back to look up at him. “Jack. Want you to fuck me. Been dreaming about it for so long now… Please .”

As if you’d flipped a switch inside of him, Whiskey – no, Jack – picked you up, your legs immediately wrapping around his waist. You let out a little squeak before you were gently laid down onto the bed and now, Jack was on top of you, kissing you like his life depended on it. He licked into your mouth again and you moaned against him. Jack’s hips grinded down against your clothed core. God, you could feel he was rock-hard under his jeans and you were dying to rip them off of him. You’d thought about this situation before, sure, but nothing from your wet dreams and fantasies could compare to how hot it was to actually be in the moment.

Suddenly, Jack was pulling away from you and stripping off his clothes, you following suit and pulling off your outfit only to toss it all across the room. You were a little self-conscious about his response to seeing you naked, but watching his eyes grow wider and his cock twitch the smallest bit made you feel invincible.

“Absolutely breath-taking, darlin’,” he murmured. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your chest. “Scoot up the bed more fer me, baby, wanna eat you like you’re the last meal I’ll ever have.” You burned at his words and you could only nod dumbly and pull yourself back toward the headboard. After getting settled, Jack pressed soft kisses up your thighs until he had reached where you both wanted him to be the most. He started off with teasing licks that made you feel like you were going to explode right then and there. His tongue gently flicked over your clit and you responded by fisting your hands tightly in the bedsheets, eyes squeezed shut as soft noises fell from your lips that you couldn’t back any longer

“Please, Jack,” you whined. “More. I need more.” You weren’t a stranger to sex, but the very limited encounters with your past partners were currently being blown out of the water. No one had ever made you feel like this before, so close to cumming in practically a minute flat.

“As you wish, sugar,” you heard him say with a chuckle. A kiss was pressed to the skin of your thigh before, true to his word, Jack ate you like a man starved. He licked long stripes up your pussy before digging into your clit with his mouth and his tongue that had you seeing stars. You looked down at Jack and you swore you got closer to orgasm just by seeing how his eyes were closed and his big hands were pushing your legs further apart so you couldn’t clamp down on his head.

“F-Fuck, gonna cum, fucking Christ,” you moaned loudly, head tilting up to the ceiling. You felt one of his hands disappear from its spot on your leg and then you felt a thick finger slip inside of you. The whine you let out was long and high-pitched and the instant a second finger was inserted to curl and prod at your g-spot, you came, cursing loudly and crying his name.

Before your brain could even think of something to say or a way to articulate how amazing that was, Whiskey was kissing you again. The taste of yourself on your lips was so incredibly hot.

“Never tasted anything so good in my life, sweet thing,” Jack said. He leaned down to lap at one of your nipples as he tweaked the other gently in between his fingers, making the stiff bud harden even more than it already was, and all you could do was lay there and whine Jack's name at the attention. You really thought he was trying to kill you with how much worship he was giving your body. He pulled off of you to press a kiss to where your heart would be before he looked back into your eyes.

“Now, gorgeous, we can go as far as you feel comfortable,” he said. “If you don’ wanna do anything else tonight, that’s okay with me. Ya can get me off or I can go take care of myself if you’d like, I just wanted to make you feel good.” You felt the butterflies in your stomach kick into overdrive again. Honestly, you really wanted Jack to fuck you, but you were still somewhat reeling from how hard he’d just made you cum with only his mouth and his fingers (that and you were more than a bit anxious about going all the way with him yet). But there was one thing you’d fantasized about several times…

“I… Ireallywannasuckyourdick,” you spat out. After saying it, you covered your face with your hands. You couldn’t believe you’d just said that. You heard Jack chuckle before you felt him gently take your hands and move them away from your face.

“Baby, I’d love nothin’ more,” he assured you. He leaned back and bared himself to you. For a moment, you could only stare at his cock and try not to drool at how hot he looked like this. His cock was hard and curled up toward his stomach with pre-come was spilling out of it slowly, dripping onto his torso. You settled yourself between his legs and licked an exploratory stripe up the vein running down his cock. Jack let out a loud groan and it only egged you on further. You took the tip into his mouth and lapped at the beads of pre-come that had spilled out. The salty taste of him was heavenly and, despite your earlier assumption that you might not be able to cum again soon, you felt ready to go all over again.

When you finally bobbed your head down, you thought Jack couldn’t moan any louder. You managed to fit all of him inside of your warm, wet mouth, the curly brown hairs at the base of his cock tickling you a little. You stayed down for a couple more seconds before it got to be too much and you had to pull off to cough slightly.

“Fuck, sugar, look so good with your mouth so full of my cock like that,” he groaned. Jack threaded his fingers in your hair and gently nudged you back toward his cock. “Gonna burn that image into my brain.” His words had you needing to reach down to gently touch yourself and you did so as you started to move your mouth up and down his cock again.

“S-Shit,” Jack hissed. You set a steady pace, fast enough to keep up with your need to finger yourself while you sucked Jack off, and it felt like all too soon, Whiskey was tugging on your hair just enough to make your body tingle in pleasure. “G-Gonna cum, sweet thing, make sure you take it all, so wonderful, that’s it, my good darlin’ .”

And that was all it took. His praise was what sent you over the edge.

You found yourself clenching around nothing as your finger frantically rubbed circles on your clit, humming around Jack’s cock as you came. Jack pushed your mouth down the smallest bit to fully sheath himself in your mouth and then you felt the hot burst of cum splash onto your tongue and down your throat. His fingers released their grip on your hair and you pulled off, swallowing as you did so. Jack gave you a wicked smirk at seeing you swallow his cum, but in an instant, he was cupping your face in his hands and making you look at him.

“I am so sorry I forced your head down like that, sugar,” he apologized. “Did I hurt you? I-I didn’t mean to, I swear, it’s just…” You cut him off before he could say anything else.

“It’s alright, Jack, I enjoyed it,” you replied. Your voice was the slightest bit hoarse, but you couldn’t care less. That was the single hottest thing you’d ever experienced in your life.

Whiskey gave you a kiss to your forehead before he got up off the bed, stretching a little as he did so, and walked into the bathroom. You let out a deep, contented sigh as you flopped down and buried your face into the soft pillow behind you. You felt like if you tried to get out of bed at the moment, you couldn’t. Your entire body felt exhausted, well-fucked, still drunk off of Whiskey’s cock that had been in your mouth mere minutes ago.

“Sweetheart, c’mon, move a li’l bit fer me,” he muttered. His Southern accent seemed even more pronounced than usual, which you thought was cute. “Gotta clean you up. Make sure my sugar’s taken care of.” You shifted from your current position to make it easier for Whiskey to wipe you down. The warm washcloth felt nice on your skin, getting the stickiness of your sweat off of you. Whiskey also pressed the cloth between your legs for a brief second and you felt your body get a small burst of warmth. Honestly, you were so worn out, you didn’t think you could be ready for another round if you tried, but that didn’t stop your body from trying.

Whiskey sat the washcloth down on the nightstand next to the bed and laid down, tugging you into his arms gently. You snuggled into him and you felt like you could fall asleep just like this. However, you did have one question for him.

“So… your name is Jack?” you asked after a few minutes of silence into the skin of his broad chest. Whiskey pulled his head back from where it had nestled on the top of your head to look at you with a smirk on his face.

“Would ya believe me if I told you my name was Jack Daniels?” he shot back. A loud laugh bubbled out of your lips. 

“Absolutely not ,” you laughed. Whiskey shared a laugh with you before he leaned in and gave you a long kiss to your lips. Your hand drifted up the soft skin of his back – the soft skin you had probably just scratched up even with your blunt fingernails – and threaded in the hair on the nape of his neck. Kissing Whiskey in this moment was tender and affectionate and you would give anything to stay like this forever. Curled up in his arms, you felt like you could take on anything.

“Well, it’s not the name I was given when I was born,” he started after he pulled back. His voice was low now, like he was sharing a secret. “Changed my name to it when I was a younger man. So, legally speaking, I’m Jack Daniels.” You blinked at him a couple of times.

“You changed your name?” you questioned. “How come?” Your fingers were still running through the hair on the back of his neck and at the question, you felt him tense up a little. Worried, you’d pried too much – despite currently being naked in his bed – you started to do damage control. Your fingers stilled and tightened, probably almost tugging at his hair. “I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Before you could babble anything else, Jack pressed another kiss to your lips but it was short and chaste. It had you melting all over again. “Darlin’, it’s alright,” he soothed. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your temple. “Gonna tell you everything one day. All ‘bout my past. You’re real special to me an’ you deserve to hear it from me before someone from back then finds out about you an’ tries to tell you.” His hot breath ghosted across your skin as he spoke to you, making your body shiver. 

You weren’t exactly sure what he meant, however. But you realized very quickly into your friendship that Whiskey never really spoke about his life, preferring to change topics over actually giving you an answer to something. You had a couple snippets of comments he’d let slip while in conversation at the café, but it wasn’t much. He’d mentioned that he used to work for Statesman Distillery (then again, his belt buckle had practically given that away the day you met), still had connections to them now that he was “retired”, and occasionally did work for them. He’d also mentioned once that, at one point, he was married a long time ago but he was divorced (you’ll never forget the way he looked incredibly uncomfortable when you’d asked about it before you changed the subject, something Whiskey had been thankful for). Sure, you knew about his hobbies and his favorite movie and other things of that nature, but other than that, Whiskey was a closed book.

Suddenly, you realized you’d been off in your own head thinking instead of saying anything back. Your eyes finally focused back on Jack and you could see that he looked ready to bolt at any second. Instead of prodding for more, you kissed the tip of his nose. “Hey, it’s okay,” you reassured him. “You can tell me more about you when you’re ready. It makes me worry about you, sure, but I still trust you.”

Whiskey gave you a soft smile and his grip around you got tighter. You looked up at him just in time to see his eyes slide shut and his breathing turn steady. You weren’t sure where this left your relationship with Whiskey, but you figured you two would talk about that in the morning. For now, you closed your eyes and drifted off to sleep, surrounded by the scent and the touch of your cowboy.

[fenrislorsrai]

Firefish - a twitter alternative

TLDR: Looks like twitter, functions better. Lets you interact across multiple platforms. Allows NSFW. Has built in anti AI scraping.

If you ever used Twitter, it's going to look similar in structure, so the learning curve is low. There's more features that that, but they're not so intrusive you HAVE to learn them right away but also aren't hard to find. It's a nice balance.

The big difference is post length- it allows up to 8000 characters, so like Mini-Tumblr.

one of the features I like that familiar's but better is if you hover cursor over name on desktop is it pops up the profile for the person and a follow button. So you can immediately hover over name and get context about the person posting when it's not someone you already follow. Is this health info being posted by a professional or by someone that thinks you should stick rocks in your vagina?

That feature also means its incredibly easy to follow people regardless of the instance. On Mastodon it was extremely annoying to follow people. If that the thing that put you off Mastodon, Firefish fixed that and made it better than Twitter.

Firefish runs off ActivityPub, so it lets you follow and interact with anyone using the plugins for that. So includes Mastodon, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Misskey, and Tumblr is allegedly developing an integration to run it.

Okay, NSFW content! We're about to get slightly in the weeds here. whether NSFW content is allowed is generally by server. When you go to join Firefish, it'll ask you what server you want to use and it'll tell you about rules. If you want NSFW, pick one that allows!

That's it. If you picked one that did not, it generally won't allow you to follow things that do or boost stuff from a location that did.

NOW, A GREAT FEATURE! Spoilering stuff is super easy on Firefish. Just click the button! Say you see something you wanna boost but its *not* spoilered. You can boost AND spoil the image/text of the quoted item! MAGIC.

now, on to antennas.

The Antenna feature on there lets you track tags or users in a separate panel so you can see it in one spot. You can also add NEGATIVE tags to the antenna. So say you want to see news about your city. So you set the main tag as the City. But you don't want sports news. So you can put in negative tags of sports, specific sport names, and individual teams in the city. And then you get news about the location, but no sports

For fandom purposes, you can use it to filter out things you just don't vibe with. hate that one ship? BEGONE.

PROFILES: you can stick hashtags in your profile and it'll turn up in searches easily. also it will ask you "are you a cat?" If you say yes, it gives your profile pic cat ears.

Overall when I'm posting links to Firefish posts (or posts via something from ActivityPub hosted sites that I interacted with via Firefish), so far it renders the preview link well on most platforms. I'm not sure how it works for embedding a whole message into a static page (like you could do with Twitter for news articles).

AN IMPORTANT NERDY NOTE: okay, you wanna sign up for Firefish now. Select from the servers offered some have different rules restrictions and some have Non-english default languages. Pick the one you like. If you pick Firefish.social itself that one IS the largest but also it gets day one code updates... so sometimes it gets funky or won't load properly for a few hours. If that will drive you bonkers, pick *any* other server. The server size is almost irrelevant because Firefish plays so well with other services!

also, if you don't see one today, check again in a few days! admins rotate through open enrollments to keep the growth rate managable. also, if you're *that* kind of nerd, you can host your own server. Even with only YOU on it. and it still interacts normally with the rest of the ActivityPub servers!