#delta co-op

[rinzay]

Update and plans

Ayup everyone :DDD, Just a quick update on my art related things (and stuff regarding the Forever sitters comic and Security Virus au and so on)

I'll be takin a break on posting art stuff this week and possibly the next but on April expect more activity since I would have more free time then :DDD

On the other hand some of you are probably wondering what happened to the FS comic. It's not cancelled no worries!!

I'll be remaking the intro of it and basically start from scratch. Only two pages came out but honestly? I didnt have a plan for making it without burning myself out. I'll be figuring out how to make it enjoyable for myself and enjoyable for yall to read :DDD

With Security Virus, I have not thought of an ending. JDHSJDHS Yeah I love the au I made but it's lacking an ending if you can tell. I'll be remaking the AU as well, Gregory and Vanessa are still siblings tho since that was the main premise of the AU.

I'm also planning on revisiting old AU's I've made (I'm looking at you Delta Co-op)

Alrighty other than that, Thank you all for loving my art, my ideas and this little blog I run despite how I've been incosistent from time to time. I shall let you continue scrolling. Have a nice day everyone :DDD

[absurdthirst]

A Bumpy Road {Frankie Morales x F!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.6k

Warnings: Fake marriages, mentions of emotional alienation/affairs, fighting, drunk driving, death, feelings, injuries, mentions of surgeries, confessions, oral sex, vaginal sex, mentions of family planning

Comments: In order to stay on his team and keep his toxic ex in-laws from gaining custody of his daughter, Frankie does something crazy. He marries you, his friend. You need insurance and he needs someone to care for his daughter, ignoring how he feels about you until he ends up hurt on his deployment.

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

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|| MasterList || Frankie Morales MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

You have an idea, it’s outrageous, outlandish and completely insane but it might just actually work. You bite your lip nervously as Frankie paces in front of you, swiping his hands through his hair and it’s unusual to not hear the rasp of the shorter military high and tight he used to wear. Since being accepted into Delta, he had been allowed to grow his hair out past normal regulation, the need to look less like the soldier necessary for the ops he would be running. Unless he has to give up his entire career because of the three year old little girl currently napping in her room upstairs. 

“How could they do this?” Frankie hisses, angry and frustrated. Scared that they actually could take his daughter from him, terrified they would. “They can’t do this. I just- I asked for help while I was deployed! Not to take her from me!” It had been a mistake to reach out, to talk about his upcoming deployment. The papers had been delivered by a court server today. He was being sued for full custody of his little girl by his late wife’s family. 

Your mind races, trying to talk yourself out of the crazy idea but you can’t. It would work. Better yet, people who knew you would believe it. And Frankie could prove that he had care in place for his daughter, stability. The military would get off his back and his former in-laws would have no case. The bonus would be that you would have health insurance for the first time in years. “Frank.” You murmur quietly, following his frantic pacing. “Frankie!” You call louder, getting his attention this time as he stops mid-turn to look at you. “Marry me.”

His eyes widen, absorbing your words, and he thinks back on how damn long he’s been in love with you. It’s hard to think about but he nods, knowing that this is smart. You need your meds and the insurance will get them for you. He needs a caretaker for his daughter that isn’t his toxic former in-laws. “You’re a genius.” He declares and cups your cheek to kiss your forehead. “God, how - you are a goddamn angel, baby. That’s perfect. We can - we can get married before I deploy and then Ana can have someone - are you sure you want to take over caring for her? I know you babysit and when I’m away but - full time? It’s a lot of work.” He says, lowering his hands from your cheeks.

“I won’t lie and say that I’m not nervous.” You chuckle and melt at the soft, grateful expression in his warm eyes. “But she’s a good kid. And there’s the daycare, so I can still work.” The more you think about it, the more that you know it’s the right thing to do. “Ana loves me, and I know you don’t want to lose her or give up your spot on the team. The boys need you.” The fact that you have very strong feelings for Frankie doesn’t need to factor into this. “I say we get married quickly so you can let your in-laws know that it’s a losing case.”

Frankie can’t believe you’ve agreed to do this and he knows he will owe you for the rest of his life. He can’t lose his daughter but he also can’t leave his friends, his brothers, to go into danger without him. “I want you to pick a dress. I’ll pay for everything. Rings too. I- I want it to be us and Ana. No one else. She loves you already and I- are you sure you want to do this?” He asks, reaching for your hands to squeeze them.

“It’s not completely altruistic.” You remind him, knowing that he is aware of your need for health insurance. “I want to do this. I know we need to take care of things, power of attorney and things like that, but I want to help you, Francisco.” You promise quietly, imagining a small courthouse wedding with the handsome soldier. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t sure. We’re friends. It’ll be easy.” 

Frankie nods, knowing you know him inside out, even the dark things he hides from the outside world. The dark sins he has committed. He leans in to kiss your forehead, “I think so too, I- I can’t believe I’m saying this but - but I can’t wait to marry you.” He smiles as he pulls back. You are his best friend and as much as he tries to deny it, he’s in love with you. He knows you’re better off in the dark on that particular sin. It wouldn’t benefit you to know that. His late wife knew and that’s what killed her. 

**** 

“Janet, please. Just calm down, sweetheart.” Frankie pleads, following his wife down the hall. Ana is crying, woken up by the screaming, and Frankie is desperate to deny what Janet is accusing him of. 

“You’re fucking in love with her! Just say it. I- you didn’t love me. Did you? It’s always been her.” Janet screams down the hall and Frankie shakes his head, unable to answer. When Janet got pregnant, he was just about to be called up for a deployment and he knew he had to do the right thing and marry her. He loved her, he did. In his own way. He can’t love her like he does you, though. You are the sun, the moon, the stars. Everything to him. He had done the right thing and married Janet but she was never you. When Ana came along, she became his world and he stayed for her, fought for her. 

When Frankie doesn’t answer again, Janet shakes her head. “I knew it. You bastard! You shouldn’t - you shouldn’t have married me. It’s over Frank. It’s done. I- fuck. I gotta - I gotta go.” Janet says, rushing towards the front door. 

“Wait. Don’t. You can’t fucking drive. You’ve had three glasses of wine.” Frankie growls, having long accepted that his wife became an alcoholic in his absence, drinking when the nights were lonely and Ana wouldn’t stop crying. He didn’t realize it until he came home from that first tour. 

“I’m fucking leaving otherwise if I stay in this house, I’m gonna kill Ana.” She threatens and Frankie growls, grabbing her purse. 

“You fucking - threatening the life of our daughter? You- I know you’re hurt but you’re a - get the fuck out. Go kill yourself on the goddamn road for all I care.” He growls, shoving her purse at her. She doesn’t say a word as she leaves and Frankie watches her drive down the street. 

Little did he know that he’d be getting a call an hour later to tell him that his wife had died in an accident, driven into a tree. He was upset, mostly for Ana, for the mother she’d never get to have. Janet looked after her well-being but was never affectionate or caring. Now she has no mother at all. “I’ll be right there.” He promises the cop and the next number he dials is yours. “Hey. Yeah, um, I know it’s late but can you come over? I need someone to watch Ana for me. I’ll explain when you get here.” He says and hangs up after you agree. His wife just died but his heart still beats at the sound of your voice. He’s committed many sins but tonight might just be the worst of all. 

****

“You don’t need to be nervous.” You remind yourself as you look in the mirror, hands trembling as you lean towards the glass and smudge a little more of your eyeliner into place. “It’s Frankie, he’s not- he doesn’t actually love you.” That stings more than you thought it would as you wear the white tea dress you had picked out to get married in. Feeling like a bride and yet not one all at the same time. It’s going to be just ten minutes before Frankie will be here to drive you to the courthouse to exchange vows. The marriage certificate is ready to be signed by the magistrate that will officially declare you Mrs. Francisco Javier Morales. The knock on the door startles you, and you look towards it before glancing back in the mirror. “It’s time.” 

When you answer the door, Frankie’s breath is taken away from him. You look devastatingly beautiful. “You look so pwetty.” Ana grins up at you and you look at her in her little white flower girl dress that is similar to yours, her hair done in what looks like an attempt to style it by Frankie. 

“She’s right. You look - you look incredible.” He says, his dark eyes meeting yours and he offers you a boyish grin.

Frankie is wearing his uniform, you had asked him to but it’s impossible to think of anything but how handsome he is wearing his medals. “Not nearly as incredible as you.” You reach out and your finger strokes his jaw. “You shaved.” Your finger grazes his lip and you pull back, aware that if you keep touching him, you will want to kiss him for real. “Every single woman in town is pissed at me today.” You promise. 

Frankie suppresses the shiver that runs through him at the way you caress his face and he knows it’s going to be hard not confessing how he feels. He knows you only think of him as a dear friend and even if, by some miracle, you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to look past his sins. He’s not good enough for you. He blushes and clears his throat, “alongside every man.” He counters and Ana tugs on your hand, “daddy got me petals.” She holds up the basket that she insisted Frankie get her. She had heard about flower girls from her friends in pre-school and she insisted Frankie let her throw the petals down before you walk down the aisle. “I know it’s only a courthouse wedding but Ana wanted to make it special.”

“Thank you, Ana.” You bend down to look the little girl in the eyes, knowing how excited that she is. For her, this is exciting and fun, something that she will play with her friends the next time she sees them in school. “You are the prettiest little flower girl I have ever seen.” You promise, making her smile and you reach out to cup her little cheek. “Now I know your daddy talked to you about it, but how would you like me to come stay with you and daddy? Help him make breakfast and do your hair? Would you like that?” 

Ana nods, her eyes wide, “yes! Daddy never gets my hair right.” She says with a pout, “are you my new mommy?” She asks and Frankie had spoken to her about this. How you were going to come live with them, how you were going to be his new friend and that her mommy was still with her. He hates how selfish Janet was to drink and drive and the guilt he felt when she died after he all but forced her into the car, but there was something in her eyes. He’s seen that look before. She would’ve hurt Ana and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

“I-” You frown slightly, unsure of what to say to the young girl. “I would like to be your friend. A good friend. But I also don’t want you to feel like I am trying to become your mommy unless you would like that.” It might be a little more than a three year old understands, but you don’t want her to feel like she has to forget Janet. 

Frankie kneels beside his daughter, “your mommy is your angel, remember? She’s gonna look after you.” Frankie smiles and says your name, “she’s gonna be your friend when daddy is gone fighting the bad guys, okay? You are safe with her and she loves you as much as daddy does.” Frankie knows his job is much more complicated than good guys and bad guys but it’s how he can explain to a three year old that he’s gonna be gone for so long. He hates missing huge parts of her life but he can’t let his team down. 

“Okay daddy.” She hands him the basket and steps closer to wrap her small arms around your neck.

You smile at the two of them together and you know that you are doing the right thing. You are giving Frankie the opportunity to keep his daughter here with him so he can come home to her when he can. “Are you ready to go throw the petals down, sweetheart?” You ask softly. “I bet daddy will take us out for ice cream after.” 

Ana grins and nods, squealing “lets go!” 

Frankie chuckles and stands up, holding his hand out to his daughter and he winks at you, “lets go get hitched, baby.” You smile and he holds his arm out to you, guiding his girls to his truck. 

****

Ana beams as she tosses the flowers on the floor, Frankie would say in heaps more than scattered but he chuckles and she comes to stand beside him. When you walk down the small aisle, Frankie exhales shakily, his heart pounding and he’s certain you can tell he’s sweating. When you stand in front of him, you beckon Ana to stand between you and Frankie knows he’s made the right choice for his daughter. It’s always been you.

The magistrates ceremony is brief and you barely remember any of it, grinning like an idiot as you stand there with Frankie, imagining if this were actually real. “Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?” He asks, making you swallow harshly before you squeeze his hands. “I do.” You promise clearly.

Frankie nearly yells “I do” but manages to control himself, staring into your eyes as the officiant declares you husband and wife. “You may now kiss the bride.” Frankie knows this could be the only chance he gets to kiss you so he leans in to cup your cheek, pressing his lips to yours and he is firm but not demanding. It’s not brief but it doesn’t drag, despite Frankie wanting to pull you against him and slide his tongue into your mouth. This is an agreement between friends and nothing more. He pulls back and smiles, looking down at Ana between you who looks happy. This feels right. After signing the marriage certificate, Frankie takes your hand to guide you and Ana back to his truck. “I - I hope you don’t mind…it was supposed to be a surprise but the guys put together some food and drinks at Tom and Molly’s.

“Really?” Your mouth drops open in shock and you smile when he nods. “Oh my god, that’s so sweet.” You gush before you frown. “Wait.” Twisting in your seat, you watch as Frankie buckles Ana into her car seat. “Do they- uh, know what the situation is?” You ask softly, unsure of what you can say around them. 

Frankie shakes his head. “No.” He finishes pulling the strap up Ana’s chest and looks over at you. “I wanted them to be able to truthfully say they believe it is real.” He explains, making you nod in understanding. There’s the possibility that Frankie’s in-laws could still come for custody or challenge the validity of the marriage and it’s better if everyone thought this was real. “Got it. Happy newlyweds.”

Frankie is grateful that you’re going along with this. He knows it benefits you too but it’s a lot to ask, to pretend to be married to him. The drive to Tom’s house is quiet and when you knock on the front door, Molly opens it with a “congratulations!” You grin and Frankie holds your hand and Ana’s as he walks inside. All of his team are there, several of your mutual friends, and Frankie is blushing when they shout “congratulations.”

“Hot damn!” Benny bellows, making you automatically grin as the younger Miller brother bounds into view. “Fish got married! You son of a bitch, you hid it from us!” He tackles Frankie in a bear hug while Molly pulls you in for a  hug. “What? Afraid she’d see me in my dress uniform and run off with me?” Ben teases, pulling back to grin at his friend before he scoops you up in a hug. “She wouldn’t have done that? Would you, sweetheart? You’ve been in love with ole Fish for years.” Benny teases.

Frankie picks Ana up, not wanting her to be excluded and he tries to ignore the comment, aware that people have thought you and him have been in love with each other for years. It’s true on his side but he doesn’t fool himself into thinking you love him as more than a friend. “Shut up Benny, my wife has good taste.” He jokes and Pope walks over. 

“Couldn’t pick a best man so you decided to do it solo?” Pope jokes and Frankie gives him a one armed hug. 

“Uncle Pope!” Ana cheers as Santi takes her into his arms, “hey chiquita.” He kisses the cheek of his goddaughter. 

Frankie smiles, turning towards Will. “You finally did it, huh? You convinced her to marry you, you son of a bitch.” He chuckles and Frankie hugs his friend. 

“Guess so.” He grins as you greet your friends and they admire the ring Frankie had bought you. He had spent quite a bit of money on it, wanting to make something about this situation real.

The party is fantastic but after a few hours you are ready to leave. Not because anyone is rude, but the jokes about you being pregnant before Frankie leaves for deployment and giving Ana a sibling just curl in your stomach. Knowing that you are never going to have that with your husband because he didn’t marry you for love. He married you for Ana and to fight off his in-laws. With the little girl passed out against her father’s shoulder, you use that as an excuse. “We need to get her home. Today was a big day for her.” You tell Molly when she offers to keep Ana overnight so you and Frankie can have some time alone. “I think we will settle in better if she’s there with us.”

Frankie nods, aware that he won’t be getting a wedding night. He’s not that stupid. He would never ever ask it of you. “She’s right. I want Ana to feel settled since we are leaving soon.” He says and rubs your back with his free hand. “Let’s go, sweetheart.” He murmurs and he keeps Ana in his arms while he says goodbye to his friends, knowing he will see them soon.

In his truck, you look over after he’s pulled away from Tom and Molly’s. “We didn’t discuss sleeping arrangements.” You realize, rolling your eyes at yourself. “I can stay at my apartment until you leave, but I would rather Ana get used to me being there.” You admit. “Or I can stay in the guest room if you prefer? When Ana notices that we aren’t sleeping in the same bed, you can say that you don’t sleep well beside me? Or….” you bite your lip, imagining curling up next to him. “We are both adults. We can sleep next to each other, right? You have a king sized bed.” 

“We can share a bed. We are adults. Not like we haven’t before.” He reminds you of when he used to get drunk and end up in your tiny one bed apartment, seeking solace and a late meal after a night out with the boys. “Besides, I think it would be best if Ana thinks this is real. I want her to think that this is real so she is happy with you. Not that I don’t think you’re not - you know what I’m saying, right?” He asks as he drives to his house.

“I know what you mean.” Reaching out, you pat his hand and give him a smile when he looks over at you. “It’s a good thing we’ve started carting some of my things over, right?” You have every intention of selling most of your things, since Frankie’s is already established and your furniture holds no sentimental attachment for you. “We can go get my ID and everything tomorrow. Get me set up in the system as your wife?”

Frankie nods, “yeah. We will sort everything out tomorrow.” His heart pounds in his chest at hearing you call yourself his wife and he swallows harshly, knowing that nothing can be done. For your sake and Ana’s. He can’t fuck this up by letting his feelings get involved. He sighs and pulls into his driveway, killing the engine and he’s careful as he takes Ana out of her car seat.

As Frankie takes Ana to lay her down, you take the bag that Frankie had brought over into the master bathroom so you can change out of your wedding dress into some comfortable pajamas. They aren’t fancy or sexy but you had bought some new, cute sleeping clothes since you would be sharing a house with Frankie. Washing the makeup off and taking your hair out of the careful style you had put it in for the ceremony. Looking more like your normal self when you open the door to find your new husband in the bedroom you will share. 

Frankie is carefully hanging up his uniform when he sees you and his heart clenches at how fucking beautiful you look. He feels guilty that he’s got you in this situation, in a marriage of convenience when you deserve all the love in the world. He strips down to his boxers, pulling a plain shirt out to pull on. “You want some water?” He asks, clearing his throat and you nod so he ventures into the kitchen, exhaling shakily to force himself to calm down. This isn’t a real wedding night. “Here you go, sweetheart.” He says and hands you the glass.

“Thank you.” You sit on the end of the bed and take a sip of the water, trying to calm your nerves and you sigh. “I know that this is- that we aren’t actually together, but I want you to know that I’m not going to embarrass you while you are deployed.” You tell him. It's been a long time since you’ve dated but just because you aren’t really Frankie’s wife in all senses doesn’t mean you are going to mess around with anyone. “You don’t have to worry about that.” 

Frankie comes to sit down beside you, reaching for your hand. “I- I know this isn’t easy but if you do meet someone…you need to tell me and we end this. I shouldn’t - I don’t want to get in the way of the rest of your life. I love you - for - for doing this for me, and I will never be able to repay you. You’ve helped me keep Ana and I’ll forever be in your debt. I can’t - I can’t hold you back if you find someone and want to live your own life.” It kills him to say it, hating the thought of you with anyone else but he can’t be selfish, not when you’ve done so much for him.

It’s hard not to immediately assure him that you would never meet anyone else. Not when you are in love with him and no one has ever stood up against Frankie in your heart. Instead, you nod. “And I want you to do the same thing. You deserve to be happy, Frankie and when you meet someone that does that for you….” You give him a weak smile and go for a joke. “It will be the easiest divorce in the history of divorces.”

Frankie chuckles softly, his heart sinking but he ignores that and leans in to kiss your cheek. “Let’s get some sleep. It’s been a long day and I know Ana will be waking us up with excitement to have our first day together. I want to do as much as I can with her before I leave. Tomorrow, let’s go get you in the system and go for breakfast.” He says and lets go of your hand so he can slide under the covers.

Frankie has his side of the bed established, so you climb in on the other side. Knowing that you don’t mind it and you are thankful that his bed is comfortable. “It was a good wedding, Frankie.” You murmur as you lay down beside him. “Thank you. For not thinking that I was crazy.” You grin at him, knowing that he is also thankful you are willing to do this. “Goodnight hubby.”

“Goodnight wifey.” Frankie chuckles, leaning over to turn the lamp off and you curl up, falling asleep pretty quickly. He doesn’t. Staying awake and listening to your soft snores, murmurs, and breathing. His heart aches for you, to curl around you and breathe you in. He can’t ruin this. You don’t feel the same way, you want the insurance and to help him out. It takes a while but eventually he falls asleep, unaware that he had ended up doing the thing he was trying to avoid: curling around you.

Waking up in Frankie’s arms is a special kind of hell. Because you know that this is only because he’s asleep and not because he’s decided that he wants you in the middle of the night. Even if the very prominent hardness pressed against your ass makes you want to pretend that he does. The good thing is that Frankie is a heavy sleeper when he’s home so you manage to wiggle away from him before you wake him up. “Morning.” You huff when he starts to stir. “I have to pee, go back to sleep.” You urge softly.

He grumbles, hugging the pillow you were sleeping on, inhaling your scent from it, and he falls asleep again, wanting to make the most of this time at home. When you walk into the kitchen, you decide to get a start on making some coffee and eventually, Frankie wakes up, rolling onto his back and willing his morning wood to disappear. When the mental attempt is fruitless, he gets into the shower. Groaning as he wraps his hand around his cock, he remembers the dream he was having of you underneath him, celebrating your wedding night for real.

In the kitchen, you are reminding yourself that Frankie is just a man who wakes up with a hardon. It doesn’t mean that he wants to throw you up on the counter and fuck you. Deciding that you will make a small breakfast for Ana, giving Frankie some space and allowing you to cool down.

“Fuck. Oh fuck.” Frankie groans, jerking himself as his cum paints the shower wall. He’s lost track of how many times he’s imagined fucking you while in this shower. After cleaning off the shower and himself, Frankie brushes his teeth and shaves, getting dressed just in time for you to finish Ana’s breakfast. “Thank you for doing that.” Frankie says and fixes himself a cup of coffee after he sees you already have a cup.

“Of course.” Ana squawks over the baby monitor, obviously just waking up and you smile. “Do you want to get her or do you want me to start getting into a routine?” You ask, before you answer your own question. “Let me get her. I’ll be right back.”

Frankie watches you go, sipping his coffee and smiling as he listens to Ana sleepily say good morning on the monitor before she realizes you’re still there and she is excited, telling you how she wants to make cupcakes and show you all her dolls. It makes Frankie feel comforted that his little girl will be looked after while he’s gone. “Morning baby girl.” He greets her when she walks into the kitchen, eyes still sleepy and he picks her up to kiss her cheek. 

“Daddy. I want pancakes.” She demands and Frankie chuckles, “we will get pancakes later baby.” He says your name, “she made you some eggs for now.”

Ana frowns slightly and shakes her little head. “I no want eggs.” She pouts, crossing her arms and you try not to smile at the ferocious little look on her face. 

“Oh, well..” you sigh softly, “I guess you don’t have to eat the eggs. Even though they give you lots of energy to play.” You tell her softly. “Especially since this is just supposed to be first breakfast.”

“First breakfast?” She pipes up and Frankie nods, “yeah. Pancakes are second breakfast. But only if you eat the first breakfast. You wanna show off all your dolls, right baby girl? You gotta have energy to do that and eggs give you that.” Frankie explains to his daughter who lowers her arms. 

“With ketchup.” She insists, walking over to you.

Laughing, you turn back towards the refrigerator. “Eggs with ketchup, got it.” You don’t miss the way Frankie winces and you wonder if it’s something that she had learned from Janet. Frankie’s first wife had never hidden the fact that she hadn’t liked you, so you had tried to give her the distance she wanted, though you weren’t going to stop being friends with the guys or Frankie for her. “After you eat, I’ll help you get dressed and we will do your hair, how does that sound?” 

Frankie is reminded of Janet, who he used to make fun of for having eggs with ketchup and she used to make it for Ana when she started eating solids. “Can I have braids?” She asks, wanting to have her hair different from the styles Frankie just about manages to put together. “Of course, sweetheart.” You say and Frankie smiles as he watches Ana hug your leg.

Breakfast goes easy for Ana and you leave Frankie to clean up the kitchen while you and Ana go to get ready. The young girl sitting extremely still for a three year old, excited for her braids. You don’t blame her. The dolly she had introduced you two had braids and she wanted to look like her. Making her gasp in the mirror when she looks at her reflection.

When Ana comes out, squealing happily about her braids, Frankie ooohs and awws and tells her how pretty she looks. He winks at you, “you did a good job, baby.” He says and he doesn’t even think about the nickname he calls you and Ana admires the braids. “You wanna get ready and I’ll entertain the little lady?” Frankie suggests.

“Thanks.” You nod and try not to take his nickname to heart. It’s just practice for when you are in public and around others. “I’ll try not to be too long,” you promise, turning and heading towards the bedroom where your bag is. You need to shower and plan on doing just basic makeup for your ID photo.

****

Frankie glances over at you while he drives, admiring your profile in the sun and his gaze drops down to his ring on your finger. It makes his heart twist that he didn’t propose to you properly but again, he’s reminded that this isn’t real. “You got everything?” He asks while looking in the mirror at Ana who is admiring her Barbie.

“Social security, birth certificate, marriage certificate, driver’s license.” You go through all your documents and grin. “Yep. Although now I need to change all of that too. To reflect the last name Morales.” Your stomach twists pleasantly and you remind yourself that you are a Morales in name only. “Plus a passport change. That’s the one I dread.”

“It’ll be fine. You’ll have the insurance soon. Do you have enough meds to last?” He asks, knowing you have been halving the dose and he hates that, seeing how it has taken a toll on you. You aren’t your usual self and he wants to see you’re okay before he leaves.

“Yes.” You bite your lip and reach for his hand on the gear shifter. “Thank you Frankie. This is- I am grateful. I hated choosing between my medications and eating sometimes.” You hate how expensive it is to live when you don’t have health insurance and your job does not provide employer insurance since you are technically a contractor.

Frankie exhales, hating that you have to even choose. “Fucking country.” He huffs under his breath, knowing that he fights for freedom but those freedoms don’t allow you to have what you need when you desperately need it. He pulls into the parking lot of the administration building and comes around to open your door, helping you out before he moves to unbuckle Ana.

“Thank you.” You feel your cheeks heat up from Frankie’s attention to manners. You grab the diaper bag just in case and the three of you make your way to the first office to have you officially added to Frankie’s record as his wife and dependent. You will have to memorize his social security number because that is how they will give you the services you need from now on.

Frankie remembers adding Janet to his file when she was newly pregnant before he was first deployed and he squeezes your hand as you walk out, officially added as his dependent. He will call his lawyer later to tell them about the wedding so he can get Janet’s parents to drop their custody case. For now, he’s going to take his family to breakfast. 

****

“Silly daddy!” Ana giggles when he puts the empty glass to his eye and pretends to look at her through it. Pancakes eaten and bellies full, he hasn’t been this happy in a long time, glancing at you when he lowers the glass from his face.

Frankie is such a good father and it makes your heart pound. Imagining that you are a real family and wishing that you could be looking forward to giving Ana a little brother or sister. “Daddy is silly.” You tease, sending him a smile.

He chuckles, reaching for your hand so he can caress the ring with his thumb. “Daddy is silly!” Ana giggles and leans into Frankie’s side. He cuddles her with his free arm, knowing it’s going to be hard to leave but he has to, he can’t abandon his brothers. 

**** 

“Is she asleep?” You ask as Frankie walks into the kitchen. 

“Out like a light.” He tells you and groans in appreciation when you hand him the bottle of beer. He leaves in a few days and tomorrow he begins to prep for his departure. He has one last night to spend with you in relaxation. 

“You wanna finish that show?” You ask and he nods, watching you dish up the pasta that you’ve been cooking after giving Ana her simple buttered noodles earlier. 

“Sure baby.” The nickname comes naturally now and it slips off of his tongue without thought.

Your evenings have been so natural, perfect together. The friendship between the two of you had made it easy to be around each other and the only thing that you are struggling with is to not try to jump Frankie. He’s so sexy, especially when he comes home in his uniform. Waiting until he’s asleep to touch yourself while you are laying next to him at night or using your toy in the shower before Ana gets up is the only relief that you are getting. Bringing the pasta over to the couch, you sit down beside him and hand him his bowl. “Hopefully we figure out if they are going to get together this episode. I don’t want to wait until next season to find out.” 

“Probably not. It’s the waiting that makes the end result sweeter, don’t you think?” He asks, thanking you for the food and he hits play on the show. “Fuck, this is good.” He groans after swallowing the first bite. You are a damn good cook and he is going to miss your food when he’s got MREs on the menu. You eat in companionable silence, it’s comfortable and he loves that he can just be himself around you. Janet’s parents were furious to hear Frankie had married you, having heard from their daughter about how she thought he loved you more than her. Still, they didn’t have a case anymore so it was dropped

“Oh, I hope you don’t mind.” You start as you turn towards him. “I told Ana that we will drop you off together. She wants to see you off and I couldn’t say no. I think it will help her understand why daddy has to be gone for a long time.” You know this will be the first deployment that she will remember and you want it to be as good as it can for her. “I also got you one of those recordable books. You know? The ones that we saw in the toy store? That way you can read her bedtime story anytime she’s missing daddy.” 

Frankie swears he falls in love with you even more in that moment. Watching you with his daughter, how caring you are, how much you love her, it makes him want to stay and just spend the rest of his life with you, not missing a moment. When you were in the kitchen baking cookies with Ana last weekend, he imagined you pregnant with his child and it’s almost too easy to envision. “Yeah? That’s a great idea. I’ll do that tomorrow when she’s napping. I-I’m worried that she’s gonna forget all about me.” He admits his deepest fear, knowing he could potentially leave his daughter an orphan if he were to die on this deployment. It keeps him awake at night.

“I’m not going to let that happen.” You promise him softly, reaching over and taking his hand. “You have your will set up, you know I will make sure that if something happens, she knows all about her wonderful father, Francisco Morales.” You bite your lip. “Maybe you can record some videos for her? Send them to my phone to show her when she’s needing to see your face?” You know that video chatting will be sparse, sometimes impossible, but you want to make sure that she remembers him. “And we are going to be making you care packages.”

He smiles, unshed tears stinging in his eyes as he squeezes your hand. “You are amazing. I- I know this is - this is hard but I want you to know that I love you. You’re my best friend and I couldn’t do any of this without you.” He admits, “I owe you everything, baby.” He blinks and a tear escapes, allowing himself a moment of vulnerability, knowing that you’d never think of him as weak or not enough. He trusts you implicitly.

Your heart aches because you know that he doesn’t mean ‘love’ like you wish that he would. Still, you swallow down your feelings and lean over to kiss his cheek. “I love you too, Frankie.” You promise him quietly. You do, you love him with everything that you are and you always will. “I promise you that I will hold down the fort until you can get back home.”

**** 

It’s early and Frankie knows Ana is sleepy but she insists she comes to say goodbye to her daddy. The enormous hangar is full of families saying goodbye to their soldiers, some for the first time, others are well practiced in this. Frankie adjusts his pack over his shoulder when he sees his team. Tom saying goodbye to Molly and the girls, Will and Benny saying goodbye to their mom. Pope saying goodbye to his current girlfriend. “Come here, baby girl.” Frankie says, bending down to pick Ana up after setting his pack down once he’s standing with the team, not wanting to tear up in case it upsets his daughter more than it should.

“Daddy, I don’t want you to go.” Ana sniffles and you reach over to rub her little back. She had been very brave while Frankie was packing and had even stuffed a picture she had drawn for him in one of the pockets. “I want you to stay with mommy and me.” 

Frankie has mixed feelings, so happy that Ana is comfortable enough to call you mommy but he’s sad that she doesn’t remember Janet. As much as he resented her mother for what she became, he wants Ana to know her mother. Your eyes widen slightly and he knows he will email you to discuss this when he can. Now isn’t the time or place. “I know, baby girl.” He kisses her hair, “but I can’t stay. I gotta go fight bad guys, remember? You’ll be safe here with mommy and I promise you, I’ll come home as soon as I can. I will call you as many times as I can. I love you. So much.” He chokes a little and swallows the lump in his throat.

You know that it’s important for you to kiss Frankie goodbye, everyone around would expect it. You lean in and kiss his cheek. “I’m going to miss you. We are going to miss you. Take care of yourself please.” You beg him quietly. “Come home to us.” 

Frankie doesn’t know if he will come back and he nudges his nose against yours, “I- can I kiss you goodbye? Properly?” He asks, knowing it’s important for him to show you are his wife to anyone watching. You nod, unable to speak, and he cups your cheek, pressing his lips against yours. It’s brief but he tries to pour as much into it as possible. Ana clings to him as he nudges his nose against yours again before he pulls back. “I’m going to miss you, baby.” He tells you, adjusting Ana on his hip and he gets the minute warning to say goodbye.

Taking Ana, both you and she give Frankie a tearful goodbye, another fierce hug before he is walking away. His daughter is clinging to you as you both wave frantically as he boards a bus to take them to the plane. “Okay, baby girl.” You murmur softly, stroking her back as the little girl tucks her face against your neck. “We’re going to be okay. We’ll talk to daddy soon.” 

Frankie looks back at you before he boards the bus. Walking away is the hardest thing he has to do but he does it because he cannot turn back. He has to be there with his team. With a sigh, he steps onto the bus and takes a seat, unable to tear his eyes away from you and Ana as the bus pulls away. Pope slaps his shoulder, “they will be okay, hermano.” He promises and Frankie silently prays he’s right.

****

“Hello?” You quickly answer the phone, hoping that it is Frankie, letting you know that he’s gotten to his base overseas. “Frank, is that you?” You fumble for the light beside the bed and sit up. It’s late, or early but you don’t care. Ana groans next to you, having slept in the same bed for the last couple of nights since Frankie had left. “Hello?”

“Hey baby.” Frankie smiles against the phone when he hears your voice. He’s aware of how late it is there but he wants to hear your voice. He’s going to his op brief in the morning, diving straight into it, and he doesn’t know how long he will be dark for. 

“Hey.” You reply sleepily and Frankie’s heart twists, remembering how you’d curl into his chest during the night. 

“Just wanted to let you know I’m safe. Fucking cold here right now. How are you? How’s Ana?”

“She’s good.” You look over at his spot to see his daughter sprawled across his pillow and taking up even more room than he does if that's possible. “She’s sleeping in your spot. Wanted to cuddle daddy’s pillow.” You murmur quietly so you don’t disturb her. “I won’t let her get used to it, but she needs some comfort right now.”

“I miss her already. So much. I, uh, I want you to give her the bear tomorrow.” He says. He’d gone to the mall to Build A Bear and recorded his voice, telling Ana how much he loves her, and he wants her to have it now that he’s gone. The bear is wearing a uniform like daddy does. “How are you doing? I know it’s a lot to look after her alone.”

“Taking it one day at a time, baby.” You tell him. Thank god for her pre-school, allowing for you to work without having to entertain her. “Molly promised to come over and help out, we will get along just fine.” Reaching over, you pull up her covers and smile when she frowns just like Frankie does. “The bear will be the first thing she sees when she wakes up, I promise.”

“Good. I- I’m heading out any day now. Not sure when, but I’ll be dark for a while until we come back to base. I- I don’t know what’s gonna happen out there but I want you to know that you and Ana mean everything to me.” He confesses, wanting to leave you with that as his time is nearly up.

“We’ll be waiting to hear from you and putting together your first care package.” You hate how your stomach twists but you put on a brave front for him. 

“Sounds good. I gotta go now, sweetheart. I- I’ll talk to you soon.” He promises, aware of how much he wants to say to you but he can’t. He has to stay strong and not drag you into his stupid emotions. “Bye Frankie.” You murmur and he smiles, “bye baby.” He says and hangs up, closing his eyes and he knows this is going to be harder than ever.

**

You knew that this wasn’t going to be easy. Living in his house, raising his daughter. But it has moments where you can’t imagine anything else. Packing up care packages with his favorite things inside for him to have a bit of home and shipping them off faithfully. Living with your phone nearby at all times, because you don’t want to miss his calls. They are few and far between, but emails are regular, making you create a file folder to keep them all in. It’s been three months and you are finally settled into being Frankie’s dependent.

Frankie devours every email, every photo, every damn video you send of Ana. He wishes you’d include photos of you - not sexual, he just misses your smile. “Baby girl, daddy misses you.” He tells Ana on the video chat, back on base after a few hard hitting missions and he’s glad to see his daughter’s face. “Mommy. Give daddy a kiss!” Ana demands, having been kissing the phone to Frankie herself making his heart yearn for his family.

“Hey!” You light up when you see Frankie on the screen. Your hand automatically goes to your hair. You haven’t done it and you are wearing leggings and one of his t-shirts while you clean. Not your best look. “It’s good to see you, baby. How are you?” You think he looks tired but you don’t want to say that. You know he’s been out of communication so he’s been outside the wire.

God, you’re gorgeous. Frankie inhales sharply and bites his lip, “I’m good. Exhausted. We think we are gonna be sent out again. It’s - it’s rough.” He admits, running his hand through his hair. He realizes you are wearing his shirt and his cock twitches, knowing he’s gonna imagine you wearing just that when he goes to shower. “I miss you.” Frankie says softly.

“I miss you too.” Admitting that is easy. You miss your friend. The man you have fallen in love with. “Ana has a playdate on Saturday. We are going to Chuck E Cheese with one of the little girls from her preschool and her mom. Her dad is on the deployment with you.” You ramble, filling him in on all the small things about the time he’s been out of communication. “And we started a countdown for your tentative return.” You grin and angle the camera towards the calendar, showing where you’ve been marking off days.

Frankie hates that you’re waiting on him but he loves it at the same time, having a family to come home to. It keeps him going. It allows him to put his entire being into making sure he flies the team out of danger. It motivates him. “Hopefully I won’t be a day late coming back to you.” He says, asking you how your work is. Menial conversation but it means the world to him, he loves how simple it is to hear about your day but compared to the horrors he sees, he appreciates it.

You know that the call will have to end soon. Plenty of others want to talk to their loved ones. “We are planning on mailing you another package since Benny ate all your Oreos.” You laugh. “I put in a package for him so he doesn’t steal yours .”

Frankie grins, “thanks baby. I could’ve killed him when he bragged about stealing my cookies with the goddamn crumbs in his teeth.” Frankie shakes his head and Ana rushes up to the phone. “Daddy! Mommy got me a Barbie!” She holds her new doll up and Frankie admires it, reminded of how good you are with her. He’s not sure what will happen in the long run. When you meet someone and want to divorce. It will kill him but he will do it. “Okay my loves. I gotta go. Ana, sweetheart, I love you.” He says and she blows him a kiss, “love you daddy.” He looks at you, “I love you too. I’ll call when I can.” He promises and you nod, “bye Frank.” You blow him a kiss and he knows he will be thinking of that all afternoon.

****

“Coming!” Drying your hands on a dish towel, you rush towards the door, wondering who it can be. Maybe Molly, she had said she would drop by. Your friendly smile freezes the second that you open the door and see uniforms. Heart sinking, you feel like you’re going to be sick. You’ve seen this scene in a movie way too many times. “No-“ you gasp out, making the one with the silver leaf on his lapels remove his hat- or cover as Frankie called it. 

“Mrs. Morales?” You can’t breathe, you can’t speak as you imagine the next words, praying that you are finding yourself in the middle of a nightmare. “I am sorry to report that your husband has been injured in combat. He was shot multiple times and is currently being flown to Germany. You are his medical power of attorney and we need you to consent to surgery for when he arrives.” His words almost sound like you’re underwater. “Mrs. Morales, do you understand?” He asks you with a frown.

You blink stupidly at him for several moments before his words sink in. “He’s alive?” You whisper, reaching out for his arm desperately. “Frankie’s alive? Yes, yes whatever they need.” You rush out, tears streaming down your face. “Oh god, Germany?” You swallow. “I need to be there. I need to go be with him.”

“We have already arranged for you to go to Germany. Pack your bag now and we will wait. There’s no time to waste.” He says and you nod, rushing into the house to the bedroom to frantically pack a bag, grabbing your passport, and you go into Ana’s room, grabbing things for her, and you are grateful that Frankie got her a passport in hopes of taking her to Chile to see his distant cousins one day. “Mommy? What’s wrong?” She asks with a frown after she stops playing.

“Honey.” Bending down, you brush Ana’s hair back. “Daddy - daddy got hurt. He’s going to be okay, but we have to go visit him. Cheer him up.” You don’t want to scare her, but how do you explain to a three year old that her dad was in surgery after getting shot. “Can you be a big girl and come with me now? We have to be good because it’s a long trip.”

“Daddy’s hurt?” She asks, her lower lip trembling and you nod, “yes but we are going to kiss his boo boos better, okay? Can you be a good girl and pick out some toys for us to take?” You ask, grabbing her backpack and she nods, picking up her favorite dolls to take on the trip. Once you’re all packed up, you alarm the house and lock it, stepping out to the men waiting for you.

It’s surreal, being driven to a plane that is scheduled to take off in just a few hours. Apparently they had delayed it and you’ll never know if it was them or providence that had you up in the air so quickly and on your way to Germany. Praying the entire time that Frankie would be okay as you tried to entertain Ana, worried what you might learn when you land.

****

“Morning baby.” Frankie smiles, kissing along your neck. 

“Hmmm. Morning.” You grind back against his hard cock and smile, “someone is eager to start the day.” 

Frankie chuckles, sliding his hand under the t-shirt you’re wearing to cup your tit. “Always when it involves you.” He rasps, pinching your nipple and you whimper when he slides his hand down your belly after letting go of your breast. It’s starting to round, you’ll have to announce that you’re pregnant soon and Frankie knows you won’t be able to wait long after you both tell Ana. She will spill the beans within hours. His hand slides lower to disappear into your panties and he wastes no time rubbing your clit. Your soft moan has him biting down on your shoulder, grinding against you. 

“Fuck, Frankie.” You whine softly and he smiles against your skin, “mmm love it when you moan my name. My beautiful wife.” He sighs and pushes two fingers inside of your wet cunt, making you turn your head to find his lips. His tongue slides into your mouth as he pumps his fingers, loving the way you push your pleasured sounds into his mouth to muffle them. It doesn’t take you long to cum, sensitive from the hormones, and he pushes you over the edge by twisting his wrist to press his thumb to your clit. “Cum for me.” He begs against your lips and you fall apart with a cry of his name. He kisses along your jaw, working you through it until he’s pulling his fingers out of you. 

There’s a beeping noise and he frowns, looking over at the nightstand. “Did you get a new alarm clock?” He asks and you shake your head. 

“No. Frankie? Frankie?” Your face blurs and he’s back into the void.

**

“Frankie.” You carry Ana, rushing through the hospital behind the nurse who is bringing you to his room. He’s out of surgery but he hasn’t woken up yet. The danger is still there but he’s stable. Tears stream down your face when you see him looking grey and still in the hospital bed, hooked up to the heart monitor. “Oh god, Frankie, we’re here.” You promise, rubbing Ava’s back. “It’s okay baby,” the little girl has turned away from the sight of her daddy in the bed and tucked her face into the crook of your neck. “He’s okay, he’s sleeping. Trying to feel better.” The doctor had explained his injuries and the surgery and you are so damn thankful he survived.

Ana whimpers, “is daddy okay?” She asks and your heart breaks at the fearful tone to the voice. 

“Yeah, baby girl. Daddy is gonna be fine.” You try to be positive, hoping that he’s going to be okay. 

**

You’re not sure how many hours have passed. Ana is asleep on the chair, curled up after the hospital staff brought her and you some food. Time will tell if Frankie wakes up, his head and chest bandaged and you can’t seem to look away from the rise and fall of his chest, the beeping of the heart monitor reminding you that he’s still here.  When he does wake up, he blinks, wincing at the bright light above, and he tries to remember what happened.

“Oh thank god.” You sigh breathlessly when you feel him shift, looking up to find his eyes slowly opening. “Frankie. It’s okay, take it easy.” You don’t want him to be startled or scared. Squeezing his hand gently. “It’s me. You’re in the hospital in Germany.” Trying to keep your voice soothing until he turns to head to look at you.

His throat is so dry. Like he has been stranded in the desert for days without water. He swallows, trying to speak, and he tries to remember what happened but all he can say is “love you.” His dreams were lucid, showing him what life could be like. A life spent with you and Ana. You as his wife, his actual wife, not some paper so you can get healthcare. He closes his eyes again, feeling exhausted.

“I love you too.” You cry, relieved that he’s okay. That he’s awake. The fear and the anxiety make you sob as you lean forward and kiss his hand. “I’m so- god, I’m so - god I was so worried.”

The nurse comes in to check on you at that moment and you turn towards her, “he’s awake.” The nurse nods and comes over to Frankie, ushering you away and pushing the button to summon the rest of the medical team to assess Frankie who is still half drugged up but aware of his surroundings.

You move over towards Ana, leaning over and checking on her while the doctors and nurses come into the room. Smiling as she cuddles the beat that had his voice recorded in it while she sleeps. You have to talk to him. You can’t do this. Not when you really love him. You can’t pretend you don’t want a real future with him while playing as his wife.

The medical team eventually filters out and the doctor approaches to tell you that Frankie’s vitals all look good. He was shot in the head but it was just scraped and didn’t go in. He had a bullet to the chest which punctured his lung but didn’t go near his heart, and a bullet to the shoulder. He’s lucky to be alive but he should make a recovery as long as he’s stable.

Listening to the doctor, you are so damn thankful for the fact that Frankie pulled through as well as he has, hugging yourself as you hear the prognosis and what will happen going forward with rehab for him. “Thank you.” You murmur as the doctor leaves, letting you move back towards Frankie. You can tell that he’s about to fall asleep as you take his hand again. “Baby, I-” you choke out the words, new tears falling and you just squeeze his hand again, unable to get the words out. Frankie’s eyes flutter closed again and his breathing evens out as he falls asleep again. 

****

“Daddy! Mommy wants pancakes.” Ana declares and Frankie chuckles, “oh she does? I guess it is Mother’s Day after all.” Frankie says as he slides the pancakes he was already making onto the plate. “Come on then. Let’s go.” Frankie says once he’s got everything and Ana opens the door for him to find you holding the baby, breastfeeding him. 

“Happy Mommy Day!” Ana declares and you smile, looking up at Frankie as he holds the tray. 

“Happy Mother’s Day.” He says and kisses your cheek even though he showed you how much he loves you this morning before the kids woke up. “I’ll hold him while you eat.” Frankie offers after his son pulls off of your breast. You nod and Frankie takes the baby into his arms, certain that this is a dream. The life he’s always wanted with the woman he’s always wanted.

“I’ve been thinking.” You smile sweetly at the picture Frankie paints holding your son. 

“Yeah baby? What have you been thinking about?” He asks, looking up from Miguel to find you grinning at him. His heart flutters every time he sees that smile. 

“I think that once the doctor clears me, we should try for another.” You admit, chuckling when his eyes widen. “Have a set of Irish twins. What do you think?” You had cursed him while you were pushing Miguel out, but immediately apologized once the pain had passed and your son was in your arms.

Frankie’s eyes widen, “really? You want another one so soon?” He asks and you nod, “yes. Yes. I don’t want to waste time. It’s precious.” He agrees, knowing how quick time flies. “Let’s do it.” He says and he is leaning in to kiss you. “I love you baby.” He murmurs and you hum into his mouth, making him smile.

****

Frankie squeezes your hand while he continues to rest. Letting you cry in solitude while Ana still sleeps curled up in the chair. “I love you Frankie.” You admit quietly. “I’ve always loved you. It’s why it was so easy to offer to marry you. I- I want you to recover for Ana, but for me too.” Leaning down, you kiss his hand again, wondering if he’s dreaming. If he is, you hope that it's a good dream.

Frankie blinks against the bright light again, annoyed that he’s been dragged away from his dream of making another baby with you. The dreams were so real he mourns the life he had in those dreams and he opens his eyes to find you crying while holding his hand. “Wha- baby?” He croaks, throat still so dry and he wonders why you are crying.

Looking up, you press your lips together as you hold back a sob. Leaning forward and pressing your lips to his cheek and forehead, taking care to keep away from his bandages. “Oh god baby, you're awake. I - I’m so glad.” You pull back, knowing he is probably confused. “You were- you were shot.” You explain quietly. “You’re in a hospital in Germany. I- Ana and I flew out as soon as possible. I have been so worried about you.” 

He frowns, finally getting his focus, and he looks at you. “Shot? Germany? The- the others?” He asks, suddenly worried about his team. Are they okay? Is anyone else hurt or dead? His heart monitor starts to beep rapidly and he squeezes your hand.

“Everyone else is fine.” You promise, having heard what happened from the officer who had taken you to the airfield to fly out. “You took fire while you were trying to get soldiers out of a heavy fire situation. You were shot, but managed to get them back to the base before you passed out right after you set down your chopper.” Your heart had stopped when you heard how he had barely made it back to base, but you could only be strong for him. 

He’s still fuzzy but he understands what you are saying. He nearly died. He remembers the panic in his mind when he was shot, thinking about leaving you and Ana behind. Fuck, he nearly died. Fuck. “I love you.” He tells you breathlessly. 

“I love you.” You murmur, tears streaming down your cheeks. 

“No. No. You don’t understand. I’m in love with you. I love you. I love you. I can’t - I can’t live without you. You’re my best friend. You’re my everything.” He chokes, needing you to understand him.

“You’re my best friend too.” You promise him, thinking that he’s just telling you needing you as a friend. 

But Frankie frowns. “No baby, I don’t- I want to be married to you for real. Forever.” He manages, squeezing your hand. 

“For real?” You frown and then lean forward. “Baby, I want- if this is just some kind of reaction to being shot-“ 

“it’s not,” he insists. “I love you.” 

You lunge forward and press your lips to his. “I love you.” You tell him breathlessly.

He wishes he could reach up and cup your cheek, keep you pressed against him, but all he can do is kiss you back. “I’m so fucking in love with you. Always have been. Even with - even when I was with Janet. It’s why she left that night. We were arguing and I- shit. I’ve made so many mistakes but marrying you ain’t one of them. I love you. I love you.” He says when you lean back to look into his eyes.

Your heart breaks, knowing that you were the cause of what could be the reason that Janet was driving that night, although you know her actions were her own. You know that she and Frankie weren’t good together and you can’t blame him for the past. “I love you, Francisco.” You promise him softly with a smile, kissing him once more. “Will you stay married to me?” You ask quietly, not wanting anyone to over hear. “Make this a real marriage with me?” 

Frankie nuzzles into your cheek, unable to believe how lucky he is to have you. “I love you. It’s always been you. I- I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to start the rest of our lives.”

You smile and giggle happily, reaching up and brushing his hair back from his face. “I love you too baby. Now you just need to heal so you can come home to us.” Frankie’s deployment is officially over and as soon as he is recovered enough to go home, you would be headed back to the states so he could recover fully. 

****

“Frankie!” You huff, pushing at his wandering hands and pushing them away from your ass. “You need to stop. You could pull a stitch.” You chide, finding it harder and harder to push him as the weeks go by.

Frankie grunts, “don’t care. It’s been torture seeing you and not being able to be inside of you.” He admits, and he knows you’ve done stuff. You have sucked his cock and he let you sit on his face, but the doctor told him no strenuous activity. He hasn’t been cleared yet but every day it’s getting harder to not fuck you. He honestly wants to make love to you, something slow and sweet to consummate your marriage…finally.

You bite your lip and you know that he is just as eager as you are to finally have sex. Leaning in, you press your lips to his. “If - and I mean if - you can be good and be still, how about we compromise and I sit on your cock?” You know that Frankie wants to be in charge but he can’t. No with the bandage on his side. But if he could be still, you could ride him. “But you have to be still. Not trying to take over.”

Frankie pouts, aware that he can’t ruin you the way he wants to but he has the rest of your lives to make love to you, to make you cum on his cock while he fucks you. “I can be good.” He promises, sliding his hands down to squeeze your ass. Ana is in bed and he’s so grateful for it so he can push his hard cock into your hip. “I won’t take over.”

You smirk, absolutely aware of the fact that he will try to take over. “Then what are you waiting for, soldier?” You tease. “Get undressed so I can fuck my husband.” You are already getting out of the bed so you can strip out of the t-shirt and panties that you had taken to sleeping in. Enjoying the way Frankie’s eyes wander over your body every night.

He loves seeing you like this. His beautiful wife. The love of his life. He swallows, throat suddenly dries, and he is grateful he isn’t wearing a shirt. His boxers are able to be shoved down and he pushes the sheets down the bed before settling against the pillows. “Baby. Come here. Are you wet? You wanna sit on my face?” He asks, “there’s lube in the nightstand.” He wants you to be comfortable. “And condoms…if you want.” He adds, knowing you haven’t been on birth control and he doesn’t want to push you in case you change your mind and don’t want to get pregnant yet.

He pants, fingers twitching to grab you. He desperately wants you, he wants to make you feel good. “I can’t wait to see you pregnant.” He admits, knowing that the experience will be different than Janet who was a nightmare when she was pregnant. She was demanding and accused him of cheating, and then cried and begged for sex in the same breath. He had whiplash and tried to be there for her but it was hard at times. His hands caress your back and he leans in to kiss your shoulder, just breathing you in while you grind against him.

“Lean back, baby.” You chide, pushing his shoulder back gently. “I’m going to come to you. Give you what we’ve both wanted.” He feels so good against your clit that you can’t help but roll your hips, slicking up his cock with how wet you are and enjoying when his cock flexes against your folds. Leaning in, you press your lips to his in a soft kiss.

“Fuck. Don’t tease me baby. It’s been torture.” He groans when you kiss him slowly, his hands squeezing your hips to encourage you. “Come on baby. I need you to fuck me.” He begs, rocking his hips to grind against you.

Taking mercy on him and yourself, you reach down and wrap your fingers around his thick cock and lift your hips. Eager to have him inside you now and feel his cum filling you up. The first inch makes you gasp, carefully bracing your hands on his chest but not putting any pressure on him. Wanting to make sure you don’t hurt him as you sink down on him.

Frankie whimpers, actually whimpers, when you take his cock inside of you. “Fuck baby. You- Jesus fucking Christ - you feel so good.” He pants, “I- oh God. Wanted this for so long.” He grips your waist, wishing he could slide inside of you on your back and make love to you.

Leaning forward, you press your lips to his and slide your tongue into his mouth as you grind back onto him. Wanting to make sure that you get used to the thick heft of him inside you. “Me too baby, wanted you for so long.” You promise, your walls clenching around him.

Frankie almost feels like he can't breathe. His heart beats out of his chest and he pants when you clench around him. "Fuck, sweetheart. Feel so good. Can't - can't wait to feel this for the rest of our lives. So damn lucky." He kisses along your jaw and down your neck, wanting to worship you as much as possible.

“I’m lucky.” You start to slowly roll your hips, in no hurry to cum. You want this time to be soft and sweet. Not only for him, but so you can feel every inch of him scrubbing through your walls. “Love you.” You close your eyes as he kisses you, absorbing the groans and loving how his hands wander as you slowly ride him.

“Love you too.” He vows, knowing he’s going to ask you to marry him again. He wants a big wedding, the boys to be there and your friends. He wants to show off how much he loves you. After nearly dying, it’s put everything into perspective and he knows he is grateful for what he has. Others have fared far worse than him. His hands squeeze your breasts and his cock twitching inside of you, imagining them full of milk for his baby. The thought nearly sends him over the edge but he controls himself.

“Ohhh someone thought of something they like.” You tease, seeing the look on his face as he twitches inside you. You wonder if it’s the same as him. Imagining him knocking you up tonight. Your hips roll a little faster and you moan his name softly, reaching up and combing through his hair as your nose touches his and you look in his dark eyes

He chuckles softly, “was thinking about you full of our baby. When your tits get bigger.” He confesses and nudges your nose with his. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait to begin our family with Ana and another child. It’s gonna - fuck - it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.” He murmurs, caressing your back.

You moan, imaging how possessive, how loving he will be when you are showing. Frankie seems like the type to worship you when you are pregnant. “I want that too.” You promise. “Have your baby, share that with you. Raising our kids.” Ana isn’t yours by blood but you love her like your own.

He nods, knowing he wants to ask you to formally adopt Ana and be her mom. He will preserve Janet’s legacy with her daughter but Ana deserves all the love in the world. “Fuck.” Frankie groans when you rock a little faster, his shoulder aches but he ignores it, trying to rock his hips up into you as you grind on top of him.

“Frankie.” You gasp out, clenching down around him when his cock nudges against your g-spot wonderfully. “There.” You pant, knowing that if he keeps hitting that spot just like that, you will cum quickly.

He hisses, concentrating on thrusting up into you at that angle. “Baby. Cum for me baby.” He begs, “come on, be a good girl. Cum for me.” He demands, needing to feel you clamp down on his cock.

You whine out his name, holding onto him as he takes control. 

He wasn’t supposed to do that, but you are beyond caring. As long as he doesn’t rip his stitches, he can take the reins and thrust up into you. “I’m gonna cum baby, oh fuck, I’m gonna cum on your cock.”

“That’s it. That’s it.” He groans when he thrusts up into you, his hands gripping your ass, and you clamp down on his cock. “Fuck yes baby. That’s it. Oh shit. I’m gonna-” Frankie usually prides himself on his stamina but the emotional connection combined with wanting you for years and the added ecstasy of you possibly getting pregnant and his near demise has him sent over the edge. “Fuck.” He moans your name as he cums, cock twitching inside of you.

It’s Heaven, the molten heat of his seed filling you. Making you gasp in pleasure as you grind down on him as he rides out his high, pushing up into you with short thrusts. “Oh god, oh god.” You collapse against him and kiss along his jaw. “I love you so much.”

“Love you.” Frankie pants, his entire body lost in the feel of his orgasm. It’s more than he could’ve ever imagined. He feels complete. His wife in his arms, hopefully pregnant soon with his second child. It’s his dream come true. He just wishes it wasn’t such a bumpy road to get to this point but that’s life. Twists and turns…Frankie still got his happy ending.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 5/21/2024

get a load of this cat

listening

one of my favorite bands, Joywave, dropped a new album last week! it is not my favorite album of theirs but so it goes. perhaps it needs more time to grow on me. Sleepytime Fantasy kicks off my favorite section of the album. video game enchanted ice cave dream sequence music.

i must stay true to my own rules for this series (not a rec series, genuinely what i've been into the most this week) and the song that's been on loop all week is a genshin impact character's theme music (punchy wolf-coded ice cop who is the duke of the prison he. runs? administers? don't worry about it). unfortunately a bop. the character music lately has been a lot more modern and experimental than i expected? this one has a police siren drop

-

reading

thank you mackintosh.

i really, really enjoyed Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott (LAMBDA award winner 1995)! @delta-orionis and i frequently ask ourselves "what if neuromancer was good?" and this scratches that itch for me. it is often difficult for me to take neuromancer's protagonist henry seriously, but this book features a pair of extremely practical dykes. it opens on the passing of a new american law criminalizing big swathes of online activity, passed despite a presidential veto. description from amazon

Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the computer nets. The hip, noir adventurers who get by on wit, bravado, and drugs, and haunt the virtual worlds of the Shadows of cyberspace, are up against the encroachments of civilization. It's time to adapt or die. India Carless, alias Trouble, got out ahead of the feds and settled down to run a small network for an artist's co-op. Now someone has taken her name and begun to use it for criminal hacking. So Trouble returns. Once the fastest gun on the electronic frontier, she had tried to retire-but has been called out for one last fight. And it's a killer.

this startled me by how fun and competent it is! i tried reading one of the author's books last year (Dreamships) and had a miserable time with the pacing and flow of information. there are echoes of the pacing issues i had with the last book-- this is a nearly four hundred page hardcover, we have a lot of Next Locations to go to, and we are going to take our fucking time getting there. a road trip book, rather than a destination book. Scott has gotten way way better at fleshing out those locations— an artists' co-op has their skylights set to amber to hide the wear and tear on everything in their central hangout space when the feds show up. i also connected with the inciting incident way more-- someone stealing a female hacker’s name and style is instantly relatable. i am riding shotgun with Trouble. i am ready to throw down with her.

it's a very physical book in many ways, bc it has three brief sex scenes, is very concerned with sensuality in both senses of the word, and overall it's like the background in an anime that’s full of dials and buttons and little blinky lights. written in 1994, fascjnating how much concepts of VR and sensory inputs have not changed, but everyone still has the equivalent of an enormous old school desktop and giant CRT monitors set up. everyone is constantly lugging around so much physical tech. the stuff that makes you better at hacking in the net is quick reactions to VR sensations, the only way to get that cutting edge sensation is to get a physical chip or “worm” in your head, and the only people who do that are the core outcasts and freaks of the internet (the gays, the women, the people of color, the all three, presumably the furries as well). from that day to this…

there's an interesting contrast between Trouble and her old partner Cerise stalking the virtual reality bazaars/being queens of the BBS undergrounds, and the danger they feel and face when moving about in the real world. some reviewers are very cranky about how negotiations on and offline feel the same but i did not feel this particular quibble. communication is communication. it is known both on and offline that they're 1) women and 2) lesbians. they're in less physical danger online but slurs can still happen no matter where they are. also, i am well used to the necessity of having to posture and peacock and be kind of a bitch to establish myself in order to get anything done in coding/hardware scenes, which is something i don't think any of the male reviewers of the day ever had to think about.

some cowboy shit goes down at the end that had me hooting and hollering, and Scott handled the hacking scenes in an interesting way-- a sort of abstracted duel? terrific "fight" scenes. very interesting at how she will move things around in order to treat scenes in ways she's good at-- like establishing very grounded locations that feel real, physical sensations, and fight scenes-- instead of just kind of slogging through a very surface level high-overview travelogue like in her last book. ive been stuck on a fic chapter for like four years and this is making me think about doing it the fun way instead of the way i thought it should be done. this may be obvious but i am an amateur and more importantly an idiot.

this was a $6/1 book special last year at one of my favorite thrift stores, a religious shop with the absolute worst vibes in the greater houston area but some of the best stuff

-

watching

Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970, dir. Brava). sometimes you see a cool title on kanopy and you don't have a better way to kill an hour and a half. plus it had some guys i know from cowboys. tw for a suicide's body in the first fucking ten seconds of the trailer, which is a weird trailer choice bc u don't actually see most of the murders in the movie.

ive watched a fuck of a lot of spaghetti westerns so i feel i am somewhat qualified to tell you this is one of the worst dubs ive ever seen. the lines actors are quarter-heartedly delivering do not always make a lot of sense and only occasionally match the subtitles. i am assuming this is the original dub, bc kino lorber generally does a pretty okay job restoring things?

this is not a good movie (extremely troubled production, director swap three days before filming, made on a shoestring budget, the actors mostly wore their own clothes, etc). it is not very good at maintaining tension, because it is a film that first and foremost Looks. beautiful fucking sets, beautifully decorated. the exterior is a matte painting, a sort of frothy dream-bubble of sixties architecture. most of the interiors are apparently a real house. incredible experimental burbling soundtrack full of Weird Sounds.

sorry about the tubi interface and our old friend the activate windows logo.

there are so many fun directorial flourishes and staging, but it does get a little wrapped up in itself. this made me think of The Secret of NIMH, a beautifully animated talking-animal film that gave me nightmares as a child, where the animation tricks and sparkles and moving parts sort of all get in each other's way to produce something less than the sum of its parts. this sort of happens here. i'm going to yoink this from a review:

Bava’s eye for exquisite compositions is equally evident. One scene in particular stands out in this regard: The filmmaker shoots an otherwise humdrum fistfight through wooden latticework that breaks the action up into an abstracted mosaic effect. The fight culminates with a table being upended, which in turn unleashes a myriad crystal spheres. The camera follows along as the spheres tumble and cascade down a spiral staircase and roll across a tiled floor before plopping like so many bath bubbles into a tub. The scene concludes with the revelation of a recently deceased character caught in what you’d have to call a tableau morte. It’s a dazzlingly orchestrated sequence, easily on par with more famous Bava set pieces.

it's gorgeous! there's also So Much going on. another lovely bit of business: as each person dies they get wrapped in plastic sheeting and put in the walkin freezer. next to slabs of beef. not a subtle film, and i don't mean it as a diss, bc where's the fuckin fun in that?

-

playing

i have not been doing much of anything here except listen to podcasts and work toward the two-thousand-fish-caught achievement in genshin. impatiently waiting for Clorinde to be released in several weeks. that one button needs a raise. it is So funny to see genshin characters with fucking guns. very sword and pike based societies so far

-

making

every time i have tried to make one of these samplers for Me it's gone horribly wrong or been somehow destroyed so i'm making this one for my brother's upcoming birthday, bc he will have off-campus housing next academic year, in an attempt to peacefully do some fucking cross stitch and get something out at the end of it. pattern here on etsy

[capribornio]

413countdown

Delta kids - Day 5: Videogames

You get headcanons for today because. I forgor this was happening lol.

Harry used to play AAALLL the dressing up web games when he was younger. He had a bookmark with a lot of sites, and he loved spending his afternoons deigning outfits. Some of his first sketches were copies of clothes found in the games, modified a bit according to his tastes. He still plays them sometimes for inspiration.

Tavvy loves indies RPGs. It's a bit of a rebellion for him, cosidering most brand games are all Crocker Corp. Vrissy finds really cool he does rebel a little in secret and extremely lame his choice of rebellion (<3=). She mostly plays co op games with Harry (it'supposed to be romantic but both of them end up flying into gamer rage at each other).

Yiffy plays first person online shooters with her gang. (The cool games, not that Crocker Corp bullshit). She's ruthless with the noobs.

On a not-Delta-kid, still Candy Earth C note, Meenah is SO angry at herself for not thinking about something as genius at making money as videogame lootboxes. She hates that it occurred to Jane first. (Then Karkat points out that actuallly, Jane got that from Earth B, where lootboxes where a Earth B Crocker Corp invention. Whcih means that, technically, it did occur to some version of Meenah first. Meenah goes back to be pleased with herself).

[sleepsonfutons]

20 questions for fic writers!

Ope it's double tag time >:D thanks @spockandthings & @bazzybelle for the tags~

This one's got length to it so get the scoop under the cut lol

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Shoot, how many do I have... let's see now... ooooh, that'd be 18!!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Eyyyy 104,261 since I started posting last year :3

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The Sandman and The Witcher, though mostly Sandman so far lol

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

hmmmm, those would be...

In Awe, I Stand -> 370 kudos

Dream of the Dark -> 226 kudos

My Comfort. Your Touch. -> 216 kudos

Every Inch of Me -> 161 kudos

Starlight, Star-Bright -> 139 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my best to, yes indeed! That doesn't always means it happens though cuz life and energy and honestly attention-span...but I read every single comment I get and cherish them. They are bright spots in my day and I like to share the joy I've been gifted with the person who gave it when I'm able 💖

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ohoho that's gotta be Don't Ask Me To Say Goodbye!! I have Plans for that AU, but as it currently stands it's angst-central with only heartbreak~

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics have happy endings I wanna say, but happiest has got to be a toss-up between Starlight, Star-Bright and My Comfort. Your Touch. They're both super soft, self-indulgent delights :3

8. Do you get hate on fics?

*knocks on wood* nah

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do [hellmo.gif] How do you feel about potatoes? (but also like relatively "normal" stuff: butt stuff, mouth stuff, touching stuff, eldritch stuff, basically a variety of different stuff >;3 LOL)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Not so far, though I'd not be opposed to writing one.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

*knocks on wood again* not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope, but open invite to anyone who might want to! Just give me a shout when you're done cuz I'd love to see~

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

HECK YE!!!! @phinofthestorm is outstanding and I literally can't say enough nice things about writing with her! The amount of time we've spent on the same brainwave with our collab fic As a Stranger I Know Myself has been mindblowing and fantastic!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Honestly, I'll never get over GrimmIchi (Bleach) I don't think lol. The nostalgia factor is unbeatable at this point.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Truss Me Up But Never Leave Me Hanging probably fits the bill best, much to my chagrin. It was meant to be a canon-verse Dreamling shibari fic, but *vague handwaving* I wound up getting in my head over whether I could write it to the level of accuracy/quality I feel it deserves

16. What are your writing strengths?

Setting the scene? aka "purple prose" and metaphors

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Concise, "non-flowery" writing in general and dialogue

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I mean if it makes sense, idk why not. Only caveat to that is if it's not a language you speak yourself, definitely get someone who does speak that language to proof it!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Witcher with the bday fic I wrote for my bestie: Where You Least Expect It

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Dang, twist my arm why don't'cha... Sheesh favorite fic I've written... I love 'em all honestly, but I reckon Along the Garden Path, We Meet. It's just a short little thing though Dream being a lil shit to Hob early on, before even their first centennial meeting in 1489, absolutely sends me every time.

Woooo we made it to the end! Now to torment tag to join the fun with 0-whole pressure @seiya-starsniper @phinofthestorm @mentallyinvernation @certifiedbisexualdisaster @blueberrymffn @gabessquishytum @delta-pavonis @aquabluejay

[reasonandempathy]

What to do with 10 trillion dollars

I spent way too much time actually answering a reddit question of "How would you spend 10 trillion dollars if you needed to in 20 years. You will die after 20 years." So, I figured I'd share it here.

With only $10 trillion dollars you can't stabilize greenhouse gases or get rid of fossil fuels, which are 13t and 44t respectively. I'm using a variety of sources, so don't expect citations.

I did slightly overpay for things, strategically, partially because I can only imagine doing the things I would do would make it more expensive than it would otherwise be. You'll see.

I'm presuming I don't get assassinated.

What you can do (I did the math) figures are in Billions:

Personal (2.44/10000):

1.44 on remaking 8 games as mid-line AAA games (I chose Legend of Dragoon, FF8, Witcher 1, and the Legacy of Kain series).

.214 on 50 years of housing and buying yourself a $130,000,000 home in NYC. Includes taxes, maintenance, and furniture.

.15 on household staff for 50 years, with at double the normal pay

.000327 to put 3 kids through the best pre-k and best college in the country

.664 setting up each of those 3 kids with their own equivalent home and staff setup

Public Service (4303/10000):

Big one out of the way. 2500bn in lobbying/buying up American politicians to enact structural reforms I want to see. You would think this would be way too much, since the presidential election in 2020 only had 14.4 in it. This amounts to averaging 250 in spending every election cycle, even off-year. I counter with the global commercial banking market having a market cap of 2800 in 2023. The defense industry is almost 480. Health insurance in the US is 1600. This is an expensive, long-drawn fight. This is likely the single most important thing on the list. Anti-corruption measures, labor rights, pro-democracy reforms, including ultimately making it illegal for other people to buy more elections.

a cumulative total of 1803 spent on:

curing the most common cause of blindness worldwide

eradicating polio, rabies, elephantitis, malaria, world hunger, COVID19 issues, Water + Sanitation access, extreme poverty, homelessness in USA, Canada, and UK (I looked for China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, and Pakistan but couldn't find real numbers),

protecting the Amazon rainforest

Corporate Fixing (5692/10000):

Buying up and changing (converting to Co-Ops, converting to non-profits, dissolving, or something in line with those:

Meta

Amazon

Disney

JP Morgan Chase

Lockheed Martin

Delta

Alphabet

Asda

Tesco

Nike

The Weinstein Company

United Airlines

Shein

EA

BP

Bayer (side-note: they own/are Monsanto now)

De Beers

Vonovia Real Estate Developers

DLE

Ubisoft

Ikea

Shueisha

and Viz Media

It leaves me with 1.4bn left over. I'm comfortable with saying an additional billion would likely be used up administratively as things get a bit more expensive than I thought they would.

Honestly, I could likely blow it on close friends and family who need it. If you have an issue with the house spending being for 50 years instead of 30, that can just be shuffled around a bit to include more people in my personal life to meet the same number.

Leaving me with 470 million to spend elsewhere in the next 20 years. Expensive vacations, nice cars, donating to "smaller" issues as I see worthwhile, giving family and friends money for their ventures/dreams, etc. make me think it wouldn't actually be hard to lose track of that much money in those many years.

Hell, if I want to I can probably spend a million bucks on food a year just for my family. Probably more, if I actively try to do so.

[wadbot]

DCDELTA.wad: Doom Core Delta (10th anniversary edition) MAP05: echoes (-2568, 1836, 288) Author: Michael Jan Krizik (valkiriforce) Date: 2019-12-23 Description: This is an updated, special edition version of the vanilla megawad Doom Core - contains various changes including co-op fixes, difficulty adjustments, a few new maps and updates throughout for the 10th anniversary of the megawad's inception.

[delkios]

For those of you RepComm fans that also like game dev talk, here's a podcast done by Brett Douville and Tim Longo (lead programmer and director, respectively) in 2020, playing through the game and also bringing in some of the other devs to interview. I'll put links and a brief synopsis of each one.

Part One (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: giving context around the time via other released games and consoles, what squad based gaming was like at the time, developing the idea for RepComm, discussing the opening sequence and lightly touching in Geonosis

Part Two (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: the lack of information re: clone organization/GAR structure, playing through Geonosis, discussions about weapons, the Prosecutor, details on scav droids, trandoshians and AI communication and scattered talk about difficulty levels

Part Three (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: George Lucas's input on differentiating between clones and lack of humor, talking about voice acting/recording process, going through Kashyyk, technology limitations, level flaws and working with a small dev team, difficulty level (particularly the bridge), using level design to make the AI seem smarter, some info on the books, toys/the game's surprise success, minor talk about plans for a sequel, Delta's cameo in the Clone Wars

David Collins and Jesse Harlin (voice director and composer) Discussion notes: the state of game music/composers/audio at the time, RepComm devs working with audio from the beginning, music changes depending on how you enter a room, sounds from the game being reused in other Star Wars media, Jesse and his girlfriend/now wife developing 'ancient Mandalorian'/Mando'a, 'kote' confirmed to be Cody (specifically Jesse's sister), battle sounds on Geonosis, questioning the use of Ash/no guitars in Star Wars, multiplayer a late addition

Harley Baldwin (level designer) Discussion notes: the unique culture of the RepComm dev team, a stealth level intended in Kashyyk, Prosecutor's atmosphere, difficulty spikes designed to emphasis squad importance/level designers are not good measures for difficulty, Kashyyk designed to be a culmination of the player's experience and knowledge, squad moving ahead of the player due to playtest concerns, easter egg in the texture editor

Greg Knight and Paul Pierce (concept artist and UI artist) Discussion notes: devoted concept artists weren't common at the time but proven to save development time, the entire team contributed to ideas for concept art, influences for the design of the HUD, decision to make the game entirely first person/immersion driving UI design, weapons as a 'character', differences in RepComm's design notes vs movies' games, enemies mean different things between Jedi and clone troopers, noting similarities between RepComm and Rogue One, RepComm's low profile allowed them to get away with more, hangars in Prosecutor meant to progressively make the player more desperate and AT-TE a reward for surviving, Kashyyk's bridge was meant to be the 'boss battle', the concept of 'the squad is your weapon/the squad is your health'

Dave Bogan (lead animator) Discussion notes: working title 1138, 'what is the enemy doing when they don't know you're there', aiming to compete with Halo, every enemy had to act and move differently, expanding on the SpecOps special feature video, game mechanics/logic vs how things are actually done, the wookie-kill animation that got cut, RepComm influencing the tone of Star Wars games/more non-Jedi games, book recommendation based on RepComm, a bug in multiplayer that didn't get fixed apparently allowed co-op???

Tim Longo and Brett Douville (director and lead programmer) Discussion notes: no real talk directly about RepComm that hasn't already been covered but some good conversations about communication and team work

Jeremie Talbot (character lead) Discussion notes: nobody knew what they were doing, just wanted to make it as cool as they could, the use of tiger teams who fixed various problems, all the devs wanted to make the game fun to play and shared ideas, BABY ARMS, raindrops on the HUD for a dollar, having people with knowledge between programmers and artists to communicate, talking about trailers, not being too devoted to following storyboards, talking about the opening sequence, fans often bring up the opening, despite LucasArts's shake up RepComm team felt distant from it, there for the team and the game first and the company second, needing a mix of veteran and new devs

Honestly I'd been trying to listen to these for, like, two years but I kept going through cycles of remembering it when I didn't have the time to listen how I wanted to and keeping it in the back of my mind until I'd forget and then re-finding it in my bookmarks. I don't really remember how I came upon it- rabbit hole falling, I'd guess -and thought I'd share it around to other fans that likely hadn't come across it, either.

For add fun, here's a RepComm stream Brett Douville did around 2015 where he also interviewed people that worked on it. Unfortunately I can't find the first part on either his youtube or twitch pages but there's still three others. Note that there's some repeated information so I'll only mention anything new

Part 2 w/ Daron Stinnett and Jesse Harlin (executive producer and composer) Discussion notes: (Daron's audio is pretty quiet in comparison to Brett's) talking about how and why RepComm came about, deliberately tucked the team away so execs wouldn't bother them, when prequels came out it seemed like LucasArts wanted a game in each genre, 'not Star Wars enough', pointing out a couple name drops in the Prosecutor briefing, originally had no John Williams music, setting music cues in levels/'here comes stinky', the thought process behind developing Mando'a, didn't have an AI to deal with non-commando clones which is why they're scripted to die, even though you love the game while making it you're sick of it by the time it's finished, original voices were sound-alikes, Fixer/Advisor's VA was the only one that didn't get recast, a cut level was a Geonosian church, talking of different instrumentation between levels,

Part 3 w/ Nathan Martz (enemy AI programmer) Discussion notes: (Nathan's audio is ESPECIALLY quiet) talking about how Geonosian enemies 'choose' points to jump to, good AI is about cheats/build the world so the characters can be smart, scav droids were originally more lethal and were nerfed to not do certain behaviors if you're not looking at them, it's very easy to make a difficult AI, it's harder to make an AI that's challenging and fun, setting up common AI behaviors to work modularly and wanting to make finishing moves for the wookies equals the squad being able to do finishing moves, 'the most important thing an enemy does is die'/making interesting deaths, talk about lighting challenges, LucasArts got a new president halfway through RepComm's production, didn't understand the game but allowed it to continue, sequel talk, devs wanted to have co-op but was unable to

Part 4 w/ David Collins (voice director) Discussion notes: (I am very jealous of the shirt Brett is wearing in this video) David did the all the Trandoshian vocalizations and the radio chatter, a lot of ideas behind RepComm went into the Clone Wars series, originally the squad didn't have names only numbers, talk about casting VAs and working with Temuera, squad banter/'if you want your AI to be smart you need to make them sound smart', special features existed in order to have unlockables, George Lucas was apparently quite fond of the game

[tales-of-asteria]

[Special Gacha] EX Summon ~Rimul~ Duration: 1/23 (Mon) 16:00 ～ 2/6 (Mon) 15:59

Chance to get the new exclusive Bond Awakening enabled 5☆ Rimul and the previously released 5☆ Kyle [Kimono], Reala [Flower Viewing] and Judas [Snow Festa].

The already-running awakening partner Kyle can be used to awaken Rimul.

✶ This gacha features a Step Up gacha, where you pay a discounted rate to draw 10 characters and continuously raise your chances of pulling a 5☆. Steps will not be resetted even if you get a featured 5☆.

✶ You will also get rewards after a certain number of steps, and with the 20th you will be able to choose one of the featured characters from a 5☆ Select Summon Circle (you need a total of 800 Asteria Stones to reach the 20th step).

In this gacha will also reappear other Bond Awakening enabled 5☆ characters. The rates of this gacha’s featured characters will be higher than other 5☆.

For the event, the single daily pull will cost 3 Asteria Stones instead of 5.

There’s also the paid option to get a 5☆ character with a multi-roll.

Rimul’s artes and skills details:

Light 5☆ Rimul

Stats at LV80 HP: 21,500 | Power: 2,370 | Defense: 2,210

Mystic Arte: ソルブライト Sol Bright Power: 420% (Target: Single) | Hits: 65 | OL: 42 (high hit type)

Arte1 - デルタレイ Delta Ray Power: 240% (Target: Single) | Hits: 6 | Activation: 60%

Arte2 - シャイニングスピア Shining Spear Power: 300% (Target: All) | Hits: 8 | Activation: 25%

Arte3 - ディバインセイバー Divine Saber Power: 400% (Target: Single) | Hits: 16 | Activation: 15%

Co-op skill: Magic Attack Boost 6 (magic type) Increases magic attack by 110% for 90 seconds. (wait time 06:00)

Light 6☆ Rimul

Stats at LV80 HP: 25,000 | Power: 2,720 | Defense: 2,510

EX Skill: The light party members' attack will be increased by 130% in the light frames

Mystic Arte (OverLimit gauge at MAX): ソルブライト Sol Bright Power: 420% (Target: Single) | Hits: 65 | OL: 42 (high hit type) Bond Awakening Bonus: Light members' attack +40% (activated turn)

Mystic Arte (Awakened Mode OverLimit): ソルブライト Sol Bright Power: 750% (Target: Single) | Hits: 120 | OL: 85 (42+43) (finish & high hit type) Bond Awakening Bonus: Light members' attack +100% (1 turn)

Arte effects added by Bond Awakening:

Arte1 - デルタレイ Delta Ray Heals the light members by 20%

Arte2 - シャイニングスピア Shining Spear Recovers the light members from the “attack down” and "defense down" statuses

Arte3 - ディバインセイバー Divine Saber Light members' attack +50% (1 turn)

(Co-op skill is the same as the 5☆)

[444namesplus]

1* 2.6.2. 3 3B2 5.0i 5.1 5.53 7 15kg 17 20 22nd 26 50BMG 51 69 97 312 411 414 707 737 747 757 767 777 868 888 1071 1080H 1911 1984 1997 2600 3848 8182 $ & ^ ^? a ABC ACC Active ADIU advise advisors afsatcom AFSPC AHPCRC AIEWS AIMSX Aladdin Alica Alouette AMEMB Amherst AMW anarchy ANC Anonymous AOL ARC Archives Area51 argus Armani ARPA Artichoke ASIO ASIS ASLET assasinate Asset AT AT&T Atlas Audiotel Austin AVN b b9 B.D.M. Badger bank basement BATF BBE BECCA Becker beef Bess bet Beyond BfV BITNET black-bag Black-Ops Blackbird Blacklisted Blackmednet Blacknet Bletchley Blowfish Blowpipe BMDO BND Bob BOP BOSS botux BRLO Broadside Bubba bullion BVD BZ c Cable CANSLO Cap-Stun Capricorn card Case CATO CBM CBNRC CBOT CCC CCS CDA CDC CdC cdi Cell CESID CFC chaining chameleon Chan Chelsea Chicago Chobetsu chosen CIA CID CIDA CIM CIO CIS CISE Clandestine Class clone cocaine COCOT Coderpunks codes Cohiba Colonel Comirex Competitor Compsec Computer Connections Consul Consulting CONUS Cornflower Corporate Corporation COS COSMOS Counter counterintelligence Counterterrorism Covert Cowboy CQB CRA credit cryptanalysis crypto-anarchy CSE csystems CTP CTU CUD cybercash Cypherpunks d D-11 Daisy Data data data-haven DATTA DCJFTF Dead DEADBEEF debugging DefCon Defcon Defense Defensive Delta DERA DES DEVGRP DF DIA Dictionary Digicash disruption

DITSA DJC DOE Dolch domestic Domination DRA DREC DREO DSD DSS Duress DynCorp E911 e-cash E.O.D. E.T. EADA eavesdropping Echelon EDI EG&G Egret Electronic ELF Elvis Embassy Encryption encryption enigma EO EOD ESN Espionage espionage ETA eternity EUB Evaluation Event executive Exon explicit Face fangs Fax FBI FBIS FCIC FDM Fetish FINCEN finks Firewalls FIS fish fissionable FKS FLAME Flame Flashbangs FLETC Flintlock FLiR Flu FMS Force force Fort Forte fraud freedom Freeh froglegs FSB Ft. FX FXR Gamma Gap garbage Gates Gatt GCHQ GEO GEODSS GEOS Geraldton GGL GIGN Gist Global Glock GOE Goodwin Gorelick gorilla Gorizont government GPMG Gray grom Grove GRU GSA GSG-9 GSS gun Guppy H&K H.N.P. Hackers HAHO Halcon Halibut HALO Harvard hate havens HIC High Hillal HoHoCon Hollyhock Hope House HPCC HRT HTCIA humint Hutsul IACIS IB ICE ID IDEA IDF IDP illuminati imagery IMF Indigo industrial Information INFOSEC InfoSec Infowar Infrastructure Ingram INR INS Intelligence intelligence interception Internet Intiso Investigation Ionosphere IRIDF Iris IRS IS ISA ISACA ISI ISN ISS IW jack JANET Jasmine JAVA JICC jihad JITEM Juile Juiliett Keyhole keywords Kh-11 Kilderkin Kilo Kiwi KLM l0ck LABLINK Lacrosse Lebed LEETAC Leitrim Lexis-Nexis LF LLC loch lock Locks Loin Love LRTS LUK Lynch M5 M72750 M-14 M.P.R.I. Mac-10 Mace Macintosh Magazine mailbomb man Mantis market Masuda Mavricks Mayfly MCI MD2 MD4 MD5 MDA Meade Medco mega Menwith Merlin Meta-hackers MF MI5 MI6 MI-17 Middleman Military Minox MIT MITM MOD MOIS mol Mole Morwenstow Mossberg MP5k MP5K-SD MSCJ MSEE MSNBC MSW MYK NACSI NATIA National NATOA NAVWAN NAVWCWPNS NB NCCS NCSA Nerd News niche NIJ Nike NIMA ninja nitrate nkvd NOCS noise NORAD NRC NRL NRO NSA NSCT NSG NSP NSWC NTIS NTT Nuclear nuclear NVD OAU Offensive Oratory Ortega orthodox Oscor OSS OTP package Panama Park passwd Passwords Patel PBX PCS Peering PEM penrep Perl-RSA PFS PGP Phon-e phones PI picking

Pine pink Pixar PLA Planet-1 Platform Playboy plutonium POCSAG Police Porno Pornstars Posse PPP PPS president press-release Pretoria Priavacy primacord PRIME Propaganda Protection PSAC Pseudonyms Psyops PTT quiche r00t racal RAID rail Rand Rapid RCMP Reaction rebels Recce Red redheads Reflection remailers ReMOB Reno replay Retinal RFI rhost rhosts RIT RL rogue Rolm Ronco Roswell RSA RSP RUOP RX-7 S.A.I.C. S.E.T. S/Key SABC SACLANT SADF SADMS Salsa SAP SAR Sardine sardine SAS SASP SASR Satellite SBI SBIRS SBS SCIF screws Scully SDI SEAL Sears Secert secret Secure secure Security SEL SEMTEX SERT server Service SETA Sex SGC SGDN SGI SHA SHAPE Shayet-13 Shell shell SHF SIG SIGDASYS SIGDEV sigvoice siliconpimp SIN SIRC SISDE SISMI Skytel SL-1 SLI SLIP smuggle sneakers sniper snuffle SONANGOL SORO Soros SORT Speakeasy speedbump Spetznaz Sphinx spies Spoke Sponge spook Spyderco squib SRI ssa SSCI SSL stakeout Standford STARLAN Stego STEP Stephanie Steve Submarine subversives Sugar SUKLO SUN Sundevil supercomputer Surveillance SURVIAC SUSLO SVR SWAT sweep sweeping SWS Talent TDM. TDR TDYC Team Telex TELINT Templeton TEMPSET Terrorism Texas TEXTA. THAAD the Ti TIE Tie-fighter Time toad Tools top TOS Tower transfer TRD Trump TRW TSCI TSCM TUSA TWA UDT UHF UKUSA unclassified UNCPCJ Undercover Underground Unix unix UOP USACIL USAFA USCG USCODE USCOI USDOJ USP USSS UT/RUS utopia UTU UXO Uzi V veggie Verisign VHF Video Vinnell VIP Virii virtual virus VLSI VNET W3 Wackendude Wackenhutt Waihopai WANK Warfare Weekly White white Whitewater William WINGS wire Wireless words World WORM X XS4ALL Yakima Yobie York Yukon Zen zip zone ~

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

19 Dec 2022: What if shops didn’t sell things?

[Image: a collage of Kuka/Ruscha/Burtynsky]

Hail and farewell

This is the last Co-op Digital newsletter. It has had an excellent and enjoyable run, thank you to everyone who helped get it going with decisions, everyone who kept it going with content, and everyone who read it. We’ve been wrapping up with 3 questions. Previously: more radical membership and more than a shop? 

Thank you all for reading and sending ideas. The Co-op story continues on the magnificent Co-op Digital blog. Rod will still be writing about climate change and carbon transformation at Holdfast and about money at Checksies. See you there?

What if shops didn’t sell things?

Supermarkets and many other types of retail businesses are often high volume/tight margin machines, looking to increase volume and find small gains and complementary products and services with higher margins. Will this always be the case? 

As climate change bites into the world, making it less predictable, will the cost and availability of materials change the dynamic for retail? Do supply chains fracture? Will managing the entire lifecycle of products and packaging add cost that makes retail unviable, or will it unlock new business? Can shopping fit into circular economies if recycling and reuse becomes central? What if shops bought things from you, instead of selling them to you?

2040

Aya looks the length of the warehouse. There’s a haze in the distance where the unfactory starts and above the superstructure is barely visible behind the ambient dayglow. A city inside a building.

She pulls the door shut on her housing unit and walks to the bus stop. There’s only a couple of minutes to wait before a driverless bus pulls up. These carbon grey boxes crawl the building, patiently looping between the different work, housing and leisure zones.

Aya gets on the bus and sits. Her glasses immediately pop up an interactive about hitting this month’s KPIs. With a glance she flicks it away, and looks the other way to access shopping. A carousel of plaid shirts flickering across the field of view, partly obscuring the view out of the window of apartment blocks, terraced 2-up 2-downs, community centres, and behind her in the distance parkland and the executive mcmansions. Aya considers buying a shirt that says 2005 and has all the confidence of that era. The checkout dances and says: “Hey you know you could put that 229.50 into something more long term? Say Pension to put it to work for you.” Aya sighs, shuts her eyes and whispers “Cancel”, the UI an afterimage in reversed colours.

Aya steps off the bus at the warehousing zone and passes through two layers of perimeter security: ID badge and then a tongue print which performs ID verification and a recreational drugs test. Now she is matter-side. She steps through the air wall into a cavernous space: kilometres of racking, ducting, assembly areas, disassembly areas, recycling, storage, cabling, transport, uncountable shelves of racking and gigantic bays of raw material.

10 years ago, at peak shopping, this building was Amazon’s largest fulfilment centre, the entire building performing inventory, pick and pack - all of it heading into cardboard boxes, out the loading bays and to everyone’s home via the Amazon-only lanes on the motorways. 

Since then, the building has grown and evolved in response to 15 years of carbon budgets and circular economy targets. The shadow of the smile logo is still faintly visible on the wall. The work is now two-way: they’re doing as much inbound for recycling as they do outbound retail: the increasing value of material feedstocks made disassembly and recycling higher margin businesses. Across the way, building crews are pulling out the pick and pack racking, and hauling in more recyc stations.

Conveyor belts of toys, consumer goods, electronics, plastic items, everything. Some things are automatically sorted, separated by size or material type into smaller flows on smaller conveyors, a river delta. The metal goes off along a conveyor to be remelted in a distant area. The plastic is ripped apart into uncountable white-edged grains of feed stock. 

Further away, and behind more layers of security, are the goop vats where the synthetic bio voodoo happens. There’s a smell of ammonia and long chain polymers everywhere, which the air ducting cannot ever remove entirely.

Here though, the river belt meanders through rows of stations, where human-robot pairs work next to each other, pulling objects off the main belt and moving them to several smaller tributary belts for onward sorting.

Aya walks up to the only unstaffed station. A fixed robot is at the wide conveyor belt. Its body is a 7-axis spine of rotatable stainless steel segments that look more like muscles than components. Its arm ends in an array of cameras, lidar sensors and rubber tipped and suction manipulators. Around the robot is a 2 metre no-go zone hashed out in hazard orange. It has placed several objects in that space around its base. A Casio watch. A christmas tree toy. A clown painting on black velvet. Lego pieces.

The supervisor approaches and shrugs at Aya: “You make it work, if you can. I in’t going near it though…” Aya swipes her badge into the work station. The robot’s arm monitors everything that passes on the belt under it, occasionally twitching as if indecisive. But it is not moving and not sorting items.

Aya watches the belt for a while and reaches out to pick up an old lunch box in blue and red plastic. She shows it to the robot, and then with great care Aya places it on the floor, inside the no-go zone, and steps back. The robot’s arm bends, the array inspecting the lunchbox for several seconds. 

Then it straightens, moves back over the belt, and starts grabbing objects and sorting them.

Thank you for reading

Thank you friends, readers and contributors. If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters. Stay strong.

[eitmonline]

EITM Playlist 8/21/24

Oasis - Rock ‘n’ Roll Star | 6:11

Taylor Swift - I Can Do It With A Broken Heart | 6:25

All Time Low - Monsters | 6:31

Delta Rae - Morning Comes | 7:03

Lucius, Adam Granduciel - Old Tape | 7:10

Marvelous 3 - Psalm Of The Summer | 7:35

Thus Love - Birthday Song | 7:50

The Ramona Flowers - Dangerous | 7:55

Ray LaMontagne - Step Into Your Power | 8:25

Sublime, Stick Figure - Feel Like That | 9:00

Halsey - Lonely Is The Muse | 9:26

Phantogram - Happy Again | 9:44

Seven Hours After Violet - Radiance | 9:50

Rosie Soul, Tony Jackson - Absent Friends | 10:20

Rosie Soul - Bad Person | 10:47

Mitski - Bug Like An Angel | 11:04

[eyeballtank]

2 videos of my MetaDoom map:

The map is technically finished but due to how PK3 stuff is usually handled and what I missed out on, I realize the map may not be playable unless I either learn more stuff and put more work or… I dunno, have someone else wiser make the PK3 work for me? I even used Slade to look into DrPySpy's map and the structure had stuff that I should've thought of way before,

I do hope this map inspires others to make maps for the mod or even assets based around Urdak/Argent D'nur themes like textures and maybe enemies. I even told myself "maybe I could try maps for Doom Delta or Supercharge" but as long as this one stays like this, not sure if it can happen. At least that Eto map is finished, it's the main project itself that isn't. Maybe I should keep up with vanilla/basic Doom maps but at least more personal projects like Nortubel are going fine. Why is the framerate choppy? I only installed KDenLive for this and all because the NVidia thing no longer crops to just the game itself. Had to split it in 2 parts because the home site of 2 hour long "meda literacy" anaylisis video told me 18 minutes was too long.

Oh and CREDITS/INFO (Even if you can't play it right now): GZDoom map: Cultist Rage by EyeBallTank Format: UDMF, GZDoom version used 4.10.0 Textures: OTEX and a bit of vanilla Mod: MetaDoom 7.1 Fire traps: Realm667/Captain Toenail Jump pad implementation: DymitrKharitonov Some tutorials: Chubzdoomer, signaltome, ZDoom wiki Inspiration: DrPySpy’s map “Baphomet’s Entryway” Music: Jay Reichard/prjdoom wad. Difficulty: UV because i didn’t check for other difficulties. Co-op?: Well i added extra spawns for the other 7 players. Vertical aim/jump/duck: Needed.

[chorusfm]

Olivia Rodrigo Announces New Tour

Olivia Rodrigo has announced her 2024 tour. Fri Feb 23 – Palm Springs, CA – Acrisure Arena ~ Sat Feb 24 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center ~ Tue Feb 27 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center ~ Wed Feb 28 – Austin, TX – Moody Center ~ Fri Mar 01 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center ~ Sat Mar 02 – New Orleans, LA – Smoothie King Center ~ Tue Mar 05 – Orlando, FL – Amway Center ~ Wed Mar 06 – Miami, FL – Kaseya Center ~ Fri Mar 08 – Charlotte, NC – Spectrum Center ~ Sat Mar 09 – Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena ~ Tue Mar 12 – St. Louis, MO – Enterprise Center ~ Wed Mar 13 – Omaha, NE – CHI Health Center ~ Fri Mar 15 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center ~ Sat Mar 16 – Milwaukee, WI – Fiserv Forum ~ Tue Mar 19 – Chicago, IL – United Center ~ Fri Mar 22 – Columbus, OH – Nationwide Arena ~ Sat Mar 23 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena ~ Tue Mar 26 – Montreal, QC – Bell Centre ~ Fri Mar 29 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena ~ Mon Apr 01 – Boston, MA – TD Garden ~ Fri Apr 05 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden + Sat Apr 06 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden + Tue Apr 30 – Dublin, Ireland – 3Arena = Fri May 03 – Manchester, UK – Co-op Live = Tue May 07 – Glasgow, Scotland – OVO Hydro = Fri May 10 – Birmingham, UK – Utilita Arena = Tue May 14 – London, UK – The O2 = Wed May 15 – London, UK – The O2 = Wed May 22 – Antwerp, Belgium – Sportpaleis = Fri May 24 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Ziggo Dome = Tue May 28 – Oslo, Norway – Spektrum = Thu May 30 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Arena = Sat Jun 01 – Berlin, Germany – Mercedes-Benz Arena = Tue Jun 04 – Hamburg, Germany – Barclays Arena = Wed Jun 05 – Frankfurt, Germany – Festhalle = Fri Jun 07 – Munich, Germany – Olympiahalle = Sun Jun 09 – Bologna, Italy – Unipol Arena = Tue Jun 11 – Zurich, Switzerland – Hallenstadion = Wed Jun 12 – Cologne, Germany – Lanxess Arena = Fri Jun 14 – Paris, France – Accor Arena = Tue Jun 18 – Barcelona, Spain – Palau Sant Jordi = Thu Jun 20 – Madrid, Spain – WizInk Center = Sat Jun 22 – Lisbon, Portugal – Altice Arena = Fri Jul 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center ^ Sat Jul 20 – Washington, DC – Capital One Arena ^ Tue Jul 23 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena ^ Wed Jul 24 – Lexington, KY – Rupp Arena ^ Fri Jul 26 – Kansas City, MO – T-Mobile Center ^ Sat Jul 27 – Oklahoma City, OK – Paycom Center ^ Tue Jul 30 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena ^ Wed Jul 31 – Salt Lake City, UT – Delta Center ^ Fri Aug 02 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center ^ Tue Aug 06 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena ^ Fri Aug 09 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena ^ Sat Aug 10 – Portland, OR – Moda Center ^ Tue Aug 13 – Los Angeles, CA – Kia Forum + Wed Aug 14 – Los Angeles, CA – Kia Forum + + The Breeders ^ PinkPantheress ~ Chappell Roan = Remi Wolf --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/news/olivia-rodrigo-announces-new-tour-2/

[open-hearth-rpg]

Open Hearth Video Roundup - August 18, 2023

Welcome to the weekly Open Hearth Gaming video roundup!

These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the games we play every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play in games like these, join our Playabl community and click on the "Calendar" tab to sign up for upcoming games. To browse our library of videos of past sessions, please visit our YouTube Playlists page.

Open Hearth Gaming Calendar

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Series II (Session 5) Lowell Francis runs for Ethan Harvey, Patrick Knowles, Sherri, and Tyler Lominack In the wake of a second murder our investigators being to pull on new threads literally and figuratively. They begin to pull together the pieces of history and unmask the hidden forces desperately trying to conceal their crimes. This leads to a final revelation which at first seems cataclysmic until Bao Shi saves the day with a combination of luck and foresight.

The Veil Iterations: Nonesuch (Session 2) Lowell Francis runs for Joe F, Jonathan, and Mike Minutillo The crew meets up, still trying to process the incidents from last session. But when our empath picks up on a memetic conspiracy to create terror via the rumor of sinister psionics, they begin to dig into the larger conspiracy of corporate churches and an engineered, post-scarcity, fear-based economy.

Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes (Session 3 of 12) Shane runs for Blake Ryan, Brandon Brylawski, Mark (he/they), and Puckett After losing themselves in the night floors, the agents emerge to find the Macallistar and its residents also transformed after dark.

Public Access (Session 1) Mike Ferdinando runs for Brandon Ungar, Kae, and Steven S. Our first session of an ongoing campaign of Public Access! It's the summer of 2004, and we meet the Deep Lake Latchkeys as they meet each other moving in to their rented house on Rodenbecker Street in Deep Lake, NM. They receive a mysterious videotape and strange photograph, and then an old acquaintance asks for their help.

Star Wars Saturday

Broken Binary Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Cody Eastlick, and Steven Watkins A Kitsune Media Group security team is sent to the barrens to retrieve a stolen cyber-brain.

MCU Sunday

Hit the Streets: Defend the Block (Session 5) Rich Rogers runs for Kae, Marc Majcher, and Sherri The Bushwick Originals try to talk things through with one enemy and discover another!

Hit the Streets: Defend the Block (Session 6) Rich Rogers runs for Greg G., Kae, Marc Majcher, and Sherri The housewarming party concludes and the team races to save one of their own... from one of their own?

Off-Calendar Highlights

The Between: Stars and Suns (Session 19) Madelancholy runs for Chris Greenbriar, Eirinar, Jack, and Mike "Finale Part 2: The Wild Hunt" - [Content warnings: mention of blood, occult rituals, veiled harm to animals] The Wild Hunt is underway, and the hunters of Hargrave House follow different lines of investigation with much blood, sweat, and tears...as they thwart Titania's plans, and conclude Season One of the Stars and Suns campaign with Part 2.

Ironsworn (Session 0) Madelancholy runs for Rob Fletcher A campaign started last summer of this Iron Age magic-infused fantasy TTRPG in co-op mode - our Session 0 world-building straight from the book and offline chat.

[myblog123jazz]

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