#gate pass management system

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[mclarengf]

la vida es tan dulce (contigo)

race day with dad!logan sargeant

[2.3k] 

note: woooow this got out of hand quick… well, enjoy my first proper full length fic! #didntknowhowtofinish x

“come on honey, time to go,” your boyfriend calls into the hotel room, still holding the door open for your daughter. 

lottie sargeant, every bit her dad’s lookalike, runs out, a tiny hand placed above the cap on her head to prevent it from falling. 

you stifle a laugh at her mild panic, readjusting the purse on your shoulder as you follow her out. logan closes the door behind him and holds out his arm for you to take. lottie, seeing you’re both ready to go, leads the way to the elevator, hitting the down button as if to summon it faster.

you squeeze her hand as you step in, “are you excited, lottie baby?” 

she grins up at you and nods, seemingly too happy for words.

“you’re gonna do amazing too, honey.”

logan looks up at this and shoots you a nervous smile. he’d qualified p14 the day before, a genuinely impressive result for the twisty streets of monaco. 

“all thanks to my lucky charm,” he’d said afterwards, kissing the top of lottie’s head in thanks. 

“i’ll just be happy if i can stay p14, y’know?” he says now, fidgeting with his watch, “at least it’s pretty tricky to overtake here.”

“daddy’s gonna win!” lottie, having regained the ability to speak now, wraps herself around logan’s leg, a hug of support. logan laughs at her blind faith and pats her head as he leads her out of the elevator and out to the street. 

“thank you, baby, i’m gonna try so hard just for you, yeah?” 

williams had managed to get you holed up in a hotel only a couple of blocks away from the paddocks, so you’re walking a bit slower than your family because of the heels you’re wearing, having wanted to dress up a bit for the prestigious monaco grand prix. lottie, who’s now found herself atop her dad’s shoulders, develops a system of tapping the top of his head whenever she looks back and you’re a bit too far behind for her liking, so that he stops and you get an opportunity to catch up. 

although lottie’s brilliant stratagem means you get there a few minutes later than planned, you all eventually arrive at the paddock entrance. logan puts your daughter down to grab his pass as rifle around in your purse for yours.

“lottie, have you got your paddock pass?” 

lottie reaches for her neck, only to find it empty and pass-less. 

“mummy…” her lip wobbles and her eyes turn sad as she realises what this means. 

logan stops as he’s about to scan his, already thinking of ways to get her in without a pass. she’s a kid- she’s his kid, surely it’ll be fine, right?

“oh look, darling, here it is!” you produce lottie’s pass from your bag, along with your own, and hand it to your girl on the verge of tears. instantly, she brightens and runs back over to her dad. 

relieved he doesn’t have to smuggle his own daughter in, logan lifts her up so she can tap her pass on the gate, before doing the same with his own and pushing through the turnstile. you follow suit, cringing at the photo which pops up on the display. 

just as logan hands lottie back over to you on the other side, a fan recognises him, and then another, and another. soon, logan’s being swarmed, and you’ve been pushed off to the side. lottie, to her credit, isn’t much disturbed by the sudden separation, but does cling to you tighter, probably for fear of being pushed away from her mum as well. logan’s head pops up above the sea of people, eyes searching for you and you gesture vaguely in the direction of the garage and hospitality areas when you spot each other. he sticks a thumbs up in the air before ducking back down to focus on autographing mementoes and taking selfies. 

you’re only stopped a few times on the way to hospitality, by a couple of fans who recognise you as logan’s partner, and a few photographers, looking to snap a ‘candid’ picture of the sargeant family. 

the williams team principal is engaged in a lively conversation with a few team members when you emerge on the second floor of the williams area. 

as soon as he sees you, he crosses the room for a hug, greeting you with a, “how’ve you been? it feels like it’s been ages!” 

“ah, you know, busy with this one always,” you return the hug and help lottie to stand on a chair. 

“hello lottie!” james is ecstatic to be fawning over your daughter, “don’t you look lovely today?” 

she’s dressed head to toe in williams merch, a team jersey layered over a white tutu and tiny williams-blue sneakers. her team cap is slightly askew from the journey here, but at least her pigtails seem intact for now. 

“hi grandpa james,” she reaches for him to hug her, and giggles as she’s spun around in his arms. 

“where’s logan?” james asks you, peeking over your shoulder to spot his missing driver.

“ah, we left him at the gates; i didn’t want lottie to freak out about the crowd.” 

he hums in understanding, still holding lottie. 

“it’s looking good today, you know,” he nods down to where the garage is on the floor below, “weather’s fine, car’s performing; we’ve high hopes.” 

you start to reply when he’s called over by an engineer with a clipboard. he hands lottie back to you with an apology, which you wave off. 

“come on baby, where do you wanna watch the race then?” you shift her weight into one arm as you free the other to fix her hat. 

lottie furrows her brows in deep thought, pondering your question, then points towards the balcony. 

the view from up here is incredible; you’re looking out over the pit lane and back straight of the circuit, and can see all the yachts lined up in port hercule. 

just then, lottie makes a small squeak, looking down at the pit wall. you follow her gaze down to see your partner walking over to gaëtan, greeting his engineer by dapping him up and pulling him into a hug. logan’s already dressed, wearing his fireproofs and overalls, tied at the waist. the two part and start discussing something or rather— most likely the next two hours of racing.

you know the race is supposed to start soon, but if logan’s only now saying hi to gaëtan, surely you’ve still got a little while. enough time to pop down and wish your boyfriend luck, at least. you adjust lottie in your arms again and make your way downstairs. 

logan’s no longer in the pit lane when you reach the garage, so you head towards the drivers’ rooms in the back. you go to knock on the door just as benny pushes it open on his way out. 

“oh hello!” he smiles at you as you catch the door with your foot, but his arms are full of god-knows-what training equipment, so you forego a hug and settle for returning his smile. lottie waves at him as he goes.

“baby?” you turn your attention back to the room, hoping to see logan sprawled out on his massage table, or standing in the middle of the room stretching out. instead, he’s sat on the floor, staring at his phone. 

“hey!” he gets up and takes lottie from you. she settles easily, head dropping onto his shoulder to watch her parents talk. 

“how’re you feeling now, log?” you shake your arms out- lottie’s getting so big so fast- and wrap one around logan’s waist. he rests his chin on your head, breathing in deeply and letting out a sigh. 

you stand together in silence until, “i don’t wanna disappoint the team,” he mutters into your hair eventually, “i’ve finally got a good quali position and i don’t wanna fuck it up for everyone.” 

he takes care to turn his head away from lottie as he swears; she’s at the age where she’s picking up words left and right. 

you move your head back to look at him, taking in every detail about him; the slight bags under his eyes, the freckles dotted across his face, the 5 o’clock shadow growing in. there’s a piece of hair hanging in his eyes which you brush aside as you take his face in your hand. it’s these quiet moments you really adore, where it’s just you two (and lottie) against the world. the sargeant family. even if you’re not technically a sargeant yet.

“you’re gonna do wonderfully babe,” you smile as he leans into your touch, watch as the stress in his face leaves it. standing in front of you now isn’t logan sargeant, the american who made it to f1, or logan sargeant, the other williams driver, each version of himself burdened with massive responsibilities. right now, he’s just logan, the boy you fell in love with.

 “and for what it’s worth, we’re already so proud of you, no matter how you do in the race.” 

at this, lottie perks up and reaches her hand up to logan’s face too, wanting to join in. he melts at the gesture, taking her hand in his to press a kiss to her palm. 

“that’s worth everything.” 

he sits lottie down on the massage table to kiss you properly for the first time today, arms settling around your waist. his hand drifts lower as the kisses get lazier, and soon it’s fully rested on your bum while you exchange slow, open-mouthed kisses. 

remembering where you are and your audience in the room, you pull away first, placing one more peck on logan’s lips as he pouts, wanting more.

he holds you tight as you say, “you’ve got a grand prix to race in now, handsome,” and is only incentivised to let go when you remind him how much lottie’s been looking forward to helping him get ready today. 

lottie helping her daddy get ready consists of watching him pull his race suit over his shoulders and watching you zip him up. she holds his gloves out as he slips his hands into them, and then- logan’s favourite part- gives him a good luck kiss. 

he’ll put his balaclava and helmet on just before he gets in the car, which lottie can’t help with today because you’re watching from upstairs.

“i love you, logan. race hard, yeah?” 

you kiss him one more time before you leave, relishing in the way he doesn’t want to pull away. 

“i love you too. keep your fingers crossed for me- both of you?”

lottie frowns at this; she’s not yet mastered how to cross her fingers by herself, but you laugh at her little expression and promise you’ll help her once you’re upstairs. 

pre-race rituals complete, you tug her away from daddy and return to hospitality. 

logan gets a good start when the lights go out, though a slow reaction from an aston martin ahead means he has to swerve to avoid a huge crash. he manages an overtake on kevin magnussen through the chicane, earning cheers throughout the room, and no doubt from the garage below too. 

the race ends with logan p13, but after zhou guanyu gets a 5-second penalty for leaving track limits, he finds himself in p12. 

logan’s post-race radio plays from the tv playing sky sports f1, “-good race today guys, thanks for helping me not look so bad in front of my daughter,” he laughs. 

crofty is saying something in response but lottie, already ecstatic because of the energy in the room, has stolen your attention by squirming happily in your arms as she hears her daddy talking about her on tv. you decide to take her back into the paddock so she can run around and let off some steam.

logan’s in the media pen when lottie spots him, and, full of excitement, she slides her hand out of yours and is halfway to him by the time you can react.

“-yeah, really happy,” you hear him say before he’s interrupted, “oh-? what are you doing here, baby girl?” 

he picks her up and looks around for you, smiling when he finds you.

“and who’s this gorgeous girl? is this who you were trying to impress in the car today, logan?” the interviewer- thank god- doesn’t seem annoyed by the intrusion, and instead welcomes it, holding the mic up to lottie, awaiting her answer.

“i’m lottie,” your girl says brightly, “my daddy’s the best racer in the whole world!”

logan, the interviewer, and logan’s press officer all laugh at this, while lottie smiles proudly. logan takes the opportunity to carefully adjust the williams cap on lottie’s head, which has been knocked askew from her running.

“lottie, do you want to be a racer like your dad?” 

logan angles her away from the mic before she can answer.

 “oh, let’s not get those ideas in her head yet. she’s already a handful without the stress of karting and racing right now.” 

this earns another laugh from the interviewer, thoroughly amused by father and daughter. the rest of the interview is uneventful due to lottie preoccupying herself with waving at the other drivers as they travel around the pen.

logan makes a beeline for you when he’s released. 

“hi baby,” he lets lottie down and scoops you up just as quick. 

“i’m so proud of you, log. for real.”

he says nothing, enjoying the moment, though you can feel him smile into the crook of your neck as he stays holding you up. you’re accutely aware of some people stopping around you and filming, but you’re just focussed on being with logan and lottie. your family.

[sanakimohara]

“COLA” B.C. PT.2

“Wish you wanted it a little bit. More, but it’s a chore for you to give…”

Synopsis: Having a crush on her best friend’s older brother was a secret Y/n L/n had managed to hide for years. She presumed those feelings had disappeared over time, but when Chris—or rather, Chan, as he’s called by the rest of the world—makes a surprise visit to Australia to spend his last break of the year with his family, Y/N is bewildered to find that she, in fact, is still infatuated with her best friend's brother. Unbeknownst to her, Chan is already well aware of it and isn’t above taking advantage of her innocent crush on him. All fun and games, right?

WARNINGS: [MDNI! 18+] pining, fluff, smut, a bit of angst, cursing, smoking, and alcohol use. oh and the DDGL dynamic is implied…

A/N: Let’s hope I don’t scrap this and at least finish writing it…also Chan is his current age 25 and the reader is 18+

—————————————————————

—————————————————————

People.

She hated so many people around her but had no other place to go.

Airports always irked Y/n. Maybe it was because she’d been to so many in her childhood, forced to behave like an adult in the presence of a crowd all the time, and always afraid of losing her parents when they were there. Which was rare to say the least.

The repulsion and discomfort never really left her system when it came to large crowds. Even at the ripe age of 19 Y/n would rather walk all the way to the Bang residence then deal with constant bustling of an airport.

Unfortunately, walking to her destination would be miserably hot in the Australian weather so she was stuck with waiting for her planes boarding announcement to be made all alone. Thankfully, she’d arrived at a decent time and since it was a continental flight it wouldn’t be long before said announcement would be made.

She occupied herself with a book, earbuds tucked securely in her ears, and her favorite boba drink nestled between her thighs as she read to pass the time. Y/n’s eyes scanned every word on the worn pages of her book, soaking in every detail it could give even though she’d read twice before, but an enticing dark romance novel tends to keep her attention better than anything else.

She delights in the fantasy that’s described in its pages. Where the plot is lack, steamy and disgustingly lustful filler scenes are written, and when a major event does take place it dwarfs in comparison to the impact of headlines the next smutty paragraph brings.

Dark romances are her escape in some way, an acceptable binge she’s allowed herself to indulge in. It’s not a dirty secret or a guilty pleasure for her to read them but rather a way for her mind to envision less then pure fantasies of her design.

Each one of them involves Chan is some way.

She’ll never admit it to anyone, nor dare to say a word alluding to her desires, but it’s hard to put down a book that helps you satiate a hunger you can’t manage right?

Whatever the answer is, Y/n continues to bury herself in the images described in the pages she scans, and if anyone who knew her had walked by they would’ve recognized the tale tell blush starting to coat her cheeks. A sure sign she was either flustered or perpetually turned on.

Luckily, no one around her noticed the tinge to her cheeks, and so she was left to enjoy her book in peace for the time being. Thirty minutes and a couple of sips from her drink later Y/n heard the announcement that informed passengers it was time to board. “

Flight C18 to Sydney, Australia is now boarding. Passengers please make your way to gate 3 and loading dock 3A.”

Y/n nearly jumped out of her skin as the announcement echoed around the waiting area. Her heart thumped in her ears as people around her started to make her way to the designated gate. She clutched her book close as a few strangers briskly walked past her. For some reason or another she assumed they’d judge her if they saw what she’d been reading.

A ridiculous fear, but a fear she favored anyway.

With a few swift movements Y/n packed her book away into her carry on bag and finished off her drink before gathering her bags and phone. She double checked if she’d grabbed everything before making her way to Gate 3 but stopped when the subtle echos of cheering sounded from somewhere in the airport.

“Wonder what’s that all about…” a man asked another as they walked past her.

Y/n had the same question and looked around to pinpoint where the shouting was coming from. When she pinpointed the oncoming noise she rose to her tip toes to see who the crowd was bombarding all of a sudden.

Her investigation was cut short though when a woman tapped her shoulder. “Are you line for the ticket check miss?,” she asked and Y/n nodded sheepishly before responding, “I am, sorry I got a bit…distracted.”

The older woman only nodded in understanding, following behind Y/n as she walked up to the gate assistant and handed them her ticket to check. “Must be some sort of celebrity with how much racket those people are making…” the woman scoffed under her breath and Y/n stifled a giggle at how annoyed she sounded.

“Maybe,” she mumbled to herself, taking one last glance back at the moving crowd heading towards the gate before going to board the plane.

By the time Y/n had officially steeped onto the plane she could hear the shouts of excitement roaring where she’d been standing only moments ago. She didn’t bother to look back, deeming it impossible to get any clue to what’s going from staring again, and opted to find her seat. Which was in Business Class as per usual.

One of the few perks she was happy to have due to traveling so much with her parents when she was younger. Less people were crowded together in Business Class and she sometimes ran into interesting or famous people too.

That was if they were seated next to her and as of right now she hoped no one would be. Sleep and read was her only objectives during this short flight and being next to someone might force her to be social at some point.

Y/n found her designated spot, sat down, got comfortable, and placed her carry on in the seat next to her. The cabin was still fairly empty and so she assumed it would stay that way. All there was left to do was wait for take off which the pilot announced would be in a matter of minutes.

She took the opportunity to text Hannah before putting her phone on airplane mode for the flight.

<< Boarded and about to lift off Han! 💕

>> yay finallyyyyy

>> can’t wait to see you. Mom and dad keep asking how long it’ll take you to land lol.

<< that’s sweet of them :) tell them I’m excited to see them after so long btw!

>> what about me??!? :(

<< Han you’re so dramatic…

<< of course I’m excited to see you too dummy..

Y/n smiled at her phone as she hit send, finding it cute how clingy Hannah could be, but her happiness was cut short as someone came to stand beside the seat her bag was placed in.

“Uhm, sorry but I think that’s my seat..”

Her heart fell to her stomach and if it weren’t for the cushioned seat underneath her she would’ve fell straight through the floor of the plane out of shock.

Her cheeks flushed pink and she gulped softly as the familiar voice spoke up again.

“Miss, sorry, but this is my se-“ Chan immediately cut himself short as the girl in front of him lifted her head to look up at him.

His mask hid most of his shocked expression when their eyes met but Y/n could still see the recognition in his chocolate brown eyes.

She didn’t know what to say, how to say it, or even how to react to seeing the one person -the one man- she’d hoped not see.

This can’t be fucking happening…., she thought watching his eyes crease into crescent moons from the smile forming behind his mask.

“Long time no see, princess,” he greeted her in plain English, accent clearly coming through as he called her the same nickname he’d given her the last time they met.

Hearing it, hearing him call her that again, and just being face to face with him had her chest feeling light and her mouth running dry.

She hadn’t moved or stopped staring at him since their eyes met and Chan was slightly worried he’d startled her into a permanent stupor, but then she blinked slowly and timidly spoke back to him. “H-hi Chris..”she inwardly panicked hearing herself stutter and fought the urge to bite her lip in embarrassment. He’d know she was incredibly flustered then and whether that’d make the situation more awkward or not was the least of her concerns now.

Chan laughed softly when she addressed him as Chris. Even after years of knowing him she’d refused to call him anything else. Every once in a while she’d slip and call him “Channie” but that was rare. He didn’t hold it against her though, moving her bag, and sitting himself down next to her instead. Y/n instinctively flinched form his sudden close proximity and avoided looking at him as he got comfortable next to her.

She was almost certain he could hear heartbeat thudding like rolling thunder in her chest and she prayed to god her face wasn’t ten shades of red.

It definitely was.

Chan didn’t point that out though, choosing to enjoy her flustered state rather than teasing her further.

*buzz buzz*

Her phone vibrated on the floor, laying right next to her feet, and it caught Chan’s attention.

She froze, wondering when she dropped the device and how she failed to notice, but snapped out of her thoughts when Chan spoke.

“Let me get that for you.”

He reached down before she could react, picking up the device and placing it back in her lap. Y/n felt her skin grow hot as he gently returned her phone, his hand grazed over her thighs as he withdrew and it felt like he’d shot electricity through her from the subtle touch. It was an accident, she reminded herself as he leaned back into his seat again.

A pure, one time, accident. That’s all.

She shifted her legs, unconsciously pressing her thighs together as a ripple of warmth coursed through her core, and she cursed herself for wearing a shorter skirt than usual.

“Thanks,” Y/n whispered to him, not fully composed yet, and still trying to act normal around him.

Finding her footing felt impossible the longer he sat near her though.

Chan removed his mask, flashing her a kind smile, “You’re welcome. I did sort of scare you, so it’s the least I can do, Princess.” He nudged her shoulder with his and Y/n forced herself to smile despite wanting to scream from the feeling of his muscular arm against her.

This was going to be the longest 5 hour flight of her life….

And he was going to enjoy every last second.

*********

Soon, the plane was off the ground and headed to Sydney but Y/n was still trying to maintain her demeanor towards Chan.

She was failing miserably.

During take off all she could do was stare out the window and try to breathe like her life depended on it.

Ascent and descent on aircraft was her worst enemy and Chan only had to take one glance at her to notice how pale she got as her manicured nails dug into the lush leather of her seat.

He wasn’t the type to not help someone in need or at least a girl who hated ascending turbulence on a plane. So, he reached over, gently resting a hand on her leg, massaging the expanse of her thigh as a gesture of comfort.

At first Y/n was board stiff under his touch, quite literally considering hurling herself out of the plane the second she felt his firm and warm menstruations on her thigh.

Ever so slightly she started to unwind, welcoming the steady pace of his hand running up and down her skin. She let out a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper -Chan couldn’t tell but it made his head spin a little hearing it.

She was so cute.

Still the same pure girl he remembered.

He watched her expression transform from anxiousness to relief as the plane leveled out. She lifted her head off the window, glancing at him with a look of gratitude on her face, and he bit back a smile at the docile action.

“Feelin better?,” he inquired just loud enough for her to hear and she nodded, eyes fixed on his hand that was still on her thigh. He’d stopped stroking it when she sat up right but had yet to withdraw his hand completely.

Y/n swallowed thickly as her mind delved into what would happen if he just slid his hand a little higher up her skirt. But….his hands felt and looked so perfect on her thigh and she could see every vein in them too.

What would it feel like to have them wrapped around her throat, or better yet, clasped over her mouth while he fucks her-

She bit her tongue hard as self inflicted punishment for imaging such inappropriate things but it was proving difficult for her to not let him do it.

He’s your best friends older brother…snap out of it, she scolded herself for what felt like the 50th time since Chan’s surprise appearance…

She took a breath, peeling her doe eyes away from where his hand was and looked him dead in the eye. With the little confidence she had left she answered his question assertively, “Yes, I’m fine now. Thank you for…comforting me.” A shy smile graced her lips and Chan hummed in approval, satisfied with her response, and finally willing to retract his hold on her.

“Good…I’m glad I could help…” he held her gaze, voice uncharacteristically low, and his dark chocolate eyes sharpening on her when she looked away from him.

Y/n had to fully cross her legs at this point, needing pressure on her mound in someway or another. She masked the action as an effort to fix her skirt and then lowered it as if she were some proper lady of a royal family.

Chan didn’t comment, smirking to himself at her innocent attempt to be modest. He’d seen and slept with enough women in his time as an idol to know the signs.

She couldn’t hide anything from even if she tried.

Y/n, on the other hand, couldn’t stop fidgeting, every now and then squirming in her seat as if to get comfortable. She wasn’t obnoxious about it, more naive of her arousal is what Chan called it, and he found it increasingly adorable as the flight went on. If he so much as stared at her for too long she’d squirm like an ant under a magnifying glass. Chan could only imagine how’d she react to him touching her intimately.

That thought alone gave him a hard on.

He controlled himself well though, not letting on how he felt was a skill he’d mastered after years of practice.

Eventually, they made small talk at some points of their trip. She asked why he was in Australia despite his supposed ‘busy schedule’ and he told her the truth.

“I wanted to surprise my family. Since I didn’t get to see them on my break earlier this year I’m making that up with this trip.”

Y/n smiled, forgetting the heat persistently pooling between her thighs, and finding it endearing how much Chan valued time with his family.

“That’s sweet of you Chris…” she chirped with a beaming smile.

He nodded, “I’m guessing you’ll be staying with us again for the holidays?”

Y/n hummed in agreement, “Hannah wouldn’t let me say no.” She giggled softly and Chan laughed lightly at the mention of his sister.

“Yeah, she was pretty ticked you didn’t come last year..”

His face shifted from joyous to slightly reprimanding, “I was too..”

She bit her lip as he stared at her, “I…I got really busy…”

That was a lie. A lie that Chan didn’t believe for a second .

Y/n glanced into his eyes but regretted it seeing the stern haze in them. He knew she was lying and he hated being lied too. That was a fact she’d discovered while watching him and his members on some reality show a long time ago. She also knew it from Hannah herself. He mentioned his hatred of lying many times in many coded ways in his weekly ‘Chan Room’s’ as well.

Of course he saw right through her but at least she’d attempted to cover up her faults from last year.

Y/n did not want divulge her true reasons for ditching her plans with the Bang family but she knew his next words would be, “Don’t lie to me…” and at that point she’d have to tell him.

She’d have to tell him he was the primary reason she chose to cancel.

It wasn’t something she wanted to reveal, ever, so before Chan could interrogate her Y/n stood from her seat and excused herself to the restroom. “I’ll be right back.,” she chirped with a false sense of calm

However, this meant she’d have to shuffle past him to some degree. Not ideal, but necessary if she wanted to escape his questioning.

Chan raised a brow at her. Letting her squeeze past him and into the aisle. Her skirt rode up a bit as she did so, giving him a split second glance at what she wore underneath, and that gained her an instance of much needed distraction on his part.

Pink lace, I knew it…, he thought.

Y/n hurriedly smoothed her skirt back to normal, trying very hard to ignore his lingering gaze as she scurried off to the restroom. Her head was spinning the whole ten foot walk there and it felt like the air was swallowing her whole until she shut herself in the semi-clustered bathroom.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” she whispered as her nerves blazed and her mind raced to come up with a plausible excuse to answer Chan’s oncoming questions. Nothing seemed to be sufficient. Every excuse she thought of he’d probably disprove or see though. It was impossible.

The throbbing in her core was no help either, it intensified every time she thought about him, and at this point she couldn’t think straight at all.

“God, I can’t do this…” she whined in defeat, going to the sink for cold water to dab on her neck for some sort of relief. The shitty attempt at control helped for milliseconds before the feeling of Chan’s hand running up and down her thigh had her body shivering again.

A quiet moan escaped her throat and Y/n dabbed more cold water on her neck to relieve the tension she desperately needed to release.

“Pull it together,” she scolded herself, glaring at her reflection, and attempting to find any flaws that might be there. If she walked out of this bathroom worse than she came in Chan might out her completely.

He already had, years ago, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

Still, that just wasn’t an option she’d like to choose right now and so after a few minutes of steady breathing paired with a silent moment to think Y/n felt composed enough to exit her seclusion.

She opened the door, expecting to walk right out with no problems, but there stood Chan already peering down at her.

A very heavy silence passed between them.

Y/n managed to hold his gaze despite her heart rate accelerating. On the other hand, Chan wasn’t sure why he’d followed her. At first he chalked it up to a sort of proactive protectiveness.

She was his little sisters best friend after all and any stranger could try to harm her. He’d do the same for any other friend…right? Wrong…

Another lie.

An invisible little truth he told himself was valid to justify his urge to watch over her.

The truth was he had less than pure intent to guard her and more interest in helping her solve a problem she clearly wanted to hide from him.

“Sorry, do you need to?…” she politely shifted away from the entrance, allowing him the opportunity to pass by her if he needed to, but he didn’t move a muscle…

Y/n swallowed thickly as familiar sparks ran up her spine the longer he held eye contact with her.

“You okay Chris?..” she sounded concerned, successfully masking her real reaction to his unwavering gaze.

Her voice snapped him out of whatever trance he’d been in and he returned to his normally friendly disposition.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Princess. You were just gone for a while and I thought something might be wrong.” He laughed softly, as if to throw her off with the sound so she wouldn’t think too hard on what he’d said, but Y/n held onto his every word.

He’d followed her, waited for her to come out, and admitted it too.

Creepy,,,but something in her liked it.

Her stomach was doing flips, cheeks turning a light shade of pink as a soft “oh..” slipped past her lips. It felt odd to have someone this interested in her, especially Chan, but he seemed to be like that with everyone he knew.

She couldn’t take this one instance as anything more than her best friends protective older brother looking out for his sisters pleasantly naive friend.

Nevertheless , she found it attractive. The idea that Chan wanted to protect or guard her was enough to feed her fantasies for the rest of her life.

Chan shifted, standing to the side and motioning for her to walk past him, “Shall we.” Y/n nodded, smiling softly as she walked past him and back to her seat. He trailed after, stopping to reach into the overhead compartment for his carry on bag.

She caught sight of his shirt lifting, his skin taut with muscle underneath the black hoodie he wore, and his jeans resting on his hips perfectly to show off the band of his boxers that hugged his sculpted v-line just right.

Y/n wanted to reach out and graze her fingertips over his skin, have the blessing to touch him just once, but settled with just stealing glances at him as he retrieved whatever he needed from his bag. He suddenly looked down at her, a smirk on his face as she quickly turned her head towards the window. He’d caught her staring where she shouldn’t be and gave her no time to act as if she hadn’t been.

“You okay?,” he asks her, gaze lingering on her frozen posture before refocusing on the items in his bag. She clears her throat quietly, nodding in response, and shifting in her seat.

Chan didn’t pry further, knowing she was the quiet type of girl who’d get even more shy under pressure, so he let her be. Y/n kept her eyes fixated on the cloud filled sky outside, hands tucked under her legs.

Embarrassed couldn’t begin to describe how she felt right now but it was dangerously close.

Chan had caught her staring and not even at his face.

She was fucked.

Totally fucked.

—————————————————————

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TAGS: @imastraykidsfan 🖤 + @channniesslefttt 🖤

Just wanted to thank you all for supporting this series and all my other posts. It’s good to know I’m not the only delulu and extremely unhinged stay out there….thats all I have to say lol 🖤

BONUS CONTENT +

[talenlee]

Why Is Druid?

Say that like ‘where is Wizard Hut?‘

I love the 4e Druid. This is a marked change from how much I liked the 3e druid, or how often you might see me playing a druid in a Baldur’s Gate game. Back in 3rd edition, the druid, despite being very powerful, never really engaged me, in part perhaps because I was always trying to find something exploitative and powerful rather than merely accepting the juggernaut of a toolkit the game just left in the Player’s Handbook. You couldn’t get clever with the Druid, you just had to pick it up and use it, like some sort of society of creative anachronisms where one of the anachronisms available to the players was has gun. Valid, but hardly sporting.

The Druid in 4th edition is different. Wildly different. Weirdly different, and different in one of those ways that shows what I think of as a seam in the design between 4th and 3rd editions of D&D.

The Druid was one of 3rd edition’s great mistakes, a full spellcasting class with healer capacity to serve as a pinch-hitter healer in a group that wanted things a little more varied, addressing an enormously complex potential build from its earlier edition, 2e, and all in the process, resulting in some deeply confused mash up of abilities that attempted to address confusion with volume. The druid of 2e had a special unique set of rules compared to the Cleric — for example, at a certain level, you passed into a specific category of Druidic ability and now you were technically a Hierophant, and Hierophants had seven extra spells of every level. Of course there was a limited supply of Hierophants in the world, so there was a question of if you could level up if another one existed, and maybe there’s a one-in, one-out policy? First in, first fired?

Anyway, I can’t speak to how it played, but I am at least aware, on the edges of it, that the 2e druid was odd. It had a lot of things it could do, but much of how it worked, reading the books, seemed to be interesting but challenging to manage. You could wild shape, you could heal, you could cast utility spells, you could even fight with some melee weapons — personally, I didn’t see any of it worth it, because none of the things it could do it could do very well.

3e addressed this seeming difficulty by instead taking all those different options and bringing them all up to the same level. Wild Shape worked by checking traits of monster units, which meant that you weren’t limited to specific reinterpretations of animals and instead could do what a druid feels like it should do — you know, turn into an animal. The spells were rebalanced and shared across different classes, which meant that they tended to work in a more standardised way. Armour rules were aggregated, and weapons were made less terrible.

The result was that the 3e druid went from being ‘decent’ at a bunch of things to ‘good’ at everything it wanted to do. The problem of the druid then became about picking the thing you wanted to at every opportunity, and doing a good job of it — you’d have druids carrying wands of healing so they could dedicate their spell slots to more important tasks, like Flame Striking opponents, or messing up the battlefield with roots. You’d also see druids keeping the ‘best’ list of animals on hand, and every new monster book presented a new chance for druids to develop a new best form.

It also created the strange question of What does the druid do?

The answer was ‘everything.’

The 4e Druid, in comparison and contrast to these designs is something very different that touches, at best, on the periphery of what the 3e Druid could be. I mean it stands to reason, you can only ever touch on doing everything when something you’re working from is so powerful. 4e with its role system of Defender, Striker, Leader and Controller, and its reliable, reusable balance math suddenly was confronted with fitting an elephant into a shoebox.

How do you represent something busted that could do everything in the context of a new system that sought to explicitly prevent that? I joked when the game was new that the four roles were Defender, Striker, Leader and Miscellaneous. That any class too powerful, with too much stuff it could potentially do, got thrown to the Controller role as suggested by the first Controller we ever saw being the Wizard. Oh and back in Player’s Handbook 1, the Wizard had a few builds that were pretty ridiculously pushed — the pinball wizard, I’ll talk about it sometime — and that meant that it was easy to feel like the Controller Does Everything.

That impression diluted through experience, of course, and eventually it came to that while yes, the Controller sure has some Miscellaneous vibes, the core of what the Controller was there to do was to attack the enemy action economy. Nice and obvious to a non giga-nerd, right? Okay, how about this: The leader lets you do more things, the controller stops them from doing more things?

And into this space, they poured the druid.

It works beautifully, for my tastes; the druid needs to do lots of things to feel properly druidy, but you need to make sure the doing lots of things doesn’t unbalance the game. Controllers have the widest variety of things they can do and ways they can do them – inflicting status conditions, changing enemy position, preventing specific action types, making areas on the battlefield inaccessible, these are all ‘controllery’ things, and that means there’s a lot of different ways you can flavour them. The Invoker is most famous for making zones in the play space hard to deal with, the Wizard has a build that slides things all over the place, and the psion controls people with immense penalties to their damage rolls.

Obligatory pause where, while reading this aloud, for either Fox or I to comment on how amazing it is that Dishearten is an AOE power.

Anyway, the druid was designed to be a mode switcher class. That is, there are two ways a druid can do things. One is a melee controller that makes a single target’s life harder, the other is a ranged controller that makes a large group of enemies’ lives harder. This mode switching then adds a new element to the class that your powers can interact with, where you now have control powers that can add a mode switching element to them as well. This is your Wild Shape – you transform into some kind of nonspecific beast, which can use your Wild Shape powers. Each form has fewer powers to manage, and you can build your druid to specialise in one or the other or do a mix.

This lets the druid do the ‘a lot’ without letting them actually do everything. You have a lot of choices and a lot of ways to play with those pieces, but even just how often you use the mode switch is part of what the druid does to control the battlefield. When I first played a druid, it was not uncommon to start a fight out of wild shape, use the first turn to make some kind of area control power, then shift into wild shape for the rest of the fight kicking people into that area control power. There are druids builds that work like wizards and only ever shapeshift to get away from problems, and make a hit while scuttling away, or to sit on a specific type of problem. There were druids who focused on summoning monsters and using them as kind of turrets on the battlefield, positioning allies in a way that benefitted them around those summons.

Lone artillery combat encounters, where you have a bunch of stuff in front of a long-ranged attacker? Druids love those. Even at level 1, that artillery is spending their days completely stuck underneath a Fire Hawk power.

Problem is, of course, that if you want to do Everything doing a Lot is going to miss something. That was what led to the subclasses of the druid, the ones that added healer elements to the druid, because the druid back in 3e could do that. It added animal companions, because the druid back in 3e could do that. Now I don’t worry too much about these things because if I wanted an animal companion on my Druid, I’d take a theme for that, but also because these changes were introduced in an Essentials book.

Which is to say, they’re crap.

They’re not crap crap, like I try to defend Essentials as giving players a choice for simplified character builds, but in the specific case of the Essentials Druids, in order to work with the simplified choices, these Essentials druids with their animal companions and their healing powers have to look at all other Druid powers and not use them. The only use they get out of their animal companion is using the specific subset of powers that make them work, and that makes combat more samey. But again: That’s a thing you probably want if you want a simplified build.

Still, it gives rise to my favourite joke – I mean like, funny thing, not really a joke, there’s no subversion of reality or anything here – about the Healer Druid. See, every Leader in the game gets an encounter power, usable twice a combat at level 1, that heals an ally with a bonus. Every class gets their own version that lets them distinguish their class specifically and add some interesting detail that shows how this Leader differs from other Leaders.

The Healer druid build gets Healing Word.

The Cleric power.

Literally, the same power, same name, listed as a Cleric power.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[unexpectedbrickattack]

Some (scary, Huge) fake peppi sketches i managed to get out recently

Ramblings under the cut heehee

Wanted to emphasize his HUGE and Hulking body. Hes got Similar movesets to the ingame fake peppino, but theyre fundamentally very Peppino-esque; he is strength and speed based just like Peppino instead of being (primarily) unpredictable and speedy. Thinking of the grab still being one handed but its more like him grabbing Peppinos shirt/body, and immediately chucking him against the wall (similar to peppinos two-armed grab)

The shouldercheck that Peppino does is mimicked with Fake Peppino using his hand as a mace/heavy weighted head weapon.

Runs up the wall on all fours instead of the regular run he does ingame (similar to Peppino using his hands to help with wall climbing)

He is INCREDIBLY loud and shrill during this fight; his voice echoes over itself and its very fast and unintelligible. Hes got very loud and nervous laughter bubbling up alongside the shrill screaming so its just NOT a fun time for Peppino at all.

He is normally very docile, but bc of some hcs I have wrt to him and pizzahead (and the tower overall), he is EXTREMELY stressed out and out of control when Peppino goes through his boss gate. Once he gets his ass handed to him AND he exhausts himself w the chase sequence, Fake Peppino is calmed down enough to think rationally again. And he has decided that Fighting Sucks and he would much rather just keep making pizzas lmao

(yoinking this from discord bc i do Not want to paraphrase lmao)

[I make my peppino SO hulking despite being short so i wanted to convey that same kind of Hugeness but like, if he had the extra height to go along w it Like peppino throws his weight around so i wanted fake peppino to do the same; hes very fast but also incredibly destructive and brutish]

[Im trying to find the best way to put it but like. In the same way getting angry gets u worked up and ur face gets hot and ur heart starts pumpin, the same thing will happen to fake peppino, only it translates into his body starting to bubble up and boil. Which looks AWFUL and it FEELS awful and it further aggravates him when hes burning up and falling apart So he will escalate very fast and essentially go blind w rage until he either passes out or gets knocked out]

[I want him to be a somewhat close parallel to peppino; act first think later. Everything makes him emotional and just like peppino, it will build up out of control very fast, and make him blow up in anger before he can think of a better way to handle it]

[ALSO wrt to fake peppino fighting i want the direction to be less ‘oh that is a weird freaking thing’ and more like ‘that a scary huge monster what the fuck IS that’ Like he makes the ground shake in his own pizzeria when hes chasing after peppino like hes throwing his weight around in such a way that makes him feel like the tank from left 4 dead. Big mans. Charges after peppino, misses; and where peppino would just bonk the wall, fake peppino makes a crater in the wall before shaking off the debris]

[hes not really throwing temper tantrums hes like. JUST as emotional and unable to ‘mask’ as peppino is but he does not have the 40+ years that peppino had to at least have the awareness to be ‘im destroying my own home’]

[I feel like. He is just as fast and strong as peppino, the difference being that peppino has Self Restraint, even if its not Alot And body limitations like breaking limbs n such, but fake peppino does not have that hindrance]

[He and peppino arent like emotionally unstable they are just incredibly volatile when under immense stress. Like most people!! Peppino is just under maximum stress 24/7 and fake peppi is a brand spankin new peppino that finds everything raw and stressful

(From a tagentially related convo)

[hes got a weirdass hobbled together nervous system (since u always see those nervous system diagrams laid out w a floating brain lol)

Its very human like but also inconsistent in some places ie he can feel pain but not All the time. The human body is very VERY complex and theres so many things working together to make shit happen. A nervous system but no bones to help hold it up and send it through the body; its floating in doughy goop ALL the time. His skin isnt Real skin so it doesnt have the same kind of like. Setup to easily receive pain and touch overall. Stretching his body out makes it hard to actually access the nerves so hes often unaware of Pain. But he can Feel things happen. I dunno]

[(responding to the idea of Fake Peppino getting hit with something blunt vs getting impaled or stabbed and grazing his nervous system)

[YES its like literally hitting a raw exposed nerve. The same pain youd get from a fucked up tooth i think however, if u managed to do that his instinct to protect himself would go haywire and hed literally try to maim you or die trying. He has no built in shock response to extreme pain like a normal human does]

[dyslexic-mess]

Suits and Stars AU part 2

(Part one)

Suits where not really Dannys thing.

For one, the shoulder pads made him look much too square for his liking. The fitted waist was all to exposing and three layers? Absolutely not. As he approached the building, a shimmering skyscraper that practically screamed ‘you can’t afford to look at me’, Danny decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and took off his blazer. A vest and tie where enough, right? Besides, its not like he actually worked there. The dress code wasn’t really his problem beyond looking vaughly like he fitted in.

The stiff fabric hooked over one arm, he strutted into the building with all the zeel of a man who worked a wall street office job.

“Nicholas Halden” he said to the receptionist, putting his hands in his pockets as she clicked on her computer. “Your not on the system” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously. “First day.” he countered, easily. “Inturn?” damn, what was this girl, a cop? Danny brightened his smile a little more “new P.A, actually”

She gave him one last look over her glasses, scanning him. “I don’t have any ticks or fleas. Promise.” He crossed his heart with that, leaning into his smile so it became more of a smirk. The woman finally cracked a little, huffling through her nose with an up turned lip before flipping through a folder. She handed him a lanyard “make sure you keep it that way, Mr. Halden” Danny took it and began to walk backwards in one motion, towards the security gates. “Nick” he offered. She finally smiled at him. “Nick.” she corrected in a slightly warmer tone. “Get a proper security pass before next week”

“Will do!” He responded as he turned to walk properly, shooting a finger gun over his shoulder as he did.

Receptionists. They held the keys to the castle and they knew it. Thinking about it, Danny would rather get grilled by a cop. They where easier to charm.

The office itself managed to be both claustrophobic and far to big. Rammed with people in suits of varying quality, tapping on keyboards and scribbling on paper. They chattered to each other about one thing or another and it was absolute murder on Dannys over sensitive ears. He fought the urge to cover them as he made for the office at the top, of course, that was sectioned off by a glass wall and a door twice as big as it needed to be.

He recognized his employer inside, looking more commanding in his own set of shoulder pads and dress shoes. Danny would almost believe you if you told him this guy and the tussled looking dude from last night were different people. Almost.

They were still the same in some very key ways. The tightness in his movements, the way his eyes scanned his surroundings so he noticed Danny long before he approached and, of course, that scowly tilt to his brow that darkened his features and shadowed those mottled blue eyes.

It was a shame, really, and Danny found himself, briefly, wanting to make the man smile.

He did not smile when he clocked Danny. Infact, that serious scowl seemed to deepen slightly as he waved him in, dismissing the other men in equally stuffy suits he'd been talking to.

"You got past reception?" He questioned, seeming surprised. Danny shrugged "don't panic, most people wouldn't"

Tim just hummed, positioning his laptop so it faced away from his office facing window. He pulled up a very official looking document with 'Nicks' ID and employment files. "Nicholas Halden. That's a little on the nose" Danny crossed his arms. "Does that make you Burke?"

The other man snorted "yeah. It dose." He handed Danny another lanyard, this one looking more official than the 'guest' card he was wearing. "I'm not dumb enough to let a known criminal walk around without keeping tabs-"

"-I'm not known" Danny butt in, a little prideful. Tim waived a hand at him.

"I know. In any case, this'll track your movements."

"Your not a convicted fellon so you can leave it at the door at the end of the day but if your on the clock, your wareing this."

The way Tim was debriefing him made Danny wonder if the nervous, flighty looking man he'd met last night had been a mask. This guy was clearly no stranger to being in authority and had no problems dolling out orders. It was, in a way, reassuring. He just hoped Tim could back up his thunder.

He directed his attention back to the computer, where Tim pulled up work schedules, fake contact details and a bit of fabricated history for nick. Just in case.

"Nick is my new P.A, employed with good recommendation, on a probationary period. That gives you clearance to do most things on the grounds I asked for it. Just don't go abusing the privilege-"

Danny rolled his eyes, Tim didn't bother acknowledging it.

"You work the job. You find my rat. When we've tied the loose ends, Nick starts underperforming and we let him go."

It was Dannys turn to hum as he looked over the startlingly good fake documents. Damn, even tucker would struggle to produce something like this! Did it make him curious? Hell yea but for now he was gonna mind his business.

"Its a good plan" he commented, flicking through the tabs a few more times as he did. "Though I don't remember you mentioning I'd have to do actual work around here when we spoke last"

Tim glanced at him "What, think you can't handle it? Or do you just have an aversion to legit work?" Danny huffed and rolled his eyes again "whatever, sure. Book you a taxi and reserve you a restaurant between actually doing what you're paying me for. Piece 'a cake"

"Better be" Tim sighed, closing his computer. "This has a time limit. The-"

"Yeah, yeah, the longer they get away with it, the more confident they'll get in what they leak. I got it." Danny finished and Tim raised an eyebrow. "Don't do that infront of the other employees. You might not answer to me but Nick does." He dead panned.

Danny just gave another one of his easy smiles, picking up his new ID, which felt more like a tracking collar, and spinning it on one finger. "You got it, pretty boy"

Tim puffed out his cheeks in the biggest expression Danny had managed to get from him, pointing a finger in his direction as Danny went to leave. "And don't call me that either!" He called after him.

Oh yea. This was gonna be a fun couple of weeks.

(Part three)

[cloakedsparrow]

‘Tim Joins the Bat-Family Early/Jason Sickfic’ AU Idea

Jason’s immune system wasn’t in great shape when Bruce adopted him, so before the Robin training and everything, Bruce, Alfred, and Leslie first focused on strengthening it. They adjusted his diet, made sure he was up to date on all his vaccines, made sure he got enough sleep (that one was mainly Alfred), ran allergy tests, all that not-so-fun-but-very-necessary-for-good-health stuff.

And it worked. Jason hardly ever got sick after the first year he was with them. Which is why neither Bruce nor Alfred immediately questioned it when he decided to sleep in late one fine Summer morning. Eventually, Bruce left to get some work done with Wayne Enterprises and Alfred headed out to run some errands and have lunch with an old friend.

Despite his good health since being adopted, Jason had his ass kicked by the flu enough times in the past before that to recognize what was happening when he woke up miserable and feverish.

He knew either Bruce or Alfred would happily come home to take care of him, but he felt a little silly calling on either of them. Bruce needed to work and Alfred only got to leave the Manor like once a week unless he was stuck driving Bruce somewhere. Jason didn’t want to call either of them back.

Dick, however, he didn’t mind calling. His big brother had made it clear that he could call him any time for anything (advice, help, a friendly ear, needing someone to yell at Bruce, anything). Jason's hazy, fevered mind, light sensitive eyes, and sore joints led to him hitting the contact number that read ‘Drake’ instead of the one that read ‘Dick’. (Either Tim had given Jason his number and Jason just never used it before or Janet and Bruce had made sure their kids had the others’ home number for emergencies)

Tim answered and, while Jason honestly wasn’t sounding all that coherent, understood that the older boy was sick. He’d had to wait out the flu on his own before and knew how much it sucked, and the Waynes were just on the other side of Bristol, he wouldn’t even need to cross into any bad neighborhoods to go help. So he packed up some of his tried and true flu fighting supplies and hopped on his bike to head to Wayne Manor. He parked the bike outside the gates and just slipped his scrawny ass between the bars to walk up to the huge home. He knocked and waited politely for a reasonable moment, then walked around to the service entrance and punched in the pass-code that he shouldn’t have known (he’d seen Dick use it once but if anyone asked, he guessed. He’d mention to whichever member of the Wayne household he ended up speaking to that your eldest son's birthday wasn’t the best pass-code). Tim makes his way to the family wing upstairs and tries a couple doors before finding Jason's room.

Jason is in bad shape, but Tim manages to get him to take some fever reducer and stay hydrated. He fills a bowl with tepid water and finds washcloth from the nearest bathroom to place on Jason’s head. He reads from the book on the nightstand. He gets Jason to eat some applesauce. He takes his temperature every half hour and writes everything down for whoever comes along to take over.

Eventually, Alfred returns home (maybe he got help up by Gotham weirdness) and is surprised to find a strange boy in the Manor. However, his primary focus in on Jason. He’s happy with the care Tim gave his grandson but, naturally, takes over from there. Tim leaves a note about the pass-code and lets himself out.

A few days later, when Jason is feeling better, Alfred asks him about Tim. Jason doesn’t remember a whole lot about when the kid arrived and only had bouts of lucidness here and there before Alfred took over. He honestly hadn’t been sure if they’d adopted another kid or if he was a relative of either Bruce or Alfred’s but he hadn’t really been in the best place to question it much. He’d felt safe though. And cared for.

After Alfred comments that he, too, was impressed with the care Tim had administered, Jason has a red flag go up. Tim is two or three years younger than him. He’s a child. His first response to such a strange call out of nowhere should have been to get an adult. He shouldn’t know how to tackle the flu on his own like he did.

Jason decides he should thank Tim. Maybe spend a little more time with the kid, since he seems cool. Maybe look into his home life a little while he’s at it.

Maybe he’ll just end up keeping him. If Bruce can bring home a random child in need, why can’t he?

And then he does just that.

[omgthatdress]

I have a lot of feelings about Julie’s collection. After the election of Richard Nixon, the deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, and then the Manson murders, the peace and love happy hippie 60s had given way to the dirty, strung-out scumbag 70s. Even though Julie is living in San Francisco, the hippie era had long since passed by 1974. As Hunter S. Thompson beautifully put it in Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas:

“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.””

I love the hippie aesthetic. I get that AG would want to have a doll that reflects that. A lot of Julie’s story revolves around her fighting for environmentalism, which is one of the aspects of hippie culture that managed to stick around, largely because of backlash to the consumerism of the 50s. But in Julie’s collection there’s plenty of times when her looks lean too far into the 60s and miss the mark of the 70s. As much as I appreciate AG doing the hippie thing, an accurate collection for the 70s would drag us to polyester hell and never let go. The 70s are one of those special eras in fashion where everything is ugly as fuck. The fashion of the 60s was much more aesthetically pleasing, but the fashion of the 70s is ironically appealing. It’s so ugly you love it. It’s ridiculous. It’s camp.

Granted, the fridge that was 1974 fashion still had plenty of hippie leftovers in it, and her original meet look with its crochet cap, embroidered tunic, and fringe belt feel true to the era.

Hand crafts like knitting and crochet had a resurgence in popularity, so I’m glad that both collections have a knitted accessory.

Part of the history lesson Julie gives is that Title IX meant schools could no longer forbid girls from wearing pants, so that’s why Julie is in jeans.

Julie’s BeForever look is straight 60s hippie. The inspiration seems to be Janis Joplin, who had been dead for four years:

AG seems to be wanting to have it both ways with Julie, and I honestly wish they’d just commit to the 70s:

On another note, the 70s would have been a great chance to have another doll of color (American Indian Movement, much?), but they went with a White girl with blonde hair. Which honestly I kiiind of get. Like if I were going to select ONE decade of the 20th century to have a blonde doll, it would be the 70s. I cannot emphasize enough how ubiquitous long blonde hair was to 70s pop culture.

For an era that still claimed to be progressive, the 70s were whitebread as hell. Outwardly there was women’s lib, civil rights, and the sexual revolution, but inwardly, the 70s were an extremely conservative decade when Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority were just starting to lay their slimy hooks into the American political system. It’s a decade of contradictions and extremes that I wish AG would fully commit to.

[carionto]

The Power of Error!

Titan! What a name for a moon, the jewel of Saturn, boundless scientific value, the works!

Bureaucracy! The most horrifying eldritch abomination Humanity has ever birthed. It is all pervasive, unavoidable, unfathomable, unkillable. A singular stroke on a piece of parchment (it's all digital these days, but hush now, dramatic words) can decide the fate of all.

Captain Knoslark, the head of the Warp Gate project and general overseer of the Dyson Ring construction efforts, was not enthused with paperwork. Unless it was a character sheet or notes for his drama plays. Get in, get out, minimal effort so he can go back to running four hundred million terawatts between two closely located quantum entangled particles. Why not, maybe he can turn string theory into string fact!

One day, after yet another report about the construction efforts, the captain was visited by Vice Admiral Krastina, one of the primary officers in charge of patrolling the inner Sol system and also managing the assistance with any nearby construction efforts.

"Captain Knoslark, a word."

He didn't like to have "words" with people like her. That always meant something bothersome, like responsibility.

"These are the materials requisition forms you signed off on, yes?"

He didn't know. Probably? Whenever someone asks a question like that, they already know the answer, and that means it's bad news. Could she just not do that? We can skip this.

"We will not be skipping this, Captain."

Witchcraft!

Well okay, the captain was notoriously bad at any social deduction games as he could not lie or pretend to save his life, except when he's explicitly roleplaying. If he weren't an actual captain, he could pull this off, but he is, so he can't.

"Care to comment on what happened to Titan?"

As a matter of fact, Captain Knoslark didn't care to answer that, mainly because he didn't know, but the Vice Admiral seemed to want something, so he brainstormed and came up with a brilliant plan.

"Right, can we instead do a thing where I say "Smokebomb!" and I leave and this conversation ends? Because I do not have an answer to that and this is incredibly awkward. I think we can pull this off. Okay, ready?

Smokebomb!"

The Vice Admiral maintained a steely gaze on him, narrowing her eyes just a tad with each passing second as Knoslark slowly crouch-walked backwards for the door, also maintaining perfect eye contact with her.

With an unchanging expression of expectation throughout, the good captain leaves the room after a solid minute.

Krastina shakes her head, she also doesn't want to deal with explaining to the government and even less so to the populace why Titan was unceremoniously broken apart and used up to further the construction of the Dyson Ring. To be fair, it has sped up the process tremendously.

Still. Damn. How did he misspell Thyone so badly? Nobody cares about that random moon. Of Jupiter, no less.

__________________

This whole thing exists because I wanted to use the joke of smokebombing out of a conversation by just saying the word. Heard it on a podcast a few years back and just suddenly recalled it. Titan in this verse is gone now all because of something dumb like that. I will not apologize.

[croxot]

Here I'll ramble about my favorite games this year.

This sure was a good year, and I have better opinions than the game awards do so I'm just gonna talk into the ether for a bit here.

Once upon a time I liked D&D 5e quite a bit, just like everyone else on this god forsaken internet. In recent years I've been more interested in Pathfinder 2e and Lancer. After so many years rolling with 5e, it became a bit more refreshing to try systems with more specific and rigid rules for certain things. However, a videogame requires specific adherence to rules to function, and in this respect, Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible adaptation of the system. There's just so much stupid bullshit you're allowed to get away with in game that most devs would not even consider. I may have played thru act 1 like 7 times now and it's still entertaining. Also I went from hating Lae'zel to loving her. Congrats Larian, you made me like perhaps the most annoying person I've ever met in a videogame.

As my bones start to deteriorate I find myself seeking smaller, more intimate games that give a sort of feeling. Lunacid is "like" Kingsfield in the way that it's a first-person dungeon crawler. That's where the buck stops for that comparison gameplay wise. However, Lunacid offers an extremely specific feeling I find is rare in games. It's the same sort of "you're lost and alone but also it's also groovy" feel as Metroid Prime 1 & 2. And if you can capture the same sort of feeling that some of my favorite games ever gave me as a teenager, you're just automatically on my games of the year list.

I saw a gameplay video in passing on twitter, got slightly horny because caked-up goat lady, went to the steam page and saw OVERWHEMINGLY POSITIVE. I don't think my experience with Pseudoregalia is unique. It just feels great to jump around and the music slaps.

Cross the feeling of the open-sea adventure of Wind Waker, with the chase and collection of fishing minigames of countless other titles, and the dread of exploring the uncaring unknown. It scratches a seldom-scratched itch of exploratory joy within an indifferent universe. Dredge's systems can be distilled to the simple loop of growing beyond your own fears to discover more and more. None of these fears is particularly intense, but it's enough. Dredge isn't going to find itself on game of the year lists because it's doing any one thing particularly well. It's also not doing anything specifically or wholly NEW. It is however, more than the sum of it's parts, and it is beautiful.

Remnant 2 is the best co-op souls-style game that exists, tied with Nioh 2. That's it, that's what I had to say. It just real good and it deserves to be on game of the year lists.

So like, late this year, 2 Souls successors came out. Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen. And goddamn did Lords inspire division.

I think these releases really showed that people who are "Souls Fans" really cover a LOT of different specific interests, and not all of these interests are well-represented in every souls-like. Lords, perhaps amazingly, seems to cater to what I particularly want out of a Souls game, whereas Lies of P did not. I like these games for their challenge, sure, but more importantly, I like the character building. The ability to create a unique playstyle that I can take on the game with. This slowly grated on me in Lies of P because the game really only wants you to play it (and succeed at it) a certain way. Because the perfect parry was the truest answer to everything a boss could throw at you, and the dodge sucks ass, I felt more exhausted by the end of the game than anything. I also wanted to try a strength build, but the heaviest weapons cannot manage to fully wind up and land a hit on any bosses past the halfway point. Without any hyper-armor or poise, the "big weapon" playstyle felt completely trash, even outside of bosses. Lords lets me dodge, block, perfect parry, and hey they ALL feel useful. I can actually wind up big weapon hits too! Yeah it feels a bit floaty, and yeah enemy density can be rather crazy at times, but I'm the weirdo who's favorite Dark Souls is DS2. Lords also does ranged combat better than any of it's contemporaries. I think a lot of people also never played the original Lords of the Fallen. Now that game SUCKED. I played the whole thing, my god.

GAME OF THE YEAR BAYBEE

I've already talked about AC6, but again, you can't just get me to complete a game. I see an achievement list and I say "fuck that, I hate that!" I saw AC6's Achievement list and I was rubbing my hands together like a cartoon villain. Like Pseudoregalia, AC6 just feels good to play. It feels so tight, and after a few hours you can feel the minute changes in the way your mech handles even after small part swaps. Anyways it needs DLC with more Rusty content. 12/10.

[tereotechsolution]

The Importance of Secure Gate Pass Management in Modern Businesses

Gate pass management software is an essential aspect of security for modern businesses. By implementing a gate pass management system, you can help to keep your business secure and ensure that your business is compliant with regulations and laws.

[fullyarmoredbattlesturgeon]

signalis lore spoilers

people keep talking about the penrose 512 crashing on Leng, and i don't think people are considering the fact that... it's not possible.

normally possible, anyways.

launched from an orbital station at high speed, the Penrose ship design was never designed to carry enough fuel to carry out full accelerations, only enough to maneuver the craft once launched

the broadcast transmission at 1500 cycles explicitly mentions that by the time 1500 cycles have passed (~4 earth years), they are sitting around the edge of the Oort cloud, the massive debris field that surrounds every solar system

going roughly by the anatomy of our solar system, that means they passed leng (the farthest out labled planetoid) maybe as far as a year back from cycle 1500.

and then they keep going for at least around ~3900 odd cycles out into space (bringing the total flight time to ~5400 cycles).

that's about 8-9 years of continued travel at their approximate velocity before Ariane is put in cryo, and we have no idea how much longer Elster is alive for after that.

unless they managed to pull off some crazy mid-space orbital manuever, they would never have had the fuel to reverse their velocity and head back in the direction of the solar system, and there is never any mention of an attempt (or even desire to) return to the solar system.

we don't know if the Penrose crashes out there or just keeps flying through space, but the Penrose ever being anywhere close to Leng is.... physically impossible, barring special exception.

this also throws a serious wrench in the theory that all LSTR units are based on a decommissioned Elster (LSTR 512). The Eusan government is willing to do a lot of things, but flying a 30 odd year round trip to go fetch Elster (who they know is dead and having their brain decompose) is WILD.

yes, the original LSTR neural pattern was lost with the destruction of the central archives on Vineta. yes, the LSTR they salvaged the currently used pattern from was part of the Penrose program.

but it was probably from an LSTR unit that never launched or was part of an orbital crew working on the Penrose program ships (someone has to build them, load them and launch them, right?).

Our Elster was too long gone, and the sealed document that talks about the loss of the Vinetan archives was... packed into the luggage of the Penrose 512, before any of the events of our story take place.

so... how *does* the Penrose crash on Leng, of all places? why is it right outside of the Sierpinski facility, which Elster and Ariane were nearly assigned to all those years ago? why does Elster have to pass through the black gate to get into Sierpinski?

Ariane's desperation and bioresonance is clearly a part of it, but teleporting a ship hundreds of thousands of miles... by yourself? Elster coming back to life, hundreds of times during the time loop? Where are we even supposed to start with the fact that Ariane has clearly left the ship at the start of the game, and is only in the red-wastes version of the Penrose?

one of Falke's crayon pages talks about meeting Ariane in the red wastes beyond the gate. it's unclear when this took place, and it probably has something to do with the bioresonance tying Falke and Elster's memories together, but i can't help but think that when Falke met the Red Eye, she also met Ariane, reaching out desperately across space.

regardless, something genuinely eldritch is happening, and it's not just the flesh below Leng that's proof of something *else* going on.

[cognitivejustice]

A 2,000-year-old Sri Lankan hydraulic system uses natural features to help harvest and store rainwater. In a rapidly warming world, it is providing a lifeline for rural communities.

Each April, in the village of Maeliya in northwest Sri Lanka, Pinchal Weldurelage Siriwardene gathers his community under the shade of a large banyan tree. The tree overlooks a human-made body of water called a wewa – meaning reservoir or "tank" in Sinhala. The wewa stretches out besides the village's rice paddies for 175-acres (708,200 sq m) and is filled with the rainwater of preceding months. 

 Tank cascades are receiving new attention as climate change is projected to increase both Sri Lanka's drought and flood risk (Credit: Zinara Rathnayake) 

Siriwardene, the 76-year-old secretary of the village's agrarian committee, has a tightly-guarded ritual to perform. By boiling coconut milk on an open hearth beside the tank, he will seek blessings for a prosperous harvest from the deities residing in the tree. "It's only after that we open the sluice gate to water the rice fields," he told me when I visited on a scorching mid-April afternoon.

By releasing water into irrigation canals below, the tank supports the rice crop during the dry months before the rains arrive. For nearly two millennia, lake-like water bodies such as this have helped generations of farmers cultivate their fields. An old Sinhala phrase, "wewai dagabai gamai pansalai", even reflects the technology's centrality to village life; meaning "tank, pagoda, village and temple".

But the village's tank does not work alone. It is part of an ancient hydraulic network called an ellangawa, or "tank cascade system". As such, the artificial lake at Maeliya links up with smaller, man-made reservoirs upstream in the watershed. Together with their carefully managed natural surroundings, these interconnecting storage structures allow rainwater to be harvested, shared and re-used across the local area.

Constructed from the 4th Century BC up to the 1200s, these cascade systems have long helped Sri Lankan communities cope with prolonged periods of dry weather. "As most of the country is made up of crystalline hard rock with poor permeability, it induces runoff, " says Christina Shanthi De Silva, senior professor in agricultural and plantation engineering at The Open University of Sri Lanka. "Our forefathers built tank cascades to capture this surface runoff," she explains, preventing it from being washed away into rivers and, ultimately, the sea.

Such knowledge has since been passed down the generations. In a laminated box file, Siriwardene carefully safeguards a map his father, the village head, drew of Maeliya's cascade. There are nine tanks in this particular cascade, his father writes. A copy of another handwritten booklet documents the tanks' history and the folk poems that villagers sang in gratitude for its continuous water resource.

[shuttershocky]

More complex enemy AI feels like the best way to handle it. Simple stat inflation is awful and gating mechanics behind difficulty seems... bad design, frankly.

Like I said in the post, most games use a combination of different factors rather than just one.

I made the post specifically because i was just thinking about how Devil May Cry's Dante Must Die mode + Turbo mode which manages to use everything listed all at once.

For example, in DMC5's DMD, enemies have increased stats. But they also have their aggressiveness toned up the higher the difficulty gets, and will even change up what moves they use most (or get new ones). DMD also introduces a new mechanic in enemy Devil Triggers which you now have to play around (enemies will DT to power up when too injured or when too much time passes or sometimes just DT at the start, needing you to both fight fast and try to spread damage around). DMD also has stricter rankings, a style score that would get you an S rank in Devil Hunter would need an extra 1000 points for S rank in DMD. And finally, Special Edition brings Turbo mode, which makes the whole game run at 1.2x speed, which makes execution a whole lot harder, but also makes the game even flashier and cool from how fast you can move.

And despite using every single thing I listed all at once, 5's Turbo DMD ends up pretty good! Mind you it's really hard (maybe not DMC3 crazy but still), but because 5's enemies are balanced well and the combat system is refined so precisely, the challenge feels like it was designed to push you to the limit, without requiring conservative, overly efficient, or incredibly limited playstyles that defeats the point of playing a DMC game.

And on the other hand of notable examples, there's the System Shock remake (and older System Shocks too but i'm mentioning the recent title) allowing you to customize your own difficulty setting. You could change multiple settings from combat to puzzle complexity yourself, so if you don't like fighting but do like sweating on puzzles, you could set enemies to be unable to even see you but put puzzles to maximum challenge. I wish more games would give that a try!

[light-lanterne]

navigating across morbid accounts, i encountered the most harrowing of stories which i have now turned into a small fic concept for day 2 of @bylerween2023

tw // body horror, gore, disturbing imagery, illness and death - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - ☽ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - dear @foodiewithdahoodie, forgive me for tagging you unprompted but i believe you will find this as absolutely fascinating as it is disturbing.

in 1927, a man called ebenezer byers suffered a fall that left him with constant pain in his arm. advised by his physician, he then began taking a medication called radithor, a supposed endocrine system stimulant that helped ebenezer feel energised. healthier. no longer in any pain.

he took the radithor, often consuming multiple doses a day until —three years later and after 1400 doses— he noticed he could no longer feel any effects from the medication.

so he stopped, became ill and, eventually, died. over the course of a year and a half, ebenezer lost a ton of weight, had headaches, his teeth fell out, his lower jaw became so deformed it had to be removed so he could be fed. his bones began to disintegrate. his skull became riddled with holes.

he passed away in 1932 to what was then denominated "radiation poisoning" (later specified as various cancers), which he acquired from his high intake of radithor, a solution of radium in water manufactured by a college dropout who pretended to be a licensed doctor. unfortunately, this man would go on to die from cancer himself many years later, after creating several other radioactive products, never being punished or prosecuted for knowingly endangering people with his "cures".

and that is the tale of ebenezer byers.

,,,so, and because of the implication that the upside down is radioactive in some way,,,

byler au where the party —and will in particular— start spending more and more time in the upside down as they continue their fight against vecna. multiple years go past and will doesn't know if it's just him, but as time goes on, all the negative side effects the upside down used to have on him stop affecting him and, instead, the longer he's in there, the stronger and healthier he feels.

so he begins asking to go down there more often. joins any mission the party needs to get done. hangs out by the closest gate whenever the others decide he should stay in the rightside up instead. he becomes almost addicted to the way the toxic atmosphere makes him feel to the point that, when the group finally defeats vecna and manages to close the gate, he has to hide his sadness and disappointment from the others.

but he moves on, and life goes on and soon enough, things start feeling normal again.

,,,that is, until will starts feeling sick. weak. his skin begins to peel off. he wakes up every day with one more missing tooth and blood all over his mouth and under his nails. his hair falls out in chunks. his eyes, bloodshot, begin looking more and more deranged as he comes to understand what is happening to him and, perhaps more importantly, as he realises that there is nothing he can do to stop or change this anymore.

after all, it's not like he can open up a gate into the upside down once more, right ?

maybe. maybe not. he tried to hide it from everyone, but of course mike noticed and, loving as he is, mike offers to help, desperate to save will because he is not losing him after everything they've gone through.

thus begins a little game of mutual deception:

on one side, the perishing, almost-zombie-looking will accepts to look for a cure with sweet, naive, innocent mike, subtly trying to manipulate him into helping him open the gates once more because will needs the upside down. desperately. not to live but because he misses it and how it makes him feel.

and on the other hand, the always-determined mike, who's being so kind and loving and diligent in his search for a cure. who is absolutely fed up with humanity after how much pain the entire party had to go through because evil men who didn't care about any of their lives —specially will's.

mike, who is secretly working on a way to open a way back into the upside down because he doesn't care who lives or dies anymore as long as will —who's too kind to wish harm on anyone, hence why it's a secret— gets to survive.

- the end -

(below is a photo of ebenezer for reference. be aware, it is highly unsettling and saddening. also, i looked it up and apparently @henrysglock has a whole theory about the possible implications ebenezer byers' story might have on the stranger things plot. be sure to give it a read)

[bagelvangr]

modern day au where Eivor and Randvi are travelling back home for the holidays

they are from different cities but have the same connecting flight and end up seated next to each other on the plane

Randvi obviously has the window seat because she checked in early and Eivor has to awkwardly take the middle seat, this will not be explained further

just like right now, there is an arctic system affecting flights. their flight ends up delayed from the gate, and then it taxis/holds on the tarmac for like 4-5 hours because de-icing and general weather conditions are making it really difficult for ALL flights

they get to know each other on the plane. Eivor's phone lost charge like 2 hours into the forevertaxi and Randvi had been reading some old Norse archeology book so they start talking. Eivor talks about and shows Randvi her tattoos and talks about living in Norway/Iceland/Faroe Islands/England/Ireland/Archeological flavour of your choice.

They find out they have a lot of mutual contacts and plan to meet up when they land.

The travelling situation is a mess and they have to navigate the airport with hundreds of other stranded travelers trying to figure out what to do with their cancelled flights. Randvi is distraught bc it's her first year in a while going back home and her sister (Thora ofc) just had a baby. Eivor is distraught bc a mentor and father figure of hers passed away (Svend) and she's concerned she won't make the funeral.

They spend literal hours in endless lines getting confusing information from a severely understaffed and overwhelmed 3am airport staff. Everyone around them (and themselves) are tired, hungry, thirsty, looking for a way to their destination.

They split briefly at first, but eventually find each other again to navigate the mess. It just makes more sense to stay in line together. One can stay in line and watch bags while the other uses the restroom, tries to find out what is happening in another line, tries to find food/drink, charges their phone. This of course leads them to exchanging their contact info so they can keep each other informed.

At some point Randvi gets super cold bc it's negative double digits and her coat is in her checked-in luggage. So of course Eivor gives her her jacket and says "it's fine, I run hot. Anyways, I'm wearing a flannel so technically I have layers too" -- totally normal gay behaviour.

Eventually, after 16 hours, they are delirious and swaying on their feet, but they manage to get a standby flight to where they're headed. They get food and drinks together once the shops are finally open and then head to their gate. Eivor, clearly shaking and on the verge of sleep deprived delirium, offers to stay awake while Randvi catches up on some sleep while they wait. Eivor says she will sleep on the flight.

Their first standby flight is a miss; but they're automatically rolled over to the next flight. Since it's still some hours away, Eivor does get some sleep and they both rest for a while.

There's a mutual unspoken fear of being put on separate flights since they are on standby and itching to get going, but luckily they make it on the same flight.

Seats are super limited though and they end up sitting separated from each other. Not that it matters too much bc all they end up doing is sleeping lol

When they land, there's a bit of debacle about how to find their luggage, and they end up chatting a bit more. This is when Eivor learns that Randvi was actually pretty close with Sigurd and Styrbjorn's family in general (details to be filled in on exactly what this is lol), and Randvi learns that Eivor is very good friends with Tove, who she is also good friends with, sharing mutual interest in ancient art.

So they learn they're going to the same neighbourhood, so they take a rideshare together. They actually solidify their plans to meet up later when Randvi learns Eivor is getting another tattoo and Randvi is giving research materials to Tove for referencing.

Eivor takes a genuine interest in it and offers to help on any expeditions or research sessions or trips if Randvi would like. Randvi learns Eivor has a boat and has enjoyed their time so far, and so they start planning regular expeditions around the North Sea, experiencing its lands and gifts together and witnessing the beauty of the northern lights regularly on Eivor's boat. :)

And for the 7292649391638th time, these two bitches fall in-love AGAIN