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[rnssoftware0]

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[rahul-odoo-data-analyst]

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[tofupixel]

⭐ So you want to learn pixel art? ⭐

🔹 Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!

Edit: Now available in Google Doc format if you don't have a Tumblr account 🥰

Hello, my name is Tofu and I'm a professional pixel artist. I have been supporting myself with freelance pixel art since 2020, when I was let go from my job during the pandemic.

My progress, from 2017 to 2024. IMO the only thing that really matters is time and effort, not some kind of natural talent for art.

This guide will not be comprehensive, as nobody should be expected to read allat. Instead I will lean heavily on my own experience, and share what worked for me, so take everything with a grain of salt. This is a guide, not a tutorial. Cheers!

🔹 Do I need money?

NO!!! Pixel art is one of the most accessible mediums out there.

I still use a mouse because I prefer it to a tablet! You won't be at any disadvantage here if you can't afford the best hardware or software.

Because our canvases are typically very small, you don't need a good PC to run a good brush engine or anything like that.

✨Did you know? One of the most skilled and beloved pixel artists uses MS PAINT! Wow!!

🔹 What software should I use?

Here are some of the most popular programs I see my friends and peers using. Stars show how much I recommend the software for beginners! ⭐

💰 Paid options:

⭐⭐⭐ Aseprite (for PC) - $19.99

This is what I and many other pixel artists use. You may find when applying to jobs that they require some knowledge of Aseprite. Since it has become so popular, companies like that you can swap raw files between artists.

Aseprite is amazingly customizable, with custom skins, scripts and extensions on Itch.io, both free and paid.

If you have ever used any art software before, it has most of the same features and should feel fairly familiar to use. It features a robust animation suite and a tilemap feature, which have saved me thousands of hours of labour in my work. The software is also being updated all the time, and the developers listen to the users. I really recommend Aseprite!

⭐ Photoshop (for PC) - Monthly $$

A decent option for those who already are used to the PS interface. Requires some setup to get it ready for pixel-perfect art, but there are plenty of tutorials for doing so.

Animation is also much more tedious on PS which you may want to consider before investing time!

⭐⭐ ProMotion NG (for PC) - $19.00

An advanced and powerful software which has many features Aseprite does not, including Colour Cycling and animated tiles.

⭐⭐⭐ Pixquare (for iOS) - $7.99 - $19.99 (30% off with code 'tofu'!!)

Probably the best app available for iPad users, in active development, with new features added all the time.

Look! My buddy Jon recommends it highly, and uses it often.

One cool thing about Pixquare is that it takes Aseprite raw files! Many of my friends use it to work on the same project, both in their office and on the go.

⭐ Procreate (for iOS) - $12.99

If you have access to Procreate already, it's a decent option to get used to doing pixel art. It does however require some setup. Artist Pixebo is famously using Procreate, and they have tutorials of their own if you want to learn.

⭐⭐ ReSprite iOS and Android. (free trial, but:) $19.99 premium or $$ monthly

ReSprite is VERY similar in terms of UI to Aseprite, so I can recommend it. They just launched their Android release!

🆓 Free options:

⭐⭐⭐ Libresprite (for PC)

Libresprite is an alternative to Aseprite. It is very, very similar, to the point where documentation for Aseprite will be helpful to Libresprite users.

⭐⭐ Pixilart (for PC and mobile)

A free in-browser app, and also a mobile app! It is tied to the website Pixilart, where artists upload and share their work. A good option for those also looking to get involved in a community.

⭐⭐ Dotpict (for mobile)

Dotpict is similar to Pixilart, with a mobile app tied to a website, but it's a Japanese service. Did you know that in Japanese, pixel art is called 'Dot Art'? Dotpict can be a great way to connect with a different community of pixel artists! They also have prompts and challenges often.

🔹 So I got my software, now what?

◽Nice! Now it's time for the basics of pixel art.

❗ WAIT ❗ Before this section, I want to add a little disclaimer. All of these rules/guidelines can be broken at will, and some 'no-nos' can look amazing when done intentionally.

The pixel-art fundamentals can be exceedingly helpful to new artists, who may feel lost or overwhelmed by choice. But if you feel they restrict you too harshly, don't force yourself! At the end of the day it's your art, and you shouldn't try to contort yourself into what people think a pixel artist 'should be'. What matters is your own artistic expression. 💕👍

◽Phew! With that out of the way...

🔸"The Rules"

There are few hard 'rules' of pixel art, mostly about scaling and exporting. Some of these things will frequently trip up newbies if they aren't aware, and are easy to overlook.

🔹Scaling method

There are a couple ways of scaling your art. The default in most art programs, and the entire internet, is Bi-linear scaling, which usually works out fine for most purposes. But as pixel artists, we need a different method.

Both are scaled up x10. See the difference?

On the left is scaled using Bilinear, and on the right is using Nearest-Neighbor. We love seeing those pixels stay crisp and clean, so we use nearest-neighbor. 

(Most pixel-art programs have nearest-neighbor enabled by default! So this may not apply to you, but it's important to know.)

🔹Mixels

Mixels are when there are different (mixed) pixel sizes in the same image.

Here I have scaled up my art- the left is 200%, and the right is 150%. Yuck!

As we can see, the "pixel" sizes end up different. We generally try to scale our work by multiples of 100 - 200%, 300% etc. rather than 150%. At larger scales however, the minute differences in pixel sizes are hardly noticeable!

Mixels are also sometimes seen when an artist scales up their work, then continues drawing on it with a 1 pixel brush.

Many would say that this is not great looking! This type of pixels can be indicative of a beginner artist. But there are plenty of creative pixel artists out there who mixels intentionally, making something modern and cool.

🔹Saving Your Files

We usually save our still images as .PNGs as they don’t create any JPEG artifacts or loss of quality. It's a little hard to see here, but there are some artifacts, and it looks a little blurry. It also makes the art very hard to work with if we are importing a JPEG.

For animations .GIF is good, but be careful of the 256 colour limit. Try to avoid using too many blending mode layers or gradients when working with animations. If you aren’t careful, your animation could flash afterwards, as the .GIF tries to reduce colours wherever it can. It doesn’t look great!

Here's an old piece from 2021 where I experienced .GIF lossiness, because I used gradients and transparency, resulting in way too many colours.

🔹Pixel Art Fundamentals - Techniques and Jargon

❗❗Confused about Jaggies? Anti-Aliasing? Banding? Dithering? THIS THREAD is for you❗❗ << it's a link, click it!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE tutorial of all time for understanding pixel art. These are techniques created and named by the community of people who actually put the list together, some of the best pixel artists alive currently. Please read it!!

🔸How To Learn

Okay, so you have your software, and you're all ready to start. But maybe you need some more guidance? Try these tutorials and resources! It can be helpful to work along with a tutorial until you build your confidence up.

⭐⭐ Pixel Logic (A Digital Book) - $10 A very comprehensive visual guide book by a very skilled and established artist in the industry. I own a copy myself.

⭐⭐⭐ StudioMiniBoss - free A collection of visual tutorials, by the artist that worked on Celeste! When starting out, if I got stuck, I would go and scour his tutorials and see how he did it.

⭐ Lospec Tutorials - free A very large collection of various tutorials from all over the internet. There is a lot to sift through here if you have the time.

⭐⭐⭐ Cyangmou's Tutorials - free (tipping optional) Cyangmou is one of the most respected and accomplished modern pixel artists, and he has amassed a HUGE collection of free and incredibly well-educated visual tutorials. He also hosts an educational stream every week on Twitch called 'pixelart for beginners'.

⭐⭐⭐ Youtube Tutorials - free There are hundreds, if not thousands of tutorials on YouTube, but it can be tricky to find the good ones. My personal recommendations are MortMort, Brandon, and AdamCYounis- these guys really know what they're talking about!

🔸 How to choose a canvas size

When looking at pixel art turorials, we may see people suggest things like 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. These are standard sizes for pixel art games with tiles. However, if you're just making a drawing, you don't necessarily need to use a standard canvas size like that.

What I like to think about when choosing a canvas size for my illustrations is 'what features do I think it is important to represent?' And make my canvas as small as possible, while still leaving room for my most important elements.

Imagine I have characters in a scene like this:

I made my canvas as small as possible (232 x 314), but just big enough to represent the features and have them be recognizable (it's Good Omens fanart 😤)!! If I had made it any bigger, I would be working on it for ever, due to how much more foliage I would have to render.

If you want to do an illustration and you're not sure, just start at somewhere around 100x100 - 200x200 and go from there.

It's perfectly okay to crop your canvas, or scale it up, or crunch your art down at any point if you think you need a different size. I do it all the time! It only takes a bit of cleanup to get you back to where you were.

🔸Where To Post

Outside of just regular socials, Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Instagram etc, there are a few places that lean more towards pixel art that you might not have heard of.

⭐ Lospec Lospec is a low-res focused art website. Some pieces get given a 'monthly masterpiece' award. Not incredibly active, but I believe there are more features being added often.

⭐⭐ Pixilart Pixilart is a very popular pixel art community, with an app tied to it. The community tends to lean on the young side, so this is a low-pressure place to post with an relaxed vibe.

⭐⭐ Pixeljoint Pixeljoint is one of the big, old-school pixel art websites. You can only upload your art unscaled (1x) because there is a built-in zoom viewer. It has a bit of a reputation for being elitist (back in the 00s it was), but in my experience it's not like that any more. This is a fine place for a pixel artist to post if they are really interested in learning, and the history. The Hall of Fame has some of the most famous / impressive pixel art pieces that paved the way for the work we are doing today.

⭐⭐⭐ Cafe Dot Cafe Dot is my art server so I'm a little biased here. 🍵 It was created during the recent social media turbulence. We wanted a place to post art with no algorithms, and no NFT or AI chuds. We have a heavy no-self-promotion rule, and are more interested in community than skill or exclusivity. The other thing is that we have some kind of verification system- you must apply to be a Creator before you can post in the Art feed, or use voice. This helps combat the people who just want to self-promo and dip, or cause trouble, as well as weed out AI/NFT people. Until then, you are still welcome to post in any of the threads or channels. There is a lot to do in Cafe Dot. I host events weekly, so check the threads!

⭐⭐/r/pixelart The pixel art subreddit is pretty active! I've also heard some of my friends found work through posting here, so it's worth a try if you're looking. However, it is still Reddit- so if you're sensitive to rude people, or criticism you didn't ask for, you may want to avoid this one. Lol

🔸 Where To Find Work

You need money? I got you! As someone who mostly gets scouted on social media, I can share a few tips with you:

Put your email / portfolio in your bio Recruiters don't have all that much time to find artists, make it as easy as possible for someone to find your important information!

Clean up your profile If your profile feed is all full of memes, most people will just tab out rather than sift through. Doesn't apply as much to Tumblr if you have an art tag people can look at.

Post regularly, and repost Activity beats everything in the social media game. It's like rolling the dice, and the more you post the more chances you have. You have to have no shame, it's all business baby

Outside of just posting regularly and hoping people reach out to you, it can be hard to know where to look. Here are a few places you can sign up to and post around on.

/r/INAT INAT (I Need A Team) is a subreddit for finding a team to work with. You can post your portfolio here, or browse for people who need artists.

/r/GameDevClassifieds Same as above, but specifically for game-related projects.

Remote Game Jobs / Work With Indies Like Indeed but for game jobs. Browse them often, or get email notifications.

VGen VGen is a website specifically for commissions. You need a code from another verified artist before you can upgrade your account and sell, so ask around on social media or ask your friends. Once your account is upgraded, you can make a 'menu' of services people can purchase, and they send you an offer which you are able to accept, decline, or counter.

The evil websites of doom: Fiverr and Upwork I don't recommend them!! They take a big cut of your profit, and the sites are teeming with NFT and AI people hoping to make a quick buck. The site is also extremely oversaturated and competitive, resulting in a race to the bottom (the cheapest, the fastest, doing the most for the least). Imagine the kind of clients who go to these websites, looking for the cheapest option. But if you're really desperate...

🔸 Community

I do really recommend getting involved in a community. Finding like-minded friends can help you stay motivated to keep drawing. One day, those friends you met when you were just starting out may become your peers in the industry. Making friends is a game changer!

Discord servers Nowadays, the forums of old are mostly abandoned, and people split off into many different servers. Cafe Dot, Pixel Art Discord (PAD), and if you can stomach scrolling past all the AI slop, you can browse Discord servers here.

Twitch Streams Twitch has kind of a bad reputation for being home to some of the more edgy gamers online, but the pixel art community is extremely welcoming and inclusive. Some of the people I met on Twitch are my friends to this day, and we've even worked together on different projects! Browse pixel art streams here, or follow some I recommend: NickWoz, JDZombi, CupOhJoe, GrayLure, LumpyTouch, FrankiePixelShow, MortMort, Sodor, NateyCakes, NyuraKim, ShinySeabass, I could go on for ever really... There are a lot of good eggs on Pixel Art Twitch.

🔸 Other Helpful Websites

Palettes Lospec has a huge collection of user-made palettes, for any artist who has trouble choosing their colours, or just wants to try something fun. Rejected Palettes is full of palettes that didn't quite make it onto Lospec, ran by people who believe there are no bad colours.

The Spriters Resource TSR is an incredible website where users can upload spritesheets and tilesets from games. You can browse for your favourite childhood game, and see how they made it! This website has helped me so much in understanding how game assets come together in a scene.

VGMaps Similar to the above, except there are entire maps laid out how they would be played. This is incredible if you have to do level design, or for mocking up a scene for fun.

Game UI Database Not pixel-art specific, but UI is a very challenging part of graphics, so this site can be a game-changer for finding good references!

Retronator A digital newspaper for pixel-art lovers! New game releases, tutorials, and artworks!

Itch.io A website where people can upload, games, assets, tools... An amazing hub for game devs and game fans alike. A few of my favourite tools: Tiled, PICO-8, Pixel Composer, Juice FX, Magic Pencil for Aseprite

🔸 The End?

This is just part 1 for now, so please drop me a follow to see any more guides I release in the future. I plan on doing some writeups on how I choose colours, how to practise, and more!

I'm not an expert by any means, but everything I did to get to where I am is outlined in this guide. Pixel art is my passion, my job and my hobby! I want pixel art to be recognized everywhere as an art-form, a medium of its own outside of game-art or computer graphics!

This guide took me a long time, and took a lot of research and experience. Consider following me or supporting me if you are feeling generous.

And good luck to all the fledgling pixel artists, I hope you'll continue and have fun. I hope my guide helped you, and don't hesitate to send me an ask if you have any questions! 💕

My other tutorials (so far): How to draw Simple Grass for a game Hue Shifting

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[thekittenkait]

was anyone gonna tell me cyanide is the CEO of a successful software development company or was i supposed to find that out at midnight on a workday under a sovietwomble video myself

[marcferguson]

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[phantomrose96]

The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

[vervesystems]

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Assess your project: before you begin, it is important to assess your project. Take steps to consider how outsourcing will factor into your project. Quantify the specific benchmarks that you want to meet. Then, define the reasons why you want to outsource some or your entire project.

Define your technical stack: You will also need to identify what technologies you will use for your project. Make a brief list and when you are looking for offshore development teams, you can check out the technologies they work with.

Look at the company experience: When you select an offshore development partner, make sure that you select a company with experience in the technology you want. Sometimes, a new entrant can provide a fresh perspective with new age ideas, but, make sure that they have the technology expertise you require.

How much is it going to cost? Well, lastly, check the cost of the project. It’s not only about the amount. It’s about the quality of work that you will get for the price. While the objective is to keep the costs low, the price should not be the only deciding factor.

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[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[callmeagardengnome]

❤︎ office affairs ❤︎ | SONG MINGI

pairings ࿔ mingi x fem! reader

genre ࿔ office au, non-idol au, romance, SLOWW BURNNN

synopsis ࿔ working for a job promotion is the smart thing to do, but working to make song mingi fall in love with you is way more fun.

w.c ࿔ 8.1k

c.w ࿔ suggestive but no smut, mingi likes thighs woops, mutual pining (?) reader watches anime, reader also wears pencil skirts a lot of the time, this is an IT company, light swearing, alcohol, kiss scene

author’s note: this took way too long to finish but im glad its done! also rmbr to like and repost!

not proofread!

other fics

the moment your eyes found song mingi, you knew that he was the one.

okay, ‘the one’ might be extreme, but he definitely caught your attention on your first day.

you applied to ‘ATECH’ after graduating from college, hoping to land a job in one of the top IT companies in the city. you’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time learning how to code and develop software, so imagine the joy you felt when the job offer finally appeared in your inbox.

“over there are the bathrooms,” your boss, hongjoong, said as he pointed to a set of doors at the end of the room. “and this is where you’ll be working,” he patted the desk.

“thank you,” you smiled, letting out a quiet groan as you set down the heavy box in your arms.

you looked around. the office was pretty normal, each section had desks right next to each other with the company-issued computer sitting on each one.

you turned back to your desk, your eyes landing on who your deskmate would be - and you swear that your breath was taken away within a second.

he was the definition of your type: neat, built, handsome.

not to mention the way his glasses sat on his face or the button-up shirt he wore that had his sleeves rolled up slightly, exposing his defined forearms. he looked good. impossibly good.

“mingi will be showing you the ropes of the company,” hongjoong began, giving mingi a sharp glare when he was about to protest. “don’t hesitate to ask him for help.”

you nodded. “got it,” you replied, settling into the swivel chair at your desk.

as hongjoong walked away, you heard mingi mumbling something under his breath, but it was too soft for you to catch. he quickly returned back to his work, typing on his keyboard at speeds you didn’t know were possible.

“hey,“ you spoke up, sitting up straighter. “i was wondering if you could help me with-“

“-ask him,” mingi muttered, barely looking away from his computer screen as he pointed lazily to a guy at the next table.

you blinked. “but hongjoong told me to ask you?”

mingi sighed, finally stopping his typing to face you. “i don’t know why he did that. i’m not anyone special, i’ve just been working here for a while.”

mingi then pushed himself back slightly so that you could see who he was pointing to. “wooyoung’s the manager, you should be asking him on how things work.”

“oh.. okay,” you replied slowly. “mingi-“

“-mr song,” he corrected, cutting your sentence short again.

you raised an eyebrow, looking down at the polished nameplate on his desk that read out, ‘SONG MINGI’.

“right.. mr song,” you nodded slowly. “i guess i’ll just do that.”

you ignored the weird exchange and began to unpack your things. after sorting out everything, you decided to find this ‘wooyoung’ guy mingi was talking about earlier - it was actually easier than you thought since he was talking pretty loudly with the person next to him.

you took a deep breath as you walked over to his section, feeling your palms sweat as you wiped them on your pencil skirt. “hey uh..” you trailed off as wooyoung’s eyes widened.

“you’re the new hire?” wooyoung blurted out in surprise as he looked you up and down.

he then blinked and shook his head. “wait shit- that sounded bad.”

wooyoung turned his chair around to face you, waving his hands defensively. “sorry, we don’t normally get girls here- you know, it’s IT. not that it’s never happened but they’re usually.. a lot older.”

“cool..” you chuckled awkwardly, offering a polite smile as you were unsure of how to respond. “well, mr song said that i should ask you for help.”

wooyoung’s eyes widened even more than before. “mr song?” he said a little too loudly, making a few people glance in your direction - though wooyoung didn’t seem care. “did hongjoong tell you to call him that?”

you shook your head. “no? he corrected me when i called him by his name.”

“oh…

my…

god.”

wooyoung busted out laughing. “i’ve never heard anyone call him mr song- even jongho doesn’t! and he just started working here last month!”

“wait really? then why-?”

“-it’s definitely a kink thing,” wooyoung muttered to the guy next to him, who you now noticed was watching the whole interaction.

“what was that?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

“nothing, nothing,” wooyoung waved it off, still chuckling. “anyway, this is yeosang. if you ever need anything just come to either of us. we’ll help you out.”

yeosang nodded politely, giving you a small smile. “nice to meet you. welcome to the company.”

“thanks..” you responded, bowing slightly. “nice to meet you too.”

soon enough, you found yourself sitting between them - with wooyoung desperately trying to teach you the company software (though he was messing up terribly) while yeosang corrected him at every step, trying to fix his mistakes. the two eventually got into a mini argument as you sat there awkwardly, watching two grown men argue on whether to press the ‘s’ or ‘z’ key.

you eventually spaced out, looking around the office. your eyes landed on song mingi once more, watching how focused he was on whatever he was doing.

the more you looked at him, the more boxes he ticked in your books. but this rigid character of his was going to be an issue if you wanted anything to happen. you cracked your fingers, and only one thing was on your mind as you turned away from mingi.

you were going to break through that ‘serious’ personality of his.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

you’ve learnt two things about mingi during your first month of working at ATECH.

number one: he seemed pretty reserved - at least, when you’re around.

it was a little odd. whenever you were nearby, mingi was quiet, silent even. but the moment you were out of sight or busy, laughter would erupt from his table.

you had a pretty important deadline coming up and you needed to work on it with your full attention. you put on your bluetooth headphones and got straight to work. the music did help you focus, but unfortunately, your headphones died with a loud beep.

annoyed, you took them off, moving to grab a wire to charge them when suddenly - you heard something. talking. coming from none other than your deskmate, mingi.

“no- you don’t understand, the fight scenes are incredible!” mingi exclaimed, almost jumping off of his chair. “the animation alone is on another level.”

“overrated,” jongho countered, smirking as he leaned back. “mingi, i don’t know why you keep recommending anime to me. i only watched one episode because you forced me to.”

mingi rolled his eyes. “you don’t get it- episode four is gonna change your life.”

it took everything in you to not laugh out loud. you’ve never seen mingi so passionate about something - and it was about anime of all things.

not that there was anything wrong with it - hell, you watched it. it’s just that seeing mingi so invested and defensive was.. kind of cute. maybe you should give the show a go.

but in the middle of mingi’s rambling, jongho yawned and suddenly glanced in your direction, giving you a friendly wave as his grin widened. “hey ‘___’.”

mingi froze mid-sentence, his hands moving to his keyboard almost instantly, the rant coming to an awkward halt. he quickly straightened his back and cleared his throat, acting as if nothing had happened.

jongho raised an eyebrow, clearly holding in a laugh. “you done with that deadline?” he asked.

you blinked. “uh- yeah almost,” you replied with a nervous chuckle.

you turned back to your work quickly, trying to refocus on your attention to your work but it was pretty difficult to ignore the scene playing out beside you.

from the corner of your eye, you could see jongho trying, and failing, to hold in his laughter, his shoulder shaking as he repeatedly hit mingi who was frantically typing on his keyboard like he was trying to forget what happened.

jongho wiped the imaginary tears from his face. “i’ve never seen you like this before.”

number two: he was definitely single.

thanks to your friendship with wooyoung and yeosang, you were spending almost all of your breaks together - which meant that you were always finding out new things about the office.

as the three of you settled down in a nearby food court, wooyoung started yet another rant about the office, but the topic eventually shifted to your coworkers and somehow mingi.

“he’s probably never felt the touch of a woman,” wooyoung snorted, leaning back into the chair.

yeosang immediately smacked wooyoung on the arm. “don’t say that, he’s our friend..”

“..but yeah, that’s probably true,” yeosang shrugged, slurping the noodles in his bowl.

you couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head. “you guys make it sound like he’s so strange.”

“he is. he’s so weird around you,” wooyoung said, waving his fry around. “i swear- it’s like he’s never met a girl that can code or something.”

you sighed, stirring your iced coffee. “maybe he’s shy.”

“shy?!” the both of them exclaimed in unison, their wide eyes blinking at you.

“he is not shy,” wooyoung emphasised, to which yeosang nodded violently to his statement.

wooyoung took a sip of his soda before clearing his throat. “you should’ve seen him before you got here. he’d laugh at every dumbass joke we made. and now? he’s basically a robot.”

yeosang made a sound of agreement, wiping his mouth before adding, “i mean- he’s probably not used to women being in the office.”

“yeah, especially if they're young and actually, you know-” wooyoung wiggled his eyebrows at you, earning another smack from yeosang.

you rolled your eyes. “shut up.”

wooyoung shrugged with a grin, taking a bite out of his fry. “i’m just saying it how it is.”

you chugged your iced coffee. “is there anyway i can- i don’t know, get to know him better?” you asked as you looked at your coworkers. “how do i make him…”

you trailed off, resisting the urge to ask ‘how do i make him like me’, knowing that wooyoung would probably make fun of you.

you sighed, settling for a, “how do i make him not a dickhead?”

“i mean…” wooyoung bit his cheek, quickly glancing at yeosang before turning back to you. “you could try making out-?”

“wooyoung!” yeosang exclaimed. “we need to give her actual advice. she’s gonna be working here for a while.”

“fine, fine,” wooyoung rolled his eyes, leaning closer to you. “honestly? you want to get closer to him?”

you nodded, maybe a little too eagerly, making wooyoung smirk as he continued, “just talk about anime. trust me, once he gets started, he won’t shut up.”

you and yeosang chuckled. “noted,” you smiled.

“i’m being serious,” wooyoung leaned in even closer, his eyes bigger than before. “i would love to see the look on his face when he finds out that girls who code and watch anime exist.”

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

even though the whole office knew how awkward you and mingi were around each other, it wasn’t enough to stop hongjoong from pairing you two up for whatever work he had.

the two of you were tasked with test-running the company’s latest software before it was handed off to the client. you spent the next hour sifting through its features and finally, you found a bug.

“mr song,” you called, barely looking away from your screen. “can you come here? i found something weird.”

mingi rolled his chair over to your desk, glancing at the screen as you hovered your mouse over a link.

“so when i click here,” you explained. “it brings me to an error page. i tried all the reboot methods and it still won’t work.”

mingi leaned in a little closer to see the issue. “okay, that might be because-“ he began, but suddenly started to trail off.

you raised an eyebrow, noticing how he wasn’t really looking at the screen anymore. you followed his eyes and realised that his gaze had dropped, landing on your legs.

more specifically, on the way your pencil skirt had ridden up a little when you crossed your legs.

you swear that you could see the faintest hint of a blush dusting his cheeks as he stared - and it took a moment for him to catch himself.

“you good?” you tilted your head.

his head snapped back up, eyes wide as he cleared his throat. “shit- sorry,” he stammered, sitting up straighter in his chair as he quickly focused on the screen. “i was just.. thinking.”

you nodded, biting back a smile. “right.. thinking hard about that error, huh?”

“y-yeah,” he stuttered, his words rushed now. “it’s probably an issue with the script- i’ll need to check this out with yunho.”

“sure, you do that,” you replied with a grin, watching as he walked away hurriedly, running his fingers through his hair.

but of course this wouldn’t be the last time you caught mingi like that.

during meetings when the two of you were forced to sit next to one another, you began to notice the way his eyes would drop down whenever you crossed your legs.

or sometimes, you would adjust your skirt and you would feel his attention drifting towards you, only for him to blink repeatedly and turn back to the discussion. it wasn’t obvious, but it happened often enough for you to catch on.

you didn’t want to be delusional. what were the chances that the hot guy in your office you liked was actually interested in you?

you decided to wait for the perfect opportunity to test the theory - and fortunately for you, you didn’t have to wait long.

you were both working late and mingi sat at his desk next to you, trying to explain his thoughts on the layout of the software.

mid-conversation, you leaned back in your chair, stretching your arms behind your head with a soft groan. but while doing so, your pencil skirt rode up - a lot.

you pretended like nothing happened as you absentmindedly nodded to whatever he was saying. you could see mingi’s eyes shift downward, his sentence cutting short.

“what were you saying?” you asked, stretching a little more as if the movement was completely natural. you watched as mingi blink back to reality, processing what you said. “you were telling me about the layout.”

mingi cleared his throat, his eyes darting up to your face, then back to his screen when he realised he trailed off once again. “uh- yeah, the layout. it’s good.. it’s just that um- we need to fix the code if we want it to be usable.”

you could see his leg bouncing under the table as he turned back to his computer, his typing slowing down.

“are you okay, mr song?” you asked innocently, drawing out his name just a bit, watching his reaction worsen - his blush deepening and his hands coming to a stop, hovering above his keyboard.

“i’mfine,” mingi said quickly, pushing his glasses back up. he started to type on his keyboard once more, completely avoiding eye contact with you.

you smiled to yourself, giving him a hum of acknowledgment as you turned back to your screen.

so he likes thighs, huh?

oh this is getting fun.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

mingi might actually be going insane.

he never realised how bad he was at talking to women - at least, not until you joined the company.

working at ATECH for six years taught him to keep his distance with new hires. watching friends come and go because of the draining job made it seem pointless to make friends with people who might disappear at any moment.

you were no exception. to mingi, you were just another person behind a computer. so even though you were seated right next to him, he barely made an attempt to acknowledge you. what was the point when you’d probably be gone soon? at least, that’s what he told himself.

mingi didn’t want to get attached.

he had to draw the line somewhere. he’d already betrayed his own words of ‘not getting close to anyone new’ with jongho, who only joined a few months ago yet managed to find himself a soft spot in mingi’s heart.

that was already enough for mingi to double down on his ‘professional’ act to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

when you started, he would give dry answers to whatever questions you had, hoping that you would keep your distance from him. but for some reason, the more he avoided you, the more he found himself paying attention to you.

not to mention how you were insanely gorgeous - which messed with him. a lot.

when you first joined, mingi was confused of why you picked IT to be your job of choice instead of modeling, acting or anything of that sort. but he quickly understood why you entered the industry when he saw the way you coded. it was way beyond any expectations he had.

so not only were you impossibly beautiful, you knew how to code well.

whenever you had to work together or you had a question to ask him, mingi would catch himself straightening his back, doing anything to hide his image of being the nerdy, anime obsessed guy in the office.

mingi knew it was ridiculous. he barely knew you and yet he felt this insane urge to impress you. he didn’t even know why he told you to call him ‘mr song’.

he had never done that before. it just slipped out, like he was trying to seem professional. though, it just made things more awkward.

but the worst part of it all would be those pencil skirts you always wore to work.

you seemed to have a wide range of them, he noticed. some days they would be neutral colours, some days they would be bright and patterned.

he never thought that something as simple as a pencil skirt could derail him of all the thoughts and human decency in his mind. yet there he was, looking at the way your things pressed against each other as you shifted in your chair or how the fabric lifted up ever so slightly-

-god, he felt like a pervert.

he didn’t know exactly when he started to pay attention to your attire or how your skirt hugged you in a way that left him stunned. was it when you had to work together on that one test-run? or during all those boring meetings the company had?

well, not that it mattered. all mingi knew was that he wanted- no, needed to stop being distracted by you.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

“shit, i’m late for work,” you muttered through your teeth as you turned off your alarm. you quickly put on your clothes, grabbing your bag as you slammed the door open and headed out the house.

you unfortunately reached the office half an hour late. you were nearly out of breath as you rushed to your desk. as you slid into your seat, you noticed mingi’s gaze on you, looking.. relieved?

you logged in, pretending not to notice his eyes on you. you began to get started on your work, hoping to make up for lost time.

but just as you began to focus, wooyoung strolled over to you, leaning against your desk with a smirk.

“you’re late,” wooyoung tilted his head.

you looked at him with a deadpanned expression. “you’ve been late three times this week.”

wooyoung grinned, grabbing a random chair nearby and plopped himself between you and mingi. he began to talk about some ‘crazy’ thing he was going to do on the weekend, acting as a podcast as you coded.

just then, wooyoung’s attention shifted to your phone, which suddenly lit up with a notification, revealing your lock screen - a character from the anime that mingi had been talking about.

“wait..” wooyoung leaned in, his eyes narrowing. “is that anime?”

you glanced down at your phone, nodding. “yeah, i’m kind of hooked right now.”

wooyoung raised an eyebrow, turning to mingi then back at you. “don’t tell me he converted you into one of his anime minions..” he pointed to your deskmate.

mingi sputtered, completely thrown off by the conversation that he was suddenly involved in. “what? no, i didn’t- she just-“ he stumbled over his words, his face heating up.

you smacked wooyoung’s arm. “i did hear him talk about the show, but i got into anime itself on my own.”

jongho, who happened to pass by your desks as you said that, stopped. “you guys are talking about anime?” jongho looked at mingi with a wide grin on his face. “didn’t know anime recs were the new pick-up lines these days.”

wooyoung smirked as he leaned closer to mingi. “so she’s a weeb and can code. mr song, does that do anything for you?” he teased.

mingi’s face was now a shade of bright red and he kept his eyes locked onto the computer screen, avoiding any eye contact. “i didn’t even say anything to her about it..” he mumbled.

after wooyoung and jongho continued to tease him, they eventually walked away to do their own work. you glanced over at mingi, tilting your head when you realised that he had already been looking at you.

he turned away quickly, clearly flustered as he muttered, “don’t.. don’t listen to them.”

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

“have you done the surveys hongjoong sent in the group chat?” you spoke up, your voice echoing in the quiet office.

mingi blinked. the two of you had to work overtime again to complete a piece of software that a client wanted. he didn’t even realise how late it was until he looked at the time.

“he sent surveys?” mingi asked, raising an eyebrow.

you nodded, holding out your phone to him. “its all about ‘staff satisfaction’ and other bullshit like that. he’s forcing everyone to get it done quick so you should get started.” you turned back to your computer, putting your phone on the desk.

mingi watched as you returned back to work, but there was one thing that he couldn’t get his eyes off of - your lock screen.

he couldn’t stop thinking about how you were paying attention to that conversation. he had to admit that the fact that you actually took his recommendation did make his heart flutter slightly.

mingi’s fingers rested on the keyboard. ‘don’t say anything,’ he told himself. but then again… you liked anime?

his mouth moved before he could even think. “did you finish episode four yet?”

you looked at him, not knowing what he was referring to until you saw that he was staring at your phone screen. “mhm, i actually finished episode six yesterday. i can’t stop watching it.”

“wait, six?” he turned his chair to face you completely. “so you saw the fight scene right? and that whole backstory part?”

you nodded excitedly, matching his enthusiasm. “yes! and the twist with that guy’s brother? insane,” you replied.

“right? i told jongho it was genius,” mingi continued, words spilling out of him way faster that he could control them. “and there’s this one part- wait i can’t spoil it.. uh, but just know that it’s a whole new level.”

only now and then mingi realised how ‘out of character’ he got with you, especially when he saw the way you were watching him. your eyes sparkling with interest as you leaned in, actually listening to whatever he was saying.

and for a second, he couldn’t look away.

his heart stuttered and suddenly, he was back in his own head. what was he doing? he forced himself to turn back to his computer, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“well- uh.. anyway. we should probably get back to work..” he said, leaving you confused of what made him stop.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

“alright, i think that’s everything,” hongjoong said, shutting his laptop. “you guys can head home.”

the sudden meeting your boss called dragged on a lot longer than anyone thought. so the moment it ended, everyone around you got up immediately, hurriedly packing their things.

suddenly, hongjoong realised something. “oh, i need someone to print out these reports by tomorrow morning.”

you barely had time to react before his eyes landed on you, then mingi who was almost out of the door.

“mingi, you’re familiar with the printer setup right?” hongjoong asked with a smirk. he then turned to you. “this is a good chance to teach our new hire how we handle our documents.”

both you and mingi let out identical, disappointed sighs - your frustrations perfectly in sync.

everyone, including you, knew that the printing room was a nightmare - old, dusty, falling apart and tucked away in a corner of the office building that was farthest away from the entrance.

“of course,” mingi muttered, his voice flat. “the printing room.”

hongjoong gave a shrug. “it’s not that bad,” he said, obviously lying.

you swore quietly but gave a polite nod to your boss. “got it. anything else?”

“nope, just the reports. shouldn’t take too long,” hongjoong replied as he grabbed his things, heading to the door. “thanks guys!”

with a collective sigh, you took your notepad and followed mingi - who was already sluggishly moving his feet to the printing room.

he pushed the door open, the musty smell of old paper and ink greeting the both of you instantly. “why hasn’t anyone fixed this place yet?” he asked, mostly to himself as he used his hand to cover his nose.

you stepped inside, wrinkling your nose. “because no one comes here unless they need to?”

“right,” mingi muttered. he flipped the light switch, the fluorescent bulbs taking a moment to stop flickering.

the room was cramped and small. dust floated lazily in the air and the ancient printer hummed ominously at the end of the room.

“let’s get this over with,” you said, putting your stuff on an unstable metal shelf.

mingi took out his phone, looking for the files that hongjoong sent him. he glanced at the printer, then at you as he sighed. “i can load the paper. you can.. figure out how to make the rest work.”

“gee thanks,” you said sarcastically as you rolled up your sleeves.

mingi eventually taught you how to use the printer, which took a lot more steps than its modern-day versions. the sounds of each page churning out filled the silence in the small room.

when it was done, you reached for the stack of printed sheets as mingi went straight for the door.

but just then, there was a metallic clatter. you turn around to see the doorknob lying and rolling on the ground.

“you’re kidding me,” mingi muttered. he crouched down to pick it up, but the doorknob was useless. the door was jammed shut. completely.

the room was barely big enough to fit the both of you and now you were stuck here? it couldn’t get worse than this, could it?

mingi sent a text to yunho to come to the printing room to let the both of you out. even though he already heading home, he told you both to be patient while he made his way back.

soon enough, the both of you settled on the floor to wait. mingi sat with his knees close to his chest. when you sat across from him, your knee bumped against his, making him freeze slightly.

you crossed your legs, adjusting your skirt as you do, but you catch mingi glancing before quickly looking away, pink dusting his cheeks.

he cleared his throat, reaching for a nearby clipboard on the shelf and offering it to you. “uh, you can use this if you uh- if you need to cover up or anything..”

you raised an eyebrow, a smile forming on your face. “thank you,” you said, accepting it.

the room falls silent once more and the buzzing of the lights above began to become louder.

mingi shifted a little, clearly hyper-aware of how close you were. you could hear his breathing getting faster, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

after a while, he fumbled with his phone, typing another message to yunho. you watched as his fingers tapped quickly on the screen, slipping a couple of times.

you bit the inside of your cheek. “do i make you uncomfortable?” you asked once he slid his phone into his pocket.

mingi’s head snapped up at your question, his eyes widening as they met yours. “what?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

you leaned back against the wall. “do i make you uncomfortable?” you repeated.

“nono, of course not,” he said hurriedly, his eyes locked on the printer.

“are you sure?” you raised an eyebrow.

“i-“ mingi rubbed the back of his neck. he shifted in his spot once more, though his knee bumped into yours again - making him jump slightly. “i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“come on,” you grinned. “you barely talk to me unless you have to, and when you do, you can’t even look at me- like right now!” you giggled as you watched his eyes dart around the room.

you fiddled with the printed papers. “i’ve seen how you act around your friends. you’re fun, you’re loud. so why are you so quiet now?”

mingi opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. his hands fidgeted with his shoelaces, his jaw tightening. finally, he let out a soft sigh and glanced at you - for just a second.

“i don’t know,” he admitted.

“you don’t know?”

“i mean-“ mingi stuttered, his eyes on the door. his lips were pressed into a thin line and his shoulders slumped. “i guess- i just don’t know how to act around you…?” he said, already regretting his words.

mingi wiped the sweat off of his forehead, adding onto what he said. “you’re just different from the people i’m used to.”

you nodded, giving him a smirk. “ohh, it’s because i’m a girl right?”

“nonono it’s just-“ he said quickly, his ears turning red. “you’re uh..” he trailed off, scratching the back of his neck. “you’re uh- focused? yeah.. and you’re good at what you do. that’s all..”

you let out a soft laugh, making him look at you nervously. “is this your way of saying you respect me or something?”

his cheeks flushed. “you can say that..”

“hmm.. okay okay,” you hummed, trying to suppress a grin. “so if that’s all..”

you leaned in closer, “..you wouldn’t mind if we went out for lunch together right?”

mingi blinked. “like with wooyoung and yeosang?”

you shook your head, tucking a stray hair behind your ear. “just us two.”

“well..” mingi looked at the ground, trying to find the words in his brain. “aren’t most places far away?”

“there’s a manga cafe nearby. it’s pretty cute and has a decent menu.”

his eyes widened at your suggestion. “a manga cafe..?” he repeated.

you shrugged. “i thought you’d like it.”

“i do,” mingi muttered, clearly unsure of how to respond. “you don’t think it’s weird? not a lot of people like manga.”

you frowned, shaking your head. “i don’t find it weird.. do you not want to go?”

mingi immediately straightened his back, his blush deepening as he stumbled over his words. “what? no- i do-“

you laughed, cutting him off. “relax.. we’re friends right?”

you could see a smile forming on his face as he nodded. “yeah.. we’re friends.”

suddenly, you heard a chuckle from the other side of the door as it creaked open. yunho stood there with a grin, leaning against the doorframe.

“sorry it took me a while,” he said, giving mingi a knowing look. “getting cozy?”

mingi’s flustered expression turned into a glare as he stood up, brushing the dust off of his pants. “just let us out.”

yunho moved aside, watching as his friend walked hurriedly towards his desk. “hope you two had fun,” he winked.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

you leaned back into your chair, taking a bite out of your sandwich. “you know, i just finished the season this morning.”

mingi’s head shot up, his eyes wide with excitement. “really?” he asked, mid-chug of his drink.

“yeah, i was up all night watching it. i even got a little emotional at the end,” you replied with a nod, causing mingi to flash you a grin - one that you’ve never seen before.

the cafe around you had walls lined with manga shelves. the faint music of anime soundtracks playing in the background. the decor was adorable and you had to resist the urge to take a photo of every corner of the cafe.

the two of you continued talking and for once, it didn’t feel awkward. mingi seemed more relaxed, even joking around with you at times - but of course, he still had a habit of looking away whenever you made eye contact with him.

as the clock ticked closer to the end of your break, you stood up and pointed to the manga shelves. “i think i’m gonna grab something before we head back,” you said, wandering over, mingi soon following behind you.

“i don’t know what to pick,” you admitted, tracing your fingers along the spines of the books. “you got any ideas?”

his face lit up as he reached for a manga volume. “this one is really good. the world-building and plot is great. and the characters? the way they develop over time is just-”

mingi went into a passionate ramble, flipping through the pages as he spoke. you leaned against the shelf, listening to him as you bit back a smile.

suddenly, he stopped, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “sorry, i got carried away.”

you shook your head. “no you didn’t. i’ll take it,” you said, taking the book from his hands.

mingi blinked, stunned. “really?”

“yeah,” you replied with a grin. “you obviously like it, so it must be good.”

he stood there, a little speechless as you walked towards the register.

as you passed the manga to the cashier and reached for your wallet, mingi suddenly pointed to a random corner of the cafe. “woah what’s over there?”

you turned your head, confused. “what are you-”

before you could finish, you heard the tap of a card on the card-reader. turning back, you saw mingi sliding his card back into his pocket, acting like nothing happened.

you stared at him in disbelief. “..did you just pay for that?”

“would you be angry if i did..?” he said slowly, taking the bag where your manga was from the cashier.

you sighed, a small smile tugging at your lips. “no, but i can pay for my own things.”

mingi grinned. “maybe next time.”

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

it had been about two months since you and mingi started to eat lunch together. at least once a week, the two of you would grab a meal and talk about work or a new anime that either you or mingi were hyper-fixated on.

to be completely honest, mingi was pleasantly surprised at how your conversations evolved. what used to be a little awkward and dry now felt natural and easy.

mingi cracked his fingers. his screen had been glaring at him all morning, the same error popping up no matter how many times he rewrote the code. he leaned back into his chair, rubbing his temples in frustration.

“hey,” your voice pulled his attention away from the screen. “what do you want for lunch today?”

mingi blinked. “shit- i’m sorry,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “i can’t go today. too much work to do.”

you didn’t seem bothered by his response. instead, you tilted your head. “okay, then what are you craving?”

“uh... something light, i guess?” he replied hesitantly, unsure of why you were asking.

you just nodded, grabbing your phone and standing up. “be right back,” you said, leaving before he could question you further.

when you returned about 20 minutes later, mingi stared at you in disbelief. you set down a steaming cup of noodles, his favourite chips and a coffee.

“w-wait,” he stammered, immediately reaching for his wallet. “how much was it? let me-”

“-it’s fine,” you interrupted, brushing his offer off. “just eat before it gets cold,” you slid back into your seat.

mingi stared at the meal infront of him, his heart racing in a way that he couldn’t explain. it wasn’t just the food (though that definitely played a part), but it was the fact that you knew and remembered his favourites. you even went out of your way to do this without making it a big deal.

‘that’s just what friends do,’ he convinced himself as he took a bite out of his food. but when he glanced over to you, the butterflies in his stomach told him something that he wasn’t ready to admit.

not yet, anyway.

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

you were busy testing out a software when jongho appeared, dragging a chair behind him. he sat it in your section, right between you and mingi.

“guess what,” jongho began as he faced mingi. “i finally got that place i was looking at.”

mingi turned away from his monitor, eyebrows raising slightly. “oh? that’s cool. congrats man.”

“thanks. i’m thinking of having a little housewarming thing this weekend,” jonogho continued. “nothing big, don’t worry.”

mingi nodded, leaning back into his chair. “sounds good. let me know what time.”

it wasn’t until then when mingi noticed that you were listening in into their conversation, your fingers paused over your keyboard. his eyes darted to yours for a moment before he spoke. “do you want to come?”

you blinked, your eyes shifting to jongho. “i mean.. do you want me there?”

jongho shrugged. “yeah, you’re cool. bring wooyoung and yeosang too.”

mingi didn’t say anything, but the way jongho gave him a knowing look didn’t escape your notice. you bit back a grin, nodding slowly. “alright, i’ll be there.”

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

“damn you look good,” wooyoung said, looking you up and down.

you raised an eyebrow. “what are you talking about? i’ve worn this outfit to work before.”

“yeah but the work air does you dirty,” he said, earning him a smack from yeosang.

“focus,” yeosang said, pointing to jongho’s door. “who’s knocking?”

“not me,” wooyoung shook his head quickly. “i already carried the chips here. i’ve done my part.”

you scoffed. “you brought two bags and i’m pretty sure you ate one of them.”

“they’re big bags, okay?” wooyoung defended.

yeosang sighed. “fine, i’ll-“

before he could knock, a deep sigh was heard on the other side of the door. the three of you exchanged a look with each other before the door swung open.

wooyoung and yeosang, who were leaning against the doorframe, stumbled forward and landed infront of jongho’s feet.

jongho stepped back, opening the door wider. “welcome.”

you blinked, giving him a smile. “hey, jongho.” carefully, you tiptoed over the two fallen bodies on the ground as you entered the apartment.

the apartment had a warm and cozy feel. there was a decent amount of fake plants and the furniture looked new but comfortable. the dining table was lined with snacks and the kitchen counter was filled with a surprising amount of alcohol.

you walked over to yunho and mingi who were already standing around the kitchen. you waved to yunho before turning to mingi and giving him a quick hug.

mingi froze for a bit, though he quickly recovered, his response stiff. “uh- hey.”

jongho clapped his hands to gather everyone’s attention. “alright, don’t get too comfortable. let me show you around.”

he led the group on a small tour around his apartment, showing off his bedroom, bathroom, living room and office space - he even had a guest bedroom.

after the tour, you found yourself back in the living room, chatting with yunho and mingi.

“so how’s the project going?” yunho asked, taking a sip from his drink.

“not bad,” you replied. “it’s a lot of coding but i’m enjoying it for the most part.”

mingi nodded. “yeah, and you’re good at it,” he muttered quietly, mostly to himself.

you glanced at him, giving him a smile. “thanks.”

the tips of his ears turned pink and he quickly turned to yunho, who was trying to hide a smile behind his glass.

after a while, you wandered over to the snack table where yeosang and wooyoung were hanging out.

“chips are food,” wooyoung said angrily.

yeosang sighed, turning to you. “this is his third bowl.”

“it’s a party,” wooyoung shrugged. “i’m living my best life.”

before anyone could say anything, jongho’s voice was heard from across the room. “wooyoung!”

wooyoung froze, a chip halfway to his mouth. “what?” he shouted back.

jongho stood by the door, his arms crossed. “tell me why there’s a group of at least 15 people outside my house saying that there’s a party here?”

wooyoung chuckled nervously, clearing his throat. “um.. about that..”

jongho’s eyes narrowed. “don’t tell me you-“

the doorbell rang and before you knew it, a large group of people poured in, loud music taking over the entire space.

wooyoung scratched the back of his neck. “i may have uh- spread the word a little.”

✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡♡˚‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚

the house grew loud, music bouncing off of the walls as laughter filled every corner. you squeezed through the crowd, heading over to the kitchen for another glass of soju. but when you reached, your eyes landed on mingi who was downing many shots of alcohol.

“heyheyhey, stop,” you said, stepping forward and gently taking the glass from his hand.

mingi blinked at you, confused, his cheeks pink. you looked at him with concern. “what’s going on? why are you drinking so much?”

he mumbled something incoherent, rubbing his forehead. without hesitation, you hooked your arm around his and tugged him toward the hallway. “you’re sitting this one out,” you said firmly, guiding him into the guest bedroom which thankfully, was unoccupied.

closing the door behind you, you made him sit on the edge of the bed. mingi groaned and slumped down, half of his body dangling off the bed while his upper body rested against mattress.

you sat on the bed next to him. “are you okay? what’s wrong?” you asked softly, rubbing slow circles on his back.

“...i don’t like people,” he mumbled, his face half-buried in the sheets.

a small smile tugged at your lips. “it’s okay. i get it.”

“i like you, though,” his said, his voice muffled but clear enough to make your eyes widen in shock.

“wait, what?” you blurted out, staring at him disbelief.

mingi got up abruptly, sitting on the bed properly like nothing happened. “why did wooyoung bring so many people? this isn’t a party party,” he said.

“i.. i don’t know,” you stammered. “can we go back to what you said before-”

“i didn’t finish the code i was supposed to give hongjoong,” he interrupted, looking at you with glassy eyes. “am i getting fired?”

you shook your head. “no, he gave you until next month to complete it. can we-”

“-i haven’t eaten pasta in so long,” his voice cracked, on the verge of tears.

“i’ll get you pasta tomorrow,” you said quickly, giving him a small, reassuring smile.

mingi’s face lit up. “really?”

“yes,” you nodded.

the two of you sat in silence for a moment, the muffled noise of the party bleeding through the walls. soon enough, you finally spoke up. “hey.”

mingi turned to you, his eyes a little clearer now.

“when you said you liked me,” you began cautiously. “what did you mean?”

“that i like you,” mingi said plainly like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“well, yes, but,” you cleared your throat. “as a friend or-”

“i like your eyes,” he cut in, his gaze locked onto yours. “and your nose.”

you blinked, stunned.

“your lips are pretty,” he added as he leaned in slightly. “and so are your outfits.”

“i-”

“i like your voice,” he continued. “and the cafes you bring me to.”

your heart raced as you stared at him. “...is this the alcohol talking?” you asked weakly.

mingi tilted his head, reaching up to touch his mouth like he was checking for something. “i’m pretty sure i’m the one talking,” he said, completely serious.

a wide smile broke across your face. “you’re cute.”

“me?” he looked behind him, seeing if there was someone else in the room.

“yes, you,” you laughed softly.

mingi’s face flushed a deeper red - whether it was from the alcohol or your words, you weren’t sure.

a comfortable silence fell over the two of you once more and you could tell that mingi was beginning to sober up. he shifted slightly, his movements becoming nervous.

“i’m sorry,” he began, but you quickly cut him off.

“don’t apologise,” you said.

“but i made you uncomfortable- oh my god i made you uncomfo-”

“i like you,” you said, pulling him out of his spiral.

mingi froze, his eyes wide. “are you serious?”

you nodded.

“b-but you’re so..” he trailed off, his eyes searching yours. “..pretty.”

“thank you,” you said, your heart fluttering. “though i think you’re really downplaying yourself.”

“why would you like someone like me?” mingi asked, his voice a whisper.

you shrugged. “for all the same reasons you like me.”

“because i watch anime?” he asked, confused.

“that’s a bonus,” you grinned.

the next thing you knew, your hands brushed against his, lingering for a moment as his eyes shifted to your lips. it was such a simple action and yet it sent your heart in circles. slowly, he leaned in closer, his warm breath against your skin.

“are you really okay with this?” he asked, worried that you were playing a prank on him.

you looked into his eyes, your voice soft. “i’ve been waiting for this.”

then mingi’s lips were on yours.

it was soft at first. but the second your hand found his jaw, tilting his head slightly - something in him changed. his hand was on your thigh, his fingers curling into the fabric of your skirt like he needed to hold on or risk floating away.

your hand moved to his chest and you could feel his heart pounding beneath your palm. mingi’s other hand found your waist, pulling you just a little closer.

“mr song,” you mumbled against his mouth, the name drawing a low groan from him.

“god- you’re so perfect,” he muttered, the grip on your thigh tightening, his thumb tracing the seam of your skirt, sending shivers up your spine.

you lost track of how long you stayed like that. the music from outside faded into the background and the room slowly disappeared from your mind.

and then the door slammed open.

you and mingi jumped apart, faces flushed and breaths uneven. just then, wooyoung stumbled in, his arm draped lazily around a girl.

“oh my god,” wooyoung’s eyes widened, darting between the two of you with unhinged glee. without waiting a second, he whipped out his phone and snapped a picture before slamming the door shut - his loud voice echoing the hall. “i knew it! i knew it! i knew it!”

you groaned, covering your face with your hands as you got up. “this bastard-”

“-hey,” mingi caught your wrist, his fingers gentle but firm as he tugged you back toward him. his face was still flushed and his lips were slightly swollen, but his voice was soft. “don’t focus on him. focus on me.”

your heart skipped multiple beats. you nodded, letting him guide you back into his arms.

this time, the kiss was much slower - no rushing, no interruptions, just the two of you. his hand returned to your thighs, this time squeezing it lightly, and you couldn’t help but smile against his lips.

when you broke apart, his eyes studied your face, his thumb gently tracing your lips. you brushed away the stray hairs that stuck to his forehead, adjusting his glasses which were lopsided.

“was i good?” mingi asked nervously.

“of course,” you giggled, your cheeks warm. “way more than good.”

he let out a sigh of relief. “i’m glad..” he said softly. your words made him smile, the stress in his shoulders easing.

“if wooyoung posts that picture..” mingi said, leaving a trail of kisses on your jaw. “..i’m deleting his league account.”

any and all feedback appreciated <3 remember to like and repost!

[orteil42]

just found out this fucking thing

that i've been using to make crunchy old DOS music was made by the company that went on to develop Skype and Kazaa

that's him in the top-left. that's the skype dude. thanks for the music software Jaan it is nice & runs good 👍

[mv1simp]

I’m so in love with your writing style and I think for a suggestion max and the reader being toxic asf exes but can’t get over eachother yk and try make eachother jealous but just end up in eachothers bed always 😭 sorry i suck at explaining but id die if i seen u write something like that 🥰

PLS I ALWAYS LOVE THIS CONCEPT nothing more juicy than some toxic tension with exes 🤭

Wicked Games ♥️

Max Verstappen x Toxic Ex!Reader

but baby let’s face it, I’m not into dating, all these hearts I’ve been breaking (come through, I'm not living like i did before)

no matter how hard you try, you just can’t stay away from your toxic situationship with playboy millionaire Max Verstappen after he breaks it off to be “just friends”. At least you can expect him to have more discipline than you, given his skillset as a 3 time F1 champion, right? Too bad he can’t seem to stay away from you either…

Content includes: 18+ MDNI, jealousy, toxic playboy! Max, smut, cheating, hate sex, just the usual classicsTM

You’d heard about Max Verstappen well before you first met him. Having recently moved to Monaco to start your new job working for a software company, you had quickly become familiar with the world of F1 - including its’ current top driver who was known for his aggressive style on the track and his lavish, playboy lifestyle off it. You hadn’t paid much heed to it until you were at a friend of a friend’s house party one night, after being peerpressured by the threat your coworker Bianca delivered that you were apparently “doomed to die alone as an old dog lady who sat in front of her 4 wide screen computers all day.” Bit dramatic, but it did the trick and soon you were walking through the doors of a raging party that night.

You had been warned that Monaco was a small place, filled with many of the rich and elite, and you were bound to run into some politician, actress or influencer sooner or later. You just hadn’t expected the first celebrity you met to be Max Verstappen, three time world champion, freshly out of a highly publicised breakup with a Russian supermodel! Bianca snarked next to you, yet he was laughing loudly in the middle of the living room, surrounded by his friends without a care in the world.

You shrugged, honestly quite disinterested in the celebrity thing, and had forgotten completely about the F1 driver until a few hours later when you found yourself alone on the outdoor balcony wanting some fresh air, tipsy from a bottle of white wine. Hearing the balcony door open and close again behind you, you started talking, assumed your friend had followed you out - I am never letting you convince me to drink that wine again Bianca, oh my god -

Only to turn around and come face to face with the infamous Max Verstappen himself. You hadn’t realised you had squeaked his full name out loud until he smiled bemusedly, saying just Max is fine, sweetheart. You blushed profusely, apologising and didn’t notice the way he looked you up and down in your cute, conservative outfit of light jeans and a fitted pastel cardigan. Instead of going back inside like you had expected, he struck up a conversation about how that white wine was truly deadly, which then led to a debate about the potency of red vs white vs rose, and before you knew it you two had been talking for hours about anything and everything, including your pets (you were very strongly pro-dogs while he preferred cats, which was just diabolical since they ignored humans half the time. He laughed and said that was the whole point). When he found out you worked in software - specifically, for one that specialised in developing e-sim racing tracks, his blue eyes lit up in genuine excitement as he animatedly began discussing specifics with you, an attractive pink flush on his cheeks from his drinking. He was insanely good looking, with his tall broad build and soft smile, and you were pleasantly surprised he was so down to earth. When it was time to go he had easily asked for your number, Bianca gawking at the scene as you typed your details into his phone, your caramel skin all flushed from the attention of a handsome man like Max. She dragged you off after, hissing at you to be careful, he’s way too much of a player for you, don’t expect much from him, okay? After a couple days went by and you had indeed, not heard anything from Max, you accepted that was that and promptly forgot about it.

But then, 3 weeks later in the middle of your Thursday afternoon Pilates session, your phone dinged with a text. Monza track is down in the system wtf. You guys gonna sort this out? You had panicked initially thinking the unknown number was your boss before your phone dinged again. This is Max btw. Wanna come over and fix the glitch here? Just this once plz 🙏

“Here” turned out to be Max’s insane penthouse apartment overlooking the Monaco marina, and just this once became a monthly occurrence whenever Max was home between races and on his rig with you beside him, sharing your technical knowledge about the online track to help him set new records. Monthly became weekly when Max realized you had never actually driven the rig yourself and you found yourself in his lap - for teaching purposes, of course Max stated unconvincingly - and weekly became almost daily when you started to become a little too good on the track and his hands moved down your body, into your cute short shorts and he expertly slid his fingers into you until you fell apart for the first time, still sitting right there on his lap. Think you need some more practise, schatje, Max had smirked. You crashed into the barriers barely 100 metres in. And the rest had been history.

10 months later, this - situationship? relationship? friends with benefits? gaming buddies who fucked on the side? - had you confused. Sometimes he acted like your boyfriend, having homecooked meals together and watching movies on the couch, his head on your thighs asking you to rub his hair in the way he liked. Other times he acted indifferent, giving you the cold shoulder at parties or the rare times you would join your friends at a race. And when you would be stressed about work he would appear as the caring friend on behalf of your now shared group, rubbing your shoulder and offering you comfort and advice. But the worst would be when he would disappear for weeks, obviously busy with work but would cut off all communication and you would be forced to stalk his fan pages to get updates and read rumours of all the models he would be seen with overseas - only for him to turn up at your doorstep randomly wanting to be let in. You tried to be mad each time, yelling at him to explain himself, knowing this wasn’t healthy, really you did - but it was hard to resist his oh so talented tongue when he would lay you back and whisper sweet apologies in between your legs, making you come over and over again on his fingers, then with his mouth and finally on his thick cock that you had ended up losing your virginity too. You hadn’t realized how attached you had become to the champion driver until you were on a group trip to Amalfi coast and were caught making out on a moonlit beach by a stray papparazzi, making Max freak out.

He had been the one to very clearly insist on keeping things secret - for both your sakes, he said - given his very public status and you had been happy to agree, being a private person yourself. But as time has passed and Max became the only guy you wanted to be with, you had started to assumed he had been feeling the same - judging by the expensive diamond jewellery he would turn up with to pair with his wicked apologies, when he would always be the one you called to pick you up when you were too drunk to taxi home, and in the quiet, domestic moments when you were curled up together he murmured you understand me in a way no one else does, liefje.

Apparently though, Max has not been on the same page at all, which he made very clear when he publically dismissed the multiple viral pictures of you two - which now circulated the internet as finally some juicy gossip about the unusually single F1 driver had emerged. All your friends had sent the interview clip to you, with Max’s clear dismissal of I don’t know really know her, just an acquaintance from my friend group. My priority is my career, not entertaining the fangirls, he had said without an ounce of guilt on his handsome face.

You’d been desperate to give him a chance to explain himself, thinking it was a PR tactic, but Max had been ignoring your calls for days and you ended up knocking at his door. He’d let you in with a sigh, watching your eyes fill with tears as he said it had never been that serious, c’mon baby, when had I ever said it was exclusive, just a bit of fun for you too wasn’t it? Got a good fucking from me and a bunch of Cartier jewellery. Let’s just stay friends from now on, yeah?

God. What a fucking prick. You made sure he knew it too as you screamed it at him before storming off. You still hadn’t fully accepted it, checking your phone afterwards and expecting him to call and grovel for your forgiveness, until your friend group’s Sunday brunch a couple weeks later, where Max had made a rare appearance - and this time, with a pretty girl you vaguely recognised from a magazine cover right by his side. You had met his eyes across the table briefly, looking for any hint of remorse but finding none, as he quickly looked away, laughing at the girl next to him. You fled straight to Bianca’s after, into her arms and sympathetic gaze as she rubbed you through your sobs. It took you weeks to get out of your depressive slump, your heart completely broken and humiliated publically. You promised yourself, you were never going to shed a tear over Max Verstappen again.

You were a young, hot, and very talented woman living in Monaco - and now that you were no longer hung up on Max, you were free to monopolise on your single status. Althought he has left you with a broken heart, he’d undeniably made you a lot more experienced and confident when it came to navigating guys - without become too emotionally invested, of course. You only needed to get your heart broken once to learn never to do it again. You traded in your cute conservative outfits for more trendy, fitted pieces that show off your body just right as you started going on dates with different guys every weekend.

After a lunch date earlier that day, you were walking into a friend’s house for a group potluck one evening, still dressed in an off shoulder summery minidress and kitten heels, with matching makeup done to complete the look. You’re absentmindedly replying to a text from the guy who had said he’d love to see you again when you catch sight of Max for the first time in weeks, along with a new girl you hadn’t seen next to him. Before, this would have sent you into a spiral, but now you just push down on any unwanted feeling and greet everyone warmly. Conversation is flowing, wine poured and everyone digs into dinner, and when the topic of dating came up your friends were curious to hear about all the dates you’d been spotted on recently. You start telling some of them one of the funnier first date stories where the guy’s ex had been bartending and he had been paranoid the whole night about being poisoned. At some point you notice Max has been glancing in your direction. You look back, raising an eyebrow to say What? and this time he doesn’t break eye contact, staring at you before slowly drifting his gaze up and down your body. You flush and turn around, ignoring him the rest of the night and also ignoring the butterflies that swirled in your stomach from seeing him. Fucking asshole, checking you out while his girlfriend is right next to him on the couch.

Max’s heated stares across the room continue at the next gathering and the one after that and you continued to purposely avoid him. And if anyone noticed that you were dressed in cuter and tighter outfits each time, in the pastel colours that you knew he liked with matching heels, revealing more of your tantalising tan skin for Max’s gaze, they wisely chose not to comment. It all came to a head at a party on Max’s yacht one weekend. You greeted him politely as you stepped on, having come to terms that you two ran in the same circle and had to act like civil adults. He greeted you back easily, arm around a different eye candy model this time. You resisted the urge to roll your eyes at his usual playboy ways and went to go fix yourself a drink.

After you had all gone swimming and eaten dinner and were now relaxing watching the sunset, your phone dinged with a text to signal the arrival of Anton, who was the latest hire at your workplace and had recently been coming to a few events with your friends. He was also your newest hookups in your recent string of casual relationships - most of which had been average in bed at best, and you had your fingers crossed that Anton was going to deliver. Your group greeted him warmly as he came upto the deck, coming straight to your side and you leaned in to rest on his lap, all relaxed from your cocktails. You didn’t miss Max’s glances at Anton’s hands that lay on your thighs. The night went on and more drinks were drunk and people wandered off, yet Max’s agitated gaze was now firmly fixed on Anton’s fingers moving up your legs, lifting your skimpy sundress and rubbing your thighs. His own latest fling was completely ignored as she sat next to him, clinging onto his biceps. Smirking with satisfaction at having riled Max up for once, you excused yourself to head to the toilet downstairs.

You had barely entered the hallway when you were yanked into a side room and slammed against the door as it closed. Max?! you gasped, looking up to find his stormy blue eyes staring at you heatedly. You push him back with full force, What the fuck do you think you’re doing-

He cuts you off with a scoff, Oh, what I’m doing? You’re the one practically getting fingered by that fuckwit in front of everyone! He steps forward, now even closer into your space, and you can’t deny how turned on seeing him get all hot and bothered has made you. What, jealous Verstappen? Missed me that much? you tease. Too bad, you already fucked it up with me. Otherwise that could have been your hands on me instead.

Max looks positively murderous at your jab before a predatory glint emerges in his eye. Schatje, he says, making you bristle and demand stop calling me that but he ignores you. Schatje, you’re the one who wants my hands on her, hmm? I heard you, you know. Earlier when you were talking to Bianca about how none of the guys you’ve been fucking have been able to do it for you. Making you cum was never a problem for me, remember? don’t you miss it? Shall I fix that problem for you?

Oh, you do remember. For all his arrogance Max was an absolute god in the bedroom and you missed the sex dearly - and it seems Max had been missing it too. He easily lifts you up against the wall, your legs instinctively wrapping around him as trails his hands up your dress and you’re rolling your eyes and denying his words, telling him he was a cocky asshole and you hated him but not stopping him as his fingers slid into you, finding you already dripping. He smirks, all ego, but you quickly wipe it off his face by telling him it’s probably still wet from when Anton went down on me earlier. A complete lie but Max didn’t need to know that, did he?

And no one else needed to know that Max angrily swore at your lie as he pumped his fingers in and out of you, grabbing a hold of your tiny dress and whispering how you were such a dirty girl for wearing these slutty outfits and teasing him.

No one needed to know when he yanked his raging erection out his trunks and began thrusting into you, moaning in your ear about how you were just as tight as the first time he had fucked you, right here on the same yacht, and just like that night he’s going to make you come again now-

And no one needed to know that when you both emerged hastily upto the deck a while later, sitting down next to your respective latest partners but your eyes still fixed on each other, it was his cum that was now covering the inside of your thighs.

Once you had started you both couldn’t stop. Everytime you saw each other things got more and more out of control. A new influencer at Max’s side who was left alone when he fingered you to completion in the dark gardenshed outside a friend’s house party, his other fingers shoved inside your mouth for you to suck on and keep your moans quiet. An ex client of yours left wandering trying to find you, his date at his own charity gala, while you were upstairs riding Max on a plush chaise in the office up, heels still on and silk dress pulled up, making him swear in a way only you could get out of him as you took him in deep. You’d tell him you hated him, that you were only using him to relieve your sexual tension and he meant nothing and he would laugh, whispering in your ear Don’t lie, baby, I know you love this, your sweet pussy just needs my cock inside it, huh?

This went on and on for weeks, a twisted competition where whoever would concede first and drag the other one away was the loser - and you and Max both despised losing. It wasn’t until you were almost caught on camera by paparazzi yet again, this time in the back of his Aston Martin Valkyrie with your head between his legs, deepthroating him messily, using your tongue just the way he liked it- that Max freaked out again and demanded you two break it off at once. You’d rolled your eyes at his melodrama, thinking he was bluffing, but true to his word Max hightailed it out of a room the next few times he saw you, despite your best efforts at picking an outfit you were sure would make him crumble.

Time for you to up the ante, you mused. You weren’t going to stop until you walked away as the winner of this wicked game. You licked your lips as you devilishly thought up your plan.

Maybe this time you’d go flirt with one of his handsome driver friends and really piss him off?

—————————————————————————

A/N: love seeing requests you guys send, pls send as many as you want I need inspo!!! Hope you enjoyed this anon lmk what u think, will write Part 2 soon if u keen 🫶 soz I made it too long ahahah had to split it up

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada sues Google

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/03/clementsy/#can-tech

For a country obsessed with defining itself as "not America," Canada sure likes to copy US policies, especially the really, really terrible policies – especially the really, really, really terrible digital policies.

In Canada's defense: these terrible US policies are high priority for the US Trade Representative, who leans on Canadian lawmakers to ensure that any time America decides to collectively jump off the Empire State Building, Canadian politicians throw us all off the CN Tower. And to Canada's enduring shame, the USTR never has to look very hard to find a lickspittle who's happy to sell Canadians out.

Take anti-circumvention. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a gnarly hairball of copyright law whose Section 1201 bans reverse-engineering for any purpose. Under DMCA 1201, "access controls" for copyrighted works are elevated to sacred status, and it's a felony (punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine) to help someone bypass these access controls.

That's pretty esoteric, even today, and in 1998, it was nearly incomprehensible, except to a small group of extremely alarmed experts who ran around trying to explain to lawmakers why they should not vote for this thing. But by the time Tony Clement and James Moore (Conservative ministers in the Harper regime) introduced a law to import America's stupidest tech idea and paste it into Canada's lawbooks in 2012, the evidence against anti-circumvention was plain for anyone to see.

Under America's anti-circumvention law, any company that added an "access control" to its products instantly felonised any modification to that product. For example, it's not illegal to refill an ink cartridge, but it is illegal to bypass the access control that gets the cartridge to recognise that it's full and start working again. It's not illegal for a Canadian software developer to sell a Canadian Iphone owner an app without cutting Apple in for a 30% of the sale, but it is illegal to mod that Iphone so that it can run apps without downloading them from the App Store first. It's not illegal for a Canadian mechanic to fix a Canadian's car, but it is illegal for that mechanic to bypass the access controls that prevent third-party mechanics from decrypting the error codes the car generates.

We told Clement and Moore about this, and they ignored us. Literally: when they consulted on their proposal in 2010, we filed 6,138 comments explaining why this was a bad idea, while only 53 parties wrote in to support it. Moore publicly announced that he was discarding the objections, on the grounds that they had come from "babyish" "radical extremists":

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216

For more than a decade, we've had Clement and Moore's Made-in-America law tied to our ankles. Even when Canada copies some good ideas from the US (by passing a Right to Repair law), or even some very good ideas of its own (passing an interoperability law), Canadians can't use those new rights without risking prosecution under Clement and Moore's poisoned gift to the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

"Not America" is a pretty thin basis for a political identity anyway. There's nothing wrong with copying America's good ideas (like Right to Repair). Indeed, when it comes to tech regulation, the US has had some bangers lately, like prosecuting US tech giants for violating competition law. Given that Canada overhauled its competition law this year, the country's well-poised to tackle America's tech giants.

Which is exactly what's happening! Canada's Competition Bureau just filed a lawsuit against Google over its ad-tech monopoly, which isn't merely a big old Privacy Chernobyl, but is also a massively fraudulent enterprise that rips off both advertisers and publishers:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/canadas-antitrust-watchdog-sues-google-alleging-anti-competitive-conduct-2024-11-28/

The ad-tech industry scoops up about 51 cents out of every dollar (in the pre-digital advertising world the net take by ad agencies was more like 15%). Fucking up Google's ad-tech rip off is a much better way to Canada's press paid than the link tax the country instituted in 2023:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

After all, what tech steals from the news isn't content (helping people find the news and giving them a forum to discuss it is good) – tech steals news's money. Ad-tech is a giant ripoff. So is the app tax – the 30% Canadian newspapers have to kick up to the Google and Apple crime families every time a subscriber renews their subscriptions in an app. Using Canadian law to force tech to stop stealing the press's money is a way better policy than forcing tech to profit-share with the news. For tech to profit-share with the news, it has to be profitable, meaning that a profit-sharing press benefits from tech's most rapacious and extractive conduct, and rather than serving as watchdogs, they're at risk of being cheerleaders.

Smashing tech power is a better policy than forcing tech to share its stolen loot with newspapers. For one thing, it gets government out of the business of deciding what is and isn't a legit news entity. Maybe you're OK with Trudeau making that call (though I'm not), but how will you feel when PM Polievre decides that Great Replacement-pushing, conspiracy-addled far right rags should receive a subsidy?

Taking on Google is a slam-dunk, not least because the US DoJ just got through prosecuting the exact same case, meaning that Canadian competition enforcers can do some good copying of their American counterparts – like, copying the exhibits, confidential memos, and successful arguments the DoJ brought before the court:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

Indeed, this already a winning formula! Because Big Tech commits the same crimes in every jurisdiction, trustbusters are doing a brisk business by copying each others' cases. The UK Digital Markets Unit released a big, deep market study into Apple's app market monopoly, which the EU Commission used as a roadmap to bring a successful case. Then, competition enforcers in Japan and South Korea recycled the exhibits and arguments from the EU's case to bring their own successful prosecutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

Canada copying the DoJ's ad-tech case is a genius move – it's the kind of south-of-the-border import that Canadians need. Though, of course, it's a long shot that the Trump regime will produce much more worth copying. Instead, Trump has vowed to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian goods as of January 20.

Which is bad news for Canada's export sector, but it definitely means that Canada no longer has to worry about keeping the US Trade Rep happy. Repealing Clement and Moore's Bill C-11 should be Parliament's first order of business. Tariff or no tariff, Canadian tech entrepreneurs could easily export software-based repair diagnostic tools, Iphone jailbreaking tooks, alternative firmware for tractors and medical implants, and alternative app stores for games consoles, phones and tablets. So long as they can accept a US payment, they can sell to US customers. This is a much bigger opportunity than, say, selling cheap medicine to Americans trying to escape Big Pharma's predation.

What's more, there's no reason this couldn't be policy under Polievre and the Tories. After all, they're supposed to be the party of "respect for private property." What could be more respectful of private property than letting the owners of computers, phones, cars, tractors, printers, medical implants, smart speakers and anything else with a microchip decide for themselves how they want to it work? What could be more respectful of copyright than arranging things so that Canadian copyright holders – like a games studio or an app company – can sell their copyrighted works to Canadian buyers, without forcing the data and the payment to make a round trip through Silicon Valley and come back 30% lighter?

Canadian politicians have bound the Canadian public and Canadian industry to onerous and expensive obligations under treaties like the USMCA (AKA NAFTA2), on promise of tariff-free access to American markets. With that access gone, why on Earth would we continue to voluntarily hobble ourselves?

[hairyjocktf]

Fire in the Forest

Adam sighed deeply as he unlocked the door to his apartment. The familiar scent of old laundry and takeout boxes washed over him as the door swung open. He slid his bag off his shoulder onto the floor and slumped onto the couch. Today had been one of the worst days of his life, to put it mildly. The company he’d slaved away for since graduating a few years ago had unexpectedly let him go as part of cost cutting measures. Every late night he’d spent at the office suddenly hit him as a waste, his hard work had never mattered to those up top. Adding insult to injury was his paltry severance package; with his rent it’d barely last two weeks. He wouldn’t even have time to breathe before having to find a new job.

Before he knew it he’d passed out sitting on the couch, waking up hours later to a dark sky out the window. Shit, he muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes before forcing his body up and off the couch. He tossed a frozen meal into the microwave before setting his laptop up on the table. With the microwave humming in the background he started visiting websites of companies he knew of in the same sphere. Career page after career page yielded no luck. He grabbed his food from the beeping microwave and continued to solemnly scroll through page after page of indeed listings, applying to every one he could convince himself he was qualified for. Soon enough it was two in the morning, and Adam decided to call it quits. He cleaned up his now very cold dinner and went to the bathroom to splash some water on his face and clean up for bed. His red hair glowed under the ceiling light, looking almost like fire. It was one of his more attractive qualities, he thought to himself, looking at his skinny frame and ghostly skin. He flipped off the lights and hopped into bed.

It was around ten the next morning that Adam finally crawled out of bed. He grabbed his phone off the desk and quickly checked for any job notifications. There was only one, and not one he recognized. It was a recruitment email from a logging company, Cascade Lumber. He skimmed over the email, they’d “found” his profile online and thought he’d be a good fit for a lumberjack role? That was ridiculous, he thought, and closed out of his email. Frustrated at no actual leads, he decided to take a walk for the morning and get back to searching that afternoon. While out trying to enjoy the rare sunny day, that email stuck in his mind. Really? A lumberjack? It was absurd, insulting almost. He was a software developer, not some country laborer. He got back to his apartment and threw himself back into the search, sending out applications one after another. The next day was much of the same, desperately trying to find more niche positions that might be hiring. Still no responses, though. Each day he became a little more stressed, a little more frantic in his search. How had no one responded yet? He had plenty of qualifications and experience, he didn’t understand the problem.

Two weeks had passed and Adam was against a wall. His severance cash was nearly dried up, and still nothing had come through, not even an interview. Even his connections had fallen through. With the bills starting to pile up on the counter, he was out of options. That was when he remembered the email from weeks before. At this point it couldn’t hurt to respond, maybe they had a tech position he could weasel into. He wrote a short response and sent it off. Just minutes later, as Adam was in the middle of making lunch, his phone buzzed. They’d responded already, inviting him out to their office. The address was nearly an hour out west, but what choice did he have?

The next morning he was on his way out of the city, high rises giving way to fields and then forest. Dense groves alternated with barren patches of recently logged areas, letting sunlight down to the road. He pulled down a narrow road and a few minutes later parked in front of a modest building tucked into the trees. His car was surrounded by huge trucks filled to the brim with tree trunks, as well as some large machinery he couldn’t identify. Upon walking inside he was greeted with a dim room full of old logging gear. He heard the footsteps of someone large approaching, before a huge man descended the stairs to greet him. He looked enormous in this small room, almost scraping the ceiling, and his frame was equally wide. His open shirt revealed a forest of hair on his chest, and his beard was incredibly thick. Adam suddenly felt very intimidated, despite the large smile on the man’s face.

“Hey there! You must be Adam, so glad you took us up on visiting. We really think you’d be a great asset on the team. Whoa! I’m getting ahead of myself, the name’s Derek,” he reached out his absolute paw of a hand. With a shake Derek immediately began touring Adam around the office. Derek was overwhelming with his enthusiasm, but also in his assumption that Adam had agreed to start working there. He didn’t have another option, but they didn’t know that. They got into Derek’s truck and he drove off into the forest towards a work site. The majority of the information Derek was spitting out went in one ear and out the other, but Adam tried to look as engaged as he could. The truck came to a screeching halt in an area they were currently clearing. The sound of chainsaws was like nails on a chalkboard to Adam as they stepped out of the truck. In the distance he saw machinery whirring away cutting trees, as well as men harnessed up with saws. Derek went into more detail about working in an active logging site, the dangers and safety measures. Adam was instead busy looking at the men working nearby. They had on hard hats and bright orange vests overtop thick jackets or flannels. They all looked big and burly, like they’d been lifting for years. Adam wasn’t sure how in Derek’s mind he would be able to do anything here.

“...and I think that just about covers most of it. Oh! And the salary is $55k per year, with annual raises and benefits. We try to do right by our guys here,” Derek smiled at Adam. That number had finally gotten his attention. Nothing close to his old job, but better than zero. In a decision that probably warranted some more thought, Adam opened his mouth.

“Great, when do I start?”

Derek’s smile doubled in size and he slapped Adam on the back. “That’s my man, let’s get you all set up then while you’re out here,” he said. They both got back into Derek’s truck and drove back to the office. Inside Adam was handed the same hat and vest he saw the men at the site wearing.

“Now that’s just the basics, you’ll probably want some heavy clothing while on the job, and get yourself some good boots while you’re at it,” he chuckled, looking down at Adam’s aging vans shoes. Adam thanked him and walked back to his car. Still unsure of this whole venture, Adam departed. On the way back he stopped at some workwear stores, looking for boots and clothes to fit the job. Having no idea what he actually needed, he just looked for the closest things to what he remembered the guys there wearing. Close enough, right?

Back at his apartment he cautiously tried on all the clothing he’d just gotten. To his surprise, it all fit fairly well, despite his body being much smaller than most of the guys out there. His thin frame looked bulkier under a thick layer of protective and warm clothing. He almost… liked how it looked? Adam quickly put that thought out of his head and stripped off the gear. The sun was already dipping below the horizon and he had to be out there early in the morning from now on. 

The alarm came even sooner than he thought. Adam rolled out of bed at four in the morning, and was out the door as soon as he could get himself together. The air was chilly outside, with not even a hint of the sunrise yet in the darkness. He drove straight to the site Derek had assigned him to, finding a group of men chatting together while donning their equipment. Adam introduced himself, and began putting on his own assigned gear. The day flew by as several other guys instructed Adam on how things worked. He was more keen to pay attention to everything this time, listening intently to each burly man who showed him how to use a chainsaw. By the end of the day he’d felled a few trees and learned the basics of the larger machinery the team used. Despite it being cool all day, Adam was sweating up a storm in his thick coat. Maybe he’d overestimated how much layering was needed. The drive home felt shorter than it had the day before, but Adam was frustrated at a recurring itch on his jaw, it just kept coming back no matter how much he scratched at it.

The next few days were much of the same, Adam’s time was highly supervised while he was learning, but he was surprised at how easily he took to it. His original plan of finding a tech position to switch to had already been forgotten. The other lumberjacks seemed to like Adam as well, despite his scrawny stature. His red hair made him easy to point out, even though it was usually covered by a hard hat. The itch on his face reared its head a few more times, as Adam’s baby smooth face was slowly overtaken by a light red stubble. Each day it would poke out just a hair more, reaching out from his chin towards his sideburns. Adam failed to notice this, just as he was blind to the muscle his skinny body had started to put on. In just a week he’d gained serious definition, he had slight pecs and shoulders, and his arms looked like he’d been working out for years. Must be the intensity of the job, he thought to himself when one of his old t-shirts no longer fit. As the days passed, his stubble connected across his face, and some wispy hairs poked out of his growing pecs. Barely noticeable, but there nonetheless.

The weeks continued to pass as Adam got settled into his position. He started to feel like a real lumberjack as trees fell by his hand day by day. He began to fit in more with the other men as well. His bright red stubble thickened. Hairs that were barely more than peach fuzz grew thick and pushed out into a true short beard. The wisps on his chest likewise grew thicker, curlier, as more pressed out of his pecs. The red hairs grew and wove together until the hairy coating could no longer be ignored. His chest hair was normally kept beneath multiple layers, until one of his fellow loggers spotted the rug while he was changing. The crew gave him their old flannels and forced him to wear them and let some of the fiery red hair poke out. They all loved it, he was looking like them with their thick beards and hairy chests. The tiny new hire was quickly vanishing beneath muscle and fur, as the hairs on his chest spread downwards over his tight stomach.

Adam began noticing that each day he would leave work absolutely soaked in sweat. His layers just absorbed it leaving him a sopping mess as the job was so labor intensive. It didn’t bother him, he just bought more work clothes to cycle through, but he was oblivious to the other effects it was having. Adam’s body, steeping in sweat all day, was producing more and more. Not only that, his previously bare pits began sprouting fine red hairs. At first it was just a few thin hairs poking out, but as they were soaked in sweat they grew thicker. More hairs popped out of the damp pit, filling in rapidly. His once smooth pits were growing into a dense jungle of hair, the hairs thick and red, tangling together into a tuft that trapped even more sweat and stench. They spread out of the confines of his pit, connecting with the pelt on his chest and beginning to pop out across his upper arms. He would dig his fingers into his furry pits to scratch, the hair growing in itching like mad. Each day more hairs pushed out, more sweat was trapped, and the more he smelled like the other men around him.

As the weeks rolled on, Adam kept having to buy new clothes between sweat stains and simply outgrowing them. His body had put on a lot of size since starting, his thin frame bulking out as he grew taller and wider. The weather was growing colder, and the added layers were hiding his growing size, as well as his growing fur. The hair from his pits was continuing its march, with wiry hair cropping up across his shoulders, triceps, and was especially dense on his forearms. Red wispy hairs sprouted all over his upper body, filling in gaps and growing into a thick ginger rug. His body was growing at a rapid rate, biceps filling out and pecs becoming real pillows, but it wasn’t all muscle. His size was softened by a healthy layer of fat that only encouraged more hair to sprout. His already dense chest hair thickened further, red hairs swirling around his nipples and growing longer and curlier. The chest fur grew up and over his shoulders, creating a seamless carpet from his hands through his torso. Even his back was beginning to show signs, as light red fuzz was gathering around his shoulder blades and above his waistline. Hair sprouted out of his shirt collars and poked from his sleeves; even under his layers of clothes his coworkers knew Adam was hiding some impressive fur.

What they couldn’t see was below Adam’s waistline. The fur coat from his stomach slowly inched downwards, the wispy hairs occupying his groin quickly overrun with a thick red bush. The hairs pushed out from the base of his cock, thick and curly they sprouted and tangled together as the bush expanded. The hairs climbed up and connected with the rug on his stomach, and out to his thighs before racing down his thick legs. His pubes grew denser into a thick triangle of red hair, his cock growing larger to not be hidden beneath the jungle. Adam hardly noticed as the bulge in his jeans grew day by day, sweat soaking the area as it developed a thick musk that was barely contained by his underwear. He had to buy larger sizes after his balls swelled considerably, dropping lower than before and sprouting with their own rug of red hair. The hairs spread down over his taint before blossoming in his ass crack, a thick fiery explosion of fur pushing out as the hairs grew like weeds over his large cheeks. His legs grew stockier to support his growing body as the hairs continued their march from the thick nest of pubes. His thighs were coated before it spread to his calves. His feet stretched and ached as they grew multiple sizes in just a few weeks, before too being buried beneath a thick mat of red hair.

Winter finally began showing its ugly face, and Adam’s job grew rougher daily as temperatures plummeted up in the mountains. His body adapted, packing on considerable bulk. Gone was his thin, twinky frame, replaced now by a thick and strong body, built for strength and warmth. His thick muscular frame was coated in a layer of fat to insulate him, and his belly seemed to just keep growing. The fur coat he’d been developing only continued to come in. The red hairs grew thicker and denser every day, pushing against his clothing. His fiery red beard, which had been well kept until now began erupting from his face with a fury. Thick hairs curled over his upper lip as the hairs on his cheeks pushed out inch after inch. More hairs filled in between as the coating crawled higher on his cheeks. It surged down his neck and blended with the thick chest hair. He looked wild, but it kept his face warm from the frigid winds. He even got complimented on it, earning a reputation as a real mountain man from his fellow lumberjacks. Adam had fully adapted to his job, there was no going back. He was now a hairy, hefty lumberjack with a fur coat to rival an animal’s. He’d grown to be one of the best in the crew, each tree felled returning as a hair in his pelt.

[vhaos-chaotic-writing]

Hi!👋, im back(again), sorry if im a little bit of an bother(english isn't my first language sorry😅), i want to have ANOTHER request of Yandere TFP ALL Autobots(poly pls🥺)with an same cybertronian s/o from my first request that is SUPER shy, easily flustered and hardly ever raises thare voice that comes out as VERY adorable whispers and thare...

🥰DROP🥰

💞DEAD💞

❤️‍🔥GORGEOUS❤️‍🔥

🥰🌌💗💜AND like my first request small scenario and headcanons💜💗🌌🥰

Hug🤗

YOU ARE NOT A BOTHER SHUT UP I LOVE YOU!!! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ) And it's okay, english is also not my 1st language, but be patience and keep listening, reading and speaking it!! And you'll get the hang of it!

(〃￣︶￣)人(￣︶￣〃) Sending hugs too bestie!!!

(TFP) Yandere!Autobots w/ Shy Cybertronian!Reader (HCs & Scenario)

WARNING: Yandere behaviour, yandere harem, romantic relationships, overprotective and obsessive behaviour, soft kidnapping (?), typical violence from the series and a little bit more, Reader is gender neutral and in the Autobot faction. Long ass post ngl.

Don't worry guys I'm adding Ultra Magnus I ain't forgetting that fine mech again. And Cliffjumper, sorry baby I forgot you at first.

You were the little of hope the team protects dearly.

Everyone in the autobot team loved you so dearly and all of them had a little non-spoken vow: to protect and love you.

And how could they not do that? You were such a soft, spark-spoken bot, always trying to bring comfort to the others, never being too loud, supporting them and just being that light in the darkness they were in.

You arrived to earth with the original team - and if back in Cybertrone all of them were a little bit protective over you, being on a new planet it go 10 times more.

From the beginning after the autobots established on the base thanks to the human's militia and Agent Fowler, the team decided to forbid you from going on missions - you would have tried to gently speak in your defense of being able to fight alongside your friends, but after hearing the concerns of your teammates and feel as if their sparks would vanish at the mere thought of you getting hurt or... offlined by the Decepticons, it was more than enough to give in, smiling at them sweetly with a small 'I understand', deciding to become Ratchet's assitant.

All of them were so relieved - they didn't want to force you inside of one of the storages room and keep you there inside against your will. They were gonna do it to protect you! Alas, you were such a good, sweet bot that knew they were only looking after your well being! So good, so good!

The team cherishes every single little moment they have with you - every little smile, chuckle, conversation, inside-joke - anything became a dear memory within their softwares.

After Cliffjumper's death... the need to protect you grew, to the point the team started to develop such obsessive ideals about you.

Everyone's spark was clenching in pain, watching you cry your optics out while hugging Arcee, how was holding you closely and sobbing quietly, anger painted on her faceplate... she wasn't gonna let you get offlined like Cliffjumper did - no one was gonna let that happen.

You love dearly your teammates, and you know all of them love you! But... sometimes you feel like their love for you is too much. Sometimes.

Optimus Prime and Ratchet can be too overprotective, sometimes - You know they mean well, but sometimes you are mad at yourself for not telling them to chill. Optimus always remind you the promise you made to them before he leaves with the others for a mission - "to leave the base it is prohibited, even less if you don't have someone making you company." And you try to convice him, but his worried expression and your stuttering and passive behaviour always makes you close your mouth and whisper a "I'm sorry, I understand." It melts your spark at the sight of Optimus' soft, relieved smile and that forehelm gives you. And Ratchet, by Primus, he is always fretting about you - he is always checking on you even when you are on the same room, making sure you are well recharged and had your fill, always saying that "you are far more important than him" when you scold him for not having his fill of energon. You always remind him he is important too, but he is set on always prioritizing you over himself...

Your spark sinks a little at hearing Ratchet and Optimus speak quietly in the dead of the night - Ratchet was telling on detail everything you did on the day, as if it was a report. What it scares you is how precise his words and details are, it seems... obsessive, too obsessive. And Optimus thanks Ratchet for keeping you safe and sound, promising to keep fighting for a better world so all of the team and you could live happily back at Cybertrone... and you swear you felt Optimus' optics on you as you tried to recharge on your own berth, or heard Ratchet whisper sweet nothings to you as you recharged, too.

Bulkhead, Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus have silently vowed to be your guardians, your own personal wrecker-guards. Wheeljack is constatly flirting with you, as Bulkhead is the shy type to quietly give you small gifts like a small flower or pretty rock. Ultra Magnus always gives you praises and words full of - all three of them always get to make you blush. But lately, Wheeljack's flirting has become too... intense in your opinion. Bulkhead seems always too anxious whenever he gives you a small gift, fearing you are going to reject it. And Ultra Magnus seems to make his praise become worshipping, as if you were like Primus itself. You've also have started to notice how the three of them seem to always aim to get your favor, any kind of positive reaction - an approval from you, as if you were the one to have the last word and decision, like a god does. Wheeljack wishes for a flirt back, Bulkhead wishes for an approval, Ultra Magnus wishes your benevolence.

Bumblebee and Smokescreen can't never get enough of your affection and attention - like two young puppies. They also always try to have any kind of physical contact with you, which nearly always translates into hugs or servos holding. And these two are an intensified version of the three wreckers - Bee constantly seems to look after your approval, your words of affirmation and gentle praise. Smokescreen either flirts with you non-stop or spills too many worshipping praises like he did when he got to meet Optimus. But what makes them different is that they verbalize their protective promises. The two of them have said they are not afraid of ending any decepticon for the sake of keeping you safe and sound, to give you the Cybertrone you deserve so you can live happily and surrounded only by the bots that love you so dearly. And they promise this as they snuzzle gently their helms against yours, holding your servos softly... whispering their obsessive promises to your audials.

You know that, since the day Cliffjumper was killed, something inside of Arcee broke again. And thus, you became her light of hope, for whenever she was grieving or letting her spark poison with anger and a need for revenge, you were there to hug her or hold her servo, letting her cry on your shoulderplate. But she should be the one doing that! You cried and grieved the loss of Cliffjumper too! She is still has burn in her system the sight of you crying after finding out about the red autobot's murder. She was gonna avenge Cliffjumper (oh, how much he loved you - He would always tell Arcee everything he loved about you, and find such happiness at knowing Arcee thought the same) and keep you away from any danger. She wasn't gonna lose you. She was gonna offline anybot before that happened. She had become more touchy, overprotective, always seeming to act as a wall between everyone and you. "Cliffjumper always vowed to protect you... and I'll do the same - I won't let anything happen to you." She promised in a whisper as she hugged you. All you can do is hug her back, even when you were slightly... scared at how lost her optics seemed.

You love your teammates - you were so sure you wished to pass the rest of your life with all of them once the war was over, to bond with them and love them... but you've noticed how deep their feelings for you were.

Obsessive. Overprotective. Worshipping you as if you were like Primus. Promising to you with whispers about forever protecting you, about how important to them you were, that they were not going to be afraid to shed energon in your name if it meant to prove their love and devotion for you. Keeping tabs on you, whispering to one another everything about you, listening to you, watching you from time to time as you recharge, making sure you never leave the base.

You are their beacon of hope, the light in the darkness - Optimus and Ratchet are not afraid to taint their vow to not offline the enemy if it means to keep you safe and sound, keeping their optics on you. Bulkhead, Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus are ready to protect you from any danger as guardians and destroy anyone who tries to touch you. Bee and Smokescreen will keep giving you all the love and attention they can, promising you the universe and the stars. Arcee will make Cliffjumper's wish come true by keeping you away from danger and bring you the Cybertrone you derseve, just like the others aim to do.

And... there's nothing you can do about it.

All you can do is allow your teammates surround you as if the cocoon of a butterfly - keeping you warm, safe, loved.

Did my best!! Kind off felt like I didn't do good. (Uu￣ 3￣) Vhaos out!

[kaunaz]

hey. so. i need the Ultrakill community to understand something, in case Hakita doesn't say anything about it.

Unity, the company, has decided to begin charging developers that made games with their software, once they meet a certain threshold. if a game earns $200,000 within 12 months, and 200,000 installs of said game happen total, the devs will be billed a flat rate of 20 cents per install. RETROACTIVELY. which is already a major blow to everyone who's ever found success with Unity (hint: Ultrakill is made in Unity).

to make this worse, the company is not planning to use tracking software to figure out how many installs have happened, like we THOUGHT they might, and aren't doing a good job of clarifying what an "install" even means. instead, they have stated that they'll be using a "proprietary data model" to determine this number per game. translation: they're making up numbers with AI. they don't even care. it's basically robbery and we're pretty sure this is mad illegal.

these changes are being finalized by January 1st of 2024.

game developers have the following options:

1) pay the bullshit fee.

2) port their entire game into another engine and re-release it in said engine.

3) cancel their Unity subscription and remove their game from all stores.

i don't know what this means for Ultrakill. maybe Hakita can pay the fee. maybe he'll try to port into Godot or Unreal. or maybe he will just decide it's not worth it to keep going. i don't know. i don't know what sort of person he is.

no matter what happens, PLEASE try to enjoy the game while you can. if development continues, expect delays. lots of them. above all, DO NOT GET ANGRY AT HAKITA IF THE GAME NEEDS TO BE DELAYED OR SHUT DOWN. THE BLAME FOR ANY PROBLEMS GOING FORWARD LIES SOLELY ON UNITY'S CORPORATE GREED.

Hakita, if you're reading this, please just do whatever you think is best. it's your game, your life. we enjoyed everything you've done so far, and for me, that's good enough.