#like it would work so well! fun with the ‘magic systems’ would be fun

[gameboyhamazing]

I can’t believe there’s not a single crossover I can find of golden sun and avatar it would be so fun

someone out there understands the vision I have, I know it

[casually-salad]

Just beat mother one, I immediately have like five drawings I want to make now.....

[sysig]

Just Desserts continental northern map made using this method! :D (Patreon)

[snepfeathers]

oooouuughghhh. I am having some Thoughts about a Nyx/Aleyxi comic sequence thing.... maybe I'll try to get down a draft/storyboard between comm work tomorrow

[lizziesfirstwife]

YES!! Grace us with your masterpiece :P

Guardian Angel

jinu x fem!reader

warnings: hints of yearning, depressed themes, obsessed jinu?, clueless reader, use of Y/N, slow burnnn, suggestive language, not proof-read

word count: 3140

authors note: this is my first fic in a long time, so please bear with me as english isn’t my first language. have as much fun reading this as I had writing this! <3

preview to part 2 moodboard for part 2

Part 2

Jinu hated Sundays. 

Sunday was the one day of the week when most of the population made it comfortable at home, not putting a single foot outside. There was nothing wrong with it being Sunday itself. A few lone pedestrians stretched through the alleys of the metropolis, mostly nurses who had the bad luck of having to work on weekends and teen groups who used the calmness of the city to hang out undisturbed. 

Jinu hated Sundays more than anything.

They were quiet, forcing one to think about all the things that seemingly went wrong the past 6 days. He didn't want to think. A normal person would have used a free Sunday to meet up with their relatives, or spend a spa day in front of the TV. 

The deeper Jinu sank into his thoughts, the more dense and dark the clouds in the sky above him became. He wasn't human. He shouldn't think about whether it was worth getting up in the morning, if it was worth carrying on with the small flame of hope he managed to sustain all these centuries. 

Contrary to all religious and folklore beliefs, demons needed sleep. Jinu slept, but didn't dream. And he was glad. Because not even demons are immune to the ghosts of their past that haunt them. 

The road was clean, the puddles from last night's thunderstorm still deep in the ditch.  

He had swapped his usually colorful clothes for something dark. No colorful pants, no colorful shirt. It didn't seem right to him. He was lost in the small crowd of the city, blending in too well as if he were one of them. One of many aimless figures desperately seeking their meaning in life. 

Sunday was the day Jinu dreaded the most. Not just because it left him alone with his thoughts, but because of the people. Or rather the lack of them. 

Nobody went out on Sundays. Hardly anyone. Not even in this big city, where new gambling stores opened every day and small businesses had to close because the rents were too high. 

The people worked so much, that they spent the time they had left with their families. He wondered what it was like to come home to a warm meal, how it felt to spend time with people who expected nothing from you in return for their acceptance. He wanted to be accepted, deep down. But acceptance was a luxury. Tolerance was a prosperity that was easier to uphold, easier to manipulate. 

Sundays were the most unprofitable days for the soul hunters. Many stores closed on Sundays, almost no activity available for the lost souls of this city. 

And out in the vast emptiness of the city it was too dangerous to do what needed to be done. 

A warm light. Large white letters in cursive script.

✮⋆˙

Had the flour expired? The lettuce leaves looked strangely shriveled, didn't they? 

She had a feeling she would get fired soon because of the action with the cupcakes, but if not, her voluntary letter of resignation would be typed and sent away faster than she needed to get up in the morning. It was supposed to be a part-time job to finance her studies, a shitty minimum wage job as an untrained bakery employee. She had no idea how to even bake bread, because the last time she tried, she almost lost a tooth. 

But she knew how to get cinnamon buns out of the packaging, or how to make a sandwich with instructions. 

She loved Sundays. 

No one wanted to work on Sundays, which meant much-needed bonuses and an exceptionally quiet shift. Working in customer service was not for the light-hearted.

Yesterday, she tried a new hair styling cream that was supposed to have some kind of magical bonding system in it. Allegedly even Zoey from Huntix used it. Y/N was frustrated with her hair. Wearing it up every day for work and the heat from the dozen ovens didn’t help care for it. So she tried it out.

Only for her hair to end up in a low wispy bun this morning anyway. Work rules and such things. 

Y/N sighed. Luckily it was Sunday. That meant that after her shift ended, she could take home all the left over baked goods that didn’t sell that day. 

She wasn’t poor, she still had her parents sending her a bit of money every month. But she didn’t have a job yet. A real job, not this forced university funding job. A job which she could only apply to with her degree in archeology. 

Everyone has told her she wouldn’t find a job in the field, that only the far more experienced archaeologist experts would be getting booked on excavation sites.  Y/N sighed and dumped the weird smelling flour in the trash can under the front desk. 

She knew they were right. Surviving as an archeologist in South Korea was harder than in the USA or Europe, where she would’ve had better job prospects. 

Pulling out the chair behind the counter, she smiled as she sat on it, straightening her apron. She would find a way to get into an excavation. Do some internships, join a few archeological Facebook groups, and she would surely feel better. Fake it until you make it. 

The bell tinkled, announcing the arrival of a new customer.

✮⋆˙

The air in the small shop soured of cinnamon and sakura room refresher. Jinu scrunched his nose. 

He didn't know when he had pushed the door of the small bakery inwards, when exactly he had entered the small space. A few white wooden chairs stood in two corners of the store, accompanied by equally white round marble tables decorated with lacy white table cloths. Tulips that were starting to wilt, filled various vases in the small space. A warm lamp hanging from the ceiling, inviting dust so sit on it if not cleaned properly.

Demons did not have to eat human food. They could, but it didn’t make them survive. They had the burden of robbing people of their souls, their entire lives, who deserved it the least. People at their lowest point. Homeless people. Desperate teenagers who ran away from home at night because they had long since given up hope of a better life. Jinu wanted to feel sorry for them. On dark days, the only thing that kept him waking up from his dreary sleep was the small flame of hope he protected inside himself for all those years.

But what choice did he have, what choice but to take away the only thing they had left in their miserable lives?

A low hum interrupted the path of his wandering eyes, which scrutinized every detail of the bakery.

He turned around. He was used to people starting to scream, especially women, when they spotted him. When they saw the K-Pop star. When they saw the version of him that millions of people loved. Forced smile, clothes that no grown man would voluntarily wear, happiness basically tattooed on his face. These reactions soothed something inside him. 

On days when he wondered what it was like to be really liked by someone, or even loved... on those days it wasn't quite so bad to think about it. After all, he had fans who loved him, didn't he? Isn't that what counted? With every new fan, he reached thousands of others. One step closer to their goal. 

True love and affection, which did not have to be bought or hypocritized, did not exist. 

But she didn’t scream. She just sat there. He almost didn’t spot her sitting behind the counter, which displayed varieties of tuna sandwiches and some adequate looking baked goods. When she spotted him standing there all still, she quickly put her phone aside and stood up. 

Jinu wanted to chuckle. Now he knew where the sakura scent came from. 

Her hair was tied together behind her head, some fashion strands hanging down her temples. It curled slightly, maybe from the heat of the oven behind her. Maybe it was just her natural hair texture. 

Her lips moved, but he heard nothing. She smelled of cherry blossoms and cinnamon, looked as if the word unhappy was not part of her vocabulary. 

Her fingers touched her necklace, nails embellished with pink nail polish. He had never understood why women painted their nails when hardly anyone would pay attention to such things. 

His eyebrows furrowed. 

They looked beautiful.

"Do you need help?" 

His eyes snapped up.

✮⋆˙

Y/N didn’t believe in angels. 

She didn’t have a hard childhood growing up. She had two married parents and an annoying older sister that moved out from home years ago and barely texted her anymore. While most of her friend’s parents got divorced in high school or throughout college and university, her parents stayed together. Simply out of convenience, or out of love that still lingered in their hearts from all those years ago, Y/N wasn’t sure what it was that kept them together for this long. 

They were busy working all the time, her father an architect that traveled abroad often, and her mom a veterinary nurse. Their marriage worked, but as the years went on, Y/N felt more and more invisible to their love. Their affection barely was enough for themselves, and she as their youngest child became forgotten. When she was younger, she used to curse out the devil for making her parents so successful in life. She didn’t believe in angels or the tale of every person having a guardian angel, because if they really existed, they did a really bad job.

But as she looked up to the customer who entered the small shop, ready to recite her studied standard greeting, she froze. 

He was tall. The smell of rain emitted from him, most likely from wandering outside in the still damp streets. But he didn’t say anything, he just stared at her.

He looked at her like she had the answer to all of his life problems, as if she was a puzzle waiting to be solved. 

His eyes looked mesmerizing. A deep brown, almost black, looked back at her own eyes, captivating her in a trance she was unable to escape. Was this how sirens lured sailors into their deathly embrace?

But he didn’t look evil. He didn’t look like the type of man to hurt you, just to feel malicious. 

She tried to speak, but the words didn’t want to leave her mouth. Her fingers wandered to her necklace, touching the small gemstone pendant hanging on it. It was a nervous habit she picked up during exam phase in high school, her fingers playing with her jewelry as soon as she got the slightest bit anxious. 

She certainly wasn’t in high school anymore, and she definitely didn’t know why she was uneasy, why she suddenly felt conscious about her hair, the stains on her apron, or that she forgot to apply mascara this morning. 

Shaking her head, she forced her fingers to let go of her necklace and instead grip on the marble counter in front of her. 

“Do you need help?” 

The man seemed to snap out of his trance, and shook his head. 

“No, no- I mean yes.”

Y/N crooked her eyebrow and hummed. Out of customers talking to someone on the phone, placing their card on the card reader without telling her they want to pay by card, and customers that complained about the prices, the ones who were unsure what to get were her favorite. 

“Any idea of what you want to get today? A sweet treat or a hearty snack?”

He shook his head. Jinu wasn’t prepared to talk to anyone, less a woman who he didn’t know why his words suddenly turned to thin air when looking at. Taking a deep breath, he looked at the displace of products behind the glass. He was a charming, young superstar, who never had to try to get humans to like him. They just did, annoyance and rejection foreign to him. He knew that that affection wasn’t real, but it was the best available for him at the moment. But this woman was blind to his charm it seemed, indifferent to his looks. 

Y/N wasn’t unfazed. She tried to appear that way, at the very least. Inside of her, she was screaming at how sinfully good he looked. She couldn’t afford to think that way about anyone. Love didn’t last, a curse doomed to dissolve under time. But God, if his eyes didn’t want her to jump into his arms, she didn’t know what do think anymore. 

Humming again, she tapped her foot against the wooden floor of the bakery. 

“Do you like it spicy?”

His head snapped up from where he was previously looking at, pupils widened.

“What?”

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows at his reaction. How couldn’t he understand this simple-

“Oh! No, no, not like that! Oh God-“

Jinu chuckled, her reaction making him feel slightly bad for his uncertainty of what to get. 

“Yeah, I like it spicy.”

Y/N looked at the man who was holding back a laugh, and furrowed her eyebrows.

“Are you making fun of me?”

She pressed her lips into a thin line, crossing her arms. 

“No. I mean it. I like spicy food. I don’t look like a liar, do I?”

Y/N shook her head, sighing and pointing to the left side of the food display. She was getting underpaid, and she only got 4 hours of sleep. She didn’t want to argue with anyone, less this sinfully charming Korean Adonis. 

“We have chicken sandwiches with gochujang, grilled garaetteok, or plain chili filled rice balls.”

Jinu pretended to think about which option to choose, but in reality he was just using the time to look at her from underneath his eyelashes. He didn’t know what about her made him curious, it just…felt right to look at her.

He straightened up again and looked at her, really looked at her.

“What is your favorite?”

Truth was, Jinu didn’t know how any of these dishes tasted like. The last time he ate food for enjoyment reasons was 400 years ago, the taste of everything he once loved long forgotten in his trapped mind. He didn’t know how to cook either. His mother always cooked for him and his little sister, refusing to let him do anything besides working hard on his career. He shook his head. Laughter echoed inside his head, the smile of a woman he didn’t recognize haunting his mind. 

Y/N didn’t know what to answer to that. No one cared about her opinion, everyone just expecting her to wrap up their food and give them their change. She put a loose strand of hair behind her ear and shook her head. 

“I don’t have one. I don’t like spicy food at all.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Then what made you think I would like it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “You look like the opposite of me. I don’t like spicy food, so I figured you might like it.”

Jinu looked her up and down. She was wearing faint pink colored jeans, a white blouse and over that her black work apron with a few stains on it. Her pink nails and jewelry only complemented her outfit. She was right.

While she was a star trying to shine, he was a meteor trying not to crash into earth. 

“So what do you like then?”

She pointed to a small brown baked sweet treat with white frosting on top, and dried honey in the shape of a heart draped on it. “This is the only thing in here I made myself. Everything else really is just ripped out of a plastic wrap and put into an oven.”

He nodded, not even looking at the other options. “I’ll take it then, your…” He squinted his eyes and looked down at the lettering in front of the item. “…cinnamon roll.”

Y/N smiled at that. She didn’t know what drew her to him. He looked strangely familiar to her, the level of familiar of someone you met in a dream you only dreamed once. 

She took a pair of tongs and placed the cinnamon roll in a brown paper bag. No one ever bought the cinnamon rolls, too special of a taste and too sweet for most people. That’s why she loved them, and the overwhelming taste of hope that came with them. Hope that she carried within her every day she came to work, every time she cried herself to sleep because of her dream job being unavailable to her. Every morning she would come to work early, just to bake the sweet treat over and over again, in hopes of not taking it home with her again like the last day and the day before that. They were the only thing in this store that she wasn’t happy to be able to take home on Sundays.  

She typed something in the screen of the cash register, the imagine for the cinnamon rolls popping up, and selected it. 

“That would make 7000 won (5$). Cash or card?”

He reached into his back pocket, and placed a crisp ten-thousand won note on the counter.

She was already typing it in the register, when he took his bag from the countertop and just shook his head. 

“Keep the change.” He opened the bag and took a bite out of the roll, eyes widening briefly before looking at her. “It’s worth the money.”

With that, he turned around and exited the store, leaving behind a baffled young lady and way too much change.

Y/N looked down at the note and put it into the till. She took out the change, and carefully dropped it into the tip jar on top of the counter. Employees weren’t allowed to take the tips customers gave them home, instead having to put them in the tip jar to be divided under all employees every week. But since it was Sunday and she would be closing the shop, the jar was all hers.

She dropped on her chair she was sitting on earlier, her arms hanging still beside her. Her head felt like a void, empty and shouting simultaneously. 

The strange feeling inside of her lingered, the premonition of this not being the first time they met. Her mind couldn’t put a finger on where she could possibly know him from, and it killed her. 

She shook her head, and wet a rag before wiping down the countertop. 

She didn’t know he was watching her. 

She didn't know that he now had his eye on her.

Y/N didn’t believe in angels, especially not in guardian angels. 

She just didn't know yet, that she now had her very own, very special, guardian.

𓍯𓂃ᥫ᭡.

Thank you for reading! If you liked reading this little piece of fiction in any sense, I would be more than happy about a like, reblog, or a comment! I absolutely love this movie, and it’s a shame how they ended it. But I’m sure we will get a second part, with the way the last scene teased it. <3

Comment if you would like to be tagged in a potential part 2! Requests for this movie are open ۫ ꣑ৎ

Who wants a preview of part 2? Let me know here! .ᐟ>ᴗ<

What do you think will happen in ch.3? Vote here!

Jinu x pregnant!reader

tag list: @yoihoshi-maki @kristinthegeek @zozoparsnips @mackenzielaw15 @lunaria1 @blobs-away @thaliasnicket @bakugousimpofawif3 @yoongiprongs @franbowidk @lorain07 @jetblackw1ngs @thesimppotato11 @aubreeiscool @ivorria @iamatinydinosaur

⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨ ᰔ ୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹

[cressidagrey]

Love Letter

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Felicity Leong-Piastri (Original Character)

Summary: Other people write love letters, Felicity Piastri reengineers tire degradation. 

Notes: Big thanks to @llirawolf , who actually knows what she is talking about and is the genius behind the science. She said this science "was understandable and accurate enough for fic." (Also I am aware that this is not believable, but hey, let me have fun 😂

(divider thanks to @saradika-graphics )

By the time McLaren hit mid-season in 2024, Andrea Stella had become something of a veteran in the art of bracing for impact — the kind that came not from a crash, but from the Piastri household.

He had gotten used to it.

Oscar’s precision. His unnerving calm. The way he drove with the composure of a man triple his age and none of the ego.

Felicity, who wasn’t technically on the payroll, but might as well have had a desk in R&D. Who was so liked in the engineering department that Andrea had overheard an engineer asking Oscar like an overexcited puppy when his wife was going to come back and play with them. 

Felicity was always lingering at the edge of a race day.

Always watching. Always noticing.

And then there was Bee — small, serious, and so wildly intelligent it made his engineers nervous. She had literally seen an issue with their suspension during her first trip to the garage. Now, she asked about downforce balance mid-lunch and then drew airflow diagrams on her juice box.

Andrea had learned to expect brilliance from them.

But what Felicity handed him that morning wasn’t brilliance.

It was revolution.

It came in the form of a single-page drawing.

A3 paper. Hand-sketched. Neat annotations in clean block lettering.

She passed it over casually, like it was a grocery list. “Was thinking about deg last night. Couldn’t sleep. Just a theory. Don’t know if it’s actually useful, sorry.”

Andrea glanced at it.

Then really looked.

And stopped breathing.

At first glance, it looked like a cooling solution — rim cooling, a variation on brake duct design. Not uncommon. Not radical.

But then he saw it.

Phase. Change. Materials.

His eyes darted to the margin where she’d written:

PCM core set to activate at 276°C. Peak drawdown window ~30 seconds, reset threshold <210°C. Tapered air channel design for directional retention. Modeled after CPU heat-sink transfer.

Andrea looked up.

Felicity just shrugged. “Everyone’s been trying to brute-force cooling through airflow. I figured… maybe it’s not about keeping it cool. Maybe it’s about controlling the peak.”

It wasn’t theoretical.

It was elegant.

Andrea’s brain kicked into high gear. 

PCM — phase change materials — had been a whispered concept in F1 circles for years. The holy grail of thermal management. 

The idea that you could insert a material that would melt in response to a precise temperature range, absorbing energy as it changed state — holding a system in a stable thermal window. It worked in CPUs. Data centers. Rocketry.

But no one had ever made it viable in an F1 brake drum environment.

Not until now.

Not until this.

Not until it came from Oscar Piastri’s wife, at 2 a.m., in the quiet space between insomnia and motherhood.

Andrea blinked hard. “You know we’ve had engineers — PhDs — trying to crack this for years?”

She just shrugged. 

He had no words.

Just respect.

And the rising sense that something seismic had shifted.

He handed it straight to the sim team. They ran a closed simulation. Quietly. Then another. And another.

By the time they tested it under controlled parameters, the engineers were whispering about windowed degradation curves. About temperature floors. About thermal consistency that shouldn’t be possible.

Oscar was suddenly able to manage medium compounds like they were hard. The performance drop-off curve flattened — flattened. Andrea had never seen anything like it.

No magic bullet in F1 ever worked this fast.

But this?

This wasn’t a magic bullet.

It was physics. It was material science. It was control — without compromise.

They ran it again during a private test at Silverstone. And then — stealthily — implemented portions of the system into the race package.

By the time the 2025 season came around, Red Bull was accusing them of cheating. Mercedes was sulking. Ferrari was confused. 

The paddock wanted to know what the hell McLaren had done.

The answer?

Felicity Piastri.

When Andrea called her into his office, holding the latest race run data in one hand and a calculator in the other, she sat across from him sipping tea out of a mug with Bee’s name on it.

“You realize you’ve just solved one of the biggest unsolved problems in modern F1?” he said.

Felicity blinked. “I was just tired of watching Oscar hemorrhage tire life while driving perfectly.”

Andrea stared at her.

She added, a little awkwardly, “I didn’t… mean to change the whole season. I just wanted him to stop overcompensating for a thermal flaw no one was fixing.”

Andrea leaned back in his chair and said — for the first time in his career — “I am both terrified of and completely in awe of your entire family.”

Felicity just smiled and said, “Would you mind printing a copy of the new tire envelope profiles? Bee wants to compare the heatmaps to the old ones.”

Andrea buried his face in his hands. “Tell her to go easy on us.”

“I’ll try. No promises.”

They were rocket ships now. Every track. Every compound. Consistent, controlled, deadly fast.

And somewhere, deep in the McLaren server, the drawing still existed. In a scanned file. Named Piastri_Insomnia_Fix_v1.pdf

Andrea renamed it later that week.

"Found the Window."

Because that’s what it was.

A window — held open by a woman who thought differently. Who didn’t need the spotlight. Who just loved someone enough to stay up all night figuring out how to protect him from heat, chaos, and failure.

And somehow, she’d done the same for all of them.

***

Mark Webber had seen a lot in his career.

Title deciders. Broken bones. Politics dressed up as progress. He’d seen technical miracles and driver meltdowns and the rare, perfect moment when both came together and worked.

But he had never seen a technical revolution arrive folded in half on a single piece of A3 paper, annotated in gel pen and handed in like someone had just scribbled down the grocery list.

And he certainly hadn’t expected it to come from Felicity Piastri. Maybe he should have. 

He was standing trackside in China when Andrea Stella handed him the printout — not the PDF version with simulations, but the original. The drawing. The one that changed their 2025 season from promising to dominant.

“She gave me this on a Tuesday,” Andrea said, voice flat with disbelief. “Said it was just a thought. I’ve had people with entire departments fail to model this. She did it because she couldn’t sleep.”

Mark turned the page over once. Then again.

It was neat. Clean. Not showy.

Pressure curves, airflow vectors, the highlighted activation band of the phase change material she’d used to stabilize tire temp near the brake drum.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “She’s a genius.”

He knew that. He had been aware of it for years. But it was something else entirely to see it in action. 

Andrea didn’t argue. “She just… wanted to help Oscar.”

Mark stared at the drawing again.

That’s when it hit him.

This wasn’t a flex.

This wasn’t about glory. Or proving herself. Or showing up a paddock full of men with degrees and dynos.

It was a love letter.

Written in airflow.

Signed in melting point theory.

Stamped in the stable temperature range of a tire that could now go ten laps longer without falling off.

Felicity hadn’t just solved degradation.

She had — quietly, brilliantly — rewritten the way Oscar raced.

Because he was hers.

And this was what loving him looked like.

Not flowers. Not poems. Just… making the world easier for him. A little softer. A little kinder. A little less brutal at 300km/h.

Mark let out a slow breath.

“Do you think she knows what she did?” he asked.

Andrea shrugged. “I think she knows why she did it. That’s probably enough.”

Mark folded the paper again — carefully, reverently — and tucked it back into the folder.

And in that moment, he didn’t see the terrifying engineering breakthrough.

He just saw a woman who loved her husband enough to change the laws of tire life —So he wouldn’t have to carry the weight alone.

***

Oscar had just come back from a long run on used mediums when Andrea called him into the office.

Nothing dramatic — just a quiet, “Got a sec?” as Oscar peeled off his gloves and handed his helmet to a mechanic. The kind of thing that sounded normal. Routine. Like maybe they were going to go over sector data or tire drop-off or which curb had tried to kill him today.

So when Andrea closed the office door behind them and reached into his drawer without saying a word, Oscar raised an eyebrow.

Then Andrea handed him a sheet of paper.

A3. Slightly folded. Faint graphite smudges along the margin.

 The original one. Still folded along the crease Felicity had made when she handed it to Andrea like it wasn’t the single greatest thermal breakthrough in modern tire strategy.

Oscar took it automatically.

Looked down.

And stilled.

There were notes in clean block print. Equations. Angled airflow paths, subtle thermal gradients, annotations on phase change material melt points and rim temperature drawdown.

Oscar’s throat went dry. His eyes scanned the drawing again, heart starting to race—not from adrenaline, but from recognition.

He knew that handwriting.

It was so her. The tidy script. The neat arrows. The absence of drama.

Just a brilliant mind trying to fix something that made the person she loved suffer.

He’d seen it on post-it notes stuck to Bee’s whiteboard. On margin scribbles in books Felicity had left lying around. On every note she slipped into his suitcase before he went to a race….every note that he then slipped into his racing gloves. 

Oscar looked up, voice quieter than it should’ve been. “This is Felicity’s.”

Andrea nodded once. “She gave it to me three months ago. Said it was probably nothing. Just an idea she had when she couldn’t sleep.”

Oscar sat down.

Because suddenly, his knees weren’t quite up to the task.

He stared at the drawing like it might vanish.

This was it.

The fix. The reason their tires held. The reason he didn’t fall off in stint two. The reason strategy meetings had shifted from damage control to aggression. The reason the car felt like it trusted him back for the first time in forever.

He felt it like a punch to the chest.

“She… she did this?”

“She did,” Andrea said. “And she didn’t want credit. Said she just wanted you to stop overcompensating for bad thermal management. That you were too good to keep bleeding lap time for other people’s mistakes.”

Oscar swallowed hard. His hands were shaking.

He looked back down at the paper.

At the numbers.

The calculations.

Oscar turned the page over.

A post-it was pressed to the back, Andrea’s handwriting.

“From Mark: ‘This isn’t just engineering. This is her love letter to Oscar — making the world around him easier.’”

Oscar’s heart stopped.

He stared at the sentence for a long, long time.

He read it again. And again.

The words didn’t feel like compliments.

They felt like someone had taken a flashlight and pointed it directly into his chest — illuminating something he hadn’t dared to articulate, even to himself.

Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

The sketch. The concept. The whole damn thing.

Felicity hadn’t set out to change a season.

She’d just wanted him to stop hurting.

To stop watching his tires fall apart under perfect driving. To stop fighting physics he couldn’t control. To stop carrying all that frustration on his own.

She’d stayed up at 2 a.m. not because it was her job — but because it was his dream.

She had never once made him feel like he had to win for her.

But God, she made him believe he could.

He blinked hard.

Thought about the way she kissed his temple when he came home late. The way she labeled Bee’s lunchbox with thermal guidelines for optimum snack temperature. The way she never said I love you like a performance — only like a truth.

Then he looked up. “Mark… he really said that?”

Andrea’s voice gentled. “He did.”

Oscar stared at the page again.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Yeah. That’s her.”

And in his chest, where the engine noise usually lived — Where the pressure, the expectations, the sheer weight of competition settled — He felt something loosen.

Because winning was nice. The championship would be incredible.

But this?

Being loved like this?

That was better than anything he’d ever drive for.

***

The house was dark when he got home.

Not silent — not entirely. There was the low whir of the dishwasher. The cluck of a chicken outside, ruffling in its sleep. The soft creak of floorboards as he kicked his shoes off at the door and padded down the hall in his socks.

It was late. He hadn’t texted. He hadn’t needed to.

The bedroom door was open.

Bee was curled up in the middle of the bed like a starfish in mismatched pajamas, one hand still clutching the tail of her stuffed frog. Felicity was beside her, lying on top of the duvet, eyes closed, one arm slung across Bee’s little body like she was anchoring her in a dream.

Oscar stood in the doorway for a long time.

Just… watched them.

His wife and his daughter. One terrifying genius and one tiny one-in-training. Both of them unknowable and brilliant and his.

He swallowed around the knot in his throat and moved quietly to the other side of the bed, careful not to wake Bee as he lay down beside them.

Felicity stirred almost immediately, her breath catching as her body registered the warmth beside her.

Her eyes opened — drowsy, soft.

“Oz?” she murmured, her voice rough with sleep. “You’re home late.”

Oscar didn’t answer at first. Just slid his hand beneath hers and laced their fingers together. His thumb brushed over the back of her hand, slow and steady.

She didn’t push.

Didn’t sit up.

Didn’t ask.

Just waited.

And because she didn’t ask — because she already knew — he found his voice again.

“Mark saw the drawing,” he said, barely more than a whisper. “The one you gave Andrea.”

Felicity blinked slowly. “Oh.”

“He said it was a love letter. That you were making the world easier for me.”

She was still for a beat.

Then: “He’s not wrong.”

Oscar exhaled sharply. Pressed his forehead to her shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“I would’ve figured something out eventually.”

“I know.”

“But you did.”

She turned her head just enough to press a kiss to the crown of his hair.

Her voice was quieter than ever. “I’d do it again.”

Oscar’s breath hitched.

“I’d do it again tomorrow,” she said. “And the next day. And the day after that. If it meant you could breathe easier. If it meant you didn’t have to fight so hard just to keep pace with people who were working with better tools.”

He closed his eyes. Let the weight of her words settle over him like a blanket. Warm. Certain. Steady.

She ran her fingers through his curls once, twice.

And then she whispered: “You make the world easier for me, too. You just don’t notice it. You make it softer.”

Oscar kissed her shoulder. Didn’t move.

Didn’t need to.

Because she knew.

And he’d carry that with him — into every debrief, every qualifying lap, every moment on the podium.

This wasn’t just about racing.

This was home.

And it felt a hell of a lot like winning.

***

Lando found out in the most Lando way possible: completely by accident and one week too late.

He was in the simulator debrief when the topic of “thermal management integrity stability” came up — words that immediately made him want to die a little inside.

They were talking about their tire performance. Again.

Specifically, the fact that they could now absolutely cook it through mid-stint without falling off the cliff. And no one else could.

Lando was half paying attention — until one of the engineers muttered something about “F. Piastri’s material integration concept.”

Lando blinked.

“Sorry, whose what now?”

The room went quiet.

Andrea didn’t even look up from his screen. “Felicity. The drawing. You’ve seen it.”

“No, I have not seen it. Unless it was attached to a meme or came with a side of banana bread, I was not included.”

Will Joseph — Lando’s race engineer — slowly slid a printed diagram across the table.

Lando took one look.

Paused.

And said, “Wait. This is her?”

Andrea nodded without looking up. “Came up with it over insomnia. Gave it to me like it was a shopping list. It works.”

Lando stared at the airflow map, the PCM trigger temperatures, the annotated note that literally said ‘the goal is to stabilize the moment he usually starts slipping — give him room to breathe.’

He felt like someone had sucker-punched him with science and sentiment at the same time.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, sitting up straighter. “You’re telling me Felicity Piastri — as in, Oscar’s wife who wears motor oil like perfume and once fixed the coffee machine with a literal wrench — came up with the strategy that made our car an actual rocket ship?”

“Yes.”

“And it works.”

“Yes.”

“And she just gave it to you? No credit, no fuss, just… ‘here, I fixed the entire concept of high-deg tire strategy because I couldn’t sleep’?”

Andrea finally looked up. “Correct.”

Lando sat back, stunned.

He knew Felicity was scary smart. Knew she could rebuild a gearbox while calculating orbital velocity. Knew Oscar worshipped the ground she walked on and never made a big deal out of it because he didn’t need to.

But this?

This was something else.

“She didn’t do it for the team,” Lando said quietly, the realization hitting all at once. “She did it for him.”

Andrea didn’t say anything.

Didn’t have to.

Lando looked back down at the page — the margins, the equations, the gentle note that said “he’s too good to be held back by bad thermal behavior.”

And he felt it in his chest — that familiar ache.

Because that wasn’t engineering.

That was love.

The quiet kind.

The kind that doesn’t shout or show off.

The kind that stays up at 2 a.m. fixing something no one else thought could be fixed — just so the person you love can breathe easier.

So he doesn’t have to carry it all alone.

So he can go faster, safer, freer.

It was a love letter.

Not in flowers or poems.

In airflow and melting points.

Lando leaned back in his chair and exhaled. “Jesus Christ. She built him a better world.”

Will snorted. “She rebuilt tire degradation, but sure, let’s make it poetic.”

Lando didn’t even blink. “It is poetic. He’s the quiet guy. And she’s the quieter genius who knows exactly where he hurts and rewrites the laws of physics to help him anyway.”

Andrea tilted his head. “You’re getting sentimental again.”

“I’m right,” Lando shot back, still staring at the page. “He’ll win the title because she didn’t want him to bleed for it.”

He tapped the margin with his knuckle. “This is the kind of love that never asks for a podium. Just builds the car to get him there.”

And for once — no one had a comeback.

Because they all knew it was true.

***

They were in the driver’s lounge two days later, when Lando struck.

He’d been waiting for the perfect moment.

And Oscar, blissfully unaware, had just taken a bite of his protein bar like he wasn’t about to get emotionally roasted.

Lando stretched out across the sofa like a cat in a sunbeam and said, far too casually, “So… what’s it like being loved so much your wife reinvented tire degradation for you?”

Oscar blinked mid-chew. “…Sorry?”

Lando grinned. “Just curious. I mean, some of us get love letters or handmade birthday cakes. You? You get full-phase material integration strategies and temperature-controlled brake ducting. Romantic stuff.”

Oscar groaned, immediately regretting not hiding in the sim room instead. “Lando.”

“I’m serious,” Lando said, sitting up now, fully energized. “Felicity took one look at your stint data and said, ‘this man needs help. Let me just rewrite thermodynamics real quick.’”

Oscar rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t—”

“No, no,” Lando cut in. “Don’t you dare downplay this. The rest of us? We have to manage deg. You? You have a thermodynamic guardian angel in your marriage bed.”

Oscar flushed, the tips of his ears visibly pink. “She had a theory. That’s all.”

“‘Just a theory,’” Lando mimicked, using air quotes. “‘Just a casual bedtime sketch that turned McLaren into the most stable tire platform on the grid.’ My God, Oscar. She loves you so much it’s physically measurable.”

Oscar sank lower in his seat, muttering, “You’re insufferable.”

“You’re married to the Nikola Tesla of tire temp control. I deserve to be insufferable.”

“Lando—”

“She built us a better car because she hated watching you suffer.” Lando flopped dramatically. “Imagine. Being loved with that level of efficiency. Can you even comprehend?”

Oscar sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “She’s just… always been smarter than all of us.”

Lando stopped mid-rant.

And smiled, softer this time. “Yeah. I know.”

There was a long pause.

Then Lando added, “Anyway. If she ever wants to fix my brakes, tell her I’m emotionally available.”

Oscar snorted. “Absolutely not.”

“What about Bee? Can she be bribed with juice boxes and data sets?”

Oscar shook his head, laughing now. “She’s already running her own simulations. She’s got standards.”

Lando grinned. “Just like her mum.”

Oscar looked down at the McLaren logo on his hoodie — the one Felicity stole all the time — and felt something warm settle in his chest.

He didn’t say anything else.

He didn’t need to.

But when he went home that night, he kissed Felicity extra softly — and whispered thank you against her temple like a promise.

And Felicity?

She just smiled, wiped her grease-smudged fingers on her jeans, and said, “Don’t thank me yet. Bee thinks we can improve the airflow angle by three degrees.”

Because love — in their house — was always a work in progress.

And always worth the effort.

***

[chongoblog]

WHY THEY PUT THE COW IN MARIO KART WORLD

I’m sure many people have put this together at this point, but I figured out why there are so many weird characters in MKW, and I think it speaks to why I love this game

So let’s say you’re a game designer, and you’re coming up with ideas for items that play into the whole “World” theme and work well with the new game design philosophies of an open world Mario Kart. Eventually, after a lot of back and forth, theres one idea on the table that you all feel like could be fun: Kamek!

After all, he’s been increasing in relevancy recently as a sort of right-hand man for Bowser, and in his very first appearances, he was using his magic to transform everything into Bad Guys for you to fight. So what if using Kamek spawned a bunch of baddies to be obstacles? Fun idea! And similarly to how characters can change their costume depending on where they are on the map…what if the enemies that spawn vary depending on where you are when you spawn Kamek? REALLY fun idea.

But then someone asks the question. Did you say “he was using his magic to transform….everything…into Bad Guys”? Like…even other racers?

Now THATS a fun idea.

But then you run into the problem of scope creep. Yes, this is a fun idea. But it’s a logistical nightmare! You can’t just put a model with a couple animations in as a racer and call it a day. When you’re making a game, ESPECIALLY a game with as much in it as this, you NEED to account for edge cases. So let’s say you get turned into a bat, or a little ghost, or a goknba (somehow) and then you get hit by an item? Well okay, you’ll need an animation for that. How about throwing an item? Getting hit by lightning? Honking your horn? Turning left and right? Backing up? Crossing the finish line and winning? Crossing the finish line and losing? Hell, did you know that in this game, you have a special animation for throwing a blue shell?

And you want to just make a new racer model, complete with a full set of animations, most of which no one will EVER see, just to allow Kamek to be as fun as it can be? And this is gonna be for all sorts of weird characters, a lot of which being deep cuts since we’re putting enemies from across the Mario franchise. Like, we’re talking Cataquacks, Cheep Cheeps, Dolphins, Para-BiddyBuds, COWS of all things.

Well, fortunately they were working on the launch title for the new system from the biggest gaming company on earth, so while a lot of companies couldn’t afford the time and the polish to make all these different characters (and even those that could would see all that work as not remotely worth the time put into it) instead Mario Kart World said “well who said that no one’s gonna see those animations?” And they put them in the roster for you to play as. Because if you wanna play Mario Kart as a cow, then there shouldn’t be anything stopping you

[sare-nim]

THE SUN IN THE DARK²

Previous--->Next

The story continues smoothly. You let the group make the foolish decision to accept ‘Apple Fairy Cookie’ into the group and follow her.

Bla-bla-bla it all went as planned until now. It's starting to bore you. Why must you sit and watch them be stupidly naïve again?

Then came the shadow milk disguised as a shepherd scene. You stayed silent but continued hearing the nonsense the blue cookie was saying.

“Because lying is fun!” The cookie finally stated just like the dialog you had read in this episode.

You sighed fondly at the memory you didn't pay attention to the other cookies instead you stated. “That's true, lying can be fun.”

You responded honestly to 'Young' Cookie. The other cookies now look at you. Some of their gazes are confused, some are amused, and one is intrigued.

You closed your eyes trying to block their gazes out of your mind. The corners of your lips twitch as you held back a smile before stating

“However the punishment for such a sin isn't light is it young shepherd? Were you locked away by your caretakers as punishment?”

You opened your eyes to stare into the ‘young’ cookies eyes who narrows them down at the words ‘locked’. You couldn't help but see a hint of amusement in those eyes of his.

“That's right! But their mindless adults who don't like having fun!” The shepherd stated while pouting, making himself look adorable.

You ignored his show to instead look at Pure Vanilla Cookie who has been looking at you. You can't help but raise an eyebrow at his gaze In response he smiled softly like always. He raised his hand to place it on your shoulder.

“No need to be so harsh my dear friend. Young cookies are always a bit mischievous but with age comes maturity.” He stated the words sound as soft and as sweet as the earth bread's sugary clouds.

The sweetness was too strong for you. You couldn't help but soften your gaze at the ancient. Your soul is too weak to resist melting under his sweet words and voice. So innocent—it is sad that he will be broken by Shadow Milk Cookie soon.

You turned your gaze to the gang of young cookies who had shuffled behind you sensing an uneasy atmosphere. They weren't stupid well their bodies aren't stupid they themselves—need working on. You know they sense danger more easily than the ancient. Their bodies probably felt the dark whispers of deceit pouring out of the 'young' cookie just like the deceit Apple Fairy Cookie has been pouring out since we met her.

They need to hide their auras better. You can sense their dark-filled magic easily. You wonder why Pure Vanilla Cookie hadn't noticed maybe he was used to this sort of magic? You're unsure and because of it, you stayed silent letting the scene play out like it was meant to be before your interruption. While you thought.

That night you walked around the area just patrolling so no cakehound or other enemies would attack waking up the others for a fight. They need their sleep.

Not like you need sleep anyways. Somehow you're stuck in your original world's timeline when it comes to sleeping and aging. Very useful for long traveling but also when your time to sleep comes you basically enter a coma by Cookie standers sleeping for days until your systems says you had enough rest.

You walk and walk through the darkness. Your eyes carefully scanning the area around you. A sound comes from the right, a soft sound that only a sheep can create. It's a trap. That's what your mind tells you immediately but you still head towards the sound boredly.

As you approached where the herd of sheep where located you couldn't help but sigh. It's a boring sight truly one you have seen a lot in the past—sadly, you weren't hungry. These sheep would be a great sugary feast.

You felt a sheep rub against your leg. You looked down taking in the sheep's appearance. It's mismatched eyes looking up at you as it innocently rubs against your leg.

You stayed silent looking down at the sheep before letting your cookie body drop on the ground landing on your behind. You looked away from the obviously disguised shadow milk cookie sheep. To pay attention to a wolf combined sheep that has approached you. Its cunning eyes look up at you.

You glanced back at the sheep that was still looking up at you with a curious gaze. You stretched your hand taking the sheep's head in your hand holding the animal by its jaw.

“What a nice meal you would make.” You said with a smile appearing on your face. The sheep flinched at your words seemingly in confusion at the unexpected words. Then it tilted its head on the side in almost amusement, recovering fast from the shock.

“But Pure Vanilla Cookies wouldn't like an innocent sheep to be hurt.” You boredly stated while you let go of the sheep's head to instead grab the wolf sheep's head.

“However I haven't tasted one of you yet.” You commented while turning to look at the sheep. Who has laid down on the grass covered ground, its eyes studying your form and expression.

“Should I eat its heart first? For daring to feel darkness? or Should I eat its tongue first that it uses to spread lies?”

You smiled softly while you took in his expression the way the mismatched eyes narrowed. The sheep form gives away no emotion but you can tell he has gotten the message—well you hoped he did.

“Sheep…are you too hiding a wolf under your fur?” You questioned shamelessly wanting to poke the cookie disguised sheep's act more.

The sheep kept looking up at you, its eyes looking into yours. You let go of the wolf sheep mix to instead push yourself up from the ground.

You dusted your clothes while walking away from the area—you turned around before fully leaving the area, the sheep's eyes still following you; its body hasn't even shifted away from the position.

“See you in the sprite of knowledge…Sage of truth.” You blankly stated your eyes not bothering to take in his expression. You resume walking, not giving time for this play any longer.

You returned to the group. Most of them were sleeping, the fire spreading warmth for all of them to take an enjoyable sleep . Your eyes move to the only awakened cookie that is a very shaken up Pure Vanilla Cookie who is holding his head.

The staff's eye looking at your approaching figure. Pure Vanilla Cookie tilted his head back to look up at your approaching figure, his eyes taking your form. “Y/N cookie?...”

He questioned softly a shaky breath followed after his words giving away his shaken up state. He pulls his hands away from his head even though he didn't want to. He raised his hands and fixed his hair, smoothing the strands up.

He was going to put that nice act up so you wouldn't worry you guessed—however you silently approached him before he could.

You raised your hand only to pat his head making him flinch. His eyes widening while looking up at you with confusion. His eyelashes fluttered slightly—his lips parted, letting out a shaky breath.

You hummed softly, retracting your hand from his silky pale strands. You sit next to him, your eyes looking at him without pity or confusion instead with understanding.

“Hm…sleep I'm keeping watch.” You responded to his call leaning back you rested your back on the tree behind you two.

His breath hitched—his eyes shone from excitement? You think so but why would he be excited? Or wait was it sadness? You weren't sure so you brushed the thoughts away at least he doesn't look like a kicked puppy that was left in the rain anymore.

You felt him lean closer to you hiding his face in your neck while his shaky breaths hit your neck. This is more dramatic than you remember–You didn't move instead you stayed letting the cookie cling onto you.

“Thank you….” He softly whispered his words shaky, his mind overwhelmed with the past events; everything seems to have taken a toll on him. He just hid it well.

You hummed in response there's no need for words right now. He just seems to desire the warmth of knowing someone is here next to him. That he isn't alone.

—————————

Divider made by---> kisses4thekuchikis

[maspers]

Sarene: Well, my husband's apparently dead, so I have nothing to do. Time to troll people in power.  Ashe: Please don't troll the King, my lady.  Sarene: Of course not.  Ashe: Oh thank goodness Sarene: That would be too easy. Now, that religious crusader with the armor, psychopathic sidekick, and massive army of priests… he might be fun to play with Ashe: Oh sweet merciful Domi why *meanwhile in zombieland* Raoden: I am going to cure everyone's depression using shoes and history books Galladon: Pretty sure that hasn't ever worked Raoden: Of course it hasn't worked, it hasn't been done by ME yet. 

I love Elantris so much. The rest of the Cosmere gives us complex backstories and traumas seasoned with snark and philosophy and epic magic systems. Elantris is just two separated soulmates who decided to punch fate in the face because they felt like it. Simple, but delicious.

[uhhhj13iguess]

prepare yourself

avenger!peter parker x avenger! reader

summary: peter loses you on a mission, and it's worse than he could've imagined

wc: 3.5k

cw: body gore! mdni! i wanted to experiment with writing body horror, so it gets very graphic when detailing injuries/mutilation. there's no description of the actual events happening, just a lot of wording around the body designed to hopefully make you feel a bit squeamish!

if anyone wants, i'd love to do a part two with the medical-side juxtaposition as well, and give a sweet lil peter ending to turn this angst into fluff i fucking did and forgot to tag it! here it is!

masterlist and taglist!

peter shot one last web towards the wall, concluding his mural of men webbed along the hallway outside the security room. he gave himself a proud smile, admiring his work.

"you're telling me these guys are hydra? for a decades-long terrorist organization, they sure don't know how to train their front line very well."

you snickered beside him, sliding another bloodied man along the tiled floor to where you'd piled the others.

"i don't get why tony has us on security watch, this is light work. why even have me train under nat if i can't use my skills in practice? i wanna get my hands dirty, i wanna know what they aren't telling us." you kicked the foot of the man below you, turning to peter and giving him a frown. he offered you a knowing smile in return.

"yeah, i get what you mean. come on, lets just get in there and disable the security measures. then we can go back to the jet and try that chocolate i bought at the sokovian 7-eleven."

you grinned at him, heart swelling at the thought of some alone time with peter before the rest of the team was done.

"alright. you head in, i'm going to do one more sweep of the first floor while you're in there."

peter felt his senses go off for a second, a weird feeling in his chest. "i don't know, maybe we shouldn't split up."

you gave him a look. "what, you don't think i can handle myself? come on, you know we've cleared this floor already. plus, you've got like, three buttons to hit and we're home free, it won't be that long."

"yeah, but—"

"but nothing, spidey. come on, work your tech magic and meet me out here."

he let out a breath, shaking off whatever bad feeling was sitting in his stomach. "yeah, you're probably right. one sec,"

peter ducked into the security room, a dissonant beep ringing through the air as he held the keycard to the lock. the light flashed green and let him in. he laughed, "thanks bad guys!"

he heard you chuckle from down the hall as he made his way into the room, a smile on his face. he would never admit it to you, but he liked that you two were handed the short stick on missions. you were in and out, leaving time alone before the rest of the team came back, and he relished those moments more than any chance of glory.

he reached the switchboard, glancing at the monitors as he saw the rest of the team on the cameras making their rounds on various floors. "god we're so badass."

(y/n) was right: it was a matter of exactly three commands before he had the systems disabled. he heard tony through his comms,

"thanks, kid. now, do us all a favor and get yourself to the jet. this shouldn't take long."

peter smiled to himself, a feeling of accomplishment coursing through him. did he press literally there buttons? yes. but he pressed three buttons as an avenger. man, that would never grow old.

he heard commotion from down the hall and called out towards you. "alright (y/n), we've had our fun. stop messing with them and let's fuck up some chocolate, shall we?"

he was met with silence, his chest feeling tight again. "(y/n)?"

he took one step out of the room before his head was met with a metal fist, the CRACK of his own skull ringing through his ears before he lost consciousness.

tony jerked back as his hand repulsor let out a blast, sending the guy on steve's back to the ground with a heavy thud.

"mr. stark, both peter and (y/n) have gone unconscious." FRIDAY echoed through the suit. his blood ran cold.

"what?"

"both of them are in the building and their vitals are stable, however, they've both just lost consciousness within one minute of each other."

he felt his breathing pick up, his heartbeat commanding in his chest. he looked to steve and nat. "you guys good?"

nat threw a nasty headbutt, sending the agent in front of her collapsing to the ground. "go, tony."

he flew out without another word.

"FRIDAY, get me their most recent location."

"head to the security room, sir. take a left now."

tony reached the room in a matter of a minute, missiles out and on guard. he announced himself before storming the room, standing down once met with peter on the ground, no one else around him. he rushed out of his suit and to his side, shaking the boy relentlessly.

"kid, come on. wake up."

a few more desperate shakes and peter was gasping for air, fists flying and ready to fight.

"woah woah woah, hey— you're alright, you're okay. same sides, just me."

peter stalled his movements, taking a deep breath and allowing himself to grab ahold of his surroundings. he sat up slowly before immediately regretting it. man, did his head hurt.

"kid, you alright? you're bleeding. take of the mask, i need to see it." tony reached towards him, only to be swatted at.

"mr. stark, someone'll see!"

"kid, the floor is clear. i'm pretty sure you're responsible for that. jesus, how hard did you hit your head?" he pressed the spider emblem on peter's chest, revealing his blood-stained curls.

"pete, what the hell happened? for fucks sake, we need to get you out of here. FRIDAY, admister morphine."

"what? no, mr. stark don't— OW! mr. stark, what the hell??"

"kid, you're going to thank me in ten minutes. where's (y/n)?"

peter felt his mouth go dry. "w-what do you mean 'where's (y/n)''?"

tony's face fell. "shit. okay kid, let's get you to the jet. sam?" he called into his comms.

"yeah tony, what's up?"

"get down here, i need you to get eyes on (y/n)."

peter shot up instantly, his mask climbing back up his face. "no, mr. stark, really. i'm fine. i can feel it healing already, honest. i have to find (y/n)."

"we aren't having a discussion on this."

"you're right, we're not."

peter took off, flying down the hallway and out of sight before tony could even get back in his suit.

"karen, show me heat signatures."

the team searched for a while, leaving no one in their way untouched. the fight to find you was growing tireless, and the more time that passed without a trace of you led to more panic spreading amongst the team — peter worst of all.

he'd grown feral in his search for you, bloodying any body he encountered.

"kid, we should head back to the jet. we need to gameplan this." tony rang through his suit.

"no. mr stark, her tracker is still in the compound and she's close enough to read vitals on."

"pete, we—"

"she's in pain, mr. stark. i'm not leaving this building without her."

peter continued to search for hours, detailing every single room in the building. he spent the most time in the room your tracker had led him to, but helpless as he couldn't find you anywhere nearby. he had screamed your name for the majority of the search, his throat raw as his own healing couldn't even keep up with his efforts. he felt the blood warm on the back of his throat, accompanying the warm flood of tears down his cheeks.

"this is all my fault." he let out a horse whimper, bouncing his head up against the brick wall in front of him.

he felt hopeless. he felt like the world was crashing around him, a wretched feeling in his chest ripping him apart from the inside. this was all his fault, he didn't—

the bricks against his forehead ground against one another before shifting backwards, causing peter to jerk his head up. he stared wide eyed to a portion of the wall having fallen back as though on hinges, a long hallway now standing in front of him.

"a secret door. you're kidding." he breathed to himself. "mr. stark?"

"yeah, kid?" tony rang through.

"i found a door hidden in the wall right where (y/n)'s location is. i'm going in."

"i'll be there in 30 seconds."

peter sighed to himself before stepping his foot over the threshold and down the concrete-lined hallway.

"this would've been way cooler 5 hours ago."

tony landed in the room, eyes on the hole in the wall as he made his way down. he spotted peter ahead of him, not quite to the room at the other end.

"mr. stark, i have (y/n)'s heat signature in the room about twenty yards ahead. she's alive, but her vital signs are unstable. i'll prepare the jet for medical intervention." FRIDAY alerted.

tony gave a deep sigh as he approached peter, a hand falling on his chest and preventing him from walking any further.

"mr. stark, what are you— we have to go, sir!"

"kid, just wait a second. i need you to be prepared for anything, okay? they had (y/n) for almost five hours, and you know what we came here for originally. just, prepare yourself."

peter scowled, a look of of uncertainty overtaking his features as though he was at war with himself. he met tony's gaze. "this is all my fault."

"hey, pete. you know that's not true. you're lucky we aren't finding you in this room too."

peter took a shakey inhale, turning back to the opening of the cold room before them. "i'll feel lucky when i have her out of here."

and with that, peter ran. he navigated the room, desperately following your heat signature as tony focused on the agents and scientists in the room. he hoped peter was entirely focused on getting to you because he sure as hell wasn't following the "no-kill" rule this time around.

with everyone else taken care of, peter ran to the other end of the room where karen had traced you. and while tony had done his best, there was nothing peter could've done to prepare himself for what he saw.

you were on the concrete floor, clothes ripped and shivering from the frigid temperature of the room. your eyes were closed as you flinched from the noises around you, but it wasn't your demeanor that stopped him dead in his tracks.

there you laid, at complete mercy of those around you. thick tubes entered your body through your arms and chest, a viscous, black sludge coursing into you. it leaked out around the edges, your torn skin wet from not only the liquid but from the amount of blood lost as well.

the tubes protruded two from each forearm and one on either side of your collarbones, each breath stretching the skin around them and causing more tearing on your chest. peter could see the outline of the tubing in your arms, your skin bulging as the tubes fished themselves up to your biceps. the sight made him lightheaded, beginning to panic as he fought to believe what his eyes were showing him.

the scent of everything brought tears to his eyes, a sickly sweet smell in the air as your body fought hard to reject everything that was happening. it was foul, a putrid scent similar to that of rotten fruit flooding his nose and raising bile in his throat. had it been from the stench alone, peter would've thought you'd been dead for hours.

he took a step closer to you and there was a crunch underneath his right foot. he lifted it and looked down, confusion coating his features. and then, there was nothing but terror.

he leaned down to pick up a tooth, skimming the area to notice another few molars scattered around your limp body. his eyes met with the bloodied pair of pillars on the ground, giving new and nightmarish reasoning to your blood-soaked mouth. peter looked back up to you and felt his knees give out.

he crawled closer, not daring to touch you to make anything worse. now, he got a better look at your face, and he almost wished he hadn't.

blood pooled down your chin and dripped onto your chest, notably from the missing teeth and whatever else they'd done to you that peter couldn't see evidence of. you let out a cough, but it came out more as a gag, blood filling your mouth at a higher rate than your body could handle. you choked, new waves of red liquid spilling from your lips and splattering across your torso as you fought to breathe.

somehow it wasn't your mouth that made peter feel faint, however. it was your eyes.

your eyelids had been crudely sewn shut, crusted over and bloody. your soft lids were torn to shreds, the flesh ripped raw — no doubt from unconscious efforts to open your eyes.

you let out a ragged breath. "hello? w-who's there?"

peter watched your eyes move underneath the lids frantically, the movement only proving his assumption correct as he watched the skin pull against the thread, flesh tearing apart at the struggle.

"hey hey hey, stop moving, please. calm down, it's just me. it's peter,"

he couldn't help the quiver in his voice, his body betraying him as tears flooded down his cheeks under the mask.

"i'm going to get you out of here, okay? i-i just need you to trust me, okay? i'm gonna get you out of here, i promise."

you nodded, the minimal movement enough to elicit a sharp cry from deep in your throat. peter winced, placing a hand on your head and running his fingers through your hair, careful not to get too close to your eyes.

"pete, i-i, please, i don't..."

karen's voice pierced through his mask, drowing out your pleas. "peter, we're losing her. you need to get her to the jet immediately."

he couldn't breathe. his vision was going dark around the edges, panic overtaking him as his eyes racked over your body, desperately hoping this was all just a horrible nightmare. at some point, the rest of the team had joined in on the fight, the sounds of gunshots and violence fading to the background as a ringing pierced his ears. he didn't know what to do, he didn't—

"p-peter? are you still there?" your trembling voice drew him out of his haze. he watched again as you fought to open your eyes, face controting in pain as you pulled against the thread. he grabbed your hand in his, giving it the faintest squeeze.

"hey, hey i'm sorry, i'm right here. please stop moving your eyes, try to relax them for me. i'm so sorry, (y/n), i'm so sorry." the last part a whisper.

you turned your head towards his voice, tears slipping through the loops in the thread. it rewet the blood crusted around your eyes, the tears running down your cheeks a pinkish-red.

"they told me i saw too much."

peter felt his stomach turn at your words, intrusive thoughts of them holding you down and stitching your eyes shut plaguing his mind.

"i'm so sorry, i...

"peter, you need to act quickly. start by removing the tubes from her arms." karen rang through his suit again.

he shook off the thought, bringing his attention back to you. "i need to get these tubes out, okay?"

you choked out an "okay", more blood spilling from your lips as you spoke.

"don't talk, okay? i'm going to get you out of here. just stay awake for me, please. i'm just gonna..." he placed his hand on one of the tubes, nauseous at their size in his hand.

he held tight, the movement alone from his grasp being enough to earn a whine from you, incoherent pleas to stop escaping your lips.

he felt panic bubble in his throat again. "karen, please. how do i do this, i... i don't... i don't know what i'm doing."

"it doesn't seem as though the tubes in her arms are intertwined with anything. the best course of action may be to pull as quickly as possible,"

peter could taste the bile in the back of his mouth.

"the tubing is about two feet long, peter. you're going to want to pull quickly and pull a lot further out than you think."

he took a deep breath, summoning all the willpower he had left. "okay, i'm going to take these out, alright? i need you to brave for me, this isn't going to feel great."

you choked out another "okay" as peter tightened his grasp on the tubing. he gave himself a mental countdown, closing his eyes and pulling as hard and as quickly as he could.

the sounds that filled his ears made him wish to never hear again. you let out a blood-curdling scream that forced an echo through the concrete room, the rasp in your voice telling peter you'd been crying out like this for hours. it broke his heart to hear you in so much pain, but somehow your deafening anguish wasn't the worst part.

he could hear as the tubing left your body. the squelching noises of the plastic running through your flesh burned to his memory, one he knew would haunt him at night. you let out another roar as the tubing left your body and peter opened his eyes, immediately looking at the now-open wound in your forearm. he no longer had to worry about the noises haunting him.

the tubing had left a gaping hole in your arm, a dark red mixture of various liquids splattering out of you. he was quick to throw a web on it, stopping the flow for now. he looked at you, tears blurring his vision.

"i'm sorry," he cried, out, nearly choking on his own sobs. "i need to keep going, i'm so sorry."

he grabbed the next one, wasting no time pulling as hard as he could. this time, however, he made the mistake of keeping his eyes open. he watched as the tubing moved from under your skin as though a snake was slithering inside of you, the bulging in your arms pulsing and raising as peter moved. the tubing hit the ground with a thud, and the next thing you could hear was peter dry heaving.

he continued with the other arm, apologies on his lips as though he was pleading for his own life. they were drowned out by your screams, the rasp in your tone growing stronger each time as you lost your ability to speak. you could feel your throat ripping apart as you cried, even more blood running down to your stomach than before. you heard the sounds of peter's webshooters and felt two more cool sensations on your left arm.

"okay, we just need to get the ones in your chest, okay? we're almost done, (y/n), i promise,"

he took a step back to examine the two tubes left before a voice cut through his ears.

"peter, you can't pull on these two, they're too close to her heart. you're going to need to sever them and leave them in so they can be taken out surgically."

the thought brought another gag to his throat. he nodded silently, reaching down to the boot on your left foot where he knew you always had a back up dagger hidden. he let out a sigh of relief as he felt the metal against his masked fingers, pulling out the knife and bringing it towards your chest. he noticed as your ragged breathing picked up.

"peter? w-what are you doing with that? what's going on, please?"

"it's okay. i have to leave these ones in here, okay? i'm going to cut them and then we're going to go," he held a firm hand on one of the tubes.

"you're going to feel some pressure, okay? you're going to feel me cutting it, and it's going—"

"—peter, she's losing consciousness. you need to make the cuts now."

"okay! okay, i— fuck, okay."

peter began to saw at the tubing, the back-and-forth movement ripping at the skin around the edges. it pulled, blood and dark liquid splashing out on your bare clavicle and turning everything he saw red. he braced for your scream, but felt even more panicked when he didn't hear one.

"hey hey, hey please no. please, stay with me, please i'm trying. just please stay alive."

he finished off the final tube, again using his webbing to seal the open ends and prevent anything else from going in (or coming out). he wrapped his arms around your limp frame, beginning to lift you. his whole body shook, the weight of the situation sitting on him like nothing he'd ever felt before. he let out a cry that hurt his chest, using everything he had left to get back to his feet.

he had you. he had you, and everything was going to be fine, he just needed to—

"kid, grab on!" tony yelled as he flew past, signaling peter to web himself onto his suit. he did so, holding you tight in his arms as tony flew them outside and towards the jet.

they landed outside, his arms shaking violently as he rushed you over to bruce who was waiting at the glider entrance.

"please, help her. please, you have to help her."

[rpgsandbox]

I drafted a legal argument against Wizards of the Coast - and you can too!

WotC is trying to pull off a licensing clawback just two years after the OGL Debacle, and I figured out how to punch back.

If you've played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you've probably heard of the legendary "Deck of Many Things" – one of the game's most iconic magical items. It’s a lot of fun, and it has always been something associated with brand-name Dungeons and Dragons.

This article is about the legal usage of “Deck of Many Things,” and about how Wizards of the Coast seems to be trying to take it back in 2025 after giving it to the community in 2023. And it’s about how you can hit them where it hurts.

The History of the Deck

The "Deck of Many Things" has been a staple of D&D since the earliest days of the game. It's been included in every edition and is as much a part of D&D lore as dragons themselves. For years, this term was effectively the property of TSR and then Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro.

But something important happened in January 2023. After the massive backlash to their proposed OGL changes, Wizards of the Coast – through Executive Producer Kyle Brink – announced that they would be releasing the Systems Reference Document version 5.1 under a Creative Commons license:

Kyle’s announcement goes on to say: “This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.”

This was huge news! For those who don't know, releasing something under Creative Commons essentially means giving it to the public with very minimal restrictions. In this case, they used the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows anyone to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially – as long as appropriate credit is given.

The SRD 5.1 document, which spans hundreds of pages, explicitly includes "Deck of Many Things" on page 216, along with a full description of what it is and how it works. By releasing this under CC 4.0, Wizards effectively released this term into the public domain, allowing anyone to use it in their own works.

The gaming community praised this move as a step toward rebuilding trust after the OGL debacle. It seemed like Wizards had learned their lesson and was committed to supporting the community that had grown around their game.

The Betrayal

Fast forward to April 2025. WotC announced that they were revising their SRD 5.1 with a new and improved SRD versioned 5.2. For 5.2 they listed a bunch of milquetoast fantasy terms that I’m sure they’re very proud of, and kind of squeeze in a couple of footnotes. Those footnotes say that they’re going to be clawing back the term “Deck of Many Things,” as well as “Orb of Dragonkind.”

Well lo and behold, on the USPTO’s trademark search database, Deck of Many Things is in fact a pending word mark, with the latest application updated in April of 2025.

The serial number is 97260475, and you can look it up yourself on the USPTO website. This is what it looks like:

So here’s the problem. This application effectively attempts to claim exclusive rights to a term that Wizards had already released under Creative Commons just two years earlier.

Why They Can’t Do This

So why can't Wizards of the Coast trademark "Deck of Many Things" now? Let me break it down:

The Creative Commons 4.0 license they chose is explicitly IRREVOCABLE. Here's what the license actually says in Section 2(a)(1):

"The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material."

That means once Kyle Brink proudly published the SRD 5.1 under this license on that fateful day in January of 2023, they could never take any of it back. The license explicitly prohibits imposing "additional or different terms or conditions" on the licensed material.

Attempting to register a trademark on material you've already licensed to the public represents an attempt to impose additional restrictions on that material, a violation of a term of the Creative Commons 4.0 license. Specifically it is a violation of Section 2(a)(5):

“No downstream restrictions. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material.”

My Attempt to Challenge the Trademark

When I discovered this trademark application, thanks to Dark Kelsey, I decided to take action. The USPTO has a process called a "Letter of Protest" that allows anyone to submit evidence showing why a trademark shouldn't be granted.

I drafted a carefully formatted Letter of Protest following all the USPTO guidelines. My evidence was straightforward:

The official announcement of SRD 5.1 being published under Creative Commons

A copy of page 216 through 218 from SRD 5.1 showing "Deck of Many Things"

The full text of the Creative Commons 4.0 license highlighting its irrevocability, etc.

I TRIED to submit this through the USPTO's electronic filing system, confident that the evidence was clear and compelling.

The Setback

Unfortunately, when I tried to submit the Letter of Protest, I received this error message:

"This form cannot be submitted because it has been more than 30 days from the date the application published in the Official Gazette."

I had missed the narrow window to submit a Letter of Protest. The USPTO only allows these submissions either before publication or within 30 days after publication in their Official Gazette. By the time I discovered the application, this deadline had already passed.

This was frustrating, but it doesn't mean the fight is over.

The Path Forward

If the USPTO does grant this trademark – which they shouldn't if they're properly interpreting the prior Creative Commons licensing– there's still another option: filing a Petition for Cancellation with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

A cancellation petition allows anyone who believes they would be damaged by a trademark registration to challenge it even after it's been granted. The filing fee is $600, and the process typically takes about three years.

For this specific case, the grounds would be:

The mark doesn't function as a trademark because it was published under an irrevocable Creative Commons license

The applicant's actions in seeking the trademark contradict their prior grant of rights

The process is more involved than a Letter of Protest, but it's completely doable even without an attorney. The TTAB provides clear guidelines, and everything can be filed electronically through their online system.

Conclusion

What Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are trying to do here is repugnant but not surprising. They're attempting to double back on a license they've already granted – something they've developed a pattern of doing every couple of years now.

First it was the OGL controversy, where they tried to revoke a 23-year-old license. The community pushed back and won. Now they're pursuing trademark terms they explicitly released under Creative Commons, trying to AMEND a creative commons license that they just published (5.2 amending 5.1), perhaps hoping no one would notice or care.

This is more than just a legal technicality – it's about trust. When a company publicly garners praise for licensing away intellectual property, only to sneakily try to reclaim it later, they're betraying the very community that supports them.

The irony here is that Wizards didn't even need to do this. They could have trademarked specific implementations or product lines featuring the Deck of Many Things without trying to claim ownership of the term itself after releasing it to the public.

So why am I telling you all this? Because you don't need to be a lawyer to challenge corporate overreach. The systems exist for regular people to participate in these processes. Whether it's a Letter of Protest or a Cancellation Petition, the tools are there for you to use.

If you care about not getting bamboozled by incompetent, dishonest corporations, consider getting involved. Watch for these kinds of trademark applications, be ready to file your own challenges, and spread the word when companies try to walk back their commitments.

Simon Says: An Addendum

After publishing this article, I received some valuable feedback here from Simon, an academic lawyer in the UK who teaches trademark law. Simon pointed out an even more straightforward legal issue with Hasbro's trademark application that deserves attention, one that transcends the Creative Commons argument.

The fundamental problem? "Deck of Many Things" likely isn't even eligible for trademark protection in the first place.

Under trademark law (both in the US under the Lanham Act and similarly in the UK), a valid trademark must be distinctive – it must have the capacity to identify goods as coming from a specific source and not another. But here's the kicker: "Deck of Many Things" products have been created by numerous publishers over the years, not just Wizards of the Coast.

This widespread use means the term has essentially become descriptive or potentially generic within the gaming industry. It no longer primarily signals "this is a WotC product" but rather "this is a type of magical card deck with random effects" – a concept that's been implemented by countless game creators.

Think about it – when you hear "Deck of Many Things," do you automatically associate it exclusively with Wizards of the Coast? Or do you think of the general concept that's been part of gaming culture for decades?

This distinctiveness requirement exists for a good reason. Trademark law isn't supposed to give companies monopolies over common terminology in an industry. It's meant to prevent consumer confusion about who made a product, not to let corporations fence off widely-used concepts.

So beyond the Creative Commons issue, there's this even more basic problem: Hasbro is trying to trademark something that likely fails the fundamental "distinctive" requirement of trademark law.

This remains an example of a corporation trying to claim exclusive ownership over community cultural elements that have been widely used and understood for decades. Whether through Creative Commons “revisions” or by ignoring basic trademark principles, the effect is the same – an attempt to monopolize what should remain in the public sphere.

[sysig]

Hm ok what's your favorite or a really cool worlbuilding thing you've done? For any fandom or original or even an unimplemented idea

Hmm well at least in the past decade, my big worldbuilding projects have mostly come down to three-ish stories: Other Side of the Gun, Adventures of Gæilo and Ethon, and Just Desserts

OSG was an Invader ZiM fancomic concept I started around 2013 to justify every single Irken headcanon I ever came up with lol - I never finished it, or even really started it, but I put a lot of time and energy into its roughs back in the day :)

^A stick figure recap of Ch. 1, inspired by - what else - the Vargas stick figure recaps lol

One that you can see over here is all the work I did for my DnD campaign, AGE! (Though its sideblog hasn't been updated in a while haha - the AGE tag over here works just as well) I basically homebrewed a pantheon and had an absolute blast designing all the gods and their forms before they became gods and even things like architectural differences in their churches and the BBEG and his motivations and just ah <3 Such a fun project :D

It also laid the groundwork for things like Pokemon Homestyle, specifically all my papercrafts! You can really see how I leveled up haha

And my latest has been Just Desserts! Even with less time under its belt, it's still pretty expansive, as evidenced by my icon and theme and the backlog lol, and it's the one I have the most AUs of! (Though OSG does come close actually haha) There are still some thorny details I'm trying to iron out, especially to do with the magic system, but all the characters and creatures and the fact that I made my own fighting minigame, ah, pleased! I've never been so happy with a sona before Charm! ♥ From the very beginning it's been so fun to work on and I still want to improve!

[fernthewhimsical]

Okay now that I got the bitchiness out of my system a bit, let's see if I can write a bit on """"rules"""" of witchcraft as I would like to see them.

Stop bitching about other people's practices and focus on your own. If you spent a lot of time worrying or raging about how other people practice, how will you ever grow your own? Focus on yourself and your own power and let other people do their thing.

Other people's practices are inspiration, not goals. On the flip side, if there is someone who you look up to, or someone's practice you love seeing, take it as inspiration for your own, but don't look it at as a goal to achieve. Firstly, what people share online is not the whole of their practice, and secondly you're not them and their path is not yours.

Be curious. Why are people harping on "black and white magic"? Why are Starseeds bad, but Alienkin and Starkin are fine? Why is cultural appropriation such a bad thing? (If you answered "because racism" on all three of these, have a cookie!) And not just curiosity about these concepts, but also about correspondences (Why are red roses a symbol for love?) or ingredients you have in your home (will this basil work as well as rosemary for this spell?) or other paths and techniques, or spirits, or -- you get the point. Once you know the "why" you can use your own discernment. Does this work for me? Do I agree with the why? Etc. etc.

Be respectful -. To other people, to other practices and cultures, to spirits and deities. Find out their customs and cultures if you can, and act accordingly. Did you know that not saying "thank you" to the Fair Folk is only a custom in Irish and Scottish folk tales? Yeah, exactly.

-But don't be terrified. You're a witch/wizard/warlock/unicorn/whatever dammit! Act like one! Witchcraft is about empowerment, so be fucking empowered! An anarchy saying is "no gods, no kings, no masters". As a polytheist witch who works with the Fair Folk for me it's more "lots of Gods, some Kings, no masters!" I meet them with respect, but on equal footing. I experiment because if I screw up, well, I'll have learned something, and I've learned a lot about getting myself out of weird stuff.

Have fun. For fuck's sake, your practice is supposed to bring you joy. If it doesn't bring you joy or make you feel fizzy with inspiration and energy, try something else. If you need to, toss the whole thing out and start over. Trust me, it helps.

[swiftiethatlovesf1]

Their little sunshine p.1

Heyy guys, I hope you enjoy this Alex x reader x Lily, I have planned more parts for this story so I hope you enjoy it :)

If you want to read more stories of mine here's my masterlist.

The first time Alex Albon met his new physio, he nearly did a double take.

The Williams garage wasn’t exactly the most colorful place—navy blues, whites, and the occasional streak of sponsor red dominated the scene. But she stood out like a soft splash of pink against it all. It wasn’t just her outfit, though her pastel compression top and perfectly coordinated sneakers were a stark contrast to the usual sports gear around. It was the way she carried herself—bubbly, warm, and utterly radiant.

"Alex!" she beamed, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet as he approached. "I’ve been waiting to get my hands on you—well, not like that, obviously, but you know what I mean!"

Alex chuckled, a little taken aback by the sheer enthusiasm radiating from her. "I think so?"

She grinned, unfazed. "Don’t worry, you’ll love our sessions. I promise I’ll take the best care of you!"

He wasn’t sure what to expect, but as soon as they started, he realized she wasn’t just all sunshine and chatter—she was good. Her hands were gentle yet firm, her instructions clear but never harsh. And more than anything, there was something about her presence that made it easy to relax.

For the first time in a while, physio sessions didn’t feel like just another part of the job. They felt… comfortable.

It didn’t take long for Alex to start looking forward to their sessions. She had this way of making even the most mundane exercises fun—humming pop songs under her breath, sticking tiny smiley face stickers on his water bottle when she thought he wasn’t hydrating enough, or dramatically gasping when she found a particularly tight knot in his shoulders.

"You’re so tense, Alex!" she scolded one day, hands pressing firmly into his back. "It’s like you’re storing all the stress of the paddock in here."

"Maybe I am," he joked, eyes fluttering shut as her thumbs worked out a particularly stubborn knot. "You’re a miracle worker, though."

She preened at the compliment. "I am pretty great, huh?"

Even Carlos, ever the skeptic, eventually gave in.

"You’re actually magic," he muttered one day, rolling his shoulder after a session. "I don’t know what you did, but I feel like I just slept for a week."

She beamed. "Told you I’d take care of you!"

For Alex, though, it wasn’t just the skill—it was her. She was the kind of person who lit up every room she walked into, and as the season dragged on, with its relentless travel and stress, she became a safe space.

One particularly rough weekend, after a frustrating qualifying session, Alex found himself in the physio room earlier than usual. She glanced up from where she was organizing massage oils, instantly noticing the tension in his posture.

"Tough one?" she asked gently.

Alex exhaled. "Yeah."

She didn’t push him to talk about it, didn’t try to force positivity onto him. Instead, she simply patted the massage table. "C’mon, lie down. Let’s get some of that stress out of your system."

As her hands worked through the knots in his shoulders, he felt himself slowly relax.

"You know," she mused, voice light but comforting, "you’re allowed to have bad days, Alex."

He hummed, eyes closed. "I know."

"Good," she said simply. And somehow, it was exactly what he needed to hear.

It wasn’t until a few races into the season that Alex finally introduced her to Lily.

"You have to meet my girlfriend," he told her one afternoon, stretching out on the massage table as she worked on his legs. "I swear, you two would get along so well."

She blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Lily," he clarified, sitting up from the massage table. "You two would get along so well."

Her lips curled into a smile. "That’s a bold claim."

"I’m serious!" Alex insisted. "You’re both, like… nice. And you make people feel comfortable. And you have this whole cute aesthetic thing going on."

She giggled. "Are you calling me cute, Albon?"

He rolled his eyes. "Just meet her, okay?"

The opportunity came during the Monaco race weekend. After a long, exhausting day in the paddock, Alex invited her to dinner with him and Lily.

She arrived in a soft pink sundress, her hair tied up with a matching ribbon. And the moment she stepped into the restaurant, she was met with a bright, familiar grin.

"Oh my God, you’re adorable!"

The greeting came from none other than Lily. He, stood up from his seat to introduce you to each other but before he could even respond, you had already reached out to hug her.

"You’re so pretty!" you gushed.

"You’re so pretty!" she shot back, already feeling like they had known each other for years.

Alex, watching them with an amused smile, shook his head. "I knew this would happen."

It was instant. Over dinner, they fell into an easy rhythm—talking about everything from skincare to travel to their shared love for making fun of Alex.

"So, how’s he as a physio client?" Lily asked, smirking slightly.

"Oh, such a baby when it comes to deep tissue massages," she teased, making Alex groan.

Lily laughed. "That checks out."

By the end of the night, they had already exchanged numbers, planning a shopping trip for the next free weekend.

And just like that, she wasn’t just Alex’s physio anymore—she was part of their little circle.

A ray of sunshine that fit right in.

Part 2

[just-a-sketchbook]

First Quilt!

It has been a lot of fun and a lot of trial and error but it's done!!!

It's roughly 1.20 x 1.20m (which is a number of feet I can't be bothered to look up but let's say it's about child sized and it'll be great to chill on the couch).

I want to thank @langdon813 who I've never talked to (sorry if you hate being tagged) but whose gorgeous Drunkard path quilts made me wanna do it too :)

I had never done any quilting before (but I did sew), so here's what I've learned, if any beginner is interested in jumping off the deep end the way I did and wants advice from someone who has freshly acquired experience but will also not use any confusing technical terms (with pictures!) :

Fabric picking : so most advice I read was to go for pre-selected bundles of fabric that already go together, but I'm contrary and like to do my own thing so I used wax fabric (the blue ones on top the pile) I had laying around, which I strongly recommend: it's very easy to cut due to it being waxed, and I added a few fat squares from the shop, plus I also had the orange and blue floral and I based the coulour scheme on it. One thing that's true is it would have been easier to work with fabric of the same thickness, and the floral was givne to me by my ma who got in on trip to Thailand and it was alot thinner than the rest which didn't help.

Cutting: I got a rotary cutter for the occasion and it's great! Do not maybe push too hard on it and give yourself nerve damage the way I did (temporary but still), it's actually ery sharp and easy to use, so long as your template doesn't slip you're fine

Piecing :Yes you can do curved piecing even if you have zero experience, you just gotta make a template and

pin it a lot.

1/4 inch margins is the standard so I rolled with it because I don't like converting, but when you're strictly metric it is kind of annoying but doable because my machine does have a 1/4 inch mark and if you stick a length of tape along it it's pretty easy to follow, even for curved piecing.

Layout: At some point you've got to decide the layout is done, because I've re-arranged the blocks at least 6 times and it's a very good way to go insane. (For rough reference, my plan was to have no repeat fabrics in any of the circle-in-a-square blocks, and I only made one mistake which I clocked too late to change)

Chain piecing!! Meaning you pile your blocks together in a specific order (that I personnaly wrote straight up on each piece with a very sophisticated letter/numbers down/across system) and then just sew them together in a line without having to cut the thread between each pair. Looks a little like a fanion banner and at some point it feels like you'll be forever tangled into it but then it's magic :) It's not that hard actually and will save you a lot of time + there's a lot of online tutorials you can use.

Basting! (which it took me while to understand is the part where you attach the backing, the fluff and the quilt top together) : you need more safety pins. Safety pins will save you from the wrinkles and the unfortunate oopsies of realising you've caught your backing double folded into your quilting stitch, which I did a good three times and was not fun to undo. Also, I forgot to tape the backing to the floor and it probably would have helped with the wrinkling...

Backing : I used an old linen table cloth I got for 10€ at a charity shop, and I've still got about 2/3 of it left, so I recommend that, it's sturdy but soft enough, doesn't thread easily and can be washed at very high temps, if that's a thing you do.

Quilting! Well, my machine came with a quilting foot for free motion quilting (which means you're the one moving the fabric along in whichever direction and you can sort of draw with your stitches) and it seemed fun so I did that, and here's what I learned : curves are hard but doable, also my machine doesn't like to go back (kept skipping sitiches for some reason) so it involves a lot of shifting the quilt around, which isn't easy considering the bulk. And also, drawing the quilting pattern you want so you can follow it while quilting actually does help, I used an iron/heat-erasable pen and it worked just fine. Check your stitch tension, mine was too loose and I realised too late so there's spots where I could pull on the thread and it looped, had to stitch back over that.

Quilitng pattern : I wasn't sure what to do, supposedly your batting (aka: the fluff) comes with instructions on how tight you should quilt to avoid it coming apart through use but I got mine cut at the fabric shop and forgot to ask so I just rolled with a rough 10cm maximum distance in between stitching lines but tried to do less in most places. According to many blogs : the tighter your lines the stiffer your quilt, so I kept it loose for comfort. (Picture is halfway done, I added a smaller square/circle inside each square/circle and if you look at it you'll see it's actually diagonal lines form one end of the fabric to the other.)

Binding is boring, and there's nothing to it. I got a length of pre-cut bias binding, machine-sewed it front to front to the quilt top side of the quilt and the folded it back and secured it by hand to the back with a ladder stitch. Took me roughly and entire rewatch of the Last Of Us. There's a trick to doing the corners that's fairly simple but I've lost the tutorial...

Overall : I got myself a quilting book with techinques and such and it helped, but there's a ton of stuff online, and once you get over the very Christian American mum vibe of most of the blogs, it's all very helpful (and gorgeous!) (no offense meant to Christian American mums, it's just a bit of a culture shock from where I'm standing).

[qwertyprophecy]

Mortholme Post-Mortem

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has been out for two weeks, and I've just been given an excellent excuse to write some more about its creation by a lenghty anonymous ask.

Under the cut, hindsight on the year spent making Mortholme and answers to questions about game dev, grouped under the following topics:

Time spent on development Programming Obstacles Godot Animation Pixel art Environment assets Writing Completion Release

Regarding time spent on development

Nope, I’ve got no idea anymore how long I spent on Mortholme. It took a year but during that time I worked on like two other games and whatever else. And although I started with the art, I worked on all parts simultaneously to avoid getting bored. This is what I can say:

Art took a ridiculous amount of time, but that was by choice (or compulsion, one might say). I get very excitable and particular about it. At most I was making about one or two Hero animations in a day (for a total of 8 + upgraded versions), but anything involving the Queen took multiple times longer. When I made the excecutive decision that her final form was going to have a bazillion tentacles I gave up on scheduling altogether.

Coding went quickly at the start when I was knocking out a feature after another, until it became the ultimate slow-burn hurdle at the end. Testing, bugfixing, and playing Jenga with increasingly unwieldy code kept oozing from one week to the next. For months, probably? My memory’s shot but I have a mark on my calendar on the 18th of August that says “Mortholme done”. Must’ve been some optimistic deadline before the ooze.

Writing happened in extremely productive week-long bursts followed by nothing but nitpicky editing while I focused on other stuff. Winner in the “changed most often” category, for sure.

Sound was straightforward, after finishing a new set of animations I spent a day or two to record and edit SFX for them. Music I originally scheduled two weeks for, but hubris and desire for more variants bumped it to like a month.

Regarding programming

The Hero AI is certainly the part that I spent most of my coding time on. The basic way the guaranteed dodging works is that all the Queen’s attacks send a signal to the Hero, who calculates a “danger zone” based on the type of attack and the Queen’s location. Then, if the Hero is able to dodge that particular attack (a probability based on how much it's been used & story progression), they run a function to dodge it.

Each attack has its own algorithm that produces the best safe target position to go to based on the Hero’s current position (and other necessary actions like jumping). Those algorithms needed a whole lot of testing to code counters for all the scenarios that might trip the Hero up.

The easiest or at least most fun parts for me to code are the extra bells and whistles that aren’t critical but add flair. Like in the Hero’s case, the little touches that make them seem more human: a reaction speed delay that increases over time, random motions and overcompensation that decrease as they gain focus, late-game Hero taking prioritising aggressive positiniong, a “wait for last second” function that lets the Hero calculate how long it’ll take them to move to safety and use the information to squeeze an extra attack in…

The hardest attack was the magic circle, as it introduced a problem in my code so far. The second flare can overlap with other attacks, meaning the Hero had to keep track of two danger zones at once. For a brief time I wanted to create a whole new system that would constantly update a map of all current danger zones—that would allow for any number of overlapping attacks, which would be really cool! Unfortunately it didn’t gel with my existing code, and I couldn’t figure out its multitudes of problems since, well…

Regarding obstacles

Thing is, I’m hot garbage as a programmer. My game dev’s all self-taught nonsense. So after a week of failing to get this cool system to work, I scrapped it and instead made a spaghetti code monstrosity that made magic circle run on a separate danger zone, and decided I’d make no more overlapping attacks. That’s easy; I just had to buffer the timing of the animation locks so that the Hero would always have time to move away. (I still wanted to keep the magic circle, since it’s fun for the player to try and trick the Hero with it.)

There’s my least pretty yet practical solo dev advice: if you get stuck because you can’t do something, you can certainly try to learn how to do it, but occasionally the only way to finish a project within a decade to work around those parts and let them be a bit crap.

I’m happy to use design trickery, writing and art to cover for my coding skills. Like, despite the anonymous asker’s description, the Hero’s dodging is actually far from perfect. I knew there was no way it was ever going to be, which is why I wrote special dialogue to account for a player finding an exploit that breaks the intended gameplay. (And indeed, when the game was launched, someone immediately found it!)

Regarding Godot

It’s lovely! I switched from Unity years ago and it’s so much simpler and more considerate of 2D games. The way its node system emphasises modularity has improved my coding a lot.

New users should be aware that a lot of tutorials and advice you find online may be for Godot 3. If something doesn’t work, search for what the Godot 4 equivalent is.

Regarding animation

I’m a professional animator, so my list of tips and techniques is a tad long… I’ll just give a few resource recommendations: read up on the classic 12 principles of animation (or the The Illusion of Life, if you’d like the whole book) and test each out for yourself. Not every animation needs all of these principles, but basically every time you’ll be looking at an animation and wondering how to make it better, the answer will be in paying attention to one or more of them.

Game animation is its own beast, and different genres have their own needs. I’d recommend studying animations that do what you’d like to do, frame by frame. If you’re unsure of how exactly to analyse animation for its techniques, youtube channel New Frame Plus shows an excellent example.

Oh, and film yourself some references! The Queen demanded so much pretend mace swinging that it broke my hoover.

Regarding pixel art

The pixel art style was picked for two reasons: 1. to evoke a retro game feel to emphasise the meta nature of the narrative, and 2. because it’s faster and more forgiving to animate in than any of my other options.

At the very start I was into the idea of doing a painterly style—Hollow Knight was my first soulslike—but quickly realised that I’d either have to spend hundreds of hours animating the characters, or design them in a simplistic way that I deemed too cutesy for this particular game. (Hollow Knight style, one day I’d love to emulate you…)

I don’t use a dedicated program, just Photoshop for everything like a chump. Pixel art doesn’t need anything fancy, although I’m sure specialist programs will keep it nice and simple.

Pixel art’s funny; its limitations make it dependent on symbolism, shortcuts and viewer interpretation. You could search for some tutorials on basic principles (like avoiding “jaggies” or the importance of contrast), but ultimately you’ll simply want to get a start in it to find your own confidence in it. I began dabbling years ago by asking for character requests on Tumblr and doodling them in pixels in whatever way I could think of.

Regarding environment assets

The Queen’s throne room consists of two main sprites—one background and one separate bit of the door for the Hero disappear behind—and then about fifty more for the lighting setup. There’s six different candle animations, there’s lines on the floor that need to go on top of character reflections, all the candle circles and lit objects are separated so that the candles can be extinguished asynchronously; and then there’s purple phase 2 versions of all of the above.

This is all rather dumb. There’s simpler ways in Godot to do 2D lighting with shaders and a built-in system (I use those too), but I wanted control over the exact colours so I just drew everything in Photoshop the way I wanted it. Still, it highlights how mostly you only need a single background asset and separated foreground objects; except if you need animated objects or stuff that needs to change while the game’s running, you’ll get a whole bunch more.

I wholeheartedly applaud having a go at making your own game art, even if you don’t have any art background! The potential for cohesion in all aspects of design—art, game, narrative, sound—is at the heart of why video games are such an exciting medium!

Regarding writing

Finding the voices of the Queen and the Hero was the quick part of the process. They figured that out they are almost as soon as writing started. I’d been mulling this game over in my mind for so long, I had already a specific idea in mind of what the two of them stood for, conceptually and thematically. When they started bantering, I felt like all I really had to do was to guide it along the storyline, and then polish.

What ended up taking so long was that there was too much for them to say for how short the game needed to be to not feel overstretched. Since I’d decided to go with two dialogue options on my linear story, it at least gave me twice the amount of dialogue that I got to write, but it wasn’t enough!

The first large-scale rewrite was me going over the first draft and squeezing in more interesting things for the Queen and the Hero to discuss, more branching paths and booleans. There was this whole thing where the player’s their dialogue choices over multiple conversations would lead them to about four alternate interpretations of why the Queen is the way she is. This was around the time I happened to finally play Disco Elysium, so of course I also decided to also add a ton of microreactivity (ie. small changes in dialogue that acknowledge earlier player choices) to cram in even more alternate dialogue. I spent ages tinkering with the exact nuances till I was real proud of it.

Right until the playtesters of this convoluted contraption found the story to be unclear and confusing. For some reason. So for my final rewrite, I picked out my favourite bits and cut everything else. With the extra branching gone, there was more room to improve the pacing so the core of the story could breathe. The microreactivity got to stay, at least!

A sample of old dialogue from the overcomplicated version:

Regarding completion

The question was “what kept me going to actually finish the game, since that is a point many games never even get to meet?” and it’s a great one because I forgot that’s a thing. Difficulties finishing projects, that is—I used to think it was hard, but not for many years. Maybe I’ve completed so many small-scale games already that it hardly seems that unreasonable of an expectation? (Game jams. You should do game jams.)

I honestly never had any doubt I was going to finish Mortholme. When I started in late autumn last year, I was honestly expecting the concept to be too clunky to properly function; but I wished to indulge in silliness and make it exist anyways. That vision would’ve been easy to finish, a month or two of low stakes messing around, no biggie. (Like a game jam!)

Those months ran out quickly as I had too much fun making the art to stop. It must’ve been around the time I made this recording that it occurred to me that even if the game was going to be clunky, it could still genuinely work on the back of good enough storytelling technique—not just writing, but also the animation and the Hero’s evolving behaviour during the gameplay segments which I’d been worried about. The reaction to my early blogging was also heartening. Other people could also imagine how this narrative could be interesting!

A few weeks after that I started planning out the narrative beats I wanted the dialogue to reach, and came to the conclusion that I really, really wanted it to work. Other people had to see this shit, I thought. There’s got to be freaks out there who’d love to experience this tragedy, and I’m eager to deliver.

That’s why I was fine with the project’s timeline stretching out. If attention to detail and artistry was going to make this weird little story actually come to life, then great, because that’s exactly the part of development I love doing most. Projects taking longer than expected can be frustrating, but accepting that as a common part of game dev is what allows confidence in eventual their completion regardless.

Regarding release

Dear anonymous’s questions didn’t involve post-release concerns, but it seems fitting to wrap up the post-mortem by talking about the two things about Mortholme's launch that were firsts for me, and thus I was unprepared for.

1. This was the first action game I've coded. Well, sort of—I consider Mortholme to be a story first and foremost, with gameplay so purposefully obnoxious it benefits from not being thought of as a “normal” game. Still, the action elements are there. For someone who usually sticks to making puzzle games since they’re easier to code, this was my most mechanically fragile game yet. So despite all my attempts at playtesting and failsafes, it had a whole bunch of bugs on release.

Game-breaking bugs, really obvious bugs, weird and confusing bugs. It took me over a week to fix all that was reported (and I’m only hoping they indeed are fully fixed). That feels slow; I should’ve expected it was going to break so I could’ve been faster to respond. Ah well, next time I know what I’ll be booking my post-release week for.

2. This was my first game that I let players give me money for. Sure, it’s pay-what-you-want, but for someone as allergic to business decisions as I am, it was a big step. I guess I was worried of being shown that nobody would consider my art worth financial compensation. Well, uh, that fear has gone out of the window now. I’m blown away by how kind and generous the players of Mortholme have been with their donations.

I can’t imagine it's likely to earn a living wage from pouring hundreds of hours into pay-what-you-want passion projects, but the support has me heartened to seek out a future where I could make these weird stories and a living both.

Those were the unexpected parts. The part I must admit I was expecting—but still infinitely grateful for—was that Mortholme did in fact reach them freaks who’d find it interesting. The responses, comments, analyses, fan works (there’s fic and art!! the dream!!), inspiration, and questions (like the ones prompting me to write this post-mortem) people have shared with me thanks to Mortholme… They’ve all truly been what I was hoping for back when I first gave myself emotions thinking about a mean megalomaniac and stubborn dipshit.

Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for being around.