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mysticstronomy · 4 months

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WHAT IS QUARK MATTER??

Blog#363

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

Welcome back,

Deep within the atoms that make up our bodies and even within the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei, are tiny particles called quarks

Quarks are the ultimate building blocks of visible matter in the universe.

If we could zoom in on an atom in your body, we would see that it consists of electrons swarming in orbits around a nucleus of protons and neutrons.

And if we could zoom in on one of those protons or neutrons, we'd find that they themselves are made up of a trio of particles that are so small that they have almost no size at all, and are little more than points. These point-like particles are the quarks.

Quarks are elementary particles. Like the electron, they are not made up of any other particles. You could say that they are on the ground floor of the Standard Model of particle physics.

The existence of quarks was first theorized in 1964 in the work of two physicists, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, who were both at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) but who came to the conclusion that quarks exist independently of one another. Contrary to how science is often portrayed in the media, Gell-Mann and Zweig's conclusions were not an "a-ha!" moment but were instead built on the back of many years of hard work and careful discoveries by the particle physics community.

By the 1950s, physicists were building up a library of known particles. It was a bit like botany, cataloging the various types and their properties, but what was missing was an underlying theory behind their existence. This theory ultimately became known as the Standard Model, but in order to get there several vital discoveries had to be made, including that of quarks.

Most puzzling was the existence of particles called hyperons, which were unstable and decayed very quickly, but not into the particles they were expected to decay into.

Gell-Mann realized that there must be an unknown quantum property at work, which he named "strangeness" because of the unexpectedness of it all.

Quantum numbers, like strangeness, charge and spin, have to be conserved. If a particle with a specific quantum number decays, then its by-products must add up to those quantum numbers that the decayed particle had. Moreover, the quantum numbers of a given particle have "degrees of freedom" — basically the range of values that these numbers can have.

These degrees of freedom are called multiplets, and the pattern in which these multiplets could be arranged between different particles led Gell-Mann and Zweig to believe that the particles and their multiplets could be explained if each particle was formed from two or three smaller particles.

Zweig called these tiny, elementary particles "aces", but the name didn't catch on.

Gell-Mann, who was ever one for cooky and memorable names, called them quarks, derived from a line in James Joyce's experimental novel, Finnegan's Wake: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" In the novel, the quarks refer to the three children of the main character, Mr Mark.

These quarks were referred to as "up", "down" and "strange" quarks. The up and down doesn't really refer to anything, while the strange quark had a quantum number of strangeness of –1, hence why it is called "strange", whereas the up and down quarks have a strangeness of 0.

Originally published www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, January 6th, 2024)

"WHAT IS THE SPACE - TIME CONTINUUM??"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography

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nevermindirah · 3 months

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Who talks to who, for how long and about what, in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince Bythewood?

I got curious and so I watched the movie taking a lot of timestamp notes. way back three and a half years ago now, I watched this movie for the first time bc I like gritty action movies, and it's a really good one of those. I'm still obsessed with it all this time later because it's full to the brim with well-drawn characters who have compelling relationships with each other, and boy howdy does the data show it.

I was especially curious about who spends how much time alone together on screen, so I coded all the scenes with that in mind, and I found some really interesting patterns in the breakdown of scenes where just two characters talk, where one character is the sole focus, and when three characters talk.

the winners of course are Nile and Andy, our dual protagonists, who spend 10% of the movie's total runtime alone together. they also spend a lot of time with our dual friendly antagonists, Booker and Copley. scenes featuring combinations of just these four characters make up 40% of the total runtime.

Joe and Nicky show up less in this analysis because they're side characters who mostly appear in group scenes, but wow are they richly drawn side characters. they're key players in all but two scenes where four or more named characters talk.

read on for many numbers and much analysis of what it all means!

Andy Nile 0:12:20 Nile Booker 0:06:00 Andy Booker Copley 0:05:22 Andy Booker 0:05:01 Andy Nile Booker 0:04:56 Nile Copley 0:04:18 Nile alone 0:04:07 Andy alone 0:03:31

Andy Celeste 0:02:49 Merrick Copley 0:02:41 Joe Nicky 0:02:24 Nile Dizzy Jay 0:01:33 Andy Quynh 0:01:31 Andy Nile Merrick 0:00:52 Booker alone 0:00:32 Copley alone 0:00:28 Nicky Kozak 0:00:27 Booker Quynh 0:00:21 Copley Keane 0:00:09

(the spreadsheet, if anyone's interested in digging deeper with me)

of the 12 min that our main characters are alone together on screen, almost fully half is super duper antagonistic:

4:26 is the kidnapping sequence

1:29 is their conversation outside after Nile's nightmare featuring the iconic "me and those three men in there will keep you safe" "like Quynh?"

and 7 seconds is Nile glaring daggers at Andy after walking over all those bodies in the church

the other half breaks down like this:

2:14 is them connecting over their mortal families — where Andy makes Nile give her phone back at the end

1:45 is Nile telling Andy she's not doing this, that she's going back to her family — Andy pushes with "we'd do the same for you" but then relents and gives Nile the car

50 seconds of them gearing up for the last segment of the fight — Nile tries to get Andy to wear a bulletproof vest, she jokes around with "is this gonna be like the last signal?" — it's operations-focused but there's a real warmth between them by this point in the movie (this scene starts at 1:41:45, just 13 min before the credits roll)

and 1:29 of Andy looking at Nile like she hung the moon (which, extremely valid and relatable!) and Nile saying that the time Andy's got left "you're gonna spend it with us"

Nile has an uninterrupted 4:18 sequence with Copley that speed runs the same general shape of her arc with Andy, hella antagonistic to teamwork, though the latter here is more of a professional camaraderie than the real warmth we see Nile develop for Andy.

in this context Nile's arc with Booker is remarkably different. their first scene alone together is 1:11 in total, intercut with Andy killing mercs elsewhere in the church, and it's sort of their only scene with friction between them. Booker keeps telling Nile to wait for the signal without explaining what that means, annoyingly continuing Andy's grand tradition of not fucking answering Nile's reasonable questions, ugh. though another way of framing this is of course that he's too busy packing her a change of clothes while showing off his tits for her. as I noted in a previous meta, the end of this sequence is the one time Booker lies to Nile (claiming he doesn't know who the mercs are when he has at least a basic idea, though we don't know for sure whether Copley involved him in this specific plan).

after this Nile and Booker have two more scenes alone together and they're both extended conversations: 3:14 for their conversation alone in the cave after Andy leaves, and 1:18 when Nile joins Booker on the balcony outside the bar. both of these conversations are remarkably intimate for how little these characters have interacted beforehand. remember, 6:02 total of Nile and Andy alone together with heavy animosity (Andy shot Nile in the head ffs!) before things between them started to warm up. granted, the conversation where they first start to warm to each other is right after Nile's cave scene with Booker and Andy's scene with Celeste, so an argument could be made that this was the point in the movie where Nile started to feel ready to open up to the other immortals generally and her first one-on-one conversation once she got there was with Booker before Andy. I'm not saying you have to ship them just because they get so close so quick, but the numbers sure do make it clear that us BoNers aren't making this shit up out of nowhere.

Nile and Booker's heart-to-heart in the mine is the third-longest one-on-one conversation in the whole movie — third after Andy kidnapping Nile and Nile's sequence with Copley, which are both heavy on action and exposition and antagonism, making this the longest intimate conversation in the movie. their other heart-to-heart, 1:18 on the balcony outside the pub, is on par with Joe and Nicky's 1:17 in the van.

there's also a 51 sec sequence during the Merrick tower fight where it intercuts pretty much equally between three subsets of the action: Andy going off on her own with an axe, Joe waiting for Nicky to wake up after that head shot, and Nile and Booker being drift compatible when Nile's gun jams. we're not making this shit up out of nowhere.

ok back to our blorbos in chief. we get 4:07 of Nile as the sole focus, and 3:31 of the same for Andy.

the sequence of Nile going through hell on base just because she fucking lived (laser eyes @ her squad forever) lasts 1:14 and includes a few lines from minor characters. we get 15 sec of her first dreaming of the others and waking up unmoored, then a 20 sec reprise with her nightmare of the first person she killed. the sequence of her driving away from Copley's then figuring out what the empty gun clip means is 48 sec. and then, one of the things that stood out to me the most in really digging into these numbers: just how frequently and for how long the camera lingers on Nile's face in this movie.

extended closeups of Nile with no dialogue and no montage:

10 seconds staring at the car she crushed, killing Merrick in the process but somehow not herself

36 seconds in the elevator

and a whopping 44 seconds of listening to Frank Ocean

that's fully 1 minute and thirty seconds of this movie's 2 hr 5 min credits-included runtime devoted exclusively to long takes of Nile Freeman's face.

Andy's sole-focus time is a little less tidy, because the majority of it isn't precisely focused on her like with Nile. we get 15 sec of her staring at her hand, realizing her immortality is gone. I could have coded all the pieces of the movie more granularly to find all the moments where we get Andy reaction shots, but I also could've done that with all of them and I'm but one humble spreadsheet lover, and it's more interesting to me that Gina primarily uses other kinds of film language to put us into Andy's perspective.

1:35 of her cutting through all those mercs in the church — other people are active in this scene, but they're not shown as people, and the horror of that is exactly the point, for the viewer, for Nile, and for Andy herself

41 sec of her voiceover at the opening of the movie, over clips of the kill floor scene

1 min of her moodily sitting in the car after the pharmacy and flashing back to Lykon's death

the Andy/Quynh flashback sequence that's a subset of Nicky and Joe narrating to Nile is 1:31, so counting that alongside this flashback here brings us to a total of 2:31 of Andy/Quynh(/Lykon) alone together screen time. almost precisely equal to Joe and Nicky's total 2:24 alone together.

further underlining Booker and Copley as our tritagonists, we get one scene of on-screen alone time for each of them: 32 seconds of Booker being drunk six months later and 28 seconds of Copley reacting to the kill floor footage. it's easy to focus on the Andy in a Union uniform element of this Copley scene, but a photo of his late wife is visible in almost every frame. I went back and double checked — only 3 sec of those 28 don't contain that photo of his wife displayed proudly between the kill floor footage and the Civil War photo, 3 sec of Copley in closeup. now that's what I call environmental storytelling.

we get almost exactly 5 min each with the sets Andy + Booker + Copley, Andy + Booker, and Andy + Nile + Booker. ABC and ANB conversations tend toward driving the plot and fleshing out detail about immortality, though a decent chunk of ANB in the "is this a Rodin?" part of the cave scene is Nile and Booker talking about following the money (their first moment of drift compatibility!) while Andy angsts nearby, and a decent chunk of ABC at Copley's place is Andy and Booker's heartbreaking "this is what you wanted" "not like this" exchange while Copley awkwardly hovers. just under half of Andy and Booker's 5:01 on screen alone together is about his betrayal, 2:13 across three scenes. the other half breaks out pretty evenly between them talking about Nile, making battle plans, and just being pals.

has any mid-budget gritty action movie ever done it better? even the infodumps are full of character and relationship details.

I also find it noteworthy that Booker and Copley are never alone together, and they never directly acknowledge anything about their relationship. we know from what they tell other characters that they've been in contact before the events of the movie, probably for some time in some detail. we know they worked together to ultimately enable the cartoon-villain antagonists to do their villainy. Copley is direct about how these results were absolutely not what he intended, and we can infer from Booker's behavior that he wasn't aiming for decades of medical torture either. but we get no information about how they feel about each other. now that I'm looking at it with this frame, it seems like the absence of information is itself a kind of telling — Booker and Copley maybe purposefully avoiding 1:1 contact, purposefully treating each other as mere acquaintances when others are around, because to do otherwise would be to look their guilt in the eye. oh shit I think I might have given myself a whole new meta idea on this tangent here: Copley and Booker as mirrors for each other.

disclaimer as we're nearing the end that there's inevitably going to be bias and error in something like this. I measured by seconds not milliseconds and I wasn't always precise about where I paused to note timestamps at scene changes. sometimes I included what ended up amounting to several seconds of establishing shots and sometimes I didn't. and there are a bunch of edge cases where there's more than one way to count who was an active part of which scenes, like for example:

I separated out Andy and Booker's opening motorcycle stalking and Don Quijote chat from the later part of what was probably just one scene in the script, where Booker talks to the hotel clerk while Andy interacts with tourists nearby

I included all as one Nile + Dizzy + Jay scene the sequence where Dizzy and Jay talk to each other about Nile before they go into the med tent and act shitty to her face about how Nile's still alive

I counted as Copley + Merrick the conversation in the car where Keane and Kozak are present and react on camera but don't have lines per se

similarly I counted as Andy + Booker the "she wants to talk to her family" exchange after Nile and Nicky leave the dinner table; Joe's still sitting there next to them but he doesn't say anything and the camera doesn't focus on him

I didn't try to delete the time where Andrei said/did stuff from the 4:26 Andy kidnaps Nile sequence but I did remove a Keane cut-away from a later Andy + Nile scene

so much has already been lovingly written about how well Joe and Nicky spend their short on-screen alone time and rightly so. I don't have anything new to add there so I'll take a moment instead to shout out to the 27 sec of Nicky telling Kozak to go fuck herself, and also the iconic Joe headbutting Merrick. fuck, this movie is so so good. every moment is a delight.

#the old guard #tog meta #tog #mine

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cts-games · 3 months

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💡

Ask meme here

💡 A game that inspired my own design or creative practice.

Okay, stay calm. They just want to know about the game. Just talk about the game. Don't do the rant. Just the game. Just the game.

Last Stand is THE game that made me a designer and infected me with brain worms. It can be found for free here:

Why is Last Stand available for free on a random google drive link that totally doesnt look like its just a piracy link? For reasons I am not talking about!

Last Stand is a game that is basically a mix of Earth Defense Force and Pacific Rim. Though it's worth noting that it does predate Pacific Rim. Jesus Christ, this game is a DECADE OLD? WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN. FUCK. Anyway, there was going to be an expansion that helped flesh out those Pacific Rim elements more and make them more similar, but... I'm not ranting about that.

So what AM I ranting about?

MECHANICS

Last Stand uses a resolution system of 2d10d1+Stat vs opposed roll. You and the opponent each roll 2 dice, drop the lower die, and then add your stat to your respective rolls.

The thing that makes this resolution stand out however, is a combination of 2 factors:

Health as ability damage, and dropped die matters.

Healt/Stats

The game does not have a dedicated HP stat. Instead, players have 4 ability scores (off the top of my head I BELIEVE its... Tactician, Operator, Leader, and... Elusive? I'm not confident on the last one). What do each of these ability scores represent? DOESNT MATTER! You effectively just have 4 different HP stats. Resting them however you want. They could be called Red, Blue, Green, Yellow if you wanted. Doesn't matter. What DOES matter, is that rolls are contested by themselves. If you attack a monster using Tactician, any damage you deal is dealt to their Tactician stat. Monsters always roll at their current stat value, players roll at their max value (unless they hit 0, then they lose the stat bonus). This is a little unintuitive for players during play, but it does help keep them from getting snowballed and turns multiple fights into a better war against attrition.

If a stat is targeted and it's already at 0, the attacker gets to choose where the damage goes. This lets you pierce through the defenses of a monster by attacking its weaker stats, instead of the INCREDIBLY STUPID idea of attacking their stronger stats. Because attacks go both ways. Failing an attack means YOU take damage. You should NEVER attack needlessly in this game. It's an easy way to die.

Dropped Die Matters

The other part of the roll resolution is "Dropped die matters". Every game I've seen that does that usually just uses it as a tie breaker. That is not the case here. Instead, the way powers work is that many of them have additional effects that trigger on a specific result. So for example: "On a hit deal 1 damage. On a 1, 2, or 3, deal 1 extra damage."

At first, that looks like about a 30% chance for an extra point of damage. It's not. It's a 51% chance for the extra point of damage. These bonus effects always list between 1 and 3 numbers they trigger on, which corresponds to 19%, 36%, and 51% activation chance (i think my math is right on that). As a developer, being able to quickly go "Oh this power should trigger about this often" is REALLY NICE, and it offers a good range that really gets the brain juices flowing. HOWEVER, you can also skew them a bit more by changing the specific numbers they trigger on. A trigger of "On a 1, 2, or 3..." and a trigger of "On a 8, 9, or 10..." are equally likely to trigger. However, they are not equally likely to trigger ON A HIT. This allows you to tweak the percentages a bit more in either direction by having them require both the trigger number and being a hit (or even a miss if you want!)

These two mechanics tie in together to make a REALLY good conflict resolution system. Which leads me into how powers work.

Mega Man, the Blue Mage

My apologies to a certain dungeon guy for taking so long to answer this ask. It kept turning into THE RANT. And I didn't want it to be THE RANT. I wanted it to be about the actual design merits of the game. So it... took a while. I also maybe broke down crying a few times typing this up. This game means a lot to me.

Powers in Last Stand work pretty much identical to how attacks work in DnD4e. In fact the game originally started as a hack of 4e that grew out of control! You have a Standard/Move/Minor per round (with the ability to trade each one 'down' if you want to), and a suite of powers you can use each turn. That's about where the similarities end.

There are a handful of abilities available during character creation, and the game leaves it up to the group how they want to select them. You could just pick them off a list, or you could take the cards they are printed on and draft them. Alyssa was after my own heart with that design decision. Whatever you decide, you get 6 pieces of equipment, each with a unique ability, and 1 armor. You combine all of these to get your starting stats and powers. You always have access to these abilities.

Enemies have 1 power tied to each stat (sometimes less, never more). If you reduce that stat to 0, the monster loses access to it as you rip off whatever part of their body was letting them use it. And, for the rest of the current session, YOU can use that ability. Killed a giant bee? Well guess who's got a giant lance doused in venom? At the end of the session, all the body parts you ripped off and jury rigged into new weapons get shipped off to the lab for research purposes, and you lose access to all of them. Except for one. You can choose one of those powers, and fuse it to a specific stat on your armor, keeping it permanently. Though you can only have 1 power on each stat. You can also choose to keep it in Cold Storage, which allows you to later use those parts to craft entirely new sets of armor. This is the only progression in the game, which means your build is always responsive to what the GM throws at you.

Tokens

The game has a LOT more really innovative things, but the last one I wanna talk about is Tokens.

Tokens are part of the action economy, with many powers requiring you to spend tokens to activate them. They are basically a slowly charging stamina bar. Each turn you add 1 Token to your 'Combat Bribe'. You can't spend tokens in your Bribe, but on any round, you can choose to go last (there is no initiative. It's just players go, them monsters go, then players who accepted the Bribe go, then next round), and gain all the tokens in your Bribe. Fairly straight forward.

The part that makes this an incredible mechanic is that this is also how status conditions are handled. Every status condition is on a token. As long as you have a special token, it's rules apply to you. You have a Poison Token? You take one damage every turn. You have Webbed token? You can no longer take Move actions.

But... as I said. You can spend tokens to fuel your stronger powers. You are Poisoned and Webbed? You can use a power that costs 2 tokens to clear both of those statuses at once. It adds a really fun dynamic tug-of-war to combat that I really enjoy.

It really is one of my favorite games of all time. I could rant about it to people for hours... but in the end it will almost always become The Rant.

But that sums up my feelings on the game itself.

Last Stand is ALSO the game that made me change the topic of this blog to be general games I'm working on, because I cannot go longer than a few months without working on a hack of it, because it's just... it's my perfect system. Or at least ABSURDLY close to it. And so it keeps working it's way into anything I work on.

#ttrpg #ttrpg dev #infodump #Last Stand #my cat snuggled with me in bed and thats what finally gave me the energy to finish this post

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pencil-peach · 7 months

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GWitch Onscreen Text: Episode 8

Part 9 in my ongoing attempt to transcribe all the written text in G Witch, cause I'm just that cool ! We're currently on Episode 8: "Their Choice."

<<Click here to return to episode 8!

Let us begin!

Not text, but in the opening scene, Lilique is told by Aliya that she'll "have trouble with men" in the near future during their divination session. This is foretelling how Renee will destroy her MS in the Grassley duel because she rejected John Van Simmon's lunch invitation.

TEXT: GUND-ARM Inc.

During Miorine's impromptu enlisting of Earth House to help run GUND-ARM, we see the spray painted sign that Miorine and Suletta made beforehand leaning outside the door. Given that they definitely didn't make the sign at Earth House, I like to imagine that they made the sign, and Miorine was like:

"This is the worst. Suletta, help me carry this sign to Earth House."

S: "W-why, Miorine-san?"

M: "They're going to be working at the company so I'll just have them make a better sign."

S: "Oh, did you ask them?"

M: "Not yet."

S: ????????????????????????????

TEXT DUEL BETTING ODDS TYPE OF BETTING: SINGLE RANK | ID. No | NAME | ODDS

| KP003 | SHADDIQ ZENELLI | 1.3

| LP041 | SULETTA MERCURY | 1.9

| KP002 | ELAN CERES | 2.7

| KP001 | GUEL JETURK | 3.4

| KP014 | SABINA FARDIN | 6.9

| LP029 | OLTA SHUBACCA | 7.6

| KP013 | LAUDA NEILL | 9.1

| LP022 | JONAS MOUWEN | 9.8

| MP028 | RAGNAR OOLES | 11.4

| LP013 | RENEE COSTA | 13.3

During this scene where Martin and Ojelo are talking, we get a look into the betting program he and Nuno are always using, and we get to see the top 10 ranked duelists at Asticassia at the time of this episode.

Of special note: Shaddiq is currently at rank 1, and due to the gray up arrow next to his rank, we can see this is a recent change in his rank. But considering that he doesn't duel very often, (at this point he currently has 7 wins and 0 losses) we can probably assume this is because Suletta has knocked both Guel and Elan from the top spots, leaving him alone at the top. His Odds are at 1.3

Suletta is currently at Rank 2, and we can also see by the gray arrow that this is a recent promotion. She probably rose up after defeating Elan. Her odds are 1.9.

Elan is Rank 3, and the red down arrow means he's recently been demoted, presumably after losing to Suletta. His odds are 2.7

Guel, surprisingly, is still rank 4 with a 3.4. Because he's the only pilot at the school to have won a double digit number of duels, his Win - Loss ratio is still presumably one of the best, even with 2 official losses.

Sabina is rank 5, with a 6.9. She's not only the second highest ranked pilot in Grassley House, but is the 4th best among all the other members of the main 3 houses. Even at that, her rank is 6.9, 3.5 points below Guel's. It really goes to show the gulf between the best pilots and the VERY best pilots at Asticassia.

Lauda is rank 7, with a 9.1. Still top 10, but he's eclipsed by Guel even at his lowest. It's nice to see proof pre-Schwarzette that Lauda can hold his own, and it gives more context to his statement that "[With a Gundam's power], he's a match for his brother." He's probably never beaten Guel in a duel, and with the difference in their results, he's probably never come close, either. On some level, he probably resents him for that.

Renee is rank 10, with odds of 13.3. We don't learn much about Renee, but we know now that she's the 3rd highest ranked pilot within Grassley, underneath Sabina and Shaddiq, but the gulf is large.

I don't think there's any way in hell to figure out how the odds are calculated, (I've tried.) but we know that the lower the odds, the higher your rank.

Because the names are color coded, we can actually see how many members of each house are in the top ten. Grassley - Shaddiq, Sabina, Renee (3/10) - 30% Peil - Elan (1/10) - 10% Jeturk - Guel, Lauda, Ragnar (3/10) - 30% Earth - Suletta (1/10) - 10% Unknown House - Olta, Jonas (2/10) - 20% (These two names are color coded the same, so I'll assume they're in the same house, as 'unhoused' students have the standard blue color coding : e.g Miorine)

Okay, we're ALMOST done here, but, because Ojelo often says the odds of a duel out loud during it, we can actually track the odds of Guel, Elan, and Suletta up to this point. (Ojelo always says the odds in terms of Person he's betting on's odds - Opponent's odds.)

Guel: Episode 3 Odds: 1 Episode 5 Odds: 1.4 Episode 8 Odds: 3.4 1 - 1.4 - 3.4

Elan: Episode 5 Odds: 1 Episode 6 Odds: 1 Episode 8 Odds: 2.7 1 - 1 - 2.7

Suletta: Episode 3 Odds: 8.6 Episode 6 Odds: 2.7 Episode 8 Odds: 1.9 8.6 - 2.7 - 1.9

HUAHH okay, let us continue

This is the Recording System that opens when Prospera sends her all of Aerial's past data. The screen is similar to the one that appears when Eri is speaking to Lfrith, but other than that there's not much info that can be gleaned here.

Not text, but I really how during the scene where Suletta asks Prospera why she lied to her, and Prospera continues to lie to her about why, Suletta's face is drawn in a way that's uncomfortable to look at once she falls for her manipulation.

This scene is also where Prospera tells her outright that Gundams are safe, and for nearly the entire rest of the series, Suletta repeats this, even when faced with direct evidence to the contrary because she wholeheartedly believes her mother would never lie to her for no reason.

Okay okay FINAL non text thing I PROMMY, but this scene implies that at some point, Suletta spoke with Shaddiq about the situation with her mom for at least a little bit at some point. I wish we got to see that.

TEXT: NEXT > THE ASTICASSIA SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY WE WILL SHORTLY ARRIVE...

I wonder why Shaddiq was on this flight anyway. Probably to talk to Sarius or something.

TEXT: Preparing disclosure documents for investors Application for Registration of Incorporation (Benerit Group Student Business Startup Program) Articles of Incorporation to Benerit Group Legal Certification Division Business Plan for Benerit Group Internal Entrepreneurship Committee Business Plan for Student Business Startup Program Documents for Benerit Group Grant Review Committee Broadcast License for PR Video Documents to Open Corporate Account Application for Special R & D Financial Transaction Business Application for MSP Certified Factory Application for Establishment of Sustainable Enterprise

This is the list of all the various things and registrations the company needs to take care of

Not text (sorry i lied) but I think it's interesting that the video Miorine watches of her father's speech is a secondhand recording and not an actual recording of the event.

Some closer looks at the editing software used to create the PR video. The name of the raw video file is GUND-ARMInc.PV01, and the placeholder text for the GUND-ARM Inc. Logo is GUND-ARMInc.PV02.

Also all of the silly visual effects like the hearts and musical notes make sense when you realize they had Suletta edit the actual video.

We can actually see Till's rough sketch of the GUND-ARM logo on his tablet screen, complete with construction lines. That's why they have to use a placeholder in the editing software, it's not complete yet.

When Miorine chooses the data files to cast to the screen, the 3 video files are named GUND CARDO NABO MS

The files are dated by year, so all of these files were recorded in A.S. 101.

youtube

Here is all of the editing (blessings) in the GUND-ARM PR Video 1. When Suletta walks into frame, the video is covered in a filter that makes hearts and stars appear on the screen. When the video cuts the first time, the filter changes to one that makes various musical notes appear on the screen. Then when it cuts again the filter is gone. 2. Suletta walks into frame, and then tries to correct her position, and then it cuts back to a shot of her in the original spot she was standing in. 3. Aerial is horribly keyed into the shot, and you can see bits of the green screen behind it. Tiko also walks in front of it and they didn't know how to edit him out. 4. When they begin the dance, each step cuts to a later time of day and Suletta looks noticeably more exhausted, which means they kept having to re-record it. 5. They kept having to edit Aerial's arms to make the dance moves work.

They move them around

And they stretch them.

I like that Prospera laughs at the video, because for her, it's probably like watching her daughters having fun and playing together.

The food for the party that Suletta and Miorine are bringing are from ASTICASSIA FOODS.

TEXT: ASTICASSIA SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY STUDENT REGULATIONS

STUDENT REGULATIONS >> SUPPLEMENTAL STUDENT BUSINESS STARTUP REGULATIONS ARTICLE 53 PARAGRAPH 3 SAFETY VERIFICATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY USED IN STUDENT BUSINESSES. EDIT APPLY

The part of the school regulations that Sabina edits for Shaddiq.

HOYAAAHHH!!! MISSION COMPLETE! This one was a DOOZY...but i've actually been wanting to talk about the betting program for a WHILE and I'm glad I finally got to..! My final gift...errmmm

In a way, I guess they did, in the end, huh?

Click here to go to Episode 9. >>

Click here to go to the Masterpost.

#g witch #gundam the witch from mercury #Youtube

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floralfractals · 11 days

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I don't know anything about measure theory, re: f(x)=x on [0,1], what's the deal with integration?

ohh well i guess i did kinda say that without explaining huh. let me elaborate

measure theory is all about sizes of sets, in a generalisation-of-probability-way. the probability of event A is 0.5, the probability of event B is 0.8, the total probability (of any outcome happening at all) is 1. or the measure of set C is 2, the measure of set D is 0.002, the total measure (of the ambient space) is infinity. whatever.

but what is integration if not calculating the space under a curve? is that not dependent of the measures of the sets underneath them?

lets first talk about "regular" (Riemann) integration. basically, suppose you have a function f: R -> R. it has some kind of fun graph, and youd like to find the surface between the graph and the x-axis. one way to do that is by approximation through rectangles. yknow, draw some rectangles of fixed width, put their heights either just under or just above the graph of f, add up their surface areas and bam! you have a numerical method of approximating the integral. or you could make the rectangle width smaller and smaller for exact results. thats integration. heres a visual.

ok cool so problem solved right? we know the area under the graph? surely this holds for every function?

well, no. suppose we have a really fucked up function. for example, let f(x) be equal to 1 if x is rational, and 0 otherwise. the above method wont be able to determine if the area is 0 or infinity, or something in between!

thats where measure theory comes in. we give sets a measure (notation: m(A)). this measure is not negative, and if you take the measure of two sets that dont overlap with each other, then their measure is the sum of their separate measures (in notation: m(A ∪ B) = m(A) + m(B) if A and B are disjoint. this is called sigma-additivity (the sigma means that it works for countable infinitly many sets as well)). easy! now we can define something called the indicator function 1_A(x), which is 1 if x is in A and 0 otherwise, and we define its (Lebesgue) integral to be ∫ 1_A dm = m(A). usual linearity applies for finite sums (so if a and b are numbers, and f and g are functions, then ∫ af + bg dm = a ∫ f dm + b ∫ g dm) (wacky things happen when sums are infinite: they might become infinitely large, or infinitely negative, or not converge at all).

this solves the issue of our crazy function f we just defined: notice that f(x) = 1_Q(x), where Q is the set of rational numbers. thus, ∫ f dm = m(Q), which (in one of the most natural measures, called the lebesgue measure*) is zero. done!

now for your question. the function f(x) = x on [0,1] (for our purposes: f(x) = x if x is in [0,1], and zero otherwise) cant be written as a finite sum of indicator functions. that means that our newly defined Lebesgue integral wont do without a bit of work. as it turns out, we can take limits in the Lebesgue integral, as long as our sequences increase (in math notation: if (f_n)_n is an increasing sequence with limit f, then lim_{n -> ∞} ∫ f_n dm = ∫ f dm). thus, we need to find such a sequence.

it's probably best if all functions in our sequence are finite sums of indicator functions, since we know how to integrate them. one such sequence with limit f is given by f_n = Σ_{k=0}^{n-1} k/n 1_{[k/n, (k+1)/n]}. that looks kinda scary, but if we let n go to infinity, this turns out to be equal to f almost everywhere (some points are counted twice since the intervals [k/n, (k+1)/n] and [(k+1)/n, (k+2)/n] have some overlap, namely {(k+1)/n}, but we dont need to worry about that since m({(k+1)/n}) = 0). heres another visual.

as you can see, though, when we go from f_2 to f_3 we have some parts that increase and some that decrease. that sucks because now our limit trick wont work! to solve this, notice we dont have that issue when we go from f_2 to f_4, or from f_4 to f_8. thus, the sequence (f_{2^n})_n would work, since its limit is also f!

now we can do a big calculation. please bear with me (its just this paragraph i swear)! we have ∫ f dm = lim_{n -> ∞} ∫ f_{2^n} dm, so lets solve ∫ f_n dm for any n first. we have ∫ f_n dm = Σ_{k=0}^{n-1} k/n m([k/n, (k+1)/n]) = Σ_{k=0}^{n-1} k/n^2 = (n-1)(n-2)/2n^2. we can work with that, so were ready to take the limit: lim_{n -> ∞} ∫ f_{2^n} dm = lim_{n -> ∞} (2^n-1)(2^n-2)/2(2^n)^2. that looks scary, but luckily its equal to the slightly less scary lim_{n -> ∞} (n-1)(n-2)/2n^2, and thats just 1/2.

therefore, ∫ f dm = 1/2. which is also the value of the riemann integral ∫ f(x) dx, by the way.

you see that we needed a lot of calculations, so its probably not surprising that i needed an entire whiteboard to do this.

maybe this would make you think that lebesgue integration is inferior to riemann integration. however, as it turns out, most applications of this rely on proving that a lebesgue integral ∫ f dm is equal to some riemann integral ∫ g(x) dx, and we can just solve that with our calculus skills.

also, since the integral relies on a measure, we can do some silly shenanigans with that. for example, the ergodic probability measure related to my sickly son (lets call it n to avoid confusion with our earlier measure m) has n([0,1]) = 1/2, and n([1,2]) = 1/4 (in general, n([k-1, k]) = 1/2^k). i used this in my thesis to integrate the function floor(x): turns out that ∫ floor dm is infinite, but ∫ floor dn = 4 :)

hope you enjoyed doing some measure theory with me :>

*: the lebesgue measure is probably one of the more intuitive measures. an interval [a, b] has lebesgue measure b - a, so m([0,1]) = 1. this also means that a single point has measure m({x}) = x - x = 0, and a countable union of singletons (like Q) therefore also has measure m(Q) = 0. however simple this measure is, it also gives rise to some wacky crazy properties! for example, there exist sets that cant have a measure, but you can only construct them using the axiom of choice. scary!

#measure theory #asked and answered #please send me more questions lol i like dumping info about math

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thydungeongal · 6 months

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Here's something I started thinking about recently, inspired by this post by @talenlee:

(Talen is one of my favorite writers in the RPG space and y'all should give him a follow if you want to read a bunch of really smart thoughts about games.)

The issue of ability scores trying to somehow model a reality is not unique to 4e. It's present in various degrees in all editions of D&D. As Talen points out, Strength does have something of a simulation attached to it (in terms of carrying capacity), but what a Dexterity of 16 or an Intelligence of 8 represents in the fiction is never really explained. In older editions you would sometimes get something like Intelligence determining how many languages you could speak and also act as a simple measure of your literacy, but it was so rough that it didn't actually represent anything measurable.

An Intelligence of 8 doesn't actually have any direct representation in the fiction beyond a -1 penalty to Intelligence checks. What this means is that when a person of average Intelligence (assuming that an Intelligence modifier of +0 is truly average) has a 55% chance of succeeding at an Intelligence check (DC 10), a person with an Intelligence 8 only has a... 50% chance of succeeding on that check. Looking at it like that it doesn't actually seem like that big of a difference.

Thing is, we don't have any way of measuring what any of these ability scores mean. A Charisma of 18 doesn't mean anything besides "a +4 modifier to Charisma checks." At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether your Monk uses their Dexterity of 18 or their Wisdom of 18 for their unarmed attacks (the latter is possible with the Astral Self), nor is there any functional difference between an Artificer making an attack with a magic sword with their Intelligence of 16 versus a Fighter making an attack with the same sword with their Strength of 16 (of course there is in the sense that the two may have different secondary effects attached to these attacks, but the raw numbers add up just the same).

I think that in a combat heavy game like D&D (any edition) there is value in giving players lots of discrete mechanical choices to make for their character and sometimes ability scores do end up reinforcing character archetype (it makes sense that Wizards would be good at Arcana, Rogues would be good at Stealth, and Bards would be good at Performance, and these are not only functions of their class but also of the ability scores these classes mostly utilize!) but sometimes there is a wide disconnect: Rangers and Druids won't be as good at Nature checks as a trained Wizard, Clerics don't actually benefit from being built towards being good at the Religion skill, and why are Clerics and Monks among the best character classes to build towards Perception?

I do think there is something to making it so that in a combat game a character's combat role is in harmony with their fictional identity, and D&D's classes are for the most part good at this (D&D 4e being a shining example of this type of design imo), but ability scores are a very D&D solution to the problem which often introduces its own set of problems.

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inexplicablymine · 6 months

Text

20 question for fic writers

Thank you to @orchidscript @cha-melodius @kiwiana-writes and @daisymae-12 for the tags!!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Four. (tis my small but mighty number before the flood of posting that is upcoming)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

37,315

3. What fandoms do you write for?

RWRB, and probably in some nebulous future space ATLA, 911 Lonestar, and Check, Please! (The last two are the fault of @orchidscript and @cricketnationrise)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. No Sense or Sensibility

2. Mr. BodyPillow

3. Uncut Not Uncultured

4. And They were Tentmates!

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

Yes! Always! Comments are my fuel, and I collect them like a little dragon hoards treasure

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

I at this point (both published and unpublished) have 0 angsty endings

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

They are all happy but honestly Mr. BodyPillow still probably takes the cake there

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thank goodness no.

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

Ha yes, but I can not guarantee it’s quality.

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

Ask and you shall receive: a RWRB x PJO au crossover is currently in the works to be posted starting this December and elated is an understatement.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but I would be HONORED and would LOVE to have any of my fics translated.

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

HA… currently in the works

1. PJO au w/ @read-and-write-+ @happiness-of-the-pursuit

2. A verrrry fun one with @celaestis1

3. Threesome fic with @heybuddy-drabbles

4. Something so crack it hurts with @affectionatelyrs

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Don’t do this to me, I will not have an answer. Could go Percabeth, could go Sterek, could go FirstPrince, could go literally in any number of drastic directions but I couldn’t choose a top favorite.

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

Here’s the thing, if it gets a doc it’s getting finished… which means I have a LOT of works that are coming out in the future.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Prose, description, really painting a scene.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Everything else? Kidding, I have a strong aversion for commas and I would love to improve the whit in my dialogue.

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

Yes. But you should absolutely check with someone if you aren’t fluent. Our PJO au has a LOT of fun Spanish curtesy of @read-and-write- 's brilliant mind

19. First fandom you wrote for?

A Sarah Dessen book way back when. Didn’t even realize it was fandom writing at the time. My grandmother still has that notebook with the full story, calls it my first book. If only she knew.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Published? Hmmmm honestly “and they were tentmates” it’s my best written work to date

Unpublished? Toss up between PJO AU and one that I’m working on called Looking For Orion!

No pressure tagging: @princehgejfmw @pridepages @rmd-writes @vonpeepsisback @affectionatelyrs @welcometololaland @read-and-write- @adreamareads @happiness-of-the-pursuit @cricketnationrise

#inexplicablymine answers #fic tag game #20 questions

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enbyleighlines · 5 months

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Leigh plays Tellius prt 2

We got Soren's first crit on this map! Btw, this stupid pirate map took me THREE tries. Once I lost Mist, and twice the houses were burnt down before I could get to them. Ugh. This was the first map that gave me any trouble.

And unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last.

The prisoner's map! I decided not to do the stealth thing, and just killed everybody. I think I took a little too long, though, so I didn't get much bonus exp from this map. But it's okay, because I now have Nephenee and Kieran, two more fruits to add to my basket. And Brom, too, of course. I love him, but I'm sorry, I will probably never use him. Armored knights and I don't get along too well.

Gosh, I absolutely love the dynamic between these two characters. I 100% believe that Kieran has a crush on Oscar, and that's why he took Oscar's discharge from the military so personally. One day, Kieran will realize why Oscar's squinty-eyed face makes his heart go all pitter-patter. Until then, I will fully enjoy getting these two to A rank.

Yeeeee, Nephenee!! I have said it before, and I will say it again. I love how there is just a series of chapters in early PoR where you get to recruit a new anime waifu each map. In any other FE game, these would be Ike's love interests. But not in this game! I just love how Ike collects this group of cute girls with fun, quirk personalities, and then remains platonic friends with all of them. And of all the "recruitable waifus", Nephenee is definitely my favorite. She's just too damn adorable.

I made a terrible error on this map, and accidentally put Mia within the boss's range. Thankfully, she survived with 1 HP, and I was not forced to redo this map. Whew!

It's Port Toha time! I love that Ranulf pays such close attention to Soren. Apparently, in the Japanese version, it's implied in this scene that Ranulf knows Soren's secret, which explains why Ranulf keeps such a close eye on him. I wonder if this is Ranulf's first time meeting someone like Soren. I really wish the game had expanded on this. I bet Ranulf and Soren would have some really interesting conversations. If they ever remake these games and add support convos to RD, I hope Soren and Ranulf have a support chain.

The fucking humor in this game is so great.

I don't even know what to say about this line, but man, does it make me feel a certain sort of way. Mackoya is not the only character who expresses this sentiment, but I do believe it is the first we see it, this idea that soldiers will become weak without "a steady diet of war". It's a key aspect of Ashnard's entire philosophy. I like how this completely contradicts with what Mist says later, about "Doesn't everybody want peace?" Because no, they clearly don't. There is no use for soldiers in a world without war, after all.

Someone much smarter than me could turn this into an entire thesis paper.

I respect Zihark 100%, but man, his introduction is wild. Entirely unprompted, he's just like "how many men do you want me to murder? Give me a number and I'll start hacking!" It's a shame I never use him, because I love him as a character. I do wish we got to learn more about his past, or had his past tie into the plot.

I always snort out loud at this line, because like, what steps are you taking, Nasir? There are two defining features of dragon laguz, which are the forehead markings and the pointed ears. You have decided to conceal neither of these things. You could easily hide your ears in your hair. Your hair is long enough. And what is the point of those things around your forehead? Could you not put some dangling gem or something to cover up your forehead marking?

I will accept that most beorc probably don't know what dragon laguz look like, but still. Nasir has taken exactly 0 steps in concealing his identity.

This might be my single favorite line from Ike. Gosh, he's so funny, I love him.

And that's it for part 2! Next time, we fight some pirates!

#leigh plays tellius #path of radiance #fire emblem path of radiance #tellius #fe9

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zh-lele · 2 years

Text

We ridin' (currently under editing)

This is the sound you hear when you ride with your enemies

▪︎Summary: Two young people fall in love despite the rivalry of their racing teams. The smallest mistakes you make will leave the biggest regrets.

▪︎Pairing: Lee Haechan x female reader

▪︎Genres: Street racing au, romance, angst

▪︎Word count: 11.2k

▪︎Warnings: minor character death and mentions of death, profanity, substance consumption (alcohol and drugs), toxic relationships, suggestive scenes/implied sex, graphic descriptions of a car accident, blood, guns, violence.

Listen to the playlist here. | Haechan's moodboard. | Johnny's moodboard.

A/N: Hey everyone :) I said it'll be out before August 15 and it's here :) I hope you all enjoy it. It's not proofread, though, so apologies for any mistakes. Also I hope you remember this is fiction and I do not romanticize or condone any of the characters' behaviors or ways of being in a relationship. Please read warnings before proceeding. If you enjoy the fic, don't be scared to leave some feedback! It's highly appreciated 💙

0. Subtle mistakes felt like life or death

Unlike every other Sunday morning, the Suhs' garage is closed. Traces of last night's big storm are reflected on the wet pavement and the drops still falling from the trees, hitting the sidewalk. Inside the house, at the back of the garage, everything is dark and messy; the small boxes of chinese take out from last night, now cold, remain untouched on the small table in the living room. The sound of the last drops of rain and the voice of the reporter coming out of the old television cut the air, disturbing the silence between so much implicit chaos.

'And now getting straight to the breaking news, a well-known young man from the illegal street racing community, dead in a car crash that took place last night at 127 Road.'

"Haechan, stop."

"Babe, I'm fucking tired. I gotta show them who they're messing with. Gotta make them respect me!"

"No one wants to mess with you, for fuck's sake. Not right now. It's dangerous!"

'How many more lives should have to be taken for these kids to finally stop their dangerous activities? They're a menace not only to themselves, but to other innocent civilians as well. It's truly heartbreaking.'

"Haechan, slow the fuck down!"

1. Candy paint with windows all black

It was your birthday the night you met Haechan. Ever since you were little, you have been interested in your older brother Johnny's work. But since the street racing scene has always been a bit dangerous, he promised that he would protect you until you came of age, not letting you attend any of the nightly events to which your brother dedicates his life. That came much faster than you expected, however, and that same night you found yourself attending your first competition ever. While you weren't planning on racing a car, the idea was to support one of Johnny's best friends and the team's number one racer, Taeyong, who would be driving to win a car—the winner of the race would take the loser's.

Haechan lost a car that night, that ended up parked in your brother's garage. However, he won your attention and admiration with a few words and an irresistible image in just a couple minutes. Although he was shocked to find out your last name and to see that you chatted with him with such interest and innocence, it didn't take long for his expression of astonishment to change into a flirty, cynical smile. You wouldn't understand such behavior until later, when you talked to your brother once the event ended and after driving Haechan's car—now your brother's team's car—to your new home. You were finally moving in with them too.

"I saw you talking to Haechan earlier", Johnny pointed out.

"Oh, yeah. Did you know he's an engineer? He knows a lot, and he's really funny, too! I think you would like him. He even invited me to next Friday's race and told me I can go with him–

"I don't really want you around him," your brother interrupted you.

"Johnny, I'm an adult now. You literally accepted me here because you said I'm old enough."

"Yeah but like, I didn't take you there to fall for Haechan. He's bad news."

"You don't even know him."

"I do, and I know all his mates," he said, getting out of the car at the same time Taeyong was arriving with his own vehicle—the winner of that night. "They're trouble," Johnny continued. "He's gonna sweet-talk you into doing things you've never done before."

You scoffed, not believing Johnny still wanted to control you even after he himself introduced you to his world, knowing its risks, but more importantly knowing you were doing it to escape from the controlling and toxic environment of your parent's house, the same one he had been lucky enough to get out of years before you. That you were also an adult capable of making your own decisions and facing their consequences was an understatement. "He's not gonna sweet-talk me into anything. I know very well what I want."

He let out an exasperated sigh before talking again. "Arrested twice by the police for drunk driving. Once caught selling drugs. A car accident with his ex-girlfriend a few months ago. And the Lees' garage is just a big mafia in disguise. Weapons and all, my sister," Johnny concluded after entering your house.

"As if you guys don't do all of that shit too," you answered with your head down and a pout on your lips. "I know some things, you know."

"Just promise me you won't fall for him," he asked with a much less demanding tone and a tired expression on his face.

You shook your head no and that was enough for Johnny, who came over to hug you and kiss your head goodnight before heading off to his room.

"He's just worried about you," you heard Taeyong's voice coming from the kitchen where he munched some cereal soaked in milk from a Bob SquarePants bowl.

"I know," you sighed while sitting on the island across from him. With slumped shoulders and undisguised disappointment, you decided to accompany Taeyong and drown your sorrow a little in cereal.

"But that doesn't mean you can't have fun. You just don't have to fall for him."

And Haechan wasn't intimidated by anything or anyone. Growing up watching his family race cars and do dirty business, the boy would get in and out of trouble like he had a master's degree. After seeing you for the first time, he started going to your brother's shop every day, with the excuse that he desperately needed some parts for his latest design, since his personal supplier wasn't doing his job and the Suhs' garage was "the only one with the pieces in the whole city".

However, Haechan wasn't stupid. The boy knew that your brother and especially his Japanese friend did not like him at all, so he avoided visiting the store when they were there. But when your best friend Mark or Taeyong were around, Haechan knew he had a free pass. The fact that the latter two were desperate to sell parts and get as much money as possible to be able to upgrade Taeyong's car helped him perfectly in his plan of seeing you every day he could.

The young boy was really charming. He not only had the good looks but, as your brother had warned you, he also had the smooth talk. It was hard to ignore him and even more so when he was flirting and making you laugh all the time. After a week of hearing the same phrase 'I forgot to buy something yesterday', Mark and Taeyong started ignoring him every time he walked into the store, directly leaving it up to you. They knew he was only there for you, anyway.

"But if he bothers you guys so much, I don't get why you still let him come around and buy things from here?" As soon as Haechan leaves, you ask your friend Mark, who's sitting at the computer behind the shop's counter.

"But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

You patiently wait for Mark to finish reciting the words you too have memorized, after hearing him say them enough times since you two met years ago when he visited Johnny at your house.

"Matthew 5:44," he concludes, turning on his chair and looking at you through his glasses.

"You are such a loser, I can't believe I still consider you my friend," you sigh in response.

"Listen," he started, "I respect Johnny big time, but we really need the money."

You observe Mark's eyes get wider and wider as he opens up to you in a whisper, scared your brother could come back in any second.

"I love Johnny hyung," is all Taeyong adds, sitting at the other end of the counter, without taking his eyes off his Switch. Brief, but honest words.

"And how is this guy Haechan not broke yet?" You ask while checking some duplicates of the tickets that record all the purchases he has made in the week. More than thousands of dollars in just a few days sounding a little suspicious.

"Haechan's rich–"

"He sells drugs–"

Both of them are quick to answer. But either their telepathic abilities to agree have been wearing thin, or Taeyong is too focused on his game to notice that Mark has been trying to avoid the Haechan-talk for a good few minutes already. Mark's heavy sigh and Taeyong's shocked eyes, realizing he screwed up talking too much, are all the information you needed to find out what the truth is behind Haechan having so much money.

"I've always loved you for your honesty, Taeyong," you smile at him and tell him not to worry about it, but he still sends a pouty 'sorry' to your younger friend before getting back into his game. "Johnny actually told me about it, but I didn't believe it was that big of a deal?"

"Yeah, they've been selling for years now."

Mark now lets go an exasperated sigh, clearly annoyed at the subject of talk, but that doesn't stop you from taking advantage of Taeyong's moment of vulnerability. His little virtual animal farm, more important than anything else going on around him. "What do they sell?"

"Whatever shit you need."

Mark is already gone to the back the moment Taeyong answers, and you realize the latter truly has no idea of his annoyance at the moment he starts humming the theme song of Animal Crossing.

"We really are dumb, huh."

Taeyong looks up and waits for you to continue talking while his game loads.

"If we are so desperate for money, why don't we sell too?" You ask, and Taeyong's face lights up at the proposal, his eyes widening and his mouth dropping open in amazement like the thought would've never crossed his mind if it wasn't for you.

From the back of the store, however, you hear Mark's scream calling your name. "Don't put any stupid ideas into Taeyong's head!"

—

Outside the night smells like a mixture of burning tires, weed and car perfume. Friday nights are known to be reserved for making quick money, and weeks of hard work boil down to just a couple of minutes of adrenaline rush. Tonight, Taeyong will be racing Johnny's blue BMW 340 against a 2018 Audi s6. The Audi is a heavy car, so Taeyong could take that lead to win tonight if it wasn't for Johnny's car having a turbine failing. In any case, he will be subjecting it to all possible pressure so as not to lose power. Hopefully, your team's star racer will make it to the finish line without damaging the car even more.

Taeyong is one of the nicest people you've ever met. But to others, there isn't an in-between–people either love him, or don't like him at all. You guess it's because he portrays a serious image and almost doesn't smile in public. Yet, when you really know him, you find out he's a softie.

"I love you, Taeyong," you tell him as he squeezes you in his arms, and he moves out to hug the rest of the members before getting into the car.

Simply because anything could happen at any time, you swore you'd never want to regret not telling your friends how much you love them before any of them got in a car. That's how close you got to be over the years, and how much you mean to each other.

"If I die tonight you take my Switch!" Taeyong closes the door after pointing in your direction and you smile in response.

He revs the engine causing a strange blue fire to come out of the exhaust pipe; probably another change Yuta has been working on to impress the girls out there, and to impress Johnny. Beside him, a pink car envelops the crowd in a cloud of thick, suffocating smoke, from which a boy with honey-colored skin emerges. Something about 'stop burning my tires' can be heard through all the noise from the crowd. Him and the boy in the cotton candy car exchange a quick handshake and, as soon as the flagger gives the signal, both cars take off in pursuit of the night's grand cash prize, and the renown and recognition on the streets that comes with the victory.

There's your team and the Lee's racing against each other yet another week. And there's Haechan across the street, with a cigarette between his lips checking you up and down, while you pretend to ignore him, trying to focus on the trajectory of your friend driving the blue car. When your brother's too distracted talking to your friends, though, you take your own time to set your eyes on Haechan and dig into his appearance.

High waisted white jeans matched with a graphic t-shirt of the same color and a thick leather jacket hug his figure. His clavicles are shown very slightly, and his neck is adorned with some metallic chains and pearls, making his smooth skin under the moonlight look more inviting than usual. He's got his hair disheveled and darker than normal. You decide that it's when Haechan has long hair that you find him the most attractive. And you do your best not to stare, but he makes the task too difficult—especially when he deeply looks at you and smiles like he's trying to get you hypnotized.

It was too easy for Haechan to have you eating out of the palm of his hand. Him, a face too angelic to be, supposedly, such a dangerous person. Bad at being bad. You, on the other hand, a soul too pure to fool around with a demon like him. Too good at being good. That contradiction, however, is what must make it so appealing to you.

You blink one time and he's all you see shining under the moonlight. He finishes his cigarette and throws it to the ground, stepping with the toes of his leather boots to turn it off. You close and open your eyes once more, look up searching for his face, but he's already gone at the same time the pink car comes back and stops right in front of you, letting out the high-pitched screech of the brakes. That's when you realize the scene had turned quiet as your gaze met Haechan, then violent when you lost him.

Taeyong makes its comeback two seconds after, which makes your team lose about a thousand and five hundred dollars tonight. That's not the biggest loss, however, since you often win more from the side bets on the cars than from the actual races. From the winner's car comes out a tall, pink-haired boy whose name they shout celebrating–Lee Jeno. Victory doughnuts and music blasting from all the speakers follow right after the end of the race, but none of your friends is in the mood to join the celebration tonight and the usual after hang out. They're quick to get into their respective cars and turn them on, ready to leave. Johnny's pulling on your arm motioning you to go, before you tell him you will be joining him in a second.

Where did Haechan go? You know he doesn't go to your brother's garage on the weekend because he's the one opening it early in the morning, so you need to see him one last time before Monday arrives—but you won't know, anyway, if he's gonna be back until you actually see him cross the shop's doors next week. The bass is heavy against your ears, disorienting your senses a little. The dim street lights fade as you walk away from the crowd but, still, he finds you. His hands surprise you landing for the first time on your waist, trying to stabilize you after colliding with his figure. He's even more stunning up close, shining even where the street lights have completely faded out. It feels like time has stopped, lost in his brown eyes, and you're struggling not to give up right there in his arms. Just a small smile from his lips brings you back to the street, to hear the horns and the heavy bass and to feel the chill of the nocturnal wind on your skin. But how does he do that to you?

In some substances such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, most of the electrons spin in the same direction. This makes the atoms in these substances strongly magnetic. You learned these three types of metal in particular are around the Lee's garage very often through the long talks you have shared in the mornings. Even more in Haechan's hands, as he is one of the car designers and is always experimenting to take their motors to the next level. Nonetheless, that doesn't explain the reason why you have to become so magnetized by Lee Haechan everytime he is around. Maybe it's because the opposing forces of the universe attract. Or maybe, because there is something sacred in loving the enemy and a sinful satisfaction in trying the forbidden, coexisting at the same time.

"I wanted to talk to you," your voice comes out in a whisper, the air finding it hard to come out from your lungs.

"Yeah?" He asks, pressing his forehead to yours, eyes shamelessly lingering on your lips making your knees weaken.

You can only nod so far as his hands start barely caressing your sides, more gentle than the summer breeze. "Need to do some business with you."

Your hands travel from his arms to his neck, feeling the skin, and there you squeeze until you entangle your fingers in his long dark hair. A gasp comes out of him when you subtly pull, followed by a chuckle and a shrug until he finds his voice, "Sounds good to me."

Your eyes move rapidly across his face as if you were sleeping and it was a dream, trying to imprint his features perfectly in your memory before you wake up. And your lips are millimeters apart from each other, but you don't kiss since you know you won't be able to stop once he starts, and the both of you need to be back before someone comes and finds you like this. A delicate goodbye kiss on the back of your hand is all you get before Haechan disappears again, leaving you gasping for breath and with butterflies in your stomach.

The car ride back home with your brother is quiet. You try to think it's because he is upset they lost the race, and not because maybe he saw you acting too close with the enemy. Your mind wanders to those eyes pulling you like magnets and you still feel his touch on your skin; too hypersensitive, like he had put some type of drug in your system. All the members go to sleep as soon as they step into the house, and you only hear Johnny speak when he's greeting you goodnight.

But the night still feels too young, and you are far from ready to fall asleep. It doesn't take long after you get into bed, however, until a message from an account you don't follow shows up in your notification bar. It's hard to decipher who this is about at first, the username not helping the case, yet you don't hesitate to reply once you realize.

haechanahceah: hey, r we ridin???

haechanahceah: want me to pick u up?

you: yeah

you: i'll wait for u outside

—

The morning sun is big coming up from behind the horizon, and warming your skin with its intensity at six in the morning.

'All he's gonna do is gas you.'

The night was spent in between car slides, laughs, mundane talks and soft kisses pressed up against the finest leather seats. How did you end up in the backseat? All business talk was long forgotten as soon as you got to taste Haechan's sweet lips for the first time.

"My brother would kill us if he found us like this."

You feel his chest vibrate with his laugh against the side of your head, and his voice reaches your ears as if he's speaking right from his heart.

"That would be such a romantic story. It's like we are the modern Romeo and Juliette."

"Are you like this with every girl? You gonna scare them off." You joke, moving your head to make eye contact with him. A smile takes over your face when you notice he was already looking at you with the same loving eyes.

'He's crazy, my sister. He's like obsessed with danger.'

"I'm a die hard, too passionate." He acknowledges as you lay bare on his chest, his arms keeping you secured as if you could get to dissipate at any point. "I don't scare you, though."

And even after all the warnings from Johnny and disapproving looks from Mark, Haechan is right. He doesn't scare you. On the contrary, every minute you spend with him only makes you wish that you could have the rest of your days together. Maybe watch him wake up to the sun rays peeking from your bedroom window hitting his soft skin, and watch him fall asleep with his head on your lap and your fingers through his hair while trying to finish a rom-com in the living room. To have the sun all to yourself all the time.

His tired eyes still shine like stars even though it's already morning, and he still keeps some of your red lipstick on his lips. A sad cello plays through the stereo of his yellow car. Soon the clock will be hitting seven and you must have returned to the store to avoid suspicions. Still, you allow yourself to close your eyes and fall into him, to bask in his warm presence for a few more seconds before descending back into the real world. For one last moment, it will be just his soft breaths, that sad cello, a growing, forbidden love.

And a whisper in your ear:

"Fucking love you."

2. Bad luck to talk on these rides

The wind caresses Haechan's hair in slow motion while the sky is painted purple and reflected in a gray, neutralizing the yellow color of his car. The road remains empty and quiet and his right hand, when not on the gear stick, has already made its home on your leg since many dates ago. It's strange to think that one day you could get used to the familiarity and domesticity of his presence. To think, for example, that you would no longer have to secretly see each other all the time, or that you could drive around town with the windows rolled down. Perhaps, have dinner together in the living room of your house. However, having to forget about his caresses, his fingers intertwined with yours, his sun-colored eyes, sounds even stranger. At this moment, driving carelessly down to town, it feels like there isn't really a different future in your plans; living a normal young life with Haechan isn't an option, but letting go of each other isn't either.

When he drops you off blocks away from your house, you don't really need to say it. It's implicit everywhere. In the looks, in the smiles, in the ways he takes care of you, in the gentle touch of your fingertips on his skin before you untangle your hands and he lets go of you—momentarily, as he promises he would always come back to you.

You both know you do. And it's hard to forget when the sweet taste of him is still lingering on your lips. A smile plastered on your face like a silly teenager in love.

It's late into the night by the time you make it home and find Johnny in the living room, sitting in the dark all alone, with nothing but the TV lights shining on his face. Behind his back, the table holds the remains of dinner, a bunch of empty beer cans and the end of a couple of joints. In front of him, a VHS tape is being displayed.

Mark is the one recording—you could recognize it by his voice, even when it still was way more high pitched than now. A smile comes across your face as soon as you see Taeyong's round cheeks appearing on screen, and how he tries to hide his drunken state when Mark starts with his interrogation. 'This? This is just some apple juice.' 'That's beer, Taeyong.' Another boy comes into the screen. One you don't know, but Taeyong seems to do, as you can watch how quickly he gets lost in his features, with a lazy smile adorning him. And the other boy, with pretty cat eyes and a snub nose, can only radiate adoration while his eyes are on Taeyong.

You don't know him, but you know that look all too well. Enamored eyes. The same eyes with which you look at the boy from the other side of town, the one with the yellow car that steals your hours of sleep and your heart everyday.

The laughter coming from the young boys echoes in the room. You hear your brother laugh too, but he's not the same as the one sitting in front of the TV right now. He's lost, immersed in the memories while nostalgia floods the whole place.

You watch how your brother is about to jump off the pier when a boy runs up beside him and tries to push him away. They struggle playfully, and the little boy's laughter is so powerful that he stops that violent flood for a moment. The air in the room no longer feels so heavy as his laugh echoes off the walls. Mark turns the camera to the boy's face and you see that bright and characteristic slightly-sided, heart shaped smile. The nostalgia has dissipated for a second.

'Haechan, fuck off.'

'But hyung, you threw me before!'

Then realization hits, feeling as if the water reaches the ceiling of the room, and the pressure is impossible to withstand.

"You were all friends before?"

Johnny snaps his head back to you when he hears your voice and quickly pauses the video, yet he remains quiet, busying himself at a too obvious attempt of avoiding the subject while cleaning the table.

"How come I never knew of them before?" You insist.

"By the time you moved here, we weren't friends anymore. It's been years now since that." His answer is short and reflects a strange tiredness, the kind that bothers you right in the middle of your chest, that stirs up buried feelings and puts you in a bad mood.

But you also need to know.

"What happened to you?"

"They started to handle shit the wrong way."

"That explains nothing."

At that moment Johnny abruptly drops everything he was gathering, looking you in the eye for the first time since you arrived. You know better than to push your brother when he's moody and stoned, but you can't deny that it makes you feel sick on your stomach to know that they've been trying so hard to separate you from a person with whom, apparently, at some point they were close. Good friends, actually. In your head, it doesn't make sense, and it's just another selfish and overprotective act of your brother.

"And you don't care. I know you're seeing him anyway," his tone is too cold in contrast with the summer heat coming from outside, and the old fan does nothing to ease the added heavy atmosphere that has been created in the room. "Why does this matter to you?"

You're stuck in your place, fists clenched and mouth dry. There's an expression of disgust on his face while he looks at you, despite the lack of emotions of the words coming out of him.

"You don't care if I don't like them or if I want to protect you," he continues. "You're running after Haechan, sneaking out at night and coming late smelling like alcohol and cigarettes, acting like I'm too stupid to notice. I'm afraid soon he will be putting you in real danger."

"He wouldn't do that to me," you deny with your head, eyes filled with angry tears reflecting a very upset Johnny in front of you.

He only lets out a scoff before grabbing the last of a joint and putting it between his lips to light it up. The fact that he's doing this right in front of you while talking like that about Haechan just makes you angrier.

"You're so fucking silly," and maybe at this point, Johnny is as angry as you are that he doesn't think if he's being brutally honest or mean.

"I just–" you try taking the words out before the tears start to fall. "I wanted to make money for Taeyong. He told me Haechan is part of a good business–"

"Oh my God," he interrupts you, his tone drenched in disgust, "stop talking, you're just making it worse."

But the tears already started falling. "You don't even care about what I feel?"

Johnny exhales the smoke from his lungs and grabs the remote to turn off the television, leaving you in the dark with the intention of ending the argument for once.

"You know what," he stands at his room's door frame, door handle in hand ready to leave the room, "I'm sorry, I'm just worried about you. You wanna keep fucking around with him, then do. There really isn't much I can do."

The last sentence almost reaches your ears. The silence of the room suddenly interrupted by an overwhelming buzzing and the sound of your sobs. A door opens next to the one your brother just locked himself in. A slim, sleepy figure stands there, but with his arms extended your way and his shoulder ready for you to cry on for the rest of the night until you fall asleep. You know Taeyong is true to your brother and their friendship, yet tonight you are the most grateful to him for being the only one helping you overcome your sorrows.

3. This is the sound you hear when you ride with your enemies

Haechan's closed garage does its best to cancel out any sounds other than his kisses. His heart-shaped lips leave soft traces of affection on your cheeks and your jaw, caressing your neck before planting them again against yours. You know his friends are waiting for him outside, they wouldn't start the main event without him. You also know that, somewhere across the street, your brother is waiting for you too, but instead of asking where you've disappeared to for another night he could be connecting the dots by now. And there is also one last and most important thing you know, and that is that you shouldn't be here, sitting on the hood of your forced-to-be rival's car, with the same one standing between your legs and stealing the air out of your lungs. Still, you've been ignoring for three months now the fact that you shouldn't be seeing Haechan, and it feels too late to go back.

"Like you," he whispers to you, barely getting away from your lips. "Like you so much."

His hands are gently caressing your thighs. Yours keep tracing the soft skin of his face, his nape, until your fingers tangle through his hair and you pull him away. His smile is bright and warm as the sun. His eyes resemble nothing but pure adoration; if yours shine, it's only because the moon reflects the sunlight. He has become a source of thrill and love in your life. The nickname suits him too well.

You can't fall for Haechan. Your brother's words back in the days resonates in your head, arousing an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach. I know he will try to get to us through you. Don't fall for any of the shit he could say.

"Why do you do this, though?" You ask the boy in front of you, while fixing his disheveled hair before he will have to go out.

He stares at you with a frown, the tilting of his head to the side indicating he didn't understand the question.

"Racing, I mean. Like, you don't need the money or the fame or anything that comes with this, you know."

Maybe, if Haechan didn't race anymore, there would be no such stupid rivalry between your family and Haechan and his team. Maybe that way you could be together publicly; you wouldn't have to wait for days and days to see him and, when you finally get the chance, always be at risk of being caught by your brother or his friends.

"'Cuz it's in my blood, baby," he answers with a subtle smirk. "Racing is what I am, this is what I'm supposed to do."

His tight grip on both your hands and his deep loving eyes staring into yours, you think are supposed to give you comfort. Yet, unfortunately, they're far from that.

"Hey," he's whispering against your lips once again. When he presses his forehead on yours and closes his eyes, you rush to protect his face in your hands and try to memorize each of the beauty marks that adorn it. "I know what you're thinking about. Don't look so sad."

The volume of his words is almost inaudible; the multiple voices and the music playing outside the garage suddenly disturbing your senses a little too much, and reminding you that you are not as alone as it feels like.

"I care for you. You know that I'd die for you."

"That's a little too much, don't you think?" You laugh it off this time. You know now how Haechan can get a little too passionate.

"No, I mean it. Like, if Johnny crossed that door right now, found me here wrapped in your arms and decided to beat the shit out of me, I'd still die as a happy man, you know, 'cause I got to be with you."

The mention of your brother only draws a resigned sigh from you, and Haechan stops supplying kisses to your cheeks as quickly as he notices your change in mood. "What's wrong?"

When you see him like this, with his rosy lips plumped by all the kissing, the disheveled hair and wearing his heart on his sleeve being so real with you, you try to think of a single thing why you should just listen to your brother and walk out that door, leaving Haechan behind. But you really can't find any. His eyes are heavily charged with worry before you as his hands move to cup your cheeks, leaving loving touches on your skin and giving you the time to talk.

"It's just that I fought with Johnny. I would actually like it to be the other way around," you look into his lovely eyes and can't help but slightly smile. "You beating the shit out of him for once."

Haechan laughs, rapidly agreeing to your idea and letting you know 'he will take care of it.' A roll of your eyes and a quick peck is all he gets, before you are shoving him from you at the sound of his name being called from outside. The backdoor of the Lee's garage is quickly opened to let enter the boy with the baby pink hair. His eyes are wide and quick traveling from your figure on the hood of Haechan's yellow car, to his hands now back on your legs, to the unbothered expression of the honeyed-skin boy still in front of you. The boy at the door is the first to break the silence.

"Donghyuck, the race is about to start. Come out."

"Will be out in a minute, Jeno."

"They've been waiting for you for a while now–"

Haechan barely acknowledges his words when he's already asking you if you want to ride with him tonight. "It's gonna put you in a good mood again. You're gonna love it, trust me." And there's no escape from his pleading, because Jeno is already gone and Haechan only repeats please, please, please, between kisses on your lips.

"Fine."

He smiles satisfied at your response and disconnects your lips to let you get off the hood. His hand gently grips your hip before motioning you to climb into the passenger seat. "That's my girl."

Once you're in the street, you can finally assign faces to all the loud voices you heard from inside the Lees' garage. There are too many people gathered this Saturday night, even though it's a fun-only race that you know no one is winning anything from. You can't see into the other cars because of their tinted windows, but the bright green paint of the Chevrolet lined up to your right tells you that Haechan will be racing your team tonight. It's a surprise, though, since you thought they wouldn't be risking their pride after last time's defeat of Taeyong. Yuta walks over to the green car to talk to the driver and the window rolls down revealing Mark behind the wheel, which only makes you more nervous. It's one thing to watch them run and quite another to literally run against them, something you've never done before. Not even Johnny has accelerated enough to exceed the speed limits when he's with you. Beyond Mark is a purple car that you don't recognize, but it lines up ready to race too.

On your left, Haechan awaits for the pretty girl with the flag to take position. His hands grip the steering wheel firmly and securely unlike yours, from which you must dry the cold sweat of your nerves on your jeans. His eyes seem lost on the horizon, but you know they are expecting the signal to start the race. Your eyes travel uneasily through his body to his tense jaw, finally setting on his lips. A smile adorns them the moment the girl raises her arms–it's about to start–. But you can't focus on Haechan anymore when your body's inertia pulls you back at the sudden change in speed. Haechan hits the gas quickly, taking the lead down a narrow one-lane street, but Mark is hot on his heels. As soon as the road opens up again, the green Chevrolet passes Haechan's car with its nose and you start to hear him whining and cursing.

Haechan liked control. He made sure to always know his surroundings, where he was racing and against who; to be aware of the potential, the abilities and the weaknesses of the competitor–that was his first rule. His second rule was looking at every single mirror at least every four to five seconds. He said you have to be able to visualize the whole world through your mirrors, and know what's happening behind you to understand what's gonna happen in front of you. He didn't like losing and he truly hated not being the number one. So when the purple car passes him and he tells you that it's fine, that it's just Yangyang's car–one of his mates–, but he still punches the steering wheel with anger, you are pretty sure it's not fine at all.

"I can still win this," you hear him talk to himself. The speedometer continues to increase after passing 100 kilometers per hour. 110, 120, 130... Haechan passes both cars and you swallow the lump in your throat trying to calm your nerves. He approaches the closed turn they'll all have to take to get back to the starting point, and you notice that he's not going to slow down in the slightest. Still, you can't afford to close your eyes and run away from the moment. You can't afford to be afraid of Haechan either. Even when everything seems to be going wrong, he has things under control and he would never put you at risk, would he?

"The problem about Haechan is that he thinks he's smarter than everyone else. So, like, I'm riding with him."

The image of Mark being lazy in your bed this morning comes to your mind. With a smoke between his lips is how you finally found out more about their old, ended friendship. "I'm on the passenger seat, man's driving, car's full of bitches and the car in front of us is like, clearly slowing down."

He stopped for a moment to let out a cloud of smoke from his lungs, trying to cope with the frustration those memories still caused him. "He won't even flinch," Mark told you, eyes widening and wearing a pout on his lips like every time he's at the verge, fighting with his thoughts, struggling to process emotions.

"The girls are screaming at him. I am telling him to slow the fuck down 'cause we're gonna crash! And I know he has it under control, we still got a couple meters to make it and he's gonna wait 'til the last second to press the break. But can't he fucking answer me?! It's like he ignores that he has other people in the car, you know what I'm saying?" He finished pretty much out of breath, the frustration making him collect a bunch of tears in his eyes, but he didn't let them fall.

"It was always like that with him. It makes me fucking mad how he's an asshole, yet he never really fucks up enough to like, settle down. Man's just out there being a body. That's all. Doesn't care about shit."

Haechan's right hand lifts the parking brake while his left hand turns and holds the steering wheel firmly to take the corner. The sound of the tires skidding across the pavement mixing with the beats coming out of the car's speakers deafens your ears, and you're sure it'll be hard for the other two drivers to get out of the corner clean after all the smoke Haechan has put up with his little show. The maneuver lasts a couple of seconds that feel eternal. When he releases the parking brake and manages to stabilize his yellow car by taking the lead, a smile returns to take over his face.

He gets first place despite having started the race poorly. There is no shortage of shouts and cheers for him when he gets out of the car. Mark's car is the second to arrive and, after a few seconds, arrives the purple car from which a smiling Yangyang gets out and hugs Haechan. After that, everything happens rather quickly. The boy you've been sneaking out with suddenly opens your door and tugs from your arm to get you out. Cheers get replaced with surprised gasps and smiles with gape mouths. And everybody's looking at you, but no one's doing it the way Johnny and Haechan are doing it. While one look is filled with strong indifference that hurts your chest, the other is soft and loving so you seek refuge in it. By the time you're done making out with Haechan in front of everyone and the screams have calmed down, your brother is nowhere to be seen; just a few of his friends remain on the streets with Mark.

Haechan wears a satisfied smirk looking at you before he gets closer to say only for your ears: "We gotta celebrate properly."

One last kiss on your cheek and he distances himself enough to shout, but with his grip still firm on your waist.

"After party is at ours!"

—

"Have you ever smoked before?"

You shake your head no in response.

"Alright, you better do it for the first time with someone you trust," Haechan continues without looking in your eyes, too focused on his hands almost done rolling the joint. "You trust me, right?"

You did not imagine that this would be how you appeared publicly for the first time at the Lee house. It had always been secretly, getting in late into the night when his friends weren't around, and leaving too early in the morning to not get caught. So as soon as you arrived and Haechan dragged you to the door at the end of the hall to get you both locked inside, it felt off. This was the moment you've been waiting for a while now: finally being able to be with the guy you like without having to hide. However, when you finally make it public, the first thing Haechan does is hide you.

His train of thought is hard to follow, even more to understand his actions most of the time.

He looks different tonight. While there is nothing wrong with his looks and his handsome features get accentuated in the yellow bathroom light, there is something odd about his mood. He looks agitated; he talks a lot and doesn't wait for anyone's answers. You might be worried if it wasn't for the fact that when he finishes wetting the silk paper with his tongue and sticking it down, securing the joint, he gives you one of those smiles you love. No teeth showing, only his lips pressed together in a line, slightly curved upwards at the corners, his cute dimples on display and his eyes transforming into two adorable half moons. You want to see adoration behind that smile, you want to see sincerity. You want him to tell you that everything is fine, and that you should just throw the intrusive thoughts out the window.

You just wanted a normal party night feeling like teenagers in love, only to end up locked in the bathroom with him and a bunch of drugs in his hands instead of your heart.

Yet you still like him too much to say no to him.

"Yeah," you find your voice after a moment. "I trust you, Haechan."

That only makes his little smile grow bigger, and he lights the joint.

Things get funnier. The lights get more annoying but you pay no mind to it. Alcohol tastes better than other times you've drank, so you keep drinking. And when you are with Haechan's friends the filled cups just keep going around the circle and you drink a little bit more. You believe you even see Taeyong at the party, pressed up against a corner talking too closely to the guy who Haechan presented to you as Ten—the same one you saw with Taeyong in Johnny's video—, one of the older guys of their group.

The music gets easier to dance to. Haechan's body has hardly been this close to you before in a place that's not his room or the backseat of his car. You don't even remember when you lit up the second joint, only realizing about it once you're exhaling the smoke into the air. When the living room filled with people gets too hot for Haechan to stand it, he leads you to the bathroom again.

"How would you react," he starts after locking the door, "if you saw me snorting something up my nose?"

The question leaves you speechless. Of course the idea is not pleasant. It's no fun not being in the same state as him, you already know that from other times he has come to get you super high after hanging out with friends. It's no fun being afraid that something bad might happen to the person you care about because you let them. It's no fun that you can't understand why Haechan seems to enjoy it so much. And it's no fun that you fear he might just take advantage of his influence over you—which you recognize he can have sometimes, but you don't get to decide yet if it's a good one, or a more on the bad side one.

His eyes sparkle with excitement asking you. He licks his lips over and over again waiting for your response, until his gaze drops to your lips to steal a long kiss from you.

"So? What you say?" He asks out of breath.

Your head feels dizzy when the oxygen reaches your blood once again, and you have quite a hard time focusing on his words after the kiss, his touch and his eyes always too distracting.

"It's fine. I'm just worried something might happen to you–"

"But it won't," Haechan is quick to interrupt you. "It won't, it won't. Not when I'm with you."

He pecks your lips yet another time but you decide to deepen it, pulling on his hair to bring him closer to you. It's heated and you hope it will make him forget about this other matter you don't get to like. You truly believe it has worked when you feel him struggling with his pants' front pocket, so you back off to see him smirking at you, wallet in hand and too excited for his next move.

Haechan opens his wallet and takes out a small bag with cocaine in it. He dumps some on the surface around the sink and next to where you're sitting, and brings his head closer; you only hear the sound of the thing going up his nose, his hair blocking your view. A few seconds go by while you just watch after Haechan straightens up his back and tries to fight his state, keeping his balance by holding on to the sink until his knuckles turn white. Then, he suddenly seems to recover and is once again smiling and leaving kisses on your mouth at a pace you find hard to follow. He gathers the leftover powder he couldn't inhale onto his index finger and points in your direction, offering it to you. When you shake your head no, motionless with your back to the mirror, he then brings his finger to his mouth to put the leftovers between the lips and the teeth.

"I'll wait for you in the room," Haechan whispers before gathering his things and heading off of the bathroom, leaving you alone.

You think that what just happened shouldn't have affected you so much. Shouldn't have made you worry about your safety. Shouldn't have made you question the kind of people you've been hanging with. It shouldn't have made you think of a hundred different scenarios where Haechan, you, or both come to a bad end, yet it did. But most importantly, you know you shouldn't focus on that right now that you've smoked, or you'll end up tripping in the wrong direction when, in fact, you only came here to have a good time with Haechan.

You get off the sink and out the bathroom after a while of thinking alone. Outside, the party is still going off strong. The night seems young even though you're sure more than a couple of hours have passed, and in another couple the sun will be coming out again.

"Yo," Mark enters your vision as soon as you start to head to the room where Haechan said he would be waiting for you. Your friend is locking your way and he's got this weird look; his eyes glassy and red, and you can't tell right now if it's because he's been drinking or he's been crying. "How are you? Where you going?"

"Uhhh… Haechan's room."

"I think… you gotta stop seeing Haechan."

You frown upon hearing his statement. "Give me one good reason to stop seeing him and I'll consider it. I'm serious."

"I– I'm–" Mark starts to stutter. "We're just worried about you, dude, that's it."

Deciding you won't waste any more energy on the matter after hearing that same speech over and over again, you opt to just walk past him and to Haechan's room. It's harder than you imagined, though, to dodge Mark and all the people around him to get to the door. The space seems to have been distorted a bit; the distances are longer and the amount of time that has passed between leaving the bathroom and trying to get to the bedroom is questionable. You hope Haechan doesn't think you don't want to be with him anymore.

You are about to turn the doorknob when a hand you know very well positions itself on top of yours to stop you.

"Are you two like, dating?"

"No," you tell the truth. "It's nothing serious," and that's a lie.

"So you don't love him or anything like that," Mark states.

You take his hand off yours and turn the doorknob, ready to enter the room and leave Mark behind.

"No. No, I don't."

—

The music fills your ears as you hear different people talking behind the door, in the hallway. It's hard trying to understand what they're saying, but you hear them loud and clear. Your brother Johnny asks for you and you hear Mark tell him you're not around. "That's Jeno's room, dude. Why would she be there?"

Yet you are, and Mark knows it's not Jeno's room but Haechan's, but for some reason he's decided to cover you tonight.

Time passes. You feel Haechan's touch on you, the contact leaving your skin ignited, and you're sure his fingertips could get printed on your waist. When his lips are on you, you only realize how warm he really is, burning hot making you want to rip all of your clothes off. Time stops when he's not kissing you anymore, so you have to check that all that happened just a moment ago wasn't a dream. But it's easier to get lost in his shiny, red eyes as you look for an implied answer, something that could indicate what is happening is real. A different song starts playing the moment he reconnects your lips for another kiss. Time is ticking once again and it's only him, him and him.

Why does it feel so unreal everytime you are connected? What is it about the universe that doesn't want you close together?

Haechan says he doesn't mind waiting for weeks, not if he's seeing you at the end of it. He doesn't mind the backseat of his car instead the comfort of a house, the remote locations, the late-night, last-minute calls that make him drop all his plans, not if he's getting to be with you for at least a couple hours. You still know both of you would want it to be different, a little bit easier.

When you finally connect like polar opposites, when you get together, skin to skin, there's no magnetic field more powerful than the one created by the two of you. Haechan's presence becomes massive like a black hole; it engulfs you. Time stops, you disintegrate in his arms, and you can't understand what kind of laws rule there no matter how hard you try. There is passion, and there is obsession. Donghyuck feels you deep, too deep—in his heart and in every trace of his skin you reach.

"You look for my madness, you have me crazy, baby."

You believe it's the euphoria and the pleasure that make him whisper these kinds of confessions in your ear.

And you're reaching a peak, a kind of high where you block out every noise except the ones produced by Haechan's movements and his incessant praise. His strength disarms and reassembles you over and over again. His passion is so powerful it makes it hard to breathe.

"If one day I die, you will be the one to bury me. You're too much for me."

Suddenly everything is quiet. He's still breathing heavily over you, but he doesn't move anymore. Time, however, is running again, and you make one last effort trying to convince yourself that the warmth blooming in your chest is proof that everything that took place just now, was actually real.

"I love you," you are the one to whisper in his ear this time, tightening your grip afraid you might fall apart if you let go of him. "I'll always love you."

4. Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide

The windshield wipers move from left to right tirelessly to get rid of the raindrops that hit the car without stopping. Outside it's so rainy that Haechan's favorite floral shirt got all soaked up against his skin, just by moving from his front door to the inside of his car parked on the street a couple meters away from his house. Lightning pierce the air and hits your ears like bullets. You don't recap in which moment of the night it started raining. The only thing you know it's that the situation makes you pretty scared; it's dangerous to drive at night under such conditions, but it's even more dangerous to race on a rainy night. The storm and the countless drops of water, however, hadn't been enough to scare Haechan or wash the euphoria that gets over him every time he comes across an empty road and a contender.

'I don't even like driving anymore if I'm not racing' is what he said and worried you a while ago.

"What does he want?" Haechan asks in a low voice when he notices a car lining up to his right at high speed.

It takes you a moment to process the situation, still coming down from your high, yet you recognize your friend's green Chevrolet that Haechan was racing against earlier that night and your stomach hurts.

The night did not exactly end on good terms. After a while locked up in Haechan's room without hearing Mark or your brother's voices near it, you decided it was the right time to get out and re-join the party.

A fight between a pretty much drunk Taeyong and another guy they called Doyoung–that you learned was Haechan's older friend–was the last thing you wanted to presence. When things got pretty heated up, Mark only grabbed Taeyong and took him outside while the other struggled under the speech of 'I wasn't gonna punch him! I swear!' But Mark was, in reality, as drunk as Taeyong to barely handle the situation.

Tired of them behaving like silly kids who can't solve their problems and be in the same room without wanting to hit each other, you told Haechan to take you home. It was just convenient since Jeno and her girlfriend also wanted to leave and head to her house, but neither of them were in conditions to drive. Haechan was the designated driver for the night, but because he would never let anyone else drive his car.

"That's Mark's car," you speak. "They just probably heading home."

"I think he wants to race."

You can see Haechan speeding up and Mark also doing it to keep up. That reaction throws you off a little bit, since you know that even if your friend is drunk, he's the most prudent person behind the wheel. You know very well that Mark would never agree to a race on a wet road and with alcohol in his system.

"No, I know Mark, he doesn't want to race."

"I know Mark too, you know?" Haechan is quick to respond. "You know we used to be best friends–"

"Yes, I know. But we don't wanna race right now–"

"But this bitch's speedin' up!"

And he's indeed speeding up, what looks like he's trying to surpass Haechan's yellow car. So you unbuckle your seatbelt and roll down the passenger window to stick your head out, knowing you wouldn't be seen through the tinted windows. You yell, shake your hands no, scream there's no chance you'll both race right now but Mark seems to ignore you. The raindrops roll down your face, get into your eyes and mix with the falling tears of fear and desperation.

"Haechan, stop," you demand once you get your head back inside the car.

"Babe," he sighs without looking at you, eyes heavy on the road. "I'm fucking tired. I gotta show them who they're messing with. Gotta make them respect me!"

"No one wants to mess with you, for fuck's sake. Not right now. It's dangerous!"

The sound of lightning striking just a few meters in front of the car mixes with a startled scream from Jeno's girlfriend in the back. Everything turns chaotic real quick.

"Haechan, slow the fuck down!"

But what was probably the dumbest decision of the night hadn't happened until this very moment. Haechan slows down abruptly, but the car's tires don't offer enough friction for the wet road to keep him in his lane.

One meter slip to the right and you're colliding with Mark's car. Haechan keeps his foot on the brake and the car continues to skid to a stop a distance later.

The radio and the raindrops do a mediocre job of setting the scene to music. To your left, Haechan rests his head on the seat's headrest; a cut on his eyebrow that bleeds all the way to his cheek. Nobody makes a sound, but he's the first to break the ice with a laugh that sounds maniac in your ears.

All you can do is scream at him.

"What the fuck were you thinking?!"

The car ends up stopped in the middle of two lanes near the end of route 127. You were really so close to getting to your house, and this is when you remember about your friends in the other car.

Just a couple of yards behind, Mark's car is smashed against the Jersey barriers dividing the road. The green paint on the front has completely chipped and the impact has left it completely dented, shattered it to pieces. You struggle opening your door with shaky hands and a startled breath and you get out of your seat; heartbeat resonating in your ears and making your head dizzy.

Mark comes out of the passenger door running to you, but you can't hear what he's saying. He tries stopping you, yet you shove him off to walk straight to the driver's side and open the door.

There are five stages a person goes through in grief. Denial is the first one.

"Why isn't he coming out?"

You fight Mark who is still trying to get you away from the wrecked car.

"Why isn't he coming out?!"

Taeyong remains motionless, with his head painfully attached to the steering wheel, and his arms fall lifelessly to his sides. The rain coming through the open door drains all the red and drives it down the road.

"I– I called Johnny– an ambulance is coming."

Anger.

"You let him drive," you push Mark slapping his shoulders, suddenly taking your anger out on him. "Why did you let him?!" You scream at him but he doesn't defend himself or try to stop you, immersed in a state of shock without being able to take his eyes off the figure of your dead friend.

A cry of anguish escapes your chest as you stare back at the wrecked car. You clench your fists and pull your hair trying to fight all the rage that accumulates in your body, but the pain is too much to bear. It only makes it worse feeling like you're the only one in the scene who actually cares about your friend when Mark won't drop a single tear and the others won't even get out of Haechan's car.

A couple minutes feel like forever in the rain when you are waiting, until you can make out the colored lights and sirens in the distance. At the same time and on the other side of the road, Johnny gets out of his car and quickly jumps over the concrete fence to join the scene.

Negotiation.

"Get out of the fucking car." Johnny opens Haechan's door and violently takes him out until he's lying on the ground. Your brother's left hand grips the collar of his shirt tightly and his right fist makes contact with his jaw. From the sound of the hit, you're sure one of them has broken a bone.

"Johnny, stop."

Your brother reaches behind his back and holds out a gun to Haechan's head, who remains struggling from the beat up with his back against the wet pavement. Fear runs down your spine and suddenly you're too aware of the coldness the storm has brought tonight, leaving goosebumps all over your skin and making your body shake.

"You wanted a real reason for me to hate him?" He asks looking at you in the eye, still pointing at Haechan. "You fucking got it."

That only makes you cry even more.

"Leave before I end you," Johnny warns the younger boy. "I don't want to see you ever again."

Haechan stands up ready to get back in his car, but doesn't until he meets your gaze. Something in his eyes tells you he's still waiting for you to get back in the passenger seat and leave with him. He forever will be difficult to understand.

Sadness.

"Why did you do this?" You ask with a broken voice.

"I'm sorry, baby," Haechan says as your soaked up figure reflects in his eyes that fill with tears. But his lips form a thin line slightly raised at both ends–a wicked smile–. In your head, it doesn't make sense. "This is what I am."

5. 'Til it's time we die

You had read many years ago that on cloudy days one should be able to see their soul. Like the ghosts that keep you up at night and the song lyrics that remind you of all your mistakes, filling you with regret.

Acceptance is the fifth stage one must go through when dealing with grief. Even months after losing Taeyong, after dividing his dreams between you and your friends so you could continue living them for him, you still find it hard to accept that he is no longer with you. They said he was part of all of you now, so you longed to see him like your shadow when the Sun is out.

"Is that his t-shirt?"

You nod and turn to rest your eyes on the naked boy on the bed. The little light of the sunset that sneaks through the clouds enters through the motel window and illuminates his tanned skin making you want to stay there forever, tangled between his arms, his legs and the white sheets.

"It still smells like him."

"Do you really forgive me?" Haechan asks in a whisper and relaxes when he sees you nod 'yes' once more. "And when will you forgive yourself?"

Your brother still blames it all on Haechan. You were mad at Mark for a while for letting Taeyong drive that night, and then you recognized all of you were wrong for getting on the road when none were in the right condition. Mark, anyway, you believe is having the worst time dealing with it because he decided to leave the house shortly after the accident happened, so he's all alone for all you know.

You finish dressing up before getting to Haechan and planting a last kiss on his lips, ready to leave. Taeyong had a forbidden love too. You only found out about it talking to Haechan about him and Ten weeks after he was gone.

"You know I love you, right?"

You smile after hearing him and get up from the creaky bed. Whether it was about wickedness or weakness, it didn't matter anymore. You liked to believe you were living up to Taeyong's dream.

"I'll always love you."

Taglist: @tyongf-sunflower99 @rrnhyuck @sundamariis

#haechan fanfic #haechan #nct haechan #haechan x reader #haechan oneshot #nct fanfic #lee donghyuck x reader #nct-writers #ficscafe #neoturtles #k-radio!#zh-lele

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seedlessmuffins · 4 months

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hiii k!! congrats on the win tonight 🥳 i have an unrelated hockey question 🙋🎤

this might be silly and have no real answer lol but is there a reason why there can be such a gap between teams and their games played? like some have 37 and others have up to 43 played so far. is there not a motivation to keep them more consistent to see accurate standings throughout the season, or is that just not a priority since there’s so many games? could that even work with scheduling?

hola han!! congrats on your win as well, very sexo goals!!

it has an answer but it isn't a good one lol. the nhl schedule caters mostly to the us audience, because the us has a bigger population and more teams, and often the us stadiums are used for more things than just hockey, whereas for the most part in canada, hockey has priority.

the reason the schedule is like that is because the schedule works around the nfl for the first bit of the season, as well as us holidays (thanksgiving, mlk day, etc) and special games (heritage classic, winter classic, outdoor classic, global series where they play games in other countries) first. then, the rest of the dates are filled in, they plan their days with more games and less games, based on arena availability and travel. for example, if there is a concert scheduled at pnc arena, the canes can't play that day, so they have to work around it. or if the canes are playing the canucks in vancouver, that usually means that they will also be playing some combination of calgary, edmonton, seattle, san jose, anaheim, la and vegas around that game, because it makes more sense to do a big road trip when you are travelling so far rather than to go all the way across the continent for one or two games.

the reason why some teams have played more than others is just because of this scheduling. so in the same stretch of 4 days, some teams might have played 3 games and other teams might have played 0 or 1. there isn't really motivation to even it out, with the long season and the nhl's refusal not to cater the schedule around other north american sports. there is talk about strength of schedule, where some teams have really hard stretches (like the canucks in the fall, they had 27 games in 49 nights or something ridiculous like that) and sometimes easier stretches. makes it more unpredictable, more like anything could happen!

if you want a more accurate way to look at the standings with the extreme discrepancy in games, i usually look at the points %. the abbreviation is P%, and it is just the number of points a team has divided by the max number of points they could have (if they won every game they played). while the number of games played is so inconsistent, this is the most accurate way to gage the standings and to predict how teams with games in hand will perform if they stay on form (of course, because its hockey, good teams can drop 6 game losing streaks and bad teams can go on multi-game heaters to move up. thats hockey!)

sorry this is so long and doesn't really answer the question but i hope this helped! my inbox & dms are always open ofc (especially to you 🫶) if you need more clarification!

#bestie asks 🫶#han ✨#lovely to have you here!!#k ama: hockey edition #<- i mean i never said i was doing an ama but why not right #k the hockey prof???#nhl #nhl schedule #nhl schedule explained #<- kind of LOL

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roobylavender · 1 year

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Trying to get into green lanterns lore other than the new ones (jo and tai) what would you recommend 👀

hal is the only one i feel well versed in and normally i'm a stickler for reading up on characters in chronological order but he's been so omnipresent and retconned to filth that it's quite hard to pin down a reading rec for him esp since so many people will tell you to start with the johns era (vomit) and go from there. me personally i would go about it like this:

green lantern/green arrow: this was my intro to hal as a character! he's well into his solo run by this point but it's a good litmus test for readers to gauge whether they'll actually be interested in him

showcase #22-24: his pre-solo origins **

green lantern vol. 2 #1-74: i haven't read his solo in ages so in terms of narrative importance i would simply say read the issues where carol and/or sinestro heavily feature otherwise feel free to skim or skip. the early 60s issues are really a hit or miss depending on the person but for me at least the halcarol interactions were the highlight as was seeing sinestro in his obsessive idiot loser phase

green lantern vol. 2 #76-124: the hard traveling heroes saga between hal and ollie, occasionally featuring barry, dinah, and carol. the first few issues make up green lantern/green arrow, but if you keep reading this arc you also get more introduction and exposure to john and guy

green lantern vol. 2 #125-200: post-hard traveling heroes era. this is more halcarol focused and starts to really delve into the issues that being a green lantern creates in hal's life but personally if you're overwhelmed by the number of issues i would once again focus on the issues featuring carol and skim or skip the other stuff. her predator era is crazy and one of the most fabulous arcs for a dc female love interest out there imho

green lanterns corps #201-224: i don't think you have to read this personally but if you want to get more conglomerate green lantern corps interactions you can (there is also tales of the green lanterns corps for that but it can be a hit or miss sometimes as well and is responsible for the hal and arisia relationship.. which.. well.. we don't talk about it)

green lantern vol. 3 #1-50: basically more buildup to hal's life steadily falling apart which obv leads him into his parallax era. there is also a brief carol predator era relapse that ends in some really great reflections of what makes the halcarol relationship so unique and tragic and ultimately defiant of hetero norms. and we get introduced to kyle! ***

zero hour #4-0: hal versus ollie aka the sound of my heart shattering into a million bajillion pieces

green lantern vol. 3 #0, 60-64, 100-106: hal still in his cuckoo bazonkers era as parallax aka teen wolf nogitsune voice YOU CAN'T KILL ME. he throws down with baby lantern kyle again (bless his heart). the last few issues are a mini arc where kyle has to tell hal from the past that his life is about to get really fucked up

parallax: emerald night, final night #4: hal's redemption and death

green lantern vol. 3 #81: hal's funeral

day of judgment: hal gets the chance to come back to "life" as the spectre aka one of the only good narrative decisions geobard jawnes has ever made. sick that he knew from the moment he wrote this that he was going to end it. i hate his guts

green lantern vol. 3 #119: hal frees carol of the star sapphire for good

the spectre vol. 4: hal's spectre era aka his sexiest era. a gazillion out of 10 stars for peak uncle interactions with helen and beautiful tender tragedy with halcarol (although i will complain it annoys me personally carol was so minimally included here when she had been such a big part of green lantern lore previously. i think this is what pushed johns to bring her back as a star sapphire bc he nor dimatteis could conceive of how she would be impt as a civilian character even though she had shown all capacity to be for like. decades prior lol). there are also big trans hal vibes and if you are into funky catholic guilt and rage this is your book

** hal's origins are messy in that they are basically rewritten twice. they're rewritten first in emerald dawn and emerald dawn ii, which is probably the origin i would go with overall bc it is most consistent to green lantern vol. 3 and the state hal and his relationships are in by that point (particularly with sinestro and carol). they're rewritten second in green lantern: rebirth (2004) by geoff johns, which is imho bland and terrible. personally i love hal's initial origins from the 1960s. i don't think you'll ever get a better depiction of hal as an intrinsically heroic yet externally awkward person filled to the brim with dreams and longing. i also prefer how his dynamics with carol and sinestro used to be written here before they got bogged down in a lot of the misery you see showcased by the time we make it to parallax era. the drama of that era is great obv and i love it but i also miss how cartoonish and silly and entertaining early green lantern was

*** this first chunk of green lantern vol. 3 is unfortunately written by gerard jones (aka the guy who is currently in jail for possession of child pornography. yeah) so something to keep in mind. i don't think it impacts much of what he wrote for this book specifically but it is still obv disappointing and uncomfortable so i wanted to note that. he also worked on the emerald dawn books

for the other lanterns my mutual has a carrd with essential recs for each of them here. in pre-geobard jawnes era john is mostly relegated to green lantern vol. 2 and 3 whereas guy shows up in both and then a handful of other justice league books as well as his own solo series guy gardner: warrior. kyle is probably the easiest to read about once green lantern vol. 3 segues into his introduction in the parallax era bc it obv becomes his solo book. simon and jessica have mildly interesting content in their new 52 introductions but green lanterns is probably one of the worst books i have ever read not in its content per se (although i personally do have complete apathy for new green lantern lore) but simply bc its writing is juvenile to the point of agony. which is obv standard fare for modern dc books. and then there is obv alan as well omg ty to anon for reminding me of him! i am least familiar with him but jsa 1999 is apparently a good place to start and i think he shows up sometimes in green lantern vol. 3 as well bc he mentors kyle on occasion!

#hal jordan #dc #long post #outbox #i know there are probably some individual issues i missed here or there so if i did sorry to the truthers with great memory #honestly my biggest mistake when reading up on hal was not doing my usual thing where i write down the impt issues in my notes app..#i did that with talia and wally but i forgot to do it for him so now my sense of chronology for him is fucked #and reading lists online really do not help at all bc everyone is obsessed with geobard jawnes #i do want to try making a proper pre johns reading list for him though so maybe this can be a side project for this semester

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overobsessedfanboy23 · 2 years

Text

Trying to explain this stupid overly complicated card game to my boyfriend who’s only seen the original series and it was years ago

(Put some notes in parenthesis for my notes after the fact. Also I haven’t seen Sevens or Go Rush yet so I have no idea how their duelling works)

Me: Almost 900 episodes and I don’t know the rules

Me: Well okay I do know the rules but it would take me about an hour to explain them

Him: 🤣 Okay great

Me: SO THERE ARE 6 KINDS OF SPECIAL SUMMONING-

Him: We’ll play dominoes. Or… Jenga.

Him: Jenga Hagane

Me: You can do them by first summoning fuckin shit monsters to the field

Me: These fuckers suck, they only exist to be your gateway into special summoning

Him: THEY ARE BUT CANON FODDER

Me: VRAINS straight up gives nearly all its non-link monsters 0 attack points.

Me: So there’s ritual summon in which you sacrifice these shit monsters to get some slightly better ones like Blue Eyes White Dragon

Him: “slightly better ones” Kaiba: *offended gasp*

Me: Then there's fusion summon which combines the shit monsters into a freaky Frankenstein mutation of all their parts, like Judai's Flame Wingman.

Him: Kaiba about to throw a card between your eyes

Me: He may try but it would be a waste of a blue eyes.

Me: Then there’s synchro summon, this one is boring

Him: 🤣🤣😭😭🤣

Me: One of the shit monsters need to be a "tuner monster.”

Him: And play music :)

Me: That tuner monster combines with a regular monster and adds up their levels to make a monster with a combination of their levels. ie: 3+4=7

Him: And that’s why Yuya sucks at card games.

Me: XYZ summon needs both shit monsters to be the same level as each other (there are magic cards to change their levels to make this easier) to overlay and make a decent monster.

Him: Then there’s equation summon where the square root of your monster combined with x number of monsters gives you the level of your end monster.

Him: You usually use three monsters all at once and end up with a level 10 gangbang.

Me: These XYZ monsters can also rank up (I can't for the life of me figure out how it works apart from deus ex machina) and all the numbers were XYZ monsters but not all XYZ monsters were numbers.

Me, responding to his equation summon thing: That’s what this is starting to sound like ngl.

Him: …I’m going to cry.

Him: It literally sounds worse.

Me: AND THEN PENDULUM SUMMON.

Him: I’M SCARED.

Him: It’s where you hypnotize your opponent to make him think you’ve summoned a good monster but actually it’s still the same shit monster.

Me: So basically there's a pendulum scale.

Me: You put one monster of a lower level on one end and one monster of a higher level on the other end ie: 1 and 8.

Him: And you get something between those???????

Me: Going off those numbers, you'd be able to simultaneously summon monsters through levels 2 and 7 to the field all at once.

Him: …okay.

Me: This mechanic is fucking broken and from what I understand, not even allowed in the game anymore.

Him: Yeah it makes no sense.

Me: OH MY GOD EXTRA DECK

Him: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Me: I FORGOT ABOUT EXTRA DECK.

Him: STOP *REDACTED NAME* THIS IS AN ADDICTION.

Me: No I have so much more to say.

Me: LINK SUMMON

Him: 😭😭😂😂😭😭

Me: Okay so it’s basically XYZ summon again (Note: it’s really not, this was just the easiest way to explain it)

Me: For as many monsters as you use to summon the fucker, it has that many links.

Him: …great the one I totally understood.

Me: If the links point to each other, the monsters can give each other effects and shit

Me: Which is why so much of VRAINS's duelling is "I ACTIVATE THIS EFFECT" back and forth nonsense.

Him: How do we know if they point to each other or not? Is it random?

Me: Also, there's one magic card that was banned in the actual game and was only used by the Ignis that can further link the link monsters.

Me, answering his question: They’re arrows *redacted name*

Me: The links are arrows.

Him: Yeah but what determines their direction.

Me: …where you put them. *sends him pictures of Link Summon to explain my point*

Him: But then it’s too easy???

Him: You can just choose to make all your monsters linked to each other???

Me: To get a shit ton of links. Yeah, that’s the point.

Him: Oh.

Me: It’s why a lot of people don’t like it.

Me: And also why the characters do so many consecutive link summons.

Him: But wouldn’t that make the duels last 20 hours?

Me: Do you want to hear of my pain? (Note: I love VRAINS to pieces but its duelling mechanics don’t make for the most interesting thing to watch at times.)

Him: Uhhhh

Me: Also extra deck.

Him: Um.

Me: It's where they grab their fusion, Pendulum, Link, etc cards from so they don’t have to dig through their decks.

Me: It’s actually not that confusing.

Him: Okay.

Me: They just didn’t explain it properly until Arc V.

Me: Also sometimes when the special summoned monsters are destroyed, they go to the extra deck

Me: Every pendulum monster does this.

Him: …why?????

Me: And a fair chunk of the other special summoned ones unless the player controlling them sends them to the graveyard (usually to activate its effect that can only be activated in the graveyard)

(Note: I may be speaking out of my ass here. I feel like all special summoned monsters go back to the extra deck when they’re destroyed but that could just be Arc V messing with my memory because I could’ve sworn some of them go to the graveyard because some of them activate their effects in the graveyard link a few of Soulburner’s Salamangreat Link monsters so maybe it’s specific to the monster? I don’t know so I apologize if I got this wrong.)

Me: So yeah I know how the game works.

Me: Oh wait that’s just the monsters and special summons ^_^

Him: I’m physically scared of you.

Me: I possess terrifying knowledge I know.

Me: YGO has ruined me.

Him: 😂 I know bey go spin spin

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digikate813 · 1 year

Text

Sooooooo...... 2022

2022 was...... a year.

A year where it felt like nothing and everything happened all at once! At least for me.

I feel like my daily productivity suffered the most. Between how demanding my job can be, the stresses in my home life that popped up throughout the year, not to mention getting COVID after avoiding it for so long back in August (0/10 would not recommend), things just kept coming up and even repetition became exhausting. To the point that I was only able to make 13 Let’s Talk About reviews this year. Which I think is an all time low!

But in a way, all of that, was the marathon to get to the very special moments I had throughout the year. The most significant being, getting to meet up with online friends. Before this year, I’d only managed to meet two of my friends in person. Now, I think that number is at a dozen! It’s wild to me that I even have that many friends, but the fact that I took the chances and had the ability to see these people face to face, to talk and laugh and hug for as long as was appropriate because we’re still in a pandemic (mask up guys), was truly special in a way I treasure.

Even when those connection were just over the world wide web, as they have been since Day 1, they would always brighten my day. I’d be eager to check my notifications when I got home to see if someone posted something, or wanted to share something they thought I’d like. I may not have posted much myself (I’ll work on that), but whether here on Tumblr, Youtube, Discord or yes, even Twitter, it felt good, as it always has, to see what the people I care about are up to, and maybe exchange some words on what’s new. Not to mention you guys would motivate me a lot to work on reviews, which was very helpful!

Also my Mom and I started watching the Great British baking Show and have binged pretty much all of that this year. Which was a fun comfort for sure!

It’s now 2023. The year I’m going to turn 30. Which is.... frankly terrifying to me.

But you know what? As 2022 was wrapping up, I was feeling a bit more optimistic about it. Because it’s when I looked back on the good times I had with my family, the experiences I got to have after two years of lockdown, and friends old and new who I’ve shared many good times with, I realize that there’s always something to look forward to. Even if you feel like you’re behind, you can catch up.

Whatever happens, I hope like this year, I have more experiences where I push myself a bit more. To get out there, to make connections, and to form wonderful memories I’ll look back on everyday. Because when I did that during 2022..... it felt pretty damn good.

I know I’ve written sappy posts like this before. Where I thank friends like @orangeoctopi7 @amaranthbirate @marvelandponder @blackscarabfilmz and @jinxproductions (welcome to Tumblr Jinx, there is no escape) for being constant presences of fun, laughs, encouragement and friendship. But know that no matter how many times I say it... I mean it. Every year that passes, is a year where I realize how truly lucky I am to have you all.

To borrow a phrase from one of my dear friends. I guess what I’m really trying to say is....

I’m really happy you’re here.

Here’s to 2023.

#new year #update post #thank you all for being here #I'll be here as long as you'll have me <3

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raceweek · 2 years

Note

fun added things for mick seat shitshow:

the ferrari side

it definitely started with ferrari extending sainz for 2 years, meaning the earliest mick can get a top car is in 2025 and basically forcing him to choose between ferrari and actually driving a competitive car.

major faux pas on their end because they have spent MILLIONS on mick's development and now they're going to lose him

not to mention their highest feeder series driver is currently in f3 (because illot will go and shwartzman will likely go to hypercar next year) and will most likely not be ready in 2025, when they will inevitably have either lost leclerc to a team with a strategist or given him everything he wanted because building a team around sainz would be stupid considering he's got half the talent leclerc has and is 28 years old (and will be 30 by then lol)

they're literally going to lose a schumacher over this LMAO. the lack of race strategy extends to the contracts department i'm afraid

genuinely this team has no foresight it's so hard being a tifosa these days

#firebinotto #firerueda #LOCKTHEMUP

please ferrari hire some non-italians and non-spaniards. please

the haas side

guenther and mick do NOT get along

guenther has this weird hard on for kmag that makes 0 sense because he obsesses over his driving instead of his looks???

mick has been outdriving kmag consistently since baku

the haas is still absolute shit (slowest car at spa) and is on average the 8th or 9th worst on the grid, but mick is still outscoring zhou and tsunoda in better cars.

1&1 are one of the more invested sponsors that haas currently has, but they are there because of mick. their sponsorship with haas was contingent on haas signing a german driver.

under armour and schuberth are also tied to the team through mick, whereas kmag only brought along lunar.

based off all reports haas do NOT have the money to spare for this (they're not even meeting the budget cap) and giovinazzi doesn't have that many sponsors (or talent) either so like. we'll see

the fun bit

SO many other team principals (including horner and wolff) and other team officials (including marko i think) have praised mick on MULTIPLE occasions for his driving this year and last. they are watching him

added bonus of these teams getting one of THE most marketable drivers on the grid (he's german and he's a schumacher) without having to spend a CENT on his development because ferrari paid for all of it.

getting a driver who is very clearly extremely talented and whose talent is currently being wasted on the back of the grid making crazy overtakes to get p17

it's such a shit show because like...haas and ferrari have absolutely fucked it. mick is probably the only driver on the grid rn that could lose his seat for a year, take a year off, and get a new seat (ocon style lol)

hehe. i am afraid i disagree with…a lot of this which is absolutely fine it’s okay im not like arguing or anything and i completely get your points!!

i agree ferrari are incompetent and i think steiner is an absolute prick, but i don’t think ferrari particularly care about the money spent on having mick in the fda they’re the richest team in the sport and red bull consistently write off a handful of juniors every year and it doesn’t really impact them so unfortunately money is just an object to them

i think mick has improved recently however his average quali lap this season is 0.478s slower than kmag and he’s an average of 0.293s slower every lap in the races - i can’t see how ferrari could possibly justify putting him in one of their race seats based on those numbers and i can understand why haas would be questioning if they want to retain him

i think the haas has been really slow recently yes and i wouldn’t expect mick to pull miracles out of that car bc at certain tracks it’s really really awful. but comparing his points tally to zhou (a rookie and a driver who has four dnfs that weren’t his fault) and yuki when the alphatauri hasn’t been a quicker car than the haas the whole season. i just don’t see the value in that comparison. mick scored points in two races - austria was a great performance but silverstone there were 7 dnfs/cars involved in incidents ahead of him and he capitalised for sure and i don’t take that away from him but i don’t think he would have got points that day if not for the incidents

im not anti mick or anything i just can’t see where the justification is for him being in a better car then he currently is if im being perfectly honest, sorry!!!!

#this is a side bar but it’s been bothering me for a while #im really wondering why we have this crossover with ‘marketable’ and ‘brings sponsors’#and ‘pay drivers’ depending on if you’re white or not…it’s giving me the biggest ick tbh #asks #anon #tag later

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