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shittyassffblog · 7 months

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Free Bird

Noah Sebastian x Reader

I felt horny as shit and couldn't stop myself so here is some smut with Noah <3

Warnings: P in v sex, use of Y/N, best friend!noah, oral sex

Pt 2 here

"And you can take your lame ass excuses and shove them up your ass! We're done! Goodbye!" You hung up and threw your phone on your bed, emitting a loud, frustrated and high pitched groan. You heard your PC ping on your desk and you glanced at it to see what was going on. It was Discord that alerted you that you had a message.

noah: wanna come on?

You stared at it, kind of angry that he didn't anticipate that you had just broken up with your boyfriend, but the rational part of you spoke louder and decided to just tell him you weren't in the mood.

you: naw, bad day. talk to u later tho <3

He was already typing so you sat in your chair and waited for his reply.

noah: at least call me and tell me what happened, maybe I can make your day better?

You bit your lip as you considered his offer. He was your best friend since you met at the Hot Topic you used to work at. He was just a tall, lanky emo buying A Day To Remember merch and you instantly had a connection with him. Since then, you started being friends and talking to each other every day. It's been 10 years now and you meant the world to each other. You had supported him through everything when it came to Bad Omens and you were so proud of how far he and the boys have come. So given how close you were you decided to just call him.

You put on your headset and glanced in the mirror beside your desk to see if it was noticeable that you'd been crying and decided that it wasn't. Not even five seconds passed after you pressed the "video call" button and he picked up.

"Hey sweets, what's up? Wanna talk about your bad day?" Noah asked and you sighed. You didn't even know where to start.

"Me and Chase broke up." You said shortly and Noah was silent for a while.

"Oh. Are you okay?" He asked in a low voice. Noah never liked your boyfriend and you knew that. You were half expecting him to clap in enjoyment.

"Not really. I was kind of expecting you to congratulate me." You said, still not looking at him.

"Why would I do that? You don't seem like this was a happy choice." He said.

"I broke up with him. But he cheated." You said and a tear fell down your cheek.

"God he's such a dick. But good for you that you left him. That doesn't mean that you're not allowed to be upset by it though." Noah said and you looked at him with tearful eyes. You were about to answer him when you heard a loud noise coming from him.

"Alright that's it, I'm coming over." He said, slamming his fist in his table.

"But it's 11 pm?" You said, almost as a question.

"Yeah well my best friend is sad over her shitty ex boyfriend, you don't think that warrants me coming over with pizza and booze? C'mon, what kind of a friend would I be? I'll be there soon. Love you!" He said and hung up before you could answer You sighed as the silence settled in your room and you looked around. You noticed Noahs hoodie hanging on your lamp and you decided to put it on. You walked into your bathroom to access the damage of your tears and found that it wasn't too bad. You wiped away a few stray tears with your sleeve and walked into your living room, seeing a few of your ex' stuff lying around. You grabbed a box from you last amazon shipment and filled it with everything you could find, including the stupid Five Finger Death Punch t-shirt he had given you, thinking you'd like it. As if. He didn't even know the bands you listened to.

Amid your rage cleaning, you heard the doorbell ring and you stopped as you dropped a shoe into the box. You looked at it and the memories of your past relationship came flooding back, as did your tears. You went to let Noah in and he immediately went to hug you.

"I'm so sorry you're going through this." He said and kissed the top of your head as the hood of his hoodie fell down. You cried into his chest and he rubbed his hand along your arm.

After a while he lead you to the couch and set down the pizza and beer bottle he had picked up for you on the coffee table.

"Wanna tell me what happened? How did you find out?" Noah asked, separating from you to wipe away your tears.

"She fucking DM'ed me. The girl he was with, her name was Emily or something. She had slept with him and then found him on Facebook to find that it said he was in a relationship and decided to tell me about it and apologised. Of course i don't blame her, she didn't know. But man, it just felt like a knife in my gut." You said, sniffing. Noah grabbed a napkin from the coffee table and handed it to you to help you blow your nose.

"Then did you call him?" Noah asked, taking the pizza out of the bag so you could use the bag as a trash can your your snotty paper.

"Yeah and I spent like 20 minutes yelling at him. He tried saying something like she was lying or something but she had sent me screenshots of him asking to pick her up or something." You finished and Noah sighed, pulling you in for another hug.

"He's isn't worth your tears c'mon. You're far too good of a catch to let a guy like that ruin you." Noah said and you smiled up at him. The doorbell rung again and you looked at Noah quizzically. He got up and opened the door for you. It was Chase. You felt your whole body stiffen.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me." Noah said, immediately tensing his body. Chase only laughed when he saw Noah, and then looked over at you.

"Really Y/N? Not even an hour later and you're already on to the next one? Knew I couldn't trust you, fucking bitch." He said and before you could answer, Noah had pushed Chase out the door.

"Yeah you don't get to make accusations you know nothing about. I think you should leave." Noah said, his words and tone calm but his body ready for whatever Chase could come up with.

"I knew there was more to this...thing, you and her call a friendship, so much for the bro code huh?" Chase said, trying to upset Noah.

"Don't think for a second I think of you as a bro. Not for one damn second. It is very easy to treat a woman right without expecting something in return and you couldn't even do that so leave." Noah said, pushing Chase once more. You couldn't do much but watch as everything happened. You were frozen.

"You're just gonna sit there looking stupid? What's wrong with you bitch, say something!" Chase yelled, charging forward towards you but was stopped in his tracks as Noah grabbed a handfull of his hair and dragged him outside. You ran to the door to see what was going on and Noah forced Chase down on the ground, got down on one knee and grabbed his throat.

"You leave her alone. Got it?" Chase nodded weakly and as soon as Noah let go and stood up, he ran as fast as he could. Noah walked quickly into the living room, grabbed the box of Chase's things and threw them after him.

"Don't think about coming back." He yelled and watched as Chase pathetically picked his stuff up from the ground. Noah walked back to you, taking a deep breath to calm down and grabbed your face.

"Are you okay? Did he always talk to you like that?" He asked calmly and you nodded.

"He has anger issues." You said meekly and Noah wrapped you in his arms.

"Let's devour that pizza now, shall we?" Noah asked and you smiled at him as you nodded.

"Didn't know you were that strong though." You said, trying to lighten the mood.

"I may or may not have been working out while I was on tour." He said flexing his arms playfully. You laughed as you sat down to enjoy the pizza.

A few days passed and you were doing surprisingly well. Noah was practicing for the next leg of the tour and you were setting up dating profiles. You decided that you needed a palate cleanser to get rid of the "chase cooties" as Noah called it when he suggested you try it. You were apprehensive at first but ultimately decided it was a good idea.

You were in your kitchen waiting for your leftovers to heat up in the microwave as you were swiping on tinder. No one really captured your eye except this one guy with a dragon tattooed on his neck. His name was Steven and he was not far from you. You decided to swipe on him, and not long after your microwave dinged so you locked your phone and went to eat it. As you sat by your counter and ate your food, a notification came up that Steven had matched with you. Not long after he sent you a message.

Steven: Hey, nice tats. Wanna grab a drink this week?

You stared at the message. No emojis. He had two pictures on his profile, but it linked to his instagram. You looked through and he seemed real enough so you said yes to the drink.

You planned to meet the following friday and you texted Noah to let him know where you'd be in case something happened.

Noah: go get em tiger! get ur dick wet!

You laughed at his message and sent a gif saying 'disgustang'.

Friday came and you were getting dressed for your date. You put on some dark red lipstick and a low cut top Chase never allowed you to wear and headed out the door. You felt very liberated that you could make your own choices again and happily waited for Steven a few blocks away from your apartment.

Not long after a black sports car Xoomed up to your and packed right in front of you. A very attractive man with a dragon on his neck emerged from the car.

"Y/N?" He asked and you nodded. He walked around the car and grabbed your hand to kiss it. "Pleasure to meet you, gorgeous." he said and you blushed.

"Likewise." You said and he smiled while opening the car door for you.

Not long after you arrived at the bar and he ordered you a drink and a beer for himself. You talked for a while and had a genuinely good conversation. You went to the bathroom and texted Noah an update and he sent a sports gif of a tiger mascot. You laughed and put your phone in your pocket, ready to get out the guy again.

When you came back, Steven started asking you some personal questions. At first you didn't think much of it, but the question got more and more sexual and you were feeling quite uncomfortable. When you answers got more and more short and cold he started berating you, asking why you were such a prude and generally being a dick to you.

"Do you think you just get free drinks and then that's it? No no, you gotta do something for me too sweetheart." He said and you picked up your phone, texting Noah to come get you.

"You don't seem like a very nice person." You said, finishing your drink and locking eyes with the bartender. He nodded at you, meaning he would keep an eye on you.

"I'm very nice, trust me, but only to nice girls, not gold diggers like you." He bit back and you put on your jacket. You didn't answer him, only stared at him.

"What you're just not gonna say anything?" He asked and you still didn't answer. The bartender came over.

"Hey so I think you should leave now." Said the bartender and Steve looked up at him like he was dumb.

"You can't kick me out, I didn't do anything." He said, rolling his eyes and looking back at you.

"Yes we can , we have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. So leave." He said back and you started to feel scared of what Steven would do.

"Let me speak to your manager." said Steven and the bartender agreed. Steven got up and went to the bar, and while he was arguing with the bar manager you slipped out, waiting for Noah. Just as you got outside, he pulled up and you got into the car,

"Hey sweets, how was it?" Noah teased and you rolled your eyes.

"Horrible, he was a giant dick." You said, grabbing the water bottle Noah brought for you. You took a giant gulp of it.

"What do you mean?" Noah asked as he drove you home.

"He was just horrible, I don't really wanna talk about it. " You said, and he nodded, respecting your privacy, You would talk about it when you wanted to.

"Don't let this one guy deter you from online dating though. It can be really fun you know." Noah said and you scoffed.

"Yeah for guys maybe." You said coldly and Noah glanced at you. He knew you didn't mean anything by it.

"Wanna elaborate?" He asked and you sighed.

"Well it's just, for guys it's fine, you can just order women to do what you want and if they don't want to it's on to the next one and then you put your dick in them and then that's that. For women it's like, if I reject this guy, will I be dead by the time the sun comes up?" You said huffing. Noah nodded in understanding.

"I mean I know that's a real fear that women have and that sucks a lot, but there must be a space where you can have fun too right?" He asked carefully. He didn't want to seem like he wasn't empathetic to your pain, but he still wanted to help you get over your ex.

"Yeah with a person you trust sure. But online dating is a rapists wet dream." you said. "And even then, sex isn't even worth that much."

Noah looked at you quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I just never felt that big climax that people talk about. I guess my orgasms aren't very intense when I have sex." You said and Noah looked questioningly at you while still keeping an eye on the road.

"Well what about when you're alone?" He asked and you looked at him. Might as well be honest now, you thought.

"Yeah then I feel great, but when I'm with someone it's like it's just there a little, then it gets kind of good but then they're done." You said shrugging your shoulders. Noah let out a noise you had never heard before.

"You never had anyone give you an orgasm?" Noah asked incredulously.

"Well I don't know. Maybe?" You said. "I've only ever been with Chase." You said. And Noahs eyes were bigger than you've ever seen them before. You were arriving at your house and he put the car in park.

"What about when he ate you out?" Noah asked, genuinely curious.

"Chase thought it was gross. Don't you?" You asked, turning your body a little. He looked at you like you were crazy.

"What?" You asked.

"I love eating pussy, it's my favourite passtime!" He said and you laughed.

"What do you mean? Does it even taste good?" You asked and he nodded wildly

"Yeah I mean it depends a lot but generally yeah I like the taste." Noah said.

"Well, Chase never liked it so we didn't do it." You said, crossing your legs. Noah chuckled a little.

"He really was a little bitch huh. You deserve someone who loves eating your pussy." He said, grabbing your leg, like he'd done many times before, but this time it was different. This time his hand shot electricity up your thigh, making you squirm a little in your seat.

"Would...Would you show me?" You asked and his grip on your thigh tightened. You glanced a little at him and you could see his jaw tightened.

"I uh..I don't know if that's a good idea Y/N." He said and you looked at him properly. He wouldn't meet your eyes, but his hand stayed where it was.

"C'mon Noah. I've clearly missed out on a lot. Show me." You asked, getting closer to him. You didn't know where all this confidence came from, or why you wanted your best friends mouth on you so bad, but you did. He turned to look at you, but his eyes were trained on your lips. He let out a shaky breath and let go of your leg. You leaned back, afraid you had upset him or made him uncomfortable, but he was taking off his seat belt.

"I'll show you. But just this once, I don't wanna ruin our friendship. And we don't mention it to anyone." He said and you grinned, unbuckling your own seat belt and got out of his car. You already felt yourself getting excited.

"Wow you are really horny huh?" Noah said as he locked the car, holding out his arm to wrap it around your shoulder as he walked you inside. You unlocked the door and led him to your bedroom.

As you closed the door, he sat himself on the bed. You sat beside him and a kind of awkward silence fell between you. You felt like you kind of sobered up by the reality of what you had asked your best friend to do.

"If this is gonna ruin our friendship we could just forget it or something." You said, not meeting Noah eye. He looked at you for a moment not answering.

"We could also just agree to not let it ruin our friendship. This is a one time thing, to show you what you should expect from guys that you date in the future, and to get to know each other better." Noah said, and you were surprised he seemed to have thought this through.

"That doesn't sound too bad." You said, looking down at your hands. He reached over and held one of them, squeezing it to make you look at him.

"I love you, Y/N. I want to keep being friends so this will just be two people having fun for a night and then never doing it again, right?" He asked with a sweet smile and you nodded. He smiled a little wider and before you knew it, he was leaning in, closing his eyes in the process.

"Woah what are you doing?" You said, pulling away. He opened his eyes and looked at you quizzically.

"Well I need to turn you on before we begin, only way I know how to do that is to kiss you first, is that okay?" He asked softly. When he said it, it makes sense. But no one ever did this with you. Cared for your pleasure like this. It was different.

"Y-yeah, that's umm...that's okay." You stuttered out, and he smiled again, this time moving closer to you and lightly grabbing your chin with his thumb og index finger. You let yourself relax and Noah do what he wanted to. He seemed to know best. When his lips touched yours it was light and soft, yet had passion. Like he wanted something you didn't know to give him, and it was his job to pull it from you. You kissed back, and before you knew it, his tongue was in your mouth. You had thought about kissing Noah before, but this was way different than what you had imagined. Good different, but different.

His hand on your chin fell to your neck, tracing down your arm and landed itself on your waist. He pulled, as if to get you to move closer. Already this was way better than what you had experienced before, Noah clearly knew what he was doing. You wondered where he had learned it, but decided to not ask. This was too nice.

A soft moan fell from his lips and you were brought back from your train of thought. His lips left yours and for a second you thought about whining, but when his lips attached to your jaw, right below your ear and then your neck, that whine quickly turned into a moan.

"Sensitive on your neck?" He asked and you let out a breathy sound that was supposed to be a laugh. He went right back to kissing your neck, teeth getting involved sometimes and the moans that were falling from your lips were fewer between.

"Can I take your shirt off?" Noah asked and you nodded. He smiled and grabbed the hem of your shirt, lifting it up over your head. "It's a shame though." He said, eyeing up your chest.

"What is?" You asked, kind og dazedly.

"Taking your shirt off. You looked really good in it. Why don't you ever dress like that for me?" He asked smirking while laying you down on your back, leaning over you.

"Well I don't make it a habit of sleeping with my best friend." You said smiling slightly.

"You should, he's enjoying it so far." He joked and you laughed while he kissed you between your breasts. "Can I take off your bra too?" He asked, looking up at you. His voice was low, which only made this all the more enticing. You nodded slowly, laying your head back to try and think of something else besides your best friend looking at your tits. You lifted your back little so he could fit his arm under it and unclasp your bra. He slowly guided the straps down your arms, a soft groan emitting from his lips.

"Goddamn, if I knew you were hiding these under your baggy hoodies we would have done this a long time ago." Noah said, and you laughed a little.

"Yeah cause when we met at 14 my tits were definitely this size, right." You joked, but your sentence ended with a gasp as his lips closed around one nipple while his hand massaged the other. He was soft about it all, like licking a soft serve ice cream. It caused you to mewl, which Chase could never have done to you. It was like Noah knew how to handle your body, without ever asking you.

"Kinda wanna think about your adult tits right now if you don't mind?" He said as he shifted to the other nipple. You chuckled at that and let him do his thing. He moved on to your stomach and when he reached the edge of your pant he stopped and looked up at you yet again asking, "Is this okay? can I take your pants off?" You nodded and lifted your ass, his slender, tattooed fingers grasping the edge of your pants and pulling them down, kissing just above the edge of your underwear.

"These too?" He asked and you laughed a little.

"You gonna ask every time you do something new?" You asked and he stopped what he was doing to look at you.

"Yes, how else do I know what I have consent for?" He asked.

"That is the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me ever." You said and he laughed.

"You gotta raise your standards babe." He said, going back to kissing the lower part of your stomach. "You gonna answer my question?" He asked, running his hands up and down your legs.

"I forgot what the question was." You said truthfully. He laughed as he rested his head again your hip.

"I asked if I could take off your underwear too." He said, and your heart started beating faster.

"Uh yeah. Yeah that's okay." You said. The seriousness of the situation was starting to settle in and you were kind of nervous. When he pulled off your underwear it would be crossing a line that has never been crossed before and it couldn't ever be uncrossed again. Noah could sense your hesitation so he stopped.

"If you wanna stop, tell me. It's no fun if you're not having fun." He said and you knew he meant it.

"No it's okay I'm just kind of nervous." You admitted and he came back up to your face.

"Hey. It's just me. It'll be okay." He said smiling and you smiled back, taking in a deep breath as he lowered his body again, kissing along your body as he did so. He grabbed the hem of your underwear and pulled them down. You were worried he would be repulsed by then smell of you, but when you looked down at him all you could see was hunger in his eyes. It made you feel better to know that he didn't care about the smell, so you tried to relax in his presence.

He kissed the inside of your thigh, grabbing them both and pushing up so you bend your knees. You felt very exposed, and you wished he would just get on with it.

"So pretty baby. Can't wait to taste you." He said and it made your stomach soar. Did he really not find it gross?

"You know, you don't have to do this either, like if it's too gross for you or something." You said, biting your lip. You wanted him to continue, but you understood if he didn't want to.

"I don't wanna stop. And nothing about this perfect pussy could be gross." He said, kissing up your other thigh. You took a deep breath and let him do as he pleased.

He kissed your pussy as if he was knocking for entrance, and spread your legs further. He then started at your clit, licking small, tentative licks as to not overwhelm you. When you sighed in pleasure he took that as a sign he could continue, and let his tongue wander down to your entrance and licked into you.

"Oh my god." You said, already it felt better than it has with anyone else. It seemed to urge Noah to go further, so he licked a big broad stripe up your pussy and you hummed.

"Oh Noah it feels so good." You said lowly and he smiled. A devilish smile, one that you felt was too cocky for his own good but you were struggling to care. He pleasured you with such patience, the tight feeling in your stomach building and building and you almost thought he was a magician, as fast as he was getting you worked up.

What you didn't expect was the finger that was circling your opening before entering you gently.

"Holy fuck, Noah." You said and he hummed a soft 'hmm?' as if asking what was the issue.

"Oh you make me feel so good Noah." You said and his finger slid into you further and further, stopping and then curling, reaching a spot inside you that made your whole body writhe. He was rubbing the spot, not letting one movement of his finger go without touching it.

"What the fuck Noah?" You asked, sitting half up as you grabbed his hair to keep yourself grounded. He detached himself from your pussy and smiled up at you.

"That feel good baby?" He asked, his eyelids hanging low on his eyes. You could do nothing but nod as the movements of his fingers didn't halt for even a second while he took at good look at you. He went back to your clit, this time sucking on it gently and making your hips buck up into his face. It only seemed to spur him on, as his movements sped up. You felt a familiar feeling coming and you tangled your fingers in Noah’s hair, pulling when he hit a particularly nice spot inside you.

“Noah, I’m so close.” You warned, and he sped up yet again, only he stopped sucking your clit and instead look at you through heavy eyelids, right into yours. You were a moaning mess, not being able to control it anymore as you came on his fingers, yelling his name out. He helped you through your orgasm and when you were panting for air he slowly pulled his finger out of you and made sure you saw him lick it clean. You couldn’t believe what just happened, your best friend just gave you the orgasm of your life.

“How in the hell did you do that?” You asked him, still not being able to catch your breath.

“Well practice makes perfect I guess” he said laughing. You laughed with him and he came up to lay beside you. A silence fell between you, but it wasn’t awkward. You were still coming down from your high and you noticed Noah shifting a little, seeming restless.

“You okay over there?” You asked and he looked at you with a little blush on his face.

“Well, I told you I love eating pussy” he said chuckling slightly as he readjusted himself in his shorts You considered your options. You could leave the room, pretend you had to pee and let him do his thing. Or…

“You want help with that?” You asked, turning to him. He looked at you, searching your eyes for any sort of insincerity, but he couldn’t find any. He nodded slowly and you smiled, reaching hesitantly over to kiss his lips. You tasted yourself on him, and you couldn’t imagine what Chase would have against the taste, it was not bad at all. You were taken by surprise when Noah wrapped his arms around you and pulled you on top of him, deepening the kiss.

“You are wearing far too many clothes.” You said between kisses and he hummed a sound of agreement. You pulled off his hoodie and went right back to kissing him, hungry for him in a way you never were for anyone else. He grabbed two handfuls of your ass, not caring if his grip left bruises on it, grinding you down onto the bulge in his shorts. It made you moan into his mouth, giving him an opportunity to push his tongue into your mouth. You grinded on him as your tongues pushed against each other, revelling in this new feeling with each other. It felt liberating, to not care where the line was or how far it was crossed.

"How do you wanna do this? Hm?" Noah asked, and you were confused by what he meant.

"What?" Was all you could muster out, being out of breath.

"Do you wanna have sex?" Noah asked directly this time and you thought about it for only a second before nodding wildly. He smiled at that and rolled you around, getting up from the bed to undress fully. You could not contain your stare, and you wanted to touch yourself so bad. He had clearly been working out on tour, his once lanky frame was replaced by the lean muscles of his arms, his legs were carved like a god and the tattoos definitely only made it better.

"Touch yourself for me." Noah said which brought you back to reality.

"What?" You asked, wondering if you had heard him correctly. He couldn't possibly mean that, right?

"If you're comfortable, then touch yourself for me. Want to see you pleasure yourself." He said as he pulled off his underwear. You didn't dare look, afraid it would make him uncomfortable so you looked at the ceiling as your hand travelled from your stomach down to your core. You ran your fingers along your clit in a circular motion and you felt the bed dip as he came to lay beside you.

"You're such a good girl Y/N. You really are. Look at you, doing exactly what I told you. Such a good girl." Noah whispered in your ear and it only made your fingers speed up.

"You have a condom sweetheart?" He asked and you pointed towards the nightstand you had by your bed. He turned around to grab one, and while we was distracted you took at look at his member and let out a moan you didn't mean to let out. He was big, bigger than Chase and you could barely imagine it would fit. You fingers stilled as your gaze was caught on his thick cock.

"What's wrong sweets?" Noah asked, rubbing his thumb along your thigh.

"Oh nothing uhh, nothing." You said, smiling at him. He could tell it wasn't nothing though.

"Hey, you can tell me, do you want to stop?" He asked, and you shook your head furiously.

"No! No no, I'm just, nervous I guess." You admitted, looking down. He turned to hug you and kissed your forehead.

"Nothing to be nervous about baby, it's just me." He said smiling.

"Will it fit though?" You asked sheepishly and his eyes shot to yours. You worried you had said something wrong.

"That is the hottest shit i've ever heard." He said, kissing your lips. You smiled into the kiss, your hands grabbing his face and letting the kiss overtake you. He rolled on top of you, slotting himself in between your legs, groping your body and worshipping the softness of your skin. He started grinding against your heat, pulling moans from your lips.

"God Noah, please do something." You whined and he smiled mischievously, kissing you one last time before sitting back on his knees and stroking his cock a few times before running it up and down your slit. This you knew how to do. This was familiar terretory. Or so you thought. He pushed into you slowly, relishing in the tightness of your pussy, and when he bottomed out, he let out a long groan, burying his face in your neck. You had never felt so cared for and filled to the brim with pleasure before. You were overwhelmed with emotion and felt tears spring to you eyes.

"You just tell me when I can move- hey are you okay?" Noah immediately changed demeanour when he saw your wet eyes.

"No yeah I'm good, really, I just...uhm I don't know why." You admitted and he smoothed down your hair to comfort you.

"Do you want to stop?" He asked and you shook your head, smiling at him.

"No it's okay, you can move. I promise I'm fine!" You assured him as he looked at you questioningly. He didn't seem convinced.

"I promise I'm fine Noah, I'm just a bit overwhelmed, no one ever took care of me like this before." You said, avoiding his eyes. He kissed your cheek.

"Okay, but you have to tell me if I have to stop okay? Can you promise that?" He asked, trying to catch your eyes. You nodded, and he smiled a comforting smile as he kissed your neck again.

"You can move." You said, and he pulled almost all the way out, only to slide right back in, in the same excruciatingly slow pace. You wrapped your legs around his lower back, boring your heels into him, desperate to have him fuck you senseless.

"Noah, please, c'mon." You plead and he chuckled.

"Tell me what you want baby." He murmured in your ear, his pace still as slow.

"Please fuck me Noah." You asked, looking him directly in the eyes. He looked back, and before long his hips picked up speed, pounding into you as you threw your head back in pleasure.

"Oh Noah!" You moaned, not caring how loud you were. If your neighbours heard, you'd hear about it in the morning. The sound of your moans only spurred Noah on, his thrusts relentless and his breath fast.

"Fuck Y/N. Fuck we're definitely doing this again." He said and you laughed breathlessly as you dug your nails into is back. He moved slightly and with that he started hitting a spot that felt incredible many times, over and over, eliciting screams from your throat.

"Holy fuck Noah, shit shit shit, fuck, oh fuck." You rambled and Noah kept up his thrusts, moving his hips back and forth. You could feel the feeling come back, the incredibly intense feeling in your core building and building, and before long your nails dragged along his back as you screamed out his name. Your pussy clenched around him and you couldn't hold back even if you tried. Your orgasm overflowed and wouldn't stop, you legs shaking as the intense waves of pleasure washed over you. Noah kept thrusting into you through your orgasm, and when you opened your eyes again he turned you around so he was under you.

"You okay?" He asked breathlessly and you nodded lazily.

"Yeah just...intense." You said smiling. "Did you..?" You asked.

"No not yet." He said smiling. "Are you okay to continue?" He asked.

"Yeah I'm okay." You said, moving your hips slowly. He grabbed your ass, holding onto you tight and lifting you a little and started pounding into you even more relentlessly. You could barely think straight as he used your pussy until he came into the condom, deep groan escaping his throat. His hips slowed down and he let you go, burying his now softening cock into you as he caught his breath.

"Holy shit Noah." You said out of breath ad he laughed.

"Was that okay?" He asked and you nodded, kissing him. You didn't know when would be the last time you got to kiss him like this again so you decided to enjoy as much as you could. He grabbed the base of the condom and told you to get off and you did. He removed the condom and wrapped it in some tissues you had on your nightstand, as well as wiping his dick. When he was done he looked over at you and smiled. You smiled back and you wrapped yourselves in each others arms, enjoying the bubble you two had created that no one could penetrate.

The morning after woke up alone, your clothes on the floor and a feeling of complete satisfaction, yet complete loneliness.

#noah sebastian #noah sebastian x reader #bad omens #concrete forever #bad omens band #jolly karlsson #nicholas ruffilo #nick folio #noah sebastian smut

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commodorez · 4 months

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I still believe the craziest form of computer program storage format from the 1980s is the cassette tape. Logical I get it but to store entire programs on little tape (that I only remember using to play music) is just crazy to me. Idk

Agreed, cassette tape for data storage was really clever. The concept had its heyday was the 1970s in a wide variety of encoding schemes for different computer platforms. It did persist into the 80s, mostly in Europe, while the US switched to floppy disks as soon as they were available for systems. The majority of my Ohio Scientific software is on cassette.

Talking with UK vs. US Commodore 64 users in particular will highlight the disparity in which storage mediums that were commonplace. I've got a few pieces of software on tape for mainly the VIC-20, but I rarely bother to use it, because it's slow and annoying. To be fair, Commodore's implementation of data storage on tape is pretty rock solid relative to the competition. It's considered more reliable than other company's but Chuck Peddle's implementation of the cassette routines are considered quite enigmatic to this day. He didn't document it super well, so CBM kept reusing his old code from the PET all the way through the end of the C128's development 7 years later because they didn't want to break any backward compatibility.

The big thing that really made alot of homebrewers and kit computer owners cozy up to the idea was the introduction of the Kansas City Standard from 1976. The idea of getting away from delicate and slow paper tape, and moving towards an inexpensive, portable, and more durable storage medium was quite enticing. Floppy disk drives and interfaces were expensive at the time, so something more accessible like off the shelf audio tapes made sense.

I've linked two places you can read about it from Byte Magazine's February 1976 issue below (check the attribution links).

You might recognize a familiar name present...

There are a few ways to encode binary data on tape designed to handle analog audio, but the KCS approach is to have 1's be 8 cycles of 2400Hz tone, and 0's be 4 cycles of 1200Hz tone. I say cycles, because while 300 baud is the initial specification, there is also a 1200 baud specification available, so the duration of marks vs spaces (another way of saying 1's and 0's), is variable based on that baud rate. Many S-100 computers implemented it, as do a few contemporary proprietary designs.

The big 3 microcomputers of 1977 that revolutionized the industry (Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and Tandy TRS-80 Model I) each have their own cassette interface implementation. It kept costs down, and it was easy to implement, all things considered. The Apple II and TRS-80 use off-the-shelf cassette deck connections like many other machines, whereas the original variant of the PET had an integrated cassette. Commodore later used external cassette decks with a proprietary connector, whereas many other companies abandoned tape before too long. Hell, even the original IBM PC has a cassette port, not that anybody bothered to use that. Each one used a different encoding format to store their data, rather than KCS.

Here's a sample of what an OSI-formatted tape sounds like.

And here's a Commodore formatted tape, specifically one with VIC-20 programs on it.

I won't subject you to the whole program, or we'd be here all day. The initial single tone that starts the segment is called the "leader", I've truncated it for the sake of your ears, as well as recorded them kinda quietly. I don't have any other tape formats on hand to demonstrate, but I think you get the idea.

You can do alot better than storing programs on tape, but you can also do alot worse -- it beats having to type in a program every time from scratch.

#kansas city standard #cassette tape #commodore vic-20 #ohio scientific

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angelatsumu · 2 months

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allistic simon x autistic reader was just so heartwarming and relatable to read as i’m someone with the tism that often feels like a burden on others. it was so lovely, feeling like simon didn’t want to change the reader as a person or expect anything unreasonable of them, but rather accommodate them where he can. i also liked that he didn’t have to compromise himself and was able to do an activity he likes, but also care for reader! all around just really enjoyed the piece.

if i may, i’d love to request something where one of the reader’s safe foods/essential items is out of stock or being discontinued and how simon would help them navigate that situation. one of my fave essentials just got discontinued and i’m devastated lol ♥︎

hi there! i'm very happy that you enjoyed my first autistic reader piece. i'm sorry that your safe food is out of stock ): i get fairly frustrated when i can't have access to things that comfort me. i apologize in advanced for the subpar writing that will ensue this message.

allistic simon x autistic!reader: crisis averted

in which your lovely husband attempts to help you navigate the sudden unavailability of your safe food.

simon came back from his meeting on base a bit winded and more confused than when he'd originally left the home. the meeting was a cooperative planning session involving KorTac, and your husband failed to keep up with the newly-introduced objectives and profiles. his head hurt, frankly. the entire meeting he'd only been wondering what you'd been up to and if you missed him. when he finally entered your shared home, he was relieved to have the workday slide right off his broad, strong shoulders.

simon hummed as he heard the tapping of your PC keyboard, knowing you'd likely well into a deep dive of one of your special interests. he took off his boots by the door and calmly took steps toward the study, whistling as he walked. his eyes fell upon you in the throws of your own world of wonder, irises blown as you took in the information before you. Simon cleared his throat to grab your attention, and you peeled yourself away briefly to greet him. ,"hey Si," you hummed back distractedly, and your husband chuckled in response. "hi lovie," he grinned at you, moving to stand beside you and take in the media you were consuming. he stands there for a moment, enjoying your company, before he decides to trek to the kitchen for a snack.

simon peers around the area for signs of your appetite, signs that you had been feeding yourself and staying hydrated. he was met with an empty sink and dishwasher, and the items in the fridge looked untouched. the water filter was exactly as full as when he left this morning. he sighed, shaking his head before a lightbulb went off. maybe we're out of [food item]. that could do it, he thinks to himself, treking to the pantry to confirm the item was missing. he padded back into the study to greet you again, politely asking for your attention.

when you spin around to see a frowning Simon you instinctively feel puzzled, and of course Simon can tell by the way you stare at him blankly. "lovie, you didn't eat today?" he's soft when he speaks to you, ensuring that you don't feel scolded or punished. Your lover has been so understanding of your mannerisms, fully aware that your appetite was fickle and sometimes undetectable. you shook your head in response, words lost on you as you tried to recall your last meal. "there's no food item so I can't really eat right now," you responded cooly, and Simon nods his head in response. usually he'd kept up with the supply of your items, and he was honestly quite shocked that this wasn't upsetting you as much as he'd always imagined it would. he didn't want to press the issue, but he was mildly concerned that you may be pressing it down. "why didn't you say anything, are you not upset?" the question slides over your head, and you direct your attention back to the media in front of you. " 've been busy today," you respond as your eyes focus again on the screen. Simon sighs again, turning on his heels and heading to the bedroom for a change of clothes. he knew he'd be heading to the store now, or helping you through a meltdown later.

Simon had read up quite a bit on the fickle nature of meltdowns, and he was well versed in how unpredictable they may be. he'd listened to numerous autistic media creators mention their experience in reference to valves. when the 'special interest' tank was where you needed it, and your 'manual labor' valve was at a minimum, then that allowed for things like social interaction or emotional regulation. when you had no time to yourself and no time for the things that keep you happy, your mask began to slip and 'smaller' things that you normally coped with began to feel a lot heavier and less manageable. he knew that your special interest tank currently filled your cup to the brim, allowing you to ignore the constant discomfort of hunger and dehydration. he also knew that should this hunger persist it may heighten other, seemingly less significant, senses and experiences and he'd find himself well into meltdown territory. the longer he waited for you to notice your hunger, the more likely dysregulation would occur.

at the store, Simon's breath is stolen from him. the damned item was out of stock. he haggled a store employee, begging them to check their inventory again, but they'd been completely out of it. Simon found himself driving all over the city in search of this item, but he found nothing. at the fifth store he felt defeated, and he decided to search for the item online. to his dismay, it'd been discontinued. there was a pit in your husband's stomach at the information. to Simon's surprise, it seemed that his lovely spouse's support of this item hadn't been enough to singlehandedly keep the item in service. he scoffed as he thumbed through the list of items he knew you liked, all of which seeming a reach to coax you into eating.

Simon drives the 45 minutes back to the home, and you're pacing in the living room with your headphones on. Simon doesn't even have to ask, he knows you've overdone yourself with the screens and now your head hurts and your ears hurt; your ears always hurt when you're overstimulated. No matter how much you loved [special interest], you still found yourself overwhelmed if you indulged for too long.

you turn the music down at the sight of your husband in the doorway, waiting for him to speak. "Lovie, it seems that item has been discontinued." The words take a moment to be processed, but you fail to hide the disgust and frustration you feel about the information. you feel your chest getting tight, and the music doesn't feel loud enough. "i know this is difficult but-" 'How could we not notice it was discontinued? Why didn't i pay attention! It can't be! I don't want that. I don't want it." you began to cry, frustration coursing through you as your ears began to sting. You'd tried so hard to do better, to feel better for Simon, but now you felt helpless. Your brain began to eat away at you, blaming you for not keeping up with your own foods and snacks. Your pacing continues as you find yourself striking your chest repeatedly, trying to dull the pain of the situation. your mind felt like it was melting, and the tears continued.

Simon steps to you slowly, striking his own chest lightly and he nears your smaller frame. he slowly reaches his arms out beside him, allowing you to walk into his chest. his arms remain at his sides, and he allows the painful stimming to be transferred to his chest. your strikes feel nothing close to anything he'd truly suffered, and he hoped this would help you make it through this world-shattering time. he stands there for as long as you need him to, fully prepared for this to last several hours. the tears stain his shirt as you sniffle and sob, strikes getting lighter and lighter. you cry so much it leaves you dizzy, and your arms slowly reach out to simon's to wrap them around your frame. you give him two taps to let him know that you'd like to be squeezed, and he does so without complaint.

"You're safe, lovie. I'm sure this is very frustrating, so how about we order that Chinese food place you like. I know it's not safe food but it will feed you. I even have the exact order from last time, hm?" you offer him another two taps as confirmation, and he smiles.

Once you begin to come down from your meltdown, Simon is sure to help you change into your favorite pajamas and wraps you in your compression blanket. you two spend the evening in your bed watching your comfort show and eating takeout.

an: i hope this as comforting for you as it was for me while writing. simon would be such a loving and comforting partner, and I deeply believe he'd study you and learn you so well that he can help. if anyone you love is having a meltdown, try to remove any extra emotional or cognitive labor for them.

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blackbackedjackal · 27 days

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I was the one who started the server and founded the studio. I invited DogBlud to the server.

I was an investor on the project, quoted a total of $5200 out of the full $13,600 on a website that DogBlud commissioned Angela and her team to make.

One of the first red flags I noticed as an investor was that DogBlud never patched me through to Angela and her team. She said she would after I read over and agreed to the contract that Angela wrote up, but she never did. She promised to add me and Rex to a server with Angela so we could keep up to date with the progress. This never happened.

I messaged DogBlud several times about my payments. My first one was due February 12th. I didn't know where to send the funds and brought it up with her several days before. It was around this time that I suspected she was hiding me away from Angela and her team, and now I know why.

According to Angela's own account, DogBlud is saying she invited ME to the project. Which is a blatant lie. So let's go ahead and add taking credit for space a Black woman created, a space that was predominantly women of color (DogBlud being the ONLY exception) to the pile.

Dog was not the "group leader". She was tasked with being an investor, my business partner/consultant, a writer, and an inker. Since we agreed to start on her project, Same As Always, first, I asked her to be a project manager so that she could tell us the art direction she wanted us to take. She was asked to do these things, by me, the studio founder and lead who was working on contracts, setting up meetings with lawyers/other investors and participants, researching for and planning a KickStarter campaign that was intended to help us raise more money for the studio, set up an LLC for the studio, be a character/writing consultant, cultural consultant, art director, colorist, and more.

The reason I "wasn't able to hit my deadlines" is because A. She made completely unrealistic deadlines on a project that I and Rex were under the impression was volunteer work since none of us were getting paid. We agreed to this because we knew that a lot of work needed to be completed before the site launched.

B. Because I was in the process of moving (a move that DogBlud encouraged me to do due to my horrid living situation at the time) and did not have access to my PC for certain working hours that was had agreed to. I was working consistently on the off-hours to make up for any scheduled time I missed (my art updates were posted in the server) and kept the team updated with my moving situation. I assured Dog that once I was done moving, I'd be on a proper schedule. My move was delayed and complicated due to external factors outside of my control. After about a week and a half into what was a three week process, Dog either stopped acknowledging my updates in the chat or said that she "wasn't happy" with me even though she was harassing me and pressuring me to work on pages nearly every day when I physically could not work on them.

#dogblud #long post #yes I have screenshots to prove all of this #I have over 200

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anna-no-emma · 2 months

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Batboys current ages:

Dick 27-29: His first phone may well have been the first iPhone. He also would have had most of the models of iPod. In his very early teen years people still used digital cameras. He would have been very active on Facebook and probably played facebook games with his friends (does anyone remember that gardening game on facebook?). He also would have played online games (www.friv.com would have been constantly typed into the browser). He also would have begged Bruce for an Nintendo Wii, really emphasizing all the sport games you can play on it (like we all did with our parents - mine didn't fall for it). Also always had the newest Game boy and played a lot of Mario Brothers. He also would have gotten a Playstation Protable.

Jason 19-21: He may well have gone through a minecraft phase when he was 11-13. He also would have had an early iPad growing up (those early ones were HEAVY) and probably used it to play that tombraider game (the one where you run and collect coins and it steadily speeds up while you dodge obstacles) and subway surfers. He has facebook and used it a little when he was younger but doesn't use it all now. He played with Dick's old Gameboys growing up but also had the newest Playstation Portable models.

Tim eternally 17: Definitely has a Nintendo Switch and got super into Animal Crossing (at least briefly). He also had to have an iPad for school. Fashion-wise he wouldn't be caught dead in skinny jeans. He doesn't have Facebook. He nearly fell for a lot of the TikTok conspiracies and if it hadn't been for his fact-checking nature combined with his access to the Bat-computer resources he would have fallen for at least one of them. He has a mac laptop and an eleborate gaming pc set-up at home.

Duke 15-16: Not so different to Tim but he is a little obsessed with Dick's/jason's collection of old Gameboys and Playstation Portables. They let Duke have them. Duke and Tim also mess around with Dick's old digital cameras (Tim is immediately disappointment by the quality - those digital point and shoots were not great - and looses interest. But Duke thinks they're fun)

Damian 11-13: Has his iPad and phone within spitting distance at all times (excluding missions and patrol obs). He uses his iPad to draw. He has all the newest electronics (mainly because everyone else at his fancy school has it all and he see's it as a status symbol, refusing to be thought of as lesser).

(I haven't included Playsation models in this because I'm not familiar and my light googling wasn't helpful enough. But they all would have had the newest Playstations corresponding to their ages).

#batboys #batman #bruce wayne #jason todd #robin #red hood #share with me if your age lines up with these and you have any vivid memories of tech/experiences #red robin #tim drake #nightwing #dc #dc comics #dick grayson #duke thomas #signal

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asylumdwellermoved · 8 months

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YOU! YOU'RE BACK! (you probably don't remember me we only talked, like, once, but hello xjbx)

ANYWAY UM UH what about a reader/PC seducing* Harper and getting more than what they asked for

* (could be intentional or could be Harper going "they are CLEARLY looking at me like that because they want something, yeah?")

(I REMEMBER YOU YOUR BLOG IS ONE OF MY FAVS TO LURK ON

leaning somewhat into the second option bc i love the contrast of manipulative freaks being equally delusional <3

gn!reader, gn!harper, dub/noncon)

"So, how have you been feeling?"

A newfound hesitance replaces your usual quickness to answer. You watch the bright eyes in front of you shift, possibly noticing a dullness in them that you hadn't before. Before you can wonder if it's your mind playing tricks on you, you clear your throat and smile.

"Good...! Been doing a little better lately..."

The doctor smiles back at you, clasping their hands together. "I'm glad! I assume you've been doing those techniques I gave you last week?"

You nod, trying to let the rumors swimming in your head fade to just the back of your mind as you automatically respond to their questions.

You had been seeing Dr. Harper on Fridays for a good few weeks now. Up until recently, you had been perfectly comfortable. It was nice having someone to talk to, even if they were just doing their job. You have absolutely no memory of anything bad happening in any of your sessions. It was only when you had mentioned your recent help to Sydney and saw their skin bristle and received a vague warning in response that you started to worry. Mickey remarking on the doctor's "problems" not long after definitely didn't help. You knew how dangerous this town could be, and you definitely didn't want to be on the bad side of anyone holding your physical well being above your head.

"And that recent spat with that person at your school that you told me about last week? How did that go?"

"Ah, well... they put out a cigarette on me yesterday, so I kind of feel like it's a lost cause..."

If you just... suck up to them it should be fine, right? They seem at least somewhat reasonable. Bat your eyes at them and butter them up a little, and you should be airtight.

Their eyebrows furrow in concern. "Can I see the wound?"

You nod, hesitantly unbuttoning the top of your shirt to give easier access to the burn on your collarbone.

"A few more, please? I'm going to wipe it down and apply some vitamin E gel so that it heals a bit better, I need a little more space."

You oblige, trying not to look bothered, the collar of your shirt now draping over your shoulder. They get to work on gently cleaning your wound. You choose your next words carefully.

"Hey, Dr. Harper..." You don't realize how close they are until you feel the heat of your own breath coming back onto you when you speak.

"Hm?"

"Thanks for everything. Really. I've been doing a lot better lately, and I couldn't have got here without you."

A smile crosses their lips and they hum in contentment. "You're very sweet."

"I appreciate it a lot. At this point, I don't know what I'd do without you..."

You wince a little as that last part comes out, worried you'd be pushing things. You see the look in their eyes change and you freeze. They turn their formerly fixed gaze to your face. It looks almost like it flipped some sort of switch in them.

"I'm very glad to hear that."

You flinch from the feeling of the cold gel on your skin.

"You know, just between us... You're my favorite patient."

You double take.

"A-Am I really?" You feign a smile at their strange remark.

They light up at your reaction. "Yes, really. I'm happy that the feeling's mutual."

Wait... what?

You stiffen a bit, unsure what to say. You notice that their hand is ghosting further and further from the blistering as they touch your skin. And did another button come loose?

"That said, you can come to me for anything. When you're hurt, when you're anxious, when you're upset, when you're... flustered..."

They've gotten closer. The faint hospital smell on their clothes mixed with a slight unplaceable scent feels near suffocating now. When you feel their fingers twitch a bit you notice their hands haven't left your skin.

Ah. So this is what they meant. Not the Bailey kind of scary. Something entirely different.

They hesitate for a second, but waste no time in pressing their lips against yours, pulling you into them and quickly darting their tongue out, trying to force it in. You suddenly feel smothered at the feeling of what control you had being pulled out from under you.

"Dr. Harper-...!"

They pull back, shuddering at the sound of their name on your lips before putting a hand between your legs, a heavy heat of their own pressing against your thigh, grinding softly.

"If I knew I could do this while you were lucid, I would've a long time ago..." They give a breathless giggle like it was some sort of joke, looking straight at you but showing no recognition of the horror on your face.

The look softens as you start to squirm at their touch, watching their eyes flick to your lips again when a gasp slips out. They lean in again, peppering soft, closed-mouth kisses against your lips like they weren't slipping their fingers beneath your clothes to try to get you off at the same time.

"Shhh, I need you to stay quiet for me... Don't worry, when I make sure we have some time all to ourselves soon you can be as loud as you want..." They coo at you almost like they're consoling a child.

The pleasure-induced haze in your brain keeps you from dwelling on what they mean as they keep teasing you, playing with one of your nipples through your open shirt and closely watching your reactions as they pant and moan against your ear. Unable to stop from eventually reaching your peak, you writhe against them helplessly, unconsciously bucking into their hand. A shaky gasp escapes their throat and you notice a warm, wet patch had grown on the fabric against your thigh. Your stomach turns a bit.

They lock their lips with yours again, breathing heavy through their nose, only pulling away when it starts to slow. They stare at you in what looks like a strange sort of... adoration? As they bring their fingers to their lips, slowly dragging their tongue through the mess you made. Their glazed over, half lidded eyes widen a bit when they look at the clock. "Ah- I didn't even notice the time."

They walk back to their desk, nonchalantly sitting back down, rifling through their papers before pulling a pen out. The second you get the chance, you walk out on shaky legs without saying a word.

"Client exhibiting potentially self-endangering behavior. Institutionalize at next availability."

#SORRY IM really rusty at writing and def have trouble with pacing but i hope it was FINE #it was fun though bc harper letting their stream of consciousness flow out loud #bc the relationship is mutual (in their head) was interesting #especially since a part of them very much still knows its not so they still have all the safety locks in place lmao #ok ramble over #harper the doctor #dol #degrees of lewdity

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stellaralignment · 3 months

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After reading @kira-serialfaggot 's post about inaccessible menus and @butterfly-sapphire post about non-customizable menus figured I now had sufficient excuse to rant about how I hate how every big restaurant's ""solution"" to these two problems is somehow always the worst fucking app I've ever had to use in my life.

So, to clarify real quick. I agree with both previous posts. Places that serve food should have their menu easily accessible somewhere if they have an online presence, and places that let you customize your order need to have that as a feature of any digital ordering solution they implement. Good? Good.

So, a lot of places I've seen (Wendys, Taco Bell, and McDonald to name a few) Have tried to get around how fucking horrible the DD app itself is by making their own apps with DD integration for the actual ordering/serving of delivery orders. Great, this lets them provide their own menu customization options, serve discounts/coupons, and generally have more control over the user experience. Fantastic. As a bonus, this usually also allows you to just look at the menu whenever you want.

Small issue. All of these apps were written by the worst fucking programmers I have ever witnessed in my life. I havn't gotten angry enough to de-compile or try to reverse engineer one yet, but my user experience has been so consistently bad and I've encountered issues that, as a software engineer, I honestly could not tell you how fucked their system has to be in order to allow that to happen.

Allow me to tell you the worst of these. I'm trying to order delivery from a store. It's late, like 7pm, but I know the place is open till 10. I can confirm this on their website (I do later for reasons that will become apparent) and google maps. So I punch in my address, make my order, and go to checkout. Unfortunately, the app tells me "Your payment method failed. Please select a new method and try again". Which was odd, but not unimaginable. I've had issues with my bank in the past. So I swap cards and try again, thinking nothing of it.

Except, my other card doesn't work either. Nor does using PayPal, or Google Pay, or any of the other payment options I tried. I'm getting desperate. I buy some games on steam just to make sure some of these are working, which they are. I was worried, but now that I've confirmed all my money hasn't been siphoned away somehow, I'm just confused and getting annoyed.

So I start going insane. I buy digital gift cards from several different sites and try using them. No dice, payment failed. I try using the website instead of the app, on my phone and PC. Payment failed. I boot up an android studio instance with a brand new virtual phone, install the app on it, and try to order. Again. Payment failed.

I'm starting to wonder if their servers are just completely down. A friend in a different state can order with no problems. A friend in the same town can order with no fanfare.

But my roommates can't. They have the same issue

Payment failed.

So. I'm going insane. I've now spent almost 3 hours attempting to order food, and I'm starving. It is at this point that my anger finally overcomes my social anxiety, and I do the one thing I never thought I'd do.

I call the store in question.

Now, in all of this there was one crucial mistake I made. See, that friend in the same town? Lived on the other side of town. And there's 2 different stores of this franchise in town. We didn't control for this, because the app doesn't let you pick a store anyways when doing delivery. It's hard locked to whatever one is closest, which isn't a terrible thing to do. You need to get the delivery address anyways, and you know where all your store are, so it cuts out a step for me. But having to choose a store might've clued us in to what was going wrong.

Because the store? Was closed. Not just closed, like mega closed. It was being shut down. It hadn't been open for two weeks, and would never be open again. The order was failing because they'd already taken all the computer systems out, and it couldn't confirm to have received the order.

So there was nothing wrong with the payment. Literally nothing I could have done about this. I am just barred completely from ordering because the app defaults to the nearest location for orders, and my nearest location didn't exist anymore.

And you'd think that there would be some way to communicate this to the user when making the app. But for reasons I can only assume are profit motivated (Though I have no idea how the fuck this is more efficient/profitable), the app just defaults to saying the payment failed.

Now, I wouldn't be this mad if this was just "oops edge case lol" where I suffered the unfortunate consequences of some procrastinator forgetting to do the thing that removes stores from the database. Unfortunate but not really anyone I can blame for it. But no. This is just the most extreme example, and it's not even confined to the one app.

Almost every single app like this I've used defaults to saying the payment failed and to try a new payment method when anything goes wrong. No drivers out on DoorDash to actually move the order? Payment failed. You're trying to order a seasonal item that got dropped today? Payment failed. The companies servers actually are down? Payment failed. You're not connected to wi-fi like an idiot and there's actually something you can do to fix the issue that's not related to payment whatsoever? Payment failed.

What the fuck is up with this lazy ass programming? I seriously doubt there's enough technical debt from these apps to justify not having a robust error catching system that communicates with the user what the issue is. By the fucking stars these people love collecting intrusive data, I'm surprised they havn't used this as an excuse to harvest everyone's fucking location at all times and send "error data" back to central.

But just don't tell me my debit card was declined when I'm trying to order a burger and you closed that store two weeks ago.

#journal #rant #i fucking hate food delivery apps #but i'm a poor bitch with no car #and I lived for 3 months off of a BOGO burger coupon once that just never fucking removed itself from my cart even after I ordered #so I continued to cash in on that one coupon for an entire semester #so like don't fix your apps #but don't tell me my fucking bank is broken when you just can't be bothered to update your fuckin store database

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pspkisser · 7 months

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⚙️ This laptop was saved from obsolescence! [10 mins of read]

Hello!! i am making this post here to raise awareness for PC and laptop upgrades, and how it should motivate you to do that same thing to preserve yours for longer or to give it the power you need! this will feature my history with mine, as well as the steps i took to be able to make him breathe life better! this is the story of his journey, and how it went to this current day.

his name is samuel, he is an asus fx570u and i bought him back in september of 2018 after i turned 13! he was brand new during that time and priced at 800 euros, offering only 6 gb of memory and an HDD as his specs. however he does have an 8th gen core i5 as his cpu and a geforce 1050 ti for his gpu. for something marketed as a gaming pc, it's pretty low and it wouldn't allow him to run fast enough, especially for highly demanding software and causing some compatibility issues. it wasn't severe, but as i was stuck with an hdd, that meant operating systems would run pretty slow on it, also leading to long software loading times. this is made worse by the fact that its bundled system, windows 10, isn't designed to work efficiently on hdd in the first place, but at least that means i have my hands on a windows key to be able to use some windows exclusive programs..

i mainly used him to be able to use advanced video editing software and customize the games i have on it for my own taste, because back then i loved making youtube videos and it was a passion i've had for years until i've partially retired from it. i rarely bought games on it and instead opted for free-to-plays, and overall had a good time with him.

unfortunately within only 3 months, his HDD broke down and i sent him to technicians for them to replace it with another one. it was a minor accident i've had but it formatted all my data, even though it didn't matter much since i uploaded most of it to the internet. i just had to be gentle with him by trying to not moving him around too much to stop that issue from persisting... but it was still low-end in terms of system performance. i finally used him for 1 year straight before moving on to a tower pc, feeling tired about his slowness and believing i couldn't do much about it.

i used that other (unnamed) pc for almost a year, starting from 2020! they seemed to work better since it had windows 7, but embarrassingly enough that version itself stopped receiving official security updates months before i started using it, even though i was careful while accessing the internet with it. its performances were also low, but didn't really matter much since i didn't take so much advantage from the power of samuel. suddenly, i had the foolish idea of installing windows 8.1 on the latter to try to deal with the performance issues on 10, but it led to even more compatibility issues since the drivers i used were meant to be for 10 only. only by early 2021, i got win10 back on him and started using him again to get more power again.

so the low-end performance persisted for very long. back then i never knew how to upgrade pcs, so i was only used to replacing devices with others which wasn't cost-efficient. after realizing i used windows for well over 10 years, i had the idea of switching to a mac and as a result, for xmas 2021 i got myself a cute yellow silicon imac, who goes by the name of sarah! but switching to macos posed new serious challenges, such as getting used to the lack of windows compatibility and the missing features that i was used to for a long time. most of the creativity i did with her was drawings with firealpaca and krita, and cgi with blender, which wasn't really much. still, she is pretty glossy and also powerful for many of the tasks i'm performing with her. originally i also intended to sell samuel, but that never happened (i low regret that decision so much i swear).

in late 2022, samuel's performance apparently had had a big hit... he now takes approximately 20 seconds to open any program and it seemed to me like something was wrong with him. at that time i also gained interest in linux since it's a libre OS capable of much more flexibility, essentially allowing it to revive old PCs. i finally decided to get linux mint to work on him via a dual boot with win11 (what was i thinking when i "upgraded" him from 10?). the performance seemed a little better from then, but programs still took very long to open. for that reason, he had often been collecting dust as he finally became unusable.

finally we've reached 2023. this is the year i decided to take on tearing down devices to learn how to examine problems inside of them. after checking samuel's performance again, i noticed that his HDD was having extremely low writing and reading speeds compared to my tower, which made me feel disappointed. but that's when i finally decided i could be able to replace his hard disk with an ssd, a new generation which is more durable, faster, quieter and energy-efficient...

but i still had a good wait until it was possible. suddenly with my money, i found an ssd which only costed €30, and it made me happy that this would be a quick way of healing up samuel! so i rushed to get it, and finally opened him to prepare everything... unfortunately, his keyboard has to be lifted up in the process, and there are flex cables connected between it and the motherboard. but taking out the hard disk thankfully only requires a few steps; removing some screws, then inserting the SSD inside of it. after that i quickly put linux mint back into him. SO SPLENDID...

for only the price of a high budget indie game, now he can open programs very fast, close to how fast sarah can do, and just about any task works perfectly well on him with way less bugs! thanks to that fast upgrade he's become viable for daily drives again, even though i don't have other desks suitable for pcs which makes me less motivated to use him. really wish id be able to since the architecture he has (x64) means he has a lot more software he's able to handle natively...

but then, i hadn't upgraded his ram. i said before that he only had 6 gb of it, and that meant he could only work with a few programs before becoming bloated. and as i like doing power tasks on him, that obviously causes problems. so one day, i went to a pc part store out of curiosity, and became shocked when i found small ram carts that could be compatible with my laptop. after some talk with the seller, i bought 2 ddr4 carts each containing 8 gb and clocked at 2666 mhz, more than double of what i used to have. after that it was time to take on a challenge to be able to insert them myself.

when the seller asked me if i needed assistance to have the carts inserted into my laptop, i giggled internally because of my past stories with learning how to open devices and trying to troubleshoot or modify them internally. i obviously declined it which saved me money, but also meant i had to do it all myself. after an hour of painful manipulations which required me to take out the entire motherboard from samuel, while that next step was also difficult i was finally able to insert the carts into it, before placing all his components back into place. and after such a long time of waiting...

i've finally done it!

Samuel is feeling very well right now!! despite his cpu and gpu dating from over 5 years, now he can do even more tasks at a time, while also being able to read them faster, a massive improvement compared to when it was stuck with an hdd and only 6 gb of ram. i'm guessing those low specs were for the purpose of saving manufacturing costs, but until you'd find use for the components that you'd remove, they'd end up becoming waste. and with a free os like linux mint, it adds up to an even more optimized experience than windows 10, which comes with so many unwanted stuff and can't be customized very well.

have you had a similar story to mine? did that pose you challenges? i took over 40 minutes to write this entire piece of text, but it should at least be very well detailed! on the best case scenario i hope it would inspire others to do some research on upgrading PCs to preserve their lives and especially save costs. Thank you for reading the entirety of it, don't hesitate reblogging it if you think it would interest your own audience! peace for all of you 💙

#pc #laptop #computer #computers #pc upgrade #objectum #gaming pc #linux #linux mint

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thunderlina · 6 months

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LOST MEDIA: Gorillaz - Plastic Beach Web Games

I come to you tonight with one request: I want help in tracking down the Plastic Beach point-and-click adventure game from the Phase 3 (2010-2012) Gorillaz website.

In 2010, coinciding with the release of their third studio album, British virtual band Gorillaz gave their website a huge overhaul, including the release of several new flash games. The centerpiece was a point-and-click adventure game (untitled, usually just referred to as "Plastic Beach") in which the player was able to explore the island of Plastic Beach, similar to the games available on earlier websites where the player was able to explore Gorillaz HQ Kong Studios.

Along with this game were a few others: Escape to Plastic Beach, a three chapter long action/adventure game (the third chapter of which cost €1.50 to play, and was available both for PC and iPhones.) Just recently the developer, Matmi, hinted at trying to re-release these, but they went silent regarding it and nothing has come of it so far.

There were also two smaller Flash titles, Submatronic and Gorillaz Fishing. Not entirely sure what these two entailed but they were listed on the website and, like the adventure game and Escape are not playable via the Wayback Machine nor are they archived elsewhere.

From my research, it seems the website had some kind of DRM software that the older websites (which have been archived over at zombiehiphop.xyz) didn't, since the Plastic Beach game used full tracks from the album and EMI was worried about piracy. Before anyone suggests it like was done in other places where I've asked about this, no, the game was not released on a CD or DVD. Because of this, all four games unique to the Plastic Beach era website are lost. The iPhone port of Escape to Plastic Beach was also removed from the App Store years ago, and as such is also completely lost.

As of right now, all that still exists are low-quality videos of the adventure game in action, a few screenshots, and a handful of Flash files I've dug up from the Wayback Machine.

The loss of this game represents not just a loss for Flash preservation, but a huge loss for Gorillaz fans as it was an integral element of the story of the Plastic Beach era. Without it and much of the other content from the old website, the already incomplete story that Jamie Hewlett and the rest of the Zombie Flesh Eaters team were trying to tell lives on almost wholly through secondary accounts. While recordings exist, it is simply not the same as having access to the full experience.

I ask of you all to please consider my words and help me do something about this, instead of wallowing in hopelessness as it seems the community has been doing for oh so long now.

Thank You.

Footage of the adventure game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUnvkZFPu1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmAo_POMRHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW6KHLLgBss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWIkwVDIJNQ

The handful of Flash files I dug up via the Wayback Machine: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RKpP9o-j-4jFkdQEDN54ye5LGZIrBd_7

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welldonebeca · 8 months

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The Triplets (7)

WC: 2.1k words Warnings: Seduction. Dirty talking. Praising kink. Tension. Angst. Hurt/Comfort. Semi-public sex.. kinda. A/N: "please, don't follow this character's advice. plan-b is an extremely faulty method and it only works on people under 165lbs (195 in some brands) and right after sex. it pretty much is taking 30 days of the contraceptive pill. Don't come to fanfic for sex advice. You can access Planned Parenthood for a more detailed explanation, they explain a lot about contraception and sexual health in general.

If you like my work, consider buying me a coffee or subscribing to my Patreon. It’s just $2 a month and helps a lot while I go through these hard times.

Masterlist

Dinner proceeded with Ben telling her lots of stories, and a few of them... well, they sounded a little fictional.

A little too cool to be true.

When dinner was done, Lizzie was quick to get the dishes - against Beau's protests - fuelled by both her possible new job, and wanting to be helpful.

The boys had all been doing so much for her, and what was she doing except fuck two of them behind the other's back?

"Dean," she called, taking the plates. "Little help?"

He shot to his feet quickly.

"Of course-"

Before he could even pick up a plate, though, his phone rang and Dean picked him up, and grimaced a little.

"Hm... I gotta take this," he sighed. "It'll be a minute and-"

"I'll do it," Ben offered quickly.

Lizzie's eyes widened, but she shut herself up.

Ben helping?

Oh.

The last time they'd been alone together she'd practically rubbed herself all over him like a stupid whore.

She wanted to say no, but didn’t want to seem suspicious.

So, Lizzie grabbed all of the plates and hurried to the kitchen.

She was scrapping the food off the plates when his brothers left and Ben stepped to her.

Lizzie could cut the air with a knife, with how tense it felt between them but just tried to pretend nothing was wrong.

She was on her tip toes, putting the clean plates away, when she heard a little whistle from behind her, and turned around with wide eyes to find Ben watching her from the archway.

"That's a sweet piece of ass."

Her eyes widened and she stiffened up, starign at him.

"Hm... Ben..." she tried to hide from his eyes, but they followed her.

"It's just a compliment, sweetheart," he pointed out. "Can't I say you're pretty?"

"You didn't say that," she snapped, glaring at him. "Do you think women enjoy comments about their asses?"

Ben rolled his eyes, striding to her.

"You kids these days are so fucking sensitive," he looked annoyed. "I can't compliment anyone anymore, and you come with this PC shit."

Lizzie glared at him more.

"There's a difference between complimenting someone and being fucking disrespectful."

What was so hard about understanding that?

He smirked.

"I didn't know this little pussy had claws," he teased her.

He walked even closer to her, nearly trapping her in her spot.

"A pretty girl like you should enjoy compliments," he clicked his tongue. "Bet you got a lot of them in college."

Her cheeks burned, but Lizzie refused to back down.

"Again, those were not compliments," she corrected him. "Compliments are nice. Sexual comments-"

Ben put a single finger under her chin, and she shivered, stuttering, speechless at last.

"Sexual comments what, pretty girl?" he purred.

Lizzie opened and closed her lips.

"They... they..." she looked for her words. "They have a time and place, and you're not supposed to say them to someone unprompted."

Ben looked at her, very amused, nearly pressing himself to her by then.

"Unprompted?" he teased. "You learned that in your gender study class?"

She blinked, confused.

"What-"

But he stopped her, pressing his thumb to her lips, caressing it and pushing it in.

"You got such a pretty mouth," he hummed, teasing her. "Pretty lips..."

She shuddered, and let him push his thumb into her lips.

"Perfect for sucking cock," he hummed. "But I don't think you have, right, sweetheart? Such an innocent little thing, just a little virgin."

"Ben," she tried to speak.

He shushed her.

"You still own me from your little accident a few days ago, little thing," he reminded her.

Lizzie held back a whimper.

This should be turning her on, God.

"You looked so pretty," he continued. "All horny, rubbing yourself on me, so needy..."

She whined, and he tilted her chin up.

"What do you say, pretty girl?" he pressed his body to her, and his cock was hard and stiff against her belly. "It's been a while since I fucked little virgins, and I don't mind having a one time thing."

He pulled his thumb out.

"Just don't get clingy."

Ben leaned closer to her, nose moving over hers.

"What do you say, baby?" he hummed.

She whimpered.

Lizzie shouldn't be doing this. She hadn't even talked to Dean yet. Or figured out what was going on between her and Beau.

And yet, she moved up and kissed him.

She reached her hand for his hood just as his hands moved to her hips, and gasped when Ben lifted her up and turned her around, sitting her on the kitchen island.

"Ben," she pulled back, looking at his face. "Maybe we should-"

But he shut her up with a kiss, moving his hand to her tank top and pulling on side down.

"We'll be quick," he promised, lips running to her jaw and neck.

That wasn't a good idea. They were in the kitchen, anyone could come and-

Ben wrapped his lips around her nipple, interrupting her thoughts, and Lizzie gasped.

"Pretty little tits," he grunted. "Wanna paint them with my cum."

She was stunned, feeling him tugging on the other side, and gasped when Ben took both his hands and ripped her tank off.

"Yes," he pushed it off of her. "There it is."

His hand moved to her opposite breasts, pinching and twisting, pulling like the big meany he was.

"Such a pretty slut. Can't wait to see if these tits will bounce."

Lizzie whimpered, arching her back, sensitive as he fucking tormented her tits, sucking and pinching, massaging...

When he pulled away, giving her a break, it was just to take off his hoodie, revealing his smooth chest to her eyes.

"Look at that," he clicked his tongue.

She didn't have time to, as he was moving to her tits again, merciless.

Minne had thought that, considering his messy beard, he would’ve been hairy like beau, but he was smooth like the model he acted like he wasn’t.

She squirmed under him, holding back her sounds.

Ben reached down, pulling off her shorts, too impatient as he tugged on it to throw it away.

"Are you on birth control, little thing?" he squeezed her thigh.

She nodded.

"Yeah."

Plan-B was still running her body, right? She just took it in the morning!

"Good," he picked her up, turning her around. "Gonna paint your insides."

She gasped when her belly met the cool stone, and almost yelped when Ben moved down and licked her cunt from her clit to her entrance.

"Fucking drenched," he growled. "Did you cum while I was sucking your tits, baby? Is that why you are so wet?"

Well, Beau had only just fucked her, hadn't he?

She was still sensitive and dripping with what as left from whatever they had done before, she could feel the last bits of wetness when she was seated at the table.

"Ben," she looked back at him.

But he pushed her head down onto the counter, and Lizzie had to cover her mouth to muffle a cry when he pushed his cock right inside her.

"So fucking tight," he growled into her ear, barely giving her much time to adjust, seeking his own pleasure.

She moaned with the movement inside her, though it wasn't nearly enough.

Was this it?

Wasn't he going to play with her clit or tease her or...

Well... anything?

Ben kissed her back, fucking her as she just stayed in her place, getting off.

Well, so that was what fleshlights felt like.

Good thing she didn't lose her virginity to him, it would have been a huge disappointment.

She reached between her legs with a bit of a struggle, and tried to touch herself like Dean and Beau showed her, the little spots and sweet places.

Lizzie touched her own clit, closing her eyes and trying to get herself to cum, and couldn't help moaning when Ben moved her legs, lifting one up on the counter to fuck her deeper, his balls hitting her fingers as she rubbed herself.

"Feel good, baby?" he grunted, as if he was doing anything.

But his dick feel big, stretching her and rubbing against the parts she only recently realised she loved.

"Ben," she moaned, anyway.

He squeezed her ass, slapping it.

"That's it, say my name."

Elizabeth rubbed herself to an orgasm, and she had just come down when she heard a pair of voices.

Dean and Beau.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean growled.

Her eyes widened, and Lizzie tried to lift her body from the counter, but Ben pined her down.

"Hey, we are having a moment here," Ben scoffed to his brother.

The other two twins were staring at them, both in anger.

Oh, no.

She had screwed it up, she screwed everything up.

Lizzie tried to say something, but gasped when Ben kept fucking her, too sensitive from her orgasm.

"Ben!" she cried.

He slapped her ass.

"See? She likes it!" Ben grunted behind her. "Probably should have gotten here first if you wanted to call dibs."

She hid her face, embarrassed.

Oh, God!

"Fuck, keep talking, though," he growled. "She's squeezing me down like a vice."

“You think you can just fucking touch her-" Beau started, sounding furious.

“What?" Ben interrupted him. "Jealous?”

“Don’t act so cocky. The only reason you’re able to fuck her dry is because of me," he accused, not one to let his brother talk over him. "You think the women you bring here haven't spoken about how bad at sex you are?"

Long fingers grabbed Lizzie by her hair, and he moved her head as she would face his brothers, but she closed her eyes, not knowing what else to do.

"Fucking liar," Ben grunted. "Tell him, baby. Tell my stupid little brother how you jsut came so sweetly on my cock."

But before she could even utter a word - not that she was going to, anyway - Dean's voice rose.

"What that fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Someone huffed.

"What, you think I don't know about your little stunt, last night?" Beau asked. "Fucked her on the couch, as if she was just a stupid one-night stand."

"So what? You had sex with her because you thought you could do better?"

She covered her face with her hands.

Oh, no.

"I'm sorry," she whined.

She had just used them like a stupid slut, and now they knew and were going to kick her out and never want to see her again!

"Stop," she whined under Ben, lifting herself up. "Stop! Ben!"

He did, freezing in his spot, and stumbled back when she pushed him off with her foot, jumping off of the counter.

She didn't even realise she was crying until she opened her eyes and everything was a blur.

Lizzie collected Ben's hood, quickly putting it over her heard when the boys' voices mixed behind her.

She didn't know what else to do but escape, and she bolted to the front door as she pulled her shorts up again, running out barefoot.

Thankfully, her keys were right on the bow by the front door, and no one stopped her from getting into her car.

Or if they tried to, she was too fast for them.

Still, Lizzie turned on the engine and zoomed out of the driveway, not even realising she was having a panic attack until she almost didn't stop at a red light.

Fuck, she was going to die.

That was it. She was going to die like a slut, alone and unfulfilled.

She pushed on the brakes hard, stopping from landing right in the middle of the intersection but still close to it, and tried to collect herself.

What was wrong with her? Why did she have to be so needy? So stupid and desperate?!

Everything was perfectly alright before she started flirting with them! Things were going well, and now she had ruined everything like a stupid, stupid bitch!

When the light turned green, she kept driving, trying to blink her tears away, trying to keep herself straight.

She didn't know what to do. She couldn’t go back to the house, but couldn't go back to her family.

Lizzie was all alone. She didn't have anyone, no friends no job, no-

Her car beeped, alerting her of her nearly empty gas tank.

And no fucking gas, either.

She pulled up to the next gas station, looking through her waller in the glove compartment and finding just enough for a full tank.

And there went all of her money.

But she needed it. She needed to get out of there.

Lizzie stepped out of the car quickly, emotionally exhausted by now, and rested her forehead on against the car as she put the nozzle in the right place.

Fucking hell, what was she going to do?

. . .

"The Triplets" was posted on Patreon on January 2023. To read it now before anyone else and read the sequels "The Livestream (Ben x Lizzie)", "patience is a virtue (Dean x Lizzie)" and "the pictures (Beau x Lizzie)", subscribe to my page! It's just $2 a month and it helps a lot.

. . .

Forever Tags: @emoryhemsworth @amythyststorm33 @shaelyn102 @yknott81 @maximofftrash @kgbrenner @thefridgeismybestie @magpiegirl80 @mogaruke @shadowhunter7 @musicalcoffeebean @megasimpleplan4ever @deemoriarty @05spn18 @malindacath @kdcollins @random-fandom-fangirl2112 @widowsfics @frozenhuntress67 @averyrogers83 @notyourtypicalrose @nerdypinupcrystal @giruvega

Supernatural tags: @its-daydreamer23 @imagefanfictionlover @smalltowndivaj @tayrae515 @afanofmanystuffs @oneshoeshort @andkatiethings @wakanda-sometimes @akshi8278 @xoxabs88xox @izbelross @isabelle-faith @flamencodiva @lyarr24

Supernatural Kinky Fics (+18): @stoneyggirl2 @phoenixblack89 @that-dark-girl

The Triplets: @ladysparkles78

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shuttershocky · 1 year

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Out of all the curses of modern gaming, it's season passes / battlepasses that saddens me the most, because what I am fairly sure is its origin is really close to my heart.

One of the most notable things about Dota 2 is that (even now) it's the only MOBA (games like League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, etc) on the market where every single one of its playable characters was immediately free for the player, no money or grind required, unthinkable for a free to play game. That means a player completely new to the game was actually on even footing access-wise to players with thousands of hours: everyone had access to the same cast, there were no upgrades you could get to amplify your favorites before a match (unlike the rune system League had back then, though I hear that's gone now), nothing. You were theoretically on even footing with everyone at all times, your only difference being your experience.

In its early years, Dota 2 didn't even have lootboxes for its cosmetic microtransactions yet (even when its sister game Team Fortress 2 did, and it does now). You browsed through the online store and paid 2.5 dollars to give your favorite character a cowboy hat.

All in all, there was very little way the game was actually making any money. The only reason it was even designed that way is because the original DotA was a Warcraft 3 mod faithfully updated for years with the free labor of community modders. When the lead was hired by Valve to make Dota 2, they insisted complete parity between the two versions: they would have the same updates, no gameplay can be locked behind monetization, Dota 2 should be able to run on crappy computers, etc.

Now Dota 2 has an annual tournament called The International, famous for holding the single largest prizepool in the history of Esports (back then, 1 million dollars), with the money contributed by Valve. However, they knew pumping millions of dollars into the tournament every year on a game that was not monetizing its playerbase was a great way to go bankrupt eventually, even if at the time Dota 2 was acting as a gateway for many people in third world countries (where DotA remained supremely popular) to get into Steam.

So for the third International in 2013, Valve had an idea that would plague live service games for the rest of time.

They called it The International Compendium, a way for the community to support the pro scene. You paid 20 dollars (or was it 30? I no longer remember) to get a whole set of missions to unlock exclusive cosmetics, you could make predictions for how the tournament would go and if you were right your compendium levelled up even further, you could play Fantasy Dota the way people do Fantasy Football (I still have no idea how that works) and collect cards of your favorite players then watch as their performance in the tournament gave you points, and 25% of all sales went straight to The International 3's prizepool.

People loved it. Dota 2 didn't charge you for anything but hats that could also be gained by random drops from playing anyway, so the playerbase at the time saw it as a fair deal, and besides, 25% of it went back to "fostering the community".

They sold like gangbusters. The tournament's final prizepool was $2,874,380, with 1.6 million of that being contributed by Valve.This meant that the 25% sales added by the community totaled $1,274,380, so if you multiplied by 4 to get the money the TI3 Compendium made, you had almost 5.1 million dollars, for what was the earliest battlepass in PC gaming.

So of course, everyone else followed suit.

10 years later and everyone's doing a battlepass, even games that aren't free to play. It's format of a virtual passport that levels up as you complete its task with rewards for every level gained is one of the most psychologically effective player engagement systems, keeping players hooked on a game by constantly giving them a checklist to work on. World of Warcraft perfected the skinner box design for grinding to keep players hooked, but Valve introduced an idea that could be used by any game, in any genre, of any size.

And it fucking sucks dude. This was originally designed for a game that charged you nothing. No grind, no unlocks, no free rotation because everyone is free, no daily mission checklist to keep you hooked because it was supremely confident you were playing for the love of the gameplay (and even now 10 years later where Dota 2 has caught up with the rest of the world in providing dailies, I still ignore them because I only play for the love of the game), it felt fair.

It wasn't attempting to seize all my time, it wasn't disruptive to normal gameplay, it was on a game that charged nothing, you could ignore it completely if you didn't care for the pro scene, back then the idea felt reasonable.

And now for most online games that don't feature some kind of battlepass system, I see complaints that the game does not give them a reason to play. Players NEED this checklist now, because there are other games they can play that give in-game rewards by accomplishing their checklists. You cannot make a game whose ONLY engagement system is an enjoyable core loop anymore, you will simply be buried if you don't keep up.

I always knew something like gacha was coming and it was going to be a thing that affected the industry. When I was still studying around 2012 and attended all these talks from the local game industry, the ideas always centered around monetization, and designing games to hook whales into spending, discussion around designing a core loop was how to make a player spend money in order to stay inside that core loop they were engaged in rather than creating a core loop that would impress a game designer. Mobile games back then were beginning to truly emerge as the new goldmine that the AAA industry ignored until even Call of Duty was threatened by the sheer profits made from the casual space. Even if nobody mentioned gachapon/trading cards /whatever, it was obvious the future of game design was towards monetizing addiction.

Battlepasses though, that one hurts. I really didn't see it taking over live service games the way it did. I remember seeing it crop up in other games and going "Why are they making their own compendium, they don't have a tournament to base it around?"

oof

#making this unrebloggable because Im not about to engage in discourse lmao i just wanted to share

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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I got in fanfictions and fan communities extremely young for someone my age, and looking back I really do blame it on the lack of genuine public spaces I had access to.

We have less than ever, but for even when I was a kid stranger danger paranoia was in full swing, and my parents expressly forbid public spaces. Places like parks or the library were, according to them, where the homeless and creeps camped out looking for kids. Even as a tiny child, I thought that stuff was absurd, but as the "weird kid" at school I was desperate to find a space *somewhere* and of course I was just in time for that to be the wonders of the internet via my hand-me-down PC.

It's just so sad to think that now it's not just my weird helicopter parents, it's now basically everyone crying out for public spaces to just exist!

Even prior to covid, my primary social space were the local tabletop gaming shops. Private, profit driven spaces. And while that didn't bother me while I was frequenting these spaces, it sure became clear what the problem was when these shops couldn't survive covid. Between all the shops, hundreds of people both younger and older lost their sole irl outlet because this was a community filled with folks that struggle with other social spaces.

A lot of us list a chunk of our lives, and it's hard to even attempt to get that back because where can we even meet? Living in small spaces because it's what we can afford, and with the hobby shops gone, there's not a public space we can go.

It's all so unfortunate to not only notice but to watch as it gets worse. Public spaces are so important and we're losing them.

It's a real problem.

My local crafting meetups go to a series of the larger coffee shops in the area, but a lot of the craft shops and bookstores that used to have a space for gatherings are gone. We've got more than most parts of the US, but even so...

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samueldays · 1 year

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Retrospective: D&D 3e class feature advancement and design

Of the editions of D&D that I've played, I think Third Edition is my favorite. It's imbalanced, sure, but part of what differentiates D&D from videogames is that there's a DM on hand to say "let's change that". Much of the general success of 3rd was probably due to the Open Gaming License that you may recall a recent fuss about, and two specific impacts of the OGL were 1) explosion of fan content to add on and change stuff, 2) fanmade polish of the System Reference Document (SRD), such as this hyperlinked and crosslinked version where just about everything is accessible in one click. Much less searching for rules!

I also personally liked it for the unusual way it tried hard to put player characters and monsters in the same mechanical framework using the same scale, unlike far too many games, video or tabletop, where the PC has 138 HP but does 9999 damage. (This was to some extent present in earlier editions, but 2e's Monstrous Manual fails to give a creature's Strength score, only specifying its damage directly.) D&D in general was unusually fair and honest about letting you loot Lord Mega-Evil's Mega-Sword instead of doing "2% drop chance" shenanigans. 3e went a step further to making the bugbear playable out of the box, if you wanted to play a bugbear. Bugbears were now real creatures in a sense, not simply bags of HP you popped for XP.

If you're waiting for me to get to the subject announced in the title, just keep waiting, this is a twenty year old game and I'm a grognard with a pet topic. ;-)

4th edition decided to strip much of this stuff back out again, and I detested it. 4e was super weird. 5e tentatively tried to be the simplified best bits of 1e and 3e (IMO) which is nice for the newbies, but I feel its class system still leaves much to be desired. The whole notion of "classes" in a RPG is a bit of a necessary evil. It doesn't exist in-universe, it's an abstraction because doing full pointbuy is more tiresome for players and far easier to accidentally break the system by neglecting one stat or pushing another too high. At the same time, you don't want to lock characters into a progression at level 1, so designers tend to re-invent various class options and class choices that veer back towards pointbuy, and multiclassing...

Bluntly: The "favored class" rules and multiclassing xp penalties in 3rd were failures. The hypothesis was that it would discourage "5 levels of this, 1 of this, remaining levels of this" cherry-picking and encourage keeping 2-3 classes balanced, with an exception for the favored class. What it actually encouraged was "5 levels of this, 1 level of this prestige class, remaining levels of this prestige class" because prestige classes (PrCs) were exempt. Removing that exemption would have had worse second-order effects because prestige classes had different numbers of levels and conditional advancement permission! A deeper overhaul was needed, but didn't appear. My groups usually ended up ignoring multiclassing xp penalties. Worthless rule, no content, no value. Especially the bit where it's possible to get stuck at -100% XP if you made deliberately bad choices, that's nonsense.

What was also a failure, but less so, and produced the content I want to ramble about today, is how the class system incentivized multiclassing in very different ways for different classes. I'm going to gloss over questions of obscure splatbook availability and optimization level here; if you know enough to have an opinion on them you probably don't need to be reading this.

Fighter: Multiclass out or prestige class ASAP. This because Fighters have no class features that scale specifically with Fighter level - feats, BAB and HP can be gotten anywhere, and stack cleanly from different classes. Fighter 4 / Barb 1 / PrestigeClassA 5 / PrestigeClassB 10 is an example outcome of starting from "Fighter" and keeping the concept without being bound to the classname.

Sorcerer: Prestige out, but only to +1 caster level classes. Sorcerers have 1 scaling class feature, "spellcasting", which is advanced as a whole by several prestige classes. Something like Sorc10 / Loremaster 10 is cool, gets you 20th level casting, and more class features.

Druid: Stay pure. Druids have multiple scaling class features, and very few prestige classes advance other than spellcasting.

(I reiterate: this is what the class system incentivized. Not what you 'should' play.)

This difference was not a matter of party role, but of class feature wording.

Broadly speaking, there's two kinds of class features in 3rd Edition: those that provide a static ability at a fixed level (for example, Paladins become immune to fear at 3rd level) and those that have a progression scaling with each level (for example, Paladins can Smite Evil to add their level to the damage done).

Fighters got almost entirely static abilities, and those with diminishing returns. Spellcasting was almost entirely scaling.

Paladins were closer to the Druid end of the scale due to Smite Evil and Lay on Hands saying "paladin level" (not caster level, nor character level) when calculating what to scale with. A few prestige classes explicitly advanced these features, but there was no standard framework for advancing them the way the Thaumaturgist prestige class had "+1 level of existing spellcasting class" for any of druids, clerics, wizards or sorcerers.

Theoretically, the Thaumaturgist or Mystic Theurge prestige classes also worked for other spellcasting classes such as Paladin, but this was mostly worthless because paladins were tertiary casters who got slower per-level spellcasting progression. +1 level of spellcasting had lower value for paladins or bards than it did for clerics or wizards. This was aggravated by partial progression classes such as Eldritch Knight, which provided less spellcasting advancement - measured in terms of fewer levels. They got community shorthand like 9/10 or 7/10 casting progression.

An intuitive-seeming fix haunted me for years: PrCs that give partial advancement to full casters should give full advancement to partial casters. Perhaps even more than one-for-one when advancing tertiary casters. But it was hard to spell out in rules.

Instead, WotC printed special case ugly hack PrCs like the Sublime Chord, which was blatantly "The Bard Prestige Class For Bards" that gave faster-than-bard spellcasting progression up to 9th level bard spells. (In the core game, wizards get up to 9th level spells, but bards stop at 6th level.) It worked by specifying in detail a new separate spellcasting progression meant to be used at each level from 11 to 20, after using the regular bard progression from level 1 to 10.

Ironically, this special case could then fit back into the standard framework: take 10 Bard levels, take 1 Sublime Chord prestige level, now Sublime Chord has its own spellcasting progression so it can be advanced by other prestige classes such as Loremaster or Thaumaturgist. Sublime Chord was a prestige class that bards took mostly for the spellcasting, and then they didn't need to stay in that class for the spellcasting, because spellcasting was a standard class feature that could be advanced in other ways.

What a mess.

Still, I gotta give Wizards credit for being willing to fuck around and try new stuff to get out of this mess they'd made.

During 3rd edition, some of their later pile-ons to this mess were the Truenaming magic system that worked based on a skill check instead of levels (this was swiftly exploited because Make Single Number Go Up is easy for nerds with a wide variety of options), the Shadowcasting magic system that got to retroactively convert the class levels of a wizard who multiclassed into shadowcaster (I never saw this used in practice), and the Initiating not-a-magic system in the Tome of Battle:

Instead of caster levels you had initiator levels, and instead of casting a spell you initiate a martial maneuver, and the maneuver involved swinging your sword around so expertly that it shot fireballs or healed your friends or added an extra 8d8 damage or froze the enemy's lifeblood with the Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike. It also let you resist poison or block mind control by concentrating really hard on how you are a mall ninja One with the Blade.

(image: a Blade Magic user who has convinced the DM that hitting people with your bare hands counts as a 'blade' if you call it Knife-Hand Strike.)

It was actually pretty good, once you got past the flowery names, the weeaboo aesthetic shift, the increased complexity, the dissociated mechanics, and the fact that Wizards printed three initiator subsystem classes that were different enough to be annoying. Now that I'm done damning it with faint praise: you calculate multiclass initiator level by taking your main initiator class's class level and adding half the levels in other classes, whether or not they are initiator classes. A Swordsage 6/Fighter 6 character counts as Swordsage 9 for purposes of the Swordsage's primary class feature: initiator level and martial maneuvers.

This sort of worked to encourage a moderate amount of multiclassing on occasion by reducing the cost, but not really, because of nonlinear scaling. The low-level Swordsage abilities are on the order of "Fighter but with 1d6+1 fire damage". The high-level Swordsage abilities are like "Enemy has to make a Fortitude save or die. On a successful save, enemy still takes 20d6 extra damage on top of your regular damage" and "Quasi-timestop: you get 10 opportunities in a row to pick up a nearby enemy and throw him. Your choice whether you want to throw 10 guys off a cliff, or bounce 1 guy against the wall until he dies."

This class feature progression was cribbed from the core spellcasting system for Sorcerers and Druids, see above for the multiclass incentives on those.

I don't have a general solution. Here is my sketch of a fix to the spellcasting part, also usable with the cribbed-from-spellcasting class features like initiator progression:

Build a spellcasting progression separately from a class. Each progression goes up to 9th level spells at character level 20, or the system equivalent. The "Wizard" class then gets a class feature which says something like "+1 spellcasting progression at each level". The "Bard" class gets a class feature which says something like "+0.75 spellcasting progression at each level". The Paladin class get a class feature which says something like "+0.4 spellcasting progression at each level". Round up or down with minima to taste.

This replicates the effect of the 3e progression where the Wizard got up to 9th level spells, the Bard got 6th and the Paladin stopped at merely 4th.

But by separating the spellcasting progression, all these base classes get the same amount of benefit from a Prestige Class which provides +X spellcasting progression per level (X probably 0.5-1). In regular 3e, spellcasting progression classes were worth far more to the wizard than to the paladin, because the paladin got 1/20th of a step towards 4th level spells and the wizard got 1/20th of a step towards 9th level spells.

This eliminates the weird special case that is the Sublime Chord, also eliminates certain other kinds of dumb cheese around Ur-Priest, creates space for semi-focused casting prestige classes that provide 0.9 spellcasting that's an improvement for bards but a slowdown for wizards, and makes it easier for Fighter-adjacent and Rogue-adjacent classes and prestige classes like Assassin to dabble in a little bit of spellcasting at a controlled rate. In weird design space, it allows backloading on a class that goes from +0.5 to +1.5 over the course of several levels to "catch up".

A downside is that this "fractional casting" is more granular, more bookkeeping, and closer to pointbuy, but it's a small step and D&D 3.5 was already including the similar Fractional BAB/Saves in optional rules. Maybe someone can be inspired by this to make something easier.

Now I would like to say that D&D Third Edition has come and gone and will probably never be repeated, having been supplanted by two later editions twenty years on, especially 3.5e with all its baroque customization, but that would be a lie because not only did it spawn a great many clones, Pathfinder is out there being a big name 3.5e clone with just enough tweaks to not be a copyright infringement. (Also: just enough tweaks to not quite be backwards compatible.) So I feel I should try to give helpful advice for design of class-based RPG systems, rather than just this historical overview so far. Here's my big suggestion:

Figure out how a class offers value, and why I should keep taking it.

The D&D 3e Fighter fails this test. You should multiclass out. Full BAB, d10 HD, crappy skills, Fortitude save (more chassis than feature) are available elsewhere. Feats (the only real feature) have diminishing returns.

The Pathfinder Fighter still fails this test - it's been given tiny value buffs like the scaling effect of Weapon Training: for every 4 levels get +1 to damage with a weapon group. Meanwhile the wizards are still off getting caster levels that give +1d6 spell damage every single level, and it's easy to get 1 damage every 4 levels from other sources.

Also, the Pathfinder Fighter has been given a Bravery feature: +1 on saves against fear for every 4 levels. Meanwhile the Paladin is still getting outright fear immunity at level 3.

The converse of this suggestion is asking yourself in design: Which of a class's valuable features can I get elsewhere?

For the Fighter it's "all of them", for the Sorcerer it's "all of them, but fewer places" and for the Druid it's complicated but "one-third" is a first approximation.

Extra corollary: "...and if getting those features elsewhere, what am I giving up or getting on the side?"

#all #dnd #essaying #rpg #tabletop #mechanism design #incentives #longpost #tangential rambling

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