#GUESS WHO FINALLY FOUND A GOOD GRAPHIC DESIGNER
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UPDATED FIC ANNOUNCEMENT
Tumblr user @fanonplussed is creating a Matchablossom fic for the Fandom Gachapon 2025 event!
Fandom: Sk8 the Infinity
Pairing: Kojiro "Joe" Nando/Kaoru Sakurayashiki
Tags: Mutual pining, friendship bracelets, fluff
What happens?
Matchablossom mutual pining while wearing friendship bracelets with each others' names on it…and then finally getting together
Donate to Hospitallers and fill out this donation form before March 21 to get this fic to update!

About the Author
How did you come up with this WIP? What inspired you to start working on it?
this absolutely gorgeous piece of matchablossom fanart!
How do you feel about the original media that your fic is for?
SK8 the Infinity is the most shounen magical sports anime to ever anime, and it so shounen it loops around to being gay, highly recommend!! Only 12 episodes about a boy and his love…of skateboarding!!
What parts of this WIP are you most excited to write?
The idiot boys getting together!!
Teaser
The trend of wearing friendship bracelets spreads through their school like wildfire about three months before their university entrance exams roll around, which in Kaoru’s opinion means they’re all too fucking old for childish bullshit like this.
“It’s sweet,” is what Kojiro has to say about it, because he’s stupid and sentimental. “Everyone’s anxious about having to go their separate ways after we graduate, that’s all.”
“Cheap plastic beads on a string won’t stop people from losing each other,” Kaoru snaps, and makes sure he gets just that bit more air than Kojiro when it’s his turn to do a laserflip.
Kojiro cheers, which does make him feel a little better. But then Kojiro says, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Still nice to imagine that things won’t change, right? That the people important to you now stay important to you forever?”
Kaoru viciously kicks all thoughts of Adam out of his mind. “That’s just stupid and immature,” he snarls. “Everything changes.”
Donations are now closed, but you can read the fic here!
#sk8 the infinity#matchablossom#fanfic#fanart#friendship bracelets#fandom#fandom gachapon#fandom events#fandom gachapon 2025#activism#ukraine#charities#donations#GUESS WHO FINALLY FOUND A GOOD GRAPHIC DESIGNER#graphic design is not my passion y'all#I didn't want to stoop to using AI but GOD I'm bad at this#anyway#I also added image descriptions#so that should help too#fic announcement#fanfic announcement#matchablossom friendship bracelets
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Can I have your directors insight on your Mipha comic? :0 I'd love to know why you chose certain imagery like the hand holding and head kisses and wounds.........I'm going insane over it 😭 🫶 Ive been a fan of your art for a while now and mipha's my favourite so Im so obsessed with this comic haha
YESSSS 😁 so as previously mentioned ive been attempting to write a mipha comic for a little over a year now, and most of the time what stopped me was the fact that there's SO MUCH about her that I found interesting and wanted to cover. the process for this comic was a little bit different than my usual one in that I actually started with the last few lines "i thought maybe if i loved hard enough, i could stop time / I could freeze you in place as i knew you once / the little boy whose skinned knees were so easy to heal / what a childish thought" and built the script out from there, which thankfully gave me a clear direction to focus on, i.e. wounds/healing and aging. the script also went through a few revisions (the first version was much more heavily based around the word 'pain' which eventually became 'wound' in almost every instance because I thought the imagery of a wound was easier to tie to the other concepts i was working with than a less concrete concept like pain.)
One of the major differences in structure between this comic and my sort of. standard i guess? is the aspect ratio--when i started drafting in my usual portrait orientation, I realized that a lot of the panel compositions and imagery I had in my head were very vertical, which meant I wasn't getting the level of gutter space I felt I needed for my text to have the right impact, which is why the final comic ended up in a landscape orientation! truthfully i'd also been getting kind of bored with my standard ratio--i'm doing a (VERY LONG) graphic novel in that same ratio for my senior thesis right now, and at a certain point the standard panel layouts that look good and flow well with a page shape like that kind of start to bore you. When I changed the orientation of the page all of a sudden everything clicked and the project started being exciting again!
As for the imagery itself, I usually have SOME idea of the imagery i want to use as i'm writing, and with this one the things I knew for certain had to be present were the use of red for both mipha's body and link's blood. you mentioned the wounds--honestly, the heavy focus on wounds and blood was in large part due to color. Mipha's character design happens to be this really striking red, and she also happens to be a character whose story deals very heavily with wounds and blood by virtue of being a healer, so the idea of using the same singular spot color for both her body and the wounds she was healing, inextricably tying up her presence in link's life with the presence of pain, was SUUUUPER compelling to me. (I do also just. really like drawing wounds. which sounds insane but it's true)
the hand-holding and head kisses truthfully weren't something I thought really hard about beyond like, something that was standard to me as a display of affection between children. One of the most important layers to link and mipha's relationship imo is their relative ages and the way in which that changes overtime. When they meet for the first time, they are both fairly young children. Their relationship at that point is what most childhood relationships are: uncomplicated. easy. they fit together without a second thought. Mipha is slightly older than him, but they're in similar enough phases of their lives that it doesn't really matter; they are able to relate to each other intrinsically in that way. I kind of thought about the gestures of affection common in children who are just starting to understand the concept of romantic attraction--hand-holding, maybe the occasional kiss on the hand or forehead, but never anything more intimate. That way, when they grow up, there's an extra layer of longing on top of it all. Now they're both older, but link has matured much more significantly than mipha in their time apart. Mipha still remembers him as the little boy she knew, and that's reflected in the way she treats him. She'll hold his hands and kiss his forehead, but she's completely unable to go any further. their relationship is so fundamentally juvenile that the only way she can picture his body, let alone touch him, is when it's a job for her to do, when there's a wound there that needs healing. She's younger than him, now, so young that her schoolgirl crush seems monumentally silly and immature in comparison to his adult problems, and the only time she ever comes anywhere close to adult intimacy with him is when there are striking, unavoidable reminders of the weight he has to carry literally carved into his body.
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Shoulder to shoulder: Chapter 1



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chapter 2
a/n: English is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any mistakes that may have occurred. This took me a while to write; I'm sorry. The first draft was a mess 😭😭
summary: Jake takes a liking to the random sleepy stranger who he always sits next to on the subway.
w.c.: 5k
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The subway car rocked gently as Jake adjusted his seat, trying to make himself comfortable without drawing attention. Y/N sat next to him, her head bobbing slightly as sleep threatened to overtake her. Jake noticed her struggling to stay awake and smiled to himself. She was clearly exhausted—a feeling he could relate to after long shifts at the precinct.
Moments later, her head gently lolled onto his shoulder. Jake froze, not wanting to disturb her. He glanced around the subway car, hoping no one noticed how flustered he was.
Y/N stirred slightly, her eyes fluttering open. She blinked up at Jake, her fair cheeks flushing pink. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, sitting up straight and rubbing her eyes. “I didn’t mean to…”
Jake smiled warmly, hoping to put her at ease. “No worries. Happens all the time. I guess I just have a trustworthy shoulder.”
Y/N smiled sleepily, but her expression shifted to mild panic as she patted her lap. “Where are my glasses?” she muttered.
Jake reached into his jacket pocket and held up her glasses, slightly bent but still intact. “Saved them from getting crushed by a guy with questionable hygiene,” he said, flashing his badge instinctively. “Detective Jake Peralta.”
Y/N’s face lit up as she took them. “Wow, thank you. That’s really kind of you… Detective.” She gave him a small smile, slipping her glasses back on. “I’m Y/N Y/S/N, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” Jake said, his voice genuinely warm. Before he could say anything more, she glanced out the window, and her eyes widened.
“Oh, this is my stop!” She said, standing up quickly and clutching her bag. “Thanks again, Jake.”
Jake gave her a small wave, his heart doing a somersault. “You’re welcome.”
As the subway doors closed behind her, Jake leaned back in his seat, letting out a long breath. The faint scent of her shampoo lingered on his shoulder. He couldn’t believe he’d finally spoken to her.
Later that night, Jake sat at his desk in the precinct, staring at a blank report on his computer. His mind kept wandering back to Y/N. Her sleepy smile, the way she’d looked genuinely grateful when he’d handed her glasses—it was all stuck on replay in his brain.
Boyle leaned over his desk, raising an eyebrow. “Jake, why are you smiling like that? You look like you just found out Die Hard is getting a sequel.”
Jake snapped out of his trance. “What? No. I’m… uh, just thinking about a case. A really good one. Super intense.” Jake was so caught up he didn’t correct Boyle on how Die Hard had a sequel and 4 other movies after that.
Boyle squinted. “Uh-huh. Is this ‘case’ a woman you met on the subway?”
Jake’s eyes widened. “How did you…?”
“You have a very specific grin for subway crushes. Spill.”
Jake groaned but couldn’t help smiling. “Fine. I met someone. Her name’s Y/N. She fell asleep on my shoulder, I saved her glasses, we talked a little, and then she left.”
“Did you get her number?” Boyle asked eagerly.
“No,” Jake said, deflating slightly. “But it’s fine. I’ll see her again. Probably. Maybe.”
“Jake, you’re a detective! Use your skills. Find her. But, you know, not in a creepy way.”
Jake hesitated. Boyle was right—he had the tools to find her. But he wanted it to feel organic. Real. Still, his curiosity got the better of him. A quick social media search couldn’t hurt, right?
Later that night, Jake sat at his desk in the precinct, scrolling through social media. It had taken some light detective work (entirely within ethical bounds, of course), but he’d managed to find her profile.
Graphic designer... Her bio was simple but gave Jake enough to imagine her life outside their subway rides. He clicked through her posts, smiling at pictures of her projects and the occasional blurry selfie. There was one of her at a museum, captioned: “Where the art inspires my art.” (the post)
Jake’s grin widened. “She’s cool,” he said to himself.
He leaned back, holding his phone above him. “Okay, Peralta. Chill. You’re just… getting to know her. That’s normal.” But as he scrolled further, he felt his chest tighten. She wasn’t just cool; she was amazing. And the more he learned about her, the harder he fell.
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The next morning, Jake arrived at the subway platform earlier than usual. He told himself it was purely coincidental. He wasn’t waiting for her or anything. Definitely not.
The train pulled in, and Jake stepped on, glancing around the car. No sign of Y/N. He sank into a seat, trying to shake off the disappointment.
“Detective Peralta?”
Jake’s head snapped up. There she was, standing a few feet away, holding onto the handrail. Her smile was warm, and it was impossible not to smile back.
“Y/N! Hey! Uh, good morning,” he said, trying not to sound too eager.
She stepped closer, gripping the pole next to his seat. “Mind if I sit?”
“Not at all,” Jake said, quickly scooting over to make room. His heart raced as she sat down.
“So,” Y/N began, adjusting her bag. “Detective Peralta, huh? That sounds like an action hero name.”
Jake grinned. “It’s just part of the job. You know, stopping crime, catching bad guys, making the world a safer place… no big deal.”
Y/N laughed, and Jake felt like he’d won the lottery. “Well, thanks again for saving my glasses.”
“Glad to help,” Jake said. “Though now I’m curious. What keeps you so busy that you’re falling asleep on strangers’ shoulders?”
“Graphic design. Deadlines and caffeine are my life right now,” she admitted with a sheepish smile.
“That sounds intense. Any downtime in the mix?” Jake asked.
“Not much. But I’m trying to find a balance. You?” Y/N asked, tilting her head slightly.
“Downtime? What’s that? Pretty sure I’ve forgotten what weekends feel like,” Jake joked, earning another laugh.
The train slowed as it approached the next station. Y/N glanced at the doors and stood up. “This is my stop. Good luck with those weekends, Detective.”
Jake smiled. “Thanks. Have a good one, Y/N.”
She gave him a small wave as the doors opened. “You too.”
As the doors closed behind her, Jake leaned back in his seat, grinning like an idiot. Maybe today wasn’t such a bad day after all.
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a/n: I have no idea if this is good enough; I need feedback. Episode 2 will be out soon. trust🙏🙏
#brooklyn nine nine#b99#jake peralta#jake peralta x reader#season 1 jake peralta#fanfic#jake peralta imagines#fandom#soft aesthetic#x yn#fanficiton#episode 1
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At long last, we finally commence the Creator of the Month event! Without further ado, we present to you a short interview with @webanglikethat, March COTM winner, from which you can get to know her better. Congratulations JB!
Enjoy!

INTRODUCE YOURSELF
hi everyone!! I’m really exicited to be the first creator to be represented 🥺 you may call me JB and I’m 19 years old! I go by she/him pronouns and I’m a desi italian 🫶🏽
WHEN DID YOU JOIN ROMANCE CLUB?
2022-11-04, which I could’ve never guessed! I thought I’d started playing mid 2023. according to my gallery, my first stories were chasing you and heaven’s secret! the fandom I joined way later, and that’s how I never understood why sometimes my choices were ‘free’ aka Diamond Rush – I thought I bypassed something 😭 seeing the reddit fandom explained a lot haha !
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CREATING?
for the RC fandom specifically, I started creating in May 2024 when I made a Ram edit! before that, I was mostly posting about RC on my Instagram stories and editing them, sharing my thoughts, and occasionally ranting about the characters. I actually had another Tumblr account before this one, but it was focused on different fandoms. at some point, I stumbled across the RC Tumblr community, and at first, I just lurked, reading posts and getting a feel for the fandom. I loved seeing everyone’s discussions, edits, and writing, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump in just yet. eventually, though, I decided I wanted to be part of it, so I made this account for two reasons: first, to fully immerse myself back into Tumblr (aka I forgot the password to the OG account lmao / but I did remember it!), and second, to actually engage with the RC fandom rather than just observing from the sidelines.
in general, probably since I was 11-12 for the kpop fandom, which I’m still actively doing !! my passion for creating just keeps evolving and it’s crazy how the things I started with have led me to where I am now !! I’m always pushing myself to try new things and level up my skills and the way I express myself has definitely evolved over the years. I started off with small edits, and random posts, and over time, I got more confident in sharing my work. I’ve written a bunch of poems, edited a lot of stories/videos and I’ve picked up moodboards and graphic design again! the RC fandom has been such a fun and welcoming space, and I love being able to contribute to it (✿◠‿◠)
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST EVER CREATION?
for the rc fandom? it was a ram video edit (insert link) but if we are saying in general, it was probably one of those kpop profile pictures with heart crowns lmao! I was 11 or 12, experimenting with filters and thinking I was so cool — looking back at it now, it’s cringy, but it was the start of everything. and who says cringe can’t be good? normalize being cringe !! normalize growth !! those little edits sparked something that I’ve carried with me ever since! after that, I started making moodboard edits for kpop artists and umh, here I shall expose myself just for you guys lmaoo. these are the first few “'edits”’ I found from my archived posts (no, I never finished teen wolf …) (yes, I still make seunghyun content).



CHOOSE 3-5 OF YOUR FAVOURITE WORKS AND RAMBLE AWAY!
there’s a lot of creations that I’m thinking of! one of the hardest was probably the two part web weave I made of cainlane for a friend at the time, but it’s definitely not my fave
my jayniecarter web weave is a really important creation for me. I don’t remember exactly when I got the idea, but even within the first five episodes of 7B, Jaynie’s storyline hit me hard; her role as the oldest and only daughter that everyone relied on and how everyone just expected her to push away all of her plans to be there to fix the problems caused by everyone else. there was something so raw and so real about her struggles and the way she carried so much weight on her shoulders, often without acknowledgment that it made me really pause. it was supposed to be a funny little story but it turned into so much more. I found myself deeply relating to her — her imposter syndrome, her sense of responsibility, and that feeling of being stretched too thin while trying to be everything for everyone. some chapters were genuinely difficult to read because they felt so personal, almost like I was looking into a mirror. at first, I wasn’t sure how to process those feelings. it’s one thing to read something that resonates with you, but another to actually put those emotions into words. that’s when I started thinking about the best way to express it, and I landed on making a web weave. I’ve always loved the way web weaves allow for layered storytelling — how they can bring together different pieces of media, emotions, and themes into something cohesive. it felt like the perfect medium to explore Jaynie’s journey, not just as a character, but as an experience that so many people can relate to. I started by gathering all my screenshots — Carter scenes, moments where Jaynie’s imposter syndrome was on full display, her struggling with the expectations placed on her, and the way she felt like her first year of college wasn’t turning out the way it was “supposed” to and that the experience had been robbed from her. from there, I began thinking about songs and other pieces of media that resonated with those emotions. I wanted to find lyrics that captured that overwhelming pressure of being the person others depend on, that deep-rooted insecurity of feeling like you’re never quite doing enough, even when you are. the process was honestly a mix of research and instinct—some songs immediately came to mind because they just fit, while others took time to find. I also pulled quotes from books, movies, and shows that carried similar themes of responsibility, burnout, and the complicated emotions that come with being an eldest daughter. one of the best song to describe Jaynie and Carter imo is ESOEMOEHOED by Leanna Firestone, so that was the first thing I did, along with 'this is me trying’ by Taylor Swift. some of the photos included are actually taken by me! there is a quote by a book I really like, 'Final Offer’ that made it into the final draft “You always deserved better than me.” / “No. I deserved better from you.” aside from the angst, I also wanted to portray the amazing love a sister has for her brother, so I looked through my pinterest board and found comments people, mostly sisters, left on how they loved their siblings, how they felt like they didn’t exist until they arrived. while Jaynie and Carter’s journey is undoubtedly hard and complex, that doesn’t erase the love, and that was something I wanted to make sure wasn’t lost. one little detail I really liked was, when choosing Hansel and Gretel photos, they were always holding hands! and isn’t that siblinghood? holding hands through all of the shit the world puts you through? the certainty of that warm hold? honestly, putting the web weave together was both fun and unexpectedly emotional. it was therapeutic in a way I didn’t expect and I’m glad it also resonated with the ones who saw it!
My Nova and religious guilty web weave: this one was something I planned almost from the start! I started playing wt:c for my friend andy’s birthday so she could finally talk to me about it. the obvious religious guilt / religious trauma topic stood out to me and I began gathering screenshots as I played. as a girlie who can relate to those kinds of feeling, I was sooo excited to edit this !! from the start, I knew I wanted to turn this into a web weave. I started reading articles, researching people’s thoughts on reddit / quora / any website of that sort, trying to gather their feelings. one of the best sources was an article that began with
'Let me ask you this — have you ever felt like faith was supposed to be a comfort, but instead, it turned into a burden?’,
written by Gary L Ellis. I read that and thought, damn I struck the goldmine! I’m heading in the right direction! honestly, this one was easier to edit because I already had a lot of photos of this topic saved from my previous luke castellan web weaves and some genshin screenshots (the wanderer’s iconic line of 'the first to betray me was a god, my creator … my mother’). it was also easier because I had been gathering screenshots as I played instead of thinking about it later. that saved a lot of time. another line that really fit perfectly was
“I was raised Catholic,” he began. “But you’re not now?” the judge asked, frowning. “No,” he said. He had worked for years to keep the apology out of his voice when he said this.”
and that made me even more excited because everything was fitting together so well !! another obvious source was going to be, 'Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ by Taylor Swift, a song about grooming and religious guilt which ugh, Nova would SOOO relate to. overall, I believe this took me less than a week to edit! maybe 3-4 days? I was so excited that I stayed up late editing, and I’m honestly really proud of it. I’d love to make a part two in the future!
my jaynie-ray web weave: it’s been a long time coming – is how I would describe this one. I made it for the catalog’s 14 days of love event and I knew I wanted to choose these two for the platonic prompt. their relationship is so important to me 🥺 their bond is not just a promise of 'I’ll be there’, it’s a certainty. it’s something so much deeper, that it’s impossible to unravel. my main source for this one was my favourite book, 'Happy Place’ by none other than my mother Emily Henry! if you like crying and found family, give it a read ( •̀ .̫ •́ )✧ what really stuck with me, while reading about Ray, was the way Ray’s story doesn’t just expose the pain of being kicked out but also highlights the power of acceptance!! I can’t even begin to explain how much that meant to me. so many stories about queer trauma focus solely on the suffering, and while that’s important, 7B goes beyond that. it doesn’t just show the pain of rejection but it shows the love that comes after. the way Ray finds a new family, a new support system, people who actually love and accept them, is so important. because yes, being rejected by your family is devastating. but what makes it bearable is finding the people who choose you. I wanted to make their relationship justice and hopefully I did <3 I once again used photos I took myself (the quote from the seven husbands of evelyn hugo) and honestly, this one was so easy because I can relate to their friendship as I’ve found it in my best friend Kelly, and I already have like hundreds of photos/quotes/media pieces saved on friendship and found family! honestly teared up a few times making this.
my audrey-deviya web weave: I could not answer this interview without mentioning my wife deviya, could I? this one is recent, so you’d think I remember how or why I made this but honestly, my memory is really bad! I think I screenshotted a few things while playing the old abh update and I was like, wait, that’s sacrificial lamb coded! and who is THE original one? deviya. I knew in that moment I wanted to connect their journeys, to depict their roles as both a weapon and a shield, as a human but also a tool. there were many similarities. – one of the most painful ones was I noticed how both of them die/almost die feeling like they hadn’t lived enough. there’s this lingering sense of unfinishedness, this deep grief over the life they weren’t allowed to have. it’s heartbreaking. their stories reinforce the idea that their blood is almost worth more than their existence, that they need to bleed in order to be important. this was a little harder to edit because I had to go through abh walkthroughs on youtube because I had never screenshotted her dialogues from this point of view! my friend vee was kind enough to send me a few screenshots she had, which saved me so much time !! and they were SO helpful too, I could build a whole edit out of them alone. aside from gathering screenshots, I had no issues because sacrificial lamb is part of yet another pinterest board I have. I hope I did Audrey justice! I’m not an ABH girlie, my focus is on KFS, so hopefully I got her character well !!
now that I mentioned sacrifice and blood, I HAVE to talk about Amala. so I have two versions of my Amala web weave; purple and red. this one I made because I was joking in a discord server about how I was going to make a web weave if my friend Mira (@a-cloud-for-dreams) wasn’t gonna stop sending sad Amala screenshots. we were all joking around until I was like, well … eldest daughter angst? and every other desi girlie in the discord server was like WELL YES ! so I immediately started editing cause when you get a bunch of girls asking you to do something, you do it (follow for more life advices).
I felt a lot of pressure making this one because it had been a while since I played KCD and I had never closely looked at Amala’s character. Mira was able to give me 99% of the screenshots included in my post and, while I struggled with Amala’s character, I didn’t struggle with her characterization – does that make sense? she’s the eldest daughter who takes care of everyone, who puts her own needs aside and is struggling between her indian and english side (something that sooo many immigrant children, me included, can relate to). from there, it was easy to gather photos because again, I have a bunch of pinterest boards on topic of being the older sister, the third parent and the immigrant guilt! I had the most fun editing the last photo !!!
I’m very shy about my writing so I purposefully decided to highlight my webweaves 😭 but here are some of my fanfictions: -> if you wanted avery to be a love interest, I got a fic for you ( •̀ .̫ •́ )✧ The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury is one of my proudest works. it was hard to get Avery’s voice right because he has very little screentime (I screenshotted every scene in which he spoke) and at some point I gave up, so if you find it OOC just close your eyes lmaoo. -> did you want Vyxaria to talk to Walter about Xantheia? do you cry to peace by taylor swift? don’t look further then! Lonely winter, cradle my heart explores angsty Vyxaria -> do you instead want to break your heart by having unrequited!Walter and brokenhearted!Vyxaria x Xantheia? Thalassophile, do you remember our crestfallen hearts? awaits you ! for more, look at my masterlist!

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Digimon World Data Squad - Final Thoughts
Another Digimon game defeated 😉 This one felt kind of like a knock off of the Tales of series in its presentation (although it has turn based fighting). They're both Bandai Namco, so not much of a stretch there. It's one of those games that's objectively kinda bad but still manages to be enjoyable despite its flaws.
Despite the localized name, it is NOT a part of the Digimon World series. I guess it's considered a standalone. Kind of a side story to the Savers/Data Squad anime.
Notes:
This game took me slightly over 17 hours to beat over 3 weeks. Really the time it takes to beat is inflated because the game throws a random encounter at you every two seconds 😒 Also, I could have done all the bonus content, but I really didn't want to trudge through the dungeons again.
Speaking of the random encounters, not only do they slow the game to a crawl, they also make it pretty easy to become OP so long as you don't flee from any of them. Sometimes I enjoy the built in grinding, but this was a bit excessive. The "low/no encounter" items made things better late in the game but you also had to use a new one so frequently because they expired in like 1 minute!
Another frustration with this game is that the sound mixing was atrocious! It had the benefit of having all the English dub voices but that didn't matter because you couldn't freakin' hear anyone over the blaring music! It was painful to listen to and the subtitles were absolutely required. (There was no way to adjust the sound btw)
I was impressed by how much is voiced in this game, even though the dialogue is not that well written. I liked that they had victory dialogue at the end of each battle (that I could barely make out lol).
Graphics-wise I think the game looked pretty nice, typical PS2 JRPG with the bright colors from the show. The movement of the digimon in and out of battles was great. I really liked Agumon's "windmill arms" when he got all charged up. That was cute.
Weird af battle mechanics were not for me. Which skills you have access to are based on your digimon's mood and sometimes they want to be useless for whatever reason. A lot of the support/guard skills I also just never used because it was extremely unclear what they did? I couldn't find good online guides for this game either because it's not that popular lol.

(Gaogamon was the most annoying digimon in my party. He never wanted to be helpful in battle and his attacks were always super weak >:()
Speaking of weird mechanics, digivolution was weird too! I eventually realized that there was a hidden (never introduced/explained) menu that told you the requirements for each digivolution. I spent a long time thinking it was just random and getting shitty digimon every time I attempted a digivolve mid-battle. On the bright side, it was easy to just pick a digivolution you already unlocked and jump to it. That was convenient but felt really weird because digimon games have never let me do that before (at least not going to a higher level).
This entire game was insultingly easy until the final boss who suddenly got really hard (until I found a good strategy). All the other bosses just took one try. The game is very unbalanced because they give you so much money after each battle to the point where you can basically buy infinite recovery items.
Every single boss I fought (except one) had the same "VB" weakness? How lame is that? I was able to use the exact same strategy for ever boss and it made things very monotonous.
I liked the dungeon design/variety in locations, but the constant battles left me disoriented and made it hard to appreciate the view.
(Shout out to the walkthrough I found that had maps of each one. Made things a lot less painful.)
There was a handful of game exclusive characters that were fine I guess. I liked Kosaburo and his Biyomon, but Yuma and Kagura were pretty forgettable. They felt like the kind of characters you'd see that were made to appear once in a Digimon movie.
Speaking of Kagura, he was the (gasp) surprise villain (another reason this reminded me of a Tales of game tbh). He was pretty pathetic as a villain. They reveal at the end that his whole motive was being jealous of Thomas being better than him at everything. Like, okay, cool story bro.
Rolled my eyes big time when they revealed that the plot revolved around the seven deadly sins. How many times is Japanese media gonna pull out that cliche? I'm literally playing a completely unrelated visual novel rn (11eyes) that ALSO has a seven deadly sins plot. (Actually they came out 2 years apart from each other, so maybe it was a 2000s craze lol).
It seemed pretty unnecessarily cruel to kill off Nitta in front of his daughter like that. All the characters are just like "there there..." to her. I don't get why he had to die when Kagura didn't? (They were both "absorbed" by digimon) Makes no sense other than that Kagura had more plot armor.
I did feel pretty powerful defeating Lucemon Satan Mode at the end there. Unfortunately this is one of those games that goes back to the title screen after you beat the last boss. I've always thought that was a weird choice. Let me save!!
The Digimon video game franchise continues to be completely different with every release! Half of me is like "what's up with this chaotic mess!?" and the other half is like "yes!! Keep surprising me!" I'm really glad I'm playing the games alongside the anime. Feel like I'm on my way to becoming a Digimon scholar lol.
I give Digimon World Data Squad a 5 out of 10.
#digimon world data squad#digimon#video game#gaming#digimon data squad#digimon savers#certified yap post
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XDINARY HEROES AS AESTHETICS.

🌐 seya : before we dive into an amazing world of web-aesthetics, there are few things that i’d like to point out. first of all, i chose aesthetic for each member based solely on my associations with their vibe. meaning: i associate the vibe of aesthetic with them, rather than the history behind it. secondly, some of the information was gathered from such sites as:
https://cari.institute/aesthetics.
https://www.are.na.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org.
now that we got that out of the way — enjoy!
𝐠𝐨𝐨 𝐠𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐥 : 𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐊𝐈𝐓𝐒𝐂𝐇

“baby boomer & silent generation revival of various 1940s-1950s cultural iconography, design, and kitsch associated with diner, drive-in's and malt shop culture. jukeboxes, poodle skirts, 1950s advertising kitsch, neon, chromed-out automobiles, metallic paneling, 'american graffiti'-style fonts.” — ©️ cari institute.
diner kitsch – aesthetic familiar to everyone, yet not that many people know it’s actual name (or that it is, in fact, an aesthetic!). checkered floors and walls, milkshakes, burgers, neon signs and, of course, waitresses on roller skates — these things define diner kitsch. originating from 1950s, when diners were seen as a place, where you could enjoy a hearty comfort food and have a good time with your family or friends it was finally revived in our years through media that depicts mainly high schoolers or travelers of any sorts, going out for a dinner.
🌐 seya : i chose diner kitsch for gunil because he is literally the embodiment of a nerdy boy who would definetely hang out with his group of friends in a place like that. doing homework, reading comics, getting cookies on the house because of how often they visit a diner… 🥤🍔 yum!
𝐤𝐢𝐦 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐮 : 𝐍𝐄𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐈𝐑

“the term neon-noir is a film genre, but it can also represent an aesthetic. this aesthetic includes a brooding, mysterious, cyberpunk, and dangerous atmosphere. the neon-noir aesthetic can be related somewhat to the sibling-genre neo-noir (without the “n”), including avant-garde fashion, femme fatale style, dark clothing, technology, and neon lights.” — ©️ wendy zhou (from her blog wendyzhou.se)
neon-noir (also known as future-, cyber-, tech-noir) was born in the film industry around 1980s, when sci-fi was blooming yet again. not so popular in web, it is still quite known in gamer community, thanks to such games like “cyberpunk 2077”, “anno mutationem”, “blade runner” etc. this aesthetic is mixing old-school noir with futuristic elements, giving it a whole new look. neon signs, robots, androids, futuristic technology are going hand in hand with good old detective genre, accented shadows, rain and fog.
🌐 seya : i find this aesthetic to be the most suiting to jungsu. i can imagine him in this type of setting so well and i’d actually like to read or even write something, where he is portrayed as a detective in a mysterious and futuristic setting!
𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐤 𝐣𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤 : 𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐃𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐗

“rule-bending, medium-blending "instagram grunge". full of horror vacui, chrome type, oddball textures and self-referentialism.” — ©️ cari institute.
originated in the 1990s and revived in 2010s, acidgrafix (also known as: acid graphics and acid design) aesthetic is mainly seen nowadays on the covers of music albums. bright colors (usually red, orange and neon green, neon yellow, neon purple), wireframes, distorted images, liquid metal forms – all of these are key elements of acidgrafix. the term acid, as you might’ve already guessed, came from the acid house and rave culture. it first appeared on flyers, used to promote and to invite people to raves. smiley faces (of course, resembling nothing else but the actual drug), op-art-esque patterns, sci-fi futurism – all of these were such an eye candy for party-goers, that soon enough this style overtook the music industry. after being long forgotten in the 00s, acidgrafix finally found it’s new home in instagram, where musicians would design their insta-stories and albums with all of the key details of this aesthetic.
🌐 seya : aaand this is the part that i was worried about the most. this aesthetic took it’s origins not from the best culture, but i still find it’s style being quite suiting for gaon. it’s bright, innovative and bold – just like he is!
𝐨𝐡 𝐬𝐞𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐦𝐢𝐧 : 𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐊

"the millennial and gen-z iteration of edgy grunge aesthetics, associated closely with "pop punk" and the store hot topic." — ©️ cari institute.
*puts a cd in the drive, "girlfriend" by avril lavigne starts playing* now that we're in the mood, let us find out what the hell is a teen punk. the dirty, the angry, the free and THE wild – this aesthetic conveys the whole essence of the rebellious period that every teenager eventually goes through. you can usually see this movement being expressed through clothes, style, make up and, most importantly, music, rather then the way you could draw something or edit a photo. mainly seem in early 00s, teen punk found it's new home in hearts of people through nostalgia that overtook us all as soon as pandemic started. this aesthetic combines different colors like foggy green and blue, obviously black, red and pink (yes, the tricolor of emo aesthetic is very important here). essential details of teen punk are denim jackets, torn jeans, big ass t-shirts with logos of musical groups, fishnets and those humongous military boots that everyone used to wear. the pioneers of this movement are mainly musical artists, like the infamous avril lavigne, all-time favorites my chemical romance, green day, paramore etc.
🌐 seya : now i need you to look me dead in the eyes and say that THIS isn't his aesthetic. bro literally dresses as if hot topic was more grunge and still managed to survive.
𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐲𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐣𝐮𝐧 : 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐓𝐈 𝐏𝐎𝐏

"first wave of corporate appropriation of graffiti culture. typically includes urban streetscapes & iconography contemporary to the time period (eg. trash cans, brick walls, chain link fencing, street lamps, sidewalks, industrial elements, general 'urban decay'). it's also associated with that eras' portrayal of street, hip hop, & punk culture." — ©️ cari institute.
disclaimer: this part is mostly retelling of an article from this site: https://www.grafftergallery.com/2023/08/graffiti-pop-art-vivid-intersection-of.html | i really don't think that i would be able to express myself better than they already did, so let me give the credit to the rightful authors!
this aesthetic is a firm proof of the dynamic between street culture and the world of art that was born in early 80s and was especially popular till the 00s. bright colors, bold splashes of different patterns, provocative slogans, popular singers, models, tv personalities – it screams fight for the freedom of self expression. this movement is first and foremost was heavily affected by socio-political issues, causing street artists to voice their concerns through art. graffiti itself is a rebellious act (you're literally damaging private property) and when you mix this with media icons and pop culture that was thriving, you're guaranteed to have all the attention that you need.
🌐 seya : i feel like this aesthetic really suits jun han because in my eyes he is one of the most brave idols in terms of expressing himself through his style and art.
𝐥𝐞𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐨𝐧 : 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐎 𝐒��𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐌

"let's take a look at what is included in such aesthetics as retro-surrealism (also known as airbrush surrealism and included in the subgenres of retro-futurism), shall we?"
retro is an imitation or conscious derivative of a lifestyle, trend, or art form from history, included in music, fashion, or looks. the retro art movement always invariably revives and in one way or another refers to everything that happened in the past. surrealism is an art direction that always strives to revolutionize human experience. it balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. combining these two trends of media art, we get abstract paintings made in the style of sci-fi comics from the 70s-90s. very often they feature elements such as musical instruments, outer space and electronic objects such as telephones, radios, televisions, etc. usually such paintings are airbrushed, which gives them a slightly hazy, matte effect, typical for surrealism (promotes immersion into the unconscious me thinks!).
🌐 seya : i love, love, LOVE this one so much, i just had to give it to my favorite boy jooyeon! i feel like this one suits jooyeon just because he looks like that one dude obsessed with weird ass comic books, always going around with his old mp3 player and vibing to daft punk bangers. sorry not sorry, no one is getting this image out of my head.
#xdinary heroes#goo gunil#kim jungsu#kwak jiseok#oh seungmin#han hyeongjun#lee jooyeon#jun han#o.de#xh#🌐 : seya talks.
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diary121
1/13-14/2024
friday - saturday
gonna test the newest export of the #problemsong right nowwwwwwwwwwwww.
okay, i do really really like the new guitar tone itself, so i think everything up to/through distortion i should not touch, i think really i just need to find where a lot of the rhythm is located, i guess. i guess also maybe i should try doing something where i take the guitar again and pan it left and then right, it might have more room that way to be heard better. i guess doubling a guitar that's so fucked up that also has the main riff inside could help. another thing is probably to cut some unnecessary highs, as many as i can get. and then, finally, i think the bass needs to be a little quieter. i'll figure out vocals when i get it doubled. i've just been reticent to do the doubling thing because it can very quickly become too much, plus getting the levels right can be difficult, and i don't want to pan too wide.
i did check another song, also, trying to see about using other tones from other songs in this one instead, and found that the bass was tooooo loudddddddd. always disheartening, but easy.
but today overall was pretty disheartening re: mixing, the confidence level plummets, i get miserable, but right now i think i'm happy. i guess i'll listen again to check but i shouldn't overdo it. it's like self harm sort of, testing if i'll get really upset. but it feels necessary.
i do like it though. i think panning will help bring out the lower frequencies in it, and it'll help the vocals be like, good. plus, since the song sounds like, okay, right now, i don't think the panning will create new/weird problems. so i guess i'll have to get it as close to right so i'm not working on 2 things separately, and then when that's good, double it. i think one way to get more low end out is but doing some of the high cuts, like i said, just not too many, and probably just shelving.
anyway, because of the miserable experience today i took a long shower, i tried to get back into watching the curse but like, i can't with that when i am moody. i did see something funny, i guess like perfectly timed as something for me to go feral on, which was some guy in a discord server doing this whole "i hate art. it's so decadent". he didn't actually say that but he did say people who care about art are idiots, that so many people who make it/are in scenes are stupid, it's annoying when people say artists are 'workers' (like solo artists aren't but when you get to big industrial level animation/filmmaking/graphic design or whatever, then it does become labor (it's obvious his idea of labor has to do with producing "useful" goods)). he said every second working on art prevents one from producing necessities. his posting was so evidently stupid it i guess made me feel something, like, it's so easy to critique it, obviously art isn't 'useful' and is broadly not meaningful in a like, totally material way, or a base material way. but art is a kind of communication, all of it, seeing where it's spectacularized is clearly important but his approach is this self serious and idiotic moral proselytizing, essentially, about how he's concerned about 'the real' and others ought to be too. it really is proselytizing, it's an effort to say to others, without saying outright, your soul needs saving, you are decadent, you are immoral. he brings up how you have to use equipment that people died getting, it's true, all this technology we have has blood on it, everything has blood on it, we live in hell, acting superior for a base materialism that essentially suggests that there is something 'necessary' one can do right now, is insane. what is necessary labor in capitalism, one can help, volunteer, but seeing a dude who formerly drummed in a fucking avant prog band talk about how art is a political failure of some kind because he doesn't understand marx/materialism is fucking irritating. this is the kind of politics someone arrives at via the reactionary mindset social media puts you in, his communist angle is a charade, it's essentially a kind of fascism that sees useless activity as decadent, as i continue to mention. i think what confounds me the most is the notion of utility, any worker right now, any labor, right now, how much of that is necessary, this is all mostly surplus, people volunteering do important work, people in hospitals might be doing important work sometimes. but people doing 'real' work as most people like this conceive it, hard labor, farming, serious 'skills' they imagine people needing on their imaginary utopian communes, this is all stuff that is not meant to last, every building made now serves a purpose of putting forth the appearance of growth and drumming wealth out of land. at this point, despite its relative uselessness, diy art is basically where people are most free/able to feel tethered to/ the possibility of the phrase "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs," his perspective is one that stems from the bourgeois notion that work=suffering, and so he has to suffer like jesus to illustrate to us that everyone is wasting their life force (his perspective is also a vitalist one) on producing useless things, when there is 'important' work to be done. there is, surely, it's just not going to be accomplished by someone who is solely in the grip of ressentiment and moralizing.
it is such a freakishly irritating perspective to see, it's common among certain communists. i really don't like the whole communist infighting thing or whatever, but people make it hard because, to put it bluntly, they are annoying and go on twitter dot com too much and it rots the insides of their heads until they decide they need to post in an art community that is mostly just poor trans women. it really is such a painfully bourgeois perspective.
anyway the rant is cathartic, i'm also under no illusions about either this rant or what i'm doing being important or even good in terms of helping the world, but i don't know, maybe i am just a touch too immoral, being at peace with that. i don't know. i think it's more immoral to create ways of thinking/enforce ways of thinking that make people feel that, if they aren't proceeding in an exact and certain way, of thinking and action, are immoral. it's so ugly.
i want to be liberated and sovereign, not alienated and able to see labor as something happy, to participate in, to do things as they really are needed, for others and myself, i want to be with everyone doing something, to make life happen. but we aren't there, and getting there won't happen by holding onto petty sentiments of the only way through to this is pain and asceticism, and through an excess of guilt.
sorry for the very dumb rant, though, also.
i also have so much energy rnn, it's sickeninggg, i did my workout to give myself energy to help write this but it's like, fucking me up, the morning light + allnighter dopamine are hitting me in a fucked up way, but it feels good.
now i am starting to get tired. i also did get some more writing done after the shower, so today was productive in that way. disappointments in music seem to get me to do better with writing. at least.
okay now it's like 2 pm and i'm not sleep so, idk, but i should go now so,,
byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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And now for a couple more. You know the drill.
I found zero things to like about The Talos Principle. I know it's generally considered pretty good by the vast majority of people, and I have friends who like it, but I gave up on it pretty quickly.
It got off to a great start by showing raw CSS instead of button prompts in the menus, which it deserves an award for because that's a totally new way to fail catastrophically that I've never seen before. The CPU/GPU settings are also completely baffling.
Once I finally got into the game itself it immediately crawled up its own butt with some pseudo-deep nonsense narrated by "Elohim", which like, sure buddy. I knew it was a bad sign when I was searching for something completely unrelated and pulled up a post on r/Jung recommending it. It continues to be the policy of this blog that anyone who takes Jung seriously is not to be taken seriously.
Maybe the puzzles are ok, or I'd think so in a different context? I actively disliked the way they're presented though, and I could tell it was just never going to click with me.
In better news Proverbs is a thing. A reasonably fun one too. A bunch of reviews I've seen try to describe it as a cross between Minesweeper and Picross, but it's actually its own previously existing puzzle type that's been around for a while, most commonly known as Mosaic.
In my experience it's not a particularly hard type of puzzle, but it's a good choice for what they wanted to use it for. If you're a super hardcore puzzle person looking for a challenge you've come to the wrong place, but also you probably also are aware of Mosaic and have your own opinions on it already. On the other hand if you're just looking for something pretty chill that has a good feeling of progression then this might be it.
I expected it to take a lot longer to finish after seeing the RPS review that said they spent like 36 hours on it, but it took me well under a third of that. Somehow even though I fell asleep at one point with the game still running I managed to finish significantly quicker than any of the submitted times on HLTB, and I wasn't even really trying to go fast.
I briefly almost had a moment of "maybe the Gamers were right and video game reviewers really are bad at games", but then I came to my senses and remembered that in this situation I'm basically Mosaics Georg since it's been in my rotation for multiple years of things I do while listening to podcasts to help me focus.
I guess while I'm here I might as well mention that I've also been having an extremely mixed reaction to the first couple hours of Cyberpunk 2077 so far. The world and characters and story are interesting enough so far, I guess, but I've been having a harder time with everything else.
I think I might actually like the gameplay even less than The Witcher 3, which is saying something because I actively dislike most of the gameplay in TW3. I'm also pretty sure the menus and UI are even worse in some ways than the already kind of iffy ones in TW2, in totally new and different ways. Whoever came up with using an analog stick to move a cursor around is my nemesis, and I'm not convinced it solves any problem that wasn't already addressed by just having better organization and layout of menus before. I know you can use the d-pad instead too, but it doesn't feel like the layout was designed with that in mind as the only input you're using.
And then one of the biggest problems I have is a problem I have with a lot of big games like that these days, which is the graphics. Yeah yeah, it's very technically impressive and looks nice if you're into that sort of thing. I also can't parse what's going on visually a lot of the time because it's so busy. My vision kinda sucks in a mostly uncorrectable way, and all these hyperdetailed environments with realistic materials and lighting in a lot of recent games are kind of the bane of my existence.
If the real world looked anything like that I would die several times a day from not being able to tell I'm walking directly into a wood chipper or whatever. Back to less detailed/more stylized stuff for me, I guess.
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Misc. comedy things I've been going through lately:
Picked a few episodes of the Menkind podcast, to listen to, based on what guests I thought seemed interesting
Specifically: Rosie Jones, Tom Mayhew, Paul Sinha, Andrew O’Neill, Wil Hodgson, Bethany Black, Jen Brister, Suzi Ruffell, Sofie Hagan, Tim Minchin, Mark Watson, Jessica Fostekew, Rhys Nicholson, John-Luke Roberts
I'd previously avoided Menkind because, as much as I enjoy hearing Mark Watson talk, I was not interesting to hearing from a guy who's famous for a cooking show. However, I recently had someone tell me the podcast is actually really interesting, so I gave a few episodes a try, and really enjoyed them. I've now gone through pretty much all the ones with comedians as guests so I'm not really interested in hearing other ones, but I liked those.
It's an interesting podcast premise, Mark Watson asks thoughtful and beyond-the-surface questions, it's slightly funny to hear Mark Watson awkwardly try to have "normal podcast banter" with his co-host.
Lessons and Carols For Godless People
Go Faster Stripe has three years of this - 2008, 2010, and 2011 - and I finally got around to ordering and watching/listening to them (two come in DVD form, one as an audio CD). These were great fun. It's a secular Christmas show that Robin Ince put on for many years, getting lots of non-religious people to come together and perform around Christmas. And Chris Addison, oddly. Chris Addison is Christian, but he's one of the cool Christians, like Bridget Christie. And he participated in this show, which shows how cool he is.
There are comedians and musicians and scientists, Alan Moore did a talk that I found hilarious, a young Josie Long, a slightly less old Lee and Herring (performing separately). Music from adorably young Grace Petrie, Isy Suttie, Gavin Osborn. Robin Ince has so much passion that he can make any topic interesting (I don't mean that compliment to be as backhanded as it probably sounds). There was absolutely some smug liberal atheism going on there, which isn't always a good thing, but in this case, it was fun to listen to a bunch of people get together in a space where they've agree that for tonight, they're allowed to be apologetically smug atheists (for the record I don't think there's anything inherently smug about atheism, or wrong with someone thinking they're correct to believe that religious tenant are untrue - but I also think it's nice for the sentiment of "lets get together and talk about how much smarter we are than people who fall for the religious lie" gets confined to designated spaces, and it's good to try not to be a dick about it in public in general).
Mark Steel
Haven't actually listened to this yet, but I've decided it is finally time that I listen to his old radio shows, so I've put those on my phone to be my next thing.
Bethany Black
I recently watched her GFS shows for the first time, and I should not have waited so long to get into that. Very funny. For some reason I'd thought those shows would be really dark, but they didn't feel that way, despite a lot of dark subject matter (I guess that's the reason why I had that expectation of her shows, that I knew the subject matter).
Frankie Boyle's A Short History of the Apocalypse
I'm about halfway through the audiobook of this, and it's fun. I've been going through it slowly because it's a lot, it's the sort of thing from which you want to take breaks. It feels like pure Frankie Boyle, like if he distilled everything about his sense of humour and let it loose in this one book. Just hours after hours of graphic gruesome fantasies about taboo subjects - sex, violence, cannibalism, driven into the ground until they become cynically expected. It's funny. But it's funniest in small doses.
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BIG life update + ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!
Hi my little darklings <3
Here I come with this big life update and some announcements!
So first - Im feeling way better and I can say I will be truly active and post a lot <3 Im so excited!
Important thing - I drew those Patreon prints I owed some people: I will send mail in March and it will have prints for November, December, January and February [+ for March if you will still be my Patron]. Im sorry it took me eternity to catch up on those but finally I can send you those <3 Im super super grateful for your support and understanding that my health was killing me
Print for February will be sent to everyone who are my Patron before 10th of March! Plus then you also will get March one ;p
I gonna focus a lot on my YT this year, I wanna post there artistic stuff but also life vlogs and some gaming. And I will be posting speedpaints where I talk in background ;p My goal is to post 3 videos per week at some point. I also hope to maybe do weekly livestreams?
My other focus will be my Patreon, I wanna go back to posting all planned stuff :> I might do little changes to Patreon tiers but I will let you know!
Oh, about that Gorenuary challenge... Yes, I failed it ;p But I gonna draw arts for every prompt anyway ^^ Hopefully I will finish it to the end of a year hahah >XD
I have idea for some bigger projects for this year, like I wanna start making new game and work on some horror ARG :> I wanna also come back to working a lot on my universe Terroether ^^ Hopefully I will make big progress in designing/redesigning my ocs! I also hope to come back to making lil animations and animatics :>
My health still isnt perfect, also some of illnesses will be present for a rest of my life. I decided to live my life with accepting this as I cant do anything about this. So there will be days I wont do anything. My meds and doctors are super expensive, thankfully right now my parents support us a lot financially. If you wanna donate to help me go through it here is my fundraiser: https://pomagam.pl/nhg96m I will be updating it when it comes to my health
Also, great news - my parents said I dont owe them money I borrowed to upgrade my graphic card. They gave my brother money for car so Im not in debt ;p daaaaaaaaaaaamn, Im so happy about this!
Im again happy and full of motivation; I was able to escape depressive episodes [hopefully they wont be back too often {cause of borderline}] and I found joy in creating again. Im not terrified anymore if Im not good enough or what others think about me. So I hope I will be able to draw and post again regularly :>
Okay, I guess thats all for now :> I missed you a lot guys and I hope to be truly back for real this time :>
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Thinky Third Thursday - October 2023
Welcome to the first ever Thinky Third Thursday, curated by Alan Hazelden of Draknek & Friends - a monthly roundup of thinky puzzle games that have caught my eye.
I really love thinky games. Obviously I’ve been designing them for over a decade now, but more than that it’s the only genre where you'll find deep systems, surprising interactions, and that eureka moment where you're in the shower and realise the solution to the puzzle you've been stuck on.
It’s such a great time for the space right now - there’s so many games coming out it feels hard to keep up! I hope my recommendations will be useful to you, whether you’re someone who tries to play everything thinky or you just dabble occasionally.
I’m not being paid by any of these developers to promote their games, I just want to advocate for talented people making great work. All games were purchased by myself.
Here’s what I’ve been playing:

Headlong Hunt, by Toombler Chase easily-spooked creatures to herd them into the perfect location. This may initially look simple, but it features some really great puzzle design while remaining very approachable!

COCOON, by Geometric Interactive and Annapurna Interactive The vibes on this game are off the charts. The puzzles seem very streamlined for a mainstream audience, but that doesn’t stop every moment being intensely satisfying.

Magicube, by nebu soku The puzzle design in this game is really fantastic! It might take a little perseverance to get into - it's a hard game - but if you stick with it, it will be incredibly rewarding.

Golden Idol Mysteries: The Lemurian Vampire, by Color Gray Games and Playstack The second and final DLC for The Case of the Golden Idol. I don’t think it lived up to the main game + first DLC, and found the cases pretty frustrating, but the new gameplay variation is a nice twist on the formula.

Chants of Sennaar, by Rundisc and Focus Entertainment An intriguing language-learning game. I don’t love the unnecessary / uninteresting stealth sections or that I had to do a Rush Hour puzzle in the first hour, but overall I think it’s worth checking out. I’ve seen several people recommend playing without using the journal that confirms your word guesses - if you want to lean into the concept and increase the thinkiness, that seems like a good choice.
More recent thinky releases:
Underground Blossom, by Rusty Lake
Escape From Mystwood Mansion, by Lost Sock Studio
Bilkins' Folly, by Webbysoft and Armor Games Studios
A Tiny Sticker Tale, by Ogre Pixel
Submachine: Legacy, by Mateusz Skutnik
Mosa Lina, by Stuffed Wombat
Sandy's Great Escape, by Mocha Moose Games
Upcoming games to watch for:

Crossroad OS, by Daisy Games (Demo available now) Martin of Daisy Games has been making quietly competent puzzle games at a pretty impressive pace, but this one is a real step up. The demo that just came out has some solid puzzles and great vibes - I highly recommend giving it a go, especially since it’s pretty short.

Plungeroo, by Little Crown Games (Demo available now) This is a delightful pinball-themed puzzle game, and the graphics/audio really lean into that theme. I wasn’t expecting much when I checked out the demo during Steam Next Fest, but it really grabbed me with its level of polish. The puzzles are pretty light, but still satisfying, so I’m looking forward to playing more of it when it comes out in a little over a week on Oct 27.
Puzzmo, by Zach Gage and Orta Therox (Early access signups start today) Announced today, Puzzmo is a hub for small games that want to be part of your daily routine - think Wordle or the NYT crossword. During their prelaunch period they’re opening the doors to 500 new players every day, or if you can’t wait to get let in there’s some coverage on Digital Trends that has more info.

The Talos Principle 2, by Croteam and Devolver Digital (Demo available now) The first game is one of the best-selling puzzle games of all time, so there’s a high bar for the sequel. We’ll find out soon how it’s turned out - it’s releasing on Nov 2.

Sokobond Express, by José Hernández and Draknek and Friends (Demo available now) I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the next game I’m publishing. We’re putting the final touches on it now and will have more news to share soon - in the meanwhile, please add it to your wishlist on Steam!
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pandoras box (Tsu'tey x Reader)
chapter (1) (2) (3)
warnings for this chapter- eating a worm, speaking of shooting, smut, fighting, nothing too graphic though
warnings for smut- biting kink, a bit of a pain kink if you squint, alien cock, fingering, big dicked boy, penetrative sex, I tried to not explain the reader's gentiles
word count- 2K
you are an artist who came to draw and record the flora and animals on pandora after your sister gets sick you are taken under the wing of the next chief of the omaticaya tribe.
the smut will be indicated by *** and be in red if you wish to skip it. I've also increase the length of this fic from three chapters to four for a epilog
Grace brought us back home to gather some food. Jake had a meeting with the general and I was meeting with my sister.
"So you are participating in a ritual to become a na'vi woman?" Paige asked as I nodded.
"Jake is participating in one to become a man" Paige gave me a smile to me.
"I guess you are really in good with them huh?" I gave a nod and smiled a bit sheepishly. "So. Who is it? A guy or a chick?"
"Huh?"
"You've got them heart eyes kid"
"Oh.. well it doesn't matter he is promised to another"
"No. Not Tsu'tey" She spoke out of shock and I looked away from the accusation. "He can't- he won't"
"I know" I looked downcast at my hands as Paige sighed at me a bit.
“Good luck kid” Paige pulled a silver locket off her neck and placed it in my hand “here. So we are with you during it.”
I pressed a kiss to my sister's forehead before clasping the necklace on my neck and making my way back to my pod. My consciousness slid from my body to my avatar waking up with a jolt as I opened my eyes to view tsu'tey standing over me.
"You are going to be late if we wait any longer. Put these on" He dropped a soft green loincloth that had red and blue beads woven into it and the top seemed to match tsu'tey design on his top and was a bit messier than the clothes I got before as I looked to tsu'tey to thank him I noticed his ears were faintly tinted a darker blue as his ears were folded down as he looked shyly away. "Do you like them?"
"I love them. They feel like there was a lot of care put into them" I spoke looking up at him fondly. This seemed to make him relax more but also a bit more embarrassed.
"Come or we will miss the ceremonies" He walked off as I began to change. The na'vi culture was less modest than humans, they believed your body should be something to be proud of rather than embarrassed but after I explained my culture to tsu'tey as weird as it was to him he respected my boundaries. I found him leaning against the wall waiting for me. His eyes trailed up and down my figure as I waved to him and he smiled at how well the greens and beads he chose complimented my figure and skin. He offered his hand before leading me down the staircase.
Jake's ceremony was first and went very well. He was one of the people now and now it was my turn. Mo’at approached me with the glowing worm still writhing I had to eat it whole I knew that. I bowed to the older, wiser woman in respect before she handed me the large worm. With a lot of effort and controlling my gag reflex I was able to stomach the worm and Mo'at aided me into laying in the soft moss as the singing got louder from all around me. My eyes fluttered closed as I was pulled into my hallucination. The world I saw was hard to explain it was almost like a living painting the color was so vibrant I was surrounded by colors I had never seen before. I heard loud growling as a creature approached me I instantly recognized it as the one that attacked me and jake on our first day in the jungle, a thanator. It snarled at me before jumping to attack me. I woke up in a cold sweat. Cheers came from all around me as I stood to my feet before pumping my fist in the air. Tsu'tey aided me to my feet and all I could see was pride in his eyes.
The feast held in Jake and my honor was huge. Finally allowed to sit with the rest of the clan tsu'tey and Neytiri at our sides. I was better at speaking this language than Jake was still but we both had matured and become a part of the people. There were still those that had their doubts about us for good reason. I knew about the shooting at Grace's school and knew neytiri's sister had died because of it but knew not the details. After the children were put to bed and couples and friends sat around smaller fires, tsu'tey pulled me off leading me through the woods.
"There is one last thing I can show you now" He pulled me along the path he seemed to know by heart. He pulled me to a Grove of trees that reminded me of willow trees with a purple glow to the leaves. His ears flicked around a bit as he noticed Jake and Neytiri where he was going to pull me making him growl a bit under his breath before he pulled me further in the Grove til he could no longer hear the two of them, Sitting down he pulled me harshly the rest of the way he almost seemed nervous. "This is.. where we can hear our ancestors"
He gently grasped the leaves of the tree and placed his kuru on it making his pupils blow wide and his ears twitch around before he pulled away motioning for me to do the same. I did so and heard thousands of voices young and old some louder than others but one seemed to clear the rest becoming clear in my head. It was a feminine voice and younger she couldn't have been more than sixteen. "It's okay tsu'tey you must live." her voice was warm and loving. I pulled my kuru away from the leaves looking at tsu'tey looked curious as to what I heard.
"You... I.." I tried to think of how to say it without causing him to be angry. "I think I heard neytiri's sister?" His ears flattened a bit at this but it seemed out of guilt and sadness.
"What.. what did she say?" His hand touched mine. I gently ran my thumb across his hand reassuring him.
"That it's okay. And you need to live" He seemed surprised at this and looked at the tree chuckling a bit to himself.
"Sylwain, thank you for your blessing." He spoke in his language before returning to me. His hand held mine more firmly before letting go again standing up. "So you are now a woman. You may choose a mate now." He looked off becoming icy at the idea. "I could find you a good man. Good hunter to take care of you.. and your future children. A good husband for my best student."
"Hm. That would be nice but I think the man I want to be my mate has already chosen" I spoke softly turning my gaze away.
"You wish for a taken man? Do not tell me you are that foolish to love a man who has a mate already" he looked at me with an amazed face.
"No not mated already but spoken for" I looked at him shyly. He seemed surprised at my words and he knelt to me.
"Do you speak true?" He firmly grasped my chin making me look him in the eyes "do not play with me. No games."
"No games. But I could never ask him to love me back. You don't ask a sunset to hold you back. He loves another woman and always has" I breathed gently looking away again as he let go of my chin. He thought over his next words.
"He already loves you back" he pressed his forehead to mine "he would be a fool not to love you."
"But he has a duty to his-"
"They will understand" He mused "you learn quickly you could become a healer soon." His hand gently touched my kuru. "Nga yawne lu oer"
My lips pressed to his as he grasped my waist pulling me close to him. My legs locked around his waist as my back touched the mossy forest floor his chest pressed to mine as he guided our Kuru's together making us both gasp as our beings became one. *** his hands came to the ceremonial garb he made me pulling at the knots letting them drop to the side as he pulled me close again his hand running across my body. I twitched and arched into his touch my hands running over his back as I pulled him free of his clothes. He laid kisses and bites along my collarbone and neck, decorating my skin and leaving his claim like an animal. He grasped at me holding me tightly as if he would lose me. I gasped as he ran his fangs along my neck before he dug them in making me wince a bit but before long his long fingers were running up my thigh to my hole, chuckling at how aroused I was already.
"Shut up" I grumbled at him, making him bite again a bit harder this time. He eased his fingers deep within me making me mewl and dig my nails into the skin of his back. After he felt he had prepped me enough he removed his fingers and lined up his cock with me. The Omatikaya had different gentiles than humans did. His cock which was a dark blue had a knot down at the base and seemed Pointer than a human cock did. He eased himself into me slowly giving me time to adjust before he began thrusting into me, slowly increasing his speed with time.
Our minds and bodies were one in true intimate moments. Tsu'tey kept his eyes on him letting out soft grunts as he held our heads together. My breath and his mixing and becoming one breath of air. The sighs of pleasure turned to moans and groans as we began to reach our climax clinging to one another. My fangs buried deep within his shoulder as my body shook with my orgasm, tsu'teys own following mine filling my hole his knot expanding and locking himself in me. Our exhaustion took over as we soon drifted to sleep. ***
Grace pulled Jake who was running from her back to his spot at the table
"Eat up. Picasso has even eaten before you marine" I gave a shrug and Jake shot me a playful glare.
"I got up early. I'll see you on the other side marine" I winked at him before sliding into my pod and norm closed the lid. I woke up to tsu'tey carrying me through the forest our clothes quickly having been thrown on. I looked around dazed and saw why he was running. Bulldozers, Dozens of them. "Shit!" I yelled as I saw, wiggling out of my mate's grasp landing on my feet as he pulled me along. His hunting team was waiting with his dire horse, tears in these warriors' eyes as we watched the forest go up in flames. A flame ignited in our hearts as tsu'tey pulled me with him onto his horse.
"We must warn hometree" He shouted at us as we rode back to hometree. The people looked concerned and yelled for the elders as tsu'tey propped himself up on the wall shouting in his language at them. "Sky people attacked the tree of voices! It's gone."
The cries of the people around us sounded out as they heard him. Tsu'tey held my hand pulling us both forward.
"We saw it with our own eyes. It was a direct attack on our home" tsu'tey spoke loudly puffing up his chest. Eytukan spoke and silence fell throughout the crowd
"They have attacked us for the last time now we fight! Tsu'tey will lead the attack!" War cries were let out a tsu'tey gave a nod of approval as it was spoken. Grace tried to calm the crowd
"Please listen they will only fight back harder I can try and talk-"
"No the time for talking is over! We have tried it your way and they still do not care! We fight!" Tsu'tey spat at her, venom laced in his voice. I had to agree, grace and every other scientist had tried to explain why it was such an important thing we speak with the people and they didn't care. They didn't even try and send someone to talk- my thoughts were interrupted by Neytiri pulling Jake into home tree followed by Saeyla on her dire horse. Saeyla had tears in her eyes as she pushed through the crowd suddenly pushing me down to the ground hissing at me.
"You mated with the future Olo'eyktan?!" She snapped at me shocking the crowd. Mo'at stepped towards tsu'tey in confusion, about to question him but to throw them off of me Jake spoke up.
"Neytiri and I are mated as well"
"Oh, shit," Grace said looking among the crowd of na'vi who were outraged.
"Is this true?" Mo'at questioned both of them. Tsu'tey gulped and Neytiri steeled herself.
"Yes, we are mated before ewya" Neytiri spoke.
"Sylwain gave us her blessing" tsu'tey spoke looking a bit ashamed of himself. Saeyla pushed out an unsteady breath as Jake was trying to convince tsu'tey to not attack the sky people. Saeyla pulled her blade out hissing at me going in to stab me while tsu'tey was distracted. I rolled out of the way just in time sending her to the dirt.
"Don't do this sister" I hissed back at her making her angry.
"We are not sisters dream walker!" She snarled out as she went to attack me again.
"And we are not your enemies!" Jake shouted at her, at all of them. "The enemy is out there and they are very powerful! And we can talk to them!"
"No more talk." She hissed again going back in to hit me and she did scrape her knife against my forearm before I slammed my fist into her nose, sending her flying back.
"We are one of the people we have our right to speak!" I hissed at her "we know the sky people better than any of you! Let us speak!"
Jake grabbed my arm holding me up giving me a nod of approval. He spoke in their language explaining what was happening. As he did grace fell in the crowd I quickly made my way to her
"Jake hurry!" I shouted at him but it was too late Jake dropped to the ground unconscious. I ran forward to him but only got halfway as I was ripped from my avatar body making it drop unconscious to the ground. Saeyla saw her moment and took it jumping forward to attack us but was quickly fended off by tsu'tey and Neytiri hissing and growling at anyone who came near their mates. Gasping for air as the colonel pulled us from the link forcibly.
We were pulled back to the main station to be yelled at and interrogated. Jake broke one of the cameras on the bulldozers.
"Please just let me talk to them let us speak with them they trust us!" Jake spoke pleading with all of them. The colonel simply smirked at him.
"Well, Jake that contradicts what you've already told me" He clicked a button, and a screen came up showing me grace and norm the videos Jake had been sending back. I gave him a look of pure betrayal to Jake as he hung his head.
"You knew? And you helped them?!" I snapped at him fighting against my restraints. The colonel laughed at my anger but Jake continued negotiating to have an hour to talk to them. He got thirty minutes.
.
.
.
tag list :)
@astablacksword
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10. a heap of broken images
back - next “So, Mark, this is Jared…”
Mark, it had to be said, did not look as if a large, near-invisible shadow-creature looming up out of the darkness and regarding him with a trio of eyes like the functional parts of a red-hot gas stove was a welcome addition to the list of concepts he was already struggling to grasp. He stared up at Jared in speechless silence, and when Jared’s eyes gave a friendly tilt, dropped several feet and whipped towards him, he sucked in a breath so sharp that Antonio was concerned he might have inhaled his own tongue.
“Look who it is! Double-M-hockey-sticks! It’s cool, we go waaaay back.”
“Uh?” managed Mark.
“Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah, I’ve been watching you for what, like, a year now?”
Mark made a noise.
“Gotta say, you’re taller IRL,” said Jared, happily. “Probably a perspective thing, right? Also way better res, which, like, no joke, literally every single cam in your house is ANCIENT at this point. Stone age. I kept bugging ya boy to replace them- no hate, ‘Tone- I was like, hey, I’m just your eye in the sky here, it’s not like I can just snap my fingers and your actual hardware gets upgraded with the power of heart or whatever. But he was always like... oh, hey, you good?”
This last, because Mark had just sat down suddenly with a thump, his knees having apparently decided they were even less keen on the way this conversation was going than the rest of him.
“It’s okay, Mark,” said Antonio, coaxingly. “Jared monitors all the hosts, twenty-four-seven. It wasn’t just you.”
When Mark finally found his voice, it was quite a lot shriller than usual. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Antonio thought about it, reaching for Mark’s backpack, which had fallen off his shoulder as they’d scrambled inside the door. “I mean, yeah, it was, but I guess I can see why it doesn’t. Jared, hey, uh… I know this is kind of a big ask, but…”
Popping the inner zip, he upended the backpack over the nearest free desk. With a slithering scuffle of plastic wrappers, a small landslide of bright packages and baggies slid and tumbled over each other into a rough pile on the dusty melamine surface.
“We need a way out.”
Jared’s eyes gleamed. A long slender thing, like a steely finger with far too many joints, snickered indistinctly past Mark’s ear and pinned one of the little packets (a crowded graphic-design abomination, featuring sugegasa-wearing cows somersaulting cheerfully through flames), whipping it up into the shadows.
“Buddy, just call me Healthy Community, because I have got you COVERED.”
–-
Where there was a will- and an entire bodega rack’s worth of premium dried beef products- it turned out there was a way.
Jared called them dead zones. The cameras covered almost everywhere within the HR Department, Jared’s endless ranks of shiny black eyes, in corners, in ceilings, down blind alleys and empty rooms and well-trodden corridors, but with care and a little assistance to even out the odds, a path could be walked between them. The places between were cramped and confusing and nearly as difficult to travel as they would have been to find without Jared’s help. They were not the safest places, even within this hungry, malignant landscape, and they certainly weren’t the easiest to explain.
Here was a well of dank air, some fifty feet across, stirred in a slow, endless spiral by the movement of some enormous fan or turbine, deep enough below that it was far out of sight of any travellers along the narrow path that spanned it, a clanking catwalk of green steel. Condensation dripped from the pale heights, made the metal slimy underfoot.
Mark managed a couple of wobbly steps out over the void, then slid to his knees against the spindly safety rail, a sad arrangement of metal rods and chickenwire which overall came off as less of a barrier than a polite suggestion. Antonio, following with a surer step, resisted the urge to hook a fistful of the back of his sweater, just in case. He didn’t think Mark was likely to actually pitch himself over the railing, but he did appreciate that the last twenty or so minutes had been quite a lot for any human to handle.
“Hang in there, Mark,” he said, brightly. His voice echoed, a thin distant relay pattering back to them through the slow whirlpool of air. “Not much further.”
Mark forced his hands wordlessly through his hair, found a squashed fragment of delicate orange wing stuck somewhere over his ear, and flicked it away from him in disgust.
“Uh, yeah, sorry about the butterflies,” said Antonio. “Honestly, they’re usually pretty chill, I’ve never seen them just go for the eyes like that.”
Words weren’t evading Mark, but the ability to put more than two of them next to each other in a coherent sentence seemed to be. “That- the- why-” A struggle. “Why a horse??”
“It’s just a horse, Mark,” said Antonio, testing the railing before leaning his elbows on it, like a casual sightseer above Niagara Falls.
Mark clearly felt this wasn’t enough information. He made another struggle with his hands, shaping a sort of invisible sculpture on the theme of horror, bewilderment, and indignation, a shape that cut off sharply in the middle, and then squeezed both palms into his eyesockets, speaking indistinctly through his fingers.
“Just a- just- where’s the rest of it??”
“Do you think that’s really an important question right now?” asked Antonio. He meant it as a reasonable, honest query, but Mark only fixed him with a baleful eye through the gap in his hands, and said nothing.
They moved on. Through the empty hallways, through Jared’s dead zones, through a scorched and blackened sector where quite a mess had been made and the cameras still hung obliterated from the walls, Mark stayed silent. To Antonio, there was something puzzling- increasingly worrying- about this measured silence, and he didn’t think it was just the influence of his own quietly screaming nerves. He was good at reading Mark, even when he was at his most impenetrable, and he recognised this feeling of grim, plodding pertinacity that was coming off him in waves. This was Mark doing something he didn’t want to do- something he knew had no good object, no good ending- something he knew had to be done, regardless. He might as well have been making a video reading hate-comments, or cutting up raw liver, or any other uncongenial, unrewarding task demanded of him by the Muse. He looked as sullen and morose as ever, trailing along after Antonio as they travelled slowly through the safer zones of the HR Department. The nearest he got to an energetic reaction to anything on their long walk was a slight flinch and glance back as they heard the dogs pass distantly down a blind turning, the heavy patter of claws, the hungry, cheated howls.
Finally, the Long Egress. Jared had explained, in the vague way in which Jared tended to explain anything, that this seemingly endless grey concrete tunnel had been put in place as a sort of evacuation line, a last-ditch way back to the outside world. Walking it, Antonio wondered if the original architect might have planned on using it themselves, since it was quite clear that nobody else ever had. Whoever had designed the vast building that housed HR, if they had been human, it was a fairly safe assumption to make that they hadn’t done it entirely of their own free will.
It’s best to avoid asking questions or looking at things you aren’t authorised to see.
The bulkhead lights set into the walls every hundred yards or so created pale dim pools of light like so many oases, leading them from one to the next, all the way down the long last straight. Down here, even the lights were caged.
It’s all in my head, and I shouldn’t worry about it.
Antonio felt that they had been walking for years by the time they reached the end. His shoes had run out of moisture and left no prints on the scratchy poured concrete. Every step he took felt leaden, a further pull away from something dragging gently at him, something hooked into his heart-roots, difficult to ignore. They had been walking in silence, the only sounds the scrape and echo of their steps, the thick electric hum of the lights, a quieter low static buzz that seemed to live in the walls, and Mark’s difficult breathing and occasional hitching cough. Antonio didn’t mind these noises, as it made it easy for him to know that Mark was still behind him.
No ceremony, no fanfare, just a flat final wall that grew slowly from a pale dot to a short grey oblong as they walked towards it, a last pool of light, the long hallway terminating in a single pale grey door. Someone with a sense of humour had screwed a sign to it, an ordinary industrial yellow-and-black safety sign that read DANGER – KEEP OUT. Someone else had scrawled underneath; IT’S SCARY OUT THERE.
Antonio put a hand on the door, which had a thick push-bar, wreathed in old cobwebs and cranky with disuse. He looked back, and saw that Mark had stopped a little way back along the hallway and was just standing there in the last-but-one pool of light, looking at him.
“Mark? This is it, buddy, come on.”
Mark coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and didn’t move.
“Mark?” Antonio stepped away from the door. As he moved towards Mark, Mark stepped back, mirroring him. He put a hand to the strap of his backpack, gripping it like a rosary, and suddenly Antonio felt a cold and eerie twinge of deja vu, of a week ago, of standing in the soft-lit hallway with Be Joyful Always, Pray Continually over his head as Mark begged him in a quiet, frantic monotone, pleaded, promised anything for his freedom.
I've done everything you've asked. You can have my channel, my house... just let me go.
Just now, it looked as if nothing could have been further from Mark’s mind.
“You must think I’m pretty fucking stupid,” he said.
Antonio stopped. The bug in his middle, which had been quiet for a time, stirred restlessly as he looked across the distance between them into Mark’s sharp, careworn face.
“So what is it?” Mark put out a hand and rested it against the concrete wall, either to take some of his weight or to reassure himself it was there. The flat light cast stark double-shadows, Antonio’s own falling across the door at his back and stretching down the hallway towards Mark, Mark’s slanting away as if it was shrinking from his. “What’s the trick? Because this whole ‘super secret escape’ thing is getting really old now. Maybe I’d have fallen for it when I was five but if you think I believe you’re just going to let me walk out of here, that sludge in your head must be way past expiry.”
“Mark, you have to trust me,” said Antonio. “I’m- I’m just trying to help you.”
Mark blinked a couple of times, grinned at him, in the same way skulls grinned, nothing behind it but a vacant stretch of teeth. Whether Antonio had struck a nerve, or Mark had just reached some internal breaking point, he dropped his hand from the wall and started walking forwards.
“Trust you. Trust you? You, and that- that thing in my basement- my muse-”
The sheer amount of pure spitting venom he managed to inject into one syllable was astonishing.
“-you’re the same. You’re the same thing, you’re just a- a part of that fucking blob that can walk around and look like a person. I knew that as soon as you first showed up- you think I’m going to trust you now?” He stopped, almost face to face with Antonio, his fear and aversion and bitter anger struggling with each other in his face, his hands curled around his backpack in front of him as if it was a shield.
“Mark, I- I’ve felt- I’ve been-”
Now it was Antonio’s turn to struggle. His chest was crawling, the heat in his face and hands rising, the difficulty squirming under his skin pushing him not to shut Mark up or stop him being a problem but to explain, to try to dispel the terrible disdain in Mark’s eyes. He stumbled on, aware his voice sounded choked and strange, terribly afraid to keep going but far, far more afraid to stop.
“When you were gone, I… I started to feel... different. I’ve been feeling... really weird. Mark, I have… thoughts that don’t make sense- sometimes I don’t want things to happen even though I know I should, I don’t want to do things I know I have to do- I think there’s something wrong with me. No, I- I know there is.” He held out his hands, open, pleading. “I don’t know what happened, but I- I know somehow, it started because of you.”
He swallowed.
“I’m different, I’m different to how I was, because of you. And I want to- I want to be a good friend, Mark. I’m doing this because I… I want to help you.”
“Bullshit,” said Mark.
Oh, it felt cold, it felt freezing cold in his guts and it hurt, and maybe this was how come humans could hurt each other so easily, that Mark could take every honest, vulnerable word he’d pulled painstakingly out of the core of him, these fragile little things ripped out of their shell new and raw and utterly defenceless, and hurl them so easily right back in his face. Antonio felt them start to shrivel and die in the chasm between them, but he kept quiet and just looked at Mark, who was knotting his fists in the fabric of his backpack, his jaw set hard, mouth slightly open, eyes hot and full of contempt.
“Mark,” he tried, “please, you have to-“
“No, I don’t. I actually fucking don’t, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to believe a single word you say. I listened to you for a year. I let you manipulate me, I danced like your fucking puppet, I did everything you wanted, for a year. I let-” He bit the word off.
“Mark, I haven’t even known you for a y-“
“Shut up,” said Mark, his voice deadly and as flat as the lights. “You can’t hurt me anymore. Not with my- my mom, not with-” He stopped himself again, his mouth working. “There’s nothing left, the only thing you have on me is this- this shit inside of me, this-” He let the pack dangle to the bruised fold of his elbow and held out his arms, wordless, the flat bulkhead light ghastly on his darkened veins, the black splatters of the dog’s blood and his own still staining the front of his ruined sweater. “This- this infection, this mold, I- I can feel it, I hear it in my head-” He shuddered, furiously, helplessly. “If- if you wanted to help me you’d get rid of it but you won’t, you won’t because the only thing you want is to keep me, keep stringing me along for whatever sick fucking plan-”
“Okay, but I’d need to touch you.”
“-shut up- whatever sick- whatever-” Mark seemed to hit a kind of a glitch, sticking like a scratched-up record and stopping in place. He blinked a little volley of dazed blinks, a rapid-fire Morse code message of utter confusion. “What?”
“Here,” said Antonio, holding out his hands. “I think I can do it, at least I can try. It’s just, you told me not to touch you.”
Mark stared at him in disbelief, his hands falling to his sides. He looked poleaxed. The backpack slipped gently down his arm, dropping to the ground at his feet, but he made no sign he even noticed.
“And you listened??”
For the first time, Antonio saw with stark clarity the shape of himself as he must have appeared to Mark through the past almost-year. A looming shadow, a threatening, suffocating, hounding, malicious, grinning thing that never rested and never relented, if the deal Mark had made with his Muse was a poisoned spring, Antonio had been the hand forcing him under the rank surface, forcing him to drink until he drowned.
Months too late, without words to even form the idea, he was desperately sorry. The thing in his chest- bug, alien, sickness or mistake- it was his, his guilt, his to fight and deny or accept, and for once, the choice was his own.
“I know I don’t have any right to ask you to trust me.” He kept holding out his hands, palms up, looking into Mark’s face where incredulity was fighting a pitched battle with something else, something Antonio wasn’t sure he’d ever seen there before.
“Please, Mark,” he said, quietly. “Just let me try.”
The lights hummed, the walls buzzed. Mark stood still in silence for so long that Antonio started to wonder if he’d frozen again, but at last he started to move. There was no great change in his expression, no lessening of the fear in his eyes or the clear mistrust in the thin downwards line of his mouth. As he moved, it seemed to be in spite of himself than out of any thinking, reasoning decision.
Slowly, without looking away from Antonio’s face, Mark lifted his hand and reached out.
#muse arg#dftm#don't feed the muse#mark mayhew#antonio geist#alex bale#jared the IT guy#my writing#the cynical critic#this part kicked my ass
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Filterless
Corpse Husband x Plus-sized Reader (Female)
Warnings: Body Image Insecurities, Low self-esteem, Swearing
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)
Summary: Feeling comfortable in her skin has hardly ever been the case for Y/N who’s been struggling with body image issues all her life. However, they only get worse when she sees the ‘type’ of girls her crush is into.
Requested by Anon. Hi darling! Thank you so much for your request (hits close to home 😅) I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to fulfill it and post it but here it finally is and if you’ve stuck around long enough to read it, I hope you enjoy! ALSO! - Never forget how beautiful and amazing you are. Never compare your beauty to someone else’s. We’re all beautiful people and we all shine so brightly and uniquely. No one deserves to be compared to anyone when we’re all so different yet so incredible. Love you and appreciate you with all my heart, Vy ❤
If I ever need my ego taken down a few notches - it never does, it’s barely even present, to be honest - all I have to do is go on Instagram. To be honest, regardless of how I’m feeling, opening that app is bound to make my mood plummet and come crashing into the ground so hard it drives a hole in it - probably in the form of a broken heart.
Being a content creator myself, I often get asked questions about my absence on that social platform specifically. I mean, the questions are based and rational I guess, considering I’m not a faceless YouTuber and yet my Instagram account is void of any photos. It’s not like I don’t post at all - I do! I post on my story often but it’s more often than not scenery I find pretty or a poster I’ve made for a movie/video game. Bottom line is: I barely ever allow a picture of me to make it online. The most my fans are ever gonna get of me is a selfie which is also a super rare occurrence because of how long it takes me to take and choose one I don’t hate.
Ok, but how am I supposed to find the motivation to post any sort of picture of myself when on my timeline I’m always faced with people worthy of posting pictures of themselves. People with such perfect bodies and beautiful faces. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jealous or envious of those people - good for them! They know what they’re working with and they’re working it well. I have nothing against them, in fact, I love seeing people proud of their bodies no matter their size, shape or weight. Those are my role-models: people who are proud of themselves, their bodies, their attributes and capabilities and don’t hesitate to show them off. Those are the people I look up to but, deep down inside I know I’ll never be like.
Insecure about my body, having been referred to as ‘chubby’ and ‘squishy’ all my life. Inappreciative of the stuff I do: starting from my job as a graphic designer leading towards my job on YouTube - nothing I do, professionally or otherwise, satisfies me. Nothing I do is enough in my eyes because I feel incapable of ever being able to do enough. I’ve been called lazy and a half-asser a few too many times to be able to brush it off as a meaningless insult.
With these problems I’ve had with myself and my own perception of who I am and the work I do, I’ve never had the time for romance or romantic relationships. I second-guess the intentions of everyone who ever shows any interest in me because in my mind I’m nothing special and I have nothing to offer - nothing attractive or likable at least. That being said, I haven’t even been one to make heart eyes at others either. I busy myself with my job and some side-gigs, brushing off any relationship questions with the excuse that I’m ‘just too busy to be in a relationship’ which is technically true.
Having spent twenty plus years with that mindset, one can imagine how surprised I was when I found myself catching feelings for someone. And that someone just couldn’t be any other than the biggest YouTube sensation at the moment - Corpse Husband.
I’m close friends with Poki - her and I were roommates at one point too - so her inviting me to play Among Us with them wasn’t so strange. One or two games, I thought, nothing unusual there, just friendly curtesy. I wasn’t expecting to warm up to the group of famous streamers nor did I expect them to welcome me among them so easily, mostly because my channel is so small and practically invisible to the YouTube algorithm. But soon enough, I became a permanent member of the team, making friends with every single one of those YouTubers I practically thought of a celebrities.
This journey of branching out to other content creators has proven itself to be surprisingly pleasant and has packed my book of friendships to the brim. All of that came unexpectedly, along with a wave of new subs and a higher view count. However, as I mentioned, it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. I came to finally understand what my high school friends were talking about when they were head over heels for a boy - the butterflies in the stomach whenever he speaks your name; the importance of the laugh you share with him, how special and different it is; how cool it is to be impostors with him - ok they never said that, obviously, but it’s what I have as a substitute to the ‘when the two of you make eye-contact’ bullshit since Corpse and I have never seen each other in person. That is, of course, because of him being a faceless YouTuber and me being a self-conscious and insecure girl.
We do talk all the time though - texting, calling, chilling on Discord, you name it. Our conversations range from deeply philosophical to ones that might mislead someone into thinking we’re high. There’s no topic we haven’t touched upon and yet we still manage to find something new to talk about. We have plenty of similarities but we also never seem to run out of differences we slowly come across as we keep getting to know each other better and better.
And somewhere along that journey I ended up catching feelings.
Human nature of wanting to connect with other people, I curse you for what you’ve done to me.
You might think I’m being overdramatic about the whole ordeal and that this is just a normal, natural occurrence many people experience in their life - some even daily. Well, not only am I far from used to it, but it’s also taking a toll of a different kind on me.
It’s like a constant slap to the face.
That slap turned into a punch when Corpse and I started following each other on Instagram and I started getting daily reminders of how out of my depth I am with this crush on him. In over my head, especially when you look at all those girls whose pics and videos he reposts on his story. Imagine how that makes me feel, what that does to me - puts me back into the ‘Constantly not good enough‘ basket, the one I’ve been fighting to get out of all my life. In the past and in different contexts I could easily say that it was all just my mind hating me intensely but now - now that I know for a fact I’m not good enough and don’t fit Corpse’s criteria - it hurts ten times as much. I’m not one to do shit for someone’s attention or to attract someone’s eyes, but it really hurts my feelings. Often times, it also leads me to doing dumb things and making rash decisions.
Like the one I made two days ago.
Imagine me cringing and shaking my head at my own stupidity as I admit this: I, in a frenzy, ordered a whole e-girl getup with overnight delivery.
Wait, hold up, it gets worse.
I received it yesterday and spent the whole day regretting that decision, but then, in my most insecure hours - which was somewhere around midnight - I equipped the get-up, took a picture and posted it on my Instagram page. First full body pic I’ve ever posted on there. First pic I’ve posted there of any kind. There to stay, not to be gone in twenty four hours. First pic, and it’s not even of me. It’s of who I want to be in order to fit someone’s criteria. And that fucking stings.
As you might imagine, I’ve spent today’s day regretting that decision as well. Recently my mood’s been nothing but regretting rash decisions that have surfaced under the influence of my ridiculous, constantly-present insecurities. And I would’ve probably gotten over it rather quickly had I not received a message from Corpse that read:
“Didn’t think of you with an e-girl aesthetic“
I didn’t open the message, I peeped at it as it was a notification on my lock screen. It’s still there, an unread notification. It’s been two hours since I received it and I cannot think of a single thing to say in response to that.
Truth is, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of so many things right now.
I’m afraid of becoming that girl in the photo, cause I’m most definitely not her.
I’m afraid of letting Corpse down by admitting I’m not her.
I’m afraid of what my own mind has made me do because it hates me so much and I’m terrified of what it might do in the future.
I’m afraid and stranded on things to do.
You can’t be her forever, you know. Being her won’t make your insecurities go away, it’ll only make them worse. Haven’t you learned that by now?
I sigh, frustrated and irritated with myself as I grab my phone and tap on the notification, finally deciding to face the music and allow my instincts to carry me through the interaction. Improvisation, that’s one of the few things I’m good at. Let’s hope it doesn’t fail me.
I’m just about to type out my response - not sure what it’s gonna say - when I give the message Corpse has sent me a second glance. I furrow my brows, finding there’s more to it than that peep through the notification let me see.
“Didn’t think of you with an e-girl aesthetic. You’re personality is so bright and colorful, I could’ve never imagined you were into the darks and blacks“
Because I’m not
I fail to realize until the message has been sent that my thoughts are exactly what I typed out and sent.
And honestly, I’m glad. It feels like I’ve spoken my truth, like I’ve lifted a huge boulder off my chest.
With that rare confidence in mind I go on and delete the picture.
In its spot, I post a picture I just now took - a mirror selfie in my homey get-up consisting of hot pink sweatpants and an oversized blue tee, my hair in a messy bun, my face free of make-up.
I caption it: ‘Oops, had the e-girl filter on for the last one. This is filterless me tho so...Hi 🥴’
A lot better, I’m surprised to hear my inner voice say. I hope I don’t get used to all this kindness on my brain’s part, probably won’t last, but damn if I don’t milk every second of it.
Just then, I receive a new message from non other than Corpse.
“Now that’s the girl I see when I think of you. She’s super cute 😉“
My, oh my, who would’ve guessed Corpse has a game like that - and by that I mean the ability to make me blush so intensely with only a text message.
Now ain’t that better than being someone else, Y/N?
It sure is, it sure is.
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House of the Dragon - Eps 1&2 Thoughts and Review
Fire cannot kill a dragon, and yet we can afford to be burned twice.
In Spite of the bitter taste of Game of Thrones' finale, I like many others have plunged myself into House of the Dragon with tempered expectation of the prequel. Now that the first two episodes are out - and totally not because I forgot to do a standalone one for episode 1 - I'm gonna start giving my blind thoughts on the matter.
To be clear, I'm not super familiar with this story, I know it's covered in a book and other reactors inform me that the book has two unreliable accounts (a Maester and a Court Jester) and this is a 'how it really happened' version for the tv version rather than the book version - so there are some changes and age ups - but otherwise I am blind to the direction it's going, so here's my thoughts on it.
Spoilers for the first two episodes of course, and a bit of Game of Thrones too, give them a watch first if you don't want some plot points ruined for you
So this is a good start, I think I am still a bit hesitant to go fully into it but I am liking what I'm seeing so far.
The first episode was good but I must admit I found myself more unsettled than entertained, purely because of the graphic C-Section scene and the presence of pus, I mean I never wanted to see it with the Jorah greyscale scene and I didn't want it here either, same with the sound of choking babies, it was perhaps too uncomfortable. I think the dragon CGI looked a bit wonky at times, it could be the gold on Syrax is just not great for CGI (I'm sure we all recall The Witcher's golden dragon) or perhaps the smoothness of its scales. I do feel 50/50 on the frequent need to reference Game of Thrones even though it's a prequel, on one hand I get it because it bridges the gap but on the other hand if this show is a prequel by over a century it's a little too on the nose.
Episode 2 was a lot better, but I think it suffered a narrative flaw of 'character a does not talk to character b' when it came to Viscerys announcing his marriage to Alicent, he made no effort to even discuss with Rhaenyra his intent to wed her best friend, which will inevitably start the rift between them showed in the trailers. It also doesn't make Viscerys look any better to go against his better counsel and alienating one of his strongest allies because Laena Velayron is 12, especially when Alicent is apparently around 15. The time jump is a little abrupt, though I feel that we may have more to come.
I will praise heavily the attention to detail when it comes to costuming, something the GoT universe hadn't ever had a problem with thriving on, but I will say that sometimes it does look like the helmets don't fit as well as they should. Then again, this could be an intentional design flaw since this is considered a more peaceful period of Westeros.
I like the characters so far, mostly at the least. So far the star of the show is Matt Smith's Daemon Targaryen, the sociopath prince who has become social media's latest beloved bastard, both cunning and childish he fits a balance of being a villain but also one who still cares about his family. Rhaenyra and Alicent's younger actors have done really well, as has Rhys Ifans' Otto Hightower. Paddy Considine has been really good as the grieving king Viscerys I, completing subverting the descendant of his namesake we're familiar with by appearing at the least as a fair King and a decent person put under a lot of pressure by traditions. Sian Brooke did very well as Queen Aemma, given how she would be the first major casualty of the show, it is a shame we won't get more of her. Episode 2 got to showcase Eve Best's Rhaenys (George making it really easy to second guess every Targaryen's name and spelling) and Steve Toussaint's Corlys a bit more but we still need more of them, same for Graham McTavish's Ser Harrold and Fabien Frankel's Criston Cole, who have simply looked formidable among the crowd. We are yet to have a slew of charismatic characters equal to Tyrion, Tywin, Cersei, Ned, Arya, Bronn, Littlefinger, The Hound and Varys, but we can give it time.
Story-wise, I wish we had more time with Rhaenyra and Alicent before their rift, they established their friendship well but it probably would've hit deeper if we had more time with them, I understand the time jump but we could've had a bit more in between. While I don't think Daemon's a good guy, or that he'd be the worst king (more that he'd be a ruthless one), I do agree with him that the Small Counsel are trying to manipulate Viscerys for their own gains, seen most blatantly by Otto and Corlys throwing their daughters at him. Daemon being rescinded as an heir is grief-driven, especially since we never see him say it, but Daemon's reaction to it as detailed in Episode 2 doesn't do him any favours towards making it seem unfair. Viscerys as I pointed out is a good guy, but he seriously needs to work on his communication, from not telling Aemma his choice to let her die to try and save his son, to not discussing his marriage decisions with anyone or even trying to prepare his daughter for the throne, there is a difference between 'You will learn' and 'Let me teach you'. Alicent seems sweet, for now at least Arya and Daenerys once seemed sweet too, she is in a tough spot that makes me sympathise with her, I don't sympathise with Corlys as much, Viscerys should have married his daughter (or at least sought another way to merge their houses) but his own reaction going straight to Daemon proves that his ambitions are greater than his loyalty.
Of the two episodes I think my favourite scenes so far have been the jousting tournament - both for its visual spectacle but also as a strong introduction to Cole to what I guess will set up a feud between the two - and Viscerys confronting Daemon from Episode 1, and the Dragonstone standoff from Episode 2, not in that order though. The show has promise but since we're still in 'setup' we'll see on the next episode if it can up the ante.
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chaossanthebae replied to your post “Graphic design is NOT my passion and all I have is...”Listen to me listen to me, B1, we have some...
Sorry it took so long! OTZ I hope you like it, I made sure that Kenny’s 100% just a civilian here. Long live Chaos/Kenny supremacy :D
--
B1 - Professor Chaos/Kenny
Kenny's mind felt so hazy as he slowly made his way into consciousness.
He blinked, not recognizing his surroundings, and felt his eyebrows furrow together when he tried to move and found that his arms were bound behind his back. Seeing as he wasn't naked, he figured this wasn't the fun version of being all tied up, but he couldn't think of any other situation that would leave him in this position. The last thing he remembered was leaving the store after picking up a gallon of milk for breakfast the next morning. There had been... a loud noise, maybe an explosion? Then a flash of light, and then here he was in this high-tech room, feeling like he'd been hit by a bus. But he wasn't alone, he quickly realized as he noticed movement from the corner of his eye. A handsome guy in a ridiculous outfit was walking towards him, his blue eyes seeming to spark with electricity with every step he took.
"Ah, sleeping beauty's finally awake." He said, a grin slowly rising on his face as he crossed his arms over his chest. Damn, he had nice biceps. "I didn't zap you too hard, did I?"
"Who the fuck are you?" Kenny asked, feeling his lips twist into a scowl. "And what did you do to my milk?"
"Oh, I put it in the fridge to keep it from spoiling." The guy said, his expression turning sheepish for a moment before his smug mask fell back into place. "And as for who I am, well... you'll know soon enough."
Kenny was ready to tell this guy off for being overly vague (and for abducting him of course), but before he could get the first word out, the large screen on the wall in front of them lit up. An overweight guy about their age took up most of the screen, the top half of his face hidden behind a black raccoon mask.
Great, now he had to deal with furries on top of everything.
"Chaos!" Raccoon Boy bellowed, his voice so gravelly Kenny wondered if he had a cold. "Show yourself!"
"Right on time." Chaos took a few steps into view and grinned up at him. "Why if it isn't The Coon! So nice of you to join us, did you need Call Girl's help to hack into my frequency, or were you able to follow the breadcrumbs this time?"
"Cut the banter Chaos, what have you done to the hostage?"
"He's fine." Chaos said, gesturing to Kenny behind him. "Though for how long, I can't really say. It's amazing how high you can turn up the voltage before the human body starts to lose control."
"You've sunk to a new low, haven't you?" The Coon growled, his eyes darkening as he stared at Chaos. "Electrocuting civilians is barbaric!"
"Oh, like clawing up my minions is any better?" Blue electricity crackled in the air around Chaos, making the hair on Kenny's arms stand on end. "You think you're so heroic, but really you're hardly any better than I am!"
"I am better than you!"
Things were starting to click in Kenny's head, and he tuned out the arguing to really think things through. Electricity, minions, Chaos... oh he remembered now! The guy in front of him was Professor Chaos, the new villain in town who was quickly building an empire of crime in South Park. Kenny felt a bit comforted by this realization, strange as that might be. He could handle being used as a pawn in some superhero political bullshit, no problem. There were worse things to be kidnapped over, like being used for organ harvesting or being part of a serial killer's sick fantasy. This was nothing.
He watched the two of them argue for a minute, frowning when he saw that neither one of them was really getting anywhere with this... negotiation? That was probably what this was supposed to be, but it was looking more and more like a petty squabble between childhood frenemies. He leaned forward in his seat as far as he could and whispered, "Hey, Chaos?"
Chaos jumped, looking like he'd forgotten that Kenny had been in the room at all. "Y-Yes, what is it?"
"If you really want to intimidate him, give him a deadline." Kenny said, nodding at The Coon, who seemed to be in the middle of a long monologue about the difference between good and evil. He also didn't look like he was paying any attention to him, the person he was supposed to be saving. God, the guy must really like the sound of his own voice. "Tell him he's got a day, that should shut him up for a bit."
Chaos gave him the most bewildered look, but composed himself enough to call out, "Coon, I'm tired of this! You have twenty-four hours to meet my demands or the hostage... the hostage dies, you hear?"
The look on The Coon's face was more than worth the indirect death threat. "What the fuck? You don't kill people, Chaos."
"Now end the call," Kenny whispered. "Make him sweat a little."
"Things have changed, hero." Chaos let out an evil laugh and gathered sparks in the palm of his hand. He sent the lightning straight into the screen, causing the whole thing to start short-circuiting. The Coon's angry face lingered for a moment, just long enough for Chaos to grin and give a snappy, "Time's tickin'!" before the screen finally died and went black.
The room was silent for a long moment, save for the crackle of lingering electricity in the air, but it was quickly broken by the sound of Chaos groaning loudly into his hands, all of his bravado disappearing. "Oh god, why'd I have to go and do that for? That's gonna cost a fortune to replace!"
"On the bright side, you looked really cool doing it." Kenny said, grinning when Chaos lifted his head up to look at him. "What? I'm a guy who can appreciate good theatrics."
"Yeah, I guessed that when you didn't freak out after I threatened your life." Chaos said, tilting his head like he was trying to see him in a different light. "Don't you... want to live?"
"Well obviously." Kenny said, shrugging his shoulders. "But this is clearly your first time taking a hostage, so we might as well do it right."
"How do you know this is my first time?" Chaos asked, his cheeks huffing out indignantly.
Kenny lifted a leg in the air, a loose piece of rope dangling from his shoe. "This right here. You secured my hands, but left my feet loose enough for me to wriggle them free. You didn't notice because you were too busy with Raccoon Boy."
Chaos flushed and crossed his arms defensively over his chest. "W-Well it's not like you would've gotten very far! My secret base is rigged with booby traps, you would've been a goner if you left this room."
"Is that right?"
"Of course!" He said, his cheeks turning pink as he puffed his chest out proudly. "I might've let you trick me into ruining my monitor--"
"Hey you did that all on your own!"
He pursed his lips but powered on. "--but that doesn't mean you have any power here. I'm a dangerous man, you know. You're stuck here until I say you can leave."
Kenny considered this, tapping his foot against the floor as he took in the villain in front of him. Chaos had some wickedly strong powers, and even with his legs free he really wouldn't be going anywhere without the use of his hands. The only real option he had was waiting for that tool, The Coon, to come rescue him, and that didn't sound appealing at all. He leaned back in his chair and let out a deep sigh. "Well since I'm not going anywhere, I should probably introduce myself to my host. Hi, I'm Kenny."
"Nice to meet you, I'm Bu-- um, I mean, I'm Professor Chaos!" He said, his cheeks turning a deeper shade of pink at his almost slip-up. He cleared his throat and tried to look serious as he continued. "And wherever I go, destruction's sure to follow. So you'd be smart to get on my good side, Kenny."
A shock went through his spine at the sound of his name, and Kenny was sure it had nothing to do with the villain's electrical powers. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, but he could already feel his lips curving up in anticipation. He'd always been a sucker for trouble, and it looked like Chaos was just the right combination of danger and adorable awkwardness that would make all of this worth his while.
No matter how this went down, he had a feeling this was only the first of many encounters between him and Professor Chaos.
#south park#sp bunny#Butters Stotch#kenny mccormick#bunny sp#my fics#south park fic#answered#god i hope the grammar's okay it's so hot today that i'm a little dizzy lol
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