#I tried to make a somewhat coherent map.

[muppenthings]

I was worldbuilding a little and wanted to make a rough map of the world where Keiki and the crew lives. Snuffy and Hilda is also there! The name is still in progress! :,)

Obviously there's a lot of things that can be added, like mountain ranges, rivers etc. Not to mention country borders, cities and so much more. But that'll have to be for later. The colors on the continents represent climate zones as follows:

Red: Equator zone Orange: Subequatorial zone Yellow: Tropical zone Light green: Subtropical zone Green: Temperate zone Light blue: Subpolar zone Blue: Polar zone

Then in the ocean the darker colors represent deeper water.

The bottom right blue island with the * is the size of Australia. Just to get a scale of the world~ ;)

[tojisun]

into my flesh

toji x fem reader

!! smut fic - minors dni; hinted age gap; mentioned jealousy; praise and degradation kink; petnames; squirting; brief cervix sex; breeding kink; passing out post-sex; mentioned aftercare; toji’s big dick galore // 2.4k words

: have my horny thoughts strung to form a somewhat coherent fic; i hope u guys would like it <33; title of the fic is from flesh - simon curtis

there is something in the way you make toji jealous that unleashes the ever-pooling desire he has for you.

wearing that red silk dress that he bought for you on your birthday, pulling him in with the curl of your lips, but never allowing him to venture close. you sidestep away from his touch whenever he tries to hook his arm around your waist, your lips pursed like toji isn’t worth your minute.

toji's glower grows and his frown deepens but he gets it.

he knows this game. he knows that you're just trying to set his veins ablaze because oh how you love it when his lips are pulled back in a snarl and his hips are punching in their thrust and his hands find their purchase around your neck. oh how you love his growled words pressed on the rise of your breasts, promises of filth rippling along your damp skin, before full lips circle around your hardened nipple. oh how you love it when toji is ruthless with his love — animalistic and jagged and overarching.

toji knows how this game goes so he slinks back into the shadows and watches you. he watches the way you hover around this boy — because what else could he be if not a boy whose lips twitch in their attempt to keep your attention, his fingers fiddling with the loose dress shirt hanging off of him, all because he could not handle your magnificence — and titter at his jokes, your eyelashes batting purposefully delicate, enticing him in a way that no other could. your hair frames your face devilishly: the cut of your jaw is sharp, your cheekbones are defined, and your eyes are half-lidded.

toji is feet away from you but even his throat goes parched. he can’t blame the kid for swooning even if toji wants nothing more but to pull you away from those coveting eyes.

——————————————————

toji’s smile is cruel as he taps the head of his cock on your twitching cunt. you whimper a choked moan, your eyes fluttering shut as the tears continue to spill. your lashes are sticking together and you are sure your “waterproof” eyeliner is all but retained, but fuck.

fuck.

your chest heaves as you gaze back into toji’s eyes, sharp hues of green looking at you with such reverence like you’re so precious even when utterly debauched. like toji loves you like this: heady and desperate and mewling. and he does. you know he does. but there is something so good at the reminder of how your presence pushes toji past his built walls, ushering his scarred palms to feel you.

he is so beautiful like this: impatient and hungry for you.

(toji has always been beautiful but in way that was not apparent in your exes — satoru with his twinkling eyes that crinkle every time he laughs; kento with his quiet drawl as he whispers your name; mei with her sloping curves and her pianist fingers ghosting their touch along your spine. no. toji is not delicate like them; even in his softness, toji has always been different and stark against your history of picnic dates and lavender kisses.

because toji, with his maps of scars and speckles of grey hair peppering the sea of black and crooked grin and aged hands and deep baritone, was not fortunate enough to afford to grow in his gentleness. he had to learn it himself — crafting fragility from his weaponry of agony and anger, all for you. all because of you. because he saw you and realized he loved you and promised, then, that he would bear kindness from his ruined hands.)

“hey,” toji’s voice is gruff as he calls out to you, pulling you from your swimming thoughts. “y’still there, baby?”

you blink back at him, glossed eyes focusing on his face.

oh how cruel of you to think about other people when toji, the man whom you love with all that you are, has you pinned down on his bed, mounting you with his bigger body. fuck, the reminder of how easy it was for toji to press your legs parallel to your chest has you breathing heavily, your pussy clenching at nothing. a quiet huff escapes your kiss-swollen lips, your eyes almost going crossed when toji slides his cock along your soaked folds again.

“yes,” you finally hum. “please, fuck me.” your empty hands slide down his chest, running your fingertips past his nipples and down to where he has a fist around his heavy and thick and full cock. your tongue juts out to swipe at your lips, feeling utterly hungry all of a sudden.

“impatient,” toji tuts. “after almost dozing on me an’ everything.”

your cheeks burn, your lips pouting. you murmur unintelligibly, not really refuting his words but not admitting to them either.

“shh,” toji whispers at seeing you flustered. he cups your cheeks, sliding his thumb just below your eyes. “was just joking, sweetheart.”

your lips part open for a response, one that dashes from the tip of your tongue at the feeling of toji’s cock slowly pushing in your pussy. you keen, your back arching off the bed.

god, you feel so full. and even then, with your quiet whimpers and curling toes, toji’s still not all the way in. your eyes flutter at every steady slide, panting at the feeling of being so stretched out. you don’t even hear yourself keening, so focused in the way toji’s cock breaches your walls like this is the first time all over again.

toji’s so gentle even when you can hear his heaving breaths, his fingers — the free hand that he has that’s holding onto your hip — dimpling your skin where the thin line of sweat builds up because of the heat simmering from toji’s palm. you peer up at him through clumped lashes, gasping quietly at the look you see on his face.

toji’s brows curl the way you know he’s barely suppressing himself from punching in his thrusts. his lips — scarred and plump and beautiful — are pulled in a snarl, and you shiver at the intensity of his eyes when he pulls them up from where you two are connected to meet your own.

he growls, the sound so animalistic it reverberates within the space between you two, sending goosebumps rising across the expanse of your skin.

“shit, baby,” toji groans, full-stopping and bracing himself with his hands on either side of your head. a sort of giddy and disbelief fills the bubble in your stomach — toji isn’t even fully in yet. “you’re so good, might just cum like this.”

he shallowly pulls out, you moan, your tears building up again, before he’s thrusting back in and breaching further in you. “just gon’ feel your cunt warm my cock like this, have you looking like the doll you are, an’ i’ll be gone.”

he sweeps your damp hair away from your face.

“you heard what i said, baby?” toji asks like you weren’t hanging onto his every word like they are gospel, pulling his cock back out, the slide is torturously slow, and only stopping when all that’s left in you is the head of his weeping cock. “you could milk me dry with just a bat of your eyes.”

you giggle, punching his chest playfully. “shut up and fuck me already!” you whine. toji winks at you in response and you roll your eyes with a fond smile, your bottom lip trapped between your teeth.

“mm, whatever my princess wants.” then toji thrusts all the way in.

you wail, feeling his cock hit something nestled deep in you, but you couldn’t even think for a second and figure out what it was because toji’s pulling out, not letting you get used to the full stretch of his cock, and fucking into you just as fast, his pelvis grinding against yours.

toji doesn’t stop, his hips unrelenting as they piston fast and hard and deep. you squeal, your fingers digging into the duvet, fisting them tightly as dizzying pleasure overwhelms you. toji’s head bows, the muscles of his back rippling as he does so, and bites on the juncture between your neck and shoulder.

“toji!” you cry, voice almost breaking into a sob, at the sharp pain on your neck mingling with the overdrive of pleasure erupting across your veins.

toji hums, his voice muffled in your skin. when he pulls back, he folds himself before you, pressing his weight on the back of your thighs.

“god, baby,” toji groans. “so wet around me.” he humps his hips forward as he says this, as though urging you to feel the sloppy mess running down the sides of your thighs. you choke, your eyes rolling back. toji does it again, his face finding its spot on the crook of your neck as he fucks you, his hips rolling every time he’s pressed close, and you hiccup at every new angle he hits.

there’s a weight inside you every time toji fucks in. it feels foreign but not unwanted; overwhelming and sensitive. when toji bucks in, you realize what it is that he’s hitting.

you squeal, crying as you scream, almost like the knowledge alone of toji pressing his cock in your deepest part brought about a new feeling of pleasure.

toji laughs, his voice ripping through your echoes of shaky sobs. “you feel it, baby?” he lifts his face to meet your eyes. “oh, yeah you do.” his voice crinkles like he is amused.

“deep!” you cry, trembling, your mind unable to string any more coherent sentences.

toji hums. “feel me kissing your cervix? if i press in like this,” he pauses to press his pelvis flushed close to yours, his eyes furrowing and his grin growing sharp when he feels you squeeze around him, your tight walls spasming around the thick curve of his cock. you let out a long hiss, your eyes fluttering at the feeling of being utterly stuffed.

“see, sweetheart?” toji continues, his voice low and guttural. “your womb is practically opening up for my cock.” you hiccup at his words, your cheeks warming up at the slur of his voice. the imagery makes your moans wobble, and toji laughs when he feels your pussy twitch around him again.

“oh darling,” he croons. “you love it when i talk to you about your hungry cunt? wanna hear the way it’s clinging so greedily around my cock? oh, yeah you do. you love being reminded how desperate of a slut you turn to.”

you sob, your voice breaking into breathy ah-ah-ahs. toji shakes his head, fully endeared even when you are splayed out before him — your skin glistening with sweat; your hair sticking to your forehead; your pussy stretched and wet and dripping as it clings around toji’s thick cock.

toji hums, delighted, before straightening back again. his cock slides out, its head leaving the depths of your walls — your cervix, you are reminded when toji rocks back in again as if testing how deep he’s claimed you — and you watch, even with muddled mind and blurry eyes, as toji holds onto the meat of your thighs.

it all happens so quickly. you saw toji’s mirage, a god-incarnate before you, and the next thing you know, he’s fucking you hard and fast, his mind focused on nothing but making you cum. you can hear yourself screaming, your throat burning alongside the pleasure erupting from your pussy. your blunt fingernails are digging into toji’s shoulders, and it is all you can do to reel yourself in from the numbing pleasure as toji pistons his hips, his pace picking up, going faster, faster, faster–!

“shit, baby!” he crows as the first spray of your squirt hits his pelvis. “yes!” toji hisses. “c’mon, sweetheart, keep squirtin’ on me.”

your eyes roll back and your ears are ringing, but you do just as he said: you squirt with every push of his cock, the rivulets between your thighs dripping to stain the sheets.

it takes toji four unrelenting thrusts before his hard pistoning peters into pathetic humps, his own orgasm building rapidly. “‘m gon’ breed this pussy,” toji murmurs, so pussy-drunk that his words turn into accented slurs. “‘m gon’ fill you up. you want that, baby? wanna be filled up?”

“yes, please!” you scream, nodding, your hand reaching down to rub at your hardened clit. “fill me, toji! fill me, please!”

“of course, sweet thing,” toji growls, pushing his cock all the way in, before you feel the sprays of hot cum shooting into your sensitive walls.

a choked moan escapes your throat before you are cumming agin, your soaked cunt squeezing toji’s one last time — “fuck, darling,” he moans, his voice curling into a hiss — then your eyes finally shut close.

——————————————————

you wake up to your head tucked into the crook of toji’s neck, your silk pajamas crinkling as you move about the bed. throbbing pain echoes mutely from your spine, and your exhausted mind reels back at the onslaught of memories.

oh. oh fuck.

you can’t believe you passed out. while toji’s balls deep in you, too.

you choke, embarrassment rushing across your veins.

a muffled squawk is ripped from your throat, tentatively distracting you from your thoughts, when toji’s arms tug you further into his embrace like you’re not already pressed flush to him. you study his face, watching as his brows begin to crinkle like he’s about to wake up.

before you can effectively escape from the rousing toji, his voice rumbles from where his lips are pressed on the crown of your head.

“g’mornin’,” he whispers.

you cringe, realizing that you have to face the embarrassment of passing out on toji while he’s literally breeding you. you cough, awkwardly, and greet, “good morning,” your voice quiet and broken. oh wow.

toji whistles, pulling back just enough to eye you. “you sound ruined,” he states.

you smack his exposed — hickey and bite mark-littered — chest. “whose fault is it?” you hiss at him.

toji grins. “mine.” he says it so cheekily and with so much pride, his scarred lips stretching to show off sharp canines.

you smack him again, futilely ignoring the explosion of warmth in your cheeks and the growing embarrassment curling at your stomach.

“ow! baby, ow!” toji cries, rolling away to avoid your soft punches. you follow him with difficulty, your body still aching, but you are determined to smack toji until your shame abates.

you fail, anyways, when toji drapes himself across you like an overgrown and clingy cat, trapping you between him and the soft bed.

ugh, why’s he literally so cute.

[omkookie]

. "I'll show you how much I love you"

⌈ ⚠️ 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 ⌉ Smut, drugging, Implied noncon at the end. short and rushed Yandere Reader fic (Fem)

You’ve had your eyes on the first prince of Obsidian ever since he knocked on your door that one night, to ask you for directions. The man was gorgeous, and you’ve never felt someone give off an aura as seductively dark as his.

He was… something else.

FInding out his identity didn’t deter you from him, as your heart longed for the stranger– You never feared him. The more time you spent with him, the more infatuated you became with him, and being around him made your heart flutter. Gilbert was the perfect man, a bit of a problem maker sometimes... but so cute! He was everything you could possibly wish for.

He was so beautiful…

Every time he looked at you, He made your heart beat faster. How could a man steal your heart this fast? Your strong feelings quickly turn into an obsession, and then you were always with him. Someone tried approaching Gilbert? Well, would you look at that… You suddenly acted out aggressively and hurt the person “By accident”.

Sariel becomes afraid of your sudden change in behavior. He even confronts you about it, soon realizing that you might have gone mad because of how you were describing your feelings for Gilbert. Sariel looked taken aback when you snap at him and bluntly tell him to fuck off.

Gilbert is yours, he's perfect, he's yours.

All of the words leaving your mouth were crazy.

This can’t be the Belle Sariel picked…? right?

.

It doesn’t matter though, Whatever Sariel thinks or if he calls you obsessed.

You now have Gilbert cornered, and you couldn’t be happier. He stares at you cautiously as you slither up to him like a snake, and wrap him up in your firm embrace. His initial resolve to push you away is quickly thrown out of the window when you yank him closer to you and kiss him.

His fingers tremble as they make their way to your lower back, and your tongue enters his mouth to entwine with his.

By the time you pull away, you’ve turned Gilbert into a blushing mess with a string of saliva still connecting your lips.

You push him back against the wall, and he doesn’t resist you as you begin to strip his clothes off and throw them to the side.

Of course, that means that he loves you too… right? His lack of resistance sure does!

You peel his shirt off of him, and he shudders when the cold air hits his heated skin, “Wait.” He says weakly as he tries to push your hand away when you reach down for his trousers.

In his fucked up state, Gilbert still somehow manages to stay coherent and muster some courage to push you away, “What did you drug me with?” He asks sharply while coldly glaring straight at you. “Phencyclidine. Don’t worry about that, Gil.” You coo as you cup his cheek and press a kiss against it. He looks at you with a pained expression before murmuring, “Have you lost your mind? or are you really this bold? If you kill me now then Rhodolite will be wiped off the map.”

“Oh, I’m not doing this to kill you... or for rhodolite.” You tell him

“What?”

“I’m not going to kill you, silly. I’m doing this because I love you~ The drugs take some time to take full effect though.”

He looks dumbfounded, His beautiful crimson eye looking all around the room as he tries to make sense of the situation. “I love you Gil” You say as you press another chaste kiss against his cheek.

“I see…” He whispers underneath his breath as his eye closes. He looks doubtful, somewhat restless, but way less than you expected him to look.

“Lean back, Gil.” You suddenly push his shoulders down, and his back hits the cushion lying on the floor. At least you were thoughtful enough to put a pillow there… Still, this doesn’t sit right with him.

You get on top of him, and although he tries to push you off, you merely brush his hands to the side before your hand wraps around his neck. He can’t deny that the way your hand holds his throat so firmly is somewhat hot and he’s getting aroused, but your predicament was way too fucked up for him to enjoy anything.

“Gil, pay attention to me.” your hold on his throat tightened as your other hand slapped his face. It wasn’t too hard, but it was enough to make his cheek sting. He winces, and though he once again tries to push you off, even kick you, he can’t do that because he was too weak. Disoriented, numb. He was losing feelings and his head was fuzzy.

"I'll show you how much I love you" is all he hears before he feels your hands all over his body.

[tartrat]

I want to give some more context to the Knight Light Painting that I'm working on for school.

The theme that we have to work on is based around viewpoints and i have gone with how people interpret fictional characters and how they completely change them, as well as how an outsider would view these actions.

So how does Knight Light fall into this theme?

Well firstly, since his backstory is kind of vague (it really is just him triumphing over luminous in battle that lasted like a week at most and being stranded in the light realm) and his personality is just typical Knight and Angel stuff, I wanted to add on to it to give my own view on it.

My headcanon for him is that, he is just lost, tries his best to make others happy and always sacrifices himself for them, but doesn't know that they don't care, after losing his parents and sibling he feels a continuous need to try and protect the other Light skylanders (mainly Astroblast and Aurora), has strange relations with the rest of the trap masters. I feel like i should make a whole post relating to these headcanons but the basic takeaway is that i view him more as someone who has to put up a strong front but isn't fine inside. Again I would need to fully explain in it's own post.

Face wise i wanted to change the emotions he's showing from a somewhat stern look to a more solemn one contrasting with the brightness of the armour. Relating to this is my colour choice for his armour. In game its pure white, but the figure as an iridescent purple glitter to it. However, in this painting I'm making it look pink and purple. Knight Light does have a quite masculine design, so i want the pink and purple to contrast as well as make his armour appear softer to match the expression on his face. The now actually yellow/golden background (previously supposed to be a light greyish yellow but came out as a vomit green) is there to make the colours less harsh as well as unintentionally being close to the colour that was used for Knight Light and spotlight's official artwork background.

I guess that what drew me towards him compared to the other skylanders that were in my collection was that he was my first Light element skylander and that was what was special, and surprisingly not the fact that I was an eight year old boy who these buff heroes were to appeal to, well thats part of it now so maybe he was part of my realisation that I was gay (that and probably preferring to play as the girl ghostbuster in the ghostbusters wii game because she was a lot cooler than the guy)

It is hard to explain this sort of stuff to a teacher so I'm my sketchbook I literally just said "The game he is from is very vague with his backstory, like with all characters in the series" which to an extent is true, however other characters such as Spyro (coincidentally sharing a voice actor with Knight Light) are more fleshed out because they were around from the start.

If i were to able to analyse better this would be more coherent. I do want to talk about Just Dance maps (as Just Dance is actually my main interest) and give my own thoughts and theories on them so I'll probably make a side blog for that. This post mainly serves as an exercise for me to get better at giving context in my school art work.

Anyway to basically end me explaining a headcanon and school work i leave you with the refence photo (top) and two extra photos that i took to decide on (ignore the last one being sideways).

I don't know if this will make much sense to anyone else so when i actually finish the painting I'll rewrite this when i develop my thoughts more, as there is more i want to say but I don't know how to phrase it as of now.

[onlytibki]

Yelling into the void about OPLA

Spoilers ahead!

Neutral: Some major scenes that outlined certain themes of the original story were changed, which is fair. Some things were added in certain areas, which is also fair. There's pros and cons to these things in various directions so I'm keeping it all under 'neutral'--by the same token, my disappointment about it not fitting the original story is tempered by how much just knowing the original story made me excited to see these characters and places in a live action. The two things kinda cancel, so, neutral.

Pros:

Set building. Urgh,, this summer has been a highlight for physical sets as opposed to greenscreening things. It was GORGEOUS and it paid off SO WELL.

Make-up. Again, physical make-up (I think) not CGI'ing a face, and it went so well. The Fishmen are high-key terrifying and honestly it fits the narrative. (The CGI was also amazing, though)

Fitting like 50+ episodes into 8 hours. A LOT ended up on the cutting room floor but the result was cohesive and coherent and that could not have been easy. And yet, even with so much on the floor, I think they only completely culled two or three characters? (Johnny and Yosaku (tragic) and the Island of the Rare Animals dude (but his island was shown in the maps)

Cons:

Fight choreography. There was a lot of variation in quality, imho. Kuina was incredible, as well she should be, but in some of the major fights there were moments of stillness in the background, etc. I should not have seen Luffy just stand there with his fists up while Zoro engaged Cpt. Morgan.

Make-up. If they did the Fishmen, and Merry, so goddamn well, why the hell are we missing Sanji's eyebrow and Usopp's nose? Usopp's nose might've been distracting but it didn't have to be ridiculous.

I'm not sure if it's cinematography, or editing, or directorial decisions, but I feel like they wasted precious time on a few scenes, whose minutes would've been well-spent including short, more cinematic shots. Ex: scrap kid!Sanji's "Day 2", replace with a shot of grown!Sanji bowing in front of the Baratie. Quite a few of Oda's iconic double-page shots would've translated SO WELL to the screen. Why not use them??

Side Notes

ZORO WAS IN GOA KINGDOM holy shit the things that could've changed. I wonder if Johnny and Yosaku were there too? Also his scar wasn't big or bloody enough.

Helmeppo was there. I somewhat had an opinion on him by the end of the season, which is an impressive achievement.

Scratch that, my opinion on Helmeppo is that Zoro's cutting of his hair was hilarious but the butt shot was unnecessary. Ditto Sanji being shirtless to rescue Luffy. This is OPLA why the fan service.

Nami was in shackles until age 12. :( But Bechdel test, passed!

Also this version of Nami would've absolutely tried to get with Kaya before stepping aside given the Usopp/Kaya romance.

Mihawk was PERFECT. Like absolutely iconic. Honestly the whole cast was, obviously, but you don't see as many people gushing about this fact regarding Mihawk

What the hell happened to Gin. He ate the food and then vanished from the face of the earth.

Garp's development/arc was an interesting take, and honestly it was a chunk of the really engaging part of the watch for me. I guess in canon he was too busy doing Marine things to chase after Luffy after he left Dawn Island so this is a good take.

On a related note, it does take a bit away that we didn't go through 250-ish chapters before learning about any of Luffy's family, but obviously that wasn't going to happen anyway. Also, kinda wish we'd seen him yell out 'Fist of Love' or them both fall asleep at the same time post-Enies Lobby arc style, but he was definitely using haki so it's fine.

On a different related note, actually VERY upset that we (1) didn't get Garp saying that line about how he left Luffy with Dadan so he could grow up to be a respectable Marine, and have Loof respond with Garp's training and (2) had to listen to Garp telling Luffy that the GL isn't a game, given that Luffy's already lost Sabo to the world and (3) didn't get any mention of Luffy's brothers or Dadan at all, actually.

Quick Summary: I do think a degree of enjoyment was both added and subtracted due to my knowledge of the original story. Not sure if I would've sat through the whole thing if I wasn't already tied heart and soul to the crew, but I am and I did.

But it was definitely fun and really well built. 8/10.

[hopeamarsu]

Of potions and myths - Chapter 5

William “Ironhead” Miller x f!reader

Word count 3,1k

Warnings: Some insecurities, some angst, a lot of talking, mention of child abandonment

A/N: It’s decision making time!

Chapter 4 - Chapter 6

The man leaves the living room after he’s given you the news, promising to return once you have had time to talk. He stresses that you don’t need to make the decision now, but the sooner you come to the conclusion, the sooner preparations can be made.

You sit next to Will when you are finally alone. The air is heavy and suffocating around you as you turn the words spoken to you in your mind. A lifetime of heartbreak or a lifetime with someone you barely know but are inexplicably drawn to? 

“It’s your decision.”

Will’s words, spoken again in a flat tone, cuts through the haze and you whip your head up to gape at him. He remains as he is, shoulders set and his whole body tight, eyes set forward and his mouth in a grim line. He looks like a soldier headed for war, his feelings and thoughts hidden behind an iron wall and it makes you ache for him. You draw strength from inside of yourself and grasp his hand into yours. 

“Our decision. This needs to come from us both, not just one of us. It’s both our souls, both our lives and both of us here, together.” You emphasize but don’t look at him as you speak, instead focusing on his hands and fingers, tracing them with your own. The pads of your fingers discover callouses, smooth spots and rough skin as you watch the tendrils appear, complimenting his skin tone and bathing it in golden and silver light. 

You want to explore all his skin this way, you realize. Spend hours upon hours just mapping it all out, discover all his wounds and kiss them better. Trace the scars and heal as many as you can, if only through kisses and caresses. All his sweet spots and points that make him tick. But to get there you’ll need to agree on this. 

“Sweetheart, if our views don’t match, I can never ask you to change your mind. So in the end, it is your decision.” He tries to be gentle, tries to not influence you, but it only makes you more agitated. 

“So you decide that for the both of us? You don’t even want to talk about it, just resign yourself to whatever fate I choose? How is that fair?” You can’t help it, your voice raises as anger bleeds into it. You drop his hand abruptly and rise to your feet, forcing Will to look at you alarmed. You start to pace the living room, your arms flailing around you as you vent.  

“If I choose the option you don’t want, it’s going to cause so much pain in either case. If you want this and I don’t, we’ll have to spend our lives looking over our shoulders so as not to see each other again and you’ll hate me because I have forced us into it. If I want this and you don’t, I will force you to be bound into me and it will cause so much heartbreak and it’s not fair. You’ll hate me and I don’t want that.” 

Your voice dwindles as does your anger, just as quickly as it rose. There’s no use in being angry, you just need to figure out how to move forward now. You stop your movements and sigh. You pinch the bridge of your nose, trying to gather your thoughts and leave all your confused emotions out of the equation.

“There is so much I don’t understand…” You mumble to yourself. Why did he growl at the elder, but not at Ben? What do the colors mean? What does a werewolf bond even mean, will you turn into one? Will the bite hurt? 

You shake your head to rid yourself of the rambling thoughts; those can be answered later, if needed. There is only one important question on the tip of your tongue, wanting to come out. 

“If you had to make the choice, which option would you get?” You ask, focusing your eyes into the wall behind the loveseat where Will sits. The rigid body of the soldier stays completely still as he ponders his words and you wait for him to answer. The hum of the connection jumps with every breath you take, your chests rising and falling in sync.

“I would choose you.”

The words come out slow, calculated and in an undertone, but you hear them clear as day. You chance a look at his blue eyes, the iron wall still high up behind them, so you cannot discern anything from them so you are left guessing. You feel like you are spinning as they buzz in your ear. His conviction in his words sounds ludacris after only a day of knowing one another. But also so right at the same time.  

“How do you know? Are you sure this isn’t just the connection talking?” You need to be sure.  

“Maybe it’s my wolf, maybe it’s the connection, I don’t know.” Will offers, holding out his hand for you to take. A beat passes and he starts to withdraw his hand, defeated. Quickly you spring into action and grasp it tight. You share a small smile as skin touches skin, feeling better and more calm already. He pulls you next to him again, but this time he turns so that your knees touch on the small couch and he keeps holding your hand, ignoring the tendrils for now. 

“But I do know this; when I’m with you, near you, I don’t want to leave. I want to be here with you, do all this with you. I don’t know if that’s love yet, but I do want to explore it and I want you to be mine. I felt it the second our eyes met at the pub.”

“Will, this is crazy! We’ve known each other for A DAY!”

“I know, sweetheart, I know. But I can’t help it and I don’t want to either. My wolf feels the same.” He takes your hand and places it on top of his heart. The thump-thump of his heart is rapid, so fast under your fingertips and you have the sudden urge to make it calm, soothe it out and make sure it doesn’t feel like this erratic ever again. 

“Do you feel that? I feel this way as I’m close to you and I wouldn’t change this feeling for anything. You make me feel alive and it's why I don’t think you are nothing. To me, you are everything. My wolf agrees and that’s why he wants to reach for you, be with you. Because of all this, I will always choose you.”    

He lifts your hand away from his chest and brings it to his lips, kissing the back of your hand softly. His lips feel soft and plump against your knuckles and you let out a happy sigh. As he releases it, your hand twitches because you want it back where it was, against the warmth and affection you felt. You refuse to call it love yet, but deep down you know it’s only a matter of time. 

You look at the man in front of you, taking in the beautiful eyes, the single second they flash into red and back to blue again. The lips you have felt on your own, the coarse hairs above them that tickles when he kisses you but causes shivers down your spine, and the sharpness of his nose, the regality it offers him. 

You glance at his forehead and mussed up blond hair, aching to mess it up further before venturing lower, cataloging the strong jaw and cropped beard, remembering how it felt on your skin as he kissed you in your kitchen and in here. How you think it would feel when he kisses you lower. 

You take in the curve where his neck meets his shoulder and it looks delectable. You would love to kiss him there, nibble and lick and suck until he’s a puddle of goo under you. 

You keep studying him, his words echoing in your mind as you try to come into a conclusion. As you do, you realize it was the only choice there ever really was. Your heart had been made up long before, your mind just needed to get there too.  

He waits patiently for your answer, though Will feels his nerves ramp up. This is it, this will determine his fate and he has just laid out all his cards and his heart at your feet. As the ticking clock provides the only soundtrack, he takes a deep breath through his nose, willing whatever deity is out there that you won’t crush it. 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… He counts the seconds ticking by, growing more nervous as the number grows higher and you remain silent. Just as Will is about to speak, crush his own heart, your words come out. 

“Yes. Let’s do it. Let’s complete the bond and see where it takes us,” You say and Will cannot hold himself still any longer. He surges forward and claims your lips in a passionate kiss, pouring all his happiness and his desire into it. 

One of his hands grips the back of your head and neck, flattening his palm to keep you grounded to him and the other finds its place on your hip, kneading the flesh gently as he deepens the kiss by slipping his tongue into your mouth. 

You quickly lose the sense of place and time as he kisses you, the power in it devouring you completely as you surrender to it. His mustache tickles your upper lip as he molds your mouths together and your fingers tangle in his hair, gripping it where you can and scratching your nails across his scalp.

 A deep rumble, a purr almost, leaves his chest as you hit a particularly good spot and he tugs you in closer, your legs slotting on either side of his legs when he pulls you into his lap. 

Will is nearly fully gone now, his mind fully focused on pulling sweet moans from your lips as he abandons your lips in favor of nibbling you jaw and neck, trailing an inferno behind him as he moves up and down, aiming higher until he kisses the spot just behind your ear that makes you shake in his arms. With a low chuckle, he comes up for air, murmuring sweet nothings onto your lips. 

“Will - gah, Will, we need to…” You tug on his hair, relishing the rumble that leaves his chest. As much as you wish to disappear into him and into this, the nagging feeling that you are in his brother's house keeps you somewhat coherent. 

“We need to do what, sweetheart?” The man has a voice made of honey and sin as he traces your collarbones with his tongue. You really do want to throw caution to the wind and complete the bond here and now, on this small loveseat that barely fits you both. “Pope…” You manage to gasp out, his teeth grazing on your shoulder makes you nearly black out. 

The single word seems to sober him up quickly and Will rips himself off your body, the red eyes wide and predatory as a reminder of just how far he had gone. “You’re right,” he pants, eyes tracking the saliva on your skin with hunger. 

He can feel the desire to bite just under the surface and as he touches his teeth with his tongue, he feels them already changed a little, becoming more pointed and sharp. It takes him a second to pull himself back before he winks at you.  

“Can’t have you thinking of other men while I have you on top of me.” The grin on his face is playful and wolfish. You match his grin and place your palm against his cheek, stroking it gently. He barely avoids nuzzling into it and purring, but only barely. It feels too good and his heart is elated that you want this as much as he does. 

“I can assure you, he was not in my mind because what you were doing wasn’t enough.”

“Mhmmm, but I wasn’t doing a good enough job if you can still think.”

“Behave,” You tease him gently as you untangle yourself, rising up from the couch and he follows eagerly, his huge paw finding the sliver of skin that has appeared with your wonky shirt. 

He traces his forefinger on it, teasing the waistband of your pants as he watches mesmerized the golden swirls that appear. He tries to follow one, but it seems to swirl away from him as others appear to mix in on the joyous dance.  

“Will?”

“Hmm?” 

“We still need to talk with the elders on how to move forward. And I suspect your brothers are anxiously waiting just outside,” you nod towards the front door, something he hasn’t even realized was closed firmly. He agrees but not before pulling you tight into his chest as he buries his face on the crook of your neck, breathing in the scent he’s already addicted to to ground himself. 

“Let’s do this.” He finally releases you, but keeps you tucked in as you step outside the house together. Will’s eyes immediately hone in on brothers; Benny sitting on the porch swing, Frankie leaning over the railing and Santi with his back against the wall. 

They all jump up when the door closes behind both of you and turn to face you. The two older men remain neutral but Will can see a grin trying to break its way free on Benny’s face as he looks at how close Will is keeping you. His little brother always did have a romantic streak in him. 

“We are going to try and complete the bond,” he tells them bluntly, not wanting to hide anything from them. Benny lets out a small ‘whoop’ and barrels into him, making Will lose his hold on you as he hugs him tight. You step away discreetly, allowing them to have their moment as Frankie sides up with you.

“Are congratulations in order then?” The tall man mumbles as he settles into an easy stance, arms crossed loosely and feet planted wide. His tone is mild but you can sense the underlying curiosity and slight worry over this.  

“Mhmm, we are going to try. We still don’t know all the details or even how hard it will be, so…” You let your voice die down, he’ll catch the drift you hope. He nods, keeping his eyes forward at the two brothers.

“We are brothers and a family, but those two are related by blood, so their bond runs a bit deeper. Benny is younger and Will’s always been the one he’s looked up to. Their mother, Mrs Miller, she - uuuuhhh - she left when the boys were young, I don’t think Benny was even three. Their father came to us and asked to join our pack, since their previous one kicked them out because of the sins of the mother.” 

Frankie takes a small pause, warmth in his eyes as he looks at the two blond men together. “My grandfather, who was one of the elders then, was the one to welcome them in and we’ve been tight ever since. Santi, Pope, joined not soon after and we all trickled into the military and Delta one after the other as we grew up. It’s always been us and always will be us together.”

“So that’s why he didn’t growl at Benny,” You murmur, mostly to yourself. Frankie nods, having heard your words and goes on to explain that a wolf will growl and snap at anyone who they deem a threat to family and loved ones, ultimately attacking to protect if needed. Within a family though, touching and closeness is encouraged. That’s why they are so physical with one another, he tells you. Actually, having the pack scent mark you at some point might be beneficial, the older man muses.

All this pack business thrusted against your brain produces a lot of good images and fantasies that your mind is spinning. It feels a little too much too fast, so you steer the conversation back into safer ground by looking fondly at Will nudging Benny on the shoulder in a playful manner. 

“He's very lucky to have all of you.” 

“We are lucky to have him. And all their family in fact, a lot of Millers joined our pack after them and expanded it. Hence why it’s called Miller-Morales pack now, even if it was originally just Morales pack. There are other families also, like the Garcia’s,” Frankie nods towards Pope, who has now joined his two brothers on the porch and the men are talking amongst themselves. 

“The name is because we are the two biggest families around and Morales being the founding family, but the duties and responsibilities are divided equally among everyone. Each family chooses an elder and all elders form the council to guarantee fairness and voice for all.” You did wonder about that and it makes so much sense as Frankie explains it all. It also gives you a sense of just how big the pack is, since there are six elders.

He startles you then by grasping your arm into his warm one for a second. He looks you deep in the eyes, keeping the connection as he speaks. “He might not say it, but I can already tell that this bond means everything to Will. He’s been through a lot, too much in fact, and we all want only the best for him. The man deserves nothing more than happiness. I hope you realize that.”

“I do.” You whisper softly, your heart beating harder in your chest at Frankie’s confession and slight challenge. It makes you grin that they are looking out for Will and while you didn’t expect to have the talk with one of his brothers, having Frankie do it makes perfect sense. With a soft smile, the man tips his ball cap in your direction and steps to slap Will in the back softly, joining the conversation.

You take the moment of silence and begin thumping through your phone, adding things into your notes so you can keep track of the questions still swirling in your mind. You need to get to your workstation, you decide, after the list grows in length. Who knows how long it will take the elders to gather all the needed information? And you can’t just sit tight and wait, you decide, your inner researcher excited about the prospect of digging into a mystery. 

“Will?” You hate to interrupt the boys talking animatedly with one another, but you know you have to. “How good are you with books?”

*

Of potions and myths taglist: @mylifeisactuallyamess​ @luxmundee​ @innerpaperexpertcloud​

Everything taglist (I fully understand if you want to skip this one, please let me know and I’ll remove you!) @clydesducktape​ @wayward-rose​ @themuseic​ @miraclesabound​ @clydesfavoritegirl​ @a-true-janian-reply​  @10blurredsmoke10​  @caillea​ @mariesackler​ @princessxkenobi​

[moxfirefly]

This comes as result of an idea and going through some hard times as of late. The reader here has their issues but hey we aren’t inherently perfect and I like getting into that mindset and seeing what comes up. So consider this somewhat introspective piece when a ‘relationship’ maybe isn’t the best.

Mikey x Fem!Reader

Rated Mature/Angst/Feels (18+ Only)

“I am human and I need to be loved”

A lifespan isn’t enough to understand that love is a complicated emotion. It’s addicting caress can remain in ones soul for ages. Love is kind they say, but what of those moments where it’s not? When the heart strangles itself and you choke on desperation?

Love isn’t perfect, that very imperfection glued us to those we worship. That hurt can be addicting as well.

He’s aware of it, he knows that his innocence only hides a questioning.

Because Mikey has gotten so good at hiding those dark parts that linger like shadows in his brain. There’s pain behind that smile, there’s sadness hidden beneath the foundation he’s lain.

You see it, you’re aware of it.

You can’t help but feel ashamed you’re the cause of it.

You want to take ownership of it but every time your mouth opens that tightness in your jaw increases. Before the words can be processed you’re doing most of the speaking with your hands.

And your lips.

Mikey’s never denied you, the thought of rejection paralyzes him so profoundly he aches. But it would be unwise to state there isn’t any trace of doubt. He’s mindful of your distaste for love, that you aren’t a believer. He’s mindful of what cracks inside of him when you flirt your way through the day. He’s at the forefront but he isn’t unwise to the way you linger a hand on Leo’s arm or how your eyes light up when April walks into a room.

Your eyes have that same bright hue when he’s the target. When it’s the two of you and your fingers map out a path on his thigh. It’s so palpable in the air that surrounds the two of you when you suddenly crash into him and swallow his soul whole.

You’re greedy.

The first time you had kissed him he swore there was no way he could verbally describe what erupted inside of him. He remembers it clearly like a fond dream, the way you had pushed him into a darken corner. Your hands on his waist, pink tongue tasting orange crush and sweets.

He had been so shy it had melted you. His hands tentatively resting on hips. Lips merely following your lead. When you had stopped with your lips lingering so closely to his, you had simply giggled and asked him where the night could take you both.

Mikey knows what whiplash feels like, but emotionally this was his first time. He let it go, slowly watched whatever this had meant leave his grasp.

He lets you lead.

You’re so greedy.

He can’t blame you as much as he can blame himself. This isn’t the only time naturally, he could switch the memories like tv stations, often settling on his favorite ones.

He tries to avoid the ones that hurt.

You want to blame life, blame all past events that led you to develop a thick skin. It’s so impenetrable, but the dents are here and there scattered across two decades. Mikey sees the road map of damage, it hides behind your smile and your nonchalant attitude towards the tomorrow. He kinda likes it though, that you can build up a wall for whatever tries to infiltrate your barrier.

He’s addicted to the fact that you allow him in, that your guard goes down when he’s there. Mikey just wishes he had a clearer read, that whatever is happening could have a description a fucking name tag maybe. But soon enough you’re jumping into his open and awaiting arms, pressing yourself so flush against him and whispering how much you just missed him.

Mikey doesn’t miss how you stick like glue to him one particular night. The gangs there, everyone watching some horror flick that Casey had brought over. He can’t keep his eyes straight when you’re so warm next to him, tracing lazy circles on his palm before gripping it like it was some habit.

You were a habit basically, a tick that comforted him and somehow kept him grounded into this plain of existence. It’s a rush of blood to the head. Something that swims inside of his soul, wraps around him like ivy.

You wish it could be simple, to face up and just accept the cards laid out. But you were never one to just take it at face value. Easy just wasn’t in your vocabulary and well, it’s obvious that it’s not in Mikey’s wether by proxy or his own doing.

So when you quietly excuse yourself and feel Mikey’s blue orbs follow you, you obviously text him to come with after a minute or so.

The minute he follows into his and Raph’s room and finds you sitting on his bed with your legs crossed looking pleased as punch, he knows he’s so utterly screwed. Cause he’d do anything to have that image frozen in time and place, just you and that beautiful smile that robs him of thought and oxygen. Even as you beckon him closer with a gleam in your eye that means trouble and a hundred more questions for Mikey to stay up all day and night over.

He follows.

He comes to the foot of his bed and almost overloads when the tip of that beckoning finger runs a path over what would be his navel. Mikey swallows hard, breathing through his nostrils.

It guts you how he reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. Mikey honest to god admires you like living breathing art. He takes a sharp inhale when you press your face to his clothed crotch and moan at the sensation that greets you. Mikey can’t erase the image of you, looking up at him as you push down his shorts, lust and what he registers might be love in your e/c orbs.

Much less when you take him into your mouth and the heat rushes down your body to your core. Your red cheeks hollowing in and creating such a tightness that Mikey whimpers, one hand gripping the back of your head and the other somehow interlocking with yours. It’s the intimacy of it, with your eyes fluttering closed as you take him as deeply as you possibly can. How his fingers play with yours.

Mikey tries to mumble something coherent out, he wants to tell you that he’s close and he knows it’s proper etiquete to tell you. It’s actually sweet and you almost giggle with a mouthful of him even when you feel nails dig into the back of your head as Mikey tries to not moan too loudly.

The way your throat bobs, lips swollen with a sticky sheen to them. He’s punch drunk, loves struck when he cups your cheeks and kisses you, tasting himself and falling further down into the rabbit hole that’s become the two of you not questioning this.

And god he should question it before his mind keeps running every possible scenario that’s caused this to be so unidentifiable. Because after that night he’s got radio silence from you for four days. He feels like a ghost floating around his brothers, going from motion to motion until he decides to take that step.

He shows up at your apartment, contemplates knocking on that window for fifteen minutes but what can he say? What does he want to ask? What if it drives you and whatever this is away?

He caves, eyes not so bright when you pull apart the curtains and he’s met with the same look he’s been sporting these past few days. You do smile though, that smile that digs nails into his soul. You let him come in, already putting on a mask that fits too perfectly.

“What’s wrong...Are you mad at me?” Mikey asks tentatively like peeling a hangnail. You freeze on your way to the kitchen, looking down at your bare feet like the answer might sprout from beneath them. “Nothings wrong, was just busy is all” It’s a pathetic excuse and not entirely truthful because you’ve been stewing in your apartment knowing full well that the boy behind you has planted roots in your heart.

And it scares the shit out of you.

So you turn, that shield up so high that Mikey notices and the whiplash is hard when you close the distance and wrap your arms around his neck. “What? Miss me that much?” Your scent hits him like a fresh hit to an addict. Four days without the warmth of your skin burning him. Mikey wants to test that shield, destroy it with his bare hands and find the real you in there, he pulls back far enough to look into your eyes and drown in them.

He quietly accepts his fate right then and there, ready to hand over his heart into your hands and watch you squeeze. And you see it all, your chest tight and jaw set, you run a finger across his cheek in such soothing slow motion. You want to tell him that this isn’t worth the heartache and headache, that you won’t come around any time soon.

Instead, you start to strip off his gear, bit by bit, each carefully taken apart. You untie his sweater from around his waist, hands lingering and maping out every detail you want forever engraved in your brain. You grab his hand and put them on you, a silent agreement for him to do the same. Mikey strips you out of your hoodie, finding a sports bra beneath it, eyes glued to new skin as he kneels and hooks his fingers in your shorts and slides them down slowly.

You walk him to your room, hand tightly clasped around his and there’s no hesitation in your steps because you want this and he wants this but every question that’ll come from this will just have to wait. You truly do go about things the wrong way.

The innocent touching makes your heart twist, the way his blue eyes run over you like you’re stolen art and he’s got dibs on it. It’s so sweet, asking his permission with a look to strip you of your bra, to run his hands towards the newly exposed flesh. It guts you so deeply when he pulls you close against him and just holds you, cause it dawns on you that Mikey has never held somebody this intimately. You shiver with the way he circles your back in ghostly touches, just basking in what it feels to feel your skin so close to his.

“We don’t have to do this” ‘I don’t want to hurt you’

“It’s okay, I just...Don’t disappear on me like that please” Mikey feels you tighten your grip on him and it takes every inch of his resolve to not crumble and just say that he loves you, that he’s loved you from the moment you rested your head on his shoulder, from the moments you’ve kissed him and made his head so clouded with questions of ‘If’ and ‘maybe’ but he knows he won’t be met with the same words.

Maybe not now, or simply not at all.

So he holds you close, even as you start to tremble, feeling tears on his shoulder. You can’t say anything, you can’t say a single damn thing.

See I've already waited too long

And all my hope is gone

[gra-sonas]

I like that things are actually happening this season. Last season just felt like a bunch of talking and not a lot of action imo.

Yeah, last season was mostly a lot of noise with a handful of somewhat interesting bits thrown in for good measure, but otherwise you could legit skip S2 as a whole without missing any vital information.

S2 always felt to me as if it had been mapped out guided by a 2 year old's crayon scribbling.

A lot of back and forth, up and down, but no direction, no real end goal in sight. Apart from the utter idiocy of that bomb plot... 🙄

And look at Michael! He's had more character development in 2 episodes than he had in 2 seasons before. (I'm exaggerating a little, but for all this talk of "he has to be with M for some much needed growth", he wasn't allowed to grow one bit during that year, hell, he had more character development during the one year time jump after that dreadful relationship ended).

That's not to say that S3 is perfect, or that there isn't room for improvement.

But just in comparison S2 looks like someone threw a handful of plot points into a powerful blender and forgot to put the lid on before they hit the power button. And wherever the plot points got stuck on a whiteboard, the writers had to come up with ideas to write a story around them (which often meant characters were forced to behave a certain way to make those plot points work - well, they tried...).

S3's much more coherent, so far there aren't any glaringly obvious plot holes, there's character development for everyone, characters are interacting, there are sooooo many conversations, IDK, it's just staggering how much better thought-through S3 comes across.

Imo S2 was too much about holding back - information, character development, relationship development - whereas S3's happy to give us info, allow characters to grow and relationships to form.

Anyway, I'll forever loathe S2, and so far I absolutely adore S3 😊

[autolenaphilia]

Mafia: City of Lost Heaven

The original Mafia from 2002 by Illusion Softworks is a weird and fascinating game. It is a third-person shooter somewhat in the vein of the GTA series.

It is set in the 1930s and is about a Mafia family, the Salieris in the fictional city of Lost Heaven. It focuses on the rise of player character Tommy Angelo in the Salieri organization. It is a standard gangster movie plotline, with the Godfather and director Martin Scorcese being referenced often. The character wants the money crime can give him and is successful as a mafioso, but he experiences conflict between the horrible things he must do and his conscience. This contradiction eventually destroys him and the story becomes a tragedy.

This cinematic gangster tragedy is an unusually ambitious story for an action video game at the time, and it isn’t entirely unsuccessful in those. Mainly it is because the 1930s gangster film atmosphere is so fully realized, more than the actual writing. The writing isn’t terrible, Tommy’s story is a coherent tragedy, but it does not quite reach the high level of its gangster movie inspirations.

And it has many of the problems of the genre, except even more so. The game depicts the mafia in quite glorifiying ways. The mafiosos in these guys wear nice suits and fedoras, drive nice cars and get to have cool gunfights with Tommy guns. And yet the story tries to have it the other way too, with the mafia depicted as ruthless violent people and crime leading to a tragic end. Tommy is himself frequently appalled at the things the family wants him to do and ultimately he ends up badly because of his mafioso life. The contradiction is obvious. It is the same trap the gangster films that inspired this game fall into. Gangster films want to show this cool escapist fantasy of gangsters because it is fun, yet both storytelling logic and any moral analysis demands crime leads to tragedy.

The story also has the problem of this opposition between “good” gangsters and “bad” gangsters that doesn’t make much sense. The plot driving the story for basically 4/5 of the game and especially the middle levels is this rivalry between the Salieri and Morello families that eventually becomes an outright war. And in order to have a more easily graspable “heroes and villains” situation, the narrative is clear that the Morellos are the worse mobster family. Don Morello kills people for bumping into his car and tortures people to death. He is presented as a vile and repellent villain from the first. It is the Morello mobsters which you kill for most of the game, and you kill a lot of them, and this somewhat over-the-top villainization is meant to justify that.

And Salieri doesn’t do these kinds of things, he doesn’t deal in drugs either and fights common thugs who mug and sexually assualt women. He is the “good” kind of gangster. Even his collecting of protection money is presented as actually providing some form of protection. It is an implausible idea to say the least, and the game is certainly aware of it. What drives the plot inthe last four levels of the game is that Don Salieri is becoming morally worse after his final victory over Morello, getting more greedy for money and power. Butthe game depicts him as committing ruthless murders even before that point. This inherent evil of the mafia is what drives the actual main storyline: the tragedy of Tommy.

This Salieri vs. Morello plot feels hollow, the game’s attempts to subvert it doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel credible to begin with. The over-the-top villainy of Morello and Salieri’s softer actionsfeel like sentimental nonsense from the very start. “This gangster is good, he protects people from common muggers OwO, but this gangster is bad, he tortures people >:(“. Salieri’s slide into further villainy after Morello’s defeat doesn’t feel credible either. For a subversion like that to work it must have some plausibility to start with, some emotional resonance with the audience, and it just doesn’t.

It makes the game feel like it buys into the glamorization of crime that is often present in the genre more than most actual gangster films do.

Speaking of that, I should mention the sexism of this game. Most gangster films certainly depict a male-dominated culture. In that, the genre reflects the real-life mafia, which is extremely male-dominated and misogynist, and it is arguable how much those films endorse that sexism as opposed to merely depicting it.

And I would argue Mafiafalls into endorsing it, at least in its storytelling. There are only tworeal female characters, and each only appears in one level each. Sarah is an especially outstanding example, for she becomesTommy’s wife. The level in which she appears Tommy rescues her from a sexual assault by some muggers and they have sex and fall in love. This is said to lead to their marriage, and I do literally mean “said” because we never see her again after that level. Tommy mentions her occasionally and his marriage to Sarah and their daughter is by his own admission his most important motivation.

And that is the purpose of women in the story of Mafia: to provide motivation for their husbands. Two other gangsters are similarly driven by their wifes and children to break with the Salieri family’s obligations, in explicit parallels to Tommy’s situation. And it is not just sexist writing, it is ineffective writing too. Tommy’s marriage is meant to be very important to him as a character, and it is problem in the actual story it is never shown. We never get to see Tommy’s and Sarah’s supposedly idyllic family life, only hear Tommy talk about how it is the most important thing for him, which weakens any emotional empathy we might feel with him.

The level with Sarah at least features a bunch of dialogue between Tommy and Sarah and it is nice I suppose, but it is not enough. Sarah is also depicted as a bit of a bimbo or at least extremely naive, as she doesn’t seem to be aware the Salieri’s are well a mafia family, which seems unrealistic considering how closely connected she is with them. (She grew up as the daughter of the bartender in the Salieri’s Bar and works there, a location in which they literally shoot rival gangsters in at one point).

The writer of Mafia, Daniel Vavra would many years later become a gamergater, probably the most prominent developer to sympathize with the movement. And while it is of course a disappointment, it is not entirely unexpected. He was by far not the worst misogynist in video games or anything,

but just looking at Mafia, it is not strange at all that Vavra as a game writer would feel threatened of the very idea of feminist analysis of video games.

I talked about the story far more than I wanted to when I started writing this, and it is actually not the most interesting thing about this game, it is actually the city of Lost Heaven itself, the attempts at realism in the gameplayand the cars.

The city of Lost Heaven is one of the more fully realized cities in video games, and it is clear a lot of effort and thought was put into its design. Even the map of the city which you use to navigate it showed a lot of effort. It has (printed)creases, stains and pen markings drawn on it just like a real map would. The original box(that I owned) came with an actual physical copy of the map, which was very fun to have,although bringing up the map in-game by pressing tab was certainly the more practical option.

It is perhaps not a huge world compared to modern open-world games, but it was huge for 2002 and it is varied in a semi-realistic way. Lost Heaven is divided into various distinct areas just like a real city would. There is an industrial area, a working class housing area (“Hoboken”), a detached housing area for the upper middle class on the outskirts (Oakwood), an area with mansions for the rich (Oak Hill), ethnic ghettos like Chinatown or Little Italy. The basic idea seems to have been is to recreate an American city from the period in miniature.

And the areas have been given a lot of effort to make them appear more tangible. The building models and textures are different of course, but you can also detect a difference in the pedestrians. People in working clothes walk around in the industrial area and the working class area of Hoboken, whereas you can primarily see the nice looking suits and dresses in the richer areas of of town. It clearly took great effort to program and it contributes greatly to the mood. Even the cars seem to vary slightly, with the older and cheaper cars more abundant in the poorer districts, but the difference I think is lesser compared to the pedestrians.

The care with which Lost Heaven was constructed creates this compelling atmosphere. It feels like you are driving around in a 1930s American city. The aesthetics and atmosphere make the gangster story work better than it otherwise would. Lost Heaven simply feels more real than most video game cities do. And this is despite the dated graphics.The textures might oftenbe very grainy, shop signs especially are a blurry mess, but even they were made with some effort.

Let’s talk about the cars too, because they encapsulate this game in both aesthetics and gameplay. The cars are all based on real cars of the period, even if the names are all changed to avoid any claims of trademark infringement. Fords are called “Bolts” and Chrysler Airflows are called “Ulver Airstream” for example. If you know anything about older cars, you can however easily recognize many of them them under the changed names. an early game car is unmistakeably a Ford model T for example. Also some cars are far more common than they should be, like the concept car Pierce Silver Arrow of which only five were built is a common rich man’s car in the game under the name “Silver Fletcher”.

The cars driven by the NPCs are used to show the passage of time in the game, which goes from 1930 to 1938. As the years go by in story, older cars get more uncommon (but don’t disappear entirely) and new models are introduced. Your access to cars in gameplay also improves as you progress in the story. You go from slow, fragile cars like the aforementioned T-ford to fast, powerful and sturdy cars. The effort put into the cars from the research to the NPC programming is another thing that helps create the compelling mood of Mafiaand the city of Lost Heaven.

The cars are a good example of how the game often prioritizes atmosphere and verisimilitude over fun and accessible gameplay. The driving in this game is not a side-thing like it would be in most action games and cars in this game handle fairly realistically for this type of game. It is still arcadey, but far less arcadey than you would expect from a non-driving simulator. And most importantly, cars are period accurate in that they are both slower and more clunky to handle than modern cars.

Damage to the car also has more consequences than you might expect. A crash might damage the engine causing the car to go slower, a bullet rupturing a tyre makes the car far more difficult to handle, a shot to the gas tank will cause the fuel to leak out(fuel is never really a problem in the primary story mode, but it is there as a game mechanic and can be relevant in the free ride mode). The early-game cars are more fragile and vulnerable to crashes and the like, but none (outside a special car in the game’s free ride mode which not available in the regular story) are immune to these problems.

So this game prioritizes realism over player enjoyment, practically the only obvious concession to the player is that you always have automatic gearchanges available, but you can also choose to change gears manually if you want to. It is frankly oftenfrustrating, even the best cars in this game can be difficult to handle.

Car chases in this game are brutally difficult because of this, and the game’s most infamous level is the fifth one where you have to compete in a car race, driving a fairly period-accurate racing car. It has perhaps the best speed and acceleration of all the car’s in this game, but handles terribly. It is perhaps the most difficult level in the game, and even the developers seem to have realized how unfair it is. You could cheat in the original box copy version of the game which I played as a kid and the GOG version has an easy mode for the race.

A lot of the game is actually about this car hierarchy mentioned before. Typically at the beginning of each level you are given a new car by the Salieri’s mechanic Ralphy, and it is usually better than the car he gave you last level (he also teaches you how to steal it, which isn’t that useful in the story mode, but gives you that ability in other game modes). At the end of most levels, you are also given the opportunity to do an optional side-mission for another mechanic, Lucas. If you succeed, Lucas teaches you how to steal a really capable car. Typically the car you can get from Lucas will be better than the ones Ralphy will give you for the next 2 levels at least.

So the clunky car mechanics both give period verisimilitude and a sense of progression throughout the game.

And it does certainly add to the atmosphere and sense of realism. Mafia’s cars feel more real than most video game cars, but they are also oftenfrustrating to use in gameplay.

But Mafia priortizing its verisimilitude over player enjoyment doesn’t stop there. In each level you are given an objective, typically somewhere else in the city than where you start (which is usually Salieri’s bar). And you have to drive from the starting point to where the actual level starts. After the level is over, you have to drive all the way back.

You can’t just speed your way through the city either, because Lost Heaven’s cops will notice you breaking the speed limit or running a red light and fine you. The fine doesn’t actually cost you anything in the story mode, but it takes up time and negates any time you won by speeding. You can run away but the cop cars will follow and try to arrest you (which is a game-over), and if you try to kill them they will shoot back. The police will usually radio in for back-up too, so you will have to evade or kill the cops (including the back-up) to escape, both of which are fairly difficult.

So the best idea is to keep to the speed limit of 40 mph and don’t run any red lights. You can toggle a speed limiter with the F5 button which caps your car’s speed at 40 miles. It adds to the realism the developers are going for, but in order to play the actual level you have to have this bit of tedium with the drive both before and after. It is basicallya commute except with a varying destination.

The developers was probably aware of the tedium on some level. During the first half of the second level you get to play Tommy during his pre-gangster life as a taxi driver. It is literally just driving from point A to B under a time limit, and the customer will get cranky if you crash the car, and getting a speeding ticket is game-over here of course. The customer dialogue is often rude and theydoesn’t even thank you for most of the time. It is super-tedious and clearly intended to get the player to understand why Tommy became a gangster, since this boring dead-end job is his alternative. The problem of course is that a lot of his life as a gangster consists of driving from point a to point b in a similar fashion.

The game’s obsession with verisimilitude also extends beyond the driving to the action. Without being entirely realistic, Tommy is on the flimsier side of shooter game protagonists and can’t take a lot of bullets before dying. It is like in Max Payne, where a point-blank shotgun blast can practically kill the player character in one hit. You can find healing in first aid boxes boxes, but they are rare. Reloading before your magazine is empty also means you lose any bullets left in the magazine.

And unlike Max Payne, there are no quicksaves or manual saves whatsoever. Saves are done automatically at certain checkpoints and you have to re-start at those if you die. This save system makes this game extremely difficult, since you have to sometimes practice entire segments in order to progress. It is a lot of having to memorize where an enemy mobster pops out so you can shoot him before he shoots you.

The combat is certainly well-made and sometimes quite fun. There are like the cars some weak weapons, but overall weapons feel powerful and the environments and set-pieces are often enjoyable. But the action like the rest of the game is frustratingly difficult.

And that is the game, pretty much. You have a tedious drive to have a big spectacular shoot-out that is frustratingly difficult and you have another drive back. Sometimes there is a car chase, but that’s it. There is a stealth level that tries to change up the formula where you break into a villa, but the game is not really built for stealth so it is frustrating and very much not fun. Then there is the side-missions from Lucas on your drive back, usually a timed fetch-quest of some kind. They do add variety and have some interesting story ideas but can be frustrating in their own right.

There is also the free ride game mode, where you get to explore Lost Heaven freely and do whatever you want, although there is not that much to do, except get into car chases/fire fights with cops or random gangsters you can aggro if you want. The oddest game mode is “free ride extreme”, where you get to do various bizarre quests to unlock equally bizarre cars. It is a weird mode, especially for this game, as you have this usually serious aiming-for-realism game letting its hair down and going for outright comedic surrealism.You get to chase down a super-fast npc named Speedy Gonzales, that sort of thing. The mission certainly have surreal imagination to their credit, even if they can be as frustrating as the rest of this game.

So is Mafia a good game? It is hard to say. A lot of my fond memories of this game comes from playing an already old by that point box copy as a teen when I didn’t have access toor had played many other games, so nostalgia plays into my fondness for this game.

Replaying it now, the game’s faults are more apparent. When it comes to story, the game certainly stood out back then, and the tragedy of Tommy Angelo the unwise still broadly works, but its re-telling of gangster movies has not aged that well. Gameplay-wise the game is difficult in a way that feels frustrating rather than fun, and there is a lot of tedious driving from point A to B. Some of the action set-pieces are exciting, but the high difficulty and limited save system essentially means replaying large chunks of them almost to the point of memorization.

There are many other games like the GTA series that have a similar mix of third-person action with driving which have more easily enjoyable gameplay. Mafia seems to care more about making its world believable than any kind of player enjoyment.

And it is probably its world, the city of Lost Heaven that still fascinates about this game. A lot of work and love went into Lost Heaven, and it shows. Lost Heaven is an atmospheric and memorable place. Mafia makes a lot of strange gameplay choices just to make Lost Heaven seem more real, choices that not many other games would have made for good reason, because thatlevel of realism is not that fun.

The result is that this is a game where you play a badass 1930s gangster not just during daring shootouts in mobster wars, but also during his slow drive to and from hisgangster work, and youhas to follow the traffic laws so he isn’t ticketed. It is 1930s Gangster simulator 2002, or an approximation there of.

Mafiaisn’t alwaysa fun game, there is a long stretchesof frustration and tedium here, but it is frequently interesting and a clear labour of love, atmospheric, weirdand fascinating.

[goatguns]

the Summer Projects

I have these 8 somewhat cursed projects that have been haunting me for too long and i'm going to try getting some prototypes and pilots out for them this year. Here they are in yet another fun list

GATE/SOUP

Started out as a flash game project but was technically Haxe Flixel?? development hell, its a point and click puzzle adventure game like the Myst series but with a hand drawn artstyle (or stylised 3D?? still need to experiment more on that one). Has particular inspirations from Riven, Myst III, and The Witness (and some Gmod maps)

SUNFLOWERS

Sunflowers started out early last year as a 3D third person platformer movement study with a clean artstyle, and was inspired by this song. I'm thinking it'll be made with UE4 C++ but that might end up being completely stupid, we'll see when i restart making prototypes for it.

KILLING KINGS

This is a super vague idea where I have the main character design (a robot with clothing that pulls reference from old catholic aesthetics) but is otherwise just a small pile of isolated 2d animated scenarios in my head. Inspirations include the Saga series of comics and the Castlevania netflix series but that's about all i've got for it so far.

KDRK

KDRK is easily the oldest project on the list (going on 6 years!!). I've struggled to create words to describe its genre but so far i've got low science fantasy. its like the empire strikes back director said "it's a fairytale", i feel like most things about it dont quite make sense but they're fun and look cool. I have tried to get a coherent story in place for it but nothing has quite stuck, so it's a far larger pile of some isolated some not scenarios and lots of intros set to music. My inspirations for it are all over the place

SOUL

Soul is a comic book i've been working on with one of my friends Anton, i'd say it's also a low science fantasy but it leans more to fantasy but it's also modern but not?? originally it was pulling from "traditional fantasy" tropes but as i've learnt more about where those come from i've been trying to push it in new directions.

RURU

Ruru is one of my first year uni projects that I did with two friends Paris and Hunter. It's a 90s retro-futuristic world, which is quite hard to pinpoint but it's set in NZ which helps. It was inspired by a big album of photos of Wellington from 1993 and 1994, and models of owls without any feathers. Another science fantasy type deal but originally it was leaning on Simon Stalenhag's paintings, but as they've been done to death by everyone copying them I've been in the process of revising it into something more individual and based more on our own experiences.

KOI

Koi (originally Koiboi) is a 2D/3D animated short I made last year for an animation assessment. It had a Koi inspired character hurrying into a hover Fiat and zooming off through a birch forest. It was mostly to test out a hybrid blender workflow and it worked pretty well in the end! I want to extend upon it because it was very fun to work in.

AZOLLA

Azolla is a VFX project I did last year aswell at the same time as Koi, it's a couple million particles reacting to this live song and it looked pretty cool!! I ran out of time to do anything more than 6 seconds worth but I really want to expand upon it because it's fun, took heavy inspo from Gantz Graf and a bunch of other cool particle work

I'll make a separate post and tags for all of these eventually, will post as I go

[cam-cat-writer]

Fic

So I wrote a thing! @disaster--squid this one’s for you :D thanks for helping me back in like literally Feb 2019 figure out a proper plot for this even though I forgot about it for legit forever but it’s here now! The length... got away from me <3

Hang In There

Hunk and Lance have paired up for a ground mission and are on their way back to the castleship when, of course, everything goes wrong. Hunk might be terrified, but Lance needs him and letting Lance down is never an option.

In other words, Hunk's Mom Friend Override kicks in.

Here on AO3 or under the cut!

Though I will warn you this is over 3k so it might be easier to read this one on AO3 :) Enjoy!

"Hunk, Lance, are you guys on your way up yet?" Shiro's voice crackled through the comms. "We can't hold this position much longer, and the Galra are going to call for backup soon, if they haven't already."

Hunk and Lance were running through the tunnels on their way back to the surface. Lance spoke before Hunk could even collect his scattered thoughts enough to give a coherent report. "Affirmative, Shiro. We'll surface in about two minutes and we'll need covering fire to get back to Yellow and off the planet."

He looked at Hunk for confirmation, to which Hunk nodded.

Shiro sounded somewhat relieved. "I think we can stall for two minutes. Hurry."

Lance switched off his comm and looked sideways at Hunk. "You okay, buddy? The hardest part is behind us, we're gonna be fine," he assured him, checking around a corner before they continued upward.

Hunk tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I just... can't shake the feeling something's about to go horribly wrong, you know? I guess I'm just..." he had to pause to breathe before finishing his sentence. "I'm scared."

Lance nodded, understanding. "I know, it's okay, man. We just gotta get out of these tunnels and we'll be in Yellow and back on the Castle in no time, just hang in there a little longer, yeah?" He gave a quick glance at the ceiling. "Not gonna lie, I'll feel a lot better after we're not in these tunnels any more."

Hunk shot Lance a concerned look. "Are you okay?"

Lance shrugged. "After the, uh, cryopod situation, you know, when the Castle went all haywire? After that I, uh, I'm not the biggest fan of tight spaces, I guess?"

Hunk's eyebrows shot up. "Lance, you-"

Lance interrupted him quickly. "I'm fine, Hunk, I'd just really like to get out of here. Besides, the tunnels aren't that small, I'm not panicking or anything-" He cut himself off as a sentry passed through a connecting tunnel. Once the coast was clear, he cleared his throat. "I'm fine, Hunk. Promise." He grinned and threw Hunk a pair of finger guns. "Besides, I've got you, how could I not be?"

Hunk opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, a low rumble echoed through the tunnel they were running through.

Lance stopped abruptly. "What was that?" Another rumble answered him, louder this time. Lance put one hand on his bayard and his other hand on Hunk's arm. "Hunk..."

Hunk put his hand over Lance's. "I don't... I don't know..." The rumbling came again, but this time it didn't stop, it just started growing louder and louder.

Their comms crackled loudly in their ears. "Guys!" Pidge's voice came through, panicked. "You have to get out of there, now! The Galra set off a series of explosions up here and now the tunnels are collapsing, you need to-" Rocks started coming loose from the ceiling, clattering to the tunnel floor.

Hunk grabbed Lance's hand and dragged him up the tunnel. "We're on our way, Pidge, I'm sending you my location-" Hunk's fingers flew over the holopad on his armor, "we're nearly to the top-"

The tunnel in front of them gave a great shudder and the ceiling caved in, filling the archway nearly to the top with rocks of various shapes and sizes.

Lance was suddenly very, very pale. "Hunk, please, please tell me there's another way out of here."

Hunk tapped his comms repeatedly. "Pidge? Pidge, we need another route."

Nothing.

Hunk felt his blood run cold. He tried again. "Pidge?" Slightly more panicked, "Shiro?"

Lance had started to pace back and forth, trying his own comms. "Keith? Coran? Anyone?"

Nothing.

They were on their own, then. Hunk looked around, trying to see an alternate route. There had to be another way out, or maybe they could make their way through the tunnel ahead? It was smooth stone above them, probably meant to be a main tunnel, so they'd be alright for the time being...

A soft noise came from behind him. Hunk whirled around to see Lance sitting on the ground, breathing shallowly and shaking, pale, eyes screwed tightly shut. Hunk sunk to the ground and put his hand gently on Lance's knee. "Hey, hey it's gonna be okay, buddy. All I need you to do is breathe with me, can you do that for me? Just in and out, nice and slow, just like this." Lance nodded shakily, trying to follow Hunk's breathing, his breath hitching unevenly as he did so. "That's it, that's it. We're going to be just fine, we'll get out of here in no time, yeah? Just keep breathing for me, there you go." Hunk kept up the soothing tone, checking over his holopad map of the tunnels they'd used to get down here in the first place. Several branching routes were shaded red, including the one they'd intended on taking back up, which appeared to have collapsed for a significant distance ahead. Lance's breathing was slowly starting to even out as Hunk traced routes over and over until he found one from where they were now that led up to the planet's surface that wasn't impossible to get through. There were a handful of intersecting tunnels that appeared to have collapsed, but the main tunnel was still intact. They'd just have to make their way through as best they could.

Hunk looked back up to see Lance's eyes on him. He smiled tentatively. "I think I've got us a way out, do you think you're ready to go?"

Lance took a few more slow breaths, significantly more even that his breathing had been earlier. "Yeah. Yeah, let's go."

Hunk stood up and helped Lance to his feet, linking their hands and squeezing gently. "I'll be here the whole way. We've got this."

Lance nodded, his grip on Hunk's hand tight. He was still a bit paler than Hunk would have liked, but he could worry about that later.

The first time they came to a caved-in intersection, Hunk turned to warn Lance. "The intersection up ahead has a bit of damage, but it doesn't look very intensive on the map so it should be just fine."

Lance paled rapidly and gripped Hunk's hand tightly again. "Okay." He swallowed hard. "Okay, just... let's get it over with."

When they turned the corner to see the intersection, Hunk sighed in relief. The cave-in was indeed minor, and it didn't look to have damaged the main tunnel they had come through. Picking their way over the rocks that had slid in from the tunnels branching off, they moved through and continued upward, with Lance looking more than a bit relieved. Hunk smiled at him reassuringly.

Unfortunately, the second caved-in intersection was not so minor. The opening was over half-full of rock and debris, which meant a climb up and through a 3-foot gap. Still not bad, and on the map it looked like it opened up again on the other side. Lance bit his lip anxiously and tightened his hold on Hunk's hand, squeezing his eyes shut as they made their way through the gap, Hunk rambling the whole way. "There we go, that's it, just a bit further... There, we're through the worst of it, you did it, now it's just down this and into the tunnel again, see it's getting wider already." He checked the map again, and thankfully there were only two more collapses to get through. His chest relaxed a bit.

As they walked quickly through the mostly undamaged tunnel, Lance seemed to breathe a little easier, and his hands shook a little less. The next crossroad was minorly damaged, hardly even a proper collapse, which they crossed easily. However, Hunk knew that the last one would not be so easy.

He was right, of course. When they reached the collapsed section, the main tunnel had partially collapsed as well, leaving them facing what was practically a wall of rock. Lance curled into himself and gripped Hunk's hand tightly.

"What now?" He asked quietly. Hunk squeezed his hand.

"We'll have to do a little bit of digging, I think. It seems to have settled, and if you look there, up on the right? The ceiling is still intact. If we climb up and dig a bit of the debris out there we should be able to get through to the other side. And after that, it's a straight shot right up to the surface through the main tunnel."

Lance nodded slowly. "Are you sure? What if-"

Hunk shook his head quickly. "Don't go down that road. It's going to be fine, okay? I've got my helmet scanner running so if there's any disturbance we'll be the first to know about it, yeah? Five minutes from now we'll be out of this tunnel and back outside."

Lance looked at Hunk, then down at their hands, and squeezed again. "Okay."

And so they climbed carefully up the mountain of rock, Lance making a concentrated effort to maintain regular breathing, and Hunk keeping up a steady stream of assurances and encouragement. When they reached the top, the gap they had to work with was about a foot both ways. The work of moving debris out of the way went fairly quickly, even as they stopped frequently to listen for rumbling and to check Hunk's scanner.

Nothing happened for awhile. They kept digging out rocks until they'd almost made an opening big enough to get through without risking accidentally dislodging more debris. Then, a low rumble echoed through the tunnel.

All of the blood drained out of Lance's face, and his hands curled into fists. "Hunk..." His breaths were coming out a bit shorter now.

Hunk grabbed Lance's hand again. "Hey, hey, look at me. We are so close, we're going to get out of here. You have to trust me on that. Follow my breathing, yeah? We're going to move this big rock here in the corner and get through here. Come on, you can do this, Lance, I know you can."

Lance nodded, breathing carefully as Hunk counted them out loud. Finally, the two managed to shift one of the larger rocks out of the way of the gap they were digging out.

The gap was barely big enough, but it would do. Hunk pushed Lance through first and then Lance pulled Hunk through from the other side.

Another low rumble echoed through the tunnel. They moved quickly down the slope on the other side and into the main tunnel.

A third rumble, louder this time. Lance grabbed Hunk's hand tightly. "Hunk..." Another rumble interrupted whatever he had been about to say, and it didn't stop. "Hunk, what-" The floor under their feet began to shake.

Hunk looked up and saw small chips start breaking off the smooth stone above and his eyes widened. "Oh. Oh, no." He pulled Lance forward and sped up until the two were sprinting through the practically vibrating tunnel. Hunk glanced down at the map as they ran, the falling debris from the ceiling getting larger as the shaking grew more violent.

A rock about the size of Hunk's fist crashed into Lance's shoulder, knocking him to one side.

"Lance!" Hunk pulled him closer and activated his shield to put over their heads as they ran. "Are you okay?"

Lance nodded, his expression tight.

As they turned around the next corner, Hunk could see daylight at the end of the tunnel. "That's it, that's our exit!" He almost laughed in relief as they drew closer to the circle of light.

The shaking had reached what appeared to be a crescendo, as the falling rock was now worryingly large. Hunk didn't say anything about the concerning size and frequency, but he did manage to coax Lance into a bit faster of a run. They were so close, it couldn't all go wrong now.

They were maybe 100 yards from the opening when the opening filled with six Galra sentries. Hunk dropped his shield and activated his bayard, slowing only a bit, Lance activating his shield and propping it over their heads as the tunnel itself continued raining down around them. Shots hit around them, shooting chunks out of the already-unstable tunnel walls.

Hunk shot the two on the right in quick succession, and then another one as they continued approaching. Lance dropped his shield and activated his bayard, shooting down the two on the left, leaving only one in the middle. As Lance lined up his shot, a chunk of stone, larger than the others, came loose and fell.

Hunk looked up and saw it fall, almost in slow motion, leaping to shove Lance out of the way. As he did, the final remaining sentry shot towards where Lance had been only a moment ago, hitting Hunk in the shoulder. As Hunk hit the ground, the ceiling slab came crashing down on his lower leg. Lance sat up from where Hunk and thrown him, coughing as he shot the sentry in the chest before turning to drop to his knees next to Hunk.

"Hunk! Oh, quiznack, Hunk, come on, buddy, look at me-" Lance shoved the rock off of Hunk's leg and rolled Hunk to the side. "Come on, buddy, we have to go, we have to get out of here."

Hunk groaned and propped himself up. "Yeah. Let's go, come on." Lance helped him up and pulled Hunk's uninjured arm over his shoulders and they moved as quickly as they could, both stumbling as the tunnel shook and crumbled around them.

After far too long, they clambered out of the tunnel and into the daylight, coughing dust out of their lungs. Hunk tapped at his comms again. "Anybody there?"

Pidge's voice came through almost immediately. "Hunk! Are you guys okay? We lost contact with you! Where are you, is Lance with you?"

Lance tapped into the comm link. "Yeah, I'm here Pidgeon. Think we can get a pickup?"

Hunk typed into the holopad quickly. "I sent you our location. We're pretty far from Yellow now though, we had to take an alternate route after the tunnel collapsed."

Pidge made a concerned noise. "What- never mind, we'll hear the whole story later. Since I've got cloaking, I'm still planetside, so I'll be there in just a tick. Just hang in there a little longer, okay?" And the comm link cut off, leaving Hunk and Lance to wait.

Hunk wrapped his uninjured arm around Lance in a side hug. "I can't wait to get off this stupid planet."

Lance gave a sort of half laugh, burying his face into Hunk's neck. "Seconded."

Later that night, after the two had been fussed over by the team and everyone had been filled in on the details, Coran insisted that Hunk and Lance join him in the infirmary.

Lance looked visibly uncomfortable as they entered, Hunk still limping slightly. Coran checked them over with several weird scanners that Hunk was far too tired to wonder about. Finally, after a lot of "hmm"ing and "hah"ing, Coran straightened up.

"Number Two, if your leg is going to heal correctly, we had better get you into a pod tonight, and it wouldn't hurt that shoulder either. You'll probably only be a couple of hours, these things are relatively minor fixes."

Hunk shrugged. "Whatever you say, Coran."

Coran looked at Lance. "Number Three, I'm sorry, but your shoulder-"

Lance swallowed hard. "Um, yeah, I kind of figured."

Coran put a hand on Lance's knee. "If you would like me to, we do have a mild sedative? You would only wake up as you came out of the pod, if you think-"

Lance was already nodding gratefully. "I'd appreciate that, Coran. Thanks."

The pod hissed as it opened and Hunk tipped forward into a pair of familiar arms. He looked up to see Lance smiling at him, dressed in his paladin pajamas.

"You good, buddy?"

Hunk nodded, throwing one of the infirmary blankets around his shoulders. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine. What about you?"

Lance nodded, looking to be in better spirits than he had before. "I'm good, yeah." He handed Hunk a change of clothes.

Hunk glanced around as he changed, noticing the empty room. "I guess everyone else has gone to bed, huh?"

Lance nodded, gesturing towards the door. "Coran waited for me to get out to make sure I was okay, but I told him I'd hang around to check on you when you got out so he could go to bed."

Hunk smiled. "Thanks for waiting for me. Do you want to go get something to eat? The pods always leave me starving."

Lance snorted. "Do you even need to ask?"

As the two headed to the kitchen, Lance cleared his throat. "I wanted to thank you for today. I couldn't have gotten out of there without you, man."

Hunk waved a hand. "You'd do the same for me, Lance. No big deal."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "Yes, big deal, Hunk. That was the bravest thing I've ever seen."

Hunk shook his head. "Brave? No way, I was terrified the whole time. I just... You needed me and it was easier to focus on that then how scared I was." He couldn't quite look Lance in the eye as he said it. "I think if I'd been there by myself... it might have been a really different story."

Lance nudged his shoulder. "Hunk, you are the most selfless person I know, and what you did? That was brave. Really brave. You saved my life, you got me out of those tunnels." Lance wrapped his arms around Hunk in a loose hug. "If I'd been there by myself it also would have been a very different story." His voice wavered and he swallowed thickly. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Hunk. Today or any day. I love you, buddy."

Hunk sank into the hug gratefully, already starting to tear up. "Thanks."

Lance hugged him more tightly, sounding like he was on the verge of tears himself. "Anytime."

Hunk held Lance tightly, grounding himself in the contact. "I love you too, Lance. You... you're my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without you, either. I'm really glad we ended up out here together, you know? I'd... I'd really miss you if you'd left and I'd still been on Earth." He laughed wetly, wiping the steady stream of tears off his cheeks. "It's a good thing I didn't go back to the dorms without you and Pidge, huh?"

Lance laughed, squeezing Hunk one more time before releasing him to hold him by his shoulders at arm's length. "Yeah, I guess it is, huh?" He let go of Hunk to pull down the box in the kitchen that held the paladin's snacks. "Want to try some of those cracker things from Olkarion?"

Hunk smiled and shrugged. "Why not?"

Lance pulled out the pouch in question and then paused, biting his lip. "Hunk, can I... I mean, do you think..." He took a deep breath and looked up at Hunk. "Do you remember at the Garrison when one of us would get really homesick and we'd just cuddle all night?"

Hunk nodded. "Yeah, do you want to do it again?"

Lance nodded. "If you don't mind? I just... I don't want to be alone right now."

Hunk pulled Lance into another hug. "I don't mind at all. Besides, it's been a bit of a rough day all around, don't you think? I could do with a good cuddle."

Lance shot Hunk a pair of finger guns. "I have been told I give pretty great cuddles."

Hunk snorted. "Oh, have you now?"

Lance puffed up in mock offense. "I have! I'll have you know I am a renowned cuddle master, the reigning cuddle champion-"

Hunk smiled, heading to his room with Lance in tow. They were going to be just fine.

[brokemultidotexe]

Topflight Academy Teaser | OT7

↬ Pairing: OC (Yuri) x ?? | Yoongi x Seokjin [OT7]

↬ Summary: Every year students are tested to find what they are strongest in by the government, allowing them to direct what jobs the students will have once they graduate. Yuri is the only student at the top of every category which has only ever happened  twice, including her, in the history of her country. The day she gets her yearly test results her life turns upside down when she comes home to the murder of her parents, but she ends up getting an offer she can’t refuse by being recruited by a secret organization that keeps her out of the country’s orphanage. Once recruited into Topflight Academy, which trains young kids to take on secret missions sanctioned by the government, she earns a spot on the Academy’s elite team with seven other trainees which allows her access to more information than she ever thought possible. Yuri and her team begin to unravel the secrets of the very academy she thought had saved her. When the Academy realizes their secret is out and the team they trained goes dark, the government has to fight against the very weapon they trained to kill and disappear.

↬ Word Count: 2.2k

↬ Warning/Rating: M | mentions of blood, near death experience

↬  Genre: Mystery/Action

↬  Part: Teaser (future scene)

⦕fic tag request⦖ • ⦕masterlist⦖

“Suga for the love of god get control of this car!” Hoseok bellowed through clenched teeth as he tried his best to fight for control of the car.

“Ya! I’m working as fast as I can!” he said defensively, “JK is trying to get closer to you so I can hack into the car’s computer.”

“Yuri.” 

Her hand went to the ear piece and pressed it further into her ear so she could hear Namjoon’s voice more clearly, “Yeah?”

“Is there any room for you to reach under the steering wheel and pull the cover off?” His voice was calm which helped her nerves. She leaned forward once Hoseok had lifted his leg up into his seat using his left foot to try and help control the car. The car having to weave in and out in traffic was making it more difficult to get a secure hold on the panel. “Yuri?!”

“Jesus, she’s working on it.” Hoseok barked at Jungkook.

Planting her feet against the door and pushing onto the tips of her toes allowed her to grab the cover and rip it free. A sudden force from another car hit the door she was using and propelled her forward causing her to hit her head against the cover she had just removed. The broken pieces lay scattered around Hoseok’s feet, “Yuri! Fuck, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She said in somewhat of a daze. She shook her head forcing herself to focus, “The cover is off, what next?”

“Rip out all the wires.”

“What!?”

“What!?”

“What!?”

Yuri, Hoseok, and Jungkook were all shocked by his direction. Pulling out all the wires would essentially make the car inoperable, basically making them sitting ducks for the people chasing them. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Yuri could hear the anger in Jungkook’s voice.

“It will keep them from controlling the car. There are three options that you can choose for this, you can either wait and have us keep trying to hack the car when they keep trying to cut us off and run us off the road, you can abandon the front seat and strap in the back once you pull the plug on the car and force it to flip into the river ahead which will allow you to control every aspect of it, or you can wait until you find a good opportunity and jump from the car.” There was a pause, “The probability of a severe injury is high if you jump from the car though.” He added as an afterthought.

“So basically we get to choose how we want to die, wonderful.” Yuri said sarcastically.

Hoseok glanced over at Yuri once she was sitting back in her seat, “Shit, you’re bleeding.” It was only then that she felt something warm running down her face towards her eye. She wiped her hand across her forehead and wiped the blood on her clothes.

“I’m fine.” 

Hoseok kept looking back and forth between Yuri and the road ahead, “What do you wanna do?”

For the first time that night there was silence in her ear as they all waited for her answer, “Our highest probability is the Han River.”

Without saying a word he nodded and the familiar background noise from her earpiece came to life, “Alright, I’m letting HQ know the new plan. We’ve been through these scenarios before and how to roll the car as safely as possible. I can get Suga to send the coordinates and we’ll meet you guys there to grab you.”

The energy in the car had changed and the both of them felt their nerves begin to set in, “You go ahead and strap in.” Yuri nodded and climbed into the backseat as quick as she could and strapped herself in with the seatbelt. “How close are we?” Hoseok still continued to fight the car waiting for Yoongi to send the coordinates.

“Less than five minutes. I’ve sent the coordinates of the safest spot you’ll have and also programmed an alarm to go off to tell you when to pull the plug and set things up. We have both of your geopositions so we’ll know exactly where you are at all times.” Even though everyone had gone through this scenario during training it didn’t stop everyone from being on edge with anxiety and praying for a good outcome.

“We need to go radio silent so they think they’ve pushed us far enough apart. We’ll be able to lose the car we have on our tail and get there before you hit your mark. You guys be safe and we’ll see you soon.” Namjoon’s voice was the last thing she heard before everything went silent signaling that the two of them were all each other had until the car hit the water.

The touch screen in the car had their position on a map along with a countdown timer letting them know when to start preparing for their insane decision. Yuri was doing her best to keep herself calm which normally wasn’t an issue but she was looking at possible death right in the face. “Yuri, roll down the windows in the back. We’re coming up on our mark so make sure everything is clear for me to get back there and immediately strap in.”

“Got it.” Yuri leaned over and rolled down both windows in the back while Hoseok rolled down the windows in the front. The wind from outside was blasting her in the face and she was very thankful for deciding to braid her hair at the last minute knowing that if she hadn’t her vision would be obscured making it hard to assist Hoseok and keep him safe. The flashing of the quadruple zeroes paired with the beeping had her heart in her throat knowing the time was now. Hoseok looked in the rearview mirror and made eye contact with Yuri who nodded her head in determination while gripping her seatbelt tightly.

Hoseok punched the gas towards the floor putting as much distance between their car and the car chasing them before reaching under the steering wheel and grabbing a fist full of wires and jerking them out from the console. The entire car lurched and he turned the wheels towards the river causing the car to jump the curb and started down the descent to the water. Hoseok unbuckled and tried to crawl into the back but he was having to fight the rough terrain. He was being knocked around and Yuri began to panic thinking he wouldn’t be able to get strapped in before they hit the water.

Yuri unbuckled and gripped the headrest of the seat in front of her to try and keep herself steady. She reached forward and grabbed Hoseok’s shirt and pulled him towards her with all the force she could muster. Once he was in the back and on the other side she reached over and grabbed the seatbelt and handed it to him hoping he would be able to buckle himself. She started on hers but abandoned it after watching him struggle, so she helped him out and felt relief once she heard the click knowing it was secure. She leaned back and grabbed hers and Hoseok was doing his best to assist her. He glanced to the side to check how long they had before they hit the water. Knowing Yuri wouldn’t be able to buckle in time he called out for her while he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards his body. He did his best to wrap his arms around her and hold her tightly while protecting her head with his arm.

The car hit a small boulder causing the car to flip multiple times. Hoseok did his best to hold onto her knowing he couldn’t let her go because with the windows open her body could easily be thrown from the car and that was something he refused to let happen. By the time they hit the water the only hold he had on her was her shirt which was now almost completely ripped off from the force of the car rolling. Once the car hit the water Hoseok knew he only had a few seconds before water would begin to rush in through the open windows. He was almost positive his arm was broken but he needed to make sure that Yuri was coherent enough to be able to hold her breath underwater.

“Yuri!” he yelled and his stomach sank when he didn’t get a response. He unbuckled his seatbelt so he could get a better hold on her and pull her closer now that the water was pouring in. “Yuri!” he slapped her cheek over and over trying to get her to come to. He grabbed her head to check her pupils but before he even got the change he felt something warm and slick, he pulled his hand away and saw blood coating his fingers. “GODDAMMIT YURI!” Hoseok was beginning to panic so he pulled her close enough so he could check to see if she was breathing. His body sagged in relief when he felt the hot air brush across his ear. Now his main focus had to be getting both of them out alive. The water was already to his upper chest and knew that they would have to hold their breath until the car fully sank beneath the water so they could escape safely.

Hoseok did the only thing he could think of which was to cover Yuri’s nose and mouth and hope to god he could get her to the surface before she ran out of air. Once the water hit their chin he covered her mouth and started to swim with her pushed in front of him. A piece of metal that was out of his view cut into her arm causing the water to go pink behind them as he continued to swim. His grip on her was becoming weaker as the pain in his arm got worse and he did his best to hold tight. His worst nightmare came true when she ran out of air and started to fight him and in the process slipping out of her shirt and taking a huge gulp of water into her lungs when she tried to breathe causing her body to begin sinking. Yuri was already in someone’s grasp before Hoseok could even attempt to try and grab her again. 

He hoped it was someone in the team because he was running out of oxygen and needed to get a breath of air before he could do anything else. Once he broke the surface he looked around frantically hoping to see Yuri come up to the surface right behind him. About ten feet from him he saw Jungkook break through the surface holding a lifeless looking Yuri. The dread that entered his body was ice cold and he swam frantically towards both of them while Jungkook continued to swim towards the bank under the bridge so they were out of sight.

By the time Hoseok was out of the water the entire team was surrounding Yuri and Jungkook while he tried to get her to breathe. “Yuri come on!” Jungkook pleaded desperately before leaning back down and filling her lungs with air. Jimin was working on compressions while Jungkook did everything in his power to try and save her. The rest of the team looked on silently with Taehyung pacing only to stop every so often to glance over and check on her. “Yuri, baby, come on. Please take a breath.” Jungkook was filled with relief when she started to choke. He turned her on her side and rubbed her back as she threw up water and whatever food had been in her stomach. He sat back on his hunches and sighed in relief once her eyes were open, followed by everyone else. Taehyung leapt forward and hugged her tightly mumbling incoherently against her skin. 

It was only then that Jungkook realized that Yuri was laying on the ground stripped down to just her bra, her shirt somewhere in the water, as everyone else looked on. “Jimin give me your shirt.”

The older boy was caught off guard by his request, “why?”

Jungkook stood and ripped Jimin’s shirt off his body causing the button’s to fly off in every direction, “Ya!” he looked at him in disbelief. Jungkook ignored Jimin and bent back down and helped Yuri sit up so he could help her slip her arms into Jimin’s shirt and close it around her. Jimin quieted his protests once he realized why.

“Let’s get her moved and back to HQ. Yuri and Hoseok need to go straight to the med bay once we arrive.” Namjoon said bringing everyone back into the present, “We don’t need to stick around any longer. Yoongi already heard the police call on the scanner before you even hit the water.” He said to no one in particular.

Note: There is no set release date to this fic yet, it is still a WIP but I hope to get it out soon and i’m just really excited about it. There are two links at the top that will take you to my masterlist and a form that will give you the option to be part of the tag list for this fic, that way when it is released and updated you don’t have to worry about it getting lost in the mass of posts in your feed.

[disaster-fruit]

Ahhhhhh, I just read your recent urupara post and hngh....I ship now. Not from South America but I had read briefly about the Paraguayan War and how it was one of the most devastating wars in that about ~50-75% of Paraguay's population died because of the war, but I didn't know that Uruguay was involved, especially to such an extent which definitely sounds impactful from the perspective of nation-tans. I'd love to hear more about them and about your thoughts regarding the Paraguayan War.

This ask made me SO HAPPY when I got it and now that I finished the bigger part of my research I can finally answer it! But since this could easily turn into 10 pages of non-sense, I’m gonna do my best to be concise and focus on Uruguay and Paraguay and not go on thousands of different tangent BUT if you or anyone else wants me to go deeper into my hcs about the war, just send another ask! This time I promise I won’t take this long to reply ahsduas 

The Paraguayan War was indeed horribly devastating to Paraguay, and it did seem that after it the country would disappear from the map, with so many people dead, from battles, diseases and internal persecution by the Lopez government. And it was a trauma for Paraguay the nation-tan as well that is even hard to speak of. Before the war, he was a glowing optimistic country, opening up after decades of isolation, and had somewhat good diplomatic relationships with all his neighbors - even though there was tension regarding territorial disputes and river navigation. He wanted to establish his place as a power in the region, against the influence of Brazil and Argentina, there was a growing military industry, illiteracy was almost eradicated, he was doing well. He was still a poor agrarian nation under a dictatorship centered on the Lopez family, but he was in general optimistic and ambitious. The war destroyed all he was building and left him with nothing.

It was clear that the war would be won by the allies very soon - the plans collapsed within the first months, and he was soon fighting defensively in his own territory - but no one could have predicted the scale of the tragedy. After a point, Para was sure he would disappear after the war, he had no reason to believe Argentina and Brazil had any intention but to divide the territory between them. And even if they didn’t, which was not a possibility he considered, the nation is its people too, and what happened in the war as a demographic catastrophe. By the end of it, there were almost no men left, and the population was mostly made of women - mostly girls. I think through the war that constant loss manifested in him in a lot of ways, like him slowly realizing his wounds weren’t healing as easy and fast as they should, and leaving behind scars, he was constantly exhausted, his body was weak, sickly-ish, and it continued to be for many years after the war. Still, he found a strength he didn’t know he had, both in how brave his people were in the war (and that is considered one of the factors of the war taking so long, there’s a lot of letters from ally soldiers describing how fearsome the Paraguayans were in battle, despite being outnumbered and outnumbered almost every time), and how somehow he managed to rebuild himself, even if permanently scarred. That was somewhat a surprise to him - he was so sure he was gonna die. In a way, maybe, he might feel like he did, but then realized he didn’t. After witnessing such cruelty and pain, he became a more caring and humble person, more conscious of his own limits and of his strengths, something his neighbors failed to do. 

Uruguay is an interesting case in the war - it was its internal problems that triggered it (though it was clear that a war would eventually happen in the region because of those territorial disputes and river navigation), but it was the country least involved in it. Uruguay sent only 5000 men to fight ( though it had the highest rate of death in the alliance - 62% of those Uruguayan soldiers fought in the war). The war was also very beneficial to Montevideo, which made money and developed from being the main port used by the allies. Uruguay and Paraguay were allies since both were being constantly threatened by Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay right before the war was in the middle of a civil war between the two main parties, the blancos, who were in power and had an alliance with Lopez, and the Colorados, supported by Brazilian troops. I don’t see Uru being in favor of either party, since all he had ever seen was the two fighting and not giving him a day of peace, but he especially didn’t like Brazil and Argentina interfering in his business - he knew both would gladly have him as their province if they had the chance. But he liked Paraguay a lot and was hopeful that with Paraguay’s growing military power, he’d be able to help the blancos against Brazil. But the Paraguayan army never reached Uruguay. Instead, Brazil quickly won and put the colorados in power, suddenly forcing Uruguay against his one ally. 

If Brazil and Argentina both had their own interests and ambitions in the war, Uruguay had nothing to gain from it, and I don’t think he at any moment wished for anything but for it to be over. I think one thing that he especially hated at the start of it is that there was actually a considerable number of Uruguayans fighting in the Paraguayan side, and when the allies captured those Uruguayans, they were all executed. So Uru was pushed into war with a gun on his head (Brazil’s) and had to kill his own people, fighting with his former ally, who was involved in the war because he honored their alliance and risked himself to help Uruguay. He hated every minute of it. It was still 1866 when almost all Uruguayan troops left the war, which was always being fought for Brazil and Argentina’s interests only, but he remained their ally. Once the war was over though, he was the first to try to make amends with Paraguay. As a person, he could see clearly the injustice and absurd that had happened, and feel the soul-eating guilt of letting that happen. He could never fix it, couldn’t go back and stop himself from ever asking Paraguay for help or from not rejecting the Triple Alliance, all he could do was pardon the war debts and give Paraguay back objects stolen from the war. But I think because of this, Paraguay doesn’t hold far as much grudge against him as he does with Brazil and Argentina. 

This was very……. not coherent auhsduiashd But there are honestly so many ways I could answer this question and so many things I could talk about, I tried my best to have some self-restraint (yes this huge text is me being retrained), but if there’s anything I didn’t cover or if you want me to go deeper into any point, just send another ask!! After all, writing these things forces me to somewhat organize y thoughts and consider new perspectives and that is all valuable for my fic, so thank you for this ask!

Also knowing someone started to ship urupara because of me makes me just asdhuas SO HAPPY. That is my legacy, spreading this ship in 2020.

[tainbocuailnge]

ive played all the story chapters and a bunch of side missions and tried out a handful of characters so now it’s time for The Official Lance Tainbocuailnge Review Of Fate/Extella Link if you’re like me and were kinda on the fence about buying it after extella massively let you down

tldr; gameplay is actually fun and varied with loads of different objectives and the same servant can be played in different ways so it doesn’t get boring. main story is a bit disjointed and most servants only have a quick cameo but it gets charlemagne’s plot beats down well enough and the silly everyone-knows-everyone banter is delightful. everything looks better, the world actually feels populated, and there’s a lot of care put into special interactions. link will not disappoint you like extella did

the gameplay has much more variation than just press button use moon drive repeat. you’ve got a mix of regular attacks that lead into various combos and active skills with cooldowns. each servant has like 7 of them, generally some combination of damage skills buffs and debuffs, and you can set 4 at once so there’s a degree of customisability to how you play each servant even within the fighting style they’re inherently geared towards. servants with similar regular movesets (like cu and scathach) still have decidedly different active skills so they don’t feel interchangeable. certain moves from servants that were already in extella are generally reused either at the end of some combo or as an active skill which for me goes a long way in still making it feel like the same game, just better

attacking builds moon drive meter, and fighting enemies while moon drive is active earns you np meter. this means you can use your np as often as you can charge it instead of the pathetic One time it was in extella and you can just blow up a whole sector without remorse. you can also end moon drive early with a weaker version of your noble phantasm. some active skills are labelled as class skills and if you use those in a combo against a servant you get the button mash attack that extella had. altogether it really gives the sense of an all-out servant battle

allied servants are much much much more proactive. they’ll actively go out and conquer sectors for you and will try to join you wherever you’re fighting the boss servant. if your allies are nearby more of your active skills will get the class skill property and they’ll join you in the button mash attack. before the battle you also set two support troops, who will randomly join in on your combos or defend you when you’re in a pinch. hakuno is also out on the field, so combat is much more a team effort than before

stage objectives are varied too, there’s field effects, map jamming, hunting down messengers before they can call for reinforcements, escorting allies to specific locations, waves of shadow servants, lancelot disguising himself, robin or lishu going invisible, iskandar or darius with endless armies, drake or gilles bombarding from afar, all often used in various combinations too. on top of that the extra stages will provide random additional challenges so even replaying the same stage will be different every time. 

there are four difficulties (that I’ve unlocked) but I haven’t tried any of the higher ones yet so I don’t know what they change to make it more difficult other than enemy level. there are like. i think at least 50 maybe even 100 extra stages to play after you’ve cleared the ~30 main story battles that continue until servant level 200 or something so there’s a lot to do even after you’ve gone through the story. servants unlock by clearing story battles and I didn’t realize this until very late and was very pissed off that the game wouldn’t let me use cu but that’s on me. the money is power system is still in place so you don’t have to manually train any new servant you want to try out you can just powerlevel them. install skills are also still in place and you do need to level servant bond if you want to use any decent number of those

there’s a pvp mode too but I haven’t tried it yet so no comment on that beyond i bet skilled lancelot players are The most annoying motherfuckers to fight against

graphics are a huge step up from extella. reused areas got a complete visual makeover while retaining the same feel. everyone’s models got spruced up and now they don’t look plastic anymore. there is an unreal amount of care put into sculpting karna’s asscrack. the ost actually slaps beyond the main theme this time as well as featuring some ol reliable CCC tracks. everything looks much more polished

the story is somewhat disjointed because of both the large cast and the splitting routes. the story splits up at various points to create an excuse to make different battles but it means a lot of things happen at approximately the same time in slightly different ways and it can be confusing to keep up with what happens in which order. for that reason I suggest looking closely at what path leads to which ending and playing all the quests of each converging branch before moving to the next day. the story seems to go out of its way to be ambiguous in when what happens exactly and how it’s even supposed to follow the events of extella so I think it’s best to look for the themes and the fun lore details over the linear coherence

overall the atmosphere is pretty silly and servants constantly banter back and forth even during tense situations, but it lands the occasional serious moment well enough imo. charlemagne and karl are the only ones who have any significant story focus but since they’re the only newcomers it’s not like the other guys particularly need the screentime. charlemagne himself is a pretty silly and lighthearted guy so he goes along well with the general feeling and it actually works in favour of his heavier plot beats because of the contrast. I grew attached to him incredibly quickly, not in the last place because he gets hyped about every single person he meets and it’s hard not to get excited too

the servants who weren’t already in extella generally get to show up more in the main story than the already familiar faces but most of them don’t have much more than a cameo. having a lot of people just randomly roam around with no idea what’s going on goes a really long way in making the moon cell feel populated beyond the people directly involved in the story so I actually like it a lot. they came up with like 3 different convenient plot devices to give you servants to fight without worrying about what that means for the alliances and it gives room for a lot of cool character moments

a good chunk of the extra stages come with their own mini stories told through the combat dialogue which adds to the liveliness of the setting. my favourite so far is the one where liz and nero try to hold a concert and hakuno frantically tries to explain to charlemagne in the middle of combat why it’s absolutely vital to keep them from doing that

everyone seems to know everyone so a lot of story dialogue is banter in varying degrees of playful versus vicious between both likely and unlikely combinations of servants and there’s a lot and i mean a LOT of care put into specific interactions. if two servants even remotely have an opinion on each other there’s special dialogue for it, and I even picked up unique dialogue for when archer acts as support troop for cu which no doubt means it exists for other combinations too (altho that’s not subtitled so i dont know what they’re saying there i could just tell it was the usual bickering because of the tone lol). some servants have unique win quotes from hakuno, she calls gilgamesh by his nickname ‘gorgeous’ for example. servants will sit around your home base and have a default line to say but sometimes they have lines that refer to each other instead. compared to how barren extella was, link is overflowing with the sense that these people have lives outside the current conflict and se.ra.ph is a thriving and vibrant world for them to live in

there’s a scene where karna and arjuna use their noble phantasms against each other in mutual destruction and it fucking RULES

[vulpinmusings]

Ski’tar and Friends part 17: Envar’s Wild Tour

This week, Ski’tar, 6, and Vemir follow a drugged-out teenage Lashunta around a highly secured space station run by a probably-evil corporation.  Headaches ensue.

The Dawn of this Nonsense

The Prior Incident

Archive

There were a few false starts before Envar managed to locate the elevator, since he had all the mental coherency of a bowl of pudding. Eventually, though, he managed to both get into the elevator and decide on a destination at the same time, and we went down to a level on the station chock full of very secure doors.  When we stepped out of the elevator, we were greeted by a pre-recorded hologram of Llia Tam, Envar’s mom and CEO of Arch-Energy Consortium.  The message was a basic but very firm reminder to all employees to maintain a proper level of security with their personal passwords.  Envar talked back to the hologram, confusing it for the real Llia, and complained that he just couldn’t remember all the complicated passwords.

The hologram had nothing to say in reply.

Once the hologram had switched off, Envar took us to a door locked with a retinal scan and unlocked it for us.  It led to another, fancier elevator.  We got off in what looked to be a lounge for high-class station employees.  At the far end, past a set of glass doors, was a bar staffed by androids wearing crisp white suits.  The android at the door welcomed us, checked our weapons and Vemir’s coat, and then Envar took us to the bar itself, which was tended by a Kasatha with two extra prosthetic arms.  That makes six total.

Envar ordered the strongest cocktail available, while my companions opted for something more normal.  I ended up getting served a whiskey because I hesitated too much. Luckily for my sobriety I never had to drink it, because just as the bartender set the glass in front of me, there was a commotion at the doors.  A rough female Ysoki flanked by two Vesk had come barging in, shoving the maitre d’ aside and making a beeline for Envar.  The Ysoki was demanding money that Envar owed, but our good buddy was still way too high on trans-dimensional pesh to register anything besides the fact that the Ysoki was fluffy and pet-able.  Vemir managed to catch Envar’s hand before he could do any actual petting, and I stepped up to try and defuse the situation.

I’m not sure if was our shared species or my calm logic, but I got the lady to calm down enough to acknowledge that Envar was clearly needed time to come back down to reality enough to worth threatening. She wasn’t willing to just walk away or sit around, though, so she proposed a bet: if we won a challenge of strength against her Vesk or a battle of wits against her, she’d give Envar another week before coming to collect.

After sizing up the Vesk and discussing matters among ourselves, we agreed that I would take on the battle of wits.  The challenge turned out to be a game of Farlay’s Crossing, a simplified recreation of a major battle between the Pact and the Swarm; whoever eliminated their opponent’s fleet was the winner.  I chose to play as the Swarm, and that may have tipped the scales because the Ysoki lady said the Swarm was her preferred faction.  It was a close game, as the first five rounds went to whoever was taking the agressor’s turn.  In the sixth round, when I had two ships against her last, I finally managed to pull off a defense that beat her attack, eliminating her final ship.

The Ysoki was upset about losing, but I’d been turning the charm on during the game, complimenting her successes and not gloating over my own, so she left without further fuss beyond giving me some flirty looks and pushing a sample of pesh onto me.  I held onto the drug just in case we needed something to nudge Envar later on.

Envar had sobered up somewhat during the course of the Farlay’s Crossing game, so he took less time guiding us to his next destination: the observatory lab at the top of the station.  When we arrived, Envar promptly got lost in the star-field displayed on one of the screens in the antechamber and didn’t snap out of it until Vemir knocked on one of the retina-locked doors leading farther in. The next room contained the telescope and a number of consoles for controlling the various systems.  Another hologram of Llia appeared with a warning about the restricted access rules for the observatory, but Envar just waved that off and went to the consoles, saying he wanted to get a “new high score” on what he assumed was just a vidgame.

We rushed after Envar to try and keep him out of trouble, but before we could even start trying to talk him down he’d somehow configured a dimensional shield to focus the surface of the local star right on top of us.  The room grew blindingly bright and a couple spots started getting dangerously hot, heralding the arrival of two sunspot fire elementals.

We wrestled Envar out of the chair and I took his place to reset the dimensional shield before any more elementals appeared, and this while one of the things was breathing down my neck and bathing me in radiation.  Vemir and 6 pulled out their arc pistol and frostbite rifle, respectively, and laid in to one of the Elementals.  Once I’d gotten the shield out of the danger zone, I ordered my drone to physcially shove the other elemental back, since I figured the drone’s laser would be next to worthless against beings made of literal fire.  The drone managed to throw the elemental into the wall once, but after that only succeeded in holding it in place until it bashed my drone into a pile of slag.  I threw a pair of shock grenades and a frag, all to some success, but then the second elemental got back up in my face and gave me a slap as I tried to scurry away.  I dodged around the first elemental, which was looking a lot less hot after suffering a lot of cryo-bullets and electrocution, and knifed the thing in the back as I regained my feet.  That proved to be enough to discorporate the first elemental. 6 did one better, landing a cryo shot on the remaining elemental in just the right spot to turn the whole thing into cool rock just long enough for a roundhouse kick to destroy it.

Envar took a picture of us catching our breaths following that fiasco, and judging by his reaction the pic went viral after he posted it to social media.  He then took us around the lab and let us loot several lockers.  We found a few good things, and figured that if we managed to get out the station without further incident then the blame for everything would just fall on Envar’s shoulders. Vemir found a deactivated spy drone hidden behind a locker and took it in case it had any data that historia-7 might be interested in. After looking over the remains of my drone, I salvaged its laser pistol and decided it would be better to just leave the rest and rebuild the drone from scratch.

Envar was at a bit of a loss for where to take us next, so we seized the opening by implying we had an interest in Arch-energy Consortium’s operations.  We intended to get Envar to lead us somewhere close to his mother’s office and then ditch him to break in, but he declared the only part of the business area that wasn’t boring was his mother’s office.

So, that proved to be easier than planned, for once.

During the elevator ride, a pair of Vesk in station security uniforms joined us for a few floors and gave our group suspicious looks.  They got off without saying anything, but I knew our odds of a clean getaway had just taken a bit of a dive.  We got to the door of Llia’s office without trouble, but when Envar opened the door he was dismayed to discover a new, second set of doors just inside.  I managed to hack the lock without tripping the silent alarm, and we went inside.

Llia Tam’s taste of decorations leaned toward the ancient.  There were old parchment maps and oil paintings on the wall, racks of wine, and a model of the Pact Worlds hanging from the ceiling.  The only proper technology was the computer on the desk.  While 6 and Vemir distracted Envar by asking for wine and chatting about one of the paintings, I went to the desk and started doing my thing.  Then Envar offered me some wine and asked what I was doing.  6 said I was just checking the firmware, and I added that I was going to try and alter the second door’s security so Envar could get through himself.

I was lying, of course.  All I was interested in was finding any data that looked like it would be damaging to Arch-Energy if the Starfinders were to posses it.  I located a set of files locked behind two-factor authentication; I would need Envar’s keycard and hack a password.  I managed to non-verbally convey my first need to 6, who smoothly swiped Envar’s keycard and passed it to me, and the password gave me little difficulty.  The hidden data was still heavily encrypted, but I was able to determine that it proved that Arch-Eenrgy Consortium was a front for a secretive corporate group that operated through false identities.  I copied everything of value for the Data-philes to take a crack at later.

With the data now in hand, we asked Envar to walk us back to our ship so that his presence would dissuade any suspicious parties from acting until we were back in space.  As we started flying away, we spotted two security drones following us.  I obstructed their attempts to scan us, so they found nothing incriminating and we got into the Drift without a fight.

Historia-7 was pleased with both the data and the spy drone.  She actually smiled for a split second!  She sent everything off for analysis, and as our debriefing came to an end some results came back.  Historia didn’t give away and details, but she did say that Zigvigix, the Exo-guardian leader, would need to know some of what had been uncovered.

Envar sent us an invitation to his 24th birthday party, but none of us had any intention of putting up with him again without a big ulterior motive.  Historia-7 overheard this conversation and, for some reason, felt it was important that we maintain a presence in Envar’s life, so she “volunteered” some other Starfinders to go in our place.

[vannahfanfics]

Roxas the Wingman

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts

Characters: Sora, Jasmine

Requested By: cornholi4 (FanFiction)

Additional Tags: College AU

A dreamy smile was on Sora’s face as he leaned over his desk with a lightly blushing cheek in one hand with the other slowly, methodically, absently twirling his pencil, hazy blue eyes currently locked onto the radiant young woman seated exactly two rows ahead and one seat to the left of him. A deep, admiring sigh exited his lungs as he sat there admiring her, not even paying attention to the droning of their history professor pointing at some map or another on the PowerPoint. Her name was Jasmine, and she was the most beautiful creature that he had even seen; thick, luscious dark brown hair that framed her face in flowing waves, beautiful caramel latte skin that glowed like the desert’s setting sun, warm brown eyes with thick brown lashes that Sora so easily envisioned himself getting lost in. His elbow slid over the smooth surface of the desk as he craned his neck further trying to get a better look at her; all he succeeded in doing was slamming his head down onto the table with a loud smack! He flushed pink at the chorus of giggles that bubbled up around him, namely from one of his best friends that was sitting beside him- Roxas.

“Dude, would you just man up and get her number already?” the blonde boy snorted in derision. Sora growled lightly in response, peering through his spiky brown bangs up at the sneering guy.

“Shut up, Roxas, it ain’t that easy…”

“You talking about Jasmine?” Xion asked from Roxas’ other side, leaning forword so that she could be involved in the conversation. “Isn’t she dating that Aladdin guy?” For effect, the raven-haired girl gestured to the Arabian man seated beside Jasmine who was feeding his totally illegal pet monkey apple slices under the desk. Sore grunted in a bout of triumphant laughter.

“Nah, they’re just friends.”

“You know that, but you don’t know her number?” Roxas tutted with a shake of his head. “This is ridiculous. I can’t deal with your groaning and moaning anymore,” he muttered. Sora lifted up his head as Roxas scrawled something hastily on a piece of notebook paper, tore it free from his binder, and crumpled it up into a ball.

“H-hey, what’re you- Oh my God, no!” Sora hissed in utter dismay as Roxas reared back and launched the wad of paper at the back of Jasmine’s head. Roxas had a pitcher’s arm, and the projectile smacked right into his intended target; she gasped lightly aloud and her hair whipped over her shoulder as she wildly glanced back, eyes darting through the crowd to see who would dare chuck the paper at her. Sora had slammed his head down on the desk again and was shielding it with his arms, whining miserably. Through the small gap in his arms, he saw Roxas motion to her to open up the paper. Warily, Jasmine did as bid, leaning down to retrieve the crumpled ball and, as quietly as she could, unwrinkled it to see what was written on the page.

“I hate you.”

“You ain’t about to in five seconds,” Roxas laughed back. Whining with the pitch of a wailing jet engine, Sora could only watch in dismay as Jasmine’s brown eyes danced over the penciled words. He jumped violently in his seat as they darted back to lock right onto him, so violently in fact that he kicked his backpack two feet forward and made the desk screech against the floor, making the whole back of the class snicker at him again. He shrunk down into his chair with a raging blush, wishing for nothing more than to melt through a hole in the floor and never return, as the girl’s piercing eyes regarded him levelly. Slowly, note in hand, she turned around to resume listening to the teacher’s lecture. Sora wasn’t sure if it was a good sign that she gently laid the note down on her desk rather than crumpling it back up and beaming it right for his bright red forehead. “Relax,” Roxas chuckled as he slapped Sora on the back encouragingly. “I got this.”

Sora only responded with another wheedling groan. He would have to get the notes from Xion after this, because there was no way in hell he was going to be able to focus because he was too busy wondering which way Jasmine was gonna smack the hell out of him after class. Upside the head? On his cheek? Maybe she would go straight for an uppercut or a sucker-punch… Sora spent so much time spiraling into worse and worse probabilities that he didn’t even notice class was over- that is, until the girl he was currently panicking over was standing right in front of his desk. When her pretty manicured nails tapped lightly on the surface of the desk to get him to lift his head, which was shoved down into his arms, he did way more than that; he jerked up like a rod, vibrating the desk as he quivered in absolute alarm. When she quirked an eyebrow at him, he felt like he was gonna explode.

“H-h-h-hey J-jasmine…” Roxas was bent over double trying to contain his laughter at the horribly pitiful display he was putting on. At least Xion tried to smile at him- at least, for all of three seconds before her cheeks bulged out and her hand flew to her mouth to contain the loud snort. Sora deflated, hand delving into the spiky tufts of his brown hair. “Look, Jasmine, I’m sorry. Ro-“

“Is it true?”

“Do wut?” He gaped owlishly at her. She flipped the note around and his blue eyes slowly drifted down to the messy writing scribbled across it basically admitting that he was totally over-the-moon for her. His cheeks turned the color of cherry blossoms as his startled blue eyes rose to her inquisitive but not judgmental ones. “Oh, hehehehe… Um…. Yeah…” he admitted in a teeny-tiny shy voice. He smiled sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I guess you’re, uh, gonna tell me to buzz off or somethin’ now, right?” Of course she is! She’s so pretty and outta my league… I totally fudged it about Aladdin, too; what if they are dating? I mean, I can take that guy, but still!

“No…” He looked up with bugging eyes as her pretty lips curled into a shy smile. “I was going to say that if you’d like, I’ll meet you at Starbuck’s at three to chat.” Sora gaped stupidly at her while his little pea brain attempted to process what she had said. When it did, it didn’t have nearly enough capacity to form coherent sentences, so he settled for wildly nodding his head instead. As she giggled girlishly and gave him a small wave before strutting off, Sora melted into a pile of lovestruck goo against the desk.

“Ah… No way… We’re gonna go to Starbuck’s <3” he cooed as he basically reached nirvana. The tingling that was traveling all over his body surely signaled the release of his soul from his material form. Well, he had to grab it and force it back in, because there was no way he was gonna miss his date! Now that the girl was gone, Roxas no longer cared about somewhat preserving Sora’s dignity; with an unrestrained howl of laughter, he began beating his fist against the desk while he remained bent over from cackling so hard.

“Holy shit! You looked so uncool! You better count yourself lucky that she likes goofballs, because Jesus Christ!” With a deep gulp for air, he sat up, face flushed and tears at the corners of his eyes. Sora didn’t know whether to glare at him or laugh with him, because loathe as he was to admit it, he probably did look like a big bungling buffoon. Par for the Sora course. Roxas continued chuckling as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “Ahhh, man… That was good… Ehe, you owe me ice cream for this one, Sora.”

“Yeah, I suppose I do. Thanks. Though I coulda done without you laughin’ at me.”

“Look, I’m nice, not a saint.”

“Heehee, you two… Sora, three o’clock isn’t far off. You should probably hurry!” Xion told him. With a gasp, Sora leaped out of his desk. Well, he attempted to leap, but his foot caught on one of the desk chairs and he ended up sprawled out on his belly. Groaning, he stretched out an arm to retrieve his backpack and then hurriedly scrambled up, yelling good-bye to Roxas and Xion as he hauled ass out of the lecture hall. He could barely hear the shouts of protest as he barreled down the hallway and out the building, shooting down the sidewalk in the direction of the campus library. He didn’t hear them, because his heart was singing with joy. He jumped up to pump his fist in the air with a hyped crow of his voice.

I got a date with Jasmine! Thank God for wingmen…

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