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spicycreativity · 3 years ago

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Flufftober Day 1 - Winning a Tedddy Bear for the Other

This is the only October prompt fic I was able to write, so uh. Hopefully you enjoy it!

2.5k words, pairings are pre-Logince, Dukexiety, and pre-Moceit

Nobody actually wins a teddy bear for anyone, despite their best efforts

Truly have no idea if this is solely an American hick town thing or not, but where I'm from, all the summer drama took place at the county fair; the hook-ups and break-ups and all the stuff that people would gossip about at the beginning of the school year. Except! The crew have just graduated and this is kind of their last hurrah before college and work and what have you.

Roman closed his eyes and tried to focus. He turned the basketball over in his hands, privately grossed out by the weird, sticky texture beneath his fingertips. He let the ambient noise of the county fair fade into the background. Focus. He just had to focus.

Then Virgil's voice shattered his concentration: "You know this game is rigged, right?"

Roman opened his eyes and, catching an annoyed glance from the carnival worker, sighed and hurled the ball at the hoop. It soared a neat arc and fell neatly through the center of the hoop. Ha. "I'll have you know I played basketball in middle school." He puffed out his chest a little and raised his arms so Virgil could admire his killer delts.

"And how old are you now?" Virgil leaned into Remus, who was lurking over his shoulder like some kind of lanky cathedral goblin. How Remus had landed a boyfriend before he did, Roman would never know.

The worker handed Roman another ball, which Roman accepted with a half-hearted "Thanks."

"It's true, though," Remus said, placing his chin on Virgil's shoulder. "The hoops are ovals."

"Everybody knows that," Roman huffed, and threw the ball.

"Yeet!" said Remus. Idiot.

The ball bounced off the rim. "You distracted me!" Roman huffed. The carnival worker held out another ball, but Roman dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Oh, forget it!" Two baskets would only get him a stupid Minions keychain, and he definitely didn't want something that cursed in his possession. He turned and walked away, half-hoping Remus and Virgil wouldn't follow him.

"Dude, you paid for three tries," Virgil said.

Roman stopped and turned around and nearly got trampled by a herd of excited pre-teens. "You don't get it!" He gestured at Virgil and Remus' intertwined fingers, even now unable to fight back the wave of jealousy and longing that rose up inside him. "You guys already have your fairy--" He paused, corrected himself. "Your weird, creepy, Tim Burton fairytale dream. I have one shot to impress Logan tonight and I need to make the most of it!"

"Hold on, hold on, hold on!" Remus grabbed Roman by the wrist (ewww, Roman, just try not to think about where his hands have been) and dragged him over to a bench. "Your grand plan is to win Logan some lame carnival prize before he even gets here?"

"Oh, buddy." The mocking pity on Virgil's face was enough to make Roman blush. Jerk. All he'd had to do was sit around and wait for Remus to make the first move. "What makes you think that's even going to work?"

Roman stood up again, motioning for Virgil and Remus to stay seated. He'd had enough. "Because it's a grand, romantic gesture and I am a grand, romantic prince. Now leave me alone! You're wrecking my concentration and I'm supposed to meet Logan in an hour!" And he stalked off, soon getting lost in the crowd.

Virgil looked at Remus, who was wearing a look of undisguised masochistic glee. Still, Virgil ventured, more to soothe his own conscience than anything, "Should we try to help him?"

"Look!" Remus shot to his feet, pointing off into the distance. "Deep fried pickles!" He took off, nearly jerking Virgil's shoulder out of socket.

Virgil dodged an elderly woman and nearly tripped over his boots. "Roman?"

"No, I'm Remus."

"No, I mean, should we try-- Oh, forget it." Virgil wrapped his free hand around the back of Remus' and let Remus yank him through the crowd. There was a long line for the cart selling deep fried monstrosities because this was the county fair and people lost their humanity upon stepping through the gates. Not Virgil. He would sooner lick the door of the horse barn than consume anything from this horrorshow of a food cart. That was one thing Virgil and Roman could agree on: fair food was disgusting. Ah, poor Roman. "You do have to feel a little sorry for him, though," Virgil said, admiring the shiny piercings decorating the shell of Remus' ear.

"Who?" said Remus, standing on tiptoe and examining the crowd.

"Ro--"

"Oh, Roman?" Remus landed hard on his heels and nudged Virgil with his hip. "No I don't. A little heartbreak might take Sir Brags-a-Lot down a peg." Something caught his eye and he jerked his head away with a smile. "Hey. V. I'd like to dip my pickle in your deep fryer."

Virgil made a face, but soldiered on. "But he's had a crush on Logan since, what? As long as I've known him."

"Longer." Remus stuck out his tongue. "He and Logan were lab partners Freshman year. And I had to hear about him every single night." He lowered his voice into a passable imitation of Roman's, gesticulating with abandon. "'Ugh, Remus, this boy in my science class is so annoying; he knows about dumb shit like protons and covalent bonds. Who even cares about that? I don't. So I'm gonna keep talking about it for the entire bus ride home.' Nightmare."

"Exactly!" said Virgil, though he had kind of forgotten what he was getting at. What had he been getting at? He shuffled forward as the line moved and turned his fractured attention to the menu.

"Hey," said Remus, now drumming on Virgil's shoulder with his fingertips. "When was the last time you saw Pat and the Hat?"

"Who?"

"Come on, that was clever."

Virgil tapped his lower lip. "You mean Patton and Janus?" Remus just blinked at him. "I dunno, didn't they say they were buying tickets?"

"Yeah, like, 30 minutes ago.

The line moved forward again. Remus ordered his horrifying hell-pickle. Virgil ordered a lemonade, knowing full well that Remus would insist on paying anyway.

"Maybe," said Virgil, side-stepping away from the order window and deliberately ignoring the way Remus was running his tongue all up and down his deep-fried pickle, "they went to the petting zoo."

"Well, let's go get 'em," Remus said. "They don't get to ditch us just because Patton wanted to see the bunny rabbits."

The setting sun painted the clouds a brilliant orange. Patton sighed and stared out at the expanse of the fairgrounds beneath him. One by one, rides were starting to turn their lights on. It was exactly the most romantic time of evening, exactly how he'd wanted things to go when he suggested they take a quick ride on the Ferris wheel before tracking down the others.

Well.

Almost exactly.

"I should sue," Janus said. Again. He looked over the edge of their basket where it dangled almost exactly at the top of the Ferris wheel. "How long would you say we've been stuck up here?"

"Um," said Patton, trying to wiggle his phone out of his pocket.

"What if I was diabetic, hm? What if one of us needed to take life-saving medication and couldn't because we were stuck at the top of this death trap?"

"But Janus." Patton waited for Janus to meet his eyes, then smiled. "We don't."

The magic didn't last. "It's the principle of the thing!" Janus said explosively, looking away in obvious agitation.

Patton rallied and tried again. "You don't think it's kinda romantic? I mean, look out there." He gestured at the lit-up fairgrounds and the golden haloes of clouds.

Janus huffed and didn't look. "I don't see what's so romantic about a potential reckless endangerment lawsuit." And he was off again, ranting about confusing legal concepts and other things Patton wouldn't care about, except that they were important to Janus.

Oh, well. He sighed and watched the blinking lights of El Niño. If they got down soon, maybe he could win Janus a teddy bear or something and make his confession then.

"What color?"

Roman ran a hand through his hair. Of all the games to have a knack for, he hadn't expected darts. "Pink, I guess-- No, wait, the blue one."

The attendant nodded and handed Roman a flimsy acoustic guitar. "Congrats, man."

"Thanks." Roman turned to go. He had to meet Logan at the gates soon. At least he wasn't doing it empty-handed, not that a barely-playable guitar was a particularly romantic gift. Realy, who was he kidding? Logan didn't want the guitar and Logan didn't want him.

The fairground lights lit everything up a sickly green. Roman scanned the crowd at the midway, trying to determine the best way through, when his gaze fell on a familiar pair of glasses.

He was still trying to decide how to react when Logan reached him, his arms full of brightly-colored stuffed lemurs. "Hello, Roman."

"How long have you been here?" Roman demanded. The idea that Logan had been sneaking around, avoiding him, sat heavy in his stomach.

But to Roman's surprise, Logan blushed. "Not long," he said, shifting his weight. "I wanted-- Well, it seems foolish now."

Roman forgot his anger in an instant. "What? C'mon, Lo, I don't think you're even capable of being foolish."

"I had thought," Logan dropped his gaze to the stuffed lemurs in his arms, "I had thought that if I came early, I might be able to win something big and--" He cleared his throat. "And give it to you."

"Why?" Roman demanded. Why would Logan copy his plan?

"Well, Roman," Logan said in such a clipped, professional voice that he might have been delivering the weather report, "traditionally, winning a large prize for your sweetheart at the county fair is a romantic gesture."

"But I'm not your sw-- Oh." Roman's jaw dropped. The guitar's strings dug into his fingers. Then he started to laugh. Logan's expression hardened, but he stayed put, staring intently at Roman. "I'm sorry!" Roman choked out, brandishing the guitar at Logan as some sort of peace offering, though Logan didn't have a free hand to take it. "I was--" Tears streamed hot and ticklish down Roman's cheeks, his entire body still spasming with stifled laughs. "I was trying to do the same thing! That's how I got this stupid guitar."

"Oh," said Logan. "Oh, dear."

"Come on, let's sort this out." Roman stood on his tiptoes, spotted an empty bench, and led Logan to it.

"This is terribly awkward," Logan said, adjusting the lemurs in his arms. "Do you even want these?"

"Not really," Roman said. He held up the guitar. "Do you want this?"

"I don't."

They smiled at each other. "You know," said Roman, hurriedly counting Logan's stuffed lemurs. "You can trade six of those in for a kiss."

"Piercings!" Remus tugged on Virgil's sleeve and gestured at the booth.

"I thought we were looking for Patton and Janus," Virgil said, already trying to think of a way to keep Remus from getting an ill-advised piercing.

"Forget them! I wanna get my tongue done."

"Here?" Virgil asked as Remus tugged him closer and closer to the piercing booth. "We're, like, six feet away from a horse barn. You're gonna get an infection."

"Damn, V, it's not like I'm gonna French kiss the horses."

Virgil bit his lip and made a second attempt. "Don't you have enough holes punched in yourself?"

"Nope!" They reached the booth and Remus bounced on his toes while he studied the laminated photographs pinned to one of the tent walls.

"Fine, but don't expect any kisses until that piercing is fully healed," Virgil said, struck by an eleventh-hour moment of genius.

"Hold up." Remus turned around and stared at Virgil. "What?"

"You heard me." Advantage secured, Virgil relaxed a little and even managed a sneer. "No kisses until I'm 100% sure you're not gonna get blood or anything else in my mouth."

"Baaaabe." Remus wrapped his arms around Virgil's shoulders and let Virgil take some of his weight. "You're killing me! What about my self-expression?"

"You can get your tongue pierced," Virgil said, "just not at some shady horse barn-adjacent piercing booth run by a bunch of traveling randos."

"I'm an American," Remus mumbled into Virg's collarbone. "It's my God-given right to die of a horse infection because I got my tongue pierced at a-- Whatever you said."

"C'mon." Virgil stood Remus upright and took him by the hand. "I'll pay for you to get your tongue pierced at that nice place downtown. Or I'll get Janus to pay for it. Next birthday. I promise."

"Thanks, I guess," Remus muttered. He was obviously trying to pout, but his face kept cracking into a smile.

"And as for your self-expression…" Face-painting booths were a dime a dozen at the fair; you practically couldn't turn a corner without running into some kid with their face painted to look like Spider-Man. Virgil pointed to the closest one and continued to lead Remus toward it. "I'm thinking spider eyes for me, kraken for you?" Remus took a breath, but Virgil knew better. "There's no way anyone is going to paint a photorealistic dick on your face."

"Alriiiiight," Remus said. "Kraken it is."

The sun was now nearly gone over the horizon, only visible as a faint golden line. Janus had finally worn himself out and gone silent, though even in the darkness, Patton could see the annoyance smoldering in his eyes.

Oh, he was so cute. Even when he was annoyed. Which, granted, seemed to be most of them time, although some of it had to be an act. He smiled sometimes, when he thought Patton wasn't looking.

It was those secret smiles that had given Patton the courage to make this plan. He jiggled his leg and swallowed as nerves sent flutters of nausea through his belly. "Um, Janus?"

"Hm?"

"I mean," Patton started, "since we're stuck up here and everything."

"Don't remind me."

"I mean, you know, It's not all bad. If I have to be stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel, I'm glad it's with you. I… I'm glad it's us."

For a moment, Janus was silent. Then he said, in a tone of suspicion: "You're trying to cheer me up."

Patton sighed. As smart as Janus was, he just didn't seem to be putting the pieces together. Although, that was as much Patton's fault as it was Janus'. Well, it was mostly Patton's fault. He just had to be brave. "Look, Janus, I had this whole plan where we were gonna ride the Ferris wheel together and it was gonna pause at the top and while we were looking out over the fairground, I--" His breath hitched.

"...Was going to push me over the edge?" Janus asked.

"I was gonna do this." Rainbow lights from the Ferris wheel spokes danced across Janus' face. Patton leaned over and took his hands. "Janus, I really like you. And I want--"

"Yes," said Janus. "Whatever you're about to say, yes."

So Patton kissed him.

#queuing this for later today as well #i truly have no idea when you people are online #spicypost #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #moceit #logince #dukexiety #spicywrites

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byunbaekby · 5 years ago

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Home (l.jn)

Pairing: Reader x Jeno Warnings: Language, loss of virginity, safe sex, alcohol use Summary: The story of your first love, which never truly ends for anyone. Luckily for you, Lee Jeno was the perfect first boyfriend. The struggle for you is trying to be perfect for him. Words: 11.6k

You had a thing for perfection.

It was something that had been ingrained into you from the moment you were born, to an entrepreneur mother and a father who was a cardiac surgeon. As soon as you could walk, you were placed in dance classes and trained from that moment on. You had practically tried every playable club sport in Korea. In addition to these demanding extracurriculars, your parents also expected school to remain your top priority.

It was a tiring life, trying to be perfect. But even so, even you yourself had learned to never settle for anything less than.

The way you meet Lee Jeno is perfect.

It was a rare weekend off for you, without swim practice or dance rehearsal to attend or an upcoming test to study for. You wanted to do something, free from the restraints and stresses of your overworked life—rarely were you ever able to simply let loose and enjoy the short vacation from school allotted by the weekend.

That is how you find yourself walking arm in arm with your best friend Heejin down the trails of the town’s harvest festival, an annual weekend-long celebration to welcome the oncoming Halloween holiday. There were booths manned by the local businesses, contests with sizable prizes, and games for the children to partake in.

As you tread down the pathway with your best friend in tow, you close your eyes and take a slight whiff, relishing in the smell of nature and the breeze against your shoulders. One could never appreciate the idyllic simplicity of life until they were too busy to even breathe. “You really should get out more, babe. I feel like we haven’t hung out in forever,” you hear your best friend saying, her attention turned to the nearby booth selling churros.

“You say that like it’s a choice, Heej.” You retort quickly, a simpering smile at your lips despite the fact that you know it actually is: it is simply you who overloads yourself with work.

“No, it’s not, not with you and your busybody ways,” she replies with a laugh, tugging you along. “I just.. miss my best friend sometimes.”

You sigh, a sharp juxtaposition to the festive mood of your surrounding environment. “I know. I miss you too, Heej. But.. we’re here, right? Let’s enjoy our time together!” Your response brings a grin over your best friend’s lips and immediately she nods, glad to have you back.

The two of you spend the next hour filling your stomachs with sugary treats and playing games intended for children age ten and below. The hour is filled with laughs and grateful glances at your best friend, having been too long since the first time in a long time that you had experienced such carefree joy.

You’re once again sauntering through the pathways of the festival when you hear Heejin’s whispered voice in your ear: “Dude, hottie at three’o’clock in the pumpkin patch. Look at him!”

Your best friend had always been a bit boy-crazy. So, you laugh and turn your attention in that direction, your grin dissipating as your gaze falls upon likely the most attractive male you’ve ever seen.

You catch him mid-laugh, so his smile is the first blessing you witness. Teeth bared in a wide smile, his eyesmile is enough to make you melt, and you feel an overwhelming desire to match his smile. Once you get over your initial shock at the beauty of his smile, you’re able to take in the remainder of his appearance. His hair is dark, shaggy as it falls over his eyes slightly. He has a lanky build, though you can see the slight outline of muscled arms beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt. Said t-shirt is bright orange, a typically unsightly color, and from your distance you can make out the words.

Oh, you realize. He’s a part of your town’s youth committee, dedicated to community service and other activities. This makes sense now, as you observe the way he smiles brightly while he helps a little girl pick out a pumpkin. He’s volunteering, you realize.

Your heart swells a bit, and you curse inwardly; it’s already happening.

Before you can register it, Heejin is already tugging you by the arm to the enclosed area, where families can buy pumpkins to make their own homemade jack-o-lanterns. “What are you doing?” You whisper to her in surprise as she pulls you to look at one of the many piles of pumpkins.

“Nothing,” she responds with a knowing smile, feigning interest in the pile of orange squash. “Just getting a closer look.” Not so discreetly, she lifts her head and looks over her shoulder to where Pumpkin Boy is helping the little girl and her family check out, a hefty pumpkin on the father’s shoulders.

“This is a bit too close… too obvious,” you tell her cautiously as she turns back to stare at the pumpkins of animated interest. It wasn’t that you weren’t interested in boys; you rarely had time for them, so much that your past flings were barely significant at all before you were forced to break up with them for the sake of your schedule. Now, having just turned seventeen, you had never had a serious boyfriend. If anything, you were wary of boys. Especially handsome ones like him, with a smile to melt a heart.

“Okay, but would you look at him? Why can’t the guys at our school look like that?” She whines, already turning back to steal another look. “Oh- he’s gone.” Her voice is confused, and dejected. With curious eyes betraying you, you follow her line of sight to find that he has, indeed, disappeared from the table he previously occupied.

“Can I help you ladies?”

The sudden deep voice takes you by surprise, and the two of you yelp as you jump in surprise, turning back to find none other than Pumpkin Boy himself, a friendly smile on his face. “Sorry,” he says, a deep chuckle leaving his throat next. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Were you girls looking for pumpkins?”

For a moment neither of you say anything, until Heejin clears her throat and nods while trying to hide the unsettlement in her voice. “Uh, yeah, we were.. Recommendations?”

“Depends what you’re looking for,” he leans down to roll over a pumpkin, moving it into place from where it had fallen out from its display. “Small or big?”

“Small,” is her immediate reply. A small pumpkin would definitely be cheaper, and as he leans down to search for a fitting pumpkin you slap your best friend’s arm, confusion in your eyes. Was she seriously going to put down actual money just to talk to a cute boy? She was unbelievable, but that was why you loved her: where you were quiet and studious, Heejin was always upbeat and bold, something you wished more of for yourself.

Pumpkin Boy soon stands straight again, and hands a small hand-sized pumpkin over to your friend with a thoughtful gaze, as though he truly cared about the state of the pumpkins he was selling. “What do you think about this one?” Without any disagreement she takes the pumpkin from his hands, already nodding.

“Exactly what I was looking for!” She responds, causing you to roll your eyes in amusement.

Though you thought he hadn’t noticed you, Pumpkin Boy turns to you. “And for you, beautiful? A small one too?”

His direct statement catches you off guard, and you swear your eyes widen as the air leaves your lungs. Did he just.. call you beautiful? You can almost feel Heejin’s excitement from beside you. Clearing your throat to mask your shock, you nod before replying with a small voice. “S-Sure.”

Immediately he is down again, searching for another small, hand-sized pumpkin to suit you. When he crouches to do his job, Heejin turns to you with her mouth open and her eyes full of elation, as though to say “He just called you beautiful!” You can practically hear it in her voice.

He stands again, hands sporting yet another pumpkin, similar to the one Heejin currently nests in her hands. “What do you think?”

The sincerity with which he gazes at you causes you to nod. “Perfect.”

“Great!” He responds, starting to walk to the tables where you can pay for your items, your pumpkin still resting in his large hands. Though it cannot weigh more than five pounds alone, your best friend looks to you with an overjoyed look at the fact that he is carrying your pumpkin for you. “I’ll help you two ladies out at checkout then.”

You follow him to the checkout area, where he places your pumpkin on the table that he stands behind. He reads out your prices to you, and Heejin pulls out her wallet to pay first while you observe his side profile. From all angles, he is undeniably handsome.

Then he looks to you, pulling you from your nervous stupor. With quick hands you pull out a paper bill from your wallet and hand it to him, which he accepts with a polite smile.

“You’re all settled,” he tells the two of you, though he hands each of you a business card over the table, one in each hand. “I’m a part of the youth committee,” he explains as you each take the business cards from him. “We’re all in high school, and we’d love to have more members.”

With another heart-stopping smile, he thanks you for your purchase and bids you two goodbye. As the two of you exit the area with your pumpkins in hand (easily handled in only one hand), you bid a silent farewell to him, the handsome boy who you’ll likely never see again. If only, you wish, you were a bit more bold and unafraid.

Goodbye Pumpkin Boy, you think to yourself as you look over the business card in hand. Your eyes bulge at the sight as you flip over the card to the blank side: Lee Jeno :) XXX-XXX-XXXX

You can barely keep the grin off your face as Heejin nearly drops her pumpkin, screaming in joy for you.

Once you arrive home, you text him with Heejin’s encouragement.

She complains half-heartedly that you don’t seem to be nearly as excited as she is, though she congrats you with an amused smile. In fact, your excitement is greatly hidden: you had never been the friend, between the two of you, to get boys’ numbers. Now that you have, a strange feeling of happiness makes its way into your chest.

After Heejin leaves, you text him. New pet pumpkin tucked on the windowsill of your bedroom, you type his number into your phone meticulously, and send the first nervous text.

To: XXX-XXX-XXXX Hi, is this.. Jeno? I’m the girl from the festival.

You frown at the message. It is so bland, so uninteresting. Why had he been interested in you? You’re surprised, however, when your phone beeps only a minute later.

From: XXX-XXX-XXXX Hey. Yeah, it’s Jeno :)

From: XXX-XXX-XXXX Did you make it home safe?

A smile bites at your lips as you quickly type a response.

To: XXX-XXX-XXXX I did. Did you finish volunteering?

His reply is just as fast as yours, if not faster.

From: XXX-XXX-XXX Yup, we just finished putting all the pumpkins away. Heavy, those things.

You chuckle, sparing a glance to the pumpkin on your windowsill.

To: XXX-XXX-XXXX Well thank you for your hard work. I’ll appreciate my pumpkin very much.

From: XXX-XXX-XXXX I hope you do.

From: XXX-XXX-XXX Listen, I’ve got to go but I’d love to talk to you some more. I’m glad you came to the patch today.

Your mind runs over to earlier this morning, when you had greatly battled Heejin’s decision to take you to the harvest festival on your day off. Surely, you should learn to trust your best friend’s intuition more often.

To: XXX-XXX-XXX Me too. I’ll talk to you later.

From: XXX-XXX-XXX Bye :)

You lean back in your bed to suppress the shy, overjoyed shrieks that threaten to leave your mouth and despite knowing full and well that his name is Jeno, you save his number under the name Pumpkin Boy.

Over the next few weeks, you indeed learn that Lee Jeno is just as kind as his first impression.

You learn that his birthday is in late April, a few months preceding yours. Somehow he lets it slip that he too, has never been in a serious relationship. Through a thorough game of twenty questions over the phone you learn that he plays volleyball at his high school as the libero, drives a car older than him, and dislikes mint chocolate chip ice cream.

The ice cream part is enough to cause your mint-loving self to make a face, but not enough to stop your feelings from growing rapidly.

It is the first time that you have freely conversed with someone besides Heejin without inhibitions or worries. Talking to Jeno comes so easily, no second thoughts.

Though he attends a different high school than you, this doesn’t seem to hinder your conversations, and you find yourself always wanting to talk to him. He texts you good morning, and you respond. You text throughout the day between classes, and he sends you one last smile-inducing message before going into volleyball practice. You take this time to study, so that you can be free when he comes out. On days that you have rehearsal, you’re lucky that these after school practices for your dance team occur at virtually the same time as his volleyball practices.

Since your meeting you’ve met only a handful of times. You went out once, to get ice cream (which was how you came to learn of his abominable opinions about your favorite flavor). The next, he invited you to watch him play a match at his school. You had been amazed then, at how this soft kind boy turned into a focused monster on the volleyball court. Then, you had met him for lunch, while telling your parents that you were meeting up with Heejin to study.

You share your first kiss when he comes to play a volleyball game at your school.

It is after the game has finished with your school facing an embarrassing defeat, and Jeno is walking with you down the open breezeways, that he kisses you.

He presses his lips to yours softly, but not without asking for permission, at which your heart warms. Dropping his volleyball bag to the floor without second thoughts, he tilts your face slightly upward by the chin, meets your lips, and you swear your world stops.

You’ve been kissed before, but never like this. It’s overwhelmingly, in every sense of the word, perfect.

Though he pulls away after a moment, you smile with only an inch between your lips, and pull him back to you. In that moment you feel an overwhelming joy down to your bones, and a strange power at your ability to initiate your second kiss. You feel weightless, yet there is an undeniable force tethering you down. It is Jeno, himself.

You realize then, this is what first kisses are supposed to feel like.

When you finally pull away to gasp for air, you register his laughing and a quiet “Wow.”

When he walks you off campus and out to your campus, he intertwines your fingers together. Your hands slip effortlessly into each other, curling naturally as though they were made for each other.

Three months have passed since you met when you’re laying in bed with only your bedside lamp on, hands hidden in your sweater as you FaceTime Jeno.

On the other end, he is wearing a hoodie and grey sweatpants, placing you on his nightstand as he gazes at you from his bed. He props his head up with his elbow, and smiles at you as you go on and on about your day. He peers at you with full interest from over his glasses, which you’ve seen him wear only a number of times.

It’s a Sunday night, nearing 11PM, but you don’t tell Jeno that you have a calculus test you’re supposed to be studying for. For all your parents know, that’s precisely what you’re doing in your room right now. But it’s not. Rather, you’re enjoying yourself with a bright laugh as you listen to Jeno retell a joke that his friend Jaemin had made earlier in the day.

“It was a lame joke,” you tell him once he finishes, leaving you in residual giggles.

“Why are you laughing then?” He raises an eyebrow, though an amused smile makes home across his face.

“Because you’re funny.” is your quick reply, covering your mouth with your sweater-covered hands. You simply cannot help the giggles that escape your mouth, a bright sound in the dull space of your room. Jeno simply has this effect on you; with only a smile or a lame joke, he is able to turn your dreary world into a place of carefree conversation and uncontrollable laughter.

Unable to control himself at how you simply fall apart at his joke, Jeno mirrors your laughter, though the sound is much different than yours. His laugh is deep, and after months of hearing it you start to think that you could listen to him laugh forever.

“You’re so cute,” he tells you once your mutual laughter has died down. At his sudden confession, you have the decency to smile, a warm feeling of espousement spreading through your chest.

“You’re cuter,” you manage with a shy smile.

“Impossible.” If you were being honest, you were surprised at how smoothly Jeno delivered his sweet lines to you, considering his truth that he had never had a real girlfriend. It makes you smile now, thinking that perhaps like you were experiencing all these newfound emotions for the first time, he was too.

A moment of silence passes over you, though you don’t argue. You simply stare at each other, throwing strange ugly faces back and forth as you both attempt not to laugh.

You lose when he makes an irresistible face, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. Exploding into giggles, you lean back in your bed and let the laughter overcome you, though you keep it quiet so as to not alert your parents of your lack of studying.

This was what you loved about Jeno. Never once did he make you feel that you were betraying your parents, for he always managed to make you smile in response.

When you finally quiet down after a fit of laughs, Jeno’s voice is sudden: “Be my girlfriend.”

Immediately your eyes widen, and you look at him surprised. The look on his face is just as shellshocked, as though he didn’t know the words that came out of his mouth. He quickly recovers, smooth as always.

“I really like you, Y/N. I like talking to you, and making you laugh, and hearing you laugh. I like seeing you all shy in your huge sweater, and I like the way you giggle when I kiss you. I like your mind, and the way you think, and even the way you think mint chocolate chip is the best flavor when it is far from the truth.”

His mention of ice cream makes you laugh again, pulling you from your shocked state. Only Lee Jeno himself would mention ice cream in a confession.

“I really wanted to wait, until we were in person. But you’re so busy, and I know you try to make time for me but you still are. And you’re laying there, looking so cute in your sweater and laughing so adorably, and I just-” He stops himself, taking a breath. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Will you be my girlfriend, Y/N?”

A warm smile makes its way across your face as you hug your blanket to your chest, as though you were hugging Jeno instead. “Yes.” You say finally, watching him break out into a bright smile at your response, sporting the famous eye smile that caught your eye in the first place.

Some people desire large grand-scale confessions of love, public and outrageous. On the other hand, some people prefer such moments to be small and intimate. Most people just want their confessions to be in person, actually.

But no, you decide that Jeno’s rushed and shy FaceTime confession is the best form, and the only one you want. It was perfect, and you could not imagine anything better.

Later when you yawn too loudly and Jeno wishes you goodnight with a “goodnight my adorable girlfriend,” you change his name from Pumpkin Boy to My Boy.

Your first date after becoming official is not even a date, really.

Jeno picks you up in his car, bids a nervous hello to your parents, and drives the two of you to the local library, where the two of you plan to study for your upcoming winter finals.

With final exams breathing down your back, the only way your parents will let you out is if you promise to study. Jeno finds no problem with this, so a week after that heart-fluttering FaceTime call, you find yourself pouring over your books alongside your boyfriend.

You were still trying to get used to calling him that.

What you didn’t need to get comfortable with was Jeno’s presence. Despite the majority of your conversations happening over the phone, you felt yourself slip into a comfortable silence with him as you both opened your textbooks.

His hand rests comfortably in yours, fingers curled together as the two of you look over your study materials. The library is quiet, though filled with students.

Though you try your best to focus, it is hard to stay so whenever you think about him next to you. He is wearing another casual t-shirt from the youth committee that you never ended up joining, and dark jeans with his glasses perched on his face. Without even trying, he looks effortlessly handsome. He constantly occupies your thoughts.

“Stop staring,” he says, not looking up from his notes. You pout.

“How did you know?”

“You started rubbing your thumb over my hand and you only do that when you stop reading.” Your pout grows deeper as you continue staring at his side profile, shamelessly now.

“I didn’t realize you were paying such close attention to me,” you respond while returning to your work with a sigh. There was surely no way you were going to be able to focus on physics and calculus with him right next to you.

“Of course I was. Just not as obvious as you,” he laughs lowly, careful not to disturb the silence of the library.

“Hmph,” is your response, as you begrudgingly turn the next page of your physics textbook. Oh, how boring simple harmonic motion is in comparison to the boy sitting next to you, who you’d much rather like to put your attention on.

“You wanted to study, now focus,” he says next, leaning in to place a chaste kiss on your cheek, leaving you warm with shyness. You simply don’t reply, just tightening your lips to prevent the proud smile threatening to spread across and returning your focus to your pages.

“Ah, so cute,” Jeno coos as he turns back to his textbooks.

Later when he returns you to your home he kisses you on the forehead and wishes you a quiet good luck on your exams. As he turns away and jogs back to his car, old indeed, you smile to yourself and think that this was the epitome of a great first date.

Finally summer comes, and you and Jeno are able to spend more time together.

Graduation has passed, both of you attending the other’s, and university awaits you. Though you and Jeno are attending the same university in Seoul, you know that this is the calm that awaits the storm. So, you take advantage of all the time this summer with the boy who has made his way into your heart.

Sometimes you found it difficult to comprehend that you had made it through six months in a relationship with him, given your schedules and both your lack of experience. Yes, your relationship was a ride, but you would do it all for him.

Especially now, as the two of you are connected in a liplock in his bedroom, you consider giving it all to him. Atop his bed, with him hovering over you with a kiss that makes your head spin, you feel for the first time a strong overwhelming desire.

His tongue slides over your lips and you let him in easily, these lines blurred as your tongue meets his. You’re not unaware of his hands that grip your hips, and the fervor with which he presses his body to yours. Within seconds his warmth is gone, and you pop your eyes open to find that he has pulled away to rid himself of his shirt. A smile makes its way across your face, and the shirt is long forgotten on the floor somewhere when he meets your lips once again.

Though the room is hot, you grow even warmer in the coming minutes as he presses his body to yours, your clothed cores meeting in a burning manner. Moaning into his mouth, you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him closer, begging for more friction.

He moans your name in response and groans, about to pull away. It is not the first time, after all, that the two of your have cut your makeout sessions off short.

You had discussed your virginities before, and had agreed that when the time came, it would be right. And to you, it felt right just about now.

“No,” you call out to him as he peels himself off of you and makes a move to get off the bed. Reaching to him, you grip him by the belt hook of his jeans, and pull him back atop of you.

Gaining newfound courage, you bury your face into the crook of his neck, kissing the skin. “I want you,” you moan into him before beginning to suckle on an area of skin.

You feel him tense in your hold, as though contemplating it, and he moans aloud. “Fuck, babe,” he curses as you pull away to reveal a pink spot at his neck, which will surely darken in the coming hours.

“Are you sure?” He asks, breath hot against your skin as he returns the favor, lips and teeth playing over the sensitive pallor of your neck. Yes, yes, yes. A hundred times yes.

You are sure there is nothing you’ve ever wanted more.

“Yes, Jeno,” you respond as you tilt your head back in pleasure, though it leaves your mouth as more of a moan than a reply. Not needing any further confirmation, he pulls away (getting a whine out of you) and reaches over to his nightstand, producing a condom from the drawer.

“I wanted to be prepared,” he explains sheepishly at your look.

“Whatever,” you respond, only reaching up to him to pull him back to you.

And your first time is indeed, with Jeno, all you imagined it to be.

The summer is a blessing.

Over the next few months, you are able to learn about Jeno in an entirely new way. It is almost intimate, the secrets and quirks you discover about this boy of yours.

You learn how to rile him up in a way that will surely end with him pinning you to the bed. You discover the spot on his neck that he loves you sucking on, and as he becomes increasingly daring in the progression of your sexual escapades, you come to find that no matter how rough he is in the act, he becomes the softest lover afterward.

But you also come to learn about what makes Jeno, Jeno.

You come to easily recognize the face that he makes when gaming, brows furrowed in concentration. Though he argues with you that he will watch whatever movie you want, you learn that he will almost always fall asleep in your arms whenever you turn on a chick flick rom com movie. You can’t even be mad at him, because you know he tried. As much as you told him it was okay to watch one of those action movies that he loved, he insisted on watching your movies, and that warmed your heart.

During your first sleepover, you find that Jeno likes to cuddle in his sleep. Though the victim is most often his pillow at home, it soon becomes you which he clings to in his sleep.

And when you’re not falling asleep in his arms, you do it to the careful sound of his steady breathing over the phone. It has become a routine now for the two of you, calling before bed and ultimately submitting to sleep together.

These are things that you have come to love, as much as you love Jeno.

It is what you have always desired in a relationship: the easygoing love, that didn’t ask for much. Comfortable, so much that he can tease you about how you snore and that you can smack him on the chest whenever he makes a dirty joke. So much that him in his pajamas becomes a familiar sight for you, and you learn to stop worrying over and controlling how you look around him. His love, in some ways, is like a blanket, enveloping you in all the warmth you need.

Jeno makes you comfortable, and that’s all you can ask for.

One night, in early August, you are on the phone when he says to you, “It’s 11:11, make a wish.” Instead of listening to him, you make a face which he catches over FaceTime.

“What’s with the face, missy?”

“11:11 is so.. ugly.” You respond, and he laughs, throwing his head back in that typical Jeno-style of his. Though you cannot explain any further, you get the idea that he knows what you mean.

Jeno has, of course, come to understand your affinity for perfection, and your obsession with being the best, as instilled by your parents. Therefore he understands what you mean without asking for a further explanation.

“It rubs you the wrong way, doesn’t it?” You nod. Though everyone claims it to be a magical time, you cannot help but feel that it looks off putting. Why 11:11, and not 10:10? It made more sense after all—ten was considered to be a perfect number, that’s why people say ten stars out of ten. The logic between 11:11 simply did not make sense to you.

Jeno seems to know you better than you know yourself, for he says just this. “I’m sure something like 10:10 appeals a lot more to you, huh?”

“How’d you know?” You ask, genuinely shocked as you tilt your head at him. Had you perhaps said your thoughts aloud?

“I’m your boyfriend. I know how you think,” he laughs matter-of-factly. At his laugh you pout a bit unknowingly, not sure how to feel at the revelation that he knew you just as well as you knew yourself. “Alright how about this. Let’s let the rest of the world be inferiors who make wishes at 11:11, but you and me will have our own special time. 10:10. Yeah?”

The idea is stupid, but you find yourself nodding and smiling at the same time. Warmth envelopes you once again, and you come to realize that this is love you feel for him, strong, potent, overwhelming love.

His idea was definitely stupid, but you were stupid in love with him.

The next morning you trudge your way down the stairs after staying up all night on the phone, looking for breakfast. In the midst of your preparations you hear your phone ring, so you look to it.

From: My Boy 10:10. I wish you’ll have a good day today, love.

You look up to the clock displayed on the stove and find that it is indeed that time. You’re surprised, honestly, that Jeno has managed to remember, though you shouldn’t be.

Yes, summer was a blessing and Lee Jeno was your’s.

Fall approaches quickly, signaling your impending departure from your home and toward adulthood. You are more than excited for your new university life, something you have worked toward your entire life.

And you’re more than thrilled to be doing it with Jeno beside you.

While you’re a business major and Jeno is studying kinesiology, you will be in two completely different buildings but that’s okay. The fact that you get to attend college with your boyfriend, something that you had worried about in the early stages of your relationship, is more than enough.

He helps you move into your dorm, and greets your roommate, Yerim. With his help you manage to unload the majority of your belongings, including many pictures of the two of you. Your roommate doesn’t miss the chance to point out your necklace, to which you smile. Jeno had gifted you a promise ring before the two of you left, and because you did not like the sensation of a ring on your finger, you had slid it onto a chain. It is with an admiring smile that Yerim comments, “You two must be serious.”

Yes, you are becoming an adult, and your love with Jeno has begun to mature.

What you don’t realize, is that it could mature for the worse.

College is busy, and you come to realize this.

Jeno is still playing volleyball for the school team, and his practice schedule is much more demanding than in high school. Likewise, you have joined the school’s dance team, because you simply cannot give up your first love of dancing.

You both have full school schedules atop extracurricular activities and part time jobs. So, it becomes increasingly difficult to plan dates, even study dates which had been your easy escape in high school.

Now, the two of you lay in your bed at the dorm, relishing in the rare presence of each other.

“How about Thursday, after your lecture?” He asks as he inhales your familiar scent that he had begun to miss.

“I work on Thursday from 3 to 7.”

He sighs, warm against your scalp. “Okay, how about after work?”

You make a face, though it’s hidden to him. “I have rehearsal from 8 until 11. How about Saturday?”

“I have a game.”

“Oh, right.”

“Won’t you come? You can come watch,” he says as he pulls his face neck, instead looking down at you. “It’ll be like high school again, remember?” This is said with a smile and a nudge, for he is no doubt reminiscing about your first kiss.

You have to fight to keep the displeased expression from making a home across your features. Sure, you loved watching Jeno play, for he exerted a different energy on the court. However, you had a test on Monday and could surely use all the time you had to study for it. You had been willing to give up time to spend with your boyfriend, but if you attended the game you would only be watching him. If you were only going to be watching him and unable to interact with him until after the three hour match, then you’d rather take a raincheck until you are able to be with him in person. So you tell this to him, hoping that he will understand.

He is Jeno, so of course he does. Simply offering a nod in response, he presses a kiss to your forehead. “Makes sense. You should study, anyways,” he says this though he wears a disappointed smile.

“Is something wrong?” You ask as you look up to him with worry in your eyes.

“No,” he replies immediately with a shake of his head. “Nothing’s wrong, I promise. Don’t worry about me. I understand, babe.”

You know he does, because that’s what he’s best at: understanding you. He always has. And so you are not surprised that when Saturday morning comes, and you’re about to turn off your phone to enter the library, you see his text.

From: My Boy 10:10. I wish you good luck on your studying and your exam, my love.

You smile at your boyfriend, ever so thoughtful, and quickly type a response back before tucking your phone away.

To: My Boy Same here. I wish you good luck on your game ♡

The first time you do think something is wrong, is when you return to your dorm a little past 10PM after studying for your upcoming finals.

It is December now, and with your first ever college finals beginning to stress you out, you had invested in a little study group. Your boyfriend had texted earlier, asking when you’d be done; you had told him seven, but it had run a couple hours over.

You are just about ready to jump in bed and text him, only to find him already sitting on your bed when you open the door.

“Jeno,” you call, surprise clearly showing across your face. His eyes are not directed at you, but rather the bag of food that sits on your desk. You can read the label perfectly; it is from your favorite restaurant, about a thirty minute drive off campus.

Had he gotten it for you, because he knew you were stressed and overwhelmed with finals? That was so sweet of him, not that you expected any less. “Did you get dinner?” You ask as you shut the door behind you, already slipping off your jacket to prepare to be in his embrace.

“You said you'd be back at seven.” His voice is tired, but still remains an edge.

It occurs now to you that he’s angry. You two have had your fair share of arguments, considering Jeno was expressive with his thoughts and you had a tendency to ignore things that upset you. He’s angry because you’re late, and you sigh.

“I know, but we got caught up studying. You know much this course has been stressing me out,” you reason with him as you open the bag, pulling out plates of your favorite meals. Though your stomach growls in pleasurable hunger at the sight, Jeno remains seated on your bed with a stern expression.

“I’ve been here for hours. Couldn’t you have left early?”

“For dinner? I was studying, and my phone was turned off. I said I’m sorry, Jeno.” You reply sharply, getting quite annoyed with his behavior. Of course it was thoughtful of him to bring you dinner when you would have just settled on ramen, but he knew how you were when you were studying. Considering that you were taking nearly twice the amount of units as him, you thought he’d understand your workload. “If you wanted to have dinner together you could have just come find me at the library.”

“No, not for dinner. For our anniversary,” he spits out bitterly, turning his gaze away from you.

That’s when it hits you.

Your mouth falls open as your gaze at him; had you… forgotten your anniversary in the midst of your school-induced craze? There was no way. You would never.

Immediately you pull out the calendar from your desk, and search for today’s date.

No fucking way.

You had… forgotten your anniversary. A year ago today, around this same time, Jeno had shyly asked you to be his girlfriend over FaceTime. You had skipped studying to talk to him, and now, you had used studying as your excuse to forget such a monumental date.

Guilt washes over you within milliseconds, and you’re grasping for him. As soon as your fingers touch his arm he stands from your bed, frustration and disappointment on his face.

“Babe-” You call him, but he cuts you off.

“No. All this time I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, thinking you’d come back with some surprise to make up for being late. But no, not only were you late, you forgot. Is your studying that important?”

You are at a loss for an answer, because you know that the immediate answer in your head will only upset him: Yes. Yes, of course your studying is your priority, as your parents made it so. But the question you had to ask yourself was, was it more important than your boyfriend?

The fact that you cannot find an answer upsets both you and Jeno.

In a moment he’s already grabbed his hoodie and turned to leave. “Eat your dinner. Happy anniversary,” he calls bitterly behind him. Within seconds, he is gone.

And you immediately scramble for your phone, looking to call him, text him, anything. You know Jeno, that he gets upset and simply needs time to cool down, so you cannot go after him. But when he calms, you know that he will look at his phone, and so you want to give him something to see.

Your eyes fall upon the clock as you type your message, and though your anniversary is less than perfect, you hope that he will come back to you.

To: My Boy I’m sorry. It’s 10:10. My wish is that you’ll forgive me.

And so he does.

Your freshman year of college is coming to a close, and you have yet to attend a party.

Everyone tells you that it is a rite of passage in university, but you have not been able to pull yourself away from your books long enough to even consider a party. All of your time is divided between school, dance, and Jeno.

Jeno, on the other hand, being a part of the school’s official volleyball team, attends many parties. It is not so much that it is irritating or worrying, but he surely goes to enough parties that he begins asking you to come.

You are packing up your dorm, tucking your decorations into a box when you receive a text.

From: My Boy Hyuck is throwing a party tonight. End of the year stuff. Will you come?

Lee Donghyuck is someone that you don’t particularly like. Though your boyfriend has befriended him through their mutual membership on the team, you dislike the fact that he is throwing parties nearly every weekend, urging your boyfriend to attend. You wish that Jeno would stop being so nice for once, and just say no.

Much like you do.

From: My Boy Please? It’s the end of the year.

Glancing at the message on your lit up screen as you tape a box closed, you sigh. You had just finished your final exam hours earlier, and you wanted nothing more than to cuddle in bed with your boyfriend before you both headed home for the summer tomorrow. In fact, the last thing you wanted was to have to fight a hangover on the drive home.

To: My Boy Not feeling it. I still have to finish packing.

His reply comes immediately.

From: My Boy I’ll help you pack tomorrow. Come on, it’ll be fun.

To: My Boy Jeno, I said no. I’m exhausted and I want to finish packing now so I can rest.

To: My Boy I’m not in the mood to party.

You toss your phone onto the bed, and though it beeps quickly with his response, you don’t glance at it until you’ve packed away another box.

From: My Boy Can’t you have fun for once?

At his message your brows immediately furrow in displeasure and your fingers are quick in typing a response, growing increasingly annoyed by his badgering.

To: My Boy Did you come to university to study or to have fun and fail your classes?

It’s a low blow, for you know Jeno only failed his Intro to Psychology class because it was early in the mornings on the days after his volleyball practices past midnight. But it doesn’t mean you feel any less upset with him.

From: My Boy Wow. Did you come to university to study until your eyes bleed and you forget your anniversary?

Another low blow.

Your fingers move faster than your brain, and you send your response before you can even comprehend what you have written.

To: My Boy Yes, I did. Go to your party. But don’t bother picking me up tomorrow. I’d rather crash than drive with your hungover ass.

Once the weight of your words begin to sit on your shoulders, he responds, and you can almost feel his frustration.

From: My Boy Fine.

You don’t sleep that night.

You had asked your mom to pick you up from your school, and you were glad that she had not asked any questions regarding your original plans to return with Jeno.

Rather, she shows up early in the morning and helps you load your belongings into the car. So early in fact, that when Jeno knocks on your door around noon, all he meets is Yerim who tells him you had already left.

As much as you hate to admit it, there is a bit of satisfaction in your chest when Yerim texts you to tell you this. You had planned to leave at 10AM with him anyways, yet he hadn’t even woken up from his hungover stupor until near noon. It only goes to show that you had been right after all.

Jeno was too much about fun, and you knew that was detrimental to him.

In fact, the two of you spend the first week of summer vacation ignoring each other. He texts you a few times, to which you give short responses. You do not pick up his calls, though you find trouble sleeping without the sound of his breath over the receiver.

This is the longest you’ve gone angry at each other, and this fact does not escape you nor Jeno.

You are already missing him so much, feeling that you’re missing an essential part of yourself, that when he shows up at your doorstep at 9PM one night, you immediately envelope him in your embrace.

Your argument is long forgotten, until Jeno mentions it while you’re cuddling in your now mostly barren bedroom. Somehow, your nostalgic mind throws you back to last summer, to the nights you had simply enjoyed Jeno’s presence in your life and in your bed.

Though only a year has passed, you feel like a new person.

“You know I love you,” his deep voice resonates in your ears, and you nod, your head on his chest.

“And I’d never want to hurt you.” You nod again.

“And you know I’m sorry.” You hum in response.

“And it’s 10:10, so I love you more. And I wish that we can leave this behind us,” he says, referring to your week-long argument. In response, you nod and look up to him with bright eyes filled to the brim of pure love.

“Consider it granted.” This is your reply as you press your lips to his, to the lips you have grown to love so much. On reflex, his hands come up to press at your hips, the body that he has admired in so many ways.

And that night for the first time in what feels to be a long time, you make love. It is perfect, though your love isn’t always. It is a love you have both come to take for granted.

The summer proves to be very different from the last. Something has changed, though you don’t know what.

Though you and Jeno have made up, this doesn’t mean you see each other as much as you’d like, or that your schedules clear up for each other, or that you become more understanding of each other. You take a summer job at your mother’s business, which fills your entire weekly schedule from nine to five. Meanwhile, Jeno busies himself as the assistant coach for a boy’s youth volleyball team which practices every other day.

The days belong to the world, but your nights belong to each other. Because your parents no longer care about the seriousness of your relationship with Jeno, they pay no mind to him spending the night, or you at his.

Tonight it is his bed that you lay in, his chest pressed against your back as he holds you by the waist. As much as you have been arguing lately, finding excuses to avoid him whenever your words hurt each other, you cannot deny that in his arms, you feel safe.

You feel, no, you know, that whatever the world throws at you, you will be okay as long as you have Jeno.

As soon as this thought occurs to you, you feel a strange emotion spreading across your chest, though it is not unfamiliar. There, his arm slung over your waist and his steady breath in your ears, you feel love seep through your veins and consume you.

Jeno is your home. You know that.

He is your person. The one person in the world who knows you for you. He accepts you for your flaws, like your overstudying, your habit of stressing yourself out, your desire for perfection. Jeno knows all these things, and accepts them.

Whenever you make mistakes (and you have made a lot of them), he forgives you. He accepts you with open arms, though you had never even left his heart. And through this he has taught you to do the same for him.

He laughs without hearing your punchline. He smiles for you without needing a reason to. He loves you, cherishing you as though you are perfect when you are far from it.

You know people all over the world spend their lives hoping for a love like this.

“Jeno,” you call to him, your voice breaking the silence though you know he was nowhere close to sleeping.

“Hm,” he hums in response, embrace tightening.

“Why did you pick me that day? In the pumpkin patch. Did you… come to me because you liked me? Or… was it fate?”

Not that you had ever believed in fate. You believed that fate could only work so many miracles: as much as destiny lends a helping hand, one will get nowhere without hard work. Hard work was your relationship.

He is quiet for minutes, but you know he is not asleep.

Finally, he answers. “I came to you.”

“Why?”

“Because. I knew you were special.” You? Special was surely the last word you would use to describe yourself. As though sensing your confusion, he continues. “You stood out to me. In the crowd of hundreds of people, I found you. I felt that you were special, and in the end, I was right. You are special. You are so determined… so smart. Forgiving, loving, strong-headed.”

You turn and bury your head into his chest as he continues to shower you with compliments. Even after almost two years together, he could still fluster you this way.

“I love you,” he finally says, a closing statement. He is good. He is too good to you, you think as he presses a kiss to the crown of your head. “Goodnight.”

You could never let him go. He is your perfect.

Four months later, two weeks short of your second anniversary, you nearly do.

You and Jeno are sitting in your shared apartment, the two of you having decided that you were ready to move in together. It had been a big milestone for the both of you, but you knew you were both ready. In actuality, you only saw each other so often in the apartment.

He’d wake up first and go to the gym after leaving a kiss on your forehead, and by the time he came back, you'd already left for your 8AM lecture. The next time you would meet would be briefly for a shared dinner, between your two discussions and before his volleyball practice.

Then you would slip into bed with him a little before midnight, having just returned from dance rehearsal.

Tonight though, you had decided to skip on rehearsal. It has been a couple weeks since your last quiet night with Jeno, so you made a sacrifice, one he had been begging you to make for a while now.

You know that Jeno misses you, just as much as you miss him. But the weeks are busy, and on the weekends Jeno almost always has games and events to attend. On occasions you join him, but you soon find them to be exhausting.

You much prefer these quiet nights with him, with his arms around you on the couch and a shared bowl of popcorn balanced between the two of you.

Tonight, you are uncharacteristically tired. With finals coming up, you have been overworking your mind to the max, and with the additional stress of dance on your shoulders, you have been getting less than enough sleep.

This is why you find yourself dozing off in Jeno’s arms, your head on his shoulder as your eyes begin to droop.

You love this. It is this comfort that you have long mentioned and adored.

You love that you can fall asleep in his arms, and know that you will wake up safe. You love that he loves you enough to carry you back to bed when you doze off, and you love that he loves you.

You love him.

Just as you’re about to slip into the abyss of sleep, you hear Jeno sigh.

“Seriously? You’re falling asleep?”

His annoyed tone makes you open your eyes, and you do so to find yourself facing his frustrated eyes. “Hm..?” You ask, voice still clouded with fatigue.

His response only reflects his growth in vexation. “We haven’t had a night to ourselves like this in weeks. We’re only thirty minutes into the movie and you’re already falling asleep. Are you that desperate to be rid of me?”

His words trigger a response in you, and you feel a huff of disdain leave your lips. “I’m tired, Jeno. I’m exhausted.”

“And you think I’m not? I have more units than even you this semester, and I have volleyball to deal with. You think I’m not tired, but I suck it up to spend this time with you?” He unhooks his arm from around you and you frown, knowing he is both physically and emotionally retracting from you.

“No one asked you to,” you reply angrily, feeling your annoyance grow by the second.

This seems to upset him the most, because he stands to his feet and begins to pace. You hate when Jeno paces.

“Of course no one asked me to. You shouldn’t have to in a relationship. But lately it’s always, ‘Oh Y/N, won’t you please have dinner with me tonight?’ ‘Babe, can’t you stop studying for two minutes to cuddle me?’ ‘Can’t you skip rehearsal?’ I’m tired of always asking you to put effort in.”

His answer infuriates you and you stand to your feet as well, volume of your voice rising. “I did skip rehearsal for you. And I’m trying my best, didn’t I promise you once that I’d always give my best for you?”

He scoffs, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, because this is your best.”

“This is my best!” You retort, feeling angry tears well in your eyes.

This was not your Jeno. Your Jeno was understanding, accepting. He loved you for all your bullshit, everything that you gave to him. Now your indignation is valid; you don’t recall ever yelling at him, or even getting personally upset, whenever he had knocked out during your movie nights. The nights were he would argue and insist on watching a movie of your choice, only to fall asleep before the end.

You could have made a scene then. Could have yelled at him for being insensitive, and that you would’ve much rather watched a stupid action movie with him than watch a rom-com alone.

But you didn’t. So it infuriates you that he has the audacity to complain, the first time you do what he does so often.

“Well maybe your best isn’t good enough.”

His answer stings, and hangs in the air, for you cannot formulate a response.

Not good enough.

Those were familiar words to you.

You had heard it from none other than your parents for the majority of your life. As much as you loved them, they were to blame for your insecurities, for your inconsolable need to be the best. You would only be the best by working your ass off for it.

You never would have thought you’d hear it from your boyfriend, who was supposed to love and accept you in all forms.

With sad, betrayed eyes you nod and scream back. “I know I’m not enough. I’ve never been enough. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No, it’s not. I want you to argue. I want you to fight back. You never do! You just let things happen, you just ignore them and think they’ll go away. You forgot our anniversary, and didn’t even chase after me. We got into a disagreement, one little disagreement, and you ran home without me.”

“Well fuck, Jeno, you’re saying you want me to be a mess?”

“No, I want you to fucking try for this relationship once. For once, I want you to pick me. Pick me over your stupid study groups, or your nights out with your friends when you barely even have enough nights for me. Pick me over your dance team, or studying, or any other stupid thing you have going on in your life.”

You glare at him, crossing your arms across your chest as he lists off the aspects of your life. “And you think I don’t try?”

He stares, and stares, and stares. You can practically see the deliberation in his eyes, hear his thoughts in your mind. This you can do because you know him, you have learned him from the inside out.

But perhaps you have not learned everything.

“No. I don’t.”

Finally, your tears fall. Hot and angry, they leave wet trails down your cheeks which leave you feeling weak and hopeless. Crying is not weak, you know this. But crying means to you that you have run out of things to exert your frustration into, and this can only mean one thing.

It is the end.

So you turn away, shuffling with quick feet into your shared bedroom, and slam the door shut, ignoring when he comes after you and knocks rapidly on the locked door.

To: Heejin (◕‿◕) Hey Heej. I need you.

It has been weeks since you last spoke to your best friend. Because she decided to study abroad in Japan, you have since become somewhat distant. But she is the only person besides Jeno whom you can run to, though perhaps you are tired of running.

A best friend indeed, she replies within seconds.

From: Heejin (◕‿◕) What’s up babe? It’s so late, what happened?

With shaking fingers you write your response.

To: Heejin (◕‿◕) I think

To: Heejin (◕‿◕) I need to break up with Jeno.

It isn’t until you press ‘send’ that it hits you. Perhaps because you had written it into existence, but your anger becomes replaced with sadness.

Your Jeno.

Your first love, your first. You could not imagine ever letting him go, yet you had just admitted to it. When your phone vibrates, you can tell that your best friend is just as shocked.

From: Heejin (◕‿◕) Oh honey. Call me.

An hour later you have gotten off the phone, and your tears have dried.

You clasp at your bedsheets, though you find that for the first time in your relationship, Jeno has slept on the couch. This is the worst it has ever been, and you can’t decide what hurts more: the fact that you had come to this decision, or the fact that he had let you.

Heejin had spoken calmly in comparison to you.

You had cried, you had argued with her, and you had denied the things she said. Because she was your best friend, she was not afraid to say things that would hurt you. Because unlike Jeno, she knew that you would love her forever.

She had helped you see the truth, and it had become much clearer now.

You and Jeno were no longer compatible.

He had taken you for granted. He only saw you for your shortcomings, for the dates that you had skipped out on or forgotten. He did not choose to see the things you did for him.

Things like making breakfast for him before you left for your class, knowing he’d see it when he returned from the gym. Things like replacing his shampoos, because you knew he was too busy to notice it with the stress of volleyball running in his head. The little things, which required little thought to perform but a lot of thought to recognize.

You had agreed with her here.

Then she told you the ways in which you had wronged him.

You had misunderstood him. No, she had told you, you had never even taken the chance to understand him. Rather than see that he simply enjoyed parties for the sake of freeing himself from stress, you saw him as irresponsible. You wanted to believe that him asking for your time was him being greedy.

You had always expected him to understand you without saying anything, yet you could not even attempt to understand him even when he was saying it, asking you.

What she had told you at the very end, as you were nearly crying into your pillow, was that you had mistaken comfort for distance.

Because you had assumed that he would always be by your side understanding you, it was easy for you to stand him up for unimportant things like study groups and nights out with friends. Because he had understood.

But being pushed to the side had become too much for him, when you began to abandon the great things, like seeing his team win the championship because you had rehearsal, or missing your first anniversary because you were studying.

That was what had shook you to your very core.

You had been pining, hoping for a comfortable, understanding love that you did not realize when this comfort that he had provided you turned into laziness on your part.

And though you were angry at him, you knew that you should be just as angry at yourself.

That night you fell asleep, and dreamt of a handsome young teenage boy in an ugly orange t-shirt, offering you a mini pumpkin and a lifetime of love.

Your breakup went, as you would say, perfect.

You had both seen it coming, and so when Jeno mentioned it two days later, you were not shocked. Just because you had expected it though, doesn’t mean it hurt any less.

Because the house was in your name, he had left it, along with his key on the counter.

Within a weekend he had rid the apartment of his belongings, though he left your shared things behind. Your pictures, the hoodies that he had ultimately given you. Your promise rings.

It scared you almost, how calm the two of you were in the process.

When he left, he gave you a tight hug, and whispered to you for the last time: “I love you.” Except this time, “I’m sorry” followed suit. Then a gust of wind and he was gone.

It was amicable. There was little screaming, there was a polite goodbye. He was kind enough to leave his gifts to you, and to take the gifts you had given him, though you were sure they would soon be discarded. He had even had sense to make the bed before he left, and clear the bathroom of his toothbrush.

Only Lee Jeno would be so thoughtful in a breakup.

And so as you fall to the floor with tears in your eyes and sob on your lips, you hate yourself for falling in love with such a kind, perfect man.

A year passes.

You are in your third year of university now, though you have moved out of your previously shared apartment and into a new, smaller one which occupies less space. You don’t need the excessive room anymore, with only one person.

Perhaps you have moved on.

Originally you had allotted yourself two years of time to let Lee Jeno leave your mind and your heart, that having been the amount of time you spent together. But sometimes, you truly feel that you have gotten over him.

Because you had rarely seen him on campus even during your relationship, you do not run into him on your large campus. You avoid going to volleyball games, or any sports games for that matter.

You even go on a few dates.

First there is Huang Renjun, an art major who you meet when he accidentally spills paint on you. But no, he is too harsh with his words, you learn when he gives you the hell for cancelling last minute.

Then there is Kim Jungwoo, who you meet at the coffee shop off campus. He is a barista, but you cannot find more than attraction for him in your soul because he is not ambitious, he has no more dreams besides making coffee.

You even find yourself sleeping with Lee Donghyuck once, but you quickly find that he is annoying and too brash, not like Jeno.

Like Jeno. None of them are like Jeno, and that is why none of them stay.

And so even though you tell yourself that you are over Lee Jeno, because you can give your number to strangers in the coffee shop and you can sleep with overzealous frat boys, you know deep in your heart, that you have never been close to moving on.

It hits you most when you are alone, especially late in night when you cannot fall asleep. And you remember what it was like to fall asleep in his arms, with his warmth and his breathing which brought a feeling of sturdiness.

Especially tonight, you are in bed early when you think about the fact that today marks one year since he has left you.

As poorly as your relationship progressed, Jeno has changed you for the better.

After your breakup, you came to realize your shortcomings.

It was true that you never made time for anything in your life, especially not for him. You no longer wanted your significant other to have to beg for your time, and so you began to take more time for yourself.

Study less, not that you needed to study as much as you did. Breathe more. Take walks. Sit for an hour or two in the coffee shop without a goal.

It slowed your life down. Jeno taught you this.

And despite the tears that you spilled for him, he taught you how to love.

He taught you that love was not perfect, as much as you strived for it to be. There would be bumps, there would be fights. There would be the pumpkin patch moments; those are the ones that make you feel on top of the world, as though your love could trump all. Then there are the moments of longing, where you haven’t felt the comfort of the other’s presence in what feels like millenia. There also exist times of peril, where you scream at each other and slam the doors in each other’s faces over who falls asleep in a movie.

What Jeno has taught you, however, is that you have to make the pumpkin patch moments outnumber all the other negatives.

He has taught you that like you have to work in life for a degree or a job promotion, you have to work for love. You have to chase after that person when they storm out. You have to calm down, and listen to the other’s words in a moment of anger. Sometimes, you have to forgive them, you have to acquiesce, as Jeno had often done for you.

And most of all he has taught you that you never forget your first love.

Lee Jeno was the perfect first love. He had loved you carefully, with your best efforts in mind. You could not have asked for anything more.

Even if you can have other loves, you don’t want them. You want your first love, and you want him to be your last. You would start over with him in every single way if you could, except you would be better this time.

Even if this is not possible.

You would never be able to return to the way you were, to a bright-eyed boy with pumpkins in his hand and a shy quiet girl with too much ambition for her own good. You cannot ask for him to be the boy you first met, because you cannot fulfill that role for him either.

But you don’t want to return to those days, as good as they were. You want to continue on your journey of growth with him by your side. You will never have the chance to now.

Your phone rings from beneath your pillow. You pull it out, gaze at the message on the screen, and smile.

You had never been able to change his name after all this time.

From: My Boy 10:10. My wish is for another chance to make you happy.

#nct #nct dream #jeno #jeno lee #nct jeno #jeno fanfic #jeno angst #jeno fluff #nct dream fanfic #nct dream angst #nct dream fluff #this is loosely inspired by my own life experiences #and lessons #so it was a bit cathartic for me to write #jeno x oc #jeno imagines

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kintatsujo · 3 years ago

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LoZ AU- The Courage of Running Away Part TWENTY-FOUR

This post is so late because I accidentally took a several hour nap and then it went and got a Little Convoluted, including a page that might’ve gone in a supplementary post except that I wanted it HERE, for REASONS

Warning for Fantasy Religious Imagery, which is sometimes based on Christian religious imagery because it’s Legend of Zelda and the magic book from the first game was literally just a Bibble in the Japanese

#AU August

#LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away

I'm setting up for a boss fight here and I want to go a little into the idea that Lorule Castle Town and Lorule Castle are effectively being approached like a "final dungeon" here (technically at this point my brain has assigned CoRA itself as "first half of game" and whatever I call the sequel as "Second half of game" but that's not the point)

Which actually I'm gonna real quick go into MORE of the basic "gameplay" that exists in my head if CoRA was ACTUALLY a game instead of this increasingly convoluted fanfic that I've been having Emotions over, just because I've been thinking about it and it's how I'd be plotting shit here.

Basically the MAJORITY of the gameplay would be Link running around adventuring, like any LoZ. Different greater regions would be their own discrete overworlds with a few points here and there where you could cross between them, not like portals or anything just like mountain passes and shit. (I think since we're going full jrpg with the story the sequel would probably feature an airship worldmap. Don't ask me how Link gets an airship I just cut going into the Rito captain that decides he's in love with Marla for time!)

But THEN there would be sections that functioned like Hyrule Warriors, with a team of characters that you could switch between. These would be signaled by phrases like, "Okay, Link, tell us what you need us to do." Some would be specific dungeons and some would be based on chunks of the map that had been sliced out, like how in Age of Calamity a lot of the mini missions used chunks of the chapter mission maps. Technically the Tutorial Dungeon from Hell would work somewhat like this EXCEPT that Astramorus isn't your team member, he's an "allied" unit you don't have to protect because he hangs back tossing heal items and fairies at Link.

The first REAL time you'd get a taste of having team members would be basically a minigame with Tonbo and Marla and all playable characters would have segments that let you get a handle on how they worked. Gray's would actually be a training mission where he's kind of showing off for Link because Zelda Jr. is egging him on. (See thinking about this like a game REALLY helps with the story writing lmao)

During the solo segments while Tonbo and Marla are travelling with Link, btw, they'd be wandering around cities or towns as NPCs Link can have conversations with, including one with Marla that would be sparked by examining the statue of the Fierce Deity in Clocktown Town Square but which would be presented as Marla seeking Link out. This is because I love party chat.

[image description: A below shot of a statue of Fierce Deity Link. He is lit by a lantern with fairy wings to the side, and there are strings of lights behind him and a dark roof above. Link and Marla are looking up at him as Link explains, “The Hylia Church holds that he was one of my-- One of the Goddess’s Chosen Heroes. The local faith holds that he came in the form of a child but with the soul of an adult, that he went on to take the forms of dead loved ones and dead heroes in Termina, that he had powers upon powers and skill upon skill, that he was many places at once over three days, helping and rescuing and working, and that he awoke the Four Giants of the land and pushed the moon back into the sky.” Link holds himself. “I can’t POSSIBLY live up to all that,” he says. Marla is holding some sort of wrapped food she’s taken a bite out of. She says, “Do you WANT to live up to all that? Also if he came in the form of a CHILD why’s he depicted as this big manly man chonk?” End ID.]

Also in general all playable characters's levels, hearts and general development would just be, haha, LINKED to Link's. I know a lot of people enjoy managing all their characters but I'm thinking about Final Fantasy 9 and how every time you go to a town everyone just wanders off and I never know if I'm gonna actually be able to GIVE characters their equipment or if the party's gonna get broken up by Story again. I think a lot of the flow feel to the system I've just outlined would be similar to that so I don't think the non-Link members of the party should be something a player would have to worry about upkeep with. Also yes in that same line everyone would automatically be healed and have a full magic meter at the beginning of the team segments.

Anyway for this particular party mission Queen Zelda would actually initially try to talk Link out of it. "Absolutely not," he says, "I'm going and Father is too, we deserve answers and if you end up having to blow Serenumbra up this is the only chance we'll have at getting them."

(Zelda Sr's like.... "I didn't blow your father UP...")

Ghirahim is also champing at the bit to go fuck Serenumbra up, because he's fucking furious to have realized that Serenumbra was chessmastering him. Dinravi and Eltani are going both as support and because everyone but Ghirahim agrees that Ghirahim needs someone to act as his restraint.

[Image Description: Ghirahim is waving his hands angrily and ranting, "And the WORST PART is now I have to save HYLIA'S BROOD just to SPITE him!" while Dinravi pats him on the shoulder with a grin, saying "There, there." End ID.]

I don’t know why Ghirahim’s hands always turn out so amazing, actually, I’ve always thought of hands as one of my strengths but it feels like CoRA’s Ghirahim is one panel of pretty hands after another.

ANYWAY it’s a smallisher team because the main loftwings they have that can make that trip again after having rushed from Gerudo City to Hyrule Castle are the unusually large ones like Hera, and those are fairly rare. The main characters I’m absolutely sure on are Link and Astramorus, Dinravi Ghirahim and Eltani, and of course Queen Zelda and Impa. Gray wants to go but he can’t because health potions don’t work as fast on injuries quite as severe as a stabbity in the torso and whether Marla and Tonbo come along is actually something I’m not explicitly solid on yet, because this is Draft 0.5 and I can still change my mind at this point.

And one of the things is that in this mission Astramorus essentially functions as a helper character chasing after Link with health potions just like in the Tutorial Dungeon From Hell, except he’s a lot quieter about it.

Because of this and because Link is the main character, they’re together when they find Serenumbra first:

[Image description: Serenumbra is in the middle of a ceremonial setup; in the middle are he with a book stand and behind him a statue of Hylia. On either side are symmetrical stone beds, the left below an upright Hyrulean Triforce and the right below a flipped Lorulean Triforce. Princess Zelda is laid on the left side and Princess Hilda on the right; they are dressed in simple gowns and seem to be unconscious. The beds were clearly made exactly for Hilda’s height, as Zelda is too short for hers. They are laid in state reminiscent of the way the sleeping Zelda was in Adventure of Link. Between this scene and the viewer are two figures with swords, although the nature of them is unclear; they could be people wearing horned masks. Serenumbra says, “Ah, Astra. You’re ALIVE. What a SURPRISE.” Astramorus and Link are standing side by side. Astramorus says, “So you DID know what I was planning to do.” Serenumbra makes the smuggest possible face. “Oh PLEASE, dear friend, I’ve been winding you up to see what you’ll do since you were FIFTEEN- a little NUDGE in the right direction was as good as telling you to do it!” End ID.]

Okay but looking at that Smug Serenumbra face I actively wanna punch him until he loses a few teeth so I think I’ve succeeded at drawing it. The soldiers are actually intended to be Armos because I like the Armos and I think they should show up in Botw2. (I’m kind of hoping we’ve already seen one in that more recent trailer but they don’t look anything like these buddies; I’m talking about that big turquoise dude.)

Anyway we all know this ceremony isn’t going to work. The Armos keep Link and Astramorus off of Serenumbra long enough for him to try it, and it just fuckin fizzles. Zelda and Hilda sleep right through the whole thing (they’re uh, you know, under a spell, so they’d sleep through quite a lot.)

[Image Descriptions: Serenumbra is gripping his book and staring into it, demanding of the pages, “WHY isn’t it WORKING?!!” Astramorus says, off-panel, “It’s pretty SIMPLE, Seren-” He is shown to have his hands on Link’s shoulders as if to brace him, as Queen Zelda breaks the doors behind them down with a BOOM, Ghirahim coming up behind her with a grin. Link and Astramorus shout together: “YOU HAVE THE WRONG ZELDA!!” Serenumbra stares at them, his glasses opaque, as apparently something in his mind breaks with a “SNAP!” He then smiles serenely. “Very well,” he says, as the Moon Pearl on his chest begins to glow, flooding the room with blue. “Let us see how you fare against a GOD’S NIGHTMARE.” Before him, on what had appeared to be a circular rug, something black and gaseous seems to seep into reality. It has glowing white eyes. End ID.]

#my art #au august #loz #loz au #loz au: the courage of running away

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birdsareblooming · 4 years ago

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Amy Rose the Hedgehog/Echidna

Alright you motherfuckers, Amy Rose is a Hedgehog/Echidna Hybrid and i’m going to prove it to you.

1. The history of Amy Rose

1a. Classic Amy

Amy Rose made her video game debut in 1993's Sonic the Hedgehog CD, as a non-playable character. In this game she is an 8 year old hedgehog girl kidnapped by the new antagonist, Metal Sonic. In the Japanese release, she was primarily known by her nickname Rosy the Rascal, although it is still stated that her real name is Amy Rose. She later appeared as a playable character in several ensemble spin-off games such as Sonic Drift, Sonic Drift 2, Sonic the Fighters and Sonic R. She did not appear in any of the early TV series, although she was included in most comics, including the Archie Comics series, the British Sonic the Comic and the French Sonic Adventures. (Via Sonic Wiki)

TLDR; Amy first showed up in comics, although she was created for the video games. As shown above her first video game appearance was Sonic CD.

Amy Rose was created in response to a request from the character division of Sega's licensing business, who wanted a character that could be the "Minnie" to Sonic's "Mickey" However, it was felt that it would go against Sonic's personality for him to locked into a standard cartoon relationship like Mickey and Minnie. Instead, it was decided that a one-way relationship, where Amy's affection for Sonic is unrequited, would be more interesting ((via Sonic Wiki))

TLDR; Amy was created in response to a request to give Sonic a love interest, but feeling that would “Go against his character”, they made it a one-sided relationship.

Why am I letting you know this? Well to be acquainted and understand the significance of MODERN Amy, you need to know CLASSIC Amy.

Classic Amy had a very different design, although she was still pink, she wore different clothes, has different quills (very important) and is 8. She only showed up in Sonic CD and the comics, pretty much being reduced to a minor character. Even to this day, Classic Amy has no appearance in Sonic Mania (2017), despite having Mighty and Ray, only making an appearance in a holiday episode of Sonic Mania Adventures (2018)

1b. Modern Amy

When Sonic Team reunited and started work on their three-dimensional follow-up to the classic Sonic games, Sonic Adventure, it was decided they would revive the pink hedgehog and give her a starring role in the game. Like the rest of the returning cast, Amy was given an updated design by Yuji Uekawa. While Sonic, Tails and Knuckles all received minor design changes, Amy's clothing and hairstyle were completely revamped. She also had her entire figure redesigned to make her appear older. In addition to her redesign, her official age was changed from 8 to 12. (via: Sonic Wiki)

TLDR; Amy was brought in as a main character in Sonic Adventure, getting a complete revamp in character design, unlike the other characters who only had minor changes.

Remember this. It will come back later.

Now we’re to the Amy we know and love! Short cute hair, colors that actually match and don’t look horrific (why is classic wearing green and orange. Whos idea was that) And older, but maybe not too much more mature, Amy Rose.

Another note, her design might have been revamped, but her personality wasn’t.

2. Why that Matters

I know what you’re thinking, “why is that incredibly handsome he”-no sorry, “why are we going though the history of Amy? Why does it matter just tell us why you think she’s part echidna?”

I’m getting there, don’t worry.

I wanted everyone to be extremely clear on her history, on the changes between CLASSIC and MODERN, which is very important to this theory. Not everyone us super aware of her history.

3. Her (modern) Design

-it was decided they would revive the pink hedgehog and give her a starring role in the game. Like the rest of the returning cast, Amy was given an updated design by Yuji Uekawa. While Sonic, Tails and Knuckles all received minor design changes, Amy's clothing and hairstyle were completely revamped. (Via Sonic Wiki)

Now, Finally, let’s get to her design, and the weirdness of it.

3a. Her quills

Amy is a pink-furred anthropomorphic hedgehog with green eyes and peach skin on her muzzle and arms. Unlike other hedgehogs, her spines are not spiky in appearance - but are rather worn down like that of ordinary hair, somewhat resembling a bob cut. (Via: Sonic Wiki)

I’m going to assume you knew I was getting to this

“Unlike other hedgehogs”, is a totally fair statement. Every other hedgehog we’ve seen (Even non-canon ones with terrible designs ((looking at you sonia))) Have had their quills in a very specific manner.

Out, Long, and Back.

Very much in contrast with Amy’s, Down and Short.

Also note that Shadow and Sonic, on their heads, have six quills, silver having two long ones and 5 bang quills. Basically, their quills are layered, Amy’s however, is not. It’s one right next to each other.

I note the layered quills as very important. Makes sense for mobian hedgehogs right? I mean they have layered quills like that in real life, even if there’s a lot more.

This is very important why? Because there’s another species that has their quills/spines/hair/etc. right next to each other, instead of layered.

Interesting how close it is to Amy’s own hairstyle isn’t it?

it’s even drawn similarly.

In conclusion, her quills are VERY strange for hedgehogs, but very average for echidna’s, weird for a hedgehog huh.

3b. Her Back

“What?” You say, confused.

But listen.

There’s one specific thing that other hedgehogs have, that Amy Rose is lacking.

Back Quills

None on her back. Absolutely zero.

Again, strange and weird for a hedgehog, not at all strange or weird for an echidna.

3c. Other stuff

-The top of her red dress looking like a crescent moon, alot like Knuckles’s own on his body. I just noticed this looking at the two ref sheets above. -Might be crazy, but I feel like with the 3D models Amy’s tail is longer than the other hedgehog’s. Might just be me though -Most (normal) hedgehogs we’ve seen like Sonic and Silver have very cool colors like Blue and White, and Echidnas are very centered around reds and oranges. And I mean, Pink is a light shade of red.

4. Hybrids

This will be a quick one, hybrid’s HAVE existed in the sonic universe

Although an obscure character now, Fang the Sniper has always been a hybrid.

Touma would state on Twitter that he designed Fang with a jerboa (トビネズミ?) motif in his mind.[6] However, the sales departments of Sega decided upon him being half jerboa and half wolf in Japan, and a weasel in North America.[7][8] (Via: Sonic Wiki)

And, you could be wondering why i’m saying she’s a hybrid and not just an Echidna instead of a Hedgehog. Well, She has the hedgehog ears and eye-shape.

5. The whole picture

I’ve shown you the pieces, now to put it together.

Each of these things with her new design sepretly would mean nothing, but together it means a lot.

But you HAVE to be thinking, “There’s no way that was purposeful.” and I get it. When I first thought of this theory, that was the roadblock that kept me from fully believing it, until I did some research.

I don’t belive it was the idea from the beginning. And by that, I mean CLASSIC Amy.

She looks like a hedgehog, she has back spines, she has normal, layered, quills. As well as Amy debuting before Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994)

MODERN Amy, however. Is a different story.

Remember when I told you to remember a certain paragraph?

Amy’s design was changed drastically for Sonic Adventure, even saying so in this paragraph. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles got minor things, like eye colors and more dexterity. Eggman got an outfit change. Amy’s whole body was changed. Quills, Back, Outfit, Everything.

Once again, you’re wondering, “Why does this matter?”

Amy was completely redesigned for Sonic Adventure. A game that include, features, hell, CENTERS around Echidnas.

Every flashback is about the Knuckles clan, and how Chaos ended up like that™️ because of them.

In a game where you have a bunch of Echidnas, I, personally, feel like i’d be difficult to make the mistake of 50% of Amy Rose looking like one.

Anyway Amy Rose is an Echidna/Hedgehog hybrid and either doesn’t know or is too dumb to tell anyone thanks by

#amy rose #theory #sonic theory #sonic

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doctorbunny · 4 years ago

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Now the DR Trilogy is coming to Switch, a character could be in Smash:

[Disclaimer: This may get long and will also casually spoil DR1, 2, V3 and Ultra Despair Girls - also Undertale]

In this essay, I want to talk about characters that might be good fits for Super Smash Bros but haven't really been talked about as much because they don't have the same meme factor. Like, a lot of people want Nagito Komaeda in Smash, but outside of being the most culturally known DR character, I can't really think of what a good moveset would look like for him; like, his whole thing is luck but that's quite vague compared to having an iconic sword. That being said, if he was made into a playable character. I'm calling dibs on the idea his moves will be centred around bombs - perhaps being a high risk, high reward character where there's a chance a move could be really strong or not do anything at all. I have no clue what his Final Smash would be though, since his murder scene isn't that iconic (at least outside of the game) and is quite graphic for a T rated/PEGI 12 game.

I also doubt the protagonists would get in because half of their thing is being average/not as wild as the rest of the cast. (Which is not to say they're bad characters, just not strong contenders for being a good Smash character)

Then there's the main villain, Junko. Danganronpa is technically a mystery game, so whilst there are other villains in Smash (like Bowser and Ripley), I feel like it'd be weird for Junko to appear since she IS a spoiler for the end of the first game. [Side note: Other characters like Sans, may also be seen as a spoiler, however they don't really spoil much outside of context. Like, if you knew nothing about Undertale, you might be surprised by the fact you DON'T fight Sans in most contexts, since Genocide routes only happen when the player goes out of their way, usually after looking it up online first. The fight itself also isn't where most of the emotional impact comes from either] However if Junko shows up with her monokuma hairpins, brandishing... idk, a despair themed moveset. It kinda gives away part of THH's final twist. Its not impossible, just unlikely to me. [Also part of Sans' identity in pop culture is being known as the super hard boss fight, Junko's design is well known and she has plenty of cosplayers on TikTok but outside of the DR fandom, her personality/role in DR isn't known as well]

Now on to the good part: People I actually think would be interesting candidates that haven't been considered as much.

Mondo Oowada. Now, I may ship Ishimondo, but I'm not just saying this because I'm biased. I don't think he's an especially iconic character, but he is from the first game, and I think you could make an interesting moveset without major spoilers. Firstly: He's a bōsōzoku, a type of biker with a reputation for getting into trouble (but like petty stuff like vandalism and illegal bike mods, he's no drug trafficking Hell's Angel), one of the first things he does in THH is punch Makoto so hard he's yeeted across the gym and knocked out. Secondly: He's got a brother called Daiya (his death is a spoiler but his existence isn't really), I'm just saying he'd be a quick and convenient choice for an Echo Fighter. There's also Takemichi Yukimaru from UDG, he's not well known, but throw a crazy diamond jacket on him and most people would understand him to be a reference in a final smash or something. Thirdly: He has a strong and unique-to-Smash theme, motorbikes, it could be included in a final smash somehow. Fourth: He's already been in a fighting game. "Kenka Banchou Bros: Tokyo Battle Royale" is a slightly obscure 3D fighting game, where Mondo and Daiya feature as a special boss fight. Its published by Spike Chunsoft, so Smash might be a fun time to reference it. Finally: There's just a lot of options/different ways for his fighting style to go. He could be a classic slow punch-y fist guy, he could use the pickaxe from 1-5 (only fans would get the reference but it isn't a spoiler out of context since, who even uses pickaxes in school?), he could wield that stop sign from his promo art, he could even use his motorcycle for fights, if they're feeling dark, there's always that dumbbell, who even knows! But the point is there's a lot of freedom, which I feel like game designers would like.

Chihiro Fujisaki. The character themselves is not especially iconic (much like Mondo) however, they do play an important role in the first two games (especially if you treat Alter Ego as an extension of them, they technically saved the day twice). IDK, after writing all that stuff about Mondo, this one feels less compelling, but I felt like maybe their laptop could be used in an interesting way, maybe their final smash could reference the Tetris part of Chiaki's execution? (since that is easier to make suitable for a T rated game but then again, copyright issues?). If I'm being honest I don't mind if they don't get into smash if it means avoiding more fricking discourse.

Toko Fukawa/Genocider Syo. She's been in multiple games, she's one of the creator's favourites (although Kodaka is no longer with Spike Chunsoft), she has unique weapons (scissors) and whilst it would be another example of an inaccurate DID representation, switching between Toko and Jack could make for an interesting moveset or be saved for the final smash.

Monokuma. He's basically the series' mascot, I'd prefer someone else but he would stand out amongst the Smash roster. The monokubs and/or Monomi could be in his final smash and it avoids the spoiler issues of Junko. I'm sorry, I started writing this with vigour then ran out of steam. but please let me know your ideas!

#super smash ultimate #danganronpa #dr1 #dr2 #long post #text post #i have no energy left to tag properly

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worm-man-gaming · 4 years ago

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My top 10 list for who I WANT as DLC in Smash

We’re reaching the end of an era. Smash Ultimate’s DLC is going to end eventually, with four more characters to be announced. They could release some kind of ‘Echo Pack’ in the future, which I would be hyped about (They didn’t really do much with the echo fighter mechanic), But I have a feeling that after this, there won’t be any more. So I wanted to post my list of who I, specifically, would like to see in the game.

This is not based off of likelihood, as some of these characters probably don’t even have a chance of making it in. I just think they would be neat.

Full list under the cut, counting up from #10

- Papyrus (UNDERTALE)

Okay, so hear me out.

We got the Sans mii skin, and that was by far one of the most popular mii skins since Geno, probably. People were more excited for the Sans mii skin than Terry Bogard and maybe even Banjo. They probably made a lot more money than expected from it. So why not try it again?

And while Sans is the popular character, he definitely is not a fighter. He’s a lazy, laid back character that just wants to have fun, but he’s far too weak to go into an all-out battle without risking his own safety.

HOWEVER!

Sans’s brother, Papyrus, is the polar opposite. He’s dedicated, hardworking, and can take quite a few hits. He’s got plenty of moveset opportunity. And it would be another indie rep, which is really really good for someone like me, who wants to go into game design.

Another thing: When we got the Cuphead mii skin, we also got Cuphead Spirits. They could have easily done that with Undertale, there’s enough characters. So maybe they’re saving it for a DLC Spirit board? I don’t know, just a theory.

He would be primarily a ground-based fighter, with projectiles that could crawl across the stage like that one sparky item. He could also use his blue attack, which could be good for an easy spike on airborne characters. And, who knows, maybe for his final smash we could finally see his special attack.

I really enjoy Undertale, and seeing Sans as a mii skin made me super happy. Getting a whole fighter from the series would be even cooler.

- Paper Mario (Super Paper Mario)

Nintendo, we’ve got three whole Links in this game, but only two Marios? Preposterous!

With that being said, Super Paper Mario was one of my favorite Wii games (Although I didn’t play it until very recently) And it’s a very popular series. He’s essentially his own character separate from Mario at this point. The games have so much lore put into them, and we already have a Paper Mario Stage in the game, so maybe we could get Dimentio’s dimension, or the Origami Palace or something.

He’s been in enough games and done enough crazy things to earn a pretty diverse kit for himself. He could use Pixils, the 1000-Fold arms, or even summon Paper Bowser, Peach and Luigi for some attacks.

I think he would be super fun to play. I’m terrible at vanilla Mario, but I think Paper Mario would be a good fit for the game AND be a super good-feeling character. However, this comes from a G&W main, so take from that what you will.

- King Boo (Luigi’s Mansion)

I 👏 want 👏 more 👏 villains 👏 in 👏 Smash! 👏

King Boo is a staple of the Luigi’s Mansion series as well as being an enemy for Mario in some games like Sunshine. He’s the Big Bad Evil Guy for Luigi.

And I DEFINITELY want him in this game.

It’s not so much the character himself, although King Boo is really good, I want him in for his kit. Think about it. A large character but with floaty jumps like Jigglypuff and an aerial based moveset AND a teleport? He’d be ruthless. And really fun. And that’s what I’m looking for in a character.

- BOTW Zelda (Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity)

Yes, I know. “But Worm, the Zelda we have now is annoying and awful, and you say you want ANOTHER one?!?!?” Well, you’re half right.

Yes, Zelda is known for her darkness-sealing powers in BOTW, BUT, in the recent Age of Calamity game, her moveset for almost have the game revolves around the Sheikah Slate. She uses it creatively, hopping around on ice and whirling metal slabs around with a magnet. And I think that would be a SUPER cool moveset for Smash Bros.

And who knows, maybe they would call back to older games and allow her to switch to using her powers, like Zelda used to change into Sheik.

She would be very technical, with her attacks being powerful but with some startup, almost similar to Snake of all characters. And for her final smash she could use a Weak Point Smash or they could bring back Bow of Light (Which was MUCH more fair than the current one, by the way). She’d be fun, and that’s what I want.

- Maxwell (Scribblenauts)

Maxwell is from Scribblenauts, a game where you have to solve puzzles by writing words in a notebook and those words coming to life. So he’s work in the same way in Smash, although much more randomized.

For his neutral special, maybe he could write a random item and it shows up in his hand. That would be funny AND cool, and it’s possible (because Peach does the same thing with Turnips!). He could use projectiles but also have plenty of close range options, and for a Final Smash he could use the Meteor, which in the game clears the screen of living things. Brutal! He also uses Adjectives on both his creations AND himself, so maybe for some moves he could effect the other opponent with a poison or freeze effect.

Would he be banned in competitive play? Yes. Would he still be fun? Definitely!

- Jibanyan (Yo-Kai Watch)

I may be in the minority here, but I REALLY liked Yo-Kai Watch as a game. It may seem like a cheap Pokemon ripoff, but the gameplay is nothing like it at all. You’re given a map to explore and various objectives within the map, and the battle system is really creative and fun. It’s actually the inspiration for some of my own games. Yo-Kai watch deserved more credit than it got.

Jibanyan is the poster boy for the series (and also has the saddest backstory of any cat-based character ever), and mainly attacks with both his paws and fire attacks. He could have fire-based moves and would almost play similar to Pichu. His final smash could be Paws of Fury, his soultimate move, that would hit like Donkey Kong’s final smash as a flurry of blows.

This series is really well made and thought out, and it deserves more than it got. So please put my boy in Smash, I’m begging you.

- Specter Knight (Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment)

Okay, yes. I know Shovel Knight is the main character of this series. But again, hear me out.

Specter Knight is either the first or second boss you encounter in the main Shovel Knight game, and he’s already got some moveset potential from that alone. However, he also had his own story mode, Specter of Torment, ad let me say, that is a phenomenal game. I’d go so far as to say it’s better than the main Shovel Knight game itself. His controls are quick and easy to pick up. And he has a whole bunch of special abilities you can get as the game progresses, such as a boomerang or even a shadow clone.

His smash moveset would pull most of the specials from the unlockable items he can get, leaving room for an incredible spacing game as well as a good aerial defense, as Specter Knight can both float and do a Dash Slash through enemies for some extra air time.

Shovel Knight is the main character, but Specter Knight obviously has the most soul put into him (Pun not intended). And, again, he’d be fun to control.

- Master Hand / Fighter Hand (Super Smash Bros. Series)

This is mostly me just being mad at the game for giving us a playable Master Hand, but only once. We couldn’t have even gotten a Master Mode in extras, huh?

Yes, yes, I know Master Hand is the staple boss character for Smash Bros. He’s been in every game, for crying out loud! I’m honestly surprised it took them this long to give us a playable Master Hand. But this leads into my idea:

A new hand, made specifically to fight in Smash Bros, called Fighter Hand.

Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, it’s stupid. But hey, it would be fun.

He would have scaled-down versions of Master Hand’s moves, with mainly projectile-based specials and tilts. He would be floaty, although introducing a flying character would be interesting to see how they balance it. For a final smash, maybe they could bring back Master Core from Smash 4 for a Giga Bowser-esque punch.

- The Knight (Hollow Knight)

Hollow Knight is an Indie Game that I never finished (I’m working on it, okay?) that’s kind of like Metroid in the way it’s played. It's also a very popular game, and I like bugs, so they get the number two spot because I like him.

And the special Soul moves you unlock translate well into Specials. Platformers always translate well into Smash, so he would work very well in the game. I don’t know what their moveset would be (as I haven’t finished the game yet), but I know they would be a small, fast character that mainly uses their nail to attack like a sword.

And my most wanted character in Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate is...

- Beatrix LeBeau (Slime Rancher)

Okay, look. I’m aware this has zero chance of happening. Slime Rancher was never the most popular game, and Nintendo has never mentioned it ever. But it’s one of my favorite games, and I just think Beatrix would be an incredible character in Smash Bros.

She would use her jetpack to recover, she would shoot plorts as projectiles, use he vacpac to suck up both fighters and projectiles, and maybe shoot a boom slime as an explosive and unpredictable bouncing hazard. Her smash attacks and aerials would use the various slimes you can vacuum up and feed in the game, like the Rad Slime and Rock Slimes. She would be really good offstage and onstage with her weakness being her speed.

She could bring a LOT to this series, and it would be another inspirational indie rep. And, hey, Minecraft Steve got in. Who knows at this point.

Anyway, there’s my list. Feel free to argue with me or explain why Geno should be on my list (I will not care) in the comments or reblogs, this list is not changing unless I play some new game that I feel should be represented.

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etraytin · 4 years ago

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Quarantine, Days 224-225

October 21 and 22 I have been thinking that it might be time to let the journal go down to once every couple of days or a few times a week, since it really has been quite a long time since the start of lockdown, but then I went to write tonight about what happened yesterday and I can't remember a goddamned thing. Many things have changed since the start of quarantine, but that pernicious "time isn't a real thing anymore" feeling has yet to go away. One of the original purposes of doing this was for me to record my own days so I would remember what happened when, and that's still useful. So I guess you're all still coming along for the ride, because I am terrible at keeping a private journal but have managed to do this thing for more than half a year now. Anyway, yesterday was a day. It was a day in which things happened, I'm sure. It's weird to not be able to remember what I did. It was Wednesday, so that means it was asynchronous learning day... ah, right. Kiddo had his morning meeting and at the end of it I happened to hear his teacher ask him if he'd gotten her email. I asked him what the email was, and he admitted that he might have actually not been keeping up with his core subject work in the same way he hadn't been keeping up with his resources lessons. To the tune of about ten days worth of assignments, in fact. So that wasn't great. I had a quick exchange with his teacher and promised we were going to get the work turned in, and we spent the day with him doing school in the living room instead of his bedroom, so I could actually watch him and make sure he was doing it. He got all his daily work done and two old assignments in both math and language arts, so it was a decent start. Can't get everything done in one day. I noticed while I was working with him that he seems to have slipped backwards some in his math skills. I know he learned long multiplication last year, but he seemed to have forgotten the nuances of it, and he was very bad at remembering basic multiplication facts. I like common-core style math, mostly, but I think it's bullshit that they've gotten away from memorizing the multiplication charts. Yes he can use his skills to do them in his head, but he shouldn't have to do them, they should just _be_ there. I had to have multiplication tables down cold by the end of fourth grade, and we'd all recite them every day as a class. It was annoying and boring, yes, but it worked. I don't really think you can do much higher math without just knowing multiplication and division facts. So we're working on that. He's got the two times table down fine, and everybody knows tens, so we're working now on the extremely useful threes table. It'll be a process. Anyway, we worked on the basic processes of long multiplication for a little bit, both the basic way I learned and the common core style "split one factor into easy component pieces like tens and single digits, multiply and add all those together." I have gotten so much better at math in my head since I picked that trick up. Getting him to write a complete sentence for language arts is still like pulling teeth, but we got through a couple of assignments: a powerpoint presentation on inferences that he had to complete and a writing web to prepare him for the five paragraph paper they've got coming up. That is going to be so unfun, you have no idea. Hopefully we'll at least be caught up by then. We didn't go anywhere or do anything yesterday except that Husband got out to vote. Apparently over 17,000 of the 49,000 registered voters in this county have already cast their ballots, with 950 of those just on Tuesday. Maybe we won't have anybody left to vote by election day and we'll just sit around with our well-staffed precincts, eating potluck dinner and picking at our nails. At least the gym at the high school is fixed from the fire they had last winter (Oh for the naivete of 2019, when we thought that having to distribute the students from one high school and middle school into the other schools was massive disruption of the learning process!), so our precinct is no longer left orphaned and shoved into any public space that will have us. The Democratic primary was brutal this year because they made us do it in the registrar's office itself, which means that everybody who has no idea where they were supposed to vote would just come to the registrar's office, see that people were voting, and try to vote too. The upside is that I learned the location of nearly every other precinct in the county from having to tell people where to go. For the Republican primary we were in the senior center, which was better because nobody cared about the Republican primary and also we were at least around the corner from the registrar's office. People were still lured in by our sultry "vote here" signs, but not as many. Once we are tucked back into our gymnasium where people sort of have to know we are there, I think that problem will mostly solve itself. The masks and shields are going to be awful, though. Working a sixteen hour day is hard enough without them! And that brings us to today, which I at least have not forgotten about yet. Kiddo had a doctor's appointment (no blood test so it went fine) and we checked out a new Cub Scout troop. Unfortunately it seems there Webelos only meet every other week and we were in the off week, but he was perfectly content to hang around with the Wolves and enjoy an extremely unstructured meeting that consisted mainly of ball-throwing-and-chasing games. That's fine with me; at this point I could care less about his patches and I just want him to have a little fun. And he did, so we'll definitely go back next week. On the way home from Cub Scouts I was singing TMBG's We Want A Rock, a delightfully nonsensical song, when the kiddo mentioned wistfully that I never sang his favorite lullaby anymore even though I used to sing it all the time. I was a little surprised because I have a pretty stable rotation of lullabies for the increasingly rare occasions when he wants sung to at night. Sweet Baby James, That's What Living is To Me, Chanson Por Les Petits Enfants, and Return to Pooh Corner are the usual suspects, but he reminded me of an old Chad and Terri Sigafus lullaby I used to sing him. Hush my darling, now close your eyes And mama will sing you a lullaby Soon you'll be dreaming of rainbows and colors And all of the good things tomorrow will bring And we'll laugh, dance, play in the sun Whisper and giggle, hop, skip and run We'll build a castle as high as a mountain And talk to the dragons, just you and me. And we'll sail out on a crystal clear ocean You'll be the captain and I'll be the crew We'll play bows and arrows and be superheroes There's nothing that I'd rather do Than play Let's Pretend with you.

It's a lovely little song that I cannot find in playable format anywhere online, too bad. I did used to sing it to him a lot because it was from a tape I had when I was a kid, and I used to sing it to my youngest sister when she was a baby. In more recent years I made the unfortunate discovery that the artists were uncomfortably close to the Christian Identity Movement, which is big bad news racist bullshit, and I kinda stopped liking their music as much. But the kiddo loves this song more than I had realized, and once I sang it for him he got very excited and made me sing it three more times so he could learn the words better. Death of the author, I guess. It's nice to know that he does listen to and appreciate some of the music I've sung for him over the years, and that my subpar singing voice is special to him because I am his mom.

Only other thing of major note today was that I got an update on Barry and Bixby, my feral orange boys from midsummer. Things didn’t go well for them in their second foster, which created some friction between me and the rescue coordinator as to whose fault it was that feral kittens are (gasp) afraid of crowds and loud noises. But we’re over that now, and the kitties found a caretaker who is okay with friendly boys who are not precisely housecats. They get lots of treats and petting, and look like the kings of their domain. Look how much they’ve grown! I’m so pleased.

#quarantine #long post #election 2020 #virtual school #foster kittens #foster kitten update #lullabyes

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landeg · 4 years ago

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31 Days of Apex: A Retrospection

I participated in the incredible #31DaysOfApex challenge hosted on Twitter, where fans created new content for every day of July based on a one-word prompt. I’ve signed up for/started lots of similar challenges in the past but always ended up having to drop out or trail off before the end... but this time, I managed to complete something for every day of the challenge!

My only goal was to make something by each day’s deadline, and it was a really interesting exercise both in technical skill and also in my management of not only my time, but my expectations and energy. Below, I go into more detail behind each piece.

To preface; the beginning of this challenge coincided with the beginning of a new personal time-management exercise where, for 5/7 days a week, I would only go on the computer at night. Combined with the deadline, this had an interesting effect on my time management and the quality of certain pieces.

Day 1 - Memory

From the start, I wanted to use the challenge as an opportunity to do more studies and to push myself wherever possible. This was the first piece I did and I had more time to work on it, so I used it as a digital painting study. I still think it’s a strong piece and it’s probably my favourite of the month. Symbolically, this character’s backstory doesn’t match up with her own memories, so the idea is she’s missing information she can’t quite place or remember, and this both scares and comforts her.

Day 2 - Blood

Another digital painting and lighting study that didn’t work out as well as the first, mostly due to time constraints meaning I couldn’t scrap it and start again. While I don’t like how it turned out, I did learn a lot. The character on the right is a field medic, and my intent was to show the calm after a successful rescue.

Day 3 - Mercy

Some days I relied more on the humour of a piece’s concept than the skill of its execution, though I also liked how this piece turned out artistically. After two days of intense studies, though, this was very quick and easy for me to turn out as it relied on existing skills.

Day 4 - Prize

This one thankfully came together very quickly, which I credit to the two previous painting studies making it much easier to achieve what I wanted. The character is searching for the disembodied head of the man who killed her parents, who is now acting as a robot, hence the vaguely half-machine-half-human silhouette in her hand.

Day 5 - Family

Another quick, simple illustration under a time crunch. The character framed by the nameless foreground figures has no memory of herself or her family.

Day 6 - Noise

For some pieces where I was under a time crunch, I experimented in an opposite direction; instead of studies, I played loosely with different techniques/brushes/etc to see what came out. This was a lineless style I ended up employing a lot when short on time. The piece pictured here was just one of four alternate colourways, presented in a pop-art style. The character is almost always depicted with thick coverings over her ears, so I thought she might be sensitive to auditory overload. This particular piece was retweeted by the character’s voice actress!

Day 7 - Mask

More relying on humour for lack of time/a better idea. A fun experiment in colour, though.

Day 8 - Healing

Another technically “easy” piece but with a stronger concept. It was actually pretty hard to get the reflection & condensation elements balanced right. The character pictured has a narrative thread relating to an old ex he has trouble moving on from.

Day 9 - Weapon

While obviously another joke, and made to be finished quickly, it was surprisingly difficult to get the duct tape and knife to read clearly without over-cluttering the lineless image. This little ‘bot is a drone used by one of the playable characters to hack areas of the map; it’s not NORMALLY an offensive weapon. This image was promo’d in a video stream by the character’s voice actor!

Day 10 - Truth

I only had less than an hour to finish this one by the deadline, but I still tried to experiment with silhouette and colour. It was surprisingly hard to get the interior silhouette to be legible. The outer silhouette is a playable character (not easily readible unless you’re familiar with his design) and the inner silhouette is his sister, whose disappearance he is trying to investigate.

Day 11 - Shield

A fun, self-indulgent one. Had a blast simplifying the game’s characters down into little caricatures. The character in the centre has abilities related to shields and protection, so many other people were drawing him for the prompt; I wanted to try and flip it, so I picked other characters he would be friendly with, and picked a non-lethal, lighthearted setting.

Day 12 - Ruins

Short on time so did a quick lighting study. A recent game plot has changed one of the areas of the map, submerging it in water and leaving it to “ruin”.

Day 13 - Hero

Another painting study. Really didn’t like how this one turned out, but had to turn in something, and I did learn a lot in the process. If I’d had more time I probably would’ve scrapped it and started again. This characters had recently been revealed to have been manipulated by another character who used gas-based offenses, whom she admired.

Day 14 - Rest

I was going to be away from mt computer until after the deadline, so I decided to make a traditional piece. I ended up enjoying it so much I tried to take the time to do a few more traditional pieces later. This piece was sort of a comedy of errors; I had to do it while I was out, and the pen I had brought with me to ink my sketch ran out, so I had to make do with a blue ballpoint pen, and I was missing several colours of coloured pencil. I think the finished piece reflects how rushed it was, and it did’t meet my concept, but I do still like it.

Day 15 - Skull

Another quick one but I wanted to experiment with a different line style. Wanted a sort of “graffiti” effect. One of this character’s skins includes a skull-shaped mask.

Day 16 - Growth

Extremely quick play on words because I didn’t have the time to work on anything meaningful and couldn’t think of anything better!

Day 17 - Home

Another traditional piece, this time by choice and with more time. Markers. It looks extremely like some janky art school homework on 2 point perspective because it extremely is. Perspective and backgrounds are very difficult for me - they just don’t “click” - but I had a lot of fun with this one. I kept my mistakes intact because I didn’t want to edit it too much. A lot about the technical perspective is wrong, but I think I achieved the “mood” I wanted. This location is a bar owned by one of the player characters where many of the other characters are shown to meet.

Day 18 - Sky

Very happy with how this one turned out, even though there are still lots of problems. Markers again. There’s a lot I would fix next time, and I think technically it’s lacking, but there are some specific areas I feel happy to have achieved, such as the almost brushed texture of the curved metal above his shoulder and the values of the shadow/reflections on the underside of the head piece. I’m also happy with how I was able to draw from my shoulder rather than my wrist when inking the curved lines, something I struggle with.

Day 19 - Target

An experiment in pushing the lineless style I’d already been playing with for a stronger likeness. The pose and expression in this could both be pushed more but I like the result. This character had just learned that one of the other players, whom she had trusted, was actually sharing her secrets with her enemy, and she didn’t know which one it was.

Day 20 - Friendship

I had this one concepted from when I first looked over the prompts. It was a fun challenge trying to simplify all the elements into the lineless, blocky style while being legible. This character has a strained relationship with one of his friends, and finally pushed her too far with his selfishness, and she now no longer responds to him.

Day 21 - Scar

Quick joke. This character was introduced briefly as a red herring for another character before being killed off. He was stabbed through the chest by another character’s hand, hence the scar pattern.

Day 22 - Dream

I wasn’t sure about this one while I was making it but I ended up liking how it turned out. I wanted to capture the character’s robotic legs bent at an unnaturally straight 90 degrees, like a Barbie doll. The flat background and lighting make it feel like an indoor stage. The little “electric sheep” are inspired by iDogs.

Day 23 - Meal

After a few days of not having time to really spend on any piece, it was fun to get to spend time on concepting and composing this. I always admired these kinds of watercolour-like food illustrations and this is the first time I’ve had any success in creating one myself. I concepted and sketched out the individual items traditionally before working out the composition within the box digitally. Each food item/utensil is inspired by the different characters’ design elements. Only two of the now-current characters are excluded due to plot reasons. In particular, I like how one of the character’s dome-shaped shields acts as the base and cover of the box.

Day 24 - Hobby

Wasn’t a fan of how this one turned out. I think the likeness is a bit off, and his facial anatomy is skewed. But I also like how the general composition, tone, and bee turned out. This character’s concept art originally imagined them as a beekeeper who would use smoke to fight.

Day 25 - Fear

An incredibly rushed piece that I intended to go back in and add more detail to, similar to day 4, but I actually took a step back and decided I liked the blocky, flat-colour version. This character is the youngest of four, all of whom are MIA or worse, along with his father, and his mother is losing her memory. He’s talking to her through a handheld holographic device. This piece gained more traction, most likely thanks to the subject matter since this is a popular character.

Day 26 - Holiday

I didn’t want to do a religious holiday like Christmas or Easter. A lot of other people also interpreted the prompt as a vacation, but I had already done a sort of “beach vacation” piece for day 11, so I instead went for a “public holiday” and chose NYE/NYD. This was fairly quick but the lighting was an interesting experiment. I knew this one wouldn’t be as popular because it wasn’t as “flattering” but I personally really like it. The girl on the left is kind of goofy and completely un-self-conscious and I think it’s captured here.

Day 27 - Music

Really didn’t like how this one turned out. I don’t think the likeness is good at all, the lighting is poor, and the gold detailing feels lazy. But I liked other elements, such as the pose and the clothing.

Day 28 - Treasure

This is my least favourite of the entire month, but I also had the least time available to work on it before the deadline so I had no opportunity to scrap it and start over, which I sorely wanted to do. The likeness is terrible, but more than that the base anatomy is off, the pose is stiff, and the lighting/colours are cheap. I wish I could’ve done better by this character; but, I am glad I had something finished at all.

Day 29 - Skin

This was probably my third attempt at this picture and I’m still not happy with it, but again, I had to finish something. I almost considered scrapping the concept entirely and choosing something easier but ended up seeing it through. The concept itself is actually recycled from an older piece of mine for an entirely different fandom, because I didn’t think I did it justice then, either. Would still like to revisit this concept with this character and take more time.

Day 30 - Trust

After a few days of feeling really dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the art I’d been making, I finally more time to dedicate to a piece, and I’m overall happy with how this one turned out. I decided to go for a different medium entirely with pixel art, which also gave me the opportunity to try and animate it. I started off confident and then started to get worried towards the end, but all the elements came together when I added the portal colour effects. This is an alternate reality version of one of the player characters, who appears through a portal and allows that character to escape the facility she’s being kept in, encouraging them to trust the “voices” she hears which are actually versions of herself trying to help her. This piece was retweeted by the official Apex Legends Twitter account!

Day 31 - Freestyle

I had this planned out early in the challenge and I’m really, really happy with how it turned out. It’s probably tied with my favourite along with the very first piece (how fitting). I was worried about how I was going to capture the movement without over-complicating the lineart, having so many people in one image, etc. before I realised the focus was entirely on gesture, and then everything clicked. I went for a thicker brush, which forced me to conserve my lines, and tried to simplify each character down to the bare minimum needed to recognise them. They’re also all wearing new non-canonical outfits so I used their familiar colour schemes for the same purpose. It’s not perfect, but I love it, and it’s everything I’d hoped I’d be able to end the challenge on.

I really, really enjoyed the entire month and the way it tied in with my new time management schedule. It gave me some achievable short-term goals which added up to this long-term achievement I can now look back on; I learned a lot both about balancing my energy and about technical skills, I found ways to stay motivated, and most importantly I learned to not get caught up on the individual slip-ups and pieces I didn’t like as much and to instead focus on the bigger picture. Thank you to everyone involved in organising and supporting this event! I found so many other incredible fanartists, writers, and content creators through this challenge and I can’t wait to see the bonus content released over August!

#31 Days of Apex #31DaysOfApex #highlights

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bearpillowmonster · 5 years ago

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Here it is guys, the trailer, that was at a mysterious State of Play this morning that I didn’t know about...

Let’s go over some stuff, there will be spoilers for this trailer.

FF characters...wow! Some may say “This means we’ll get Sephiroth.” but I still doubt it, I think that yellow version of Dark Inferno IS the new secret boss, however I have heard that there indeed might be 2 secret bosses. This inclusion actually leads me to believe that we will actually get to explore a little of Hollow Bastion, at least I hope. We already see some new stuff for Scala so I assume that they’ll expand them a little, even though it just looks like a quick way to get around.

Aerith talks about how they still remember so he must still be out there. Which would explain the title “ReMind” but does that mean he was supposedly wiped from existence? How does that work? Just another big quirk like the time travel I guess but we’ll see.

PLAYABLE KAIRI!! She looks fabulous, This is everything we wanted, now bring her to the next game! I can imagine all the team moves she can do with the team. She can even fight Old Man Xehanort, I don’t expect that to coincide with the story, just be a playable extra but hey we may get some story tidbits too.

I actually didn’t expect this DLC to take place after the end of the game, I figured they were saving that for the next game and there would just be a small piece like 0.2 but I stand corrected, there’s a lot more than I expected.

Judging by what Aqua says “I’m not alone this time.” I think she might be going back to the Realm boys! Like why though? Final World...again! Chirithy says he went back to basic mode, which just seems like another excuse to start him off with a clean slate like they did with DDD for KH3.

We see Sora look at Aqua from a point of view, as if he’s a ghost, I imagine this is during endgame and he can sense all the character’s aura then perhaps even have to fight the darkness that lingers within them.

Last but not least we get a breakdown. First off:

This is the Free DLC, everything below it, so no need to buy ReMind, this is just a separate update I believe.

This is just the DLC plus a concert video I assume, I don’t think there’s anything extra in this version other than that.

Now the top half, I’m not even really going to touch because I don’t know what it means like “Premium menu” and “Data Greeting”

Otherwise this is a fanboy’s treasure, I can’t wait!

#kh #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3 #kh3 #remind #re:mind #spoilers

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 4 years ago

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Would you rather see GB buff Zane's other trees, buff everybody else to be on par with Seein dead Zane, or nerf Seein dead?

Why only stick with one? Let's go for D, A mix of everything, plus other class mod buffs (for all!). I can't imagine Seein Dead Zane is the strongest VH atm (as far as I know, I haven't been keeping up with meta because this game beyond my own little bubble is kinda making me sad-o lately. I thought that award went to IB Moze nowadays), but regardless of my knowledge yes I'd genuinely love to see everyone at the same power level. Buffs ahoy! Or nerfs. Whichever works, so long as the game is actually fun and satisfying to play.

I'd personally like them to swap the Seein Red capstone with Seein Dead, but without the +25% kill skill buff. (aka: Seein Dead (mod): activate kill skills on action skill start. Get +25% kill skill efficiency. Seein Red (capstone): Zane has a chance to activate Kill Skills when shooting/damaging an enemy). Seein Dead would still be his top mod probably, but at least it would open him up for other playstyles (somewhat- we still actually need damage in his other trees). He's almost unplayable end game without that mod, because of his reliance on the skills it buffs, and I'd love to try a late-game build on him that isn't centered around kill skills for once. I tried to make a Conductor build and gave up after it took 4x as long to do anything. His new mod (won't go into more specifics bc spoilers) is looking a tiny bit promising for an Under Cover build, but we'll have to see how well that actually plays out when I get down into it. I get the feeling the damage output is going to be 'not good'. But I will be very happy if I'm wrong!!

That said, I really want to be able to use any other class mod at M10. Op8/10, my main VH Zer0 had the sniper OR melee build and even for the melee build (I am a dirty melee zer0 main) I could swap between two legendary mods. In Bl3 that difference is felt even harder because class mods are supposed to give us unique skills. But it's a pretty goddamn easy choice between "get a random dot when freezing an enemy" or "activate all your kill skills and also they get a 25% damage buff". They could've buffed Death Follows Close and Seein' Red, you know to match pre-release values (and maybe also swapped their positions back to how they were iunno just a thought), but instead dropped that class mod on us (BEHIND A PAY WALL NO LESS) and said 'whelp. We did it, boys. Zane complainers are no more'. If anybody wants to play Zane late game, they've gotta drop money on the Handsome Jackpot dlc to get their hands on the mod. That's so... Messed up? Like it feels like they locked his fix behind a pay wall and a gear slot. Like, Zane mains don't get to experiment with the new class mods that drop because we know it's never gonna top Seein Dead. Even if it's kind of 'okay' in comparison. So maybe buff his other mods? Fix Zane's skill trees? Both?? Like why. Okay. Hear me out. Seein Red: activate kill skills on AS start. Wonderful! CCnC: (potentially) infinite AS uptime. Cool! But trying to mix those two together? There's no synergy. Why does Good Misfortune buff Zane's AS uptime when the literal next skill in the tree rewards short uptime and fast cooldown? Same with Borrowed Time. There's so much... Non-synergy in his trees it's almost comical. Fixing Seein' Red would open up a ton of possibilities. Running a CCnC/Seein' Red build could actually be possible if they made it so Seein Red activated Kill Skills on damage. Or! Fix CCnC so each proc of it counts as both action skill end AND action skill start. Do *something* to make his skills synergize instead of being polar opposites.

And it's not just Zane, but he's the biggest example in my books since I know him the best. I hear Amara only has 1 (2?) good mods, too. She definitely only seems to have 1 good action skill and it's unfortunately the Phaselock redux. They could buff her other two skills, make phaseslam or phasecast actually hit hard at later levels, but they don't. It's the whole Deathtrap thing again, except now they proved its possible for AS to deal damage in m10 with iron bear and Blane (Zane's clone) so what's the deal? Also, I'd love to see Amara actually deal decent damage with DoTs at higher levels given how many of her skills are dedicated to them. It would make that one class mod that applies your AS element dot to all enemies hit by your AS really cool for mobbing.

So, okay, clearly I'd love to see everyone balanced at one level, but honestly I think they need to get to max level before they do that. I don't think we're going to have a 'Salvador' situation in 3 unless they fork up the new skill trees Big Time, so I'd love to see all the VHs at one power level (whatever they decide is best). The constant tweaking to max levels and adding new skills/gear/Mayhem levels is doing not great things to the balance (or fun-ness, imo). I get the game is still in development, and I get that they wanna buff longetivity with grinding with each level cap, but my biggest wish is that before they add new content, that they'll fix the stuff we have now so there's a base to go off of. VH skills, class mods, guns, grenades, Mayhem levels, all of it. I especially want them to test stuff at M10, given what happened with the Guardian Takedown on launch.

I know the borderlands games aren't... The best... At scaling/balancing issues late-game. But I really hope they will try to fix that this time. It is extremely disheartening to see every patch/hotfix that Zane is still... Basically borked at the base level. He's had a handful of really good fixes (stacking kill skills, the buff to quick breather) but a lot of his trees/skills are still pretty messed up, especially when you think about synergy. Also, you know, just saying, the Under Cover tree is just... So bad after tier 3. I used to vouch for CCnC, but why use CCnC when we have good misfortune which is 3x better with none of the restrictions? And why use his ice-based life steal skill, when you can get life steal at tier 2 on *any* enemy, frozen or not? Someone just needs to scrap the whole tree and remake it from the ground up. That capstone is... Blegh. So bad. I have not seen a single viable, m10 build with that capstone. You can make Seein Red work. You can make Double Barrel work. Fuckin distributed denial? N O P E. I tried. So got-damg hard. But it's a headache when it doesn't work with at LEAST half the shield effects in the game and you don't know which ones it won't work with without testing and also it's mainly for multi-player and none of my friends wanna play because the balance is so forked and...

Aw geez. This just turned into a rant about things I want fixed haha. Sorry about that, it's late and I get cranky and rambly at night.

So uh. To answer the question: yes. Just. YES.

Tl;dr: Someone please fix Zane I want him to be playable late-game without players needing to drop money on DLCs. plz thx.

#Sorry I ramble when I think about his skills :(#They're #So bad #Just.#They seem good in theory but no #Someone fix him please #Is asking for a full overhaul of a character after year 1 is over too much? No.#Fix him!!!#Ech #I could go on for years #I won't #But I could #Any who #Thank you!!!#Ask #I appreciate the chance to go feral for a moment #Bl3

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slade-neko · 5 years ago

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Took a quick break of Pokemon Sword and Shield to finally test out The Sims 4 University DLC.

I literally know next to nothing about this pack. Just what I saw in the two preview trailers. I got it thinking it’s gonna be so much fun, right?! Well... we’ll see... I’m inserting a “keep reading” because its a looong post.

First off I wasn’t sure who to send to Uni. Ended up playing it as my main OC.

Bought him a new University laptop and enrolled him into the Fox-trot University (or something like that.) Had to wait a full day or two before he got accepted. That’s a pretty long wait with MCCC cutting my game time to half-speed... Maybe you can do it instantly somehow, but I missed out on that if you can. Turns out you can, with TestingCheats True and shift-clicking to bypass the wait time. Good ol’ cheat codes savin’ the day, hahaha! Only wish I knew that sooner...

Anyways, he arrived at the University eventually. I easily got distracted looking around at all the sims walking around and one of his many classes crept up on him and he was late. Like really late, made it to class with only 3 minutes left for the session. That’s off to a wonderful 1st day.

Turns out it didn’t matter as they were actually just off-screen rabbit holes. Joyful fun, that is. I had signed him up for a buttload of computer-related classes thinking they’d be fun/ playable? Kinda regretting that now. What do the devs expect the player to in a single person household during a rabbit hole event? Are you supposed to just wait there in real life? Stare at the walk-bys? (Y’know I’ll admit the walk-bys were mildly entertaining...)

I even spotted Danny from NSP as the new “Health” teacher, I presume? Just look at those “painted on abs.” Go, Danny!

The classes are only a couple of hours too, so its not a terribly bad wait.

After that disappointing 1st class. I noticed my sim had a bunch of career tasks to do.

a final exam

term papers x2

give presentation

and homework x4

I misunderstood thinking he had to do it all at once, so I sent him to the study hall to spend the rest of the day doing “career tasks.” Luckily he had a cool study partner.

Finally sent my sim to his dorm to meet his roommates, but before he could do that, I noticed somehow he had got thrown into the E-Sports career and had to do some team gaming? I think I accidentally set him up with a gaming scholarship. I’m not really fond of “competitive gaming” though. Probably should’ve read through the scholarships a bit better.

Several more hours later, I ended up just sending him to sleep because it was incredibly late. Dawn of the 2nd day came and then he finally got to meet his “very epic” roommates! Probably the thing I was most excited for seeing in this expansion.

A Nature-loving hippie boy, a space bounty hunter girl, a space alien girl, and an edgy little jackal...? Oh, boy this will be interesting...

Then well that’s uhh, that’s honestly as far as I got in my playthrough...

The last few days I have been doing more extensive University play testing on my brother’s game and discovered a bunch of annoying things about University. Like how households are ripped apart and individual sims are thrown into single households for the schooling system. I completed an entire term and sims were not re-merged into their original households. Maybe I needed to wait more time after the term is over or something, but if it doesn’t actually re-merge my households that’s reallllly annoying. I don’t want to have to spend time moving sims around to get them back in their rightful households after a term at a University.

Another annoying thing I’ve noticed is that it would seem my roommates in Uni were creating their own University outfits that were REPLACING my outfits I made for them.

Why are these not Situational outfits? They straight up replace the Everydays I created. I can’t tell if that’s a bug or maybe an outdated mod. Seems to only affect my active sim’s roommates though, but jeez I can’t have my sims losing outfits. I spend way too much time making nice outfits on them to have my game go deleting them.

Other than those two big annoyances, the DLC is pretty fun to play. As it is now, I don’t really want to go to a University with all the headache of the cleanup duty I’d have after each term. Those two problems go a long way for me. On the positives, I really like the roommates system. It’s funny to enroll into a university and see which random sims get assigned to my dorm. As for the world, Britechester, I love it and the Universities’ designs! I personally prefer the old gothic Garreg Mach looking school way more than the modern design of the Fox-burrow university.

#The Sims 4 #The Sims 4 Discover University #my thoughts #dumb

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phantomphangphucker · 6 years ago

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A Life Of Role Playing Weakness - PhannieMay - Day 14 D & D

Summary: What’s a halfa to do when school is on lockdown and everyone’s bored? Games and trickery.

Most of the class groans as they can tell the sun has set by the room becoming near pitch black. Though pretty well everyone’s glad Mr. Lancer got stuck outside of class, otherwise he would have spent the afternoon making them do school work.

Danny, knowing full well no one else can actually see, finds some candles and sneakily lights them with his fingers. Unfortunately, there’s only three but most of the class seems relieved to have them, “took you long enough Fenton”. Rolling his eyes at Kwan, “like you would have been any faster, at least I was actually doing something”. Danny honestly could have found them way faster but that would have been suspicious. Groaning a bit at the window, though the groan was more aimed at the extreme weather outside, that has caused the school lockdown and blackout. Sure he could technically just leave, but due to the schools' security system, all the doors and windows are sealed shut. The only way out would be to phase out and that would be so many levels beyond suspicious.

Clearly, a couple geeks are tired of Star and Lily bickering, “why don’t we play a game? You know, actually get along? For one night?”.

“Oh why would we do that when it’s more fun to annoy you losers?”, Danny rolls his eyes at Todd, sure he’s not as bad as Dash but still.

Apparently, the geek kid, James, isn’t very impressed either, “I’d rather get destroyed by stupid wind while having fun, than getting mocked by some meathead”. Danny’s not really sure how insulting the guy will get him to play games but whatever.

Deciding to interfere, “what game? Ain’t nobody going to play if no one knows what’s up. And if you say truth or dare even I will mock you”.

“Oh like you even know how to mock someone, Fenton. But yeah whatever, spill”, Danny muffles his snickering because he could out mock this guy easily. Half his fights involved mocking the opponent, eighty percent if it was Vlad.

The other geek kid, Tyler, rummages through his bag and pulls out what looks like a board game, “well, someone made a D & D ghost edition. Because this is Amity, got figures and everything”. Tyler is smirking as even Danny knows that anything ghosts gets pretty much every Amity teens attention. And Danny is honestly so down for this too, he will die if there’s a figure like him in this thing.

Flopping on his back as there is indeed a little crystal clear figure that, while mostly featureless, looks suspiciously like Phantom. Finger gun shooting himself in the head before pointing at the board, while still laying on the ground, “ok, I’m in”. Seems everyone else agrees while looking at the collection of ghostly figures.

Unsurprisingly, pretty well only the geeks know anything about this game. And no one’s interested in long explanations. So they just give a quick run down of classes and alignments. But having to pull out the book and read over it quickly for species, since this was an entirely ghosts and humans version.

Danny snickers, “chaotic good undying warlock suits me I’d say”. Really Danny only picked that because of the undying bit, the joke was there so he had to take it. And chaotic good pretty much was him, no way he could call himself lawful. Not when his very existence was against the laws of nature and reality themselves.

James tosses down a shorthand species sheet, “I’m surprised they actually made so many ghost species, so take your pick”.

Species:

Ghost - versatile but never the strongest

Ghoul - aggressive close and personal fighters

Spirit - gentle divine creatures, usually lawful

Spector - sneaky loners, like to appear highly intelligent.

Poltergeist - aggressive powerful fighters, always evil. Large but often invisible.

Whisp - tricksters but powerful with magic, always chaotic good. Small in size

Wraith - protective, unattractive and often feared by others

Banshee - prophetic strong healers

Phantom - selfless guardians who care for others, always good.

Danny obviously wants to pick the Phantom class but apparently, no gets to be that, as James taps on that class and snickers, “considering this is Amity, Phantom isn’t going to be a playable species otherwise half of you guys will pick that”. Danny sticks out his arms, “oh come on, if anyone should get that species it should be the guy with the same first name!”. A few of the other kids snicker and even James shrugs in amusement but, “can’t just let one person pick it. That would be a dick move”. Danny rolls his eyes but is thoroughly amused, seeing as he’s almost about to graduate and literally no one has figured out who exactly he is, he’s kind of stopped caring about going out of his way to hide shit. Heck, he’s tempted to just randomly clue in his classmates through various absurd means. At least now the government can’t even touch him, they wanted to be on “safe footing” with the ghost king even if they still have no clue who exactly that is. All they know is that he’s frequently in the human world and capable of taking the form of a regular human. Danny’s perfectly content to let them think that ability is unique to the Ghost King.

Shaking his head and looking down to the sheet, Whisp and Wraith are the only ones that stand out to him but trickster is much more in line with himself and would be much more amusing. And he’s not really surprised that no one picks regular ghost, “well Whisp it is for me. A chaotic Whispy Warlock that just can not fucking die already”.

“Dude, that’s not what undying means here”

“No shit, let me have my jokes”, besides undying warlocks get their magic from immortals right? Well this character was made by a damn immortal, given creation and thus power from Phantoms immortal ass.

Lily rolls the weird dice in her fingers, “so what? We roll for stat points now?”. While Rex eyes Danny up and down, “you picked the smallest class but you’re the tallest guy here. Did you just pick everything to be funny?”. Danny smirks wide, not why he picked the species but absolutely. Everything about him is practically one big joke, Hell he’s playing a board game with a bunch of regular humans while pretending to be trapped during a storm. He could literally fly through this weather and it would be fun too. He could also stop it if he really wanted to, use his ice to mess with the weather and air currents; but fucking around that much really wasn’t a good idea.

“Yup, roll three dice. Total stat point of three is the worst you could get, eighteen is the highest. Ten or eleven is the average. All the regular human npc’s are tens”, Danny’s not surprised Todd went with Ghoul. He might not be that big of a guy but man could he ever be an aggressive asshole to pretty much everyone. Speaking of asshole, “Fenton, your turn. What? your brain still fried from that weak little shock?”.

Turning to Todd and answering as he throws dice, “you know I underplayed that shit right? Didn’t want to deal with damn doctors, no way anyone would have let me out of going to the hospital if they had known it was closer to four billion than a hundred volts”. Smirking at Todd, “just for reference, a lightning bolt is around one billion. Your wall socket, that I’m sure you rammed forks into for kicks, is about a hundred and twenty”.

“Ok first off, you suck with dice, second how the hell aren’t you dead then?”, James clearly thinks Danny’s bullshitting and the sad thing is, the portal was probably more volts than that. Who knows what the volt readout for the entirety of a dimension colliding inside one tiny body is. Danny finishes rolling as he talks, “I’m not dead? Well, that’s news to me”.

Star elbows him, she’s become oddly friendly even flirty over the past year. Danny’s pretty well positive it’s because of his height and even if he wore baggy clothing pretty well always, if you really looked you could tell he wasn’t scrawny. Star’s got an eye for details so he can’t be too surprised and she’s perfectly fine with dating below her standing, Hell she dated Tucker of all people. “What even happened? Pretty sure you never told anyone”.

Rolling his eyes at her, “no one cared to ask. But if you must know a ghost portal opened up directly on top of me. There’s no real way to know just how much shocked me but I’m pretty sure an entire dimension carries more volts than one lightning bolt”.

Danny’s the only one to notice the straight up shit roll of his last dice as everyone gapes at him. Tyler’s the first to speak up, “you were electrocuted by the ghost zone?! Like all of it?! At once?! You should be a lot more than dead!”. Danny throws his head back and laughs, “what? Dead with a side of extra dead sauce?! Sounds like the perfect breakfast!”. Shaking his head as he continues talking, while catching James staring in bafflement at the dice, “sounds way more edible than those stupid ecto-contaminated Hot Dogs that try to eat you back! Or that damn overcooked turkey that stabbed me with a knife”.

Kwan mouths “what the fuck”, while James points at Danny, “dude, your luck is horrendous. I’m not even sure how you even get the worst stats possible. No wonder a portal opened up on you, I think the universe might actually hate you”, glancing at Danny who has curled up in laughter, “I don’t think it’s quite that funny though”. Danny can’t help but laugh harder, the king of ghosts, the most powerful ghost around, who’s literally worshiped as a god by some; is the weakest and shittiest ghost in this game. Like Boxy could beat this guys ass. That thought makes him laugh even harder. Wiping his eyes a bit and noticing that everyone actually looks slightly concerned know, “trust me, this is utterly hilarious. You just don’t know why! Oh man!”. Wheezing in laughter again, “now watch, the rest of my rolls will be so insanely good that I impossibly succeed at everything my character does”.

Kwan points at him, “with these awful stats you damn well better, otherwise you’re screwed”.

“I think the stats reflect Fenton perfectly. Weak and pathetic!”, Danny really can’t feel insulted because it’s just really funny right now. Todd is clearly not happy that Danny finds this funny instead of insulting, or that Star is mouthing, “are you blind?”, at Todd.

“How can you possibly find being insulted funny?”, comes Rex’s squeaky voice. Danny runs a hand through his hair, “insults are funny when they’re so insanely incorrect that it becomes absurd”.

Todd rolls his eyes at Danny, “you’re a complete weakling and a scaredy cat, just like al-”, Todd cuts himself off as he stares at Danny. Who just tore off his sweater, because this is way too funny. Chances are if he ever gets destroyed, it will be because he couldn’t resist a good joke. Danny smirks a bit as he nonchalantly flexes without doing any dumb poses, because he does have some shame. While everyone just stares at the clearly ripped and heavily scarred weirdest member of the weirdo trio.

“Todd, I could fucking maim you. I could maim the whole damn football team. But that wouldn’t be very good of me, now would it?”, tapping on his character sheet with a sly smirk.

“How the hell do you look like that man? And why don’t you just join the team then? Actually have good social standing?”, Danny can’t really blame Kwan for caring about that sort of thing. After all, being a jock was pretty well the guys' life and he wasn’t burdened with crazy weird responsibilities or power for that matter.

Responding mostly to Todd’s little insults, “I come from a family of ghost hunters, what the hell do you think? That scaredy cat crap is just a cover. Which is rather pointless now, what with graduation coming up and all the teachers not really giving a shit about my crap now”, aggressively pointing his finger at Kwan while the others finish rolling, “I don’t care for sports and my time is better spent elsewhere. Social standing in Highschool means nothing to me”.

Now it’s Tyler’s turn to look incredulously at the stupid powerful halfa, “why are you even telling us this?”.

“Because it’s funny. I picked a jokester species for a reason. I’m a little shit and this is one way I get my kicks. That and no one will believe you if you tell. So it really doesn’t matter. Even if you were believed, it would hardly matter. It’s too late for the school to really do anything and I really am someone of chaos. I will only laugh harder if the whole school starts freaking out”, Danny can tell he’s confusing everyone and that is only making him snickering more. So he takes the chance for first dibs on a figure, a transparent floating skinny man in a hooded robe with his legs crossed. Looks a shit ton like ClockWork, snickering “now if only he had a staff”. This prompts everyone else to realise what he did and to start snatching at figures, while Rex gives him a shy but quizzical look. So Danny decides to be more of a confusing mess to these regular mortals, “he looks like a close friend of mine. And this makes my horrid stats even funnier because my friend is flat out OP. His tricky ass will get a good laugh out of this I’m sure”.

“Uh, humans aren’t really OP, ever, are you friends with a freaking ghost? You’re damn weird enough to be the person who befriends some ghost. And what? You going to talk his ear off about actually hanging out with people other than the two other resident freaks for once?”, Todd’s tone goes from confused questioning to his typical insulting asshole mode. So Danny decides to be a bit of an ass right back, “Todd, my friend is an omniscient borderline god of a ghost. I don’t have to tell him, he already knows and is probably snickering like crazy right now. But of course you don’t believe me, why would you? Which is why he’ll either A, do nothing to make me the butt of a joke. Or B, do something to make you the butt of a joke. That, or he’ll hit me with his staff to do both at once”. Honestly Danny’s kind of looking for approval and pretty well a go-ahead from the master of time here, he’d like to know he’s not majorly fucking up just because he’s having a bit of fun.

Everyone’s staring at him in disbelief and he can tell Todd wants to mock him some more but Danny falling back laughing stops him. Holding the figure, which now has a little tiny glowing CW staff resting across its lap, above his face. Through a laugh, “fucking nice, you enigmatic weirdo”. Sitting back up as he places the figure on the board, “and now he’s got a staff”.

“Nice trick, maybe you can-”, Lily cuts Todd off, “dumb boy, pretty sure he doesn’t carry around mini glowing staff things. No ones that weird”. She’s not wrong, why would someone ever do that anyway? Well, ClockWork might, just to throw them at him. After all, he’s got all the time in the world to mess around, when he can anyway. Just like Danny, though Danny takes way more mess around time.

Tyler shakes his head, “something tells me, we barely know you”. Danny pats Tyler on the shoulder while James actually gets the game started, “so we’re doing this party style, just a dungeon crawl. Get through the city without getting caught by hunters and defeat the ghost king”. This makes Danny cough a bit startled, the goal of this game is for his classmates and him to defeat, himself? Well, he guesses that’s not really a first for him. “Hey, James. Who does this game think the ghost king is?”, everyone looks a bit confused at him. Then James grabs one of the figures, Danny can’t help but laugh at the little knock-off Pariah figure. “Well that’s a damn easy battle currently then! Dude’s locked inside the sarcophagus of forever sleep. So we’re beating up a sleeping man, or releasing him just to fight him. Which is grade A stupid and insane”, waving off their shocked glances, “besides he’s not even the ghost king”.

“Oh and you know who is? We could just swap out if there’s a figure for him. All the figures have set stats for if you’re going to use them as NPC’s”, now Danny’s just flat out interested, because that includes him. Danny motions for the book but James sticks it behind him, “oh Hell no, just tell us who”.

Rolling his eyes, “I’m just going to take the book, dude. I do want I wanna, chaotic and all that”.

“Fenton, he’s literally right across from you. How you plan to do that?”, Todd snickers a bit while James looks smug. Danny decides just fuck it at this point, because really how has no one noticed his crap yet. Using the free-floating ectoplasm in the air to fling the book over Jame’s head and at himself, flipping through it as everyone gapes. “How did you even do that? That’s more than just sleight of hand, holy shit”, Danny blinks at them over the top of the book and snickers, realising none of them actually noticed the slight ghostly glowing. Comparing his and Pariah’s page and damn they made Phantom overpowered. Sure, that’s accurate but, uh, even if everyone had freaky high stats this doesn’t seem winnable. Why the heck put a nearly undefeatable character in a board game? Sure it was accurate to real life but still. Though making Pariah just barely above half Phantoms strength was majorly underestimating the former king. Like insanely so. And did they seriously make a Walker look-alike stronger than Pariah? The tornado “race” too? Putting the book down, “yeah I don’t think we want to do that. The goal here is to actually win right? Not just have everybody’s asses get universally kicked”.

Lily puts her hands on her hips, “just spill already. You satiated your curiosity now do ours”.

Chuckling a bit as he pushes around the figures some, “fine fine, it really should be obvious though”. Smirking as he cups the little knock-off Phantom before slowly placing him at the castle, “our little town hero is a lot busier than he seems”. Literally all of them are grinning, though Star looks a bit confused, “so why do ghosts keep coming here and picking fights with Phantom. If he’s their king shouldn’t they, like, listen to him?”.

“Fighting is how ghosts socialise, know each other, and keep each other from getting rusty. The only way ghosts won't go picking fights with another ghost is if that ghost is hated or extremely annoying to literally everyone. Well, that or just being really dumb and pointless to fight”.

“So what Phantom’s not strong enough to be pointless to fight? Really Fenton”, Danny rolls his eyes at Todd’s unimpressed tone. Shaking his head, “oh the stats this book gives him are accurate. He’s pretty well the most powerful ghost there is. An omnipotent immortal who’s literally worshipped as a god by many other ghosts. All those fights are usually more like sparring matches, he’s having his ghostly fun and keeping in touch with everyone. He’d be so very bored otherwise and the other ghosts wouldn’t want him out of practice in case something happens”.

Todd actually starts laughing at this while James does indeed decide to stick with using knock-off Pariah because damn. Todd points at Danny, “of course Phantom likes hitting and fighting! Regular jock for sure, just with real power”.

“Well I don’t like that. He should be wanting ghosts to not come here, not eagerly, or whatever, awaiting the next fight”, Danny can’t help but jerk from that because dude fuck buddy. He absolutely did look forward to the next fight, fighting and witty batter was his bread and butter. Locking eyes with Tyler, “nearly every ghost awaits their next fight, welcome to ghost nature buddy. Humans go to cafes, ghosts punch each other. Humans show off pictures of their selfies or pets, ghosts show off new weapons by using them on each other. To fight is to socialise. Phantoms one of the few that doesn’t like others in the crossfire though. If ghosts stopped picking fights here, he’d feel unneeded and paranoid. Plus this is his home, ghosts have to come here to see him. Them being here doesn’t mean they’re causing problems”. Tyler still looks unimpressed.

There’s the occasional jokes and pepperings of ghost questions as they play a few turns before Lily has just about enough and finally asks Danny just what the fuck, “how do you even know all this shit? Even your parents, who’ve spent their whole lives researching ghosts, don’t know even half this shit. I would know, I’ve asked”. Danny chuckles, his parents would know this shit if they weren’t so damn biased and actually just asked. Smirking at her, “you learn this stuff by genuinely socialising and being friendly with ghosts. My parents only wish to send them back to the Zone or experiment. Of course, they don’t know”.

“That’s actually kind of sad, still doesn’t answer my main question though. You’re actually fighting ghosts?”, Danny will give her props on being pushy. But he rolls to see if he can avoid this random hunter trap before responding, smirking as it rolls high, “I spar yes, protect the citizens. Toss around witty banter, making Plasmius regret ever meeting me. In general, I’m an OP little shit”, Danny taps on his figure, that’s actually doing well for being an utter weakling, “that’s why this is funny. The strongest most capable person here has the utterly weakest character ever”.

“Capable ghost hunter isn’t a capable ghost, even if you’re a ghost friendly hunter”, Danny can’t help but wheeze. He was just a ghost being a ghost. Half human or not, he was sparing and socialising as a ghost does. Calling him a human hunting ghosts was just so entirely wrong. Smiling with his head in his hand, “I don’t call myself a hunter and neither do they”.

Kwan pushes him playfully, “yeah well, regardless of title, I still can’t believe you even do that. Props man, I guess”.

By the time the party gets to knock-off Pariah, both Lily and some quiet kid named Max have had their characters killed off. Danny’s snickering as his and Tyler’s characters are leading the face off. While James shakes his head and points his hand at the figures, “this is ridiculous even if you had raised your stats the most you possibly could, there’d still be no way to win this”. Danny chuckles because that’s pretty much what the odds were when he did face Pariah. Once again deciding fuck it, “well then let’s make this even more realistic then. I’ll roll to multiply my characters power a hundredfold”. James starts lowkey choking, “what?! How is that realistic?!”. Danny laughs as he rolls, “that’s how Phantom won. Multiplied his power a hundredfold and nearly destroyed himself in the process. This book drastically underestimates Pariah’s power. It took thirteen extremely powerful ancient ghosts just to seal him away, Phantom did it alone. Like the self-sacrificial idiot he is”. Shrugging, “well that and, no one else was even willing to fight Pariah cause he was too damn strong and wasn’t worth fighting”.

Smirking at his die showing a high ass number, while menacingly petting his figure, “having that much power... it’s a burden, isn’t it, child?”. James mouths, “what the fuck”, at both the die and Danny.

While Todd blinks a bit surprised, “Fenton, what? I would never have expected you to sound creepy, threatening, and powerful”. Danny grins wider, “and that’s why no one will believe you about any of this”.

Now, unfortunately, this battle with Pariah requires actually defeating him. No sealing him away, and his character is pathetically weak even at a hundredfold power. He could kick his own ass with his ghost powers completely neutralised. So it really surprised no one that Danny fuckin’ dies.

Snickering down at the figure, “little ragged around the edges, eh, child?”. Before bursting out laughing as the mini staff explodes into purple mist. Todd, Tyler, and Star do wind up surviving and winning though.

“So any other crazy bullshit you feel like pulling. Since we’re officially out of shit to do besides being dicks to each other”, James mutters while lying on the floor. Todd snickers, “I’m cool with that”. Danny rolls his eyes, “now-now, would you act like that in front of Phantom?”. Both Star and Todd shake their heads rapidly, only Todd speaks though, “why the hell would I? That guy’s like super moral, I’d be making a horrible impression”. Danny can’t help but laugh, yeah he’s definitely got strong morals but he’s also a little shit. He steals, pulls pranks, constantly breaks into to pretty much everywhere, and spends most of his time pounding the crap out of someone. Good reasons or no, he’s ain’t a golden boy. Just the good guy who generally plays fast and loose with morality... and mortality. Smirking at Todd, “it’s a little late to change his impression of you, I’d say. You’ve literally punched him in the face, multiple times actually”, Danny sneers mockingly but still humorously, at Todd looking startled, “oh what? Didn’t know Phantom can change into a regular human?”. Throwing his head back and laughing loudly, “funny thing! The town barely knows Phantom”. Danny sighs as his ghost sense goes off and well, surprise surprise, his icy breath also glows. Knowing full well it’s Skulker, who really is more of a threat, he has a bad tendency to abduct people after all.

“What the fuck was that?”, Danny completely ignores Tyler, though he does talk, “the town also barely knows Fenton. So you’re right about that, but looks like I’ve got a job to do. Guess Skulker doesn’t really care about the shit weather, but then again, neither do I. Flying in the wind is hella fun”. Smirking as his toxic green eyes fill the room with an eerie ghostly light, “anyways this has been quite amusing and like I said, I’m a little overpowered shit. And ain’t nobody gonna believe you”. Before transforming and phasing out the window.

“Fenton, Phantom. We are all idiots, holy shit”

End.

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