#I even made a map for the D&D world this is set in

[aftermathfanfic]

D&Ducks

So, I was originally going to make this post for when I hit 300 followers, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, and I’ve been thinking about this for way too long, so fuck it. I’m just gonna post this now and see what happens.

In case it wasn’t obvious from the hints I’ve scattered through Aftermath, I am a huge D&D nerd. I love playing the game, I love running the game, I love the monsters, everything. And what I particularly love doing is building characters and monsters for the game. I use a lot of custom monsters for the games that I run, even though I don’t end up using all of them, and what I’ve done in the past is that I created character sheets and stat blocks for some of our favourite anthropomorphic ducks. In fact, on my main blog, I documented a solo adventure that I ran by myself, for myself, in story format as I put these duck characters through a premade advennture! (I eventually stopped, because playing a D&D game by yourself is as dull as it sounds)

So today, I’m going to revisit those roots and lay out how I would build the Ducktales characters as tabletop RPG player characters! This is something I’ve given way too much thought to, so be warned – this is going to be quite long-winded, with little to nothing to do with Aftermath itself, and of interest to only a small subset of people.

Let’s begin!

The Basics

I want to preface this whole thing by mentioning that while I’m going to try and describe these characters in a way that can be transposed onto any RPG system, I’m going to be using the Pathfinder RPG (1st edition) as a basis for these characters, just because it’s what I’m most familiar with at the moment. The basics are the same – roll a 20-sided dice, add a number and hope to get a big enough total – but there are more nitty-gritty rules and it's way easier to kill off your characters.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ll be inserting these characters into a D&D setting of my own creation, rather than any pre-existing settings. I don’t have a name for it, but essentially this setting is an undisciplined mix-and-match of characters from different IPs that interest me. The McDucks, in this setting, live as a powerful noble family in a kingdom of united beast-folk families.

Final thing is that even though these guys are anthropomorphic ducks, they’re going to have the racial traits of humans to make things simpler on me. I’ll also be giving them a swim speed of 15 feet in addition to those traits.

Dewey

This spry duck stands with the cockiness of an ambitious hero, a sword in each hand. A bright blue tabard, tattered from numerous skirmishes, flows down his chest to cover steel armour of haphazard construction.

Age: 16 Alignment: Chaotic Good Class/Level: Fighter 3/Bard 1 Ability Scores: STR 16, DEX 16, CON 14, INT 10, WIS 8, CHA 14

In this world, the triplets were raised by their uncle Donald in a quiet fishing village on the outskirts of the city of Duckland, in the providence of Calisota. They never got so much as a hint of their caretaker’s history as an adventurer, not until they found their uncle’s old adventuring gear, stowed away in the attic of their house. Among this gear was two finely made swords, both of which Dewey snatched up and started swinging around – resulting in the destruction of several family items and the near decapitation of Huey. Donald was forced to tell the triplets of his past as an adventurer, and the revelation shook them to the core. To make up for it, he decided to teach them how to adventure properly, in the hopes that if they wouldn’t be persuaded out of their trouble-making instincts, he could at least teach them to be safe while doing it.

Dewey remains the chief chaos-monger of the triplets. Ambitious and eager to live up to his family name, Dewey often throws himself into danger without hesitation, giving no thought to possible traps, uneven terrain, or indeed, the strength of whoever he’s fighting against compared to his own. He makes up for his recklessness by being virtually untouchable in a fight, deflecting swords, claws and spells with his twin swords. The longer blade, named Helios, was once wielded by his Uncle Donald. The shorter blade, Asteria, was his mother’s.

Against intelligent foes, Dewey never fights to kill – a trait unique to the McDuck adventurers – but rather, he tries to disarm and trip his foes, intimidating them into surrender. He’s remarkably acrobatic, and his fights are often performative in nature – hence his level in Bard. The sheer bravado he displays in combat inspires his family to fight even more fiercely and distracts his foes long enough for him to knock the wind out of them.

Huey

This anxious duck wears a heavy breastplate and a red cap, a collapsible spear slung around his back. He holds a large, heavy book bound in red leather with the letters ‘WJW’ imprinted upon it.

Age: 16 Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Cleric 2/Wizard 2 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 10, CON 12, INT 16, WIS 15, CHA 13

Though regarded as a do-gooder by his brothers, Huey Duck is just as brave, ambitious and adventurous as the other McDucks. He took the role of the older brother quickly, seeing himself as a caretaker of his brothers and, prior to moving into Manor McDuck, the fixer-upper of torn clothes, broken furniture, and the like. With a resourcefulness and intellect beyond his years, Huey takes the role as both the primary healer of the party and – when the occasion calls for it – the firepower.

Huey originally had his heart set on joining the Woodchuck rangers, a group of survivalists and wilderness protectors on the outskirts of the world. While there, he met clerics and priests of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, with whom he made a rapport with. He even began to learn the ways of these wilder clerics, learning magic that could heal, magic that could wound, and magic that let him shape the natural world around him. In the end, however, he was rejected by the rangers, for while his survival skills were impeccable, his fighting prowess left much to be desired. Disheartened, but determined to make use of what he’d learned, he continued his studies of the ways of Artemis, delving deeply into his survival skills and the art of restorative magic.

At some point during his escapades with his uncle, Lord Scrooge McDuck, Huey became enamoured with the other side of magic – that of the arcane. He poured over arcane tomes, taking on wizardly studies in addition to his clerical practices. He has recently begun leaning more heavily towards wizardry, for while he’s grateful to Artemis for his abilities, he considers the goddess to be more of a tutor than an idol to be worshipped. He’ll never be the strongest of Artemis’s faithful, and he’s made peace with that – wizards get more exciting spells, anyway.

Louie

This youthful duck leans against the alley wall, his head concealed by a dark green hood. He smirks at you, absent-mindedly flipping a coin up and down in the air.

Age: 16 Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Class/Level: Rogue 3/Sorcerer 1 Ability Scores: STR 9, DEX 15, CON 12, INT 12, WIS 13, CHA 18

Thief. Charlatan. Snake. Louie Duck has been called many things, and he’s never let any of it stick. He’s out for himself and his family first, and what he’s out for is treasure. Coins, gems, jewellery – he doesn’t care. He loves it all. He’ll do the right thing for his family (though not without a fair share of grumbling), but he always makes sure he gets something out of it, and he isn’t above guilting or threatening the other party into upping his eventual reward.

Louie is a rogue. Obviously. He specializes in deceit, coercion, lock- and trap-picking, and even forging documents, if the opportunity is ripe. He tries to avoid combat if he can help it, but when he’s eventually forced into it, he relies on being able to feint against his opponents to catch them off-guard. When this doesn’t work, his alternative strategy is to bamboozle his foe, trying to convince them that he’s on their side, or that there’s a bugbear behind him, or that they don’t really want to hurt him. And when that fails, he panics, runs away, and then takes potshots from afar with his crossbow.

During one of the family’s adventures, Louie came really close to death. A screeching owlbear had ambushed the party and cornered Louie alone. Disarmed, wounded, and terrified, Louie tapped into something dormant deep inside him and – with a pop – vanished. He re-appeared a mere five seconds later, but that five seconds was all his family needed to redirect the beast’s attention and save his life. Since then, Louie has continued to delve into his hereto unknown sorcerous powers, learning more and more about them each time he calls upon them.

Webby

This wild-looking duck girl wears a loose-fitting pink blouse and a purple skirt, with a matching pink tie in her headfeathers. She gets into a battle stance, grinning eagerly.

Age: 15 Alignment: Chaotic Good Class/Level: Ninja 4 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 17, CON 14, INT 13, WIS 12, CHA 12

Webby is as wild, excitable and knowledgeable as she is in canon, raised in the manor of Lord McDuck and trained by her grandmother to be a silent and deadly assassin of House McDuck. To Lady Beakley’s disappointment, while Webby has proven to have mastered the arts of stealth and disguise, she's really squeamish about killing people for some reason.

Webby takes after her granny as a highly skilled ninja – a class somewhere between the monk and the rogue. A master of stealth, disguise, martial arts and more, Webby may not seem like it, but she’s one of the most accomplished spies Lady Beakley has ever had the privilege of training. Moreover, her training allows her to access a limited well of mystical energy that allows her to perform impossible acts. Her preferred method of attack is to overwhelm her foes with quick, rapid strikes before retreating into the shadows and hiding before they realise what happened.

Aside from being an incredible warrioress, Webby also fancies herself as an amateur historian and lorekeeper – particularly when it comes to the McDuck family history. The arcane and the occult may be guesswork to her, but ask her to name an ancestor of Clan McDuck, and she’ll give you the entire genealogical tree. She knows about every single historical event that happened in Duckland, and she can name all the native monsters in the area, right down to their weaknesses, habitats, diets, and the best method to befriend them (just in case).

Scrooge McDuck

This elderly duck stands with the pride and confidence of an experienced adventurer. His cane, cloak, top hat and bright red plate armour all combine to make an imposing figure out of this old duck.

Age: ??? Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Fighter 6/Rogue 4/Duellist 10 Ability Scores: STR 11, DEX 10, CON 8, INT 15, WIS 15, CHA 16

Ruling from McDuck Manor, Scrooge is the Lord of Duckland, and one of the most powerful and influential figures in Calisota. With a manor full of artifacts, treasures and magical items, he is known throughout the land as the Richest Duck in the World, and you’d be hard-pressed to deny it. This Scrooge is mostly unchanged from the one we all know and love from canon, except this Scrooge has an army of trained soldiers, a cabal of ingenious wizards, and a small cabinet of assassins who have one loyalty and one alone – House McDuck.

You may not have heard of the Duellist class if you’ve only come in from D&D 5th edition. Honestly, you might not have heard of it even if you haven’t. The Duellist is a prestige class, one you can only take levels in if you meet the specific prerequisites, whose abilities allow Scrooge to fight with a flourish. He fights like the heroic swordsmen of old, parrying aside the blades of his foes and deftly moving around them before they can even pinpoint where he is. He fights not with a traditional blade, but with a sword concealed within his cane – a gift, from the late Ludwig Von Drake.

Other D&D aficionados may also notice that Scrooge’s physical abilities are a bit low – that, unfortunately, is due to his venerable age. In Pathfinder, your physical abilities reduce with age, while your mental abilities improve. In his prime, Scrooge’s ability scores were STR 17, DEX 16, CON 14, INT 12, WIS 12 and CHA 13, but the days of his prime are long behind him. For this reason, before going into battle, he typically equips himself with a Belt of Physical Perfection, restoring his physical prowess to what it was as a young lad. I know canon Scrooge doesn’t like to use magic (and he still doesn’t here), but that’s… really not an option in a fantasy RPG like this.

Donald Duck

With an incoherent squawking sound, this sailor rushes into the fray, swinging his fists wildly and leaping onto his foes.

Age: 42 Alignment: Neutral Good Class/Level: Barbarian 12 Ability Scores: STR 15, DEX 11, CON 13, INT 10, WIS 15, CHA 13

This good-natured, short-tempered, and risk-averse fisherman may not seem like much at first glance, but he was, in fact, once an adventurer. And as far as the rest of his family are concerned, he still is. Once a sailor for the House McDuck navy, Donald retired from his adventuring life after his twin sister, Della, was lost to the Astral Plane in an impromptu expedition gone wrong. Though he was pulled back into the adventuring life by his triplet nephews, he has never lost his cautious edge, and he remains as the most responsible member of the McDuck family.

Donald fights as he does in canon – by flying into a rage and launching himself at his opponent. He punches, kicks, bites, trips, and attacks every part he can get a hold of. In the old days, he used to use an enchanted sword, though it has been so long since he picked up the blade that much of its magic has disappeared. Nowadays, he relies on a pair of enchanted cestuses, which are essentially medieval boxing gloves with metal plates and rivets.

Mrs. Beakley

This enormous, bulky woman looms over you, her cold gaze peering into your soul. Despite her housekeeper attire, she stands tall and rigid like a soldier, and the sheathed sword on her belt does not escape your attention.

Age: Late 70s/early 80s Alignment: Lawful Neutral Class/Level: Ninja 16 Ability Scores: STR 14, DEX 8, CON 8, INT 15, WIS 17, CHA 11

Mrs. Bentina Beakley, unmarried, is the silent right hand of Lord McDuck. On the surface, she is merely the housekeeper of the manor. Beneath that, however, Beakley becomes a terrifyingly effective spymaster who has her eyes everywhere throughout the realm. Though her days as an assassin are over, she remains a cold, clever, yet surprisingly empathetic figure – so much so that she was willing to give up her career to raise a young Webby Vanderquack.

Like Scrooge, Bentina has suffered from reductions to her physical abilities from her old age, in exchange for bonuses to her mental ability scores. Her abilities in her prime were STR 20, DEX 14, CON 14, INT 12, WIS 14, CHA 8. Unlike Scrooge, she does not have any magic that can improve her abilities, but she also doesn’t see the need to. She fancies herself more of a ‘behind-the-scenes’ person these days, managing an intricate network of spies and blades for hire, gathering blackmail and intelligence for use against the enemies of House McDuck.

Launchpad

The friendly airship pilot waves at you from the cockpit, oblivious to the fact that he’s flying you directly into a mountain.

Age: 31 Alignment: Lawful Good Class/Level: Commoner 5 Ability Scores: STR 12, DEX 11, CON 17, INT 8, WIS 11, CHA 13

Launchpad remains the happy-go-lucky guy he is in canon, save that he now pilots an airship instead of an airplane. And rest assured, he is just as unqualified to fly it as ever.

[cokou]

What OP Men Post About you on Reddit PT2

OP 男性��あなたについて Reddit に投稿するもの。

𝑴𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒊 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑭𝒊𝒄

sum. Your boyfriend posted about you on reddit. 𝑹𝑬𝑫𝑫𝑰𝑻 PT1 ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ tw. Fluff & Crack! Slight nsfw on shanks part😭 ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ a/n. Im using my free time to upload my works, i hope its okay to have late uploads😭😭 // Do not translate or transfer any of my works, this is my only account (exp. AO3) will not be cross posted anywhere else. // Masterlist♥

r/AITA Swrdsmn.Zoro ⬆︎ 11.7k ⬇︎ 309

Am I the asshole for refusing to take my girlfriends map route?

My girlfriend loves to take me on a different of adventures throughout the world, her main favorites were taking simple walks that would eventually end up at the other side of the city. She drags me along with her always even if i had told her multiple times that it's too early to go for a walk. My girl, sets her alarm at 3am and wakes me up to go outside and walk with her.

About a week ago, she broke the news to ME, that she booked us a hiking trip. Me being myself, i usually laze around the house and get some sleep, so hiking isn't definitely my thing. But either way she bought us 2 hiking tickets up a snowy mountain.

When we had 4 days prior before setting out for hiking, she immediately drew a map from the place we were going. I admit that she is definitely good at drawing maps, but i studied them and absolutely got confused. I gave up on doing so.

We arrived to our destination and she immediately grabbed her map out of the bag, she tried pulling me to the right side of the mountain but there was a map hanging by the wall of the cabin shop saying that the left side is where the mountain hiking is located. I talked to her about it and she told me that the map they made is probably fake.

We got into a small argument and i parted ways with her towards the left side and i fot lost, I was reported as missing and a group of search party was launched to get me back, Now I'm back with my girlfriend's hold and she's mad at me for not taking her word. We talked to the cabin shop for the map route and found out that there was no such thing as a cabin back on the mountain.

Comments:

Chef_Sanji: yta, obvi your gf deserves someone better. ➣Swrdsmn.Zoro replied: I wasn't asking you ➣Chef_Sanji replied: Obviously you were, you posted this so you're asking everyone. (COMMENT WARNING)

—

r/meat Straw_Luffy ⬆︎ 12.7k ⬇︎ 103

My girlfriend cooked me this today :D !

I'm absolutely thinking that she's better than @chef_sanji! Her cooking is so yummy i could eat all of this in just one bite🤤 THANK YOU SO MUCH @Your.Name !!

Comments:

Chef_Sanjii: IT LOOKS SO GOOD, GIVE ME SOME TOO YN-CHAN❤️❤️ ➣Straw_Luffy replied: No way it's mine! ➣Chef_Sanjii replied: I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU ➣Your.Name replied to Chef_Sanjii: I will when we meet again! :D (Liked by Chef_Sanjii)

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r/wifey ItsmeShanks ⬆︎ 47k ⬇︎ 1.7k

—Attach photo of you

All night, all day, with clothes, naked, doggy style, missionary, full nelson, in public, in private, in bed, on the sofa, with toys, vanilla, piv, anal, boob job, hand job, fingering, masturbation, in the ship, on the floor, top to bottom, on sea, on land, on my face, on your tits, helicopter style, pegging, on camera, in front of everyone, in an alleyway, in the shower, standing up, sitting, laying down, bent over, no stopping, finishing inside, finishing outside.

@Your.Name

Comments:

Your.Name: WHAT THE FUCK SHANKS (Liked by ItsmeShanks)

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r/girlfriends Com.Acee ⬆︎ 113k ⬇︎ 12.3k

My girlfriend is so beautiful, she absolutely deserves the world.

Literally shes the best, I don't know what i even did to desrve her presence besides me, but im sos so thankful for it. Everyday i wake up next to her it feels like im blessed eith yet another peaceful and loving day knowing that everything is complete with her by my side.

She smells so good that it stays on my sense of smell, the way her fragrance litter her room and immediately smells like her once i enter is so peaceful and sweet. I absolutely love her perfume, i bought one of them to keep on my room and i spray tiny bits of it on me whenever she's not with me now.

I seldom carry her little gifts in my small bag whenever im away from her to remind me of her presence, her perfume never leave my hands. My shelves are filled to the brim with her godly scented perfumes, her perfume is wuite expensive yet it doesn't matter. Her little girts are kept in a glass covered shelf to ensure protection and will never be broken.

I love gifting her her favorite items and seeing the cutest smiles on her face, i really really wish to spend my eternity with her forever. @Your.Name i love you so much😭😭

Comments:

Your.Name: THIS IS SO CUTE AHHH ➣Com.Acee replied: ILYYYY❤️❤️ (Liked by Your.Name)

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r/Girlfriends MetalPipeLover_Sabo ⬆︎ 46.1k ⬇︎ 429

I need advice on where to take my girl on a date! D:

Any recommendations for places that's suitable for a date? I'm planning to propose to my dear girlfriend, we've been together for a solid 6 years and a half. We've talked about getting married and i think today is the day i propose to her. I can't think of any place thats perfect enough to do so.

Anything that would have a good view or maybe a little cute cat cafe beside it would be fine, I'm thinking of a little elegant theme..or maybe a little cute one? I really cant decide, i contacted my brothera but they couldn't take a single thing serious. Please actually take me seriously😭

My girl isn't that picky, but i myself think that what ever crosses my mind is simply not enough and that she deserves much better than what im thinking of, but of course i still need to atleast make the proposal romantic right?? 😭😭 Please give me recommendations, im absolutely desperate...

Comments:

Com.Acee: The grand canyon idk🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ ➣MetalPipeLover_Sabo replied: ACE GET OFF MY COMMENT SECTION😞😞😞 Straw_Luffy: Take her where there's meat! :D ➣MetalPipeLover_Sabo replied: No that's not good enough. Unknown: A flower field maybe lol? (Liked by MetalPipeLover_Sabo)

©Cokou 2024, all works belong to me.

[starflirts]

I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU (HOW YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I TURN TO)

in which you and percy must navigate the intricacy of love and glory in the midst of terror percy jackson x ares! reader, wc: 1.8k, warning: violence, description of wounds/blood, note: thank you so much for requesting!!! and yes, i picked the quest members randomly SUE ME

Percy was busy this summer. On top of his daily activities at camp, the Oracle had bestowed on him a particularly tedious quest which he eagerly accepted, not one to miss out on adventure. But the last few days have been tough for everyone. The quest Percy and his friends had taken on proved to be way more demanding than expected and monsters seemed to constantly appear out of nowhere. Looking over his shoulder to ensure everyone was okay, he noticed you trailing behind Annabeth and Thalia, backpack slung over your shoulder. Even with tired eyes and a couple of cuts on your face, you were the prettiest being he’d ever seen.

“I think we can stop here for the night,” his voice cuts into the silence of the early evening. “we’re not far off our destination and if Thalia's mapping is correct we might be a few days early. That’s great news !” 

The rest of the group nodded, each setting down their bags and stretching. “Thalia and I are gonna settle here, call us if you guys need anything.” Annabeth said, to which Percy acquiesced.

As soon as they moved off, Percy's gaze turned to you, sitting on a rock with your backpack on your knees, looking away.  

“Hey angel,” he approached you, one hand brushing your arm before settling himself by your side. “How are you holding up ?”

Looking at him for a brief second, you shrugged, opting to play with your dagger, a gift from your father, the infamous god of war. 

Taking your silence for an invitation to continue, Percy adds: “I can’t believe we made it this far so quickly you know ? Everything is going smoothly and if we get back to camp this early Chiron might see us fit for another outing !” 

His words feel like pit scorpion stingers and you close your eyes, huffing through your nose. That's when he notices how taut your shoulders are. He frowns, attempting to meet your eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong ?” he tentatively rubs your back. “Do you need anything ? I might have a few snacks Grover packed before we left..”

The mention of your friend back at camp half-blood makes your stomach clench. You miss Grover, you miss camp. Hades, Mr D’s stupid shirts are even starting to grow on you. This quest seemed to go on forever and you wished Percy wouldn’t be so stubborn about it. Putting your stuff away you sigh, looking up towards the stars slowly coming out of hiding. “I don’t need anything Percy.” you answer dryly. 

You can see him from the corner of your eye, looking at you skeptically. “Is this because we’re still on the road ? You know the worst is over, I think we’re in the clear about monsters and all… And then, if everything goes exactly as planned we’ll be back at camp in a couple of days.”

You press the heel of your hands against your eyes, as if his voice was enough to give you a headache. “I don’t care, Percy. I don’t wanna know about that stupid plan or those stupid monsters. The quest is the only thing that has been coming out of your mouth ever since Chiron told you to go talk to the Oracle. Even when we’re at camp you only seem to care about going away !” you finally snap, staring at him crossly. 

Percy’s confused, you can see it in the way his brows furrow. “Listen, it’s- it’s important, okay ? These quests, these prophecies, they’re vital if you want to prove yourself, to grow stronger ! How do you think we’d be doing in the real world without this ?”

You sigh, toying with your bracelet, a gift your boyfriend had given you last summer. “That’s not what I meant Percy ! You’re just so… You give your all to all of this and I understand, I admire you for that ! But it sucks to see you risk everything so often, to see you come back all hurt and bruised.” 

“Would you like it better if I stayed at camp and did nothing then ?” it’s his turn to get upset, arms crossed as he stares at you. 

“No ! Of course not ! I just wished you knew how to take care of yourself and others at the same time ! You’re all up in your head sometimes, barely acknowledging me, or anyone else for that matter !” you let out an annoyed laugh. 

“Oh so you’re mad because we can’t hang out like we used to ? Come on, you know how serious that is ! Of course I care about you but this is important too !”

You scoff, turning away from the boy. “Glory is important to you, I get it ! It’s what runs in your blood. But why can’t you see how it affects others, me ?”   

Percy runs a hand in his hair, obviously distressed. He calls out your name, a hint of dejection in his voice. “I think the journey has taken a toll on you. We should talk about it, about us ! You don’t mean that.” he reaches out but you step away. “Yeah, right. Is there even an us right now ? Maybe I’m just a hindrance. You’d definitely do greater things without me pestering you” you breathe out, angrily wiping your eyes. 

Your words slice his heart and you can see a twinge of sadness in his eyes. “Come on–”

He barely has time to finish this sentence when Annabeth yells from behind: “Watch out !” Briskly turning around, the boy is faced with two enormous hellhounds. Drawing out his beloved Riptide, Percy slashes the air, attempting to get the monsters to back off. When the two creatures jump forward instead, Percy’s mind goes blank. He can only think about everyone’s survival. In his line of vision, he can see Annabeth and Thalia actively defending themselves. But he can’t see nor hear you and that’s enough to make his heart beat ten times quicker. He can’t afford to diverge his attention right now but he knows you, he knows you can put up a fight. You’re not the pride of Ares’ cabin for nothing after all. 

One down, Percy thinks as his sword pierces through the monster’s fur. Brushing off the dust sticking to his face with bloodied knuckles, he turns around in horror as he hears a bloodcurdling scream. Your scream. His feet drive him to you as fast as they can, only to find you wrestling with the remaining hellhound on the ground, its fangs sinking into your flesh. 

Percy sees red. He lunges at the creature, weapon raised. Within a few minutes, what remains of the monster is the flickering black dust disappearing in the moonlight. Out of breath, Percy rushes to your side when he notices you’re not getting up. 

“Hey hey ! It’s over, you’re- you're okay.” His hands on your shoulders, “C’mon, we gotta get you up.” He tries to get you in a seating position but the whimper you let out makes his heart clench. You grab his shoulder with a shaky hand, throat prickling as you attempt to tell him something. 

“Hurts Percy…it hurts…” and that’s when he notices the gash on your lower stomach, shirt ripped to shreds and blood dripping down. A wave of nausea hits him but he holds on, applying pressure on your wound. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re- we’re gonna get you back to camp, we’re gonna help you. Just… Just talk to me yn, don’t close your eyes.” Percy’s hands shake as he tries to keep you conscious while Thalia and Annabeth fumble around him with a makeshift stretcher. 

Even now, Percy is still amazed at how fast they all ran back to camp, guilt plaguing his mind as Chiron and a couple of dryads took your inert body and carried you to the infirmary. 

The next few days are awful. Percy’s at the edge of your bed night and day, feeding you nectar and ambrosia, dabbing the sweat off your forehead when you strike up a fever, helplessly watching a kid from the Apollo cabin change your bandages. When you finally come out, he’s sat at the edge of your bed, head in his hands. 

The sun peaking out from the closed curtains is still too bright when you open your eyes. You frown, slowly raising your arm to cover them. The rustling of sheets has Percy whipping his head in your direction and even in your daze, you can see his shoulders sag with relief.

“Hey…” he says softly. 

“Wha– what happened ?” you speak out, voice husky.  

He’s sitting next to you within seconds, hand gently holding yours. You can see he’s trying really hard to find the right words, to tell you exactly how his nightmare played out. “We…We were on the way back to camp after our quest. We were all exhausted and- and we fought… I’m so sorry yn,” he pauses, voice shaky. “We didn’t have time to talk things through… Two hellhounds appeared out of nowhere and by the time I turned to look for you I– I  saw you on the ground. You were fighting the monster but he got you really bad and when he was gone I wanted to see if you were okay and– and you weren’t.. There was so much blood and you were in so much pain and–”

You squeeze his hand twice, cutting him off. He looks at you and this time you can clearly see the tears forming at his lash line. 

“It’s okay Percy,” you smile weakly, thumb drawing circles on his skin. “We made it, you made it.”

He shakes his head, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “No, no it’s not. I was terrified when we brought you here. I was mad at myself for fighting with you and I was so, so scared to lose you. I kept repeating our last interaction in my head and thinking that those words might’ve been our last made me realize how stupid I am for not noticing how I hurt you. You’re right. I get too much in my head. And… I can’t do anything when I’m not with you. I know this might sound silly but I need you with me all the time.”

You let out a small chuckle. “It’s fine Percy. I am partially to blame too y’know… I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I– I didn’t mean what I said. Of course there’s still an us. I guess I got too much in my head too.” you smile at him sheepishly. “And I hope you know I wouldn’t deal so nicely with any of this demigod bullshit if you weren’t by my side all the time.” you add with a mischievous smirk and Percy’s heart swells. 

Resting his forehead against yours, his hands are on your face, thumbs stroking your cheekbones. “We’ll be alright angel. We’ll always be alright as long as we’re together.”

[thoughtsfromlayla]

26 Ways of Taking You: D for Doggy

Summary: How does an Endless teach you a lesson? Maybe on your hands and knees.

Notes: ~2.9k words, your girl needs to get laid 눈_눈

Warnings: MDNI - 18+, unprotective sex (do you think Endless can get STDs?), fem!reader, dom!dream, p in v, no foreplay goin' in dry babyyyy, jealous dream, unintentional cheating, slight angst but it gets fucked out, enjoy

⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

C for Cockwarming ⇆ E for Edging

The world warps around you once again as your body stretches to a singular dimension. You are the beginning and end of everything. You will be there even when Death leaves and then you will take what she has left and open the next universe. Rebirth and repurpose. 

The Traveller. The One Who Knows. The Singularity. 

You have a name, you think, but it’s so old you don’t even remember how it feels on your tongue. 

It’s lonely being you, your sole job is making sure that everything works out in the end for every being, dead, alive, or yet to exist. And in your lonely existence, you often wander to different universes and realms. Your favorite was the Dreaming, a large realm that spread several different universes ruled by the Lord of Dreams, Morpheus. 

The familiar essence of the Dreaming greets you when you’re done warping into the realm. You feel each cell of your body rebuilding itself, from quirks to cells, from cells to living organisms, you are reborn. With a blow from your lips, your hair made of star systems and nebulas float back into place. 

The familiar corset you wore before you warped cinches around your waist and a breath leaves you, the ivory bones poking into your ribs. It was the necessary fashion for the realm you went to where a sneakily placed seed was enough to end a war that would come in five decade’s time. The rest of the time was spent entertaining the fae prince in his court. A good way to pass the time, but it eventually got boring, hence here you were.

The smell of tea and leather bound books indicates that you managed to weasel yourself into Lucienne’s library. You run your fingers across the spine of old and new books alike, occasionally itching your back when the markings annoy you. The corset dilutes the relief and you’re left with a slight vex for being denied scratching an itch. Lucienne is fast to find you, or you her, it’s all the same to you. You greet each other at a long table. Scrolls, books, and maps laid out before you. 

“Lady Singularity,” She greets with a familiar smile. “It’s good to see you again. It’s been a few decades now, has it?” 

“It has.” You agree as you turn your attention to the worn book in her hands, noticing the familiar face of the fae prince you met. “I was just with him.” You comment off handedly. 

“Of course, the Dreaming catalogs everything. You have been busy.” Lucienne comments as she continues to flip through the pages of your recent adventure. 

You look over her shoulder and read along with her, chuckling to yourself at the fun you had. When a familiar scene starts to unfold on the page, blush creeps up your cheeks and down your neck, a few of the stars in your hair exploding from your outrage. 

“Don’t read that!” You exclaim as you yank the book from her hands. You close it shut and the sound echoes in the library. 

“Oh, please, I’ve read everything. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” Lucienne takes the book from you and no matter how hard you grip, the librarian has some weird power over the book and takes it easily. 

“Okay, well don’t read it when I’m in the room. I don’t need a friend to know what I did with… him.” Your words taper as you give yourself away the more you speak. “I’m leaving.” You say quickly as you run away from the situation. 

The sun is setting when you make your way up the winding and seemingly never-ending stairs of the castle. The halls were cast in warm pinks and oranges when you reached the room the Dream Lord had given you the first time you visited several millennia ago. The room is the same as you left it, the open window giving to a soft breeze as dusk turns to night. 

You walk to the mirror, noticing slight changes to your physical form when you jump through that wormhole. You’ll stay the night and then go back to your own realm, the dimension between past and future, but for now, the present is much needed. 

You pull at the string of your outer dress and start to breathe easier, the heavy fabric dropping and pooling around your feet. Your shoes come off soon after and then your stockings. Your fingers grasp at the strings that tie your corset together but each time comes just an inch short. You’re becoming breathless from the struggle when your room door opens. 

“Singularity.” A voice calls out to you. His shadow blocks the entire door before he slinks into the room. His robe flowed behind him like a wave of black ink. 

“Hello, Morpheus.” You greet back, looking at him through the ornate mirror. 

You go back to trying to loosen your corset, the markings on your back growing more and more itchy the longer you struggle. You give up with a huff, and your shoulders sag in defeat. 

“Allow me,” Dream offers and his cold fingers run across your upper back, moving the nebulas over your shoulder, then trailer down your shoulder. 

Goosebumps follow the fingers and down your arms before his slender fingers go to untangle the corset strings. You feel his exhale on the back of your neck and you close your eyes, afraid of what you may look like to him through the mirror, or worse yet losing yourself if you were to see him. You do end up peaking and watching intensely at how his expert fingers unfasten the strings of the constricting clothing. 

“I have missed you.” Dream confesses.

His lips press against the base of your neck when the corset finally comes off. Despite it slowly coming off, you find it hard to breathe still. His proximity was going to kill you if the end of time didn’t. He looks at you through the mirror, keeping eye contact with you as his fingers land on your waist. 

“Will you stay the night?” He murmurs against your neck, kissing the soft skin beneath it again. His hands go over your shoulder again, pulling at the chemise and letting the thin fabric fall off by itself. The final piece of clothing joining the others at your feet. 

You turn around, his hands guiding you, and place your arms around his neck, resting them there on his shoulders. 

“Maybe a few nights, if you shall permit it?” You grin up at him with a slight tilt of your head. 

He chuckles and leans in for a kiss and you meet him halfway, standing on your toes to reach his height. Oh, how he has missed the taste of you, the softness of your lips pressed against his. You have been gone too long, he thinks with a groan. 

You jump and find it to no surprise when he catches you easily, your legs wrapping around his waist comfortably as he moves the two of you towards the bed. Morpheus is all hands, running them over the roundness of your ass, up the curves of your hips, back down to caress the plumpness of your thighs. 

His lips continue, running his tongue across your bottom lip and leaning into you when you answer with a whine. The taste of you drives him crazy, his mind is in swirls as he tastes faerie pomegranate and figs. 

“Did you visit the Faerie Prince of Khoné?” He pulls away from your lips despite the difficulty of being away from you. Instead he finds solace in the shape of your collarbone, pressing open mouth kisses onto the thin skin. “I can taste it. I can taste him.” His voice rumbles with danger, the voice of a jealous lover. 

Oblivious, you settle your arms around his neck, playing with the small loose hairs at the base of his head. “I did, why?”

“And you visited him?” He asked again, emphasizing the word to ask you indirectly of what he really wanted to know. 

You look at him, eyes dark and swirling with emotion, his hands on your hips holding you harder as the seconds tick by. 

“Yes?” You answer unsure. “I visited him.”

A frown etches onto his face as he stays silent. 

You scoff at his reaction. “Of course I have multiple lovers, as I expect you to as well?”

Your fingers wander upwards into his unruly hair, twisting a few strands between your fingers. Still, he stays silent. The only indication was the brief flick of his eyes leaving yours. 

“Oh,” You say when you understand. “Oh.” You say one more time when the weight of the conversation dawns on you again. 

You’ve never felt more exposed than you have now, an emotional wedge driven between you and Morpheus. You get up from his lap and it hurts when he lets you, you feel the way your stomach drops at how easily he lets you go. Your arms cross over your chest and you step further away from the bed, and from him. The two parts of the equation are something you no longer saw yourself allowed to be a part of. 

“Forgive me, I presumed you had other lovers,” You meekly say.

Morpheus saw you now, no longer the confident entity that you usually were. You didn’t even meet his gaze. The stars in your hair turned blue and dull, a few dying at the fraying ends. 

“You presumed I had other lovers?” He echos, his voice tipped with anger. He stands now, looming over you, peering at you down his nose. His question was obvious, accusatory, and somewhat downright demeaning. 

“Forgive me, I’ll just…” You turn to leave, running away just as you’ve always done when things get too hard. You feel the way your body begins to warp, unraveling strand by strand. 

The warping stops when cool hands wrap themselves around your waist once again. One moment you are between realms and the next you are pulled back on the plush bed. You stare, dazed, at the equally ornate headboard and try to backtrack what just happened. Morpheus comes behind you, watching with lust filled eyes of you on your hands and knees, at the way your hair falls over your shoulders. You turn your head and look at him over your shoulders, unsure what was happening. Morpheus’s face gives away nothing, even his clothes disappeared, an act that you didn’t see him do.

“What’s–” Your words are cut off as he leans and his hand comes entangled in your hair, firmly grasping it. A gasp leaves your lips and you notice the way your body couldn’t stop the way your back arched at the pleasurable pain. 

“Bow your head,” He growls as he shoves your head into the pillow. Your arms give out beneath you at the slight force. Heat travels easily down to your core and you feel the wetness slide down your inner thigh. 

“It’s Lord Morpheus for tonight, darling. You will do well to remember that.” His voice gravels as he runs a finger down your spine. He traces the markings lightly, causing a ticklish sensation across your back and a whine follows. Your ass pushes back on him impatiently at which he clicks his tongue at. 

“You do not get to ask for anything tonight. You will only take what your rightful lover will give you, understood?” His fingers trace your opening teasingly as his other hand holds down your hip in control, 

“Yes, my lord,” You gape, your eyes rolling and you swore you could see the back of your skull. A plea rests heavy on your tongue, but you bite yourself so as to not break his rules tonight. 

Dream of the Endless is a gentle lover, but even his patience can run thin. His eyes run over your figure, curves prominent at the position he has placed you in. He loved you like this, vulnerable, exposed, and ready for him to do as he pleases with you tonight. 

The hotness of him presses against your entrance, sitting comfortably between your lips and he pushes forward once, twice, neither times entering you. You only whine in distress as he dances the line between teasing and pure, unadulterated pleasure. He caresses his hand over the curve of your ass, against the softness of your thighs, just like before, and you understand that he isn’t mad anymore, but you will be taught a lesson tonight nonetheless. 

He grabs the base of your hair again, the nebulas leaving shimmering stardust over his finger and presses a third time. His other hand grounds you on your hips and he pushes in. Without any proper foreplay his size stretches you uncomfortably. But, Dream of the Endless is a gentle lover so he stays still, fighting every urge in his shaking body as he looks down at your ragged breathing and uncontrollable shivers. 

He waits until you push back into him before he begins to move, taking you in inch by thick inch. He pulls out and a groan vibrates in his throat at the drag of his cock in you. The sound of your muffled moans spur him as he stares at how he enters you again. One more drag of his cock and he starts to fuck you in earnest as your whimpers grow louder. 

The sound of skin slapping against skin bounce around the room accompanied by the sound of your wonton, muffled moans. He pulls at your hair, pulling your face away from the pillows and the sounds grow louder. Each thrust he gives you makes your moans grow higher in pitch. You don’t think he’s ever been this deep in you as he scrambles the thoughts into your brain into nothing more than pleasurable gibberish. 

His hands were everywhere they could get a hold of. You’re chanting now, anything that comes across as a thought in your mind leaves your mouth in a haste of gibberish and repeats of his name like a mantra. Your clit begs for attention and with the last bit of clarity you had left, you moved one hand down towards your core. 

Morpheus is quick to stop you, giving a sound slap on the meat of your ass cheeks, the sting enough for you to yank your hand away. 

“Please,” You whine. “Please, please, please, my lord.”

“Will you return to the Faerie Prince of Khoné?” He asks between pants.

Your pussy tightens around his cock as his fingers and trusts do not slow down. Your orgasm was imminent and just barely shimmering under your skin. The question he asks sounds muffled in your mind, distorted amongst the thoughts of his unrelenting pounding and your clit pulsing from attention. 

“Hah… who?” You managed to choke out.

“Perfect answer, my star.” He whispers in your ear.

“Please,” You beg again. “I need it.” 

He thinks for a bit, considering if you deserve it as he watches you try to fuck yourself harder by meeting his thrusts. With a hum he leans over you, enveloping you in the warmth of his body as his fingers slide between your legs. He taps it once, enough to make you jump slightly in your skin, before he draws tight circles around the enlarged clit, your arousal making the action easy and slippery. 

Somewhere along the lines of your moaning, drool seeps out of you, wetting the pillow with your spit. Morpheus notices, of course, and grins at the sight. 

“Let me cum, please let me cum!” You plead into the air, obscenities of his name following soon after. 

“Very well, I shall give it to you.” 

Morpheus fucks you harder, just the way you like it, just the way he knows how to give it to you. Your orgasm is ripped out of you with a high pitched wail, sparking down your spine as little firecrackers light up in your hair, your teeth buzzing with the force of it all. The wetness of your orgasm soaks the inside of your thighs and drips down onto the sheets. Morpheus watches closely as it leaves you in a panting mess and feels himself become undone, releasing himself into the deepest part of you. 

He stays like that for a few moments, relishing in the warmth of your sex. When he does pull out, the mixture of your two arousals slowly seeps out, joining the puddle on the sheets. He calms his breathing, going back to tracing the art on your spine. You collapse in a heap of flesh and bones, using the last bit of your energy to turn over and lay on your back. Morpheus crawls over you, his hand never leaving your skin as he cups your face. 

“No more lovers but you,” You promise as he places a soft kiss on your lips. 

“I could never control you even if I wanted to, but… thank you,” He says as he accepts your promise. 

Morpheus falls beside you and pulls the blankets over both of your bodies, pulling you close so you would be flushed against his side. By now the sun has long since set and the two lovers share each other’s embrace in the company of stars. 

C for Cockwarming ⇆ E for Edging

Main Masterlist || Series Masterlist

This was my poor attempt at understanding physics and trying to personify a concept like a singularity

♡ Yours, Layla

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #28

The Battle of Big Wand

Part 3 of reacting to this episode (spoiler-free)!

They locked the boy who has a darkness phobia in the deep dark pit, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

omfg, OF COURSE the first thing he does is ask for a drink... Good to know that even 8 years ago, I clocked him as growing up to be a guy who relies on the things that get Fairies drunk (sugar and carbonation) to block out his excessive trauma. oh geez, dude...

How long's he been losing his mind down here? He was fine a few episodes ago in "Growing Pains"! D: He was hanging out at his parents' place!

- Oh, I SO called Peri with magical back-up. He's having a rough go of it... Wowza, he's hallucinating about Dev. That's dark. - I really hope they don't send Foop on a bathroom break or my anxiety is going to spike through the roof. Even if Hazel did use her rule-free wish to revive them, would that be f'd up if they killed Peri and Irep off the way the Grim Reaper told Foop he'd die back in "Man's Worst Friend" or what?

I think ginger ale is good for nausea, which is why Peri's asking for it, but it's still funny because... canonically, he can get drunk if he has enough of that.

I like the rainbow sickness. This feels more correct and enjoyable than the rapid inflation and explosion of the OG series. You can tell Peri is sick and gradually expanding as his magic backs up, but I like that we get to see it, especially since it's set up as death in this universe (rather than easy to recover from in the OG).

I like seeing that Peri is VERY clearly ill and definitely not in a mental or physical place to "push through the pain and escape."

I definitely would say "This is dark," and this loops back to what I said watching "Fearless" and "28 Puddings Later" that A New Wish is definitely a tone shift from the OG. I wouldn't say it's Invader Zim dark, but I think the only episode that gave me vibes this dark was "Channel Chasers" during the scenes that were aiming for "gritty adult action with buff hero characters.

I know Poof and Foop got torn out of reality in "Timmy's Secret Wish," but that's still cute and fluffy to me... lmao.

sldkjfsdklfj, I made a joke during my "Lost in Fairy World" liveblog about how Cosmo and Wanda were going to get ants with all that candy in their room. I know Hazel is lying about ants, but I like it.

Her landlord's hair reminds me of Remy's. that's... a unique style.

/glances tiredly and uneasily at my list of Remy's many runaway uncles who scampered off since they weren't their parents' heir and are still pretty messed up...

I enjoy Wanda comforting her dying son while Cosmo's taking it hard off to the side. Cosmo wanting a moment to himself feels right.

Peri and Irep must not be synced up, presumably because Irep is using magic to grant wishes. Or Anti-Fairies don't get back-up.

There he is~ Anti-Cosmo "literally only here because I was told I might score a godkid" Anti-Cosma. I hate him! (affectionate).

Anti-Wanda looks like she would bite me and I would let her.

Something is so very wrong with Dev "Instead of wishing my lactose intolerance went away, I'm going to delete lactose from the universe" Dimmadome.

I enjoy Irep constantly bouncing or lightly kicking his feet as he waits for Dev to give him new wishes. He definitely gets that from his dad.

Absolutely on the floor that I clocked Anti-Cosmo as hanging back while Irep runs the show with Dev. They've literally not changed and I'm so happy!!!!

I spent over a year worried they were going to reboot A.C. into some take-charge, full-steam-ahead takeover villain, and you're telling me the local confrontation-avoider is still avoiding conflict??

Take me out now; it's never getting better than this. (The sequel.) I'm gonna be riding this high for months.

I was expecting to see Tibecuador on that map, but they cleverly have the Americas on the other side of the globe. I assume that disappeared when Timmy aged out of Fairies, though we know it wasn't unwished after Season 5 (It gets a mention in Season 6).

I like that both Dev and Irep enjoy dancing to "So proud of my son" lyrics. They're vibin'. Irep has daddy issues too.

sdlkfjsd, when Jorgen undid Dev's "king of America" wish a few episodes ago, he didn't erase anyone's minds?? I like that the news refers to Dev as "former king of America."

??? Did Dev and Trev break their friendship after Episode 1 because they both like Bev? That's hilarious!

The news report specifically says "couples are breaking up" due to Anti-Fairy influence, without implying that Anti-Fairies caused these two to get together in the first place. WERE they together? That's silly.

I am once again disappointed we were robbed of the Trev-Dev-Bev friend squad. But this is funny too.

Another waning crescent.

I'mma be honest, but Hazel saying she's had her fairies for about a year just makes me even more confused as to why we're doing a "get a rule-free wish after 1 million" instead of the previously established "get a rule-free wish after 1 year."

I... am gonna un-canonize her 1 million wishes in 'fic unless this ends up being incredibly important. Sorry to keep bringing it up, but I just can't wrap my head around this. "Timmy's Secret Wish" was kind of a big deal. It was a movie and not just a one-off episode, and it's been referenced several times in A New Wish already. Timmy took so much flak for being allegedly wasteful, dangerous, or overly reliant on his wishes. He did make some wild ones, but I'm SO curious to know what Hazel wished for. I wish we'd see flashbacks like we did in that movie, but again... recognizing the limits of a 20-minute episode.

I'm so glad Jasmine told Hazel she wasn't shocked by the reveal that Hazel had fairy godparents, seeing as in Post #10, I said she'd expressed suspicions towards Hazel twice but it didn't seem to be going anywhere and I was disappointed. That's a good callback.

Winn: Your apartment was a hotel and then it wasn't.

That's the other thing I was wondering about! Thanks, Winn. You're my favorite.

It drives me wild that Antony's not going to talk to Hazel about whether she has issues because he doesn't have the context to know fairies get assigned to miserable children. I feel like he'd really want to hear about that.

Antony knows Cosmo and Wanda? Maybe they DID have dinner together. I hope he met Peri. I think they'd be friends. I'll have to look back and see if he was introduced to them by name in "Rattleconda Racers," but... I don't think I noticed he'd clocked them as her neighbors.

They probably crossed paths offscreen while he was home for the holidays. I haven't settled on a timeline yet, but he could've been home for a whole month for winter, so it's likely they've met and he saw Hazel interact with them.

There is something so funny about Winn saying they sussed Cosmo and Wanda out as fairies because of their pink and green hair when they look like this:

I enjoy Hazel being familiar enough with Dev, Cosmo, and Wanda to know their clothes by heart, but she blanked on Irep-

- implication being that she remembered his giant square head and not much else. Not even wings.

Hazel 🤝 Chloe Remembering Foop's hair, mustache, and crown, but forgetting he wears clothes

I'm surprised Hazel's friends are ready to go to war against an entire race of evil magical beings famed for bad luck and torture, and they don't have any questions about this? I feel like one of them would want to talk to their parents. Jasmine said she was a fraidy-cat early on, but I guess facing her fears in "Fearless" turned that around more than I expected.

Oh no, Jorgen's in a pit.

??? If we're in Jorgen's office, where was Peri held before the takeover?

I like how Anti-Cosmo clicks his heels.

New shirt design for Anti-Wanda?? That was on my reboot bucket list! I had my fingers crossed for a fancy dress, sweater, or jacket, but I'll take it! This is clever because it's close to her old design.

... I don't look forward to drawing it :'D

I am OBSESSED with their energy. Anti-Cosmo is so fancy and Anti-Wanda looks like she showed up in pajamas or party clothes. And he loves her so much. That's always been their thing, but it's good to get a reminder since he spends so much of their 1-on-1 time in the OG series screaming and running around. I missed him... It's been 11 years...

... Actually, that makes this my first time ever seeing new (canon) Anti-Cosmo content drop since he was outtie by the time I got to the fandom (back in 2016 when Season 10 was just starting). Exciting!

I actually have an AU called "King Me" that I started in 2016 but have never posted anything for, but it's about Anti-Wanda being raised from birth as the leader of the Anti-Fairies and getting betrothed to some nerd, and seeing them new and shiny and dressed like this makes me want to finish it, because I love Anti-Wanda being in charge when she's so casual and silly. It's one of my favorites <3

omg, it's an anti-Fairy shirt... OH, this makes the fact I portray Anti-Wanda as giggly over puns and wordplay even better...

Anti-Wanda shopping, pointing at the crossed-out crown: It's me.

I like how while Anti-Cosmo is bragging that Anti-Fairies are masters of torture who know all their counterparts' weaknesses, Cosmo looks like this:

Anti-Cosmo: I'm a master of torture... I know your biggest weakness~ Cosmo: I don't believe you for a second, but go off I guess

Irep knew exactly what he was doing when he sent Peri to the dark pit... u can't make me believe it was an accident he was hyperventilating and rocking back and forth with crossed eyes when Cosmo and Wanda got to him...

Wheezing at the fact that I'm pretty sure neither A.C. nor Anti-Wanda has been addressed by name because the writers gave us Irep and Lezah... They can't drop the anti-names on us and don't want to call them Omsoc and Adnaw.

I DID wonder where that set-up was going, but I think their names not being not acknowledged at all is the funniest direction.

Like?? POV, New Wish is your only exposure to Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda, but you don't engage with the fandom so you sus out for yourself what their backwards names would be and that's how you grow up thinking of them.

I personally have Anti-Fairy kids using names picked by their parents and they only switch to using their anti-names when they become adults, so... if we were to assume Irep is just slightly too young to use the name Anti-Peri, that headcanon would still track in New Wish for him and Lezah. Which is interesting.

..... If Peri is short for Periwinkle, is Irep's full name Elkniwirep, because ouch. I understand where he was coming from when he complained his new name was "much more difficult to pronounce" than Foop.

I like the implication that Anti-Fairy nicknames would come from the end of their names rather than the beginning. Though looking at that name, I think Noir would also be an appropriate nickname for him.

Irep when he has to sign for a package for his parents: Eh, you can come back next week.

Anti-Cosmo's clothes are spot-on. It's him!! ... Except for his monocle being on the wrong side. I personally made him blind in one eye in 'fics, but I'm pretty sure a real monocle can be used on either eye.

It's kind of funny to me they did that. It must be easier to model this way, but the OG series never depicted him switching to the other eye even when he turned his head. Kind of interesting in an "I wonder if modern fanart will portray it interchangeably or if the right eye is deemed consistent" kind of way.

!!!! They kept his big ol' giant fangs!!! Irep definitely gets most of his personality from his mom, but he's got Dad's fangs <3

This makes me want to practice drawing him more. A.C. is the hardest for me to draw (between his clothes, hat, hair, and having bat-like ears in Cloudlands AU), but I really like his cravat here and would like to take another whack at him, I think.

skldjf, I'm glad Anti-Cosmo is still Mr. "super weird about needing to hold things in his left hand." Nobody cares, but I care

In the OG show, he threw his wand off-screen so he could switch his teacup to his left hand after picking it up... He does this in multiple episodes, shifting things to his left for no reason even if he picks them up in his right. I'm sure it means nothing, but... why did they draw him doing that? He keeps his wineglass on his left despite Anti-Wanda being depicted with hers on her right... Sometimes he'll even stand next to other characters and hold an item in his left even though his neighbor is holding the same item in their right. why.

?? Anti-Cosmo had to look up "discombobulated" in the dictionary? Wouldn't the taunting have been stronger to prove he doesn't have to look it up?

I like Anti-Cosmo bracing his legs beneath the dictionary the same way Peri did when he was looking at Da Rules.

Heavy book; need better weight distribution or it's killer on the back.

sdfkljsd... oh, poor Cosmo... Listen..... LISTEN........ I know there's no way in heck they would bring back the "77 Secrets of the Fairly OddParents (Revealed)" lore that Cosmo's deepest secret is that he's an "author of distinction" who's written oodles of books, including Astrophysics for Morons from the episode "Shelf Life," but...

This is SO MEAN... I have a 'fic ("Repeat") where we learn Cosmo's been erasing his own memories for ages because people wanted him in jail or worse for writing about astrophysics when Fairy culture pushes the idea that stars are ancient Fairies (à la "Wishology") and this is how he's protecting himself. My interpretation of him is that he gets upset sometimes because "He used to know what these words mean," like... that is an actual scene I've written, and I'm dying...

Corporate needs you to find the difference between these scenes... lmao.

"We knew it wouldn't be easy, not following the old beliefs… but we're on enough thin ice with the Fairy Council as it is. Let's… not tip the scales by making wild claims about the stars. But if it's any consolation… You can tell me about astrophysics any time of week." "Mm…" He didn't even know what 'consolation' meant. He did once, though… Didn't he? When he read his old diaries, they made no sense because he used to know so many words. His handwriting. His memories. But not all the words made sense anymore. Robin Cosma would be so disappointed in his son. How funny that your father can be a poet known across the cloudlands… and you can't remember how to spell "tinnitus."

Anti-Cosmo, you are being SO mean in my lore right now... Thanks, I hate it. But I like that physical torture wasn't the option they went for. This feels very right to me (Mental torments, preying on fears and paranoia instead of just attacking... This feels right for their species since they're supposed to be dark and creepy).

-> I mean, I don't know what I expected from Anti-Cosmo "avoids confrontation if he might get hurt" Anti-Cosma, but... lol.

SKLDFJSLDFJSLDFJ??

Anti-Wanda: /shoves A.C. out of the way and takes his book Anti-Cosmo: :(

If Anti-Cosmo has to confront anyone while he's in slapping range, he will die, actually. Wait, what did I write at the start of this liveblog?

OG series Anti-Cosmo doesn't even want to take over Fairy World; he wants a godkid. His shtick is "I will literally do anything for a godkid even if it's stupid and I make a fool of myself." And then he makes a fool of himself; it's great. [...] Taking over means confronting magical people, and Anti-Cosmo doesn't, like... do that. He taunts people IF he holds a blatant advantage (like them being locked up or them being a human who can't jump and grab him), but he's also a huge coward <3 He's Mr. Buddy System. He needs his Anti-Fairies. So... He might be here, yeah! But I do get major Irep vibes. Irep's totally leading, and I don't see Anti-Cosmo's aesthetic here, so I think he's playing a small supporting role if he's here at all. [...] He DOES have smug energy and cool lines sometimes… but he's also a tantrum-throwing brat who's scared to stand up to people, and in this house, we love him for it!! [...] I just want Anti-Cosmo to be an awkward nerd pretending to be confident, but also he likes to run around and goof off, but he should also look at people like he's confused they kicked his puppy.

sdlkfjsfdjkl??? oh my fluffin' gee. This is beat for beat "Anti-Cosmo taunting people when he's trapped them under a butterfly net in "Fairly Odd Baby" and then backing the heck down as soon as H.P. tells him "Yeah, we're not doing that." ... This is the same energy as Jorgen's slideshow when he specifically labels H.P., not Anti-Cosmo, the more influential parent of the anti-fairy child they raised to be evil way back when... He's the same person... He's such a sheep <3

I was so worried they'd change you, my doormat nephew, and for WHAT?!! Go king; give us nothing!!!

They didn't give him oodles of sass? That's what I thought for SURE they'd reboot him with. I'm losing it. He really is "just there doing his best" without being the main villain. He's minimally helpful. Basically not at all. I can finally embrace him without a hint of hesitation... My windblown tissue of a boy has come home!!

This is the best! spitting, crying. I cannot believe this. I can finally stop second-guessing if I even read him right in the OG series. He's so cringefail loserboy and always has been and I can finally stop lying low about it! I LOVE HIM!!

I genuinely could not fathom a world where they brought him back and he was still just Like That... How ?? did they do this?? I was so SURE they'd put him in charge and only present his "smug, confident" façade and I'd just shrug it off and try to squint for the parts of him I enjoy the most… omfg… Our anxious, dorky coward actually made the jump?

He's like Anatole Kuragin... Anti-Cosmo would be flawless in the role of "Okay, sing these two songs like you're the sexiest and most confident man alive. And for this other song, cower on the floor wailing about how you're a man of honor and the old man calling you a scoundrel should take it back because it hurts your feelings. You just tried to kidnap the girl you like, but got spooked and ran away. btw, you're everyone's most specialist boy in the world."

The Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 AU nobody asked for but we know we deserve:

btw, after years of waiting, I had the opportunity to see this musical (<3) and words cannot express how I felt when - after listening to the soundtrack and always wondering why Anatole backs off so fast when Marya shoos him from the courtyard - I got to experience the shock of Marya bursting onstage with a gun.

I am in such shock that I read Anti-Cosmo right. Like ?? I don't know why that's bizarre to me- I've taken so many notes on him and I was very confident in what I thought about him. I just ?? can't believe he's still set up to be a soggy dishrag?

No one ??? ever portrays him like this ?? We don't do that here! That's not on his Fandom Wiki page, which calls him a "ruthless criminal mastermind" and "far more devious than most other villains in the show." People don't remember him like this... I'm dreaming...

I gotta lie down. What the FLIP do they have written for him in the story bible, if anything?

-> I gotta read the OG series story bible @zachbrightside sent me. I've been putting it off 'til after New Wish, but maybe I'll liveblog my reactions to that too.

-> Fun fact, I collect story bibles due to my days of combing Scribd for early scripts... But the OG series story bible for FOP is one I never thought I'd see in my LIFE. I'm excited.

Okay, I totally got impatient and took a sneak peak at the New Wish story bible for fun (something I glimpsed super briefly about a year and a half ago and then put away because I wanted to wait and see the show for myself, so I didn't see more than a glimpse of Hazel, Winn, and Whispers Fred, but I don't want to look at the OG series bible until I'm properly liveblogging). AND!!!!

Guess who didn't misremember the rumor about the Pixies coming back! I'll talk about that more in a separate liveblog, I'm sure, but oh gosh; oh goodness...

They didn't reboot Anti-Cosmo with sass AND they have a note here about the Pixies "potentially aligning their interests with tech magnate Dale Dimmadome..." Do you understand how close that gets us to H.P. coming back as his sassy, in-charge self... My most beloved character in the series, still snarky... I want him so much... I can taste it... He's one chump door away...

I won't get my hopes up since Season 2 isn't confirmed, but do u understand... Yes I know they might kill him and replace him with Sanderson and it'd shatter me, but do u understand how close we are to the funky guy who's haunted my mind every day for the last nearly 9 years...

Dale, I have GREAT NEWS for you... The prophecy... H.P. and Dale together... My 7-year dream fulfilled at last...

what are Ben Stein's rates and can we get him for another movie. I think Pixies & Dale would be the thing that does me in; it's never getting better than that... Can you even IMAGINE if we had Musical 2.0. for some inexplicable reason...... My favorite episode, oh goodness... Just let H.P. dunk on Anti-Cosmo again and I'm done; I'm out. retired. deceased.

It's SO over for y'all if they do bring back the Pixies. Unfollow me then because it's all I'll talk about for the rest of my life.

Hey wait a sec- I'VE BEEN ROBBED!!!! They WERE supposed to be here! Dale WAS supposed to be the finale antagonist!

?? I was RIGHT in my initial assumption that Dale had been set up for this plot. I'm totally justified for going into this finale thinking we were gonna fight Dale. That's... way funny, because I have a whole note over here I was gonna address when I'm done watching about how I don't feel like Dale stalking Hazel and all those notes about Fairy World left on his board even went anywhere...

Did they drop the "Dale stalking Hazel" plot point & this Pixie route because they figured Anti-Fairies would bait viewers in and Pixies wouldn't? So, like... did we only have that scene to upset Dev, and now we're not following through with the implications? :'D I am dev-astated on both accounts...

I probably would've done the same thing in their position (Write the finale for Anti-Fairies instead) because the Pixies aren't as well known (I think) and don't have the same opposite vibe as counterparts (which makes for dramatic storytelling), and maybe increased excited viewers increases chance of Season 2, but...

I've been robbed blind!! D: OH, this hurts so much more than when it was "just a rumor" to me that the Pixies were meant to appear "in the latter half of the season." skdljf, I shouldn't have looked at this; what've I done... PLEASE give us a Season 2 with Pixies in it... I'm beggin'... I've seen behind the curtain and I cannot be reborn in my innocence.

- Extremely funny to me that the Pixies not showing up implies they're not making a move because it hasn't been 37 years since their last big takeover plan. It's the OCD... - HEY WAIT A MINUTE, back at the start, I told y'all taking over Fairy World wasn't Anti-Cosmo's thing and it was actually H.P.'s... oh, this is FUNNY... I wish I had someone I could rub this in the face of. Oh my feathers, I'm SO glad I know H.P. and Anti-Cosmo well enough that I nailed them both like butterflies on display and didn't make a fool of myself [in my mind], sldkfj... #Not a fake fan... You don't spend 8 years writing 1 million words worth of 'fics about each of them without knowing your boys!!! I'm sorry, I just... This has been extremely funny to liveblog. I didn't peek ahead... I didn't know for sure if Anti-Cosmo was gonna be here to take over Fairy World - I really thought they'd reboot him to be confident and suave because why would they read him as an anxious coward?? nobody does that - but I sure as heck knew an Anti-Cosmo based closely on the OG wouldn't be leading the charge! He's a pushover <3 And the fact the Pixies were supposed to be here is KILLING me. Of course it was a plot meant for Pixies... because Anti-Cosmo doesn't do this and H.P. does. That's SO funny... I can't believe this... I'm dying, squirtle... I can't breathe... Please let me infodump about how despite everything I've said about H.P. going against the Pixie stereotype, he is actually implied to have OCD, and by his own admittance seems to want to take over Fairy World because Fairy World's disorder just drives him up a wall... I miss him... I lied about loving Anti-Cosmo; please come back, beloved... Please send him on a time travel vacation so he can come back feeling like he waited his obsessive 37 years... oh my glory, he's within my grasp... It's been 16 years... - The file name on this thing is "FOP Reboot Series Bible Draft 7..." oh, my boys lived up to 7 drafts... oh, my babies...

Oh my GOSH, they pitched an episode where Hazel's parents come over for dinner game night and Cosmo and Wanda are struggling to appear normal... That's the exact kind of episode I was sad we hadn't had yet back when I was saying post-Episode 1 Cosmo and Wanda were giving me sexy lamp vibes! I'm sad we didn't get this one.

Okay... I've seen too much. I won't read anything else in here and I'll save it for a future arc of liveblogging all these resources. Oh, this stings. The finale's cool and all, but I just miss my boys so much, and I want them to come back as their glorious, snarky, finger-gunning, drunk-on-the-job selves so a new generation can fall in love with them like I have, and they are SO CLOSE...... D: Nobody knows the trouble I've seen... nobody knows my

Ooh, what?

Big Daddy!? Mark Chang? Mama Cosma? Juandissimo?? omg-

IRVING?? They found you too?

No one is safe...

[valtharr]

Imagine someone made a mod for Kingdom Hearts 2 where they perfectly recreate the world of Dark Souls. Rip all the textures and sound files and dialogue and so on from Dark Souls, recreate the whole world within KH 2. Rebuild the maps, apply the textures, place NPCs, which will give out the dialogue if spoken to. They're also taking KH 2 enemies and reskinning them to look like Dark Souls enemies. They're replacing the names and descriptions and illustrations of KH 2 items with those of Dark Souls items. But, critically, they're not actually changing anything about the actual gameplay. You are, for all intents and purposes, still Sora fighting Heartless and Nobodies, but they all just look different. It looks like Dark Souls, but plays like KH 2. Instead of slow, deliberate combat, it's fast-paced, flashy, and mostly airborne. Instead of only being able to level up at bonfires, and risking losing all your Souls when you die, you automatically level up as soon as you have enough EXP. Instead of respawning at a bonfire after dying, and having to make the trek back to where you died, you can just respawn there immediately.

Now let's say we have someone who already KH 2 on PC, and is interested in playing Dark Souls. They heard good things about the games, and really want to play them. But then, they find out about that mod. And they're like "hey, nice, I can just play that mod! I don't have to learn any new game mechanics or control schemes, and don't have to spend any extra money!"

Do you think this person would get an authentic Dark Souls experience? Do you think they'd get what it is about Dark Souls that people actually like?

Sure, they may still have fun. I mean, they probably will. After all, they already like Kingdom Hearts, and they're essentially just playing more Kingdom Hearts.

But also... they're essentially just playing more Kingdom Hearts!

They'll probably have fun with that, but they're denying themselves an opportunity to find something new that could be fun for them! Something different! Something that they can't get from just playing Kingdom Hearts! They end up settling for a cheap, surface-level imitation of the looks of Dark Souls, while completely ignoring that a team of game designers has worked really hard to create a set of game mechanics that can convey the appropriate feel of Dark Souls! They will travel the same spaces and fight (visually) the same bosses as people who play Dark Souls, but they won't actually get what made those spaces and bosses special in the players eyes. They'll never have the same kinds of stories to tell that Dark Souls players have to tell.

Anyway, that's what it's like when people homebrew D&D for a genre it's not meant for instead of even looking at games made specifically for that genre.

[rainee-da]

🍀 Your First "I Love You" [1]

CHARACTER ❥ Doom 🪞 / Famin 🃏 / Epidem 🍮

W A R N I N G ⚠️ PG-13 and heavy on fluff / BIG SPOILER!!!! / might be too OOC for you.

D O O M 🪞

He paused instantly, sword hanging in the air as he stuck in position for a while.

Poor him, his brain is buffering for a moment. You saying this in the middle of his training didn't help either.

Please help him lower his hand, he's going to give himself cramps with all the weight of those swords hanging in the air.

"I'm sorry dear, I think I misheard your words before... can you repeat that to me again?"

You repeat your words, declaring your love again. This time he heard it all, and his brain is buffering again lol.

Not for long though, because after this he let out a gentle sigh, and his usually stoic face morphed into a gentle one. A small, genuine smile plastered on his face.

He settles his sword to the side and approaches you slowly, hand reaching out to touch your face. To map your expression to ingrain it in his mind.

He has long accepted his blindness. But you made him wish he had a set of eyes to be able to see your lovely expression.

"It's nice to know such loveliness still exists in my dark world. Thank you, dear... and I love you too."

After this, he'll speak to you more lovingly and express his love more bolder than he did previously. 

However, he'll still need to be mindful and keep it minimum when in public. Especially around his father because yikes.

He loves and appreciates you so much, though he sometimes doesn't express it clearly. But he's willing to make an effort, so you will believe that it's true when he says that he feels the same way.

F A M I N 🎪

"That's nice," is all he said. As he stares at you with a blank face.

If you didn't know any better, you may thought that he didn't care.

But if you've been with him for a while, you'll notice that there's a drastic reaction in his body language.

A twitch at the corner of the eye, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, with palms opening and closing, with head slowly tilting to the side. For his usual expressionless self, this is a highly emotional response coming from him.

He can be more expressive though when he's angry... but you wouldn't want to do that.

"Say it again," his words come out thicker than usual as he grabs your shoulder with both of his hands, leaning closer with face still seemingly devoid of emotion.

Be prepared to say "I love you" repeatedly because he'll make you do that for a while lol.

He can feel his heart skip a beat as you stimulate it by adding variations of phrases and sentences to your confession.

Although you didn't need to do that. Even if you just say the classic three-word confession thousands of times, he wouldn't get bored of it.

Out of everything in the world, you're the only person in his life that he simply can't imagine getting tired of.

After he is satisfied, he'll simply hum and turn away. Deadass leaving you alone like yo what the fuc-

But oh? If you manage to take a glimpse, you'll notice that the tip of his ears goes rosy as he disappears into the corner.

Be prepared to find random gifts at the side of your bed for a while. Don't scream either, though I know you would want to.

Man has the same emotional capacity as a cat after all.

E P I D E M 🍮

He dropped his spoon (wand-spoon?) with a loud clatter. His head snapped to look into your eyes, and his mouth formed into a silent 'o' as he stared at you in silence.

"Is this for real? Are you for real, love?" he asked you gingerly, hand raised to caress your cheek.

He's so flabbergasted that he didn't even realize that he also dropped his pudding. That's gonna be your future problem lol

You repeated your confession to his face. The 'o' shape formed in his mouth goes bigger as he stares at you in an awkward silence.

All of a sudden, he lunges towards you and gives you a big hug. You couldn't see his face, but you could still feel his happiness by the way he hummed a happy note, swinging your body side by side.

He leans back to look at your face, and now you can see that his face which is usually so composed and calm except when he's having a pudding withdrawal is decorated with a warm smile as he stares at you with eyes full of love.

He leans forward and peppers your cheek with a kiss, mumbling about how soft and fluffy your cheeks are. A giggle escaped from his mouth when you yelped at the way he bit into your cheek.

He can't help it! After all, you're just like a pudding! You're so soft and fluffy and adorable like- his mind will go into a tangent as he internally has cuteness aggression.

"I was waiting for you to say that, I'm so happy my love! Like a pudding, you just know how to make my heart flutter with joy!"

Talking about pudding, now you gotta deal with his temper tantrum as soon as he realizes that he dropped his pudding. Hopefully, you brought him an extra one.

Oh yeah, he loves you too :) after pudding though... maybe?

He dropped his spoon (wand-spoon?) with a loud clatter. His head snapped to look into your eyes, and his mouth formed into a silent 'o' as he stared at you in silence.

"Is this for real? Are you for real, love?" he asked you gingerly, hand raised to caress your cheek.

He's so flabbergasted that he didn't even realize that he also dropped his pudding. That's gonna be your future problem lol

You repeated your confession to his face. The 'o' shape formed in his mouth goes bigger as he stares at you in an awkward silence.

All of a sudden, he lunges towards you and gives you a big hug. You couldn't see his face, but you could still feel his happiness by the way he hummed a happy note, swinging your body side by side.

He leans back to look at your face, and now you can see that his face which is usually so composed and calm except when he's having a pudding withdrawal is decorated with a warm smile as he stares at you with eyes full of love.

He leans forward and peppers your cheek with a kiss, mumbling about how soft and fluffy your cheeks are. A giggle escaped from his mouth when you yelped at the way he bit into your cheek.

He can't help it! After all, you're just like a pudding! You're so soft and fluffy and adorable like- his mind will go into a tangent as he internally has cuteness aggression.

"I was waiting for you to say that, I'm so happy my love! Like a pudding, you just know how to make my heart flutter with joy!"

Talking about pudding, now you gotta deal with his temper tantrum as soon as he realizes that he dropped his pudding. Hopefully, you brought him an extra one.

Oh yeah, he loves you too :) after pudding though... maybe?

I run into a writers block when writing this and I really need to sleep, so I'll make one for Delisaster, Domina, and Cell War at a later time (sooner if the reaction is good). This is my first headcanon I made in this blog. I've read Mashle before but just fallen in love with it after watching the anime. It fuels the delulu that has long died down inside of me lololol-

I really can't wait for Devil's Quintuplet (Mash's brother) to appear in the next season hopefully so I created this specifically for them. They need some love too!

I really hope you like it~ have a good day! 🍀

[cassimothwin]

So you're looking for a system other than D&D...

Have you tried solo RPGs? Because it's not just "how can I play D&D alone" there's a whole world of cool stuff out there….And I want to tell you about it.

(I'm quite sick today so please forgive any incoherence or typos.)

First off, it's totally fine if you're more of a party person over a solo person. I just know a lot of people aren't aware of solo games, how they work, or the breadth of diversity you find among them.

If you ask about solo games, the first one mentioned is almost always Ironsworn. It's freeeee and comes with a lot of resources. The PDF is over 200 pages, so I understand if you don't want to dive in with Ironsworn quite yet.

Ironsworn has a large community, including support for Foundry and Roll20, along with many derivative works. It offers a gritty default fantasy setting, but encourages you to ignore that if you prefer another world… maybe one from another RPG you enjoy the lore from…?

BUT maybe you want something that isn't as much of a commitment (and maybe a little sad)?

Many Wretched and Alone games use a tumbling block tower to simulate a random ticking clock. It might represent your failing mental health, the barricade crumbling, the ship sinking…

One of the creators of the system has a great thread highlighting their favorite games. Just search Wretched an Alone on Itch.io to find even more.

And if you don't want to go buy a Jenga tower, there are some great random simulators out there. I've been able to play W&A games on road trips, using a deck simulator, a dice simulator, and a tumbling tower simulator. Here's tower replacement I like. It replicates the odds of a tumbling tower falling without being too complicated.

Carta is another cool system where you use a standard deck of playing cards to create a map that you explore. As you explore, you usually have to manage resourses to avoid something bad, but not always.

Here's a collection of several games made using Carta.

Dead Belt takes this concept and RUNS with it. You have a few things to track as you explore abandoned randomized ship decks, searching for a good payload. Upgrade your gear and do it again.

Does the thought of managing your character sound exciting? Do you enjoy soulslike games, like Elden Ring and Bloodborne?

Rune is a fresh release with a lot of third-party support already. It's pretty easy to pick up and play too.

Apothecaria and Apawthecaria have you making potions for the local village. Go out exploring, collect ingredients, and see if you can solve the greater mysteries of the land.

Interested in horror, but want a more narrative-driven experience? In Dwelling, you'll spend the night sleepless and alone in a haunted house. This is a very neat game.

Songs of the City is a delightful tarot game that you play once a day for a week. It's another narrative-driven game where you draw cards and cast magic to see small neat changes in the city you reside in.

Anamnesis, Anamnesis, Anamnesis. I talk about this game a lot because it's magical in its simplicity. There's nothing to track and it's an incredible way to generate character ideas or tell a story.

And now there are more Anamnesis games coming out (including mine) You don't need the original games to play any of the games you see here.

There are so many more games I want to talk about, but alas, this cold is making me stop there.

If you've written a solo game, streamed one, reviewed one, or have one you really like, I invite you to share it!

[maximumzombiecreator]

I have a question about mapping the dungeon - all the games I've been a part of that weren't theatre of the mind had the GM prepare and draw the maps, both for encounters and dungeon exploration, typically on a whiteboard or dry erase mat. What are the pros and cons on having players map out the dungeon instead? How is this handled for OSR dungeon crawling typically? I can foresee miscommunication and distraction leading to incorrect maps - how much should the GM intervene in these cases? Does player mapping slow down the game?

Typically, OSR games will have someone assigned to be the mapper, both literally, in terms of drawing the players' copy of the map and within the fiction, having their character (or a hireling) doing the mapping. In most systems, the rate of movement through the dungeon includes mapping as part of what the party is doing (hence why if you look at the actual pace of movement it's really slow.) This means that in situations like fleeing from enemies, the characters are not able to map and the GM won't give them things like measurements, just a vague sense of what they see. Similarly, it's often something that a character does while exploring a room. Someone will investigate the interesting thing, someone will keep watch, someone will be mapping the room.

Now, if you're running on a grid, then I think it's pretty much essential for the GM to draw the maps when they're needed for combat. There's no sense adding a game of telephone into the mix every time you're setting up for a fight. In this case, I think you can either just accept that the party gets some free detail when they get into a fight, or you can go all the way and just have the GM provide the map that the characters draw.

For the most part, the decision whether to do manual mapping depends on if it's a type of gameplay that you care about. Because it is gameplay. Classic D&D dungeon maps often contained elements designed to confuse and frustrate mappers. Dwarves have the ability to detect slopes in passageways specifically because dungeons would contain features like that so that the party could switch levels without knowing that they had. In that sense, incorrect maps are a desirable outcome.

Typically, a GM will only want to intervene if something has gone unfairly wrong. If the map of a room or section is so wildly incorrect that the in-world character couldn't reasonably have arrived at it, it needs to be corrected. But for small mistakes (or just tricky dungeon design) your mapper could potentially end up sitting, staring at their map, trying to puzzle out what's gone wrong so that they can find their way back to the surface. Certified map sicko (affectionate) Dyson Logos has even made Mapper's Challenge dungeons that really put this skillset to the test.

And this can lead to some really great moments! Good mapping can be a way for the party to find secret doors and rooms, with their mapping leaving conspicuous gaps for them to look into. Likewise I've had players figure out based on their mapping that a wall was thin, and opt to mine through it in order to circumvent a difficult fight. In classic dungeons, partial maps were also often part of loot. This might include treasure maps, as well. A fragmentary map that shows a secret treasure will have the mapper scrambling to figure out how it fits into the map they have so far.

It does slow down the game, but all gameplay slows down the game, right? That said, I think it's a form of gameplay that works best if there are players who are going to engage with it enthusiastically. If the party is going to be in the position of forcing someone to be the mapper, it may be better just to work collaboratively with the players to keep an accurate map of what they should have been able to map so far. But if the players are into that gritty kind of playstyle, where the characters might be sitting in a dank hole, looking at their scribbles, trying to figure out how to make their way home? It's great, it's honestly fantastic.

[ultraflavour]

Tackling the Toxic Culture of Play around "Epic" length campaigns in Fantasy TTRPGs

Definitely watch this video, but I'm also going to be touching on 4 major topics:

How I fucked myself big-time by over-committing to running a long-term game of Fabula Ultima;

Why the expectation of "Epic" length campaigns causes unnecessary stress on GMs;

How Lancer solves this problem by imposing structure and enforcing strict end-points;

How classic D&D and the "West Marches" concept applies these principles through a shared set of assumptions, and how we could apply those same assumptions to our own games.

Fabula Ultim-Oh No

A little while ago, I shared my experience running Fabula Ultima, specifically the Shared World-building portion of the game.

At the end of the article, I listed one of my 4 mistakes as being "Over-committing." That part was only tangentially related to the problem of Shared World-building, but it was related.

The group I was running for wanted to create a massive world. I gave them 3 maps to choose one of that's we'd fill out. They chose two, each representing a separate hemisphere.

I didn't know enough to say no, so I agreed. What was the worst thing that could happen? Our shared world would be too awesome?? Well.

What ended up happening was that all of the elements that the players had created during the world-building session were so far spread apart that in order to incorporate even a fraction of what we had created, this game had to be long.

So in order to live up to the expectation that I had believed to be there, I made an insane commitment that I should never have done: I promised the group that the game would go for at least 4 months, then I'd try to wrap things up in another two months, for a total of 6 months. Then, I'd leave the decision about whether to keep playing to the group: If they wanted to continue their adventures in our shared Fabula Ultima universe, we could do that.

Fast Forward Two Months

Two months into the game, and I am not vibing with the game. At all.

Fabula Ultima is a game that requires a lot more input from the players than other games do. Because at any time, a player can introduce a story element, that basically means that the GM can't really prep much of anything. The game expects the game to emerge as a constant conversation between the players and the GM.

But for whatever reason, the conversation just isn't really happening. I'm constantly feeling the pressure to provide the story to the players. And when they try to introduce story elements, I inadvertently have to shut them down because they interfere with something that I've prepped.

Suffice to say, I'm not having a good time. And because I'm not having a good time, I think my players are also not having a good time. It becomes a spiral. I start calling sessions earlier than I need to. I cancel. I don't do any extra prep, because I'm wrapped up in knots before the session.

Flame-Out Ultima

It's now the 3 month mark and I know I'm not going to make it. I'm throwing a lot of energy into my job, for reasons I won't go into here, and I don't have the energy leftover to commit to the game in the evenings. It's a Thursday evening game, and Thursdays are one of my mandatory in-office days at work, so I've fucked myself harder than I possibly could have.

So I inform the group that it's time to wrap up the game. I feel terrible. I promised them that I'd try to run the game longer, and now I'm a liar.

This guilt turns to anxiety. It begins to interfere with my work and my sleep. I'm now frustrated with myself even more, because I'm allowing this stupid tabletop game, which was just supposed to be a silly fun time (I literally nicknamed the campaign "Vibes Ultima") has gone wrong in possibly the worst way it could have.

I know that the reality is that I truly have nothing to feel guilty about. I put more effort into making that game work than anyone had any right to expect of me, and part of the reason why it failed was that the energy just wasn't there. But I'll let Rona tell you what reality means to people with social anxiety:

WHY, THOUGH?

I began to wrestle with the question of why: Why did I feel so compelled to make that stupid promise of running the game for 4 months to half a year? What was the reason for that arbitrary length of time?

I narrowed it down to three reasons:

The group had just come off of a very long-term 5E campaign, all set in a homebrew setting. The GM of that game was a player in my game, so I wanted to reciprocate the gesture of the long campaign by at least attempting something long-term.

My previous attempt at running a TTRPG campaign was Lancer, and I had made it about 6 months in that game, so I figured that was my time limit. This will be important later.

The group was excited about Fabula Ultima, but our previous attempt at running it flamed out early as the GM was unable to commit to the game due to their parenting duties. This GM had previously run epic-length campaigns for our group in the past, so I feel a sense of obligation to this player as well to try to give them a nice long character arc.

All of these factors led to the decision to set the minimum length of the campaign to 4 months, as if that arbitrary length of time was some magic number that meant literally anything.

And truly, what was the downside of only promising a short-term game? One of the players remarked during the character building session that they "weren't interested in going to the trouble of creating a character just for a short-term game." This... frustrated me deeply, but I didn't say anything at the time.

This decision ended up being not good for anyone. I had set the parameters of the adventure at the start of the game as the party needing to retrieve an object from a thief. It was a flimsy premise that should have only taken 4-6 weeks, not months, to complete. But I wasn't sure what to do after that initial adventure, so I stretched the game out over a long segment of travel (which I also felt compelled to do so that the players could experience the world they had had a hand in creating).

Truthfully, what would have been the downside of running an introductory adventure, completing something, and then calling it quits? Well, Fabula Ultima is a little bit of the problem here. Fabula doesn't really have the concept of an adventure, it's very much a "just show up, have some laughs, and get some XP at the end of the session" kind of game. You're supposed to get the feeling of having accomplished something every session, because the players are always able to stimulate the story with Fabula Points.

And I was even in the perfect situation to hand off the game to someone else, because the world was 100% shared. Everyone in the game had an equal stake in creating the game world, so any one of them could have picked up my slack. And if nobody wanted to? Then I was right to think that the group was not engaged at the same level as I was, and I was totally justified to cut things off early.

So what was the way that I should have gone about things? Well, as with many things, the answer lies with Lancer.

Lancer Loves You and Wants You to be Happy

You bet your ass I'm gonna find an excuse to talk about Lancer in every article I write.

I had previously had the most success of my entire TTRPG career running Lancer. I managed to make it to the 6 month mark, running a totally homebrew setting, and I was able to cap it off in a satisfying way that tied together all of the setting elements I'd established prior to the final mission. I set up a big bad, and the campaign ended with the players sending it straight to hell.

It's to date the only TTRPG campaign I've ever run that I've felt proud of. I didn't really know what it was about Lancer that made it actually work as well as it did for me. It wasn't a perfect game by any stretch, but I actually felt good enough about it that I felt like I could run another game of it later on down the road, and it would be even better.

In retrospect, I now understand a big part of why I was able to make it work, and that was the Mission Structure. It goes a little something like this:

Planning: The players and the GM collaborate to choose a mission to undertake, either in or out of character.

Preparation: The group collects information from the base, or puts boots on the ground in the mission area, to increase their odds in the coming mission.

The Mission: Play proceeds as the players and their Mechs enter the combat area. Importantly, the mission assumes that there will be 3-4 fights before requiring the players to take a Full Repair (Lancer's equivalent of a "Long Rest"). Also importantly, the mission ends prematurely if the players take a Full Repair.

Downtime: After the mission parameters have been achieved, or the party can no longer continue in their mechs, the team returns to their base, gains a level, and engages in downtime activities (Get a drink, gather information, etc.)

That's basically it. The loop repeats 12 times, and that's a campaign. Though it might seem needlessly restrictive, this imposition of structure prevents a lot of problem behaviours from both players and GM alike.

For the GM:

By forcing collaboration with the players during the Planning step, the GM can never plot too far ahead, because they can't make any assumptions about which direction the players are going to choose to go;

The 3-4 fight guideline prevents the mission from stretching out overly long. The mechs are usually falling apart after 3 fights, and the party can't artificially prolong the mission by taking a premature Full Repair (ie. they can't "take a Long Rest in the dungeon");

The mandated Downtime means that the GM can't put a ticking clock over the party's heads, preventing maladaptive signposting behaviours.

For the Players:

The planning phase allows players a chance to impact the narrative by providing guidance to the GM about what they want to do and where they want to go;

Being able to predict how many fights there are in the mission means the players can plan how aggressively they are able to play, as well as how many resources they can spend per fight;

Downtime gives the players time to roleplay and further their personal agendas without being under the gun of a ticking mission timer.

All of these bullet points were problems that I'd encountered in other games. Most recently in a game of 5E, I tried to suggest that the group adopt the "No Long Rests in the Dungeon" policy, or at least try to do the "Adventuring Day" thing of getting 4-6 combats under our belt before resting. My character was a martial character who was increasingly irrelevant to the game as the spellcasters in the party were always easily able to recharge their spell slots through long rests.

If, by contrast, we were operating under the assumption that we would not be able to take a long rest mid-adventure, we would have had to be much more judicious about our spell slots. But because we never really felt that pressure on our resources (because the GM was too unwilling to say no to us), the spellcasters were basically always topped up, so there was no real need for a martial who wasn't as affected by attrition.

GM Fanfic Syndrome: It Could Happen to You

But much more importantly, forcing those "end points" every 4 fights and requiring player collaboration meant that I couldn't engage in the extremely destructive behaviour of over-planning a plot. Once the adventure was set, then I could prep to my heart's content. I could even create adventure sites beforehand, but as long as I didn't attach any time-sensitive story beats to them, the players could tackle them in any order they pleased.

I can't stress enough just how much trouble is caused when the GM feels like they have to make all of the important decisions about the plot. It leads to what I have taken to calling GM Fanfic Syndrome (I got this name from someone else on Tumblr but I can't find the post any more). You write a long, epic story, but never ever finish it because the conclusion of the story is always too far out for the players to directly tackle.

The symptoms are caused when the GM thinks way too far ahead about how their game is going to play out, but fails to think about all of the steps required to get there, and how many ways that those steps might fail to come to fruition.

People who spend a lot of time in their own heads tend to play out these scenarios like little movies in their head. By the time they get to the table, they've thought it out a hundred different ways in every direction, and yet somehow it still doesn't end up playing out how it did in their heads.

So by creating these little inflection points where the players get to choose which missions they want to undertake, the GM never gets the chance to write too far ahead. For GMs with ADHD, depression, or anxiety, this can actually be somewhat helpful. The rules act as guardrails, to prevent you from over-preparing on things that don't actually help you run the game better. And it forces the game to be run in units of time that never exceed a few sessions, so there is always a hard limit on how long the campaign can go for.

Marching to the West

The assumption that there should be a hard limit on adventure length, and that players should take part in the process of adventure planning, is not new. Lancer did not invent these ideas, it merely codified them in its own rules.

You can trace these ideas back a long ways, all the way back to the beginning of the hobby. The original game of D&D was billed as being "for 4-50 players." Obviously that sounds crazy on the face of it, but when you realize why, it starts to make sense.

Early games of D&D were designed to be run as part of a "Gaming Club" of up to 50 people. The idea was that the GM would run games for different groups of people at different times. Those players would schedule a time to attack a dungeon, so the GM would know what they needed to prep and when it needed to be done by.

There are two more really interesting mechanics buried in those old rules:

Adventures needed to be completed in a single session. Regardless of whether or not the dungeon was complete, the player is sent back to town at the end of the 3-6 hours allotted to play, possibly with a negative consequence applied to them;

Time moves forward in real time in the game world between sessions. If it's been 6 days since the player last played, it's also been 6 days since their character has done anything as well.

The reason for these rules is that other groups are also undertaking adventures elsewhere in the game world, and those adventures might even interfere with the adventures of other players. For example, some other players might schedule an attempt to complete a particularly juicy dungeon before another group, so the second group arrives to the dungeon to find it's already been looted.

While some of this might not sound overly fun, there are a couple of other assumptions that this style of game makes that I think are really helpful:

The game world is a small portion of the total world with a town at the center of it.

The town is never used as an adventure site. It's always assumed that if the players can undertake adventures in the town, they will choose to, because the town is a place of safety.

The adventure is always close enough to the town that the players can get there in a day.

The player is never assumed to have only one character, rather they have an entire stable of characters so that they aren't playing the same class over and over again every adventure.

These assumptions rhyme closely with another very influential culture of play called a "West Marches" campaign.

The basic idea of a West Marches campaign is thus: A DM assembles a group of players, up to 50, and perhaps nominates some co-DMs as well. The players are responsible for scheduling and deciding on an adventure to tackle. They come to the DM and say "We would like to go here and do this on this date" and the DM says "You got it."

This still has the "Everything has to be done in one session" requirement, because you can't guarantee that this exact group of people is going to have the same availability at any time after this. So it's not necessarily the best idea for a smaller group, which doesn't have the same problem of scheduling.

Solving the "4 Month" problem with a new Play Culture

But what you can see here is that there are ideas here that actually help us in the scenario I laid out above. Remember, here are my problems:

I'm not getting the input from the players that I need, so instead of finishing the adventure and starting a new one, I stretch the current one out;

Because I don't have a finish for the adventure planned until weeks out, I can't give up the GM chair until the adventure is through;

I've set too long of an arbitrary time limit compared to the amount I was able to commit to.

So how would I solve these problems, knowing what I know now?

Well, I would implement a set of rules, directly inspired by that classic culture of play that didn't even assume that a GM would be running the same adventure for longer than one session. Let alone 4-6 months! So what do we do to make the game more sustainable?

Keep the action of the campaign centralized to one area. The party should always have the opportunity to take downtime, pursue projects, etc. and it's much harder to do that when they're on some long journey to the other side of the world.

Keep every adventure to about 4-6 sessions total. Don't let the players take long rests mid-session. If they can't complete the adventure without taking a long rest, then they can't complete the adventure at all. Letting players take a long rest resets their attrition and allows them to unnecessarily prolong an adventure.

Don't place the adventure sites too far away that the party might take more than a session to get there. The party should not be able to take a long rest in the wild, so don't bog them down with pointless random encounters before they arrive at the adventure site.

After the adventure, work with the players to set clear goals for them to pursue over the course of the next adventure. You can come up with a consequence for failure if it happens, but at the very least, the players should have an unambiguous goal to tackle. Or, allow another player to jump into the GM chair, so I can play.

This set of assumptions accomplishes two really important things:

It alleviates the requirement on the GM to plot out a long campaign with narrative arcs that require the players to essentially follow a script;

It creates inflection points in the narrative where anyone could swap out, including you, the GM. Because nothing is planned out too far in advance, anyone can swap out between adventures, no problem. The continuity of the world is retained in the town and the players' characters.

That last part is really important because it directly alleviates a major source of GM burnout, which is that sense of obligation to keep the game running. The task of keeping the game alive now falls on the entire group, so the players have an equal stake in the game. If they don't want the game to flame out, they always have an opportunity to pick up the slack.

In a long-term game with an intricate plot line, it's incumbent on the GM to see things through to the end. If they set up a plot line, they now have a responsibility to execute on it. They can't hand a game off to another GM mid-adventure, and they can't expect another GM to execute on a plot that they introduced.

So a better way of doing things would be to simply not make up a long overarching plot at all. Keep things simple so that you could theoretically hand off to someone else if you had to. Or you could even switch systems! Let the smaller adventures and the downtime sessions in town handle the heavy lifting of the storytelling. Allow a story to emerge naturally from the players' behaviour, rather than imposing it through a rigidly defined plot.

These are rules that I'm likely going to be implementing going forward for the sake of my own sanity. If you ever find yourself feeling over-committed to the role of GMing, and it's causing burnout, then maybe these ideas that I've linked to might help you alleviate some of that pain.

In Summary

I caused myself to burn out by over-committing to a game because I let my anxiety about letting down my group override my better judgment;

I examined the reasons why I felt pressured to run "Epic-length" campaigns, and how it negatively affected my ability to run games;

I remembered a time when I ran Lancer and it actually worked because of the imposition of structure that prevented me from over-preparing;

I adopted a new set of rules for my future campaigns that allows more flexibility and less stress about having committed to a long "Epic" campaign.

[fatalheart0]

'Silence' Part 1

Fanfic written for @sleepyconfusedpotato for Jade and Ghost.

Warnings: Angst

Originally, I was going to make this extremely sad by having ghost find out jade was KIA. But I didn't have the heart to do it.

Ignore any grammar mistakes. I'm a bit sleepy, lol.

—---------------

"It's too silent-..."

Ghost quietly sulked behind the back of the pick up truck he and soap just escaped in, from Graves and his men. When the ambush happened Jade, Ghost and Soap were quick to break off to avoid capture, unfortunately Vargas was caught. Throughout the remainder of trying to avoid Shadow company they all continued to have small talk through their coms. I guess you could say it was a way for them to keep their heads on right, especially soap who was injured.

But after a while, Jade had gone silent. Not one word was spoken from her end. Ghost figured she was in a tight spot and had to remain with 0 contact to avoid being spotted, but that was difficult for him. Memories of the small moments they shared rushed into his head and he immediately tried to brush them off. She was a strong woman, she would be okay. Right?

He pondered in silence on whether they should turn back to pick jade up, but that risked getting them both caught and soap needed medical attention.

"Ghost?"

Ghost turns his head to soap who is still standing there clutching his bleeding shoulder. They had made it to a safe house Vargas showed Ghost on a map, one he made sure to keep a mental note of in case anything went to shit. And what do you know? It did. Ghost remains silent and nods, getting off the truck and making his way back inside with Soap following in suit.

Rudy, who had been holed up in the safe house greets them once again to which soap offers a nod.

"Why is it so silent?.."

Is all Ghost can think, the radio silence bugged him. He should have heard from her by now. It shouldn't be this silent- but at the same time it felt so loud. The world around him began to ring in his head, the voices of the past haunting him. Her voice haunting him. He could barely hear the conversation between Rudy and Soap, who was helping him with his fresh wound.

3 hours pass -

It was very visible.

No one could not see it.

The irritability Ghost wore was like this giant cloud of darkness swarming around him. At the first hour mark, they still heard nothing from jade and Ghost had begun to worry. By the 2nd hour Ghost became antsy, the smallest things setting him off to argue with everyone who was now gathered at the safe house. When the 3rd hour hit, Ghost had become unwilling to work with people, even Gaz and Price. He was starting to lose the grip on himself that he worked so hard to build. Why hadn't she called in yet? What is her location? Did her radio break? Is she too far away to use her radio? Is she hurt? What if she's screaming for him right now and he's sitting here doing nothing.

So many questions rushed through his head, how was he supposed to keep himself calm in this storm when she was the very thing that helped him through the rough waves of a vast ocean or the dark abyss from swallowing him whole. She was the very thing he needed all his life, every fear, every doubt, every dark thought that plagued his mind was instantly gone with just her presence alone.

For the very first time Ghost felt weak and helpless. He should be doing something, not just sitting here. Not sitting here. Ghost's eyes lit up for a moment as he quickly made his way outside. Merging with the shadows he effortlessly made his way to a truck without being seen. He takes a deep breath, the engine revs loudly as he turns the key. He speeds off leaving price and the others yelling to become distant background noise until it's gone. He didn't care if he got reprimanded for his actions, the woman he loved- truly loved was out there and needed him.

For hours on end he searched the last place they were at, going through every house and every room checking under staircases, in dumpsters. Anywhere she could've hidden herself from view to stay safe. He felt all hope vanishing as he dropped to the floor. Was this his reality? Did he really have to let go of her and move on? He could feel the tears well up in his eyes and he lowered his head to the ground.

The slight shimmer that bounced off the ground reflecting in the corner of his eyes grasps his attention, saddened eyes slowly drift to the sparkling speckle within the short distance fron him. The longer he stared the more he could make out, he quickly crawled over picking up the item and let out a strained sigh of relief. What had been shining in his eye was the bullet necklace he had given Jade one day off duty. Ghost was silent as tears flowed down his face as he realized through all the bodies he'd seen, not one was hers. Not a single one.

But that left him with one question. Where was she? There was no signs of Graves men having been present in the area, giving Ghost a moment to attempt to call for jade.

"Jade. This is ghost do you read me?"

Static.

And once again silence. He huffs out an annoyed sigh and stands back up looking around taking in his options. He can't give up yet.

"Jade this is ghost do you copy"

His head perked at the slight noise that echoed from a small alleyway. Pressing his radio button he holds it then releases it, and he hears it again. A beeping noise, one that happens when radio signals bounce off each other when they are close. Quickly he dashes around the corner and looks around. Nothing but dumpsters and trash. But there, on top of a few garbage bags slightly covered with trash was a flashing light. It was small but easily visible. Moving the trash away he picks up a entire radio set and ear peice. He reads the number that's used to keep track of the radios on base. Jade's radio number was #12095.

Slowly he read them off before tightly holding the radio, he brings it to his chest. Holding it there, happy knowing there was still a chance she slipped away. Suddenly prices voice comes out into his ear piece.

"Ghost we need you back here at the safe house. We have located jade. We will discuss more when you get here"

'Don't need to tell me twice' ghost thought as he bolts back to the truck speeding back to the safe zone. Once there, he bursts through the front door. "Is she alive?" Was the first thing to leave his lips as he shoulders rise and fall with every deep heavy breath.

"Alive yes, but she's been caught by Graves and his men. She's being held in Vargas' base. The same one Graves took control over." Ghost can feel the blood moving through his body. He clenches his hands, knuckles cracking. "Let's do this.."

Nothing more needed to be said. For the rest of the night, the group planned how to storm the base, where the guards were posted up in towers and the places that could hold prisoners. Nothing was going to stop ghost from reaching Jade. Nothing. Not even the devil himself could stop him from getting to her.

The next morning was miserable without jade there. Even though he knows she's alive, it still doesn't make the empty feeling go away. Throughout the day ghost did nothing but train and check to make sure equipment was clean and operational. Nothing was allowed to go wrong, not on this mission. When night fell, everyone went over the plan once more.

To start was to take out the guards in the towers, climb over the wall, and quietly make their way inside without alerting anyone of their presence. The battle was to be fought when they left with Vargas and Jade, so they weren't moved or killed on sight. Everything was in order, and the 141 set out to get their team back.

—-------

Authors note: if I kept writing, I probably would've filled out tumblrs' word limit, so to keep it safe and in order I will make a part 2.

[avelera]

Random thoughts on the D&D movie in no particular order:

I loved the jokes. All of them. All the stupid jokes. I was their target audience and they succeeded at making me cackle at dumb shit while my partner's soul left his body

The landscape shots were breathtaking and honestly made me tear up at the beauty in places. In the theater, I remember thinking, "Yeah, FUCK yeah, these guys understood the assignment!" Nine out of ten times, I think fantasy should be animated, because if you don't pour millions into the budget, the action looks like crummy LARPers wearing silly costumes in the woods. This movie understood that if you're doing live action fantasy, you owe your audience some damn beautiful landscape shots and damn did they deliver on some beautiful landscape shots.

(cut for spoilers)

I sincerely appreciated Holga and her husband being divorced but still amicable. I'm so tired of the trope of exes being evil or awful. They just seemed like two adults who wanted to love each other but the circumstances of being together doomed them from the start. It was played for laughs but it was just a moment I genuinely enjoyed as divorcee. I also loved her ex's new wife looking exactly like her, both for the gag, and for what it said about both of them being each other's type even if it didn't work out.

I also cackled like a hyena at Holga's halfling fetish while also finding it rather sweet and enjoyed imagining all the reasons why she might have that preference lol

As a basic Drizzt Do'Urden loving bitch, I squeed when I saw Icewind Dale on the map. Then I had a moment between that and the Underdark of wondering, "Am I gonna see him? Even in the distance? Am I going to see my first love, Drizzt Do'Urden??"

And then I realized: the Paladin. The Paladin is Drizzt. Only good person who came out of a nation destroyed by evil. Too good for this world, too pure, to the point of being sanctimonious but is also a hottie. Xenk is Drizzt.

Oh, I also squeed when I saw the Underdark.

I appreciated how knowledge of D&D improved certain story beats (like the gelatinous cube or the displacer beast) but wasn't required to enjoy the plot. That's how references should be done.

The most agonizingly cringe moment for me was when Holga was dying. Just. I appreciated the beat. It couldn't go any other way. They delivered on their set up with the tablet, the only question was ever, "Who besides his wife is going to get saved with it?" And it made perfect sense who it was. I'm glad they didn't try to pull a fast one. But the scene was like... 10 seconds too long of her dying for me to not roll my eyes. We know you're going to use the tablet on her, dipshit, please keep this moving.

BUT I think the reason they did it was to land a sincere moment with the daughter, and I appreciated that. I think the scene could have been improved by Holga being like, "Don't you fucking dare use that tablet on me!" and then smacking him when he did it anyway and then he'd have to explain that he set out to save his daughter's mother, not his wife, who has passed on, etc etc. but I'm not sure that would have been much better so maybe the drawn-out opera death scene and the sincerity was better in the end idk.

I KINDA wanted to see the actors as the players playing D&D BUT I know why they didn't and it was a wise choice, it undermines the drama too much to say it doesn't matter because it's a game. Maybe if instead they'd should the characters playing D&D in universe as normal humans? Idk

I thought there'd be more Xenk? I thought he'd be in the arena with them? A little bummed but I also loved his GM NPC energy.

The combat and camera work was great! Genuinely enjoyable and well made, I appreciated the artistry that went into it.

Loved the bardic distraction scene for truly capturing the chaos of a D&D party's attempt at breaking and entering

Loved the portals bit for truly capturing the strategy and planning that can go into a functioning D&D campaign's clever heist, even if I'm sure it would have taken 5 sessions to plot out IRL

Honestly, it was just a fun, solid film! It's been a while since I've seen such a fun, solid film! I would buy it and put it on in the background to just enjoy and not angst over it! It was worth the price of admission, it was faithful to the spirit of D&D instead of sneering at it the way the early 2000s one did, and I had a good time! It wasn't the highest of art but it would have been weird if it had been! I liked it a lot!

[morroodle]

The Ninjago Battle Box: the best investment of my life

A reveiw

A few days ago I got bored and made a somewhat impulsive decision to buy the ninjago battle box which I've been wanting for a while and it finally arrived today so I'm gonna reveiw it cause I haven't seen like anyone talk about it. It dosent even have its own wiki page even though it is chock full of fun facts and information and pictures

Contents:

A 2 sided map - one side is ninjago city while the other is ninjago as a whole (kinda)

Book of battles

Ninjago world guide

30 cards

Lloyd minifig

Garmadon minifig

The map:

HOLY SHIT THIS IS COOL. As far as I'm aware this might be the most detailed map of ninjago we've ever gotten and no one is even aware of it! What I think is the most interesting and what makes me question how cannon this is is that the main map of ninjago only covers like... 1/4 of the whole ninjago island? Kinda odd how like all the locations are in this tiny chunk when they have a whole island they could cover but hey its still a super cool map and an amazing piece of art!

The book of battles:

Kind of a weird thing and I couldn't find any information on what it was until I got it. Basically each page is a rough (and not 100% accurate) summary of one of the battles of ninjago, a vague but still pretty obvious clue about where the battle took place, a prompt to play and a neat art piece based on the battle. It's not so much a history book as it is a book of play ideas, your meant to use the clue to find where the battle took place on the map and then use the little battle dojo, the minifigures and the cards to play out the battle however you want. Very cute and I love it. One weird thing I found though: in one of the battles it calls the serpentine the serpentai? It's done 3 times so I don't think it's just a typo. Don't know what's going on there but its cool. Here's an example of the best page, they're all formatted the same

It only has a handful of battles, not nearly all of them, but that's to be expected and it's still great

Ninjago world guide:

It's like a little encyclopedia of heros, villains and artifacts. It includes the main ninja, the elemental masters, all the villains (up to season 15 and strangely excluding the overlord), and a bunch of non people important things like the bounty and the realm crystal. Pretty much nothing I don't already know but still neat! It's kinda cool how it's split into 2 sections, one half being heros and good artifacts and the other being villains and bad artifacts. I don't know how to describe it but theyre kinda facing different ways? It's like 2 books in one, both starting on the outsides and meeting/ending in the middle like so.

Here's Morro's page (again most of the pages are formatted the same):

Cutie pie <3

The cards:

I wish I could show off all the cars but sadly tumblr has a limit to how many pictures you can have in one post. Cards include heros, villains and artifacts, similar to the world guide but not quite as many things, just the important ones. Theyre pretty simple, with just the name/title and a drawing of the character/item. Theyre meant to be used to play the battles in the book of battles. Morro's is the absolute best one look at this little cutie pie!

Hes so sweet and adorable he has never done anything wrong in his life and I love him

The minifigures and the box itself:

Nothing really special about the minifigs just a basic Lloyd and Garmadon. Interesting to note that despite wearing his season 8 gi Lloyd has his legacy hood on. Not complaining, I hate the smooth round hoods.

The box that everything came in doubles as the little play area :D its a little dojo setting with some cute nicknacks scattered around. It needs a bit of encouragement to stay flat though. Oh also here's the outside of the box

Conclusion:

The best $25 I've ever spent. I can't believe almost no one knows or talks about this! It's from 2023 and covers up until seabound. I might have to see if I can add this stuff to the ninjago wiki, more people should know about it. If anyone else is interested in getting one (you should be) it's on the scholastic website for $17.99 + shipping, not the actual lego website.

[all-pacas]

do you have any book recs or something you read recently that you really loved? i’ve been in a bit of a slump with my reading and i’d love to pick it back up

lol thanks for indulging me!

Currently I'm working my way through 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. It is very good, very dense, and impossible to even start to explain, one of those novels in a novel in a novel situations, loosely about a city in Mexico, but also a) a love triangle between english professors b) a teacher who grows obsessed with a physics book c) an American reporter sent to Mexico to report on a boxing match d) hundreds of murdered women e) a german writer. It's. It's a lot. It's very good, it's very long, I cannot explain it succinctly.

I also just started Haruki Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase, which. I love Murakami novels but they are probably not for everyone! As a starter book for him I like to recommend Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, as it's less surreal and more grounded than a lot of his novels (and shorter). Killing Commodore, one of his more recent novels, was very fun. And if you're into sort of weird Japanese literature, I highly recommend The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, a sort of… sci-fi-ish story about a lovely peaceful society who, periodically, have concepts (like "birds") outlawed and thus forgotten by all, or anything by Sayaka Murata, who has what I can only describe as humanity dysphoria and writes fascinating short stories.

After I wrote all this I decided to self-shame and show off my Book Mountain, the pile of books by my nightstand I've accumilated over many, many months and mostly have not yet read:

The Field Guide to the Connecticut River is actually super interesting if, like me, you grew up in New England and never thought of that river over there as an eco system in itself. It has illustrations! Pictures of frogs! Geological maps! Super fun to just page through, makes me wanna go hike and look at ponds.

Mary Beard is a fantastic author and I've loved her other Roman-related books (SPQR and Pompeii), super stoked to take another crack at Emperor of Rome.

Ours is a really well written novel with an interesting idea — in the 19th century a group of mostly escaped slaves form their own secret town hidden by magic and isolated from the rest of the world, and how that both protects and hurts them. I just can't get into it, but eventually I'll finish it.

A Children's Bible is quite short and it was fantastic. A group of rich adults rent a summer home and bring a dozen or so children, who are left to fend for themselves as their parents drink and lie around, all while quietly in the background the rest of the world collapses.

Lies and Weddings was fun! it's by the author of Crazy Rich Asians and is essentially a remix of that, just set in England this time. But if you like that sort of thing, it's a fun, quick read.

Bright Young Women was another really good book, I just recently finished re-reading it. I very much enjoyed Jessica Knoll's first book, Luckiest Girl Alive, she's a very strong POV writer. Bright Young Women is a sort of… fictionalized version of the fallout of the Ted Bundy murders, except the murderer is never named or made out to be sexy or sympathetic or cool. It's more about what comes before and after 'the perpetrator' comes into people's lives. Very, very good book.

Another novel (not pictured, but it's on my bookshelf in my line of sight) I really enjoyed recently is Wellness by Nathan Hill: he wrote The Nix a few years back and that was also great, he has a very light and funny style even as he's tackling like. Grief and trauma. Wellness is basically about a married couple in a rough spot, examining them both, how they came to be who they are, the way your past shapes you even if you don't know it, and who they try to be for one another. Maybe halfway through the story there is a silly little anecdote that later came back and made me cry because it was so lovely and paid off so well. Definitely recommend.

[kolbisneat]

It’s finally here!

Wonderland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting is out now and I’m so excited to share it with you all! Being my third book in this series, I wanted to balance the tried and true with something new and I think this delivers just that.

The book is broken up into a number of chapters to make running TRRPG games (like D&D, pathfinder, OSE, etc.) a breeze. Chapter 1 explored the world, Chapter 2 explores the 100ish characters and creatures, Chapter 3 is full of specific maps and locations, Chapter 4 explores [REDACTED], and Chapter 5 rounds out the book with a few extra maps and a whole bunch of random tables for adventuring! I even got to include a small sketchbook again to see how the pie gets made.

Thank you again to everyone who preordered and you can find this wherever books are sold (and if your local book or game store doesn’t have it, they’ll be able to order it and you’ll help keep your community at the same time)

I can’t wait to hear all about your adventures in Wonderland.

[moonlitempty]

“It’s our basic human right to be fuck-ups. This civilisation was founded on fuck-ups!”

And after roughly 3 weeks of waiting, hoping, and constant refreshing of the tracking page, here it is finally, I am able to hold it, and see it, and analyse every intricate little detail of its design, and its packaging. And it makes me feel somewhat fulfilled.

I honestly keep struggling to find the words for this caption, my thoughts are all over the place and it feels like no praise or fawning will suffice, no amount of love dumping will be nearly enough to describe how absolutely lovely this record is.

The World’s End is a film I was afraid I wouldn’t like, even when I was just getting into The Cornetto Trilogy and familiarising myself with everything around it, I could just TELL The World’s End was, not quite a black sheep, but the odd one out in the trilogy. I saw hordes and hordes of people rave over Shaun (rightfully), I saw thousand of dedicated followers of Fuzz (VERY rightfully), but at most I saw a couple hundred people campaigning for End to have more recognition. So when it came to finally watch it for the first time, I was honestly nervous and I vividly remember I had to keep pausing the movie over and over again whenever Gary said or did something dumb, I felt bad for him, he seemed enthusiastic and he longed for his old life with his friends and none of them even trusted him. So that set a very specific lens quite early on that I saw the whole movie throughout, and I think it actually helped me appreciate the movie from the get-go.

So I decided to put my big boy pants on, stop systematically pausing the movie, and sit through it, no more pauses or interruptions.

•“12 Historic Ale Houses!”

I quickly found myself enamoured with End, I loved the unapologetic and almost blatant Sci-Fi route of the film, after all, Sci-Fi in general is a genre I hardly consume, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this film alone opened the doors of the genre to my once closed eyes. I grew to love the characters oddly quickly, my stand-outs obviously being Gary and Andy, but I also made room in my heart for Sam and Steven (the only survivors, ha!)

Also, it may have been the Blu-Ray doing its Blu-Ray thing but I thought the film looked PHENOMENAL, easily the most visually interesting film out of the Three, maybe it was also the use of more contemporary cameras and technology, it was an absolute treat to the eyes. The filmmaking and directing choices have been pointed out time and time again, Edgar Wright has the best directing style of any modern filmmaker.

But let’s get to the main subject, the soundtrack!

•The World’s End: Original Movie Score (Mondo Exclusive , Pressed on Crowning Glory Ale Vinyl)

This is a beautiful little record! It’s easily one of the prettiest in my entire collection, usually a splatter vinyl like this is pretty hit or miss, I’ve had my fair share of less than stellar records, but this one NAILED IT! I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but this record looks EXACTLY like a nice, cold, foamy and enriching pint of Ale, and the design of the centre labels is oddly satisfying, I lack the right words to describe it, but the entire film carries a sort of “vintage-ish” aesthetic in its graphic design and motifs, hopefully I’m making myself clear with that. It’s a mix of vintage and modern, if I had to describe it!

The record is very nice to the touch, it’s solid and quite heavyweight (which is a reassurance when it comes to vinyl), and it looks absolutely stunning when held up to the light. A detail I love is how the labels seem to slowly uncover the presence of The Network as they go on, by Side D the centre label makes it awfully clear that The Network is, a) a thing, and b) present everywhere in Newton Haven.

In the gimmick/fun little trinkets department, we have a small pamphlet! Styled as a tourist guide for the pubs in Newton, it features a full map of the town (the one Gary used to mark up the pubs), and the commentaries by both Edgar Wright and the composer Steven Price, these are frankly a treat to read and give so much more insight into not only the making of the score, but also the deeper meaning of the score, what Prince intended to transmit with the creative decisions he made while making and building the score, it makes listening to it a much more rewarding experience.

This will be forever one of my favourite items I’ve ever owned, period. Not favourite vinyl records, or movie memorabilia, items in general. And I feel immensely grateful to not only have it and hold it, but to also share it with everyone in a cohesive and engaging way. Writing this post has been an absolute privilege! Hopefully it is mildly decent and not just another one of my soliloquies.

If you got all the way here, you have my eternal gratitude and I love u mwah. here’s a cookie for your troubles 🍪

Let’s Boo-Boo.