#I have played dnd before but not recently

[dostarve]

So what are your favorite fandoms outside of Don't Starve and The Dark Pictures right now? Also any random headcannons you'd like to share?

Right now I really like this horror game that was released back in 2019!! Its super fucking obscure but i’ve been playing it recently and I love it, its called Song of Horror, made by Protocol Games and its CAPTIVATED my brain. It isn’t even that good of a game but I am obsessed with its plot and its characters.

(I know that does not count as a fandom more of an interest but I NEED to talk about it hshshwbsj)

Some other fandoms for shows i’m into are Avatar the Last Airbender, anything Marvel related (specifically Guardians of the Galaxy bc I just recently watched the new movie), the Bad Batch, the Pokémon animes, the new dnd movie; Honor Among Thieves, and some other shows that have probably slipped my mind at this moment.

Some fandoms for games i’m into include the Pokémon games (XY, Sword & Shield, and Arceus Legends in particular), the Animal crossing games, Project Zomboid, and some story games such as Detroit become human, The Last of Us, The Quarry and Until Dawn.

I don’t really have too many headcannons that I can think of off the top of my head and I have a hard time getting the characters personality right so they aren't too accurate anyways. Though I might post them all in a more organized post some other time!

Thank you for the ask!! 🩵

[invinciblerodent]

what do you mean i have a problem

..... i'll finish all of these (i have not finished even one of these)

[ashprince-of-bel-air]

A Late-Night Session.

A/N: I'm not gonna lie, this is purely self serving one-shot, I'm sure I dreamt about this so I wanted to write it.

Summary: You were part of the Hellfire crew and had just finished your most recent campaign, Eddie invited you over for the night after the rest of the club had left.

Warnings: reader is afab. It does include smut so 18+, both the reader and Eddie are at least 21.

Eddie slumped back into his throne with a smile, he had been in charge of this story for a while, and it had finally come to conclusion. The cheers from the rest of your party made Eddie smile enthusiastically, you could not help but look at him, you loved seeing how happy DnD made him. Eddie’s smile was intoxicating to you and was pretty much the only reason you attended the weekly Hellfire meetings at this point. Yes you had enjoyed DnD in your younger years but now all you went for was the enigmatic leader, Eddie Munson. He was so energetic and passionate, you had never met a dungeon master like him. You were almost sad that your current campaign had ended, hoping he would come up with another one so you could all play together again and you could be in his company.

You all cheered wildly at the end of the campaign, your group being victorious against Asmodeus. It was a difficult campaign, but you and your team made it through, celebrating your win thoroughly. The night of your win was a wild one by DnD standards, you all ate too much and tried not to drink yet in front of the younger players, you could do that later. The young ones spilled out of the room, leaving to catch their rides early into the night. The older ones, like Gareth and Jeff, left a little later leaving you to clean up, not that you minded. It left you and Eddie alone, this was something that you had become used to, each week everyone would have a reason why they could not stay and help clear up. You did not mind though, you enjoyed your private time with Eddie, just the two of you, it was the favourite part of your week, you both flirted with each other, but neither would be brave enough to make an actual move. There had always been a palpable chemistry between the two of you, it was obvious to everyone that saw you together, however you both seemed to tiptoe around it.

This week, Eddie told himself it would be different, he would ask you back to his place and he would finally make a move against you. It had burned up inside of him each day he saw you that he did not act upon his attraction to you, he wanted to claim you as his before anyone else had the chance to. The air was quiet as you had both started to clear the chairs and cards away, you never wanted to interrupt Eddies workflow, he had a system for how he worked, and you respected it. You both tidied up in silence for a while until Eddie’s deep voice broke the silence between you.

“So, Y/N…. You got any plans for tonight?” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously as he asked, he wanted to seem cool and confident, but his current form was betraying him, you turned to focus on him and your heart melted. He looked so cute and anxious that it made you smile.

“Eddie, I’m actually flattered that you think I have any sort of social life outside of DnD” You joke and smile softly at him. Eddie had always loved your playful nature, he had often wondered why you were not more popular than you were, you seemed so approachable and enigmatic to him, you were due to leave for college this year and he wanted to try and shoot his shot before you left and found someone whilst you were away.

“Well, I don’t know what you get up to in your spare time, Princess” You turned back around to stack the chairs away but you could almost feel the smirk that was plastered on his face, he was the only one that was allowed to call you Princess, you hated hearing the name from any of the other guys but Eddie got a free pass with it, for some reason the name coming from his lips made you blush and go warm, the way he called you it was almost as if he knew what effect he had on you.

You rolled your eyes at him playfully as you finished clearing up, you walked over to him. “Well actually, Munson, I don’t have any sordid plans tonight, why do you ask?” you chuckle at him, trying not to be distracted by those big brown eyes of his. They were your biggest weakness; he could commit any crime known to man but if he looked at you with his big brown doe eyes you would melt. Many a time you had to tell him playfully “You put those big brown eyes away mister” because you were annoyed at him and did not want him to worm his way out of a telling off.

Eddie had finished collecting up any figures and cards that were laid out on the table as he replied to you. “Well, I was just wondering if you wanted to come to mine for a drink. My uncle is away for work, so I have the trailer to myself?” He tried to seem smooth as he asked but his heart thumped wildly in his chest, he had never been this forward with you, but he wanted to try his chances with you, the moment he met you he was enthralled with you.

A soft blush crept upon your face as you responded, pretending to be interested in something else to hide it from him. “Sounds good to me chief.” You would love nothing more than to be alone with him in his trailer, you had spent time alone with him after each DnD session but being alone with him in his trailer was different, it was more intimate and was something that you had craved, you wanted a chance to be with him in an intimate setting, you were not sure what you would do but you wanted the chance nonetheless.

A smile erupted across Eddie’s face, you had actually agreed to spend time together, just you and him. His nervous sweaty palm ran through his hair trying to tame the wild curls somewhat. “I’ve got some good films we can watch whilst we have a drink, it’s completely your choice” his voice was slightly nervous as he spoke, he wanted to make sure you enjoyed your time with him. You chuckled and shook your head at him. “I was more than happy with the idea of free drinks, don’t give me the stress of choosing a movie to go with them”.

The final bits of the gathering were cleared away as Eddie chuckled, he spun his car keys in his hand and nodded his head towards the door. “C’mon then Princess, I’ve got a few beers with your name on them.” You rolled your eyes playfully at his smile, trying to hide how much it made you weak at the knees. You followed him outside and made yourself comfy in his truck, you had been in it many times, but this felt different, you felt there was a tension in the air between the both of you. The ride to his trailer was mostly uneventful, filled with pleasantries, asking how you both were and how he was doing with work and whatnot, he told you that he was adamant that he would graduate this year, 86 was going to be his year. It was not long until you pulled up outside of his trailer. The gentleman he was, Eddie made sure that he quickly walked around to open the car door for you, eliciting a playful eyeroll from you.

Eddie opened the door to his trailer, inviting you in. Giving you a playful bow before escorting you in, you had been in his trailer many times and he did that stupid bow every time. “So, you want a drink yeah?” Eddie called from the kitchen as you stood in the living room adjacent to it.

“Yeah sure thanks” You were not overly bothered about having a drink, but you just wanted an excuse to spend time alone with him. You both took a seat on the sofa an made yourself comfy, Eddie sat there, his legs wide apart and holding his beer bottle between his legs. You decide to test the waters and softly and drape your legs over his and lay down on the sofa, pretending to be nonchalant about it. Eddies eyes went wide as he felt your legs drape over his waist, his hand instinctively landed on your thigh. You were wearing criminally short shorts in Eddie’s mind; how could he resist touching you.

Eddie groaned internally as his hand rested on your bare thigh, he squeezed it softly causing a soft moan to emanate from your lips. You felt his rings dig into the flesh of your thighs and you could not help but moan against the feeling of the metal digging against your skin. The soft moan caused Eddie to grip your thigh even harder as he leant towards you with a smirk. “Are you okay, Darling?” His hand started to stroke further up your thigh and rested just beneath the hem of your shirt, his fingertips grazing the skin of your stomach, waiting for confirmation that you wanted more from him. You blushed at the fact you let the audible moan slip from your lips, it was hard to catch your breath knowing where his hands were on your body, desperately wanting them to explore further. Eddie leant towards you on the sofa, his hand ever so slight trailing up underneath your shirt, feeling his calloused palm against the soft skin of your waist.

“Cat got your tongue sweetheart?” He purred, that stupid smirk on his face caused your heart to flutter, but you would not be bested by him. You leant forward and left barely any room between his lips; he could feel your breath hot against his face. “I’m more than okay, Munson” You could sense that this was your opportunity, if you were ever going to get him then it was now, you held your composure despite your heart feeling like a jackhammer in your chest, trying not to look into those deep brown eyes that were now raking over you.

Your response and eagerness to lean closer to him was all the confirmation that Eddie needed, His free hand came swiftly to the back of your head and pulled you into him, your lips crashing together. You felt yourself moan into the kiss as his hand on your waist squeezed the delicate skin there, it felt like bliss as his hand gripped you and pulled you closer. You lost yourself in the kiss and moved closer to him, your aim to straddle yourself over his lap on the couch. An aim that Eddie did not stop you from achieving, he let out a throaty groan against your lips as he felt you move onto his lap, his hands devouring your body hungrily, he wanted to feel all of you. His lips released yours and found your neck, placing wet open-mouthed kisses along your neck and collar bone. You back arched towards him, wanting him to explore all of your body with his mouth and tongue. Your hands travelled up his arms until they reached the base of his neck, where you slowly tangled your hands into his soft curls and gripped softly, pulling yourself against him even more.

Eddie was in heaven, he had you on his lap and his mouth was exploring your body, he craved more though, he had wanted you from the day he first met you and this was not enough. His lips found your neck again and his voice vibrated against your skin. “Fuck…. I need you, Princess” His deep voice against your neck made you groan into him desperately, you needed him just as bad as he needed you. You gripped your hands tighter into his hair and kissed along his jawbone, your voice soft and breathy as you spoke. “Eddie…. please.” His eyes rolled back in his head at your breathy plea and gripped your thighs roughly. Eddie regained his composure slightly and positioned his hands under your thighs. He stood up from the sofa, lifting you with him and carried you towards his bedroom down the hall. You wrapped your legs around his waist and carried on kissing along his jaw and neck, now feeling his excitement thick against your thighs.

He dropped you roughly on his bed, resting on his forearms above you on the unkempt bed with pure lust in his eyes, he had wanted you for so long and now you were here in his bed, he would make sure that you enjoyed it and would want more from him. His plump lips found your neck again, his teeth grazing against your skin causing you to moan softly and grip his hair, spurring him on even further as he nipped his way down to your chest. You helped him swiftly remove your t shirt, laying bare chested before him. Eddie’s eyes laid on you half naked form, fuck you were beautiful to him, he needed just a moment to commit this vison to memory before his lips found your skin again. He kissed along your breasts, his teeth teasing you and nipping at your soft delicate skin. You felt him suck at your soft skin, leaving his marks upon your body, this aroused you even more, knowing that he was claiming you as his, knowing that he wanted nobody else to touch you.

The kisses along your breast and stomach were sloppy and desperate, until he reached the waistband of your shorts, you looked down and could see his beautiful eyes, asking for permission to remove them, a soft nod from you was all it took, and he quickly took them off and threw them on the floor. His teeth now grazed against your inner thigh, and you moaned desperately, he was teasing you and he knew it.

“So needy Princess, good girls wait patiently” You felt his smirk against your thigh as his tongue roamed your skin, wanting to taste every inch of you. Your hips bucked towards him involuntarily, you wanted him to relieve you of the heat that was swimming in your lower stomach, you were desperate for his touch. Finally you felt his lips upon you, you were already soaking wet for him, a fact that made him chuckle against you as you felt his tongue against your clit, moving in slow languid circles to torture you further Your soft moans were like music to his ears, whilst his hands roamed your skin, his big calloused hands finding your breasts, squeezing them causing your back to arch further into his touch.

“Eddie….” You moaned softly as he continued to tease you, you wanted to feel him and let him relieve you of the pressure building inside of you. He smiled and left one final kiss against you, lifting his head from your thighs, you could see your juices dripping from his face and thought he had never looked sexier. In one quick move he removed his t shirt and leant his body against yours, revelling in the feeling of your breasts against his bare chest now. His lips found yours again, kissing you passionately as he tried desperately to undo his jeans. You could feel his thick length against your thigh through the denim of his jeans so when you felt him bare against you, you moaned desperately. You had imagined what Eddie would feel like many a night, you craved it desperately, even pleasuring yourself over the thought, something Eddie did over the thought of you as well. Eddie steeled himself and took a deep breath, he had wanted this for so long and he would savour the moment, he held his cock in his hand and swiped it against your wet folds, chuckling to himself at your desperate moans. He loved seeing you so desperate and needy beneath him, knowing that he was the one causing you to come undone like this. He slowly pressed his throbbing tip into you, feeling you stretch around his girth, squeezing his eyes closed as he felt how good you were around him.

A deep breathy moan escaped your lips as you felt him inside of you, you had been with other people before but you were not used to this size, it was almost sinful how good he was making you feel just from pressing slowly inside of you. “Fuck…..” Eddie whispered as he felt himself stretch your cunt, you felt so good already and he wasn’t sure he would last too long at this rate. He started to thrust a slow and steady pace, one that felt torturous to you, your hips bucked against him as you wanted to feel him thick and fast against you. “Baby…. Please I can’t” He whispered against your neck, he wanted to, so badly he wanted to fulfil your desire and drill into you.

“Eddie… I’m so close… please” your voice desperate for him now, your nails digging into the skin on his back, he looked at you, your eyes almost in tears because you were so desperate for him now. His hands gripped on your hips, pulling you even closer to him, as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, he wanted to be close and hear your moans for him. He pounded into you roughly and after a few thrusts he felt your walls clench around him tightly, your moans were like heaven to him, he told himself that he would commit that sound to memory. One more thrust and he was spent, he felt himself tremble inside of you as he collapsed on top of your body, leaving soft wet kisses on your neck.

You were both laid together, sweaty and gasping, feeling the afterglow of your orgasm. Your hand softly stroked Eddie’s hair behind his ear, loving how the fringe of his hair was slick against the sweat of his forehead. You looked deep into his deep brown eyes and smiled, you both felt happy and at peace in each other’s arms.

Eddie finally rolled off the top of you, laying beside you he pulled you into his arms, stroking the soft skin of your back affectionately. You both laid there silently for a while enjoying each other’s embrace until Eddie spoke up, hooking a finger under you chin pulling your face up to look at him. “So, is this going to be a regular after session thing or not?” You rolled your eyes playfully at his smirk, answering him with a deep kiss. You knew this would be more than an after-session activity.

[ryescapades]

❝ [ expert third-wheeler ] ╰┈➤ of the same thread (kaiju no. 8)

— ii. apparently intruding on your dates with hoshina is one of your brother's favorite past times.

genre/warning: narumi gen x lil sis!reader, bf!hoshina soshiro, fluff a/n: wet and soggy stray sewer cat narumi up for adoption (affectionate) mini series masterlist

the first time it happened, you didn't think much of it.

it wasn't often that you and your boyfriend get to spend some time together with how tachikawa and the ariake maritime base being a good two hours away, more or less.

the only time that's possible is whenever hoshina is tasked to visit the first division due to the recent events involving the anti-no.9 conference and the making of his numbers weapon suit.

you're beyond grateful, really. even just the lingering eye contacts during formal meetings are enough to satisfy your soshiro-deprived self for some time, at least. take all you can get, you'd compromised with yourself. you couldn't be too picky in this line of work, after all.

hence, every time you were given the chance to finally sit down and properly have some quality time with hoshina, you'd planned on milking every loving second of it. in the world where only the two of you exist, you feel like nothing bad could ever happen.

"have you always had fangs, or have i just not been paying attention? wait, who am i kidding? my attention is too valuable to be paid on you, fox eyes."

okay, maybe you spoke too soon.

"didn't think we'd be having a third party today. and here i thought i agreed to a lunch date, not a family bonding time." hoshina hummed, shrugging off the earlier comment about him. swallowing a bite of rice, you let ouf a huff. "it is a date. that was just my inner demon talking."

irritated at the lack of attention, narumi clicked his tongue. "hey, stop being childish! i'm literally sitting right here!" he chided, snapping his chopsticks towards your boyfriend as you deadpanned at your brother. "speak for yourself. and you're not even supposed to be here, gen. did you run away from vice-captain hasegawa again?" you shot back, grabbing the game console your brother had brought along and smacking him with it, which earned you a pained yelp.

"ya know this can be considered as a breach of privacy, no? although this is a temporary space, you're here in my office without my permission, captain narumi." hoshina chuckled, leaning back against his seat behind the desk.

your brother snickered on the chair he had pulled up beside yours in front of the said desk. "exactly what you said, buddy. i'm a captain, so i can do whatever i want in a subordinate's office."

technically that's power abuse, you thought as you quietly eat your lunch, deciding to let the two men verbally argue back and forth about whatever it was they found unpleasing about the other.

oh well. surely this was a one time thing, right? your brother couldn't— shouldn't be bothered to disturb you and your boyfriend every single time... right?

∘₊✧─────────────✧₊∘

or so you thought.

the second time it happened was when you were on one of your most romantic nights ever; you were stargazing with your beloved soshiro. and in the night sky they were shining so bright, as if whatever deities above had painted them so vividly upon the most perfect of black canvases.

at that time you genuinely believed nothing could ever interfere with how the night was turning out.

if only you didn't agree to accompany your brother on one of his many game nights. though it might've been partially your fault that you didn't specify which night he could pick. and unfortunately for you, date night seemed to be the perfect choice for gen.

you clicked your tongue in annoyance when your phone dinged for the nth time. "don't ya want to check that?" soshiro laughed, clearly amused at how distraught you looked.

you shook your head, taking out the device before putting it on dnd. "it's just gen. he wants me to play games with him," you grunted. "right now?" your boyfriend asked, which you nodded at. he contemplated for a moment, before turning to you with a feline grin. "say you're comin' over,"

you almost choke on your saliva. "what?" you squeaked. soshiro stated the same thing, causing your eyebrows to raise even higher. "are you sure? we're on a date, soshiro. which we rarely get to do these days," you remarked.

the man sitting beside you hummed, the slants of his eyes giving him the ever so crafty image. "technically, it can still be one if i'm there too," he stated, smirking.

and that was how you found yourself in gen's room, watching your brother and boyfriend go at it on the former's bs5 as they sat on the laid out futon while you made yourself comfortable at gen's work chair, the sound of a two-player fighting game filling the room.

"dammit, dammit! yeah, take that, bowl-cut bastard! wait, shit— NOOO!!" the big red KO appeared on gen's side of the screen, causing you to sigh almost pitifully.

"wanna go again? i can try goin' easy on ya this time," soshiro quipped, making the man in question grit his teeth. "okay, why did i agree to this again?! why did you bring him here, kid?!" gen snapped his head towards you, pointing an accusing finger at your direction.

you threw him an innocent smile. "you asked for a game buddy, right? i just gave you one on a silver platter, nii-chan. i'm considering this as compensation for crashing my date with soshiro by the way," you drawled, lazily spinning around in the chair. at that point, you'd have been convinced that you grew up with a grumpy cat as a brother with how ferally ruffled he looked.

gen blanched in disgust, "eugh, hate it when you say his name in front of my face. you owe me a new figurine for this," he muttered. "you're a sore loser, aint'cha, captain?" your boyfriend piped in, not bothering to hide how entertained he was from this whole situation. gen sent him a death glare before he angrily plopped his ass back down, picking up the controller that he had hurled away during his outburst.

"alright, you're on, fox eyes!" he sneered before the two of them start another game, leaving you to once again enjoy the spectacle that was narumi gen losing rounds upon rounds of video games to soshiro (he did win some but you just couldn't ignore the significant difference between his victory and defeat scores).

guess a crashed date wasn't such a bad thing sometimes...

©🅁🅈🄴🅂🄲🄰🄿🄰🄳🄴🅂. do not steal, translate or repost my work anywhere else !

[meazalykov]

Could I make a request for Obi please?

They already have a established relationship.

With her recently getting injured, could it be something along the lines of Reader got injured a few months before the World Cup and had to miss it, but Obi mostly was there for Reader. Now with it being the other way around this time, Reader feels conflicted about going to the Olympics as see knows those first few weeks are the hard but she won’t be there to support Obi.

my home is with you

lena oberdorf x uswnt!reader (requested)

authors note: i'm sad about her injury :( I wanted to see her at the olympics and start with bayern soon.. I know she will come back stronger ❤️ here's your request! normally i wouldn’t decide to write about this because it’s so soon, but i do requests (unless it’s too dark & much) so i hope you like :)

warnings: many injury mentions, very long chapter.

being back in your hometown gave you a sense of peace and warmth.

you haven't stepped foot in washington dc since 2018. you left your childhood club to go play at gotham for a year-- before moving to lyon (2020-2022) and then bayern afterwards.

waking up in the morning, you wished obi the best of luck against her game against austria. yes, she will be your competitor in the group stages against germany, but she is still your girlfriend of 2 years.

afterwards, you put your phone on dnd and put it in your adidas bag that you will take to the audi stadium. on game days, the captain (lindsey) highly discourages the players being on social media before games.

as the second captain after her, you agreed to follow that rule. social media can be toxic.

if someone really wanted to reach out to you for an emergency, they can do it through lindsey, emma, or your sisters who came to the game to support your send off to paris.

that's exactly what happened. while you were getting ready in your hotel room-- lindsey got an emergency call from sara dabritz, her lyon teammate who played for the german national team.

sara isn't on the german roster for the olympics, but alex popp asked her to call lindsey-- since she needed you to know of the news as soon as possible.

"sara?" lindsey's eyebrows knitted together. sara calling her during international break and the off-season has never happened before.

"where's y/n?" sara asked, ignoring lindsey's confused tone.

"I haven't seen her since this morning, she might be getting ready now. what's going on?"

"the entire german team is trying to get ahold of y/n. lena went down pretty badly during todays game-- it was her knee." sara swallowed.

lindsey was sad to her about the news. nobody likes when another player goes down with a *possible* acl injury.

however, she was scared on how she was going to tell you the news.

hours later at audi stadium, you walked into the stadium alongside trinity and hal. both of them play on this field for washington spirit, and the three of you bonded over the last few days-- knowing washington dc so well.

trinity and hal stopped at a water fountain to fill up their empty stanley bottles with water. your owala bottle was filled with cold ice water already, so you continued on with walking into the dressing room.

as you turned the corner into the room, you hear your coach Emma, say something along the lines of "well we can't tell her until-" before lindsey stopped her with her finger pointing at your entrance.

you were the first to arrive before the rest of the team, surprising to the captain and coach talking in the room.

"hey!" you smiled, unaware of what they know.

"hey y/n, ready for the game!?" lindsey casually says with a smirk on her face.

the poker face of the lyon player is perfection. something could be wrong but as the main captain, she can't let her emotions take over her logic.

as the second captain of the team, you had every right to question what emma and lindsey were just talking about.

however, you didn't. you were too excited to play in your hometown again. many uswnt fans came just to see you play on your turf again.

"I'm so pumped! my family came just for the send off to paris. some of them talk about "oh we can't never see you play since you're in germany." but now they're here so-" you rambled as you giggled.

for a moment, emma frowned at your happy sight. lindsey turned around to look at the coach with a guilty look, hating that they both agreed to not tell you *that news* until the end of the send-off.

"that's exciting. I'm positive we have a great game ahead." emma says.

your happy mood became a miserable one at halftime. being nil-nil against costa rica was not motivating since you wanted to impress your hometown community.

in the 70th minute, you scored off of a set piece shot by mallory swanson. the crowd screamed as they've realized that it was you, their fellow dc native, that scored the goal.

the game ended with a 1-0. you knew that the team needed tons of things to work on if you wanted a chance at winning gold in the olympics, but that will come with time.

after the send off ceremony, lindsey asked if she could personally talk to you in one of the empty conference rooms.

you agreed. at first, you thought that she was going to discuss olympic matters and what will drive the team to win gold once you reach france. since she is the first captain and you're captain whenever she isn't-- along with alyssa naeher.

however, lindsey was very tense as you sat down beside her in one of the wheel chairs. she made sure to close and lock the door as well-- this is when your heart started racing.

she is your friend and hates to give you the bad news.

"I need to tell you this before you go on your phone and see it in the locker room in front of the other girls." lindsey speaks.

your eyes widened, confused.

"what's wrong?" you start to panic.

"alex-- alex popp-- said that lena went down during the game against austria. it's her knee, y/n."

your heart shattered into a million pieces. you looked away from lindsey as you took a few deep breaths.

the blonde understood why you couldn't say anything after that moment. you thought about lena having a possible acl injury.

you panicked knowing that you weren't there to help her.

"I need my phone!'" you jump up from the wheel chair.

"here." lindsey said, pulling your phone out of her jacket pocket. she made sure that she had your phone on hand-- in private-- so none of the other girls were alarmed about seeing you so upset.

after you switched your iphone off from dnd, you had nearly 200 notifications.

the first is lena's parents-- asking you to call them whenever you had time before or after your game.

others came from lea-- updating you on what's going on with obi. she understands you were playing a game and couldn't answer right away.

some messages were from other footballers in the community that you're friends with, asking you to send well wishes to lena on their behalf.

is this how lena felt back in 2023?

back in april 2023, you were a starter in the second game against Ireland.

you weren't feeling the greatest, your friend mallory suffered a bad injury in the first game and you knew she wouldn't see the pitch for a very long time.

in the second half as the ball was coming from the air, you jumped up to head the ball. at the same time, an Irish player's foot went up in the air to get the ball.

the sharp part of the boots kicked at your ribs extremely hard. your breath was caught in your throat and you landed on the ground-- injuring your ankle by landing awkwardly.

the irish player received a red card, but you were struggling to breath as you needed medic immediately. alex and kelley stayed with you as you couldn't even sit up without squealing in pain.

your ankle was on fire and your lung felt like it was beaten in. torture would've been an understatement.

lena finished playing the game against brazil when jule pulled her-- harshly-- to look at the tv in the dressing room.

the german girl watched in horror as she seen her lover on the grass, you were crying your eyes out as you balled yourself together.

she noticed your hands going back and forth between your torso by your right lung, and your left ankle, as the medics tried their best to figure out what's wrong.

"what the fuck happened?" lena said angrily, in english-- confused as she rushed to grab the remote and turn the tv up.

"this isn't good for the united states before the world cup-- mallory went down on the first game against ireland and now *reader's last name* can barely move without a reaction." a german commentator speaks.

the entire german dressing room looks in horror.

your bayern teammates looked horrified as jule tried her best to comfort a stressed lena.

a replay of the injury happened on the tv a second later. everyone could see quinn's cleat harshly kick your ribs-- the landing on your ankle afterwards made some of the dressing room cringe as if they could've felt it themselves.

"yeah, I don't think we will see her in the world cup after this one." the woman commentator on the tv speaks when a stretcher takes you off the pitch moments later.

lena was quick to immediately call your mom and sisters, since they were there and she wasn't.

she knew how excited you were to play in your second world cup after winning the first one at age 17.

when you got back home to germany, lena was there for you. you suffered with a broken rib and grade 2 ankle sprain.

obi helped you stand up most days and picked up heavy things, since you couldn't even breathe without feeling pain for the first three weeks. lena did your chores at home, helped you with showering (your ankle made that hard to do), she did your hair. she did everything to make sure that you were okay.

you couldn't go to the world cup and watch her play, but you were still so proud of her-- even if she got eliminated in the group stage.

the injury that happened to you made lena fully committed to wanting to marry you. even through your bad injury-- you were there to comfort her once she was back from australia after a failed world cup campaign.

back in the conference room in dc, you rushed to call lea.

she answered in a heartbeat, you were surprised since it had to have been 5:30am in germany while 11:30pm back in washington dc for you.

"lea?" your voice cracked. you hated this for lena, more than your own injury from a year prior.

"how was your game?" lea tried to calm you down.

"it was fine, now what happened?" you ask.

lea didn't take offense to you wanting to know what happened. this reminded her on how lena was with you.

being her closest friend at bayern, and the one that put lena onto you, she understands the bond you have with your girlfriend better than anyone else.

"lena tried to tackle and get the ball away from a player but her knee popped. I think you need to watch this for a better understanding." lea speaks.

on the FaceTime you can see lea typing on a few things on the phone.

you looked up at a confused, yet guilty lindsey. she felt bad for you since you were far from your home in germany.

the notification on your phone showed that lea sent a link to a twitter video. you clicked on it and watch the whole thing play out.

its hard to tell at first, but slowly you could see obi's knee pop out.

this made you sick to your stomach.

after talking to lea for a few more minutes, then waking up lena's parents to talk to them (they didn't mind, they really wanted to hear from you), then laura, then klara-- you were exhausted.

you were allowed to go on the bus early and choose if you wanted to sit alone on the way back to the hotel.

lindsey told all of the girls that something happened- she explained the situation which caused the girls to feel bad for lena and your situation.

you called lena, in private, once you were back in your hotel. she sounded so hurt which caused your eyes to let out tears (quietly) as she talked about her medical scanning tommorow.

many people would do anything to participate in the olympics. you were grateful to be a bronze-medal olympian already heading to seek gold-- but you wanted to go home to lena in munich.

the best player on the uswnt was you, no debate. after scoring in the 2019 world cup final at 17, winning two champions leagues with lyon, being the second best-player now in the bundesliga with bayern, and carrying the national team to bronze in the last olympics-- the team looked up to you.

the girls let you have your space for a while. even on the plane on the way to france.

tierna, your closest friend on the national team, sat beside you. she was quiet as she watched movies while you anxiously looked at your phone to receive some kind of news.

after the plane landed, the girls were quiet as they headed out. you realized that you couldn't sit in pain waiting for the day that you will get home to munich-- that will affect the team chemistry.

as you were in your hotel room, lena called you.

"hallo liebe." you spoke softly.

you heard lena cough before a few seconds of silence started.

the fact that lena called you instead of facetiming you, you knew it was bad. the three letter injury is something u feared for lena as your eyes widened.

"its both." lena mumbles.

"its both?" you question softly as you request to switch the call to FaceTime.

lena accepts and you see her in the hospital room, tears dried down her cheeks as her red face is covered by her hands.

"acl and mcl." she breathed out as she looked at you through the camera.

you frowned as reality hit.

lena couldn't start a bayern next month.

lena won't go to the olympics.

she will have to sit out for at least eight months.

you know she will be okay, since she has the team and medical doctors to help her heal.

however, you were sad that you couldn't drop everything to go back to munich.

"obi." is all you could say.

"I already know what you're thinking-- and don't." lena randomly says.

your eyebrows knit together in confusion as she looks at you with a unreadable look.

"don't leave your team just to come here. they need you-"

"but you need me a lot more." you cut lena off.

she knows you're right, but she can't be selfish-- even with her injury.

"you will be home soon liebe, I know you love me and will care for me as soon as you can." lena says.

"once I'm back in munich, I will be there for you. you aren't going through this alone-- we will fight through this together and you will be stronger." you gave a sad smile as lena smiles for the first time since she went down on that grass.

"Ich liebe dich" she whispers.

"Ich liebe dich auch" you say back.

"when is your surgery scheduled?" you ask.

"we don't have an exact date yet, but they said it might be the week of the 29th." lena says as she lays back in the hospital bed in her black shirt and black shorts.

you didn't respond as lena flipped the camera, showing you a closer look at her knee.

"I am so sorry." you say.

"its not your fault." lena says.

"I know- but again-- I just want to be there for you."

"and you will soon, don't abandon your team." lena made it clear.

"okay, I won't" you sigh.

of course you felt bad that you didn't want to be in france, but in germany instead helping lena. however, you were sad about the group stage match against germany.

lena and you talked about that match as being one of the last moments where you will be "rivals" before she joins you in the season for bayern. now, neither will happen.

days later, the united states plays germany in the group stage after beating zambia 3-2.

you were in the starting lineup. emma needed you for this match, making sure that you talked to a sports psychologist before this match-- just so you were mentally prepared.

you knew how the germans played, so you would be a key to winning the group stage match.

as the teams were going to take their starting eleven picture, you see the germans hold up a shirt in honor of sydney and lena-- who were injured and couldn't be in the olympics.

you sadly smiled at this, happy that they're remembering them.

however, you got your act together fast. lindsey wasn't in the lineup so you were the captain of the match.

at halftime, it was 1-1. trinity rodman scored a goal in the 10th minute but klara equalized in the 34th after an error from #3 on the USWNT.

in the second half, you scored a golazo in the 55th minute after dribbling around sara doorsoun and alex popp.

unfortunately, lea equalized in the 88th minute.

the game ended 2-2 and you weren't happy or sad about it.

all of the german girls greeted you immediately with hugs and kisses on the head. you accepted them. you missed them dearly and they were the closest thing you had to lena right now.

"lea love!" you sigh in relief when you hug her tightly for thirty seconds. the cameras capture the beautiful sight as most know the significance.

"I wish obi was here right now." you lean your head on lea's shoulder as she kissed the side of your head, above your left ear.

"I do too. I hate how fate works." lea speaks through her german accent.

"same." you roll your eyes. not in anger, but in disappointment for the situation and how things can play out for the worst.

"how are you?" lea asks.

"can I be honest?" you ask. lea nods her head.

"I want to be with her. I am so grateful to be here for a second time but I can't imagine her being alone without us." you whisper into her ear.

you didn't want any of your teammates to hear you. lea is your closest friend so you know she won't tell on you.

"she's not alone, she has her parents-- but I totally understand. she will be okay." lea smiles lightly as she pulls a piece of hair of yours behind your ear, a piece of hair that fell out of your ponytail during the match.

lea is right, lena's parents are staying with her at the new house you both own until you can go back to munich-- which could happen in a few days or weeks depending on the outcome of the olympics.

"I know. she's a fighter.' you smirk.

"and a lover." lea winked at you.

lea loves the way that you and lena respect and are in-love with each other. being the third wheel is annoying sometimes (when she has to hang out with y'all instead of her own girlfriend) but she is happy for the both of you.

after multiple matches of the olympics, the united states is awarded silver after losing against france 2-1 in the final.

you were the one that scored against france.

if you said that you weren't in a rush to get home to munich, you'd be lying.

lena's surgery was pushed back to this morning. so you took the uber straight to the hospital from the airport.

the taller german was asleep as you quietly walked into the hospital room. obi's parents hugged you and congratulated you on silver.

knowing that they've been with their daughter for many days, you offer them a break.

"you guys should go down to the cafe and grab lunch for yourselves, please don't take offense to this but ihr seht beide sehr müde aus." (you both look very tired) you whisper since you didn't want to wake lena.

they loved you like their own daughter, so it didn't take them much convincing for them to get a break-- knowing their daughter was in safe hands with you.

when they shut the hospital doors behind them, lena woke up from the noise.

you took out a blanket from your carry on luggage, your back faced towards lena so you didn't see or hear her wake up.

"liebe?" you turned around quickly when you saw lena awake.

she had the same tired look that you're used to seeing when you wake up beside her, but she was smiling at your sight.

you pout in happiness as you walked up to hug her upper body.

"my sunshine, I'm so happy to see you awake." you kissed the top of her forehead as her head pressed against your chest.

lena closed her eyes in comfort, she missed you the most.

"to see me awake? omg I didn't die." lena laughed.

"oh lena shut it, you know what I meant." you giggled back, happy to see lena cracking a joke through her pain.

you look down her body to see the scar on her knee peak out from her hospital gown.

on the inside, you felt terrible. you hated seeing lena in pain. you'd rather it be yourself than her.

on the outside, you looked at lena as she gave you a peak on the lips.

after that, you saw the ponytail of her hair tangled.

"hold on lena." you pull yourself away from her arms and reach into your tote bag.

"no don't leaveeee!" lena says

"I'm not I'm just going to help you with your hair-- it will help you relax."

you pulled out a soft brush from your bag, refusing to use a comb and risk pulling on her hair after she had surgery.

"you're so sweet" lena looks at the brush in your hand and turns her head to the side, so you have better access.

"anything for my baby." you tell her as you kiss the right side of her temple.

"i'm just glad to be back home." you mumble as you start brushing through obi's hair, getting the tangles out slowly and softly.

"isn't washington dc your home?" lena giggled, joking and teasing about the game you played in dc almost a month ago.

"nope, my home is with you."

I hope you're happy with what I wrote from this request! #comebackstrongerlenaoberdorf ❤️🙌

[geesenoises]

DnD: dungeons and draco

for @quail-in-red. this is just further proof that if anybody shows even the slightest interest in one of my dumb jokes, i crumble and perform like a silly jester at once. based on this post i made last year and rediscovered today about hp wizards playing DnD.

Dean didn’t give a lot of details when he invited Harry to his weekly dungeons and dragons game, but the last person Harry expected to see at the table was Draco Malfoy.

“We started a game together when we were, er,” Dean trailed off.

“When we were prisoners in Draco's house!” Luna finished for him brightly.

Malfoy didn’t say anything, just met Harry’s eyes stolidly and then went to fuss with the small pile of papers and cards in front of him.

Harry shared a look with Ron, who was already sitting between Dean and Hermione, and then sighed inwardly and took the last remaining seat between Seamus and Luna. He pulled out the premade character sheet Dean had owled him last week. It was wrinkled from having nearly been lost in a pile of post and then hastily shoved in Harry’s pocket before flooing to Dean’s flat. 

Harry looked around the table. Malfoy’s stack of papers was bigger than anyone else’s, even Hermione’s. And why did he have so many cards? There was a little wooden tray in front of him too. The dice in the tray looked iridescent, catching and reflecting the light. Trust Malfoy to have expensive poncy accessories. Why was he even here? Did he even like DnD? He’d grown up around magic his whole life; what did he need to pretend for?

“And so let’s go around and introduce our characters,” Dean finished. Harry had missed his whole introduction. “Since Draco and Luna have played before, we’ll start with them.”

Malfoy straightened up a little, carefully picking up his character sheet even though it seemed like he was so familiar with it, he didn’t need to reference it. “I’m Mike, a level three call center operator. I’m twenty-three years old, originally from Essex and just moved to London. I played football in uni, but am feeling less fit now that I have a job where I sit all day.”

Luna went next and spoke in a surprisingly deep voice. “My name is Archie, and I’m a level six IT consultant. I’m forty-six years old, originally from Norwich, but I moved to London for uni and never left. I’ve been married to my wife, Evelyn, for twenty years and we have two children and a cocker spaniel named Rosa.”

Harry stared down at the character sheet in front of him. He hadn’t looked at it before grabbing it in his rush to get here on time. It told him he was meant to be playing Grace, a 29 year old paramedic who’d grown up in London and recently broken up with her fiance after finding out he had cheated on her. She had a cat named Pomegranate. Harry didn’t know much about tabletop games, but there had been a group of kids that Dudley’s gang would sometimes target instead of Harry who had played. And what he’d overhead from their games didn’t sound anything like this.

“Hang on, these are just normal people; we’re all humans with muggle jobs. I thought we were playing dungeons and dragons, you know, with magic involved.”

Malfoy glared at him. “Weren’t you paying attention, Potter? Dean just explained the premise of our campaign.”

Harry didn’t want to admit to Malfoy he’d been too busy wondering what his dice were made of. He looked away from Malfoy to Dean. “Er, sorry. I was… distracted.”

Dean sighed but looked more resigned than irritated at having to explain again. “When I started the game with Draco and Luna, they got confused by the magic system because actual magic doesn’t work the way it does in DnD, so I made up a slightly different game we could play. We’re a group of Londoners in a recreational dodgeball league.”

“And honestly, Harry, it doesn’t feel right pretending to be of magical creature heritage for a game,” Hermione added. “Think of what kind of hurtful stereotypes we could fall into.”

“Okay…” Harry said slowly. It still felt strange, but now that he thought about it, he supposed he didn’t need to spend his Thursday evenings pretending to be part of a group camping out and hunting evil. Once per lifetime was enough without having to do it recreationally in the realm of imagination.

Harry smoothed out his character sheet again and introduced the group to Grace.

not sure if there will be more, but we're all shipping mike/grace right?

[gremlinmodetweeker]

König is Naturally Nerd!König

A lot of people suggest nerd!König (which is essentially regular König in my books) would be into DnD, or Star Wars, or Lego, but I disagree.

Normal and Nerd!König are obsessed with miniature armies. He has little models of airplanes and tanks that he puts on display in his room. He only has two World War models (and even then it's WW1), and those are the planes that Baron von Richthofen flew. Otherwise, he collects medieval minis and paints them.

He creates whole dioramas of them, and they're surprisingly good. He has the money to sink into his hobby, and it fills his time when he's not at work. He fidgets a lot, but he's gotten good at doing fine detail work. They're not award winning, but they're really quite good.

In addition, he's a major reader. If you want to know more about what König reads, check out this post here. If you don't want to read it, the gist of it is that König loves reading and reads all the time. He's probably the type to sniff and say the book was better than the movie. He's right, but he doesn't need to be so snobby about it.

Through the military, he has an extensive knife and gun collection. He can use all of them, sure, but he really doesn't need that many. He used to have only one room dedicated to them, but he's since had to move twice and torn down a wall most recently to make a big enough room for everything. He kinda sucks that way. He really takes up a lot of space.

However, Nerd!König didn't end up joining the military. He instead went into nuclear engineering and earned an excellent living to fund his expensive hobbies. He also ended up having more time to devote to his crafts, which led to...

More under the cut.

Nerd!König is a Snob

König is a pathfinder 2e type of guy. He's that pedantic. He'll have the rule books memorized, and he has links to download the pdfs ready at the flick of a wrist. He's ready to convert you. Your DnD supplies will be absorbed into his Pathfinder 2E.

A big reason he's into Pathfinder 2E is because he was introduced at a young age and so collected the supplies, but when he heard about the Wizards of the Coast scandals he decided he'd use that as his reasoning. He gets up on a soapbox about it whenever he can. He really, really hates Wizards of the Coast. It's a firey rage that burns within.

He also likes Warhammer. He's a disgusting Warhammer lover. He plays a ridiculous Adeptus Mechanicus army that he's painted himself. It's surprisingly good painting, too. Having painted Adeptus Mech before, I'm telling you it's really hard. He makes it looks easy with craft paint and crazy glue. He's disgustingly good at it. I hate him for it. How dare he be so good. He is genuinely a fantastic painter. That said, we saw what happened with the last Austrian painter, so maybe it's a good thing he stuck to painting minis.

Nerd!König also loves to collect ancient weaponry. To make it worse, he actually practises with it and has become pretty decent with it. He's feared among the LARPing community because he's known to be a fearsome competitor. He'd be more well liked if he didn't accidentally break people's wooden shields so often. As it is, he's not fully blacklisted, but he's skating on thin ice. He'd be banned for sure if it weren't for the fact that the forest on his property is amazing for LARPing.

Finally, he's into Renaissance fairs. He goes and does public sword fighting, once again, LARPing. He'll also show off his weaponry collections, and will gladly go on hour long spiels to anyone unfortunate to ask about the history of an item on his table. He is on good terms with the blacksmiths, and he's always having to pay the local seamstress to fix his clothing back in the traditional style. He will also go up to the ferret keeper and play with their ferrets, and then beg you to get some. He just wants a cute little ferret. Can't he have a couple? No, not one! They need playmates. You need at least three.

Either way, Nerd!König is a big silly guy. He's a bit friendlier and gentler than regular König honestly. He also is super passionate about his hobbies. He's so excited to show you his hobbies, and he really wants you to enjoy them too.

Just so you know, all these hobbies are expensive. Very expensive. It's a good thing he's making so much money, because otherwise you'd go bankrupt overnight, because, "Games Workshop released a new edition of the walkers! I need them for my army!"

[coatree]

So I do some writing on the side and recently a couple friends of mine started making this DND style AU about their WL/SOL/CTM maps, I’ve, accidentally, become obsessed with this AU and figured I’d put some writing on here for fun

These were made with a one time pass through as a fan of the AU, if you want to learn more about it, most of the content of this AU and its basics are here, and spread through out Lew’s blog. it’s creators are Lew (Ellery), CJ (Syyrin). Smurg (Flint), Chris (Iscariot), and Maruu (Mar).

Please check it out. They have made me insane about this. There is so much art and things I will post because of them.

Card Games

“You ever play cards before?” Iscariot blinked out of his half-asleep state and glanced over to Flint, who was waving around a small box in his hands. Iscariot looked to the box, noticing the similarities to something he had seen some of the other people in the cult hold onto whenever it was a particularly long day. He blinked back to reality when he remembered Flint was waiting for an answer.

“Uh, no.” Iscariot said bluntly, recalling that no one ever really offered to teach him cards. It made sense to him, he wasn’t supposed to show weakness, and play was a form of weakness. It may have been a good way to pass time, but it was never, well, in the cards.

“Really??” Flint said, sitting up straighter with his face shifting to confusion. “Not even Crazy Eights? Go Fish? Poker??” Flint pushed, only getting closer to Iscariot as the man shook his head and leaned back in response. Flint huffed and sat back, opening the box and pulling out a stack of cards.

Flint shuffled the cards in front of Iscariot, confusing the hell out of him, before the deck was placed on the grass in between the two, and cards were being given to him. He held the cards gently, not trying to put a hole in them, as Flint held his own row of cards, looking up at him with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“So first, I’m going to teach you the easy basic card game, Go Fish. You can play this anywhere at any time basically, no matter what cards you have, as long as you have a full deck.” Flint started. Iscariot listened closely, not wanting to mess up what Flint deemed the “easy basic card game”. While every inch in his body told him that he shouldn’t be playing games, the other parts of him said that he should at least give it a shot, and he shouldn't back down from a challenge.

So, he started playing Go Fish. He slowly got the hand of it, sometimes fumbling his cards, or messing up the names of the suits, but overall he wasn’t terrible. He had even won a couple of times. After the fifth game, Syyrin came over and joined in, wanting to play as well after she saw the two “having fun”, which Iscariot wanted to protest. but he bit his tongue.

Eventually, Mar also came over, deciding to join the game. She made it her life mission to target Iscariot, obviously, with her one goal being to make Iscariot lose at any opportunity. And yet, despite all that, Iscariot felt… something weird. It wasn’t what he usually knew, it felt new, fresh, it was similar to a feeling he got when Ellery…

Whatever. Regardless, it was peaceful, calming, and-

“Can I join too?”

Iscariot’s breath caught in his throat, he turned to look at Ellery who was looking at them all playing cards with an expression Iscariot couldn’t place. He didn’t get a chance to say anything before Flint lit up

“Yeah! Of course! Here, after this game we’ll get you some cards.” Flint spoke excitedly, the group watching as Ellery sat between Mar and Iscariot. He watched the rest of the game, Syyrin won, and held the cards that Flint handed to him

Iscariot was fine. He could be fine. Being so close to Ellery was perfectly fine. It was just, a normal, card game. There was no reason for the pit of guilt to-

“How do I play?” Ellery asked. It was a seemingly normal question, something that anyone would possibly ask, but the way Flint and Syyrin’s faces dropped at Ellery’s question, only made the pit inside Iscariot grow.

“You- you don’t know how to play?” Syyrin asked, to which Ellery shook his head.

“Did I?” Ellery asked again, confused as he stared at Syyrin and Flint.

The space went silent, the cracking of the fire and the rush of wind being the only noise heard. Iscariot, however, could only hear his heartbeat, the loud, drumming sensation of his heartbeat as Flint and Syyrin looked devastated, and Ellery realized why. The new feeling he felt earlier vanished without a trace, falling into the deep pit of guilt that took its regular place in his gut.

He stood, dropping his cards on the grass before stepping back, causing the others to look at him.

“I will… check around the area. Play without me.” Iscariot mumbled, heading over to his weapon and grabbing it before vanishing into the woods, leaving behind the stares of the other four as Flint once again taught someone how to play Go Fish.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for wearing a flimsy shirt and flashing my husband's friends?

Ok. So the key players here are. Me (25F), my husband (27M) and our friends who are all around our ages.

I run a D&D game on sunday evenings for my husband and 4 of our shared friends. 2 of them are big dudes and 2 are women, but we live in a basement suite and having 6 people in it makes it heat up fast. This is on an average day.

Recently, our landlord got our heating fixed. We didn't realize it was broken and blamed the cold in the suite on it being a basement. When it's just us it got pretty chilly in there pre-fixing. After the furnace was fixed, our landlord (who lives in the upstairs suite) absolutely cranked the heat to compensate for a recent week-long cold snap in our area.

As a result, it's been sweltering hot in our suite (like, i've been wearing a tank top and underwear as my at home loungewear because anything more is torture). I anticipated the high heat being a problem before the gang came over this past Sunday, but I knew I had to wear pants bc obvs. I decided i'd wear a loose flowy tank top though, just so i didnt absolutely die from the heat.

Here comes the problem. We play DND on our admittedly low to the ground coffee table. As i bent over to set up a map, my shirt fell a little too far and revealed too much. I didnt notice when it was happening until my husband pointed it out by making a joke about it. I was like "oops" and took greater care to crouch instead of bend over for the rest of the session, so as not to accidentally flash anybody again. I didnt think anything else of it and nobody said anything.

The next day, my husband was quiet and not really engaging with me, and I thought he was just tired because he gets like that when he's tired. I went to work. About 5 hours into the work day, i get a text from him saying "Just so you know, and I know I have voiced how I feel about this before, but you flashing my friends is a MAJOR turn off for me"

I was confused at first, but then realized he was referring to the accidental flashing on Sunday night. But it wasnt just his friends, it was mine too, and it wasn't on purpose. Like i wasnt doing it for kink or anything. I also am bothered by him implying i've done this before, as I dont remember ever doing something like that. Before anyone asks, I have body dysmorphia and deeply hate my appearance so it doesnt make sense to me that I would have flashed people before and just forgotten.

But im autistic so i sometimes dont know limits for appropriate behaviour. Which is why im asking AITA for wearing a flowy tank top in our very warm house and accidentally flashing people when i bent over?

What are these acronyms?

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Hi! I recently started playing dnd 5e and realized that all of ur complaints about it are absolutely true, do u have recommendations for some other ttrpg games that arent TOO complicated for beginners

If you want something that's on the same vein as D&D but a lot more beginner-friendly I can't recommend The Black Hack enough. It's like a super-streamlined version of D&D, which simplifies most mechanics while still maintaining compatibility with most D&D materials (mostly old-school D&D but I'm sure you could also convert most modern D&D stuff to it without much effort). The entirety of The Black Hack 1e fits in 20 pages (The Black Hack 2e clocks in at 120-ish pages but most of those are tables and random generators).

In terms of mechanics, it uses the same six-stat array as D&D, but does away entirely with ability bonuses and skills, instead turning all checks into d20 roll-under rolls vs a relevant ability score (e.g if you're trying to do something that involves Strength and your strength score is 13, you roll a d20, you succeed if you roll 13 or less, and fail if you roll more than 13). This extends to combat, you use a Strength or Dexterity roll to attack (depending on if it's a Melee or Ranged attack) and a Dexterity roll to dodge enemy attacks.

It also simplifies keeping track of consumable and stackable items such as arrows with the concept of usage dice (basically, you assign a die to the stack of items, every time you use them you roll that die, on a 1-2 you reduce it to the next smallest die size, and once it's at d4, a roll of 1-2 means you run out)

It also uses my favorite simplified initiative system: when combat starts, the whole party rolls a dexterity roll. Everyone who succeeds gets to act before the enemy group, everyone who fails acts after the enemies.

It has no races and only uses the four "original" D&D classes (Fighter, Thief, Magic user, Cleric), but if you miss those things, fanmade supplements like The Class Hack and The Race Hack add in some of the races and classes from AD&D and modern D&D)

Another game that might be a good fit is Knave. A lot of what I've said about The Black Hack with regards to compatibility with D&D material applies to it too, although it's mechanically different from TBH. It instead does away with ability scores and uses only ability bonuses, and it's more like a classless system where characters are defined by their equipment rather than their class features.

[alpaca-clouds]

The DnD Lore Problem - Accessibility and Characters (and how BG3 might not help)

You know what? I am gonna talk about DnD Lore and the accessibility of that lore. I talked about this exessively before. But to summarize that long blog very shortly:

Wizards of the Coasts currently makes the mistake of putting basically most DnD Lore behind a paywall, rather than offering official ressources. This leads to a lot of tables actually playing with their original worlds, rather than Toril/Faerûn, which in turn also means, that they are not spending money on official products. While my anti-capitalist ass things that the lore should be accessible just so that people can enjoy it, I also think that this inaccessibility actually costs WotC A LOT OF MONEY.

Today I want to talk about another aspect of this inaccessibility, that is kinda linked to some of the stuff I talked about before, but also is linked to the things WotC is currently not doing in terms of both Honor Among Thieves and Baldur's Gate 3. A thing, that also might not quite work with BG3, though.

See, the core problem of this inaccessibility is, that a) there is no official place where you can just get base information about the world and the timeline, b) this world has grown organically for about half a century, which lead to clutter, but also to the fact that things are at times showing their age.

I might actually make a post on the gods and religion in the world at some other point - but for now let me talk about something else: Extended universes and access points.

The Problem with Extended Universes

Okay, let's talk about how a lot of the big franchises for the longest time have told their meta stories - including DnD - and how it kinda struggles to find its audience. The extended universe.

I am frankly not entirely sure what franchise has started this. I am assuming it was Star Trek? But that is just a guess. But at some point in the 60s oder 70s someone had the idea that: "Hey, we could totally give the fans more to chew on by making official tie-in comics and novels!"

And that was how it worked for very long. Like a lot of the big franchises had at times around 10 novels and comics (if not more) releasing per year that would just explore other parts of the universe and allow the very engaged fans to... well, learn more about the world. Now, I am not going to talk about all the drama connected to the Star Wars stuff, but if you know, you know.

DnD did this too. (As did a lot of the big TTRPG systems, like Shadowrun and WoD as well.) Having a lot of tie in stuff - in the case of DnD mostly novels - that told more stories on the world and also established like some big player characters within the world. Elminster Aumar is probably one of the best examples here.

Those established some characters that play a big role within the world and also told just more stories of those big world changing events. In the recent DnD history that would be stuff like the Time of Troubles, the Spellplague and the Second Sundering.

Now, here we have one big issue. And one issue where I am not entirely certain where it arose from. But the fact is: In recent years, people invest way less into those kind of books. This is just a fact.

It is the reason why those big universes went from publishing like ten novels a year to often not more than three. We saw that in the failure of the extended Universe Disney tried to pull off for Pirates of the Caribbean (though I will still maintain that another big problem was that they barely marketed that at all - hi, everyone, who did not know there were extended universe novels for PotC). We also saw that with League of Legends, who really, really tried to tell a lot more stories with short stories and then also some novels set in Runeterra, before finally giving up, because most people didn't care.

In terms of Dungeons & Dragons I can totally see that a lot of people will also say: "I do not care what some other people's characters do within the world." Buuuuuut...

Stories actually can help you understand the world. Which brings me to...

The Elminster Problem

Okay, I do not know how to put this, but... If you look at the novels coming out for DnD literally half of them focus on either Elminster Aumar or Drizzt Do'Urden. Characters that have pretty much been around since the very beginning and. Look, I don't know how to put it but... It shows.

I am currently reading some of the newer novels and the fact is, that they do not really feel like fantasy books from the 2010s and 2020s. Because Elminster and Drizzt are very clearly characters originating in a very different time when stories were told very differently.

I mean, just look at Elminster. He is a wanna-be Gandalf character. He is from the early, early days of fantasy and... Look, I personally just really am unable to identify with a character like this.

And while Drizzt is a bit better as a character, but even he... How to put this delicately? They are both very much characters written by white cishet men for white cishet men. There, I said it.

I am noticing this a lot with reading Salvatore's books currently. Like, female characters are not overly sexualized, which is a plus. But they also very much exist most of the time in service to a man or at least in relation to a man. There is not a lot of female characters running around that have their own agency.

Which kinda leads to another thing. I actually saw this one brought up by one of those very cliché nerdy Youtube channels talking on DnD, who recognized the problem as well: There are basically two large groups of DnD players who barely intersect. One is the cliché nerds, the other is a largely queer and largely diverse group. And the youtube guy, who was very in the white cishet nerd group, suspected that actually the later group makes up more of the player base by now.

Buuuut... that is also the group who really do not get catered to by the canon lore so far. That was until 2023 with DnD:HAT and BG3 - both catering actually a lot to those groups.

Honor Among Thieves and the undermarketed books

Okay, here is the thing: Honor Among Thieves had two novelizations (one for young readers, one for older readers) and two tie-in novels. One featuring Edgin, Holga, Forge and Simon before the stuff with Sofina went down. And the other featuring Simon and Doric taking place at the time while Ed and Holga are in prison.

I am honest: I really, really liked the Ed and Holga novel. It was super cute and charming and really gives a better understanding of the characters.

But of course once again there is the thing: The books - just like the Pirates of the Caribbean books - were super undermarketed. Like, most people I know off do not even know that there were books released. Heck, even within the actual active fandom there are again and again people who will be surprised that those books exist.

And... I actually also think that the books waste one big ass opportunity, by not at all tying into the broader lore. They are super self-contained.

And that is actually just a waste. Because the place were Edgin lived in? Yeah, that place was super affected by the Second Sundering. Heck, that might have had to do something with his troubles.

Why is that an issue? Well, because... there was not a lot going on there that was inviting you to further interact with the world and learn more abotu what is happening. For once, again, because I think it is a super fun and interesting world. But also, because... WotC wants to make money and is so bad at it, that it really boggles my mind.

See, here is the thing: They could've used those characters - that really are fun and sympathetic characters - to create an accesspoint into that world.

Alright, so what about Baldur's Gate 3?

Which brings me to Baldur's Gate 3 and the thing that a lot of people have noticed: The other Baldur's Gate games - as well as some of the other games releasing around 2000 - had their own tie-in novels going into the characters, their background, but also what they were doing in the future.

Something that so far BG3 has not done, which some fans have already critized. Because a lot of people have actually gotten really invested into those characters. A lot of the kind of people especially who so far are underserved by a lot of the tie-in stuff: Queer and generally diverse audiences.

Like, I think there would be a lot of people, who totally would read a novel, about...

Astarion getting drawn into some sort of political intrigue in Baldur's Gate while serving Cazador

Karlach's time in Avernus

Some Adventure Wyll got dragged into while being the Blade of the Frontier.

Shadowheart going onto a mission for Shar (maybe together with Nocturne)

Whatever Gale was doing during the Second Sundering

Lae'zel's youth among the Githyanki

The Dark Urge and Gortash starting up the entire conspiracy

... whatever Halsin had been up to in his long live

Heck, people would eat that stuff up. And you could not only use it to worldbuild but also once more create some access into the world and what happened there. And they are kinda wasting a lot of potential by not bringing out those novels.

Of course, there is one big problem: BG3 makes it kinda hard to write about anything happening after the ending. Because as it is right now, someone is gonna be pissed if a novel set after the game does not go with the decision for a character they go for. Like, Ascended Astarion fans are gonna be pissed, if they go with Spawn Astarion - and the other way around. Same goes with every other character where you have those big decisions happening.

This is something they will have to tackle eventually if they plan on doing something with the characters in the future (no matter if we are talking Larian or WotC), but it is definitely an issue that just arises from the structure of the game.

Bonus of course is, that you just cannot define a canonical Tav. But without a Tav, you also gotta act as if the story of the game happened without a Tav, which still is not ideal. I am honestly not sure with how they are gonna deal with this on the long run.

Access via Characters

Alright, but what is the actual issue here?

Well, basically there are two hurdles to overcome for the accessibility of the lore. The first is the physical accessibility - aka, what I talked about in the last long blog post. The second meanwhile is more related to making the lore engaging. And that happens through characters.

It is for me what happened last year. I actually tried to engage with the lore as the movie came out - but only when BG3, that tied a lot more into the actual lore was released I actually found proper access to the lore. Because I had concrete things I could now look for because the game hinted at so much both through characters and major story events happening.

Here is the thing: If you just have the lore on its own, it is about as engaging as reading a history book. Sure, as your local history nerd I find reading history books fun, but most people really do not want to read a history book to engage with a hobby.

People will however engage with stories and characters that interest them. Which is where we get back to the thing I talked about at the beginning: Right now most canonical novels and stories still cater to an audience that is male, cishet, white and also, let's be frank, definitely over 30 years old. Leaving behind a lot of potential fans that theoretically make up a big part of the player-base, but actually do not engage a lot with the lore for this exact reason.

Look. DnD right now is fairly close to being an actual mainstream hobby, due to the recent proliferation of formerly nerdy stuff. And yet WotC is bleeding money, especially in regards of DnD.

If you ask me, sure... DnD should go into public domain. But it doesn't. And given that there are so many creative, skilled people working on this - no matter how dumb Hasbro is and how shitty of an employer they are - I actually do want them to succeed. I have really become engaged with this world now. And I think it is a pity that they clearly do not know how to market this stuff.

[piratefishmama]

I Wish | Part 5

It felt like he was underwater.

Everything moved by so quickly, the sounds of an applauding audience, the greeting of their host, the friendly back and forth his friends engaged in. His friends attempted to pull him into and failed because he’d checked out the moment his backside hit the cushion, it all sounded so muted, all muddled together.

He sat on the couch, nobody questioned it, although Jeff gave him a curious once over before he took the lone chair closest to the host, allowing Eddie to sit between Dougie and Gareth, safe, secure, protected by the scrappy little one and the big protective one.

It wouldn’t have been too far from the truth to assume him fragile enough to need protection.

The Host was lovely, just as Steve had predicted, just as he'd promised. The host held up a little foam board prop with an image of what Eddie assumed to be an album cover printed onto it, asked questions that Jeff answered.

If anyone thought Eddie's awkward quietness was strange, nobody mentioned it.

Even the host, whose job it was to engage with them all seemed to realise that Eddie wasn’t quite right in the moment, so he naturally glossed over him, let him be to give the others in the band the limelight.

They couldn’t pin point when it started, and so there was no point in trying to bring him out of it there and then and risk a blow up that could have the appearance cancelled.

It was only after the laughter inducing back and forth regarding a broken arm Gareth sustained on their last tour thanks to an unfortunately aimed stage dive, well into their interview now, that the spotlight finally landed on Eddie.

“So, Eddie!” Eddie jerked to attention, eyes snapping to the host as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar “A little birdy told me that you and the rest of corroded coffin, are all seasoned Dungeons and Dragons players, is that right?” Eddie’s eyes widened a fraction further, as the audience cheered, forcing Eddie’s gaze away from the host to the audience in surprise.

It was… something to be excited about, now? Their nerdy little game, that’d seen them ostracised society, caused panic among the god fearing crowds, and had suburban mothers clutching their pearls overdramatically, was something to be excited about?

The muddied sound seemed to clear just a little. He knew this. He knew DnD. Even if they hadn’t played for a while, even if they had played recently and he just didn’t know, he could spin something with that!

What many in the audience would have called Eddie’s signature toothy grin lit up his face, and for the first time during that interview, he seemed to come alive. “Hell yeah we are, Jimmy! Although many a lost little sheep have come and gone from those hallowed halls of my legendary domain, we’ve been playing since middle school! Garebear not so much, he came to us in high school, guided by my good man Jeffinner over there with a character that so utterly not him that he died way too fast in the game to have been any note.” Jeff rolled his eyes at the nickname, but seemed happy that Eddie was finally talking.

“That was how we became friends really!” Gareth chimed in “Me an Eddie anyway, he thoroughly wiped the floor with us on my first campaign so I thought that was it, they were kickin me out, but NOPE he cornered me and helped me out rolling another character in one of the empty labs, made something way more myself, it was… really cool of him. It was my first year of high school, first attempt at making friends, I was terrified an he just… he’s always been really good at that, bringing people in, making them feel accepted.” An if Eddie felt himself getting just a little choked up at how fond Gareth spoke of him, well… that was between he himself and him.

“Well GOOD, because few of my friends an I, have been playing a campaign—” the audience collectively oooh’d as the cameras opposite them swung around to face a now lit up set of what could only be a campaign mid-way through. The map was down, the DM screen was set up, the mini’s were placed, dice were available, there were even character sheets and binders full of information on them resting neatly at each station along with drinks and snacks. It looked like a party had just got up and left mid-campaign. “—An we’re kinda new to it! But I’ve seen on your Instagram that your narrations are something of legend… so I think, we would all just love it if you’d DM a little for us.” Interest piqued, Eddie looked back to the host. “I simply do not have the gravitas to pull this off the way it ought to be done.”

He didn’t know what Instagram was, but he sure as shit knew how to DM something.

“Race you” was Eddie���s only comment, before he was up and scrambling over like a kid who’d just been greeted by a mountain of presents under a Christmas tree, definitely not the 50-something year old ex-addict he now was, earning laughter from the audience that felt real instead of prompted.

For the first time since waking up in that older, weathered body, Eddie felt like maybe not everything had to be bad about that possible future. At the very least he still had DnD.

He made it to the table first, granted he was the only one racing, but he set himself up at the head of the table behind the DM screen and immediately got to work while his bandmates found their own seats for the cameras and their audience. He skimmed through the pages in front of him, the scene their host had set up, the campaign they were working on, or at least what little notes they had on it as it clearly wasn’t a full campaign.

Just a set piece, an activity to fill the time, something to do, but Eddie could work with it.

“Oh hell yeah…” Eddie crooned to himself as he looked over the notes, it wasn’t much, but it was more than enough, he had a town name, he had a list of NPC’s both living and deceased, he had notes on his bandmates new characters, he even had a little script to make his own for the scene itself, but best of all… he had the details of the enemy. Something he hadn’t heard of before, something that didn’t exist yet in his own time, something that definitely didn’t belong in a little snippet scene like that one. It looked to belong in something long, but… soaking in the details of it… he was gonna fuck his friends up when he got home.

“That doesn’t sound good for us” Gareth sighed with a gentle shake of his head, already counting down the minutes before his poor little gnome would meet his inevitable end. Poor thing only had a few hit points left, which was curious considering their mini’s appeared to be situated at the gates of of a simple town by the sea. No dungeon to be seen.

“Tell me about it” Dougie groaned, head in his hands

“Alright alright, are we ready boys?” Their host seated himself on the left of Eddie, his own sheaf of papers in front of him, looking exactly as Eddie had done initially, like a kid at Christmas.

Eddie looked up over his screen, a glint of mischief in his eyes “dim the lights please! Spotlight on me, I require atmosphere.” The lights dimmed save for one lone warm white spotlight on him, the star of mayhem to come.

“Was nice knowin you, gents” Jeff sighed, already accepting the fate of his poisoned ranger. This poor party were in dire straits despite there being no clear villain, or any potential followers of it to be seen on the board.

“The Haunting bell of the town square clocktower rang thrice, echoing through the misty din of Rainwund Harbour’s early morning air” Eddie lifted the mic on his jacket closer to his lips and with the back of his throat, made a sound not dissimilar to the chime of a clocktower bell, once, twice, a third time, and then silence “You walk the deserted lamp lit cobblestone streets, your once sure footed steps wearied, your bodies strangely tired, worn, exhausted, trudging your way through eerie silence until you come upon your destination, The Seabird Inn…” He smiled with a devilish glee, the point of his canine tooth brushing his bottom lip, cheek dimpling with the pull of his smile if any of them felt comfort before he smiled, it was gone now. “Roll for Perception.”

Part 7

[fuckyeahaudiodrama]

☀️JUNE LISTENS☀️

i still don’t have a brain! ah!!!! but i do have ears for listening! i actually listened to a lot of stuff that i ended up not liking as much, last month, but i still have plenty to rec.

Remnants — (ep1-2 early access) a dark fantasy mystery anthology. hard to describe without giving anything away. i love everything by Hanging Sloth (creator of SBR, NQD and Clockwork Bird), so i knew that i was very likely to enjoy this regardless of the premise… but my god, absolutely surreal vibes. the sound design is breathtaking! feeling very grateful to be a HS patron right now. keep an eye out for this one coming 15th july! subscribe now and don’t miss it.

Mockery Manor — (3 seasons, 37 eps + miniseries, between seasons) a murder mystery set at a theme park with a comedic twist. i didn’t think this was going to be my thing and i was so wrong. the protags are twin sisters with plenty of baggage between them. their shenanigans and banter keep the tone light even when the plot takes dark turns. looking forward to s4!

Limelight: The Specialist — (5 eps, complete) self-described as a “dark medical thriller” set in rural wales. Limelight series are generally good but satisfying endings are hit or miss; this one was VERY well-paced, with a satisfying payoff, and gave me hope for a series 2 in future. i loved the execution of the gruesome mystery and i loved the protagonist to pieces.

Close Your Eyes — (1 season, 9 eps, s2 in production) having recently listened to RQ’s Neon Inkwell: The Pit Below Paradise, which also centers around cult dynamics, i found this to be a very fun contrast. here we see how someone can be immersed and isolated by a cult, regardless of their personal skepticism or strength of will. the suspense was so delicious i had to listen to all nine episodes in a row. ends on an incredible cliffhanger — can’t WAIT for season 2.

The Silt Verses — (44 eps, finale soon) a grim religious fantasy dystopia. some of the most intricate and fascinating worldbuilding i’ve ever seen. huge cast. i know that everyone in the AD space has rec’d this pod a hundred times over, but i can’t stress enough how it’s one of my very favorite stories in the medium. the penultimate ep left off on an absolutely deranged note and i have no idea what’s coming! so exciting, if you’ve been waiting to check this one out — now might be the time!

Dice Shame — (2 seasons, 200+ eps, ongoing) classic dnd actual play ft. Harlan Guthrie of Malevolent fame, and his equally charismatic friends and family. i don’t listen to a lot of APs bc i have trouble focusing on such long episodes but i just love the chemistry of this party. slapping it on the rec list bc the current storyline has me hooked!!

Bridgewater — (1 season, 22 eps, ???) supernatural mystery, notably starring Misha Collins as the protagonist. this one has a lot of complicated family dynamics read: mommy AND daddy issues. the length of the series is just enough to let you spawn several of your own theories, which is fun, and i was really pleased that i was able to predict the true conflict and identify the antagonist. excellent use of foreshadowing etc, biggest props to Lauren Shippen of The Bright Sessions fame.

Consumed — (12 episodes) small town horror/mystery through the eyes of a stranded newcomer. this one did NOT go where i expected it to, because i started it before i listened to Bridgewater; they’re set in the same universe, so the same worldbuilding applies. i would honestly recommend listening to this one FIRST because if you do listen to the end of Bridgewater, it will kind of spoil the twist in Consumed.

The Penumbra Podcast — (5 seasons, 2 storylines, both ending this summer) still barreling toward the finish line for both Second Citadel and Juno Steel. as a patron, i was notified of early release for the SC finale this morning, which i know is gonna wreck me. just wanted to feature this because i don’t see it recced as often anymore and that’s a fucking crime. one of my top AD recs for sure.

Red Valley — (While You Were Hypersleeping 3) three ep miniseries featuring our main best boy, warren, who has been notably absent from most of this season! so nice to hear from him and to get a glimpse of what might be coming in the next part of the season.

Observable Radio — (11 eps, ongoing) my favorite recent sci-fi/horror anthology by far, tied up in a terrifically dreadful meta narrative. afaik this is a limited series but i’m really savoring each and every episode; the most recent, “Earworm”, was one of my favorites. very dark and dystopian. mind the content warnings!

The Network Defenders — (ep1) the debut of a new Planet Arcana miniseries, featuring some new voices and a fresh new tarot-based system (crowdfunding this year!) has all of the appeal of PA in terms of prod. quality, vibes and emotional depth, just new mechanics. 2nd ep is out now so i’m hopping right on that as i post this!

Waterlogged — (ep1) a new indie horror that i’ve been waiting to drop for a while now, and i really enjoyed the soft-spoken eerie vibe of the pilot. there’s a couple more things in the feed now so i’ll have to go catch up.

[willbyersabyss]

This shot has been discussed extensively about how it hints at byler and El eventually figuring it out, but I want to talk about the drawing just before this one. And maybe even consider a different context for this drawing too...

The drawings are completely different. This one has a wider head and the thought bubble is skinny. These two drawings symbolize different things.

So what does this version of the drawing mean? Well just listen to what El is saying. She says that Vecna is going to be in someone's mind, but the thought bubble that represents the mindscape is above Will. This means that Vecna is already in Will's mind. But Will doesn't feel him until he gets back to Hawkins... why? And why would Vecna be in Will's mind during the finale, but we never see? Well... we did.

The Upside Down is Will's mindscape. This is hinting at that. Vecna has been residing in the UD the entire season, and we do in fact see this in the finale.

If that didn't convince you then the next thing El says will. El mentions Terry and Billy who both have a shit ton of parallels to Will. Terry's mind loop sequence relates to Will (see here). Billy's name is literally William, he had an abusive father, and he was possessed, all things that relate to Will. Interesting thing to bring up while the mindscape bubble is above Will.

Terry's mind is in a loop/stuck in time and so is the Upside Down. Billy's mind was stuck in the memory with his mom on the beach. The Upside Down is stuck because of a memory. Will's memory.

Let's bring El's drawing back into it's original context for a second. The girl in the middle represents Max. The two figures in the mindscape are Vecna and El. But they're above Will. So Max's mindscape somehow also collided with Will's. When did this happen?

When she travelled to the Snow Ball. Vecna and El are both in her mind at the same time during the Snow Ball. This is when El's drawing comes true! And this is when it connects back to Will!

This is the only time we see the California crew once El reaches the Snow Ball memory. Will is almost entirely out of shot! We don't see his reaction at all here. Very convenient that we don't see even a snippet of how Will is feeling during the Snow Ball sequence. We only see him again once they go into Vecna's mindscape...

OK! But how do we know the Snow Ball memory connected to the UD at all? When Vecna showed up, so did the spores. It started rotting and turned dark just like the UD. The only thing that's missing is the vines which we see in Vecna's mindscape later.

(I already have another post explaining how Max's Snow Ball memory links to the UD being stuck in time here!)

Robin says that Nancy's house is frozen in time, not the entire UD. We honestly don't even know if the entire UD is stuck on the same day. It's entirely possible that the Wheeler house is stuck on November 6th, but other parts of the UD are stuck on other days. Why? Because Will travelled into a memory.

When Will got kidnapped, he was probably trying to think of happy memories because he was scared and accidentally ended up in a memory. This transformed a once rocky smoke land into Hawkins.

What memory? This is where the other byler drawing shot comes in. El's drawing lines up with Mike and Will here to represent how Will chose a happy memory with Mike (and others) to hide in when he got kidnapped. Not just a memory Mike is in, but MIKE'S HOUSE! We only saw evidence of the Wheeler house being stuck. So I think Will thought back to the most recent happy memory of the party playing DnD just before he got kidnapped. This would place Will at the Wheeler house and explain why it's stuck on that day.

If the rest of the UD is on different days, it's possible that Will mastered this trick and continued memory hopping until the entire UD transformed to replicate Hawkins. But if the entire UD is in fact stuck on the same day, maybe Will wandered too far out of the Wheeler house memory and this triggered the rest of the UD to look like Hawkins.

BUT I’ve also been recently pondering another theory. The UD isn't just Will's mindscape, but multiple, or a meeting place for mindscapes. Perhaps Vecna's collection of minds completed the Hawkins puzzle being pieced together in the UD. Will contributed first, but so did other victims. Evidence? Max's Snow Ball memory was already seen in the UD at the end of s2.

The Snow Ball decorations are there. This along with Robin's comment proves that the UD might not be entirely stuck on the same day. The Snow Ball decor shouldn't have been there if that were the case because the dance wasn't until December, not November. As I said in the other post I linked, Max travelling into her Snow Ball memory influenced the UD version to replicate it. There's some time paradox stuff happening here.

So basically: El's drawing hovering above Will was not only to hint at byler, but also to link him to the concept of memory travel, implying that he has done this before, despite us never seeing this occur… or did we?

[givehimthemedicine]

i read the Lumax analysis and ngl i feel the same about Byler. why is Will practically doing all the work. Mike just ignores him, then Will speaks up, gets shut down. no apology to his face. then Mike has the gall to pull the "b-but you won’t abandon me, right 🥺?" card seconds before they move to Cali and Will eats it up.

Mike was scribbling his next letter to send to El, while Will was making a painting as a gift for him. when they reunite at the airport, Will is so giddy, and happy even when he spots Mike wearing the Minion suit. he is going in for a hug, fully expecting he’ll get one. despite the lack of phone calls he believes that Mike is gonna match his energy. he doesn’t. he is ignored. again. when Mike realizes he is losing him he swoops in to apologize. what do we get for rest of season? it’s just Will comforting, reassuring Mike and listening to his problems. he notices Mike being upset as they are burying the corpse and talks to him, he notices Mike moping as he reads El’s letter, etc. then the grand culmination - van scene.

i give Mike a pass for not noticing Will sobbing as hes muffling his cries with his hand and turned around. but what about before? when he was giving the van speech at times Will looked and sounded like he was 2 seconds away from bursting into tears. how did Mike not notice something was wrong when he was obviously paying attention to him. and if he did that’s even worse.

Jonathan being there isn’t an excuse. he could have said something, anything, subtly to check up on him or comfort him. he didn’t do that. "you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all. like she’s better for being different" ok so why are the Duffers so allergic to showing us that. when was the last time that happened. season 2? when Mike said it’s not his fault Will doesn’t like girls, that they are not kids anymore, him wanting to play DnD, which led to Will having a breakdown and destroying Castle Byers, his safe place and cry as he ripped up their photos and called himself stupid - was he feeling better for being different? or worse? did he feel uplifted by Mike shoving in his face how normal he is unlike Will? that he’ll never be like them? that they are moving on, being grown ups and Will is stuck? could some bully at school outright calling him a slur be as hurtful as the things his best friend, someone he trusted and loved said to him then? that he never received a proper apology for.

Mike gets free therapy sessions. Will gets a few crumbs of attention and affection when Mike gets forcibly separated from El.

Mike and Will aren't characters I pay particular attention to, so the townsfolk will please forgive my newborn take.

I absolutely see your point and agree Mike has had terrible PR with Will on many occasions. but while he's often an asshat when it comes to Will's feelings, I'll say at least Mike is regularly shown to be concerned for Will's welfare in the life-and-death-plot way, and is actively involved in making plans and taking actions that save him. (Mike's the one to rally the party to go out and search for Will. to insist he's alive somehow after they all saw his dead body. to build "hey let's make sure we don't also kill Will" into the MF-killing plans. etc)

that's where I think a comparison to lumax isn't so tight because I can't think of anything Max has ever done for Lucas's welfare on either a plot or feelings level. (the writing has never really given her an occasion to save or help Lucas the way he is for her.)

and for all his shit, we have also seen Mike be really good to Will on the feelings level (mostly thinking about his incredible loyalty in season 2 and the swings speech. his commitment to Will in the front half of the show is on par with that of Joyce and that's saying something). it sure would be nicer if that was more recent/consistent, but it has happened, which I can't honestly say for Max. the nicest thing Max has done for Lucas so far is allow him to be nice to her.

[radiance1]

A random au thought that I barely thunk up before splotching it on here.

So basically, Danny, Sam, and Trucker are doing some bullshit thing and somehow manage to create a whole ass world out of a tabletop game they were playing or something.

Basically DnD I guess.

But anyways, the three create this world so that they can play and do whatever they want. All three of them have legends about themselves from the npc's they's inhabited the world with.

Tucker is the Pharaoh of the night less desert, known as Duulaman. Freeing the citizens from the rule of the Tyrant god Abanoub and brought peace and prosperity to all across the land.

Sam is the Queen of Nature known as Terra, directly on par and sharing interests with Mother Nature. Her legend is that she freed the Forest of Vita and defeated a powerful void entity who sought to use the powers of Gaia to further its own ends for power. Joining forces with Mother Nature who almost fell to its corruption to end the void being once and for all.

Danny, known as Astraeus, unlike the other two, have two different aspects to his legend. Prince of the undead, and the constellation Star Child.

The first one as you should know, is basically Danny being the prince of ghosts, wherein in the world they made the ghosts (and extending too other undead), were disorderly and running rampant among the other races in the continuation of a war that should have longed ended. So, he rounded then all up and took control because the person who was originally supposed to be doing it was... indisposed.

(Cough, real reason is that Pariah Dark somehow got his ghostly hands on the world cords and was like "Hmmm, my son's world is awfully boring time to spice things up" and then shit happened.)

Which in turn, ended the eons long war between ghost kind and the other races.

Constellation Star Child is one he kind of got on accident, his friends made a joke about him being the spawn of death and time itself and being molded from a star. Which the npc's took seriously.

Also doesn't help that he goes out to explore the void and space around their world on numerous occasions to identify any threats that would require his attention (Which is literally just an excuse so he can go and explore space to his hearts content.). And whenever he comes back, it's like a shooting star falling down to earth.

So, after they've done all of their adventures and when it was time for them to just scrap this world and move on. They just, couldn't.

This world grew extremely on them during their time in it (Despite the unexpected inclusion of Pariah Dark), and they just didn't want to destroy it so they just, stayed.

Not like stay stay, more so they come back to it a lot more than they should. Fermenting themselves as these deities or god-like beings who protect and care for their followers or something.

They created a space for the three of them to converse, known simply as the council. A realm sitting on the plane of reality between the world and the void, basically heaven but not really heaven?

Anyways.

So, continuing on with this, the trio splits apart, a feud in reality carrying into their game world that caused Danny to just leave and explore the calmness of the cosmos so he can clear his head.

Sam went to Mother Nature to talk about it and seek aid about the recent crack in three's friendship.

Tucker just went to take care of his kingdom and confide in one of his trusted advisors, much like Sam.

This is when something unexpected happened. Danny never came back to that world, not as if he went back to his reality.

He just never came back.

Something is keeping him from going back, some powerful threat that he's keeping at bay with all of his might while out in the endless nothingness that is the void.

With the absence of his presence, a powerful void creature who managed to slip between the cracks of Danny's notice suddenly sees he's not there anymore for an extended period of time and has its sights on the core of the world, Gaia, and the two goddesses protecting it. Mother Nature and the Queen of Nature.

To distract the one known as the Pharoah, it managed to find what remained of Abanoub and gave him some of its power to combat Duulaman.

Abanoub worked behind the scenes, slowly rising back to his prime state of power and with the added power of the void entity, he managed to corrupt the roots of Duulaman's kingdom and sow discord.

Unfortunately for Abanoub, it couldn't exactly kill Duulaman, so it instead caught him by surprise and put him into eternal slumber.

The void entity who named itself Akasa, just like the previous one. Sought to use Gaia as a power source, but not just the core, but the two goddesses as well.

And with Duulaman and the Star Child of death out of the way, it was free to do so however it wished, though not to say it wasn't extremely careful when it enacted this plan.

Sam didn't know that Tucker was sent into eternal slumber, nor that Danny was never going to come back as soon as she hoped he would. So, when she went to the council and found that she was the only one there, she knew something was wrong.

Mother Nature was attacked while she was on a different plane, with such a coordinated attack on both her and Gaia by Akasa, Abanoub's army, and a recent addition, Chiwa the undead duchess' pawns. She unfortunately fell and became nothing more than power source.

Sam tried, oh she tried. But in the end, after a drawn out battle between her, Akasa, Abanoub, and Chiwa. She fell as well, with the added power Akasa gained from Gaia and Mother Nature, now with the added source of the Queen of nature. He was basically unstoppable.

That didn't mean all hope was lost, with the last bit of her power, she managed to seal all three of them to specific areas.

Abanoub, the Night less Desert. More specifically Tucker's throne.

Akasa, the realm between the world and the void. The council.

Chiwa, the blood lake of the eternal lady.

Their forces were still at large however, with the ghosts under Chiwa's command wishing to continue the war from eons ago. Abanoub's armies spreading across the world to take over their various kingdoms and be forced under his rule.

All two wished to free their master's, who in turn promised to free Akasa when they were free as well.

The rest of the races didn't take this laying down at all, immediately going to war and managing to hold their ground relatively well.

Both sides were at a standstill, with Abanoub, Chiwa and Akasa sealed they lost a signifcant portion of power.

Whereas with the Star Child gone, the Queen of Nature captured, and the Pharaoh of the Night less Desert sleeping, they couldn't push forward no matter how hard they tried.

So, what did they do?

They came together and summoned people from another world of course!

And who did they summon?

The Justice League.