#I’d considered it before but I’m pretty sure that the player character is also the Collector. or they are related somehow

[aptericia]

THROW IT BACK

[roxtron]

Soo after getting back into fnaf I finally got to play SB and Ruin for myself, and honestly I’m a bit shocked by the debate about who cut the elevator, I thought most people would be in agreement it’s more likely to be the mimic than Gregory but it looks like some of the fandom is pretty conflicted. So for fun I wanted to go through most of the evidence I’ve seen to try and argue why I think it can’t be Gregory.

Of course I could be wrong, anyone could, that’s the nature of this series. I think it’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here, regardless of which path they take. But here’s my take on it.

I wanna try to keep this more structured than pure rambling so first I wanna go through evidence that suggests it was the mimic. Obviously the first note is the most obvious piece of evidence everyone points out, the subtitles. 

While some people think it’s an error or a glitch that the subtitles overlap, or argue that the files state this is the real Gregory, I don’t think that’s enough to disprove it. Why would they want to spoil if it was Gregory or not if that’s meant to be questioned? If it was supposed to be clear-cut that Gregory did cut the elevator, I feel like they’d make it more obvious. The static cut matching with the subtitle ‘glitch’ is way too convenient. And spoiling a plot twist would just defeat the whole purpose.

If it was a glitch, it would’ve been patched. I’ve seen some people argue they experienced this glitch in their playthroughs during SB, but the only times I’ve seen that is when two characters’ dialogue overlaps. I’ve only seen it with separate characters, and the only time I can remember it happening with the same character is if it was intended to be two different scenes, like if I were to get a dialogue trigger for an area while the cutscene dialogue was still playing. (By that I mean the dialogue for the last trigger was still playing by the time I activated another dialogue trigger, the player was likely meant to let the original dialogue finish before starting a new one.) I know it can also happen when you mute the game and it lets all the dialogue overlap, but that’s because they’re separate lines being played at the same time because they’re not playing at all, if that makes sense. Maybe this is because I played SB post-Ruin, but I feel like the argument that it’s a common glitch doesn’t really hold up, especially because this is an ending cutscene, you’d think there’d be more priority on making sure it works as intended. And if it were a glitch, why did everyone get it? Don’t most glitches only happen to some people and not others, and that’s why they don’t usually get caught in development? I know I went off on a long tangent with the subtitle glitch here, but I dunno. I just don’t think it’s a good enough excuse considering other evidence. 

Anyway, moving on to stronger pieces of evidence, something plenty of people have pointed out from searching out-of-bounds with youtubers like RyeToast, the battery pack. 

The mimic was left right outside the elevator, and the battery powering it right there. Obviously I’m not an elevator mechanic, I wouldn’t know the exact logic behind it, but I’d assume all he would need to do is cut the cords to let the elevator fall.

Some people have argued that’s not how elevators work, since it wouldn’t fall, it would just come to a stop, but I think some people are forgetting about location here. This isn’t a commonly used elevator like the ones that lead to the atrium or attractions, it’s an old elevator in a mostly abandoned building underground. When you use the main elevator to get down there in the base game, Freddy even mentions the elevator doesn’t seem safe, and likely won’t survive more than one trip.

(Though that line still confuses me, considering in that ending they go back up the elevator to get back to the surface. So does he mean one trip there and back?? If that was what he meant then how was the elevator still running by the time of ruin?

Regardless of which ending is canon, they would’ve used the elevator once there and back to trap the mimic in the first place, and then cassie would’ve used it again to get down there.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding Freddy, maybe it was just a gameplay mechanic so you couldn’t go back since it’s endgame stuff, I dunno. Just found that worth mentioning.

Either way, the point is the elevator probably doesn’t have those safety protocols that would make it come to a safe stop.) 

That aside, how would Gregory do it? Sure he can hack into communication devices to try to contact Cassie, but that’s all he’s done. It’s not like there’d be a system he can hack into where all he has to do is type a command to cut the elevator. Sure he’s been hacking into all kinds of shit, but there’s nothing he’s hacked into that’s directly resulted in any action similar to this one. Sure he could hack a bot and make a bot do it, but do you really think there would be any bot nearby for him to even attempt that? It just doesn’t make any sense.

I feel like if there’s anything Steel Wool has been consistent with it’s environmental storytelling, we didn’t exactly guess how the mimic got trapped based on dialogue or text. It’s because of the way the vent collapsed, the way the backpack was placed, the fact the walkie talkie had to have been left in a rush, no way they would’ve purposefully given the mimic a communication device to try and manipulate someone with.

So if they took the time to show the battery being right outside the door, right next to the mimic, but never showed us any kind of examples for how someone could remotely cut an elevator like that, it kinda points in one direction a lot more than the other.

Anyway, this section might be a bit all over the place, but I wanna look at some people’s arguments for why it wasn’t the mimic, and attempt to debunk them where I can, which will inevitably lead into further evidence I didn’t include in the first section.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence for why it isn’t the mimic is the voice, some people theorized the mimic may be running some sort of program to splice the audio together, and that’s why he’s only copying specific lines/clipping together sentences towards the end of the game. While that could be true I honestly don't think it is. 

While there’s subtle hints throughout the game that it isn’t actually Gregory talking to us, I’d argue that’s what a lot of them are, subtle. Some people point to the camera system using Cassie’s voice as a lure as evidence it can mimic people’s voices. But it wasn’t copying the voice, it was just playing a recording. Every time Cassie's voice played it was that one line from the beginning, “Gregory, are you there?” But it was never a unique line of dialogue she’s never spoken.

I honestly think it’s just a developer choice for that moment to really hit. If you’ve spent the whole game believing this is really Gregory, then by the time you get to Roxy Raceway and he asks you to kill Roxy to save him, all the glitching in that audio lets the realization hit. And I imagine it gives Cassie doubt too, but if you think about it, she’s already hit the point of no return. It’s too late to turn back now, she’s deactivated almost all the nodes, spent an entire night in this place (since it was still daylight when the game starts, but nighttime when we get to the wrecking ball area.) And considering how empathetic she’s shown to be, would she really just walk out because she thinks it isn’t him? Don’t you think there’d be at least some part of her that says “what if it is him, and I’ve just left him here to die?” 

Meanwhile when Gregory’s voice was used on the camera systems.. It’s honestly hilarious, I’m surprised nobody talks about it. Maybe it’s because I spent longer in Roxy Raceway than most players did, but his lines definitely fit with his personality. They’re all so taunting, and considering they’re used only against Roxy, I believe they were actually recorded by him, not the system mimicking his voice. The mocking “I’m so scared and alone!” “I’m here, you just can’t see me.” And FUCKING “Marco.. Polo!” (That one’s so evil it always makes me laugh.) You gotta admit that’s definitely something Gregory would do. 

Sure the mimic can copy his voice, but it can’t really copy his personality all that well if you read between the lines. The majority of the mimic’s lines for Gregory kinda fall into a few categories. Whiny, demanding, and monotone. With it being more whiny and scared than usual to try and get Cassie to believe it’s really in danger. It being more demanding to get Cassie to push forward. (Strong example being the Monty Golf catwalks, for some reason I struggled to find the Nodes there and he was constantly giving lines like “You really need to get back to redirecting the gondolas” or something along those lines. Trying to get you back on task.) And finally monotone, a lot of his lines can come across as more objective statements than anything, very little emotion involved.

Gregory’s never that whiny or afraid from what we see in the games, sure he has his moments, but in Security Breach his overall attitude isn’t being afraid, just done with this shit. It’s a bit more complicated than that but playing this game in retrospect with that knowledge makes it really interesting. Trying not to spoil the twist for other people led me to looking into all the voice lines, thinking “is that really something Gregory would say?” And the majority of the time, no, not really. I was practically scrambling at points to try and explain some voice lines to my friends trying not to spoil them. It’s not as much of a consistent personality as it is a split, he acts differently when the situation calls for it. Which, duh, that’s how human behavior works, but I hope you get what I mean when I say that.

I got a bit sidetracked but back to the idea the mimic is splicing audio together. While it’s an interesting point that would explain some cut-together dialogue.. 

Plus, it’s horror, sometimes characters have to be oblivious for the show to go on, y’know? I think this moment was intended to hit that way. The final confirmation something is definitely off, but as the player, you still don’t know what exactly it is. Because that’s not the reveal, you never find out what’s really been talking to you until you see the mimic in person. It’s another way to draw you in, keep your curiosity. If it did seem like it fully was Gregory players may start to question it in a way that wants them to turn back, but if it’s made clear this probably isn’t Gregory it leaves you to wonder, what the fuck is it?

Point is, I think it was just a developer choice, not something we’re supposed to take as evidence. And my main reason for that is, it’s kind of immediately contradicted. 

If you go back and watch the ending over again, he does mainly use pre-recorded lines, but if you look at what he says when Cassie frees him, it’s not pre-recorded. It goes from the pre-recorded, more upbeat and thankful “You saved me!” to monotone, stating it as fact. “You saved me.” If he were splicing together sentences, then where the fuck did that line come from? Maybe I’m just not as observant as I thought, but as far as I’m aware the only pre-recorded “You saved me!” is the one he uses first. The second one is nowhere to be found in SB. It kinda disproves the idea he’s splicing sentences if he immediately after gives us a new line that isn’t spliced. It’s an interesting theory for sure, but I don’t think it adds up. 

I was going to go more in depth on the tech stuff happening here but I realized I’ve made this section long enough already so I’ll put it into this section, I don’t think it’s something his character would do.

Now initially I was gonna cut straight to characterization and whatnot, and I will get to that later, but I’m gonna start by going through the tech stuff.

Every time Gregory tries to contact Cassie in-game, it’s usually through a separate piece of tech. I’ve only heard the lines separate from the game, and I’m definitely not data-mining myself, so I can’t prove that this line is the real Gregory, but..

I think one of the first times he contacts her is when you first see Roxy crying in her salon. For one, the timeline would match up. When he talks during the end of the game he says he’s been trying to contact us all night. But Cassie walked into the pizzaplex when it was still bright out, likely in the middle of the day since it doesn’t seem to be sunset, although that could just be my interpretation. If Gregory had been trying to contact her “all night” then it seems like he didn’t realize what was going on until much later in the game. If I’m remembering correctly you don’t see the wrecking ball through the ceiling revealing it’s nighttime until at least halfway through the game. 

(Although side note, I’m not sure how the mimic first contacted Cassie to lead her to the pizzaplex in the first place. The game makes it seem like the walkie talkie is the first time they talked but she wouldn’t be here in the first place if she wasn’t told to come here beforehand. Personally I think she was sent a message with the dialogue in the trailer, though I think we’re all collectively confused what device she would’ve received that message from.)

Anyways, if that point is one of the first times he’s contacted her, it would make a lot of sense. If it was the mimic calling to Cassie again, why would it not be from the walkie talkie when it’s still right there in her hand? If it was from the walkie talkie, why would it sound like it was coming from a distance, and why would Roxy run in the opposite direction? Whatever he was attempting to contact her from, it clearly wasn’t the walkie talkie.

Then there’s the rare voice line with the staff bot. 

Once again, he’s trying to contact her through a robot, not the walkie talkie. There’s a possibility he may be able to access the walkie talkie’s signal, but he can’t speak through it. I initially thought he might need cameras for this, and that point kinda stands for the mimic chase, but for this? All he has to do is listen in on the walkie talkie conversation to know which area of the pizzaplex is in. And if he had no way to access the walkie talkie’s signal, how would he even find out about this whole situation? If he found out sometime that night it seems likely to me that he somehow came across the signal and realized what was going on. And if he had 0 access to the walkie talkie.. Wouldn’t it be pretty inconvenient if he’d hacked a staff bot in Roxy Raceway to talk to her while she’s running around Bonnie Bowl?

I’ll talk about that voice line again later but for now I wanna move on to the other lines of dialogue, the last time he’s able to contact Cassie, finally through the walkie talkie.. Is the moment the mimic is busy fighting Roxy and chasing Cassie. I’ve seen some people try to argue even that wasn’t Gregory but that wouldn’t make any sense. If he was still talking on the walkie talkie during the chase wouldn’t she recognize the sound is coming from behind her.. And not the walkie talkie.. Plus, again, the files argument, with other lines being referred to as Grimic and these lines being labelled Gregory. 

And this might get a bit too theoretical but here’s my idea, the mimic used a signal jammer to prevent Gregory from communicating with her. That’s why he kept hacking separate signals like the staff bot. Considering he supposedly gives Helpi a signal jammer to prevent M.X.E.S (though to be fair that doesn’t last, it’s still established he can do this.) I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the walkie talkie’s signal was jammed so he couldn’t talk through it, the only times he does talk through it is while the mimic is busy. Even after Cassie gets in the elevator Gregory still might not fully trust the walkie talkie won’t cut him off now that the mimic isn’t busy anymore, that might explain why he hacks into the speaker system when, again, the walkie talkie is still there, isn’t it? Unfortunately for him I think that plan doesn’t work out, the mimic takes over and speaks for him. I think one of the biggest pieces of evidence is cut voice lines. 

Getting sidetracked for a bit.. 

If you look at some of the voice lines labelled to be Gregory, there’s an alternate line for the elevator scene. While the final game says “But we can’t risk being followed.” the cut line instead tells her “But make sure it doesn’t follow you.” This feels a lot more in character, a warning to her instead of a goodbye. I think this may not be a cut alternate ending, but it may be how the conversation would’ve gone if it was Gregory talking. What Gregory meant to say vs. what the mimic told Cassie. While this isn’t solid proof I think this interpretation makes a lot of sense, especially considering all the other evidence. 

Another detail about her being tricked, considering the missing posters in Roxy’s salon, this might be the first time she’s talked to Gregory in a long time. He might’ve just left after SB and just stopped talking to her because of how complicated everything’s gotten, thinking it’s better for her not to be involved in all this. Would anyone really want to have the conversation of explaining all that? Telling her the truth about him getting trapped in the pizzaplex, almost murdered by Vanny and the animatronics on multiple occasions? 

And another side note, if Gregory had told her what happened to Freddy, wouldn’t she also be questioning that whole situation? She doesn’t seem to have any reaction to the prototype on his foot, just hoping he’s functional. The only endings where Freddy doesn’t escape the pizzaplex are the endings where his whole body is destroyed. (Except the escape ending where Gregory just leaves and gets killed by Vanny after, but that’s not canon for obvious reasons.) 

As much as it sucks to be kept in the dark she clearly has been, she has no idea about Vanny or the animatronics being destroyed from what Gregory did to them.

Her only note about seeing Vanny on the cameras being “hey, she’s wearing my mask!” as if it wasn’t worn by her first. And her “What happened to you?” when she sees Chica. 

If he were to get the fire escape ending, Freddy dies after pushing himself and Vanny off the roof. While that already feels not-canon because of Vanessa most likely being freed and with Gregory during Ruin, even if you’re one of the people that assumes that ending means Vanny isn’t Vanessa, regardless of argument on that theory Freddy would be broken, and outside the pizzaplex, not in fazerblast. 

If he gets the bad Vanny ending, Freddy is fully dismantled with his head still attached and left behind. So why would he have no head in Ruin if that were the ending, especially when the work tables suggest there were technicians trying to repair the animatronics in between SB and Ruin. You’d think putting his head back on would be the first repair they’d make if the head was still there, and this was our Freddy.

TLDR here, point is if Gregory had told Cassie what happened to Freddy, through whatever canon ending that would be, Cassie would’ve known that wasn’t the real Freddy. Personally I think the prototype foot suggests a lot more that this is a red herring, not the Freddy we know, rather than just a retcon. 

Sorry for the long tangent, I know it was a bit sidetracked from the main topic here.

Even her Dad’s kept her in the dark regarding secrets like this considering the whole “My Dad wouldn’t tell me what happened to Bonnie.” Whether he knew what happened or not is a different story, but clearly she’s already been kept in the dark about stuff like this. After all it’s a heavy topic to get into, and with Gregory, considering some people still hate him for dismantling the animatronics I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he might worry Cassie would be mad at him for it. Whatever you feel about his character, in his mind it was self-defense. Extreme self-defense, but still. In his mind, the animatronics have spent all night trying to kill him, so if he harms them, it’s really just an eye for an eye, isn’t it? Those upgrades would help Freddy and whether this was his main motivation or just a part of it, upgrading the only animatronic helping him would definitely increase his chances of survival. 

But finally I wanna move onto more emotional arguments. It doesn’t seem to fit his character with what we’ve seen so far. Some people will say “wtf are you talking about? If he’s willing to kill the other animatronics he’d be willing to kill Cassie.” But I disagree. I think it’s missing an important part of his character. Yes, he’s been shown hurting other people. The other animatronics, Vanny, but I don’t think he would ever hurt someone he cares about. That’s the difference. The other animatronics were trying to kill him, so was Vanny. It’s not like he antagonized them first or did all this unprompted. He had a reason, and he had no emotional connection.

But have we ever seen him hurt anyone he cares about before this? He never has and I don’t think ever would hurt Freddy. In all the endings something bad happens to him, he cries, in some endings he’s able to do something to fix it, but in others, he’s clearly upset by the loss. Even in cut voice lines, apparently he originally would’ve been crying when Freddy got kidnapped by Moon. He clearly cares about Freddy, and does his best to make sure they can both escape. That’s the balance here. If he really was just a terrible character that doesn’t care about anyone, why would he be so distressed when something happens to Freddy? Why would he bond with him in the first place? Theoretically he could’ve just viewed Freddy as a tool, he is a robot after all, but he didn’t. He bonded with him and cared about him as he would for another person. 

Why give her directions for how to escape, why take the time to explain things to her? If he knew how it was going to end, why do any of this at all? I think if you were forced to kill your best friend, you’d probably sound more stressed than that. And it’s not like that’s any sort of voice acting issue, there’s clearly good direction given for there to be a clear difference between the mimic and Gregory during most scenes. He’s had stressed voice lines before, including the lines he has in Ruin, it just doesn’t make sense for him to seem like he doesn’t care at all when he’s been desperately trying to contact her. 

If he really was the one to drop the elevator, if he purposefully killed her, why does he seem so cold? If he had to kill Freddy for whatever reason I’m sure he’d be crying about it. Even in the escape ending where he leaves without Freddy he’s crying, and that’s not even an ending where Freddy gets hurt as far as we’re aware. So if Cassie was his best friend, someone he cared about enough to go through all this trouble to help her in the first place, to spend all night trying to contact her, guide her to the elevator.. If he really didn’t care about her, why do all this? Why wouldn’t he just assume she's dead and move on.

You could argue it’s because he was trying to prevent her from freeing the mimic before it was too late, but if that’s the case why would he give her directions when the mimic’s already been set free? Even in the elevator he directly tells her “You shut off the security, and now it’s free.” So if he knew/believed the mimic had already escaped, why kill Cassie ‘so it can’t escape.’ Even if that were also true, that’s not the only escape route. The mimic could still use the elevator Cassie used to get down here in the first place. He’d only be cutting off 1 of 2 exits. 

It’s so contradictory, if it were true I sure hope it has a good explanation in the next game. And again, the voice lines.. He sounds so panicked during them, through the mimic chase he’s yelling the directions, repeating himself, he’s clearly not calm during all this shit. He clearly cares about her. And for me, especially the rare voice line shows it. If you go back and listen to it again, the initial “Cassie is that you?” sounds a bit more panicked than the typical mimic calling out to Cassie, but at the end? After the voice glitches, that final “Cassie. Is that you?” It just sounds so full of despair to me. It’s a level of emotion the mimic never really displays for Cassie, it only sounds worried for its own safety, never concerned for hers.

Maybe I’m too invested, after all I get far more attached to characters than the lore itself, but from what we’ve seen of these characters I just feel like it would be really out of character if this was all meant to be taken at face value. If it was Gregory that cut the elevator, if he somehow managed to do it, and barely seemed to regret that choice. 

I think even if he did there’s still an argument to be made in his defense, after all we don’t know what the mimic has done to him in the games, we don’t know what it’s capable of, what he’s so afraid of. While sure we know about the mimic from the books, considering the questionable canonicity from books to games being the same timeline, and considering (as far as I’m aware) Gregory isn’t directly shown to have a connection to the mimic in those books.. Whatever he’s done in the games we haven’t seen yet, whatever happened that led Gregory to seal the mimic down there in the first place, it had to be pretty bad to cause all this. For such extreme security to be put around it, for him to leave things in a hurry, desperate to get out of there. Whatever happened clearly left some scars, whether those are physical, emotional, or both.

But that’s all I’ve got. I still find the other theories interesting, and I’m not denying they could be true. Look at the series we’re talking about here. But, with the evidence we’ve got, personally this is my take on it. I can only hope it’s true, but if I’m wrong, oh well I guess lol. I think Gregory’s definitely going to come back one way or another, whether he’s just down there to try to trap the mimic again, or if he’s going back to save Cassie, or both! I hope however he does come back it can clear up a few things. If you read all the way through, thanks, I know I ramble a lot, and I appreciate you taking the time to go through this, whether you agree with me or not. 

[everygame]

Star Wars (Arcade)

Developed/Published by: Atari Released: 05/05/1983 Completed: n/a Completion: I’ve played it hundreds of times…

It’s been a tough few weeks here at exp. Towers with a lot of stress and sadness for a variety of reasons (though the book launch has been fantastic: I’m so grateful to everyone who picked up a copy!) I feel pretty bad that I wasn’t able to post an article last week (and even this one is showing up, technically, a day late.) There just hasn’t been that much time–any time–for gaming. So let’s go all the way back to the beginning.

The very first game I ever played.

I’ve talked about this before, but this is the very first game controller I ever held:

It is still one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’ve often considered picking up a GRS Flight Yoke so I can touch one whenever I want (or even do something absurd like try and play through X-Wing with it or something) but it’s a bit cost prohibitive.

[“Hang on. You’ve been saving your pennies to pick up a XE-1 AJ Cyberstick because it can be set up left-handed and you regret that you never got the first re-issue, and that’s basically as expensive. Consider your priorities, man!”--Ed.]

Wow, rude–though I’d probably use the Cyberstick… more? (Though looking at how well the yoke works with a variety of games on MAME, I'm conflicted.) But to get back on topic, the original Star Wars arcade release is very special to me. At some point in the 80s, but a bairn, on a visit to the Magnum, Irvine’s long gone (long gone–it’s just a field now) leisure centre, my dad sat in the “cockpit” version of the arcade cabinet popped me on his knee, put in 20p and I was transported into Star Wars.

It really had everything. You’re flying an X-Wing towards the Death Star. The music you know is booming, the actual characters from the movie are cheering you on with voice samples, you get to shoot tie fighters, do a trench run and even shoot the exhaust port. Even with your dad gently guiding the controls, it feels incredible. You are never the same again.

And in many ways, neither were video games! Released in early 1983, I think that Star Wars represents the first true “thrill ride” arcade machine in its cockpit form as a game that absorbs the player totally in an (albeit slight) narrative. There had been sit-down arcade cabinets before–Atari themselves had released Hi-Way as early as 1975, but this wasn’t just a racer. 

It’s interesting to consider that this is also likely a key release that proved the value of a licence to a game (surprising, perhaps, as I’ve just written about the two previous Star Wars games and even liked one of them.) Licences had existed since Sega licensed… the Fonz(!?) for an arcade racer, though they’d have existed earlier if Atari had managed to get the Jaws licence (in an amusing example of Nolan Bushnell’s underhandedness, after not getting it, Atari released a game called “Shark Jaws” with “Shark” in tiny letters, and he made sure to release it under a unique subsidiary to not get Atari sued into oblivion.) 

Despite that history, licensed games were few and far between–as likely due to high fees as both licensees and licensors not really having an idea what to do with X or Y concept as a video game. Which is a bit sad, really, when we think of all the late 70s IP we could have experienced in the form of extremely crappy video games. Kojak for the Atari 2600, or something. Though I suppose we did get several The Electric Company games for Intellivision?

There’s a strange sort of luck to Star Wars, too, as it would be released mere months after E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was released for Atari 2600, a game that did so badly despite being licensed from (at that point) literally the highest grossing movie of all time that you’d assume no one would ever try to do something like that again. However, Star Wars had been in development since 1981 and would be released right before Return of the Jedi, hitting the zeitgeist bang on.

(There’s an even stranger bit of trivia here too. Atari CEO Ray Kassar is quoted saying of E.T. “I think it's a dumb idea. We've never really made an action game out of a movie” when a Star Wars action game would have been in development for about a year by that point. Executives: they definitely know what their company is up to!)

Ultimately, Star Wars was the right game in the right place at the right time, and in many ways, the industry has been chasing that high ever since.

Can I say something though?

It’s…

It’s not really that great, is it? It is the prototypical video game thrill ride in its best and its worst aspects. The big, flashy cabinet (designed by Mike Jang, detailed by The Arcade Blogger) masked a game that is both limited and extremely repetitive.

I’m sure like many kids who experienced it for the first time in the arcades (but only briefly), I made sure it was one of the first games I got for my home computer (via the same mail order club I got The Eidolon from, actually) and when you’re faced with just the steak without any sizzle–and the Amstrad CPC port is surprisingly faithful–you are done with the game in about five minutes. Even if you’re literally five yourself.

Because Star Wars really lacks any strong “hook” to the play that you can hang onto. Composed of three segments–the open space shooting gallery, the surface tower battle, and the trench run–each simply plays out for a set length of time that you can’t affect, and each features a very limited amount of patterns. There are no quirks or tricks or surprises in the play; you get a small amount of movement beyond the cursor so can shoot or dodge enemy fire and that's it. After you’ve run through the stages a couple of times you know everything you need to do, you get it completely, and the only thing that keeps you going (or kept me going) is getting to do the trench run, the most fun, interactive and thematic part. But you keep asking: is there anything else?

Though the game does change a bit–the surface tower battle most memorably isn’t in your first loop and uses bunkers in the second loop before switching to towers–there really isn’t. I suspect that high level play of this is largely memorisation, and I suppose you might be able to get into a Pac-Man like hypnotic flow; considering high-score records in this game have ranged from seven hours to five days some people must enjoy it. Though I think the analogue rather than digital nature of the interface makes it a less predictable and therefore less satisfying game to "solve" and for me, returning to it via emulation showed me that really, there’s nothing there. It needs the sizzle to be something—in fact, it shows just how incredible the sizzle was.

That isn’t the end of the world; Star Wars is temporarily fun, iconic and unarguably influential. But if I want to actually enjoy it… I guess I gotta go buy that flight yoke after all!

Will I ever play it again? So… of course I will! I’ll always play the cockpit machine any time I see it. Just the once each time though, for old time’s sake.

Final Thought: As well as a lot of great history on the development of Star Wars, The Arcade Blogger has also dug up some extremely fun videos that reflect just how badly Atari needed Star Wars to be a success, including a bizarre segment on a New York-area Saturday Morning show where they have to plug the machine in after they wheel it out and then the designer, Mike Hally, hasn’t been informed he’s supposed to leave the shot at the end of the segment!

Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24 is OUT NOW! You can pick it up in paperback, kindle, or epub/pdf. You can also support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[aeoki]

SHINSEKAI - Epilogue 4

Location: SHINSEKAI Stage Characters: Mika, Shuu, Sora, Natsume & Tsumugi

Sora: Woah…?

Tsumugi: Huh, what’s with the outfit? I don’t remember changing into this…

Sora: HaHa~♪ It’s such a pretty outfit~ It matches with Mika-chan-san and Shuu Nii-san.

Mika: Yeah ♪ I’m happy I can stand on the same stage with the same outfit as you, Sora-kun~ The last time we did this was when we were in “Ba-barrier” ♪

That goes the same for Tsumu-chan-senpai and Nakkun. I hope you’ll get along with us “Valkyrie” in the future too ♪

Natsume: YeAH… That’s nice and all but I don’t understaND. I know it’s probably your doiNG but why did you make us change our outfiTS?

Shuu: Are you that bad at taking a hint? I thought your brain would be the one thing that would work quite quickly.

You’re now wearing an idol’s stage outfit, so naturally, it’ll be for performing on stage, no?

Look, a crowd is gathering. They’re quite different from our usual audience but I suppose that’s also splendid and fitting for a strange world ♪

Natsume: A croWD…? This “SSVRS” hasn’t been released to the public yet nor has it been broadcast on TV, so none of our fans or anyone else should know about thIS.

Tsumugi: Ohh~... The people gathering around the stage are all the players.

They’re all ES idols who have been placed in the Tohoku region or idols from the area with “real people on the inside”.

Natsume: Come to think of iT, they’re all faces I’ve seen befoRE. As admins, we have all the information regarding every playER.

Tsumugi: So that’s why you were able to find the fake teachers who appeared out of nowhere. There were people in here that weren’t supposed to be.

Mika: Heheh. We’re not familiar with variety nor are we great at it, but we were easy targets ‘cause we have a lot of “SSG”, right?

That’s why we ended up battlin’ most of the other idols.

And after our battle, we invited them to see our performance. We asked them to come take a look if they wanted to~

Natsume: I sEE. I did notice that you two did something you wouldn’t usually do and talked to your opponents when you were paying them the “SSG” they won from yOU.

I surely thought you’d be feeling frustrated after losing, so you were hurling insults at thEM, Shuu Nii-san.

Shuu: Hmph. We fought fair and square in the same ring and lost, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to have complaints.

However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel frustrated after losing. It’s not as if arguing with them would turn our loss into a victory.

And so our opponents who felt great after winning against us were happy to accept our invitation.

As you can see, we turned out to be quite successful as the stage is surrounded by people.

Natsume: I suppose you’re rigHT. Even if you lost in a variety-based battLE, as an idol, this is considered a “wIN”.

After all, we only exist to make those who watch us be hapPY.

In that sense, “Valkyrie” has come out as the top winner in all oF “SHINSEKAI”. 

Shuu: Indeed. But it wasn’t simply to relieve our boredom.

I also told them to pay an admission fee if they watched our performance and thought it was “good”, as we’ve been losing all this time and are now poor.

I’ve left the amount of the admission fee to their own discretion and I’m sure there will be people who won’t be paying as well.

But small things can add up to make a big difference. If we can scrape together what we have, we should end up with an ample amount.

And there shouldn’t be a single soul who wouldn’t feel emotionally moved after seeing the performance I spent all my time preparing. I’m sure they’ll feel compelled to open their wallets and pay us a large amount of “SSG”.

No, that’s the sole reason why we prepared all this.

I came to learn how this world works after exploring it with Kagehira… And I researched how we could build a stage and make outfits.

And things were simple once we understood the method. We’re first-rate artisans �� preparing a stage like this was a piece of cake.

Natsume: …I sEE. I did think it was strange that your money was decreasing at a fast paCE but it was all for the creation of this large staGE.

Tsumugi: I didn’t notice at all~ I simply thought you were losing money because of your battles.

We had to oversee the entirety of “SHINSEKAI” and we couldn’t watch you two all the time, after all.

Shuu: Hmph, it wasn’t my intention to surprise you.

Mika: Really? Oshi– Onii-chan, didn’t you say, “We’ll give the ones who threw us into this mess a good shock.”?

Shuu: Naturally, I wanted to show them what we’re capable of. We were dragged into this strange world and played like a fiddle.

I wanted to see the expression on your faces paling. I’m satisfied seeing your dumbfounded faces now. Ka ka ka ♪

How does it feel for a magician to have magic cast on them instead?

Natsume: FuFU. It feels oddly refreshiNG. Actually, I feel relievED…

I should’ve knoWN. There’s no way you would stand there and let them bully yOU.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t be Shuu Itsuki of the “Five Oddballs” whom I adoRE ♪

Shuu: Calling me by my full name now, are you? Well, I suppose I don’t particularly mind.

Natsume: HmPH… I thought I could have you in the palm of my hand this tiME, make you think that even I’m capable of doing things on my oWN and have you treat me like an equAL.

But I’m still no match for my Nii-saNS…

Tsumugi: The look on your face and the words you’re saying don't match up, Natsume-kun.

Sora: Yes! Master~ looks really happy.

Natsume: I aM. Of course, I would bE. Someone I love and cherish is even more amazing than I thought he wAS.

I sEE. The reason why you were calm even after losing all those battles with the other idols is because you had planned to turn the tables heRE. 

Give a perfect performanCE, make a profit and also make a comebaCK. You’ve spent a lot but the reward is much largER.

That’s always how “Valkyrie” does things, rigHT? If anything, I feel ashamed of my own ignorance, seeing how I didn’t notice until you revealed it to mE. 

Shuu: Indeed. Do your best and continue learning what you lack, “Natsume”.

Natsume: ………!

Shuu: First, perform with us and show them what you’re capable of as an idol. Show them your idol selves that you’ve forsaken and let them shine.

Picking up the things that you’ve lost is your livelihood, isn’t it?

You have fans who find happiness in seeing you all like that.

All the things that happened in “SHINSEKAI” will eventually be broadcast as a TV show but…

Your fans won’t be interested in it at all unless they see you three featured in it.

Natsume: For some reason, hearing you talk to me about fans somewhat irritates mE. You’re the one who engages in flame wars with your fans onliNE.

Shuu: It simply means we’re facing our fans with sincerity! Art is a clash of souls – I cannot be the only one in the safe zone!

Shuu: Make yourselves akin to a god and you will fail to notice what’s important.

Stop gazing at the masses from high above the sky. Stand on the earth and pick up the things that are precious.

For we have yet to reach a perfect heaven or a utopia – we are still living in this chaotic world.

“♪~♪~♪”

← Previous Chapter

[owlixx]

Arcade Review

I attended VCF Midwest 18 (retro computing festival) in Chicago with my dad this last weekend and we stopped by the Galloping Ghost Arcade. I jotted down a list of the games we played and figured I’d flesh that out with some notes/context for tumblr.

1. Tron - they had both the original machine and the Discs of Tron machine. Considering we had both brought Tron shirts, this was a hit with us.

2. Qix - I’m familiar with the “cut off the box while something bounces around in it” genre and I had heard this name before but I don’t think I’d ever connected those dots before. I wanna play some more of this one sometime.

3. Asteroids - a classic and not much to add, but the vector graphics were so bright and vivid here that it really looked cool. and the momentum feels pretty good too on the ship.

4. Street fighter/mortal Kombat - we played MK2 and 4 which was good fun, I’d like to play more of all of them. And we did one round of SF1-4 which was super fun. I wish it was easier to get into fighting games. And that I didn’t have to pick one main!

5. Commander havoc - this really impressed with the vivid vector graphics and interesting track-cylinder controls. I didn’t even get to the platforming part until playing later in the Atari collection on my vita! Which emulates the track-cylinder using the touch screen which is a nice touch, never heard of this game before

6. Battle zone - again, this is familiar territory but playing with the real headset and joysticks really elevates it.

7. Batman forever - this one was just silly, the photo scans of the actors looks so goofy on top of the movie already being goofy

8. Berzerk - a favorite of my dad’s

9. Wizards of Wor - this one played like Pac-Man if Pac-Man has a gun, really wasn’t bad despite never hearing of it before

10. Dragon’s lair - got further than I think I ever have before, new goal of mine is to actually beat this game or at least watch the full “movie”

11. Capcom vs - always fun until the game actually starts lol, love the rosters but I suck at these even more than normal fighting games. Highlight was my dad recognizing a couple character from tatsunoko and promptly kicking my butt with them

12. Dungeon and dragons hack and slash - already own this at home but always fun to see, I really ought to beat my copy sometime with someone else

13. Virtual fighter/tekken - again, takes me back to a simpler time but I need a local player 2 for these to be fun

14. Darius - I think we played the oldest and newest one. Neat novelty for the wide wide screen. On the old one, you can tell it’s a CRT in the middle flanked by mirrors reflecting CRTs on the bottom of the machine. I have burst on my vita and never played it before, it’s cool to see how arcade accurate it is now!

15. Silent scope - always gotta pop my head in here because it’s a fun novelty, I should try the home port someday for fun

16. La machine guns rage of the machines - I have this on Wii but it was fun to play the arcade version! I was surprised by how strong the rumble was. I need to play this, NY gunblade, and ghost squad more at home with my legit Wii zappers

17. Aerosmith - never knew this existed and boy is it buckwild and kind of hilarious. Never would’ve expected the Aerosmith game to be a rail shooter

18. Moonwalker - we played this for about 30 seconds before sharing nervous laughter and moving on

19. Journey - we called this one out ahead of time thinking it surely wouldn’t be here. Plays like tron where it’s actually 5 minigames featuring poorly digitized heads of the band members. Pretty funny

20. Resident evil gun survivor 2 - this was really curious! You aim with a lighting but also move by using the light gun as a joystick. Pretty neat but the multiplayer didn’t work for us. Looks like there’s a home port exclusive to EU/JP? I’d love to play more of this oddity

21. Castlevania arcade? - I think this was just a port of Castlevania 1 but still interesting

22. Super Mario bros versus - couldn’t tell if this was different from Mario 1 at all functionally but playing with an arcade joystick and buttons was neat!

23. Mario bros - I’m so used to the remake included with GBA Mario games that the original makes me embarrass myself when I play it

24. Donkey kong - I need to actually clear all the stages at least once

25. Sinistar - my dad clutched a win against the S man himself, kinda neat how this game has multiple phases and free movement

26. Star Wars arcade - we played a super low poly one because it was 2 player with a much higher poly one next to us but single player only. Also played a ROTJ speeder bike game with neat handlebar controls

27. Defender/Stargate - a classic, I need to get decent at this one sometime

28. Tempest - TxK was the first game I got on my vita and I didn’t really get it, but now I get it more and the graphics really impresses. I’d like to play more versions of this game

29. Pac-Man/mania - a staple like bread or eggs. Maybe someday I’ll play all them in order

30. Joust/2 - this was super fun. Really shines in PvPvE with an uncertain alliance. Transforming the mount in the sequel is neat, had never seen it.

31. Warlords - 4 player pong basically, but also reminded me a bit of boom blox. Keeping an eye out for this one now.

32. Night driver - never heard of it before but kind of fun

33. Pole position - feels so much better with a real wheel and pedal

34. Qbert - terrible at it but cute

35. Spy Hunter 2 - pretty fun in 2 player mode actually

36. Speed racer - this really surprised, this was super fun. Jumping over my dad was the highlight until we both collectively ran off a cliff and quit

37. Gauntlet dark legacy - somehow plays way worse than the GameCube version? But fun seeing this guy here

38. Robocop/2 - first one sucked, second one relatively impressed especially with the Wild Guns-Esque shooting gallery minigame

39. Contra - we had just played the DS Contra 4 so we had to play this one for comparison. As hard as I remember, especially for him lol. Also played an odd 2.5D contra in Japanese. I got the feeling it was a phone game port and googling now confirms yes, it is, called Contra Evolution

40. Ikari warriors - fun to play because of the unique twisting joystick. My dad lamented that we didn’t get to the tanks

41. Crystal castles - my dad showed off a secret warp trick on the first try that I managed to recreate on my vita port that uses the touch screen as a trackball. Way cooler with trackpad than joystick like I’d played before. Also always think of the musical artist

42. Cyberball - hot nonsense, he crushed me. Fun dual screen corner setup

43. Sonic the fighters - I had thought it would be fun if they had this one and they did! Didn’t play long but just fun to see it show up

44. Segasonic - this was my wildest guess as to what could even appear here, very happy to see it! My only chance to ever really play this game. Sadly, had a rude guest next ti me during it

45. Yi are king fu - this was high on my dad’s list and did in fact appear, he blazed through the first five levels quickly. I’d like to try and play this a bit more

46. Ring king - boxing game my dad was looking for, we really struggled to get started with the controls

47. Punch out - it was neat to get to play the arcade original with the wireframe graphics like his alternate costumes in smash bros

48. Judge dredd - this one was just kinda funny, classic stiff digitized photo graphics ala mortal kombat

49. 3D xevious - had never seen this, kinda neat

50. Super puzzle fighter - a favorite of my mother’s, fun to see the cabinet version. Especially since the XBLA port is weirdly compromised in some ways

51. Space invaders - this one was fun because it had a physical background graphic that the game sprites seemed to hover above, which was much more impressive than seeing just the game sprites in isolation

52. Mega man power battle - I had beaten both of these before on the capcom arcade collection for $1.99 a pop, but playing and seeing a real cabinet was a real treat

53. Paperboy - I always associated this game with the NES but the arcade version with a unique handlebar controller is a lot more charming. Still far too hard.

54. Pit fighter - so bad it’s good, this was on my dad’s list

55. Quake - this was a curious one, having to aim and move with just arcade buttons

56. Star Trek - pretty cute vector game, the Split View of first persons and top down is pretty neat

57. Cliff Hanger - fascinatingly, a laserdisc game in the style of Dragon’s Lair but repurposing clips from Lupin III without advertising itself as such.

58. Wrestlemania - not my first time playing this one, but always fun to see the super over the top moves

59. Rampart - one of my dad’s favorites, admittedly kind of advanced for the time with the base building in between rounds. Kind of an addicting gameplay loop if I am being honest

60. Quantum - super cute vector game with trackball that plays like Pokémon ranger where you have to draw circles around objects. Pretty good game feel, curious about this one

Didn’t get to play:

Popeye - favorite of my dad’s, screen broke

Star Wars episode 4 - similar

Mk3 - working but poor screen, my favorite MK

Soul calibur - the only had 2 and we ended up skipping it anyways

Silent hill - beautifully giant machine but was either down for repair or occupied

Monkey ball - had that silly banana joystick but down for repair

[sil-and-seals-blog-something]

So, I did say I’d make a post about the DND group I play with. I won’t use any names (besides my own character’s) but I will do a small list here for identification purposes with the characters and players

(FYI, we use the measurements of feet’inches for our characters-)

Our DM will just be called DM. My character is called Inixidis, who is a tiefling. Then there’s A (half-vampire), Go (human), W (half-elf), and Ga (“human”).

My character is a level 4 bard (college of creation)/level 4 artificer (alchemist). Some quick facts about Inixidis is that they are mute, is chaotic neutral, and their obsession with blue potions (basically just liquid magical waste that causes random effects) has traumatized numerous people. They were originally gonna be a neutral good character who A’s player dubbed “Demon Santa”, but I went gremlin when playing. (They also have like, around 10 pets, 4-5 of which are scorpions and the rest are literally what people would considers pests or dangerous in the setting-)

Then there’s A. Who is a blood hunter/artificer (I think specifically the armorer subclass?). (Just to clarify, A’s player goes by she/her while the character is presently he/him). A is the lawful evil “hypocrite” of the party. This probably seems like a red flag, but A honestly makes it very fun. I remember this time that we attempted a heist and got arrested. The hypocrite part is mostly just a “I can be the only immortal bloodsucker here!” So we made a joke that the character A is a lawful evil hypocrite. Before W’s character came around though, the party’s braincell kept getting bounced between Inixidis and A. We are currently hunting down the alchemist that made A a half-vampire.

Side note, Inxidis is 22 and A is like, 300 or 3000+ years old, but the two are basically children set loose in a candy shop when together. It’s great. They’re horrible horrible influences on each other. They are literally mad scientists. They technically committed war crimes together, shamelessly. They’re also the tallest of the party.

Go is a human monk. Now see, there is a little funny fact about him though. Go’s player wanted to play a 2’5 foot tall human adult. So, one day, our DM joked that the missing height went to width. And then a homebrew subclass called the Compression Monk was made. So, Go technically has like, two subclasses. But it’s hilarious and cool because compression monks can shoot up to longer than their original height and we can imagine them slingshotting themselves across the continent. Go is a pretty chill player and kinda just goes along with whatever’s happening. Like, probs just the embodiment of true neutral.

Ga, the “human” warlock. He hasn’t actually been around in a while. We know that the character isn’t actually human, like I’m pretty sure he’s a bunch of raccoons under a cloak. Ga just likes trash. Literally collects the rights to rummage in trash cans and such. Pretty chill buddy. Absolutely falls to Inixidis and A’s peer pressure.

W, the half-elf rogue! W is the primary owner of the party’s braincell now. Resting at like, 5’2, she’s had to wrangle the 6’4 tiefling and 6’1 (I think) half-vampire. Though, she’s had her gremlin moments (the extreme drive to kill the potato king is one of those moments). She’s been in the party for the shortest amount of time (although, it’s been months since she joined, so that doesn’t mean much-). W enjoys knives a lot. I think she has like, 4 or 5 in her inventory.

But yeah!

Some other stuff to note is

-We have 3 functional immortal characters (Inixidis, one of her pets, and A) for various reasons

(Inixidis has a wishing well curse so they’ll always revive until they grant the wishes. Their pet drank their mutagen blood {drink enough magical waste and you become a dangerous thing to attack} and the random mutations they got were immortality and like, constant background music to vibe with. A basically has a thingy that lets them auto succeed on a death save, so they’re only down for three turns before stabilizing- which makes deciding who to heal much easier-)

-Inixidis has a combo wombo of two curse that makes her terrifying. Ring of Greed and the Wishing Well curse. Ring of Greed basically makes Inixidis have to roll wisdom saves for anything related to riches, but the more valuable items on her, the more powerful she is (I’m currently at a 27 or 29 damage bonus for ALL of Inixidis’ attacks). The Wishing Well curse disables me from healing any lost hp, but whenever Inixidis goes below 1 hp, the health is set back to 1 hp on her next active turn (so, just infinite revives but Inixidis retains all injuries. They’re currently very mangled).

-Inixidis and A did live experiments with blue potions (reminder: liquid, magical waste) in the basement of a warehouse. Illegally.

-Inixidis, A, and Ga technically committed war crimes on some (not-so) innocent folk living below our base-city.

-W joined the party when Inixidis, A, and Go arrived at a town of mutated cannibals. Inixidis, having Chaos Affinity (homebrew feat that allows Inixidis to have both permanent mutations and additional ones), fit in with the mutated residents quite well.

-A plans to build a robot army

-W was raised by giant raccoons (I think? If I remember the conversation correctly? That might’ve been a joke) and is hunting down a sorcerer who hurt her brother and her brother’s friend (one of which was turned into a gecko that W keeps with her)

-We’ve fought a guy who used zombie-plants (well, sorta. They were various undead)

-Inixidis has killed opponents by letting herself get bit/eaten. It’s hilariously great.

-We have a superstition involving my character. If they pass a perception check, that means something bad will happen (especially if she’s the only one to do so). Due to how bad my perception check rolls usually are (which has led to the head canon that Inixidis has ADHD)

-The patrician of our base-city is a vampire who basically has us as that “one group of people who will experience the most bat-shit insane stuff that’s actually happened” but also as the team who “discovered who the murderer running rampant was but postponed arresting him for five days because they got side tracked”

-The setting is medieval fantasy, but we’ve managed to obtained a high-tech space ship run by an AI called “Friendly Computer”. Friendly Computer attacked us at first until we sorted our problems with each other out. We lost a scorpion on that ship’s first floor. Thankfully, we were able to scrap that floor to repair the rest of the ship (I also dislike the decontain because Inixidis looses mutations going through it)

-Inixidis’s left arm is a Merbull. Who has a separate mind (sorta connected to Inixidis’s own) and can blast a beam of light. That blinds opponents. They’re also mute cause of that. Inixidis’s right arm used to have a Merbull who could speak, but we lost ‘em.

-A goes into a blood rage (homebrew based off of a barbarian’s rage) at the taste of blood (so he has to dilute it when drinking it). Inixidis will actively throw herself in the way of A’s teeth when the only targets left for the blood rage are allies. This is not to save others. This is because she find it hilarious to watch A’s disgust at her toxic and mutagen producing blood when he comes out of the blood rage (which happens when he drinks something’s blood or succeeds a saving throw).

-Inixidis and Go will actively encourage each other’s worst impulses. A, the lawful evil member of the party (the only evil one), was the one that had to step in to stop the two from breaking the bones of some sewer bandits. They are gremlins.

-Inixidis and A have been dubbed “Drugs and Robots” by me.

-The Potato King was connect to a maybe-eldritch god of (uncontrolled) growth that he was trying to bring into the mortal plane (after feeding people “fries” that were made from the god’s body, that said god could still control. They had fries growing out of their bodies when mind controlled). He died to like, 64 (maybe?) fire damage from Inixidis’s Hellish Rebuke (2d10 fire damage + 27 bonus x 2 due to PK’s weakness to fire {t’was a greasy king}, I think those are the calculations for anyone who wants to know how Inixidis managed that much with a reaction). I’m pretty sure he was at less than 20 HP when I hit him with that. Potato King was a charred corpse. We then just kept hitting the Potato God with fire attacks until W managed to banish ‘em using instructions from the dead witch who sent us to fight PK in the first place.

-W’s sanity has not been surviving being the only good aligned character surrounded by absolutely insane characters.

-We made a subspecies of rat. Our buddy Notus is a subspecies of that subspecies. He aims to become a god and we plan to assist him in that. He wants to become a god to help people. He’s that best. He doesn’t mind coming from the mad science of Inixidis and A.

-We are friends with two demons. One is stuck in the body of a golden goose (her name is Garflux, I think), and said golden goose has the ability to induce uncontrollable rage in people with a single honk (Untitled Goose reference). The other is more of Inixidis’s friend. He’s named Cheese and he runs a tavern or restaurant. Calling his name pauses time and lets him possess someone during that time pause. Inixidis was gifted a bag of coins. Placing coins on a corpse’s eyes sends the person to Cheese’s tavern, and- in turn- Cheese will give Inixidis gifts.

-There’s a lot of Chekhov’s Guns in the world of our campaign

-We almost released a big bad evil guy type god back into the mortal plane. Cheese helped us stop it.

-We’ll do random things like swap the arms and legs of skeletons

-Most of us have really cool cursed items

-Go can be standing 15ft. away from someone and just punch ‘em. Compression monks are beautifully hilarious. Most folk can only hit someone in melee who is 5ft. away. Not Go. You enter the range of 15ft.? Prepare to get hit.

-W has a cool grimoire that can cast really good spells a few times per long rest.

-A has a cool ring. It allows him to change ONE letter of a spell’s name and subsequently change the effect. Party favorite? Grease to Crease. Fold those fuckers. It’s beautiful.

-We have an in with the mafia at our base-city cause we unintentionally helped them by beating up some defectors (they were bandits who attacked us)

-Blue potion molotovs

-Boots of the Beetle

-Inixidis has an adoption problem when it comes to animals. They also happen to eat just about anything that isn’t exactly poisonous/healing. Skyrim style alchemist. Eat ingredients/drink potions to learn their effects if they aren’t healing or poison.

-A dislikes Inixidis’s immortal stirge (featherless sewer bird that sucks blood through an elongated, mosquito-like nose).

-W is younger than A and Inixidis. W’s player is older than I and A’s player.

-Inixidis carries the party’s gold because one of the artificer things I took was the ability to imbue an object with the traits of a bag of holding. So she has a Cloak of Holding. I don’t remember the exact mechanics.

SO, IN SHORT

The party is absolutely insane, terrifying, and ridiculous. I love them all so so much. The campaign is absolutely crazy and hilariously fun.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

DHSHSH stop when you said emo the first thought in my head was that one emoji that was modified to have the emo bangs and then our local emo Rin but nooo I’m sure they all know you’re cooking! Fine wine takes time to age (i cringed a little saying this kinda cheesy but ykwim)

TRUE that’s why your plots and stories always slap…but yeah hmm the blue lock loophole is kinda hard….and yeah like we’ve mentioned before the only thing that comes to mind are the typical tropes of girl sneaks into bllk as a boy or becomes manager of bllk….i mean even the official game uses that premise of having the player become a newly hired analyst/manager for the players….but yeah hmmm im sure you’ll cook with something LOL

LMAOOO lovable witty assholes >>>> I like zantetsu a fair amount and he’s funny but yeah himbos aren’t exactly my type either oops

Yeah I cannot get over the uncle vibes either and it’s just reinforced by the stubble…ok but STOP THE AIKU BAROU IDEA IS TOO GOOD im crying the aikulations have me dying but he literally WOULD do that like “good ol barou-chan needs to blow off some steam…let’s get him a girl”

HAHA TY and yesss we’re basically the same person atp I’m sure any edit that’s been screened by you will be fire

I’m also kinda surprised I’ve seen a relative rise in Hiori fans as of late? Not just here but on different platforms like tiktok too…I guess I can’t be talking that much because it kinda includes me LMAOO I’ve always liked him and his blue coloring (I’m ngl a big part of it was just “oh I like that blue”) I will admit I think white butterfly did a good deal of conversion work on me too LOL him building the exact building hit me hard I had to go back and read and think like “wait…isn’t this the exact house description from earlier…” another genius take >>> but yeah LMAO his relatively recent switch up on his attitude on soccer brought in some fans too I think

LMAOOO SAE TACKLING HER TO PARALLEL HOW THEY FIRST MET SO REAL the idea has me laughing already…but literally if only more people had your brain cells like where is this characterization of him….the normal fanon him just seems so off to me ugh but we’ve had this convo before so I’ll spare you the rant again LOL but wait also i forgot that white butterfly and fwtkac were written back to back that was some really fast work too?? Considering fwtkac was pretty hefty too damn

LMAOO rin thinking that he’d be creepy reaching out asking for her address be instead deciding to actually go stalk her is such a rin way of thinking it’s hilarious

PERSONAL PROJECT OOOOOOOOO is this a secret project or is dropping hints allowed…will look forward to reading it either way though LOL

Maybe it was your subconscious rizz and the dude was gonna hit you up if you were a soccer fan and use that as a common interest /hj the way he just walks off after has me cackling though I feel like that’s such a stereotypical sports fan interaction HSGDJSHS I saw someone walking with a Manchester jacket once and was like omg manshine city LMAOO

ALSO CONGRATS ON 900 FOLLOWERS!!! 1k is gonna hit you real soon I can feel it…rightfully so after feeding the bllk community o7

- Karasu anon

LMAOOO in my rin era but not in terms of liking him just literally being him 😔✊🏻 /j no because sometimes it’s just that i can’t make myself write for a particular character at a given moment in time?? like rn you couldn’t PAY me to write for karasu (jk you def could pay me and i’d do it) even though i love him because i just am not motivated for him meanwhile i could probably spit out smth for like uhhh reo in a jiffy 😭 it’s so arbitrary which characters i want to write for at any given moment hence why i do some requests within a couple of days and others have been waiting for a while (plus like personal projects aka bfb get in the way too hence why i’m swearing off of them until i’m done the reqs currently in my inbox…only 9 to go 😰) so it’s not even a question of me taking my time w writing (reqs usually take 1-3 days for me to do) i’m just being #lazy about it…so nagi of me i fear 💔 BUT I AM GETTING BETTER I PROMISE I WILL FINISH THESE NINE SUPER SOON

i just love having my characters actually be active in the plot w goals and development ykwim and lowkey being a manager doesn’t rlly feel conducive to that because what genuine conflict is a manager facing FKSJSJKS especially compared to pomegranate ink y/n struggling w her family, her cursed technique, sukuna, AND her relationship w yuta 😭 but i’m sure the perfect au is out there that’s somewhat similar to bllk but has space for. yk. women

no because like zantstsu w his hair down and no glasses is soooo fine i 100% would go crazy for him if he was a little smarter but he is definitely a sweetheart to the max based on his egoist bible profile 🥹 so yeah i def respect zantetsu lovers but it’s not for me!! i’ll take his two besties tyvm 🫨

that is aiku’s FIRST thought too he’s not like “wow barou seems stressed maybe i should talk to him and make sure he’s doing alright” nope it’s straight to “yikes barou needs to feel the touch of a woman DESPERATELY or else he’s going to kill all of us and then himself” meanwhile niko is like 15 so he’s just going along w whatever because he doesn’t know better, lorenzo is in it for the vibes, aryu thinks reader x barou is so glam it becomes his otp, and tbh idgaf abt sendou but like he’s there too ig 😭 and the thing is it WORKS like one date w reader and barou is rejuvenated…literally a new man altogether

yes i’ve def seen a lot of hiori fans as of late!! although unfortunately my hobby of commenting horrendous takes on bllk dude bros’ videos means i mostly see them hating/comparing him to sae and charles 😭💔 but OMG no because i think the house thing actually makes me cry lowkey…the way he doesn’t know if she’ll ever come back to their hometown or if she’s single or if she even REMEMBERS him but he builds the house she used to dream of and waits there for her just in case she ever does return so no matter what she can at least see that he loved her the entire time too 😔 like hiori my pining green flag romantic goat ⁉️ NO miraverse love interest is doing it like him tbh (except peregrine nagi…he actually has white butterfly hiori beat i think it’s sickening how much that man loves reader we just haven’t gotten to the part of the story where that’s shown yet 😓)

hehe it’s so funny because i literally was working on white butterfly at night and it turned midnight to my birthday while i was writing it so i literally began my birthday writing a hiori fic 😭 so real of me though 😩 and yeah that’s what i mean when i’m actually motivated i’m SOO fast at writing (in 2021 i wrote a 173k word fic in abt a month) so there’s rlly no excuse for me to not have more of my reqs done 😵‍💫 anyways…seabird sae my king wish we had more content of him like that!! it probably won’t be from me though because sae isn’t super high on my priority list (he’s solid mid tier i’d say…in terms of personality though i will say he’s the superior itoshi bro even if rin is kinda better looking due to sae’s fuck ass haircut)

HEHE no it’s just the aiku wingman series not a secret at all!! so far i have ideas for the barou and otoya ones…i’m thinking i’ll definitely also do karasu and yukimiya, maybe do nagi and (gulp) possibly do sae HAHAHA the way that directly counteracts what i just said one paragraph ago 😓 but i think those characters make the most sense in terms of proximity/interactions/dynamics w aiku (except nagi actually i just want to write him because i love him)

LMAOOO no you’re def right i think he used soccer/the jersey as a way to talk to me without being too creepy but when i was obviously uninterested he had to dip rq 😔 classic mira x male chemical reaction…however if he’s not a blue locker i’m not interested 🥱🫣 it’s my goal in life to marry a famous soccer player i actually think that would be hilarious like imagine you just see me on tv in the stands being supportive (pretend yk my irl name and what i look like and whatnot) and you just have the knowledge that i wouldn’t even have met my husband or been interested in him if i didn’t watch a random soccer anime and become obsessed with a character that takes five second showers 😭

AHH THANK YOU i’m hoping to cook up smth fun for a 1k event that’s not just “ok requests are open knock yourselves out” like maybe i’ll do a theme to it?? idk we will see when we get there hehe but yeah lowkey it’s unbelievable that i have that many followers on here considering how little i post the content most of them must’ve actually followed me for (aka writing)

[dragon-communion]

While I’m at it I want to analyze the opening scene Tarnished for dating potential.

Horah Loux, Goldmask, Fia, Dung Eater, and Sir Gideon Ofnir. And what the hell, let’s throw my player character in for giggles. Let’s go.

Horah Loux seems like a really cool guy, but fairly intimidating. The whole muscles and beard and ripping bears apart with your bare hands thing is pretty much the opposite of my type, but maybe we could be friends.

Goldmask is one of those people I’d love to listen to in a lecture hall, but he’s very focused on his studies and if I’m wooing someone I need a bit of attention. So. Interesting, but no.

I would get the worst and most confusing crush on Fia because she’s Nice and gives Free Hugs. I could see getting together with her, maybe, but I’m pretty sure she’s in love with Godwyn and not really looking for a third, or at the very least so intent on being a Deathbed Companion that she’s never really considered romance. A solid maybe. To be fair, I would also date Godwyn given the option. I like what he’s got going on.

Dung Eater. I haven’t done his quest line, I just know about it, so this will take some... serious consideration. I can appreciate drive and even being fucked up- as I stated in another post, the main reason I wouldn’t go for Rykard is the racism, not the murder dungeon- but I think Dung Eater is verifiably insane and possibly animated by pure rage. I’m not here to fix anyone, so the only way I could see it working is if I was an Omen. Maybe. Even then, I’m not sure if he’d have the presence of mind to care about who I am as a person. Overall, pass.

Sir Gideon Ofnir.... honestly, I could see both a yes and a no here. For one, he’s lucid, which is important for things like dating and consent. For two, he’s smart, and I definitely like smart. Methodical, thoughtful, meticulous, a good combination of both manners and self-respect. We’re hitting all the baselines here. Problem is, I think he’s more likely to use a person than bond with them. Even Fia, who definitely uses you, shows some emotional investment in you by the end. This guy? Not so much. I feel like he’d be that one guy at work you date for a couple weeks before realizing he’s just incredibly disappointing. At best.

And to round it all off for the hell of it, let’s throw in my first Tarnished- Seren Syrthiokin. We’re already off to a bad start because he’s got a beard, but! He’s a silly sort of guy who’s trying his best, with a decent sense of humor. No wealth, no home, in desperate need of a new set of clothes, but! Sensibly cautious about getting stabbed despite being functionally immortal, and actually has hobbies. Like hiking, and boar hunting. Definitely friend material.

Looks like Fia wins, but is anyone really surprised?

[dmsden]

One Chance - Running D&D for new folks as a one shot

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Once again, an Anonymous reader comes to us, with hat in hand, asking for help. They ask, “ So, I’ve been chatting to a coworker about our respective dnd games and long story short now I’m going to be running a one shot for 8 of my coworkers, 7 of which have never played before. How the hell do I do this and make it fun for people? Right now my plan is to make a classic Indiana Jones style dungeon and just let them run around in this closed space. What would you do?”

Well, Any, what you just outlined sounds like pretty good fun. I’m sure you could have a good time just doing that. If you’re asking me what I’d do in such a scenario, these would be my plans:

1. Make sure everyone was fine playing pre-generated characters. I might even start an email chain explaining the types of characters you’re offering to let folks play, and let people talk out what they want to do. If you have the time, you could suggest that the players come up with some flaws, bonds, ideals, and personality traits, just to make the characters more theirs. The reason I recommend this is that it can be very intimidating for a new player to come in and have to make a lot of decisions right off the bat, and creating characters involves a LOT of decisions. It also frees up valuable table time that could be used playing the game.

2. I would also briefly talk to the players about their characters already being established as friends and allies and play up the cooperative nature of things. This tends to prevent someone from deciding to strike out on their own, which can big things down.

3. I would put together a storyline with a defined goal. In the case of the Indiana Jones type story mentioned above, the goal could be, “Locate the dungeon, survive its perils, claim the golden idol, and escape alive with it.” Having a clearcut goal provides directions for the players to follow. When they’re in doubt, they can fall back on this goal to push them forward. If you’re ambitious, maybe each character could also have a subgoal. Just make sure that the players’ goals don’t contradict each other; you don’t want anyone to walk away feeling they lost and someone else won.

4. Put together an adventure that takes into account both the characters your group is playing and D&D’s three pillars.

4a. Make sure there are some fun and interesting combat encounters. Sure, you can fill the dungeon with nothing but orcs, but changing things up adds variety and surprise. Maybe toss in a mimic, stirges, some undead, and some encounters that can be avoided through cleverness or diplomacy.

4b. Make sure your adventure includes chances for social interactions. Maybe one of the orcs seeks out the PCs to parley after the first combat encounter, seeing an opportunity to betray the chief to his advantage. Give the PCs a chance (and a reason) to interrogate a prisoner. Have the evil cleric monologue at them. Have the mimic be one of the intelligent variety and have it bargain with them. Players love to talk to monsters, in my experience, and some characters may consider this their time to shine.

4c. Make sure your adventure has meaningful choices and interesting locales. In any given room with a choice of things to examine or doors to leave by, there should be something to differentiate between them. For example, if there are three doorways, don’t have them identical and featureless. Maybe one them has a briny smell, and the PCs can hear the lapping of ocean waves from it, one smells faintly of decay, and the buzzing of flies it audible, and one smells wet dog and blood, and there are sounds of snarling and growling. The PCs don’t know exactly what’s down each one, but they now have interesting information they can use to inform their decision. This is always preferable to just going down a path arbitrarily, because it doesn’t seem to matter.

4d. Look at the classes, races, and backgrounds the players chose. Are there a lot of martial classes? Make sure there’ll be plenty of chances for fighting. Is there a wizard? Perhaps include a magical puzzle their spells can help with. A cleric and a paladin? Definitely put in some undead. Maybe someone’s playing a dwarf; if the dungeon is an old dwarven ruin, make sure to add some details that they’ll pick up on that the others won’t. If one is a Noble, perhaps put some clues that the evil high priest is being bankrolled by a rival family. These touches will make it all more personal and hopefully interesting to the group.

5. Plan for success, but accept that not everyone will want to keep playing. If you enjoy playing with these folks, maybe you’ll want to propose that you keep playing and expand things into a full campaign. If they’ve had fun, they just might be interested. You have to understand, however, that D&D isn’t for everyone. Some people may simply be being polite in agreeing to play. Or maybe Bob from Marketing just doesn’t get into it and would rather pass on future games. That’s okay. You gave them the chance to play, and, if it’s not their thing, that’s nothing for you to take personally.

I hope this helps, Anonymous. I myself am going to be running for some people who’ve never played before in the near future. I’ll wish us both luck in these games.

[shiny-jr]

I did the math and I have a warning for you twst players on the English server who like to spend your gems immediately to collect all the cards. Here’s how I realized the looming problem... 

I was talking with a friend about twst and spending on cards when I suddenly had a flashback to October of 2020. I remember seeing a strange amount of official art from twst and lots of people who played it back then (it was fairly new and only in Japanese) freaking out. So of course, not being able to recall much, I looked it up and I remembered everything. Buckle up, y’all, because during October they’ll likely give us the Halloween event that has not one, not two, but three individual SSRs (and SRs) you have to wish for them you want to get them. Anyways, there’s also a second Halloween event with three more SSRs but I don’t think they’d dump that much on us all of a sudden. At least, I’m hoping not... 

I’ll list the Halloween characters you can wish for at the very end, in case you may or may not want to look since some people may kinda consider those spoilers I guess. BUT before that, there’s more I have to warn you about. 

Like I said, I did the math. Scarabia started about April 5. This is where the numbers roll in. Hear me out. Pomefiore dropped this June, right? Meaning it took about three months for Scarabia to end. Accounting the fact that each chapter gets longer as we progress, I predict that Ignihyde will fall at a very bad time for those who like to collect all the cards. Let’s say Pomefiore takes about four months, so it’s longer than Scarabia. In the case that it does actually take about four months or a little longer, that means Ignihyde may drop sometime between September or October. Which is ALSO when the Halloween event would take place. So around the same time you’d have those three Halloween SSRs, Idia SSR, Ortho SSR, all around the same time (also considering they don’t decide to drop the second Halloween event too). Not to mention the birthday cards between then which are Jamil Viper (September 12th), Ace Trappola (September 23rd), Jack Howl (October 11th), Trey Clover (October 25th), Jade & Floyd Leech (November 5th). 

I could be wrong, but I just thought I’d try to give y’all a heads up in case you want to save for them. For all I know, they could push back the main story to make room for the events. Hopefully I’m wrong and we do get more time, but we never know. After all, they did dump the second beans day event on us out of nowhere. Who knows what they’ll do? Oh, and after some thought, I don’t think we’ll see the second Fairy Gala Event until after Ignihyde, considering it takes place after the whole Ignihyde mess. Again, I could be wrong, but that’s just my guess. Sorry for the long message, I’m pretty sure I sound like the gif below. Anyways, scroll past the gif if you want to see which cards might be available during Halloween. If you don’t want to see it, then don’t keep scrolling. I hope my message helps you get the cards you want! 

Here’s the Halloween cards the Japanese server got back in 2020:

and then in 2021: 

[weareallstardustfallen]

hello empiresblr i have watched pix's video and i am, once again, back with analysis, because this is just my life now. today's thesis:

pixl and fwhip are narrative foils.

there's a lot of similarities between them, both as characters in the narrative and their role with that and just in general. pixl even pointed out some of them today: they've got similar philosophies when it comes to making use of the corruption, and they're both the kind of extra that it takes to put elder guardians under sausage's base. they play off of each other really well, and it's very fun to see, but i'm getting off topic bc a good dynamic does not a narrative foil make.

their role in the narrative is really mirrored, especially in their character development. towards the beginning of the story, fwhip was one of the main antagonists, alongside sausage; that's obvious from all of their interactions during basically everything preceding the peace ravine. pixl, on the other hand, was quite firmly on the protagonist's (jimmy's) side, and that was also abundantly clear. it was fairly unambiguous that fwhip was an antagonist who was doing bad things, and pixl was a character who was unconditionally on the protagonist's side.

and then the story got complicated, and their dynamic got interesting; specifically, when it came to the dragon fight.

fwhip was, for what's basically the first time (iirc) acting as a heroic figure. he messed up by sending jimmy into the end, sure, but as soon as he realized that he started thinking about what he could do to make sure that the dragon didn't die, and immediately gave back the cod head and apologized, sincerely, to jimmy. it may have been somewhat caused by his own fear of xornoth, but regardless of his motives, he did everything right. if we look at who the protagonists seem to be for this arc; it's less clear than before, but i would say scott and shubble, and of course the anti-xornoth side of things more generally; he was aligned with the protagonists.

pixl, on the other hand, was working against the protagonists. he was trying to kill the dragon, and though he wasn't villainous in the way that Sausage and Joey were in that interaction, he was definitely acting in the interests of the main big bad. unintentionally, perhaps, but he was told that he was doing something that was wrong and he chose to ignore that. it's sort of similar to how fwhip was acting as an antagonist, except for their intent; pixl didn't know the consequences of what he was doing, and he was just trying to get home, but regardless the similarities are there.

like fwhip, pix had a moment of realization that killing the dragon was wrong, but his came after the dragon was already dead. he didn't have the chance to immediately backtrack and mitigate the mistakes he'd made, because it was a bit of a pandora's box situation; you can't shut that once it's open.

(also, unrelated to the thesis- i think it's very interesting how fwhip, of all people, is the one he called out for during his vision. mr riffs explain)

his reaction is different to fwhip's, though, in what i find to be a very interesting way! both of them share the fact that they are so protective of their citizens, and care a lot about keeping them safe- it's obvious with just about everything pixl's done since the dragon fight and how every action seems to somehow lead back to the good of pixandria, and fwhip is often worrying over and checking in on his villagers, like after he returns from the dragon fight, and after the test subject dream (thank you birch for the reminder on that one!) and both of their reactions lead back to that same protectiveness. but where fwhip's reaction is action- building up the empire to keep them safe- pixl's is overwhelming guilt. he acts, with the ghast farm and solidifying his alliances and working towards taking down sausage, but the core emotion that is driving him right now is guilt.

another point- their major mistakes in the dragon fight come down to what they know really well, and how in that moment, their knowledge fails them.

pixl is really, really good at knowing how the world works. in every interaction, he always seems to be the one who knows the specifics of the mechanics they need, and the one who is teaching the person he's talking to- he's very confident in his knowledge of what makes the world tick, and exactly how to utilize that. of course, this could come down to pixl as a player having a lot of knowledge of the game's mechanics, but i'd also point towards things like the vigil- pix is a very experienced character, as well as minecraft player.

and in the dragon fight? he knows he needs to get home, and get his allies home. he knows that to avoid dying in the void, the dragon needs to be killed. he knows how to kill the dragon. his logic leads him to a very clear conclusion, and one he's absolutely certain of- but he doesn't quite account for all the factors. he doesn't realize that xornoth is another concern, and he pays for it.

fwhip, on the other hand, seems to really get people. this is actually most clear in his first act interactions with jimmy- he's fantastic at knowing exactly what buttons to push, how to needle at him until he gets the reaction he wants. it carries over to his interactions with others, too, which is what makes him such a good manipulator. he knows what makes people tick, and how, if he so chooses, to exploit that.

and his fatal flaw in the dragon battle, just like pix's, is the fact that this knowledge isn't quite enough, or he's too certain of himself without knowing the consequences. he knew exactly what to do to send jimmy into the end- he was dead certain, and right, that jimmy would walk into a trap if he thought he could get the cod head back as a result. the problem was, well... he didn't think that jimmy would be dedicated enough to kill the dragon once he was there. he knew jimmy would take the bait; he didn't know he'd follow it that far.

a final note, which i think is probably less intentional (although you never know, they're very clever writers) but is a pretty bit of poetry- the vigil and the deepslate redstone sort of mimic each other. they're both something with a power that hasn't been or can't be quite explained, but is incredibly central to their empire and their character, and they both consider themselves sort of protectors or shepherds of it, in a sense. there is also a nice visual mirror there- a dark stone and a light stone, each full of lights.

conclusion: this story is so much fun to analyze and also gunpowder boys my beloved

[yesokaythatsfine69]

Man, That's Deep (Corpse Husband x reader)

Description: Y/n meets Corpse for the first time during a stream of Among Us. Things get a little chaotic from there.

Character(s): Corpse, Jacksepticeye (Sean), PewDiePie (Felix), Valkyrae (Rae), Ken, Disguised Toast (Toast)

Pov: 3rd person

Warning(s): cussing but besides that nah just a bunch of sweet stuff :)

A/n: hello! So I've recently hopped into the whole infatuation with Corpse thing, (it's kinda hard not to.) Thus I decided to write this. Hope you like it!

*none of the Gifs used are mine. Full credit goes to the maker.

A loud blast of thunder pounded the ground near y/n's house causing her to frown. Storms often rattled her, especially because she lived alone and dedicated a majority of her time to streaming and playing pretty frightening games. She tapped on her headphones and leaned back into her chair. Her eyes flashed to her server.

Is it storming here you're at?

"Yeah it's pouring down outside. Maybe it's a good time to play something else... something less terrifying." She ended the game and began to search for something else to stream.

"Any suggestions?" She asked the chat, scrolling through possibilities. Before she could pick, however, her phone buzzed. Reaching over, she picked up the device and checked it's screen. "Hold on, I got a message from Sean. Do you guys wanna watch me play some among us?"

She checked the chat. The responses were ones of excitement, as y/n rarely played among us let alone with the group that Sean played with but everytime y/n and Sean played something together things got interesting, considering how competitive the two were. Her eyes paused at a comment.

Will Corpse be there!?

She sat back in her chair, turning towards her computer. "Uhmm...I don't know actually. All I know is that they need a tenth person and I need a game to play that takes my attention away from this storm..." She began typing in the code.

"Although I've never played with him before nor have I talked to him. However-" she paused before pressing enter. "I do think it'd be cool to talk to him because he seems so kind...okay, I'm in."

She turned on the discord and unmuted, and almost instantly she was thrown into chaos. "She killed right in front of you, Felix!" Y/n's eyes widened and she looked into her camera. "Hey guys." She laughed, turning back to the game.

"Y/n!" Sean said cheerfully, ending whatever was left over from the previous game. A chorus of "y/n's" followed, until a deep baritone voice broke through. "Hello, y/n." She smiled softly at the sound, it being almost prettier than she had imagined. "It's nice to meet you guys."

"Oh yeah, y/n, I forgot you and Corpse haven't met before." Sean spoke as he changed the color of his among us character. "I've been wanting to meet you actually before this but Sean refused to give me your number." Corpse said, and y/n snorted as Sean made a gasping sound.

"That's not even-" "you know that's funny Corpse because I've been wanting to meet you too but Sean told me you didn't have phone." Y/n joined in and the group laughed. "Fuck off." Was all Sean could mumble before the game started and the screen flashed black.

Immediately muting, y/n smiled to herself. "His voice way deeper than I thought it would be. He was talking and I was like...man, that's deep." She giggled when Suddenly imposter flashed on her screen.

She bit her lip when she saw who it was with. Corpse. Their characters then fell into Mira hq, and y/n followed a group up into admin. Waiting for the bar to move until she was able to leave, and when she did she left with Felix and toast, following them into medbay.

The three entered, each going to a separate station. "So, I'm gonna kill toast first, but I gotta get these lights off first." She winked at the camera, before waiting until Rae and sykkuno also entered. Then she shut off the lights and killed. The group seemed to miss it as they hurried to turn the lights back on.

After getting the lights on, she made her way to decontamination, where she saw corpse. He had apparently been waiting for her, and they unmuted mics to speak.

"How's it going?" She laughed. "It's going. Did you need some protection?" It was Corpse's turn to laugh. "From who, we're both imposters?" They shared a laugh. "Oh my God, I killed toast like twenty minutes ago and they still haven't found him."

Corpse laughed again and y/n became dedicated to pulling that sound from his lips as much as she could. "I'll admit, they're a little slow."

Then, both Sean and Felix entered. Without uttering a word and almost in complete synchronization they double killed. Y/n giggled as they escaped, putting herself back on mute.

"This is so much fun! I love killing my friends!" Finally as she spoke that someone has found toasts body. "Medbay." Rae's cartoonish voice relayed. "Oh my, there's like five people dead." It was true, there were like five people dead. Corpse had found the time to kill two others before the double kill.

"I think- I think that it may be y/n." Sykkuno said, and y/n immediately sat up. "Why? I was in medbay with you and left before you did. Actually I think that was the last time I saw toast, was with you in medbay."

"Yeah and I've seen y/n a lot in the game. I haven't seen you sykkuno." Corpse said, coming to y/n's aid. Her cheeks reddened when he said her name. "Yeah, and you seem almost too trusting." Rae said.

Y/n smiled. "I'm voting Sykkuno. I'm not sure who the other one is, though." The four argued slightly and y/n muted. "Corpse...is so good."

She turned to the server, seeing everyone thoughts.

Wow y/n and corpse r so cute

Her cheeks reddened.

I think someone may be crushin 👀

"Guys, come on! I have just met him!" However her words were just a feeble attempt and she turned back to the game. Sykkuno was the last to vote, voting for himself.

With that, they won. Who knew how satisfying the word victory in big red letters could be. They arrived back into the lobby, where Sean immediately let them have it. "My own best friend! My own. Best. Friend. Killing me. In cold blood."

"if you don't want me to kill you play better!" Y/n jokingly shouted back. "Besides y/n and I are best friends now." Corpse spoke as he put on a flower which matched the one y/n's among us character wore.

"All I'm gonna say is that I knew her before all of you." Rae said, adding to the chaos. Y/n laughed and turned to her server.

Ooohhh are they fighting over you?

She rolled her eyes and returned to the chat. "Everytime we play with someone new you do this." Felix was complaining, also changing into the flower y/n wore.

Finally the new game was started and y/n got crew mate. It wasn't as exciting and she couldn't talk to corpse now, but it was still fun.

She got a few tasks done, and from the corner of her eye she saw toast and corpse and enter the are she was in, in reactor. "Corpse!" She said a little too excitedly. Recovering quickly she added, "And Toast!"

However part of her doubted her watchers were amused.

The lights turned off. "Damn, that was-" almost immediately she was killed by toast, probably giving her a taste of her own medicine. Immediately a hand covered her mouth and she groaned. "God fucking! What the hell toast!"

She sat in stunned silence for a second. "I guess I'll-" Corpse found her and immediately reported. "Y/N!" He laughed over his mic. "Not y/n!" "I guess that means we're the only ones left with matching flowers." Felix cut in.

"Alright who killed my best friend?" Sean said into the mic. "Wait, wait, wait. First of all- she's mine, sean-" in that moment y/n all but blacked out, but forced herself to show no reaction, lest her viewers smite her.

"and secondly. It's toast." "Toast you about to become burnt." Sean said lamely and y/n was lifted out her haze enough to snort at his bad joke. "What why is it me!?" "Because you were the last person I saw her with. It's definitely you."

Ken softly added. "I think he's right because I can't imagine corpse killing y/n." The others laughed, and y/n leaned back into her chair, slumping down.

Toast was voted out, and the game continued. Y/n was left to follow corpse around until, Felix came from behind and killed him.

"oh my God." Y/n said, laughing. Then corpse turned on his mic. "Y/n, we're both dead." She laughed again, "I know! The games definitely more boring now that we're gone."

For a few moments they spoke about the game, until y/n began telling him about the storm. "Where do you live?" "Uh, I live in Los Angeles. Usually it never storms here, though. Where do you live?"

"San Diego." She sat up. "Oh my God that's only like two hours away. We should hang sometime." He laughed. "I'd really enjoy that, y/n." "You could come up here and we could go bother some rich people. I know where James lives."

"I would love to bother rich people with you, especially James." She smiled. "Covid permitting of course." "Of course."

Finally that game ended, with them finally figuring out that it was Felix.

Y/n stretched out, and agreed to play one more game. This time she got imposter with Sean.

She laughed manically, and clapped her hands together excitedly. "This is gonna be good!" Together the two worked as a team, delightedly playing off each other. One would sabotage and the other would kill. However the two did have one weakness and it was definitely their competitive nature's.

It had become a who can kill the most players in a game contest. And y/n was now trailing behind until, finally, she found Rae and sykkuno all in the same room. Sean had followed her in and it looked like a perfect opportunity to commit a double kill. Y/n got Rae with a clean kill and Sean got sykkuno. Then in came corpse.

"fuck!" Y/n shouted, leaping from her chair "he saw us! Corpse totally saw us! Shit!" Both Sean and y/n said nothing waiting for corpse to speak. "Oh my God. Sean how could you!" For several seconds Sean didn't reply. Then he forced out a weak "what?" Corpse sighed. "He killed sykkuno right in front of me. I didn't see anyone else around."

Y/n's mouth dropped. He wasn't going to say anything. He was going to let her slide. Of course, Sean would be getting voted out but that was a small price to pay. She looked into her camera in shock.

Her server was blowing up.

He ain't gonna snitch on daddy

She covered her mouth for fear they'd hear her laugh.

Corpse suddenly became blind after watching Sean kill sykkuno

She voted poor Sean out and the game continued.

Corpse followed her around and watched as she killed more. Seemingly the last comment about him being blind was true.

Another victory was won, and y/n braced herself for the upcoming shitstorm that was the discord call. "I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU CORPSE!" Rae blasted. Y/n laughed until a loud blast of lightning shook the house and caused the lights to blink on and off. She yelped, her cat running into the room.

"wow, what was that?" Ken asked. "You okay, y/n?" Sean's voice called. She sighed. "Yeah, but I think i better log off. It was a lot of fun you guys! Thanks for letting me join."

A chorus of "yeah!" "No problem!" And "join us again!" Welcomed her. "Yeah, if y/n leaves I'm probably gonna leave too. I'll see you guys soon."

Ignoring the ohhh and aww comments of her chat she signed off.

Her phone rang and she smiled, answering it and pulling it to her ear. "Sean finally give you my number?"

Corpse laughed from the other end. "yeah, yeah. You were serious about meeting up right?" She chuckled softly. "Very." She heard him sigh happily. "Good, good. Hey if you're staying up maybe we could...chat some more?"

She smiled brightlyand her cheeks hurt. "I'd want nothing more." Suddenly her ohone buzzed and she pulled it from her ear to check. It was a message from Sean.

"you're on the phone with him right now, aren't you?"

-------------------------------------------------

A/n: please feel free to give critism and requests. Thanks for reading!

[daandyli0n]

citizens’ eyes au

ah yes, another dsmp au. this one is based on the concept of other citizens on the dsmp aside the main 30 or so players.

the plot of the dsmp doesn’t really change (much), this will mostly just be some ideas about stuff that would happen/change slightly.

@northern-loner you said you’d be interested in seeing this, so here it is!

(this is about the dsmp characters)

here we go:

-i feel like there were a lot more people in the beginning, even before c!tommy. i feel like c!dream basically just went ‘screw it’ and opened the floodgates. people have just been coming in to watch/be a part of the chaos ever since.

-“Big sis?” “Yeah?” “Dream’s fighting the new kid who got here last week.” “...Which one?” “The loud, blonde British kid.” “...What is it over...?” “A couple of music discs, from what I’ve heard-” “OVER A COUPLE OF WHAT NOW!?”

-i’d like to think that a lot of the citizens consider the disc wars the weirdest, most insane thing ever on the server.

-OH, THE NUMBER OF WINGED HYBRIDS WHO FIGURED OUT THAT THEY COULDN’T FLY ON THE SERVER AND WERE OUTRAGED-

-the l’manburg independence war sure was something...

-the main area of the smp was a mix of people who didn’t want to be involved with the war (with reasons varying from “I have family/friends who live there, and I don’t want to fight them,” “I have no reason to fight them/I’m just not interested,” and “I honestly support them, I just don’t want to join them (at the moment, anyway)”) and people who basically saw c!dream looking for soldiers and went “Sign me the f**k up.” Again, their reasons for doing so varied (some genuinely didn’t like l’manburg and some just wanted to get involved/didn’t care).

-i tried to figure out how the citizens could’ve actually gotten involved during the final control room, and, well, i sure found a way!

-the l’manburg citizens from that time refer to this event as either “The Betrayal” or “The Massacre.” it is usually referred to as the latter.

-what happened for the citizens (who stayed behind at l’manburg) was that, before the main group actually got to the room, they were ambushed by a lot of c!dream’s soldiers. it was bloody. people on the side of the dream team had mixed feelings about what they were doing. some killed l’manburg soldiers with no remorse. some felt guilt, but also felt as though they had gone to far to turn back, so they continued on despite the guilt. some couldn’t bring themselves to do it, or stopped when they were begged for mercy. it was terrible day for both sides.

-after the bow duel, c!tommy was pretty much considered a hero by the citizens. he became generally well-liked by his fellow soldiers for his actions.

-very few people in l’manburg left with c!eret afterwards.

-even people on c!dream’s side laughed at him (or attempted to hide it) when c!wilbur did his “YOOOOOOOOOOOO SUCK IT GREEN BOOOOYYY!” speech. look, even they’ve gotta admit it’s pretty funny.

-there was a huge celebration that night. people were laughing, messing around, dancing and singing, you name it. people were congratulating each other for their bravery.

-however, some people still had suspicions that the peace wasn’t meant to last...they were, at least, sort of right..

-the elections in a nutshell:

most citizens: “Okay, this looks pretty bad, but what are the odds Schlatt will actually win?”

-well...he won.

-a lot of people followed wilbur and tommy when they were exiled.

-On Today’s Episode of: “c!Punz Doesn’t Help Their Reputation With The L’manburg Citizens”- (aka, a lot of citizens witnessed c!wilbur’s 2nd death. they ain’t happy with c!punz)

-look, this is all i can see in my mind when i think about c!dream shows up in pogtopia:

c!dream: This is how I enter Pogtopia-

c!dream, bursting into the ravine: WHAT’S UP, F**KERS?!

the citizens who followed wilbur and tommy, who also heavily distrust c!dream at this point for...obvious reasons: Why do you have that TNT?!

c!dream, handing c!wilbur TNT: F**K YOU, THAT’S WHY!

-well...he wasn’t entirely joking on the reason- (foreshadowing)

-a lot of people tried to be subtle in either telling c!wilbur he needs to get therapy or in trying to actually give therapy themselves. it didn’t help much, but it was a nice thought, at least.

-stuff in manburg was getting bad quick, and anyone who had genuinely voted for schlatt2020 was hopefully regretting it at this point.

-some people were starting to feel bad for c!quackity. mans was going through it at this point. some people were trying to subtly tell him “hey, divorce is always an option man-”

-HOO BOY THE RED FESTIVAL. SO MANY PEOPLE JOINED POGTOPIA AT THIS POINT-

-c!dream basically betrayed pogtopia (because c!schlatt gave him the revive book), and like 90% of the citizens that were there just simultaneously screamed “I F**KING CALLED IT!”

-nov 16th happens. people die. some are dead-dead along with c!wilbur and c!schlatt.

-not a lot of people really liked the fact that c!wilbur apparently decided that a 16 year old would be a good idea of a president.

-ooo boy, time to rebuild l’manburg, surely nothing will go wrong! ...right?

-oh would you look at that: Exile™

-most people’s opinions on what happened were basically “Okay, look, was it bad that he griefed a dude’s house? Yeah. Did he deserve to get exiled for it? Absolutely not. He’s also only 16 years old-”

-remember when i said that a good portion of the citizens in l’manburg were very close with/liked c!tommy? oh ho ho, trust me. c!dream found that one out the hard way during the exile arc.

-so many people tried to visit c!tommy. c!dream attempted to stop several of them. but guess what? people started trying to secretly visit logstedshire. it was at this point he probably should’ve realized his mistake.

-so, do you guys remember dream’s lore video about the revive book? 

-... i’m just gonna link this post. to summarize, it wasn’t just c!vikk and c!lazar who got experimented on...

-people in l’manburg were really scared at this time. many stayed with at least one other person. they just didn’t want to be next.

-c!tubbo just came back one night, covered in mud. he looked like he had been crying.

-the citizens asked c!tubbo what had happened, why had he been crying? c!tubbo simply turned back to the crowd following him and and simply muttered, “...We need to have a funeral.” he turned to go back to his house. l’manburg’s citizens stood there in shock. they knew what he was saying.

-tommy dead? he was dead? but-but that was impossible! tommy, the kid who had practically won them their independence? he couldn’t be dead!

-...could he?

-some simply grieved as the butcher army prepared. some turned their anger to c!dream, believing him to be hiding something.

-(he was; several things, actually.)

-the fact that both c!dream and c!punz helped with c!techno’s escape didn’t really help either of their reputations in l’manburg.

-doomsday eventually happens. everyone’s a mixture of being overjoyed that c!tommy’s back and terrified because their homes are about to be destroyed.

-people also die on this day.

-some people witness the argument between c!dream and c!tommy. it’s the first time any of them truly notice that c!tommy has changed, and not in a good way. the kid is traumatized. what had dream done to him? also, c!dream’s little comment to c!tommy along the lines of “I think you’re just too fun.” was something that had sent chills down the spines of the people who had heard it. because Oh. He sure had messed this kid up, didn’t he? for some, that comment not only chilled them, but enraged them.

-if many of them could’ve, they would’ve gone with c!tommy and c!tubbo to fight c!dream in a heartbeat.

-c!dream gets put in prison. people rejoice.

-life goes on, the egg starts to come along, people get recruited, you know; the usual.

-c!tommy dies in prison. some mourn, some try to enter the prison to murder his murderer. he comes back, people are shocked.

-oh yeah, there would probably be more prison guards in the prison. some of whom were probably witnesses to c!dream’s torture...

-a lot of ex-l’manburg citizens moving to other factions...many move to las nevadas...some go to snowchester...some go to kinoko...

-more!!! therapists!!! on the server!!!

-doctors!!!

-(Ad Voice™) Are You Tired of New Members Being Sympathetic to c!Dream And Never Really Learning What He Had Done? Well Not Anymore!

aka:

c!michael mcchill: Why is Dream in Prison?

the citizens, who have gathered a whole list of his known crimes at this point: ...would you like us to list that alphabetically or chronologically?

-c!wilbur comes back. many are unhappy for various reasons. some miss ghostbur...some try to get c!wilbur to go to therapy (and fail).

-c!slime dies and people lose their minds.

-c!dream escapes. people are afraid.

-The Tommyinnit Protection Squad™ Assembles. many want to help hunt c!dream down.

-OH THE EGG IS BACK?? JUST WHAT WE ALL NEED RIGHT NOW.

-someone help these poor guys.

that’s the main plot things i can think of for right now. i would actually love to talk more about this concept! i love talking about this concept actually!

[1kook]

card swiped (3)

→ jeon jungkook x (f) reader

→ Now, Jungkook was never one for romance, far from the sappy type. But why couldn’t he word it more softly, gently? He wasn’t just trying to fuck you, he was trying to… make love.  GENRE romance, smut, teensy angst WARNINGS eventual smut, mentions of sex, virginity plays a huge role OTHER college crushes, childhood friends to lovers, besties to lovers, volleyball player!jk, student council pres!oc, seokjin is 32... and a a coach lol<3 RATING m (18+) WC 1.5k

NOTES (!) seokjin being a hot 32 year old <3 jk gets progressively more dumb as it goes, prayer circle <3 lmk what u think !

[ masterlist ]

The truth is, the reason Jungkook doesn’t lie that much is because he’s terrible at it. 

His mother had found out soon enough who put that dent on the car after a slip-up at the dinner table. His high school coach had learned he had purposely skipped out on practice after an accidental snapchat and jealous teammate had snitched. And, well. Fifteen minutes after the end of practice finds him sitting outside the gymnasium, a grimace on his face as he considers running back to your room and confessing to all his lies. Admitting he’s still a virgin— which was practically of no use to you —and maybe even revealing his own recently uncovered feelings was the easy way out. 

Thankfully, Assistant Coach Kim Seokjin is there to knock some sense into him. The hard plastic of the clipboard they use to outline their attacks smacks him hard over the head, making Jungkook’s bones rattle from his skull down to his toes as he steps up behind him. He whirls around to glare at the perpetrator, only to come face to face with the aforementioned assistant coach. “Go home,” Seokjin says, twirling the gym keys in one hand. “I’m trying to lock up.”

“What’s stopping you,” Jungkook huffs, tucking his knees to his chest, ignoring the awfully rude manner in which Seokjin nudges him away, foot against his back as if he’s just an annoying pile of cardboard boxes in his way.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Seokjin asks casually, doesn’t sit next to Jungkook on the steps because he’s always been a little too posh. According to Taehyung, Kim Seokjin graduated from some elite university in another country with near immaculate all-around player statistics before Jungkook even knew what a volleyball was. His success and fame in the world of collegiate volleyball is why he never wears the standard-issued slippers around the court, always some high-end, luxury brand. One glance slightly to his left has Jungkook meeting the black stripe of the frequently sought after Givenchy sneakers head on. 

He scoffs, a sound that Seokjin doesn’t approve of if the karate chop he lands on the back of his neck is anything to go by. “Ow,” Jungkook flinches, pushing him away with an irritated sigh before eventually slumping over his knees again because it’s the exact same thing you do to him sometimes. Study nights— dates, his brain supplies now —where he begins gazing off into space are filled with numerous karate chops to the neck in an effort to get him to focus on his homework. “Come on, Jungkookie,” you always tease, playful smile, lithe fingers toying with the corners of the pages in your book in a way that was almost sensual. But then he does a double-take because he’s aware of the rose-tinted lens he’s unknowingly slapped over it, something he would have maybe not noticed pre-realization of his feelings. And even he is shocked by the absolute seductiveness his brain inserts into an otherwise innocent memory. He’s pretty sure you haven’t called him Jungkookie in years— was his brain trying to hint at something here?

Jungkook groans, knocking his head against his knees as a form of self-punishment for his lecherous thoughts concerning his best friend. 

But his show of emotions must move Assistant Coach Kim because, after a moment of trying to concuss himself against his own knee, there’s a hand placed on his shoulder that makes Jungkook pause. He doesn’t even bother turning around, just throws his head back to look at Seokjin upside down. He’s got a double chin from this angle. “It’s a girl, isn’t it,” his coach sighs, looking at Jungkook with what can only be described as an unimpressed expression. 

“No,” Jungkook defends even though it’s true. “Can’t I just be sad for oth—“

“I heard Jimin call you a simp on the way out,” Seokjin says rather bluntly. And then he surprises Jungkook a second time as he throws aside his posh status to sit on the dirty concrete steps beside him with a sigh. “What did you do?” 

See, Jungkook could lie here and prance off to deal with his own problems. Leaving Seokjin and everyone else in the dark concerning his personal life was, honestly speaking, the smartest thing to do. He didn’t mind his volleyball teammates and friends (in this case, his coach), but he also wasn’t too fond of being relentlessly teased throughout the entire five or more hours they spent together almost every day of the week. 

But also… 

If what Taehyung had said is true— that being, if Kim Seokjin is the illustrious bachelor who charmed his way into multiple foreign panties all whilst demolishing the spirits of liberos and defensive specialists in another country —then Jungkook needed to capitalize off his presence immediately. 

So he lays his cards out flat. “I… might’ve told my best friend I’d take her virginity,” he blurts out, turning to face Seokjin. For the most part, the older man doesn’t look too surprised. If anything, mildly amused. Jungkook quickly adds, “while also being a virgin.” 

“You’re a what,” Seokjin exclaims, chokes on his own saliva in an admittedly not Casanova, bachelor-esque fashion that ends with him coughing into his elbow and Jungkook hurriedly patting his back. “You?” Seokjin repeats once he’s composed himself. “Are a— don’t you have a girlfriend?”

Jungkook’s cheeks warm. “No, Coach. I do not have a girlfriend,” he emphasizes, because who knew sharing the details of his (lack of) sex life would be this embarrassing? 

Seokjin frowns. “What about that girl?” he asks, and Jungkook raises his brows. “You know the one. Carries around stacks of papers to sign, goes to all the games. The one who pats you on head all the time.” And he’s talking about you, of course he is, but the insinuation that other people might, maybe, possibly, perceive you as his girlfriend makes Jungkook malfunction. 

“She’s— That’s—“ he sighs, dropping his head down until his chin touches his chest, brushed against the lucky necklace you’d given him two years ago during their first trip to Nationals. “That’s… my best friend.” 

Beside him, Seokjin says, “the one you’re gonna fuck?” 

Jungkook lets out a long exhale. “Yes. The one I’m going to fuck.” And it’s so blunt and crude, not that it’s surprising coming from him, but it’s surprising because he’s talking about you. Now, Jungkook was never one for romance, far from the sappy type. But why couldn’t he word it more softly, gently? He wasn’t just trying to fuck you, he was trying to… make love. 

The thought must show on his face because Seokjin snorts. “Well, good luck.” 

And then he stands up and begins walking down the sidewalk and Jungkook can’t spring up fast enough. “Wait,” he gasps, clutching at his forearm. He feels like a dorky character in those dramas you like so much, the ones you force him into watching every time he comes over. Like he’s some disgraced son looking for his father’s approval. Except Assistant Coach Kim is neither his father nor someone he really wants approval from anyway. 

What he does want is pointers. From an experienced pro, if you will. 

Jungkook has to swallow down all his pride as a man to ask his next question. “H- How do I—“

Seokjin beats to it him with a flick to the forehead. “I’m your volleyball coach, kid,” he frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not your sex coach.” It’s a sensible rejection, one that Jungkook expected, but still. He deflates, let’s the weight of the world and his heavy gym bag nearly knock him onto the ground. 

But Assistant Coach Kim Seokjin is kinder than he lets on and, after one annoyed sigh, let’s him in on the secret Jungkook has been chasing for all his life. (Or, well, for the past few hours since he first propositioned you.)

“The key to impressing your partner is to always act like you know what you’re doing,” he tells him, arms crossed over his shoulders. It’s night now, the campus shrouded in darkness. But Jungkook swears a heavenly light shines down on Kim Seokjin just then, a halo appearing over his head when he jabs a finger against Jungkook’s chest. “Confidence is sexy.” 

“Confidence is sexy,” Jungkook repeats, feels like a kid who’s just met his favorite wrestler after years of being an avid fan, watching every match, memorizing every finishing move, collecting every figurine— it’s a little too specific but it makes sense in Jungkook’s case. You would understand this analogy perfectly, having grown alongside him during his iconic wrestling phase (before volleyball). You had indulged him in his interest, had let him practice those Do Not Try at Home moves on you again and again, even when you knew it ended with you bruised and crying, the twin pigtails you used to rock as a kid uneven and messy. But as your best friend, you had let him twist your arm and pin you to the count of three, because that’s what a good best friend did. 

And as your best friend, Jungkook was gearing himself up to completely, thoroughly rock your virgin world. Because that’s what a good best friend did.

Copyright © 2021, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

[generation-of-kuroko-and-kagami]

Midorima Shintarō: How Strong Is He?

So, I’m making this post in response to a couple asks I got (one by @taigaakagami and another anonymous one) asking some questions about Midorima:

Do I think Midorima is underrated in the GoM? This question includes Midorima being unable to go into the Zone/analysis on if he even needs the Zone.

What would it would be like if Midorima did enter the Zone? I’ll also talk about why Midorima hasn’t entered the Zone/if he even can enter the Zone.

Do I think Midorima is the best shooting guard in the series, despite the fact that characters like Hyuuga, Tatsuya, and Mibuchi are also strong shooting guards?

I don’t know that this post will be super long, but I’m going to try and answer these questions thoroughly. I’ll say upfront that I do think Midorima is the weakest of all the GoM members, excluding Kuroko. I’ve said this before in my posts, and the reasoning goes beyond the fact that Midorima is the only member of the GoM starters that hasn’t gone into the Zone. Let’s break down Midorima’s skills first, and then we can get into the comparisons.

TL;DR in bold

P.S. For the sake of argument, just know that when I say “GoM members” in this specific post, I never mean to include Kuroko. No offense to Kuroko, but on his own, he isn’t in the same league as the GoM starters.

Midorima’s Abilities & Weaknesses

Midorima’s basic abilities include his shooting accuracy, his defense, his intelligence, and his physical strength. He also improved his endurance over the course of the series to enhance his ability to shoot physically draining shots for longer periods of time. Of course, Kuroko no Basket is famous for naming every advanced ability a player has, so Midorima also has a few of those. His Super Three Point Shot allows him to shoot accurate three-pointers from the half-court and full-court lines, and the Sky-Direct Three Point Shot is a combination shot with Takao where Takao will pass the ball to Midorima’s hands--as he’s already in a shooting form--and Midorima makes the shot. This prevents any opponents from blocking the shot as Midorima can throw it off before the opposing team realizes what’s happened. Unless it’s Akashi, but we don’t need to get into that.

Though Midorima’s endurance isn’t a weakness for him anymore, like it was at the beginning of the series, he is still weak when it comes to the physicality of his GoM skills. Yes, he can make incredible shots that no one else can make, but it will definitely tear up his body in the process. If he’s able to make it to adulthood without seriously injuring his joints and muscles, he’ll be unstoppable, but until then, Midorima has to put limiters on his ability to remain healthy. Additionally, he can’t enter the Zone. Whether he needs to enter it or not is something we’re about to get into, but for now, it’s considered a weakness.

Is Midorima Underrated?

Asking if Midorima is underrated is kind of a subjective question, so really, this answer is up to whoever is reading this, but if I’m trying to be as objective as possible, I’m going to look at the comparisons between him and the other GoM members. How do fans of KnB react to Midorima in comparison to the other members? Do they generally think his abilities are weaker? Are his abilities weaker?

Here’s the thing: from what I know of the fandom surrounding KnB, it seems that people simply find Midorima’s abilities boring. Yes, everyone loves the Sky-Direct Three, but that’s because it’s a Midorima/Takao thing. It’s an awesome skill because it needs both of them. I think the mystique that comes with Akashi, the overwhelming awe that comes with Murasakibara, the amazement that comes with Aomine, and the surprises that come with Kise are too difficult to compete with. Midorima doesn’t have the same wow factor that they do. So, to that end, I don’t think Midorima is underrated because he is what he is. Some people really love him as a character and a player, and some people probably dislike him. But I don’t think people are underestimating his abilities. I think it’s perfectly clear to most people that his abilities are the most vanilla, if you will, despite potentially being the most useful. Plus, there’s the fact that he can’t enter the Zone. So, you’d be forgiven if you thought Midorima was the weakest based on that since the other members have all gone into the Zone.

Does Midorima Need the Zone?

Is Midorima underrated on the grounds that people think he’s weak for not being able to go into the Zone, despite him not even needing the Zone to being with? That is a possibility, yeah. I’ll talk about what a Midorima-in-the-Zone playstyle would look like in a minute, but I’ll agree with the notion that Midorima probably doesn’t need the Zone at all.

When players enter the Zone, you’re basically looking at the enhancement of all basic abilities. You’re faster, your more accurate, you’ve got more power. The downside to the Zone is that it drains the stamina of the player significantly. The requirements for entering are vast amounts of talent and passion for basketball.

The way I see it is that Midorima may actually be hindered by going into the Zone. The endurance training he completed to be able to use his abilities for an entire game would be wasted by draining his stamina in the Zone. Also, Midorima isn’t a very mobile player. He can be swift, and he does use power on defense, but his position as a shooting guard means constant movement isn’t necessary. Aomine, for example, needs to be able to drive and jump and dodge and pivot, so an increase in his physical abilities would only make those things more precise. Akashi needs to outmaneuver his opponents at the top of the key and make the correct passes to get the ball through, so being more agile benefits him. For Midorima, though, those improvements would go to waste.

What if Midorima did enter the Zone?

What would it look like for Midorima to be in the Zone? Why can’t he enter it already? Let’s answer that second question first. If Midorima meets both of the requirements for being in the Zone, why hasn’t he entered the Zone? Is it because he doesn’t have the talent? Well, no, because he’s a GoM member. And we know he loves basketball. So, what is it that keeps him away? I don’t think there’s a clear answer to this, but if I had to reach for one, it would be that Midorima doesn’t go one-on-one with people enough for him to focus in the way you need to if you’re gonna get into the Zone. I know that Midorima did go one-on-one with Kagami, but that showdown never had the same high-energy, high-movement feel that the Kagami/Aomine showdown did, or the Kagami/Kise one did.

As a shooting guard, Midorima is basically getting the ball to throw it off right away. He’s not in a position that favors one-on-one moments. I mean, of course, there’s always going to be some moments like that because shooting guards still have defenders, but it’s nothing like a power forward trying to make it past a center or a point guard trying to shake his defender so he can drive. It’s mostly just a.) the shooting guard gets the ball and b.) the defender tries to block it or knock it out of their opponent’s hands. Without the sense of rivalry being enhanced with one-on-one play, Midorima never really focuses hard enough to enter the Zone.

There is also the possibility that he can’t enter the Zone because he relies on his team more than the other GoM members. Which would also explain why Kuroko can’t go into the Zone. All of the GoM members rely on their teammates--well, Aomine is a work in progress, but he’s open to it, so we’ll leave that there--but Midorima is dependent on his team to perform at his best. Before meeting Takao, this wasn’t the case, but his skills elevated with the Sky-Direct Three, so his best now includes that. Meaning, he needs someone else to achieve it. Maybe that’s a stretch, but nonetheless. Look at it this way: Midorima is the only GoM member that hasn’t done the whole, “No offense to my team, but this moment is just about me” thing. Like, even Kise, who is super pro-teamwork, expressed his immaturity during his match with Seirin because he wanted to carry the burden of winning on his own. Midorima doesn’t do that, though, so maybe his lack of selfishness is why he can’t enter the Zone.

But what if he did?

I honestly don’t know that I can imagine a Midorima-in-the-Zone playstyle. It’s not like his accuracy can increase in the Zone if his accuracy is always 100%, right? I really think the only thing that would be different about Midorima in the Zone would be his speed. Which would, essentially, equate to him being able to throw shots off faster. I guess, potentially, he may step out of his traditional role as a shooting guard if he were in the Zone. Like, maybe he’d steal the ball back after a turnover or something. Takao definitely wouldn’t be able to keep up with him in the Zone, though, so I’m sure a game with Midorima in the Zone would end up like any other GoM-in-the-Zone game: Midorima running the whole thing by himself. I really don’t think it would look much different than the games we’ve already seen with Midorima, though. He’d just be sharper. I guess that’s why he was never written to go into the Zone because his abilities don’t really lend themselves to superhuman improvement. Probably because they’re already pretty superhuman.

Is Midorima the Best Shooting Guard in KnB?

Can I answer this with a short answer? Yes, he is. I’m not gonna front and say that the other incredible shooting guards in the series wouldn’t give Midorima a good fight. Tatsuya and Mibuchi, especially, but Hyuuga has also proven that he’s a worthy opponent for him. But it really comes down to accuracy. Midorima could be tricked by Tatsuya shots or foul off of Mibuchi’s, but they can miss. Midorima can’t. Actually, if it came down to a battle of accuracy, Hyuuga is probably the one I’d pick to go up against Midorima. And we’re talking individual abilities here, okay, not a team verses Midorima. One-on-one, Midorima’s basic abilities as a shooting guard outweigh anything else. That’s what they were designed to do when Midorima was written as a character, so I think it’s accurate to say that Midorima would win against any other shooting guard in the series 9 times out of 10. Now, that tenth time may be an interesting discussion to have, but that’s another post for another time.

Well, sorry this took so long to post. I meant to post it about a month ago, but hectic lives don’t leave room for KnB blogs. Anyway, please let me know your thoughts on this topic as I’m sure there are some of you reading that think Midorima is the strongest GoM player or that he’s so weak, any other shooting guard could beat him. I will try to make time for the pile of asks in my inbox in the future, so please bear with me and keep an eye out for what’s to come!

[d-criss-news]

20 Questions With Darren Criss: How Acting Has Helped Him Make New Music

While Darren Criss has graced our TV screens with a range of characters, from high schooler Blaine Anderson on Glee to serial killer Andrew Cunanan on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, he was last spotted just being himself, on our For You Page on TikTok. “I’m walking to rehearsal with a guitar on my back with a Trader Joe’s bag ... I did not bring an umbrella because I forgot that it was raining. I’m rocking that NYC musician life,” the Glee alum explained in the hilarious clip posted three days ago.

While Criss’ acting work has earned him acclaim and stardom, he leaned into making music during the pandemic. On Aug. 20, he dropped a new EP, Masquerade, featuring five new tracks that Criss says were inspired by the different characters Criss has embraced throughout his career. After Criss wrote songs for his musical comedy web series Royalties and Apple TV+’s animated sitcom Central Park before the pandemic struck the United States, he then used those experiences as a precursor to his new EP. As Criss continues to promote his new music, he answered 20 of Billboard's questions – giving us a peek into how his new EP came together, and how growing up in San Fransisco shaped him as an actor, singer and all-around artist.

1. What inspired your latest project, Masquerade?

Although I would have preferred that it come at a far less grim cost, I finally had the time. Before the pandemic, I had written 10 new songs for my show Royalties -- along with an original song for Disney and another for Apple’s Central Park. These were all assignments in which I was writing for a certain scenario and character. Go figure. It was the most music I had ever written in a calendar year. This really emboldened me to rethink how I made my own music— to start putting a focus on “character creation” in my songs, rather than personal reflection. The latter was not proving to be as productive. The alchemy of having this time and having set a new intention with my own songwriting and producing made me put on a few of my favorite masques and throw myself a Masquerade.

2. How do you think your background as an actor complements your music?

They are one and the same to me. I treat acting roles like musical pieces— dialogue is like scoring a melody; there’s pace, dynamics, cadence, tone. Physical characterization is like producing -- zeroing in on the bass line, deciding on the kick pattern. Vocal characterization is like choosing the right sonic experience, choosing the most effective snare sound, and mixing the high end or low end. It goes without saying that it works in the complete opposite direction. Making each song is taking on a different role literally and employing the use of different masques to maximize the effectiveness of the particular story being told.

3. On Instagram  you wrote that “Masquerade is a small collection of the variety of musical masques that have always inspired me.” Which track do you identify with most in your real life?

Everybody absorbs songs differently. Some key into the lyrics, some into the melody, some the production, some into vocal performance. When I listen to songs, I consider all of their value on totally different scales. So it’s hard to say if there’s any track I “identify” with more than any others, since I -- by nature -- identify with all of them. I think I just identify with certain aspects more than others. If it helps for a more interesting answer, I will say I enjoy the slightly more classical, playful -- dare I say -- more Broadway-leaning wordplay of “Walk of Shame,” but that’s just talking about lyricism. I enjoy the attitude of “F*kn Around,” the batsh--t musicality of “I Can’t Dance,” the relentless grooves of “Let’s” and “For A Night Like This.” All have different ingredients I really enjoy having an excuse to dive into.

4. What’s the first piece of music that you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

Beatles audio cassettes: “Help” and “Hard Day’s Night.” I just listened on repeat on a tape-playing Walkman until my brother and I got a stereo for our room with a CD player in it, which was  when I just bought the same two albums again, but this time as compact discs.

5. What was the first concert you saw?It’s hard to say, because my parents took us to a lot of classical concerts when we were small. But I guess this question usually refers to what was the first concert you went to on your own volition, and that my friend, was definitely Warped Tour ’01. My brother and I went on our own— two teenagers going to their first music festival, in the golden age of that particular genre and culture. It was f--king incredible.

6. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid?

My dad was in private banking and advised really, really wealthy people on how to handle their money. My mom was, by choice, a stay-at-home mom, but in reality, she was my dad’s consigliere. They discussed absolutely everything together. They were a real team, and I saw that every single day in the house. They both had a background in finance (That’s how they met in the first place.) and were incredibly skilled at all the hardcore adulting things that I absolutely suck at. They were total finance wizards together. So of course, instead of becoming an accountant, I picked up playing the guitar and ran as far I could with it. Luckily, they were all about it.

7. What was your favorite homecooked meal growing up?

My dad was an incredible chef. For special occasions, I’d request his crab cakes. They were unreal. I’ve never had a crab cake anywhere in the world that was good as my dad’s.

8. Who made you realize you could be an artist full-time?

I don’t know if I’ve actually realized that yet.

9. What’s at the top of your professional bucket list?

The specifics change every day, but the core idea at the top is to continue being consistently inconsistent with my choices, and to keep getting audiences to constantly reconsider their consideration of me. But I mean, sure, what performer doesn’t want to play Coachella? What songwriter doesn’t want to have Adele sing one of their songs? What actor doesn’t want to be in a Wes Anderson film?

10.  How did your hometown/city shape who you are?

San Francisco. I mean, come on. I was really lucky. The older I get, the more grateful I am for just being born and raised there. It’s an incredibly diverse, culturally rich, colorful, inclusive, vibrant city. By the time I was born, it had served as a beacon for millions of creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to gather and thrive. I grew up around that. The combination of that with having parents, who were unbelievably supportive of the arts themselves, laid an incredibly fortunate foundation to consider the life of an artist as a legitimately viable option. It’s a foundation that I am supremely aware is not the case for millions of young artists around the world. I was absurdly lucky.

11.  What’s the last song you listened to?

I mean probably one of mine, but not by choice. I know, lame. But I’m promoting a new EP, what’d you expect? But if you wanna know what I’ve been listening to, as far as new s--t is concerned: a lot of Lizzy McAlpine, Remi Wolf, and Charlie Burg.

12.  If you could see any artist in concert, dead or alive, who would it be?

The Beatles is an obvious "yeah, duh." Sammy Davis, Mel Tormé, or of course, Nat King Cole. I would’ve loved to see Howard Ashman give a lecture on his creative process and his body of work.

13. What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen happen in the crowd of one of your sets?

I feel like just having a crowd at all, at any one of my sets, is pretty wild enough.

14. What’s your karaoke go-to?

The real answer to this I’ll write into a book one day, because I have a lot to say about karaoke etiquette. I have two options here: I can either name a song that I like to sing for me, for fun, or I can name a song that really gets the group going. The answer depends on what kind of karaoke night we’re dealing with here. So I will say, after I’ve selected a ton of songs that services a decent enough party vibe for everyone else, then I would do one for me, and that would be the Beatles’ “Oh! Darling.”

15. What’s one thing your most devoted fans don’t know about you?

What I have up my sleeve.

16. What TV show did you binge-watch over the past year?

Dave is a stroke of genius. There are episodes that I believe are bona fide masterpieces. Also, My Brilliant Friend is a masterclass in cinematic television.

17. What movie, or song, always makes you cry?

It’s A Wonderful Life.

18. What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

Get used to sharing everything about yourself and your life now, or more astutely, to the idea that you don’t necessarily get to control how your life is shared. I know it’s not really your thing, but you’re gonna have to get used to it, so start building up those calluses now. And don’t worry, all the stuff you love now will be cool again in your mid-thirties, so keep some of those clothes because you’ll be a full-blown fashion icon if you just keep wearing exactly what you’re wearing. Oh nd also, put money into Apple and Facebook.

19.  What new hobby did you take on in the last year?

I’ve always been a linguaphile. My idea of leisure time is getting to study or review other languages. This past year, I took the time to finally dive into learning how to read, write, and speak Japanese. Other than making music, it was one of the biggest components of my 2020-2021.

20. What do you hope to accomplish or experience by the end of 2021?

I hope I get to play live shows again.