#My squad fighting on the bug front for the last 2 weeks

[cryo-lily]

Erata Prime, My squad's beloathed.

Also, my medic armor helmet would've saved me from that Auto Cannon shell right? ...Right? Or my buddy is just that good of a shot.

Eh... the bug got killed that's what matters.

[zwiezraczek]

Criminal - Chapter 7

Billy (viliain) x Female reader (cop)

Prologue/Chapter 1 - CHAPTER 2 - CHAPTER 3 - CHAPTER 4 - CHAPTER 5 - CHAPTER 6 -  CHAPTER 7:  He is a bad boy with a tainted heart -  CHAPTER 8

SUMMARY: You always wanted to become a police officer. And you became one of them, brilliantly and they offered you your first case. “The Ghosts” case. The case of fleeting people and one sneaky bastard parkouring around the town to annoy you. You swore to yourself to catch him them.

WORDS: 1.7k

NOTE: Am I updating this on Thursday? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Did I began to write again? Probably yes. I hope you’ll like it!!! 💕

TAGLIST: @onceuponadetectivedemigod​ @natsficrecs​ @suckerfor-fanfics​(leave a comment to be a part of it!) PERMANENT TAGLIST @suckerfor-fanfics​ (leave a comment to be a part of it!)

“Dear y/n,

This letter is an addition to our usual letters, because there was too much to write and not enough space left for our discussions I guess, I hope that our little Tom and Jerry game will be still as fun as it was before and that one will outsmart the other. :)

I spent the past few days thinking about what had happened the last night, I mean the last time we saw each other. It was kind of weird. In a good way I guess? It's funny how we keep on going back to each other. I mean, especially with the bondage running-gag and the fact that it's always you and me facing each other. And that we probably have something one against the other, but in a... Friendly manner? Like, you know, the friendliest we can get while we're enemies, nemesises, whatever we call each other.

It's kind of entertaining to know that there is another person working hard on our case, even if personally I think that you're not on the right track and that we, the Ghosts – I love this sick name, Seven approved it – aren't the real problem. So well, well, I don't really know what to tell. Kind of crazy for a cheeky and cocky guy like me, right? XD So yeah... Maybe I'll go with a “how are you feeling after all of this?”.

If you want, reply, and if you don't well... Don't? But it was nice to discuss with you without any gun between us, I mean like no guns involved in like “killing each other” manner, no in like “we definitely had not our guns in our pockets because we trust each other”.

A casual hug from Billy (I guess???)

Four for the cute rebel cop”

He was surely but slowly dragging you down, and you could feel it as you scratched your cat's head. Your smile widened the more you read the letter, with every word he had written especially for you, on a separate sheet to make your exchanges easier probably. You knew that it was probably bad, and highly unprofessional but he seemed to be a decent person. Really. He saved your ass when he could have told his teammates that you were there, and to torture you until you were about to reveal everything and then shoot you dead. Which would have been more convenient for him than keeping you under his roof. You put him in a kind of hell you would have preferred to avoid, truly.

And, besides, this “the Ghosts aren't the real problem” bugged you a lot. You read it a countless number of times, trying to decipher what he meant by this but you were unable to come up with a concrete explanation. And when you tried to talk to Jake about the possibility of the Ghosts not being the biggest problem, he arched his eyebrow and told you that you had worked too much on this case, but that it wasn't the moment to give up. And this was exactly what you were doing: not giving up despite the fact that this was the hardest case you could have gotten back in the days.

“What do you think, captain,” you asked your cat as he meowed you back before rubbing his face against your hand. “Yeah, we should definitely ask Billy what he meant and how he is right now. And especially, we should reply the Ghosts.” And without further ado, you went to your desk to reply.

~~~~

“Dear Billy,

I'll outsmart you, because I'm Jerry obviously! ^^

Yeah... It was really weird as an encounter, and I'm really sorry that I put you in this kind of situation. This is probably the first and last time that a cop will apologize for putting you in an uncomfortable and awkward situation like this, so take it and don't you dare telling anything! How your Ghosts squad reacted to me being in your house then? I'm sorry if they were absolutely mad about it, but at the same time you were stupid about this, I mean you had the head of the whole mission against you and the only thing you did was putting a blanket on me and allowing me to take a coffee? How unprofessional from you Billy!

Yes, these letters are actually the proof that we aren't as opposed as we should... Which is bad, very bad. It makes me consider everything in my life, should I stop being a cop? Should I become a criminal? Too many questions, not so many answers. But, I wanted to ask you... Why aren't the Ghosts the real problem? I mean, I know your criminal record, and you know it too because you did it, but... I can't really put a finger on it. I mean, at least properly, because I know some of your actions lead to dismantle some larger groups... And I can't put a finger on it, really. Which is annoying. It's even more annoying than your bondage running-gag, so now you know!

Thanks for asking! I'm better, I mean my back still hurts a lot, but my head is way better. I'm working on your case, trying to not become too crazy about all of this so you know... The usual. But a bit better because I have new information, so it's nice.

Yeah, we definitely had no guns. I mean, you didn't take my gun from my front pocket before putting me under the blanket, did you? ;) Don't push the buttons, or it will end badly Billy!

I accept the casual hug, a little embrace from y/n,

Y/n for the cocky Four”

Happily, the squad wasn't aware of all of this. Happily he hadn't to tell One about everything that had happened during that night, happily One or anybody never knew about you being in his house. He sighed, relieved. He wanted to try, by himself, to help the squad and you. Because, in the end, you were on the same side, right? You wanted justice and peace, you wanted safety for the weak and defenseless. You played in the same team, but you were constantly trying to show who was the best at this game. And this, especially this was the chance to finally reunite.

And he couldn't tell that this little solo mission wasn't pleasant. He liked writing letters, how much he did and how much he looked forward to hear from you again ans again. And when the letter after your last encounter came, he immediately took a look on the second piece of paper, hoping that you have replied, and what he held was more important than the mission he settled himself. And yes, it was. It stressed him out, it killed him to know if you would reply. And you did, and he loved it but he hated it at the same time for being so excited for a simple letter. A letter. From a cop. A cute cop. He was apparently doomed to coming back to you forever, and to be stuck with you somehow. And this wasn't unpleasant news, truly.

You made him feel normal, or a bit more normal because a criminal couldn't feel normal at all. And as much as he wanted it to continue, he should have wanted it to stop.  But he couldn't make it stop, it was too late and he was fucked up as a spy and as a human being. Probably falling for your shining eyes... Billy, come on! Be serious!

~~~~

“Dear y/n,

We'll see, who know I'm maybe the dog, I can't remember his name, but you know what dog I'm talking about! :)

Wow, the cute cop is apologizing! It'll be raining coins from the sky today! What a blessed day! I'm so lucky today! … I was a little bit too enthusiastic, I knew it had to hid something, this compliment had to hid something. Why are you so mean y/n? :'( Well, they don't know you were here? ^^' I mean, I didn't want One to yell at me for this so I kind of... Did not tell him? Because why not? You're not the only one with secrets now, hell yeah! And come on! Our little chat was nice, don't make me regret saving your ass!

You should definitely become a criminal, we still recruit in the Ghosts squad, so if you want drop your cv and One will be PLEASED with your offer! And... Yeah, you're having your finger on it. Like, you absolutely have your finger on it. So dig a bit deeper, and you'll find out many things that weren't that obvious in the first place but are really obvious if you look close enough. Incredible, I'm helping you with your case on me. If this isn't irony I don't know what it is! XD And don't you disrespect my bondage offer! It was a nicely put one, especially with the trap in front of you, so now you know! You should be grateful that I warned you about the trap! How ungrateful these cops are in those days!

Great to hear that you're feeling better, I was worried about you, I mean I had to watch after you for a night so I wanted to know. Happy to know I'm only an information provider :'( You didn't even ask how I felt... So you know, I feel great, never felt better!

Next time we see each other it's at noon under the sun to fight a duel! Only with stares, no guns obviously! :P

A little gentle pat on your back, but not to hard because you're still suffering I guess

Billy for the ungrateful cop”

You didn't know how to make it stop. It was already three weeks after the last time you saw him, and these two letters were making you feel strange. You were sometimes forgetting that it was all for your job, that they were the bad guys and that you were the good one. But apparently the world wasn't as black and white as it seemed.

And you probably weren't as impartial as you wished you were. You smiled while reading his letter, your cat laying on your desk. You loved it, you hated it, but you couldn't keep but coming back to him apparently.

[pollylynn]

Title: Dead Air WC: 1500

She won’t call the silence deafening. That would be hyperbole. It would be an oxymoron. It would be any number of the literary sins that are his purview. Were his purview.

It’s not deafening. It’s not even silence. It’s . . . some kind of lull, though. Something missing from her sonic backdrop that she can’t place at all, but its absence makes everything else too loud, too immediate, too pressing.

She thinks it’s the downstream silences at first. Ryan and Esposito are the opposite of subtle in this as in all things. They give his name wide berth. They turn the volume on their conversations way, way down when they’re tossing back and forth some joke he would have made—some joke he did make that they’ve repeated ad nauseam in the past. They mouth Castle Zone not quite behind her back when they’ve decided that adolescent fantasy and wild speculation are the keys to cracking a particular case.

But it’s not their silence that’s amplifying the rest of the world. It’s not the contagious silences that drop like a stone in the break room, the elevator, the odd corners of the bullpen, because word has spread out from the two of them as they warn everyone that Richard Castle is persona non grata in this homicide squad.

It’s not Lanie’s brand of silence, either, though that has a decibel level all its own. They haven’t fought. The two of them are simultaneously too close and not close enough to ever really fight, but they’d had a moment in the wake of Gina of the Rolling Suitcase, Gina of the Intended Summer on Top of Him. Lanie had come out of the impromptu workroom celebration—as only Lanie could have—with her fist cocked and her arms open. It had been too much. For Kate, it had been too much. It had been a moment, and now Lanie ostentatiously avoids the subject of him altogether. But it’s not that silence

It’s not the silence of her dad when he stops asking how her shadow is and what hideous crimes he’s committed lately, or the silence of the wordless workings of Montgomery’s jaw every time he catches her still at the board when he flips the lights off at night or on in the morning.

It’s not the silence of day after day without him. It’s not even her own silence.

That may be the weirdest thing about it. She expects it to be the fact that he’s not at her elbow, over her shoulder, trotting to catch up with her, talking, singing, whistling, tapping out rhythms on whatever surface is at hand, all the while. She assumes that it’s the fact that her own word count per day has dropped dramatically by simple virtue of the fact that she doesn’t have to tell him to shut up a thousand times an hour. She’s sure it must really be that the two of them aren’t bickering absolutely constantly.

But that’s not the silence, either.

She gives up on figuring it out. She gets used to it, like a constant headache thundering within the sore, thick bones just behind each ear. She lives with it, and she won’t call it deafening or anything else. She won’t expend another second trying to figure it out.

She does figure it out though. Weeks on and completely by accident, the solution drops almost literally in her lap.

She’s out of candy for her desktop dish. She seems always to be out of candy these days, and she’s always sure there’s a bag she’s stashed away somewhere. There never is these days, but she’s always sure.

It’s the middle of the night and she’s tearing her desk apart. That’s almost literal, too. She starts with the left-hand drawers. She works from top to bottom, from shallow to deep. She hauls each drawer out to its full, clattering extension with an impatient yank. She brushes aside half-used legal pads and nearly exhausted stacks of index cards and post-its. She digs beneath brand new folders and folders she keeps meaning to re-purpose. She scrabbles along the scarred metal bottoms until there’s grit beneath every one of her fingernails.

She slams the last of the left-hand drawers with a resounding bang. It fills the silence for exactly one second. She moves on to the wide center tray, even though it’s not deep enough to hide anything she’s after. Still, she tugs with purpose. She tugs with enough force that she goes rolling backward in her chair and very nearly pulls the whole drawer off its track.

It tilts crazily downward. She can see the telescoping silver-in-silver rails bending under the sudden, unwelcome weight. She manages to jam her knees up into the drawer’s lip before the whole thing goes crashing to the floor, along with all its contents. She winces at the force of the contact. A premonition of the pair of bruises she’ll have flashes on the back of her eyelids.

She tries to shove the damned thing back in and meets resistance. The track is bent or a wheel’s dislodged somewhere in the bowels of the desk. She sighs and slides one hand underneath for support and sets to work emptying the thing with the other.

She pulls out her stapler, a ruler, and three pairs of scissors, at least two of which she’d snatched out of his hands as he idly clashed the blades in some kind of meditative state. She jostles the drawer with her knee and so many bottles of desiccated White Out roll to the front that she loses count as she drops them into the trash.

Wedged far in the back, interfering with the task at hand, is an ancient pink phone message pad with yellow carbonless copies beneath, and wedged under that, a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass that, for the short while between Olivia Debiasse and the silence, had pride of place in her desktop pencil cup. She pauses over that. She twirls it by the stem between her fingers and watches the array of things on her blotter ripple in and out of focus. She eyes the metal trash can and decides it’s stupid. It would be stupid to throw it away. She sets the glass down in the midst of everything.

A dried-out glue stick topples and makes a break for sweet freedom as she hunches her shoulders. She reaches out with a blind hand to catch it as she peers into the dark, far recesses of the drawer. She can’t really see what’s bent or busted. She can’t really see anything. She lifts the wide tray firmly upward and tries again to brute force things back on track. That’s when she hears it—the rattle of a solitary object somewhere in that steel case gloom.  

Her searching fingers come up with it. She knows its shape and weight before before she can see it. She knows its provenance. It finds its way into her closed fist, though she’d rather leave it there, far back and in the dark.

It’s a short, thick bolt with a washer and hex nut twirled loosely on to its end. She uncurls her fingers slowly, one by one, though she hardly needs visual confirmation. She tips it from one hand to the other. The washer drags a glissando along the threads. It’s deafening. It’s the secret of the silence.

It’s from the chair that sits empty at the end of her desk, of course. It’s the lingering bit of the mummy’s curse, because she couldn’t quite remember where this one was supposed to go after that phase of the prank had played out. With the chair tipped legs upright, settled awkwardly between her knees, she hadn’t been able to find any obvious place for it, and when she’d tested her reconstruction with her own weight, she’d discovered the slightest bit of give in the legs so that all four never quite touched the ground at the same time. She’d discovered the squeak and decided that the least she owed him for a year and then some of adolescent fantasy and wild speculation—for everything—was the minor irritation of a slightly janky chair.

But he hadn’t noticed, or if he had, it’d been a feature not a bug—just that little bit of give in the legs and he’d elevated his fidgeting game. He’d rock it from foot to foot, back to front and on the diagonal. And with it had come the tap of metal glides on scuffed linoleum. With it had come the squeak, faint and not quite rhythmic, maddening at first, then simply part of the soundtrack of her late nights, her early mornings, and the dead, dark hours smack in between the two. Maddening at first, then simply reassuring.

It’s heavy, cupped in the palm of her hand. It’s metal-on-metal cool, but warming rapidly.

It’s a metaphor.

It’s the silence.

It’s deafening.  

A/N: Awkward that this fell after my trip, not before, but that’s a wrap on Season 2. Hmmm.

image via homeofthenutty

[myatlantispoets]

@dottilyn @thoopsy A little birdie told me that you signed up for the @shera-secretsanta-2019 event. Well guess what, I know who’s supposed to give you your present  and it’s....this girl right here! (forgive me for the awkward introduction ). Anyways, happy holidays and may you fight like a princess in the next decade! (i’m...not the best at fandom references).

I’ve prepared a fic set in a Modern AU-Etheria is a small kingdom, where magic doesn’t exist but goodness always prevails. 

Characters:Entrapta, Adora, Mermista, Bow, Perfuma, Frosta, Glimmer (basically the main squad)

Word count:2031

Hope you like it!

"Emily, will you hand me the wrench, please?", Entrapta asked the small robot that usually accompanied her. Today would be a bit different, for she was celebrating her high school graduation by going on a camping trip with her friends, so she was planning to leave the robot in charge of the house while she was gone. The thought of being without Emily was quite saddening but the thought of being with the people who've gone on so many adventures with her throughout high school helped. Of course, there was also the thought of what was going to happen now that high school was over-but she brushed it off. For now, she had to leave her messy room, say goodbye to the other robots and try and run to the train station, where they were waiting for her. "I have to leave now, but I'll be back soon. Take care of the others, ok?", she said, planting a kiss on the closest thing that the robot had to a forehead. With that, she picked up the wrench, threw it in her backpack and closed the door behind her. --- "This has to be the longest road I've ever travelled. How much do we have left?", Glimmer sighed looking out the window of the train compartment. "This is the fifth time you've asked", Mermista muttered under her breath. "We've already passed by the lake. Perfuma said she's waiting for us at the next station", Adora interfered. "Is it too late to suggest not going at all?", Mermista asked rhetorically . As the only one in the group who's grown up in Salineas-Etheria's most prosperous harbour city-she found it a lot more enjoyable to spend her summer break at the seaside than among leaves and bugs and...whatever else hid in those woods. Adora gave her a gentle, but disapproving look. "So that's a no?" --- Ten minutes later they were chatting with Perfuma, telling her how Entrapta spent the whole time while they were on the train in the  driver's cabin, figuring out how the vehicle worked. She laughed a bit, asking the mechanic about her discoveries. As the purple haired girl answered, she felt hopeful about the celebration ahead of them. But of course, a lot can go wrong in a night. The group found their spot rather quickly, as it had been previously prepared by Perfuma. When they decided to spend a week during their summer break camping, she insisted that it takes place in a natural reservation she'd been to before in Plumeria, Etheria's "greenest" region. Knowing how persistent the environmental activist could become about these things, they let it go. They were in a meadow not far from a river, surrounded by tall, green trees and a big range of flowers, among which they could find bluebells, primroses and starflowers. Perfuma went on a long speech about the forest and the various forms of life they could find there but Bow was the only one still listening after hours spent on a train ride. After taking some rest, they started unpacking the tents and setting them up. The process went easier than expected, especially after Entrapta excitedly began going around, offering everyone her help. She was the best out of all of  them when it came to spatial thinking, tools and equations, so they instantly agreed. Bow finished first, being quite good with these types of things himself. He admired Entrapta's skills and looked forward to any opportunity to learn from her. He was followed by Glimmer and Mermista-who let an overly eager Entrapta do the whole thing and then Perfuma and Frosta. Frosta was the youngest one of them and, though she wouldn't admit it, was a bit scared about her first camping trip, so  when Perfuma offered to share a tent with her, she gave in. After an hour, Adora was still struggling to set up her tent, despite her friend's help. The reason had 4 legs, 2 puppy eyes that begged one to do its bidding and fluffy ears perfect for scratching. Yes, the girl brought her pet dog, Swift Wind with her. No,she wasn't regretting her decizion but she admitted that there were...unforeseen situations that could be caused by one bringing their golden retriever on a camping trip. Because she was living them right now. "Come here, puppy! "Frosta shouted at the top of her lungs, waving to the fluffy animal. He was chewing on one of the tent poles after grabbing it while Adora was looking somewhere else and running with it to the other end of the meadow. Adora facepalmed. She thought things couldn't get any worse until he broke into one of the tents and started chewing on the pillows, spreading feathers and polyester filling all over in the camp while she watched in horror. While the others were trying to bait the puppy into returning the pole and chewing on something more edible-like one of the dog biscuits that Bow had carefully packed with him-Mermista was sitting in the back,  eating a bag of popcorn with Entrapta. The young genius was giggling, oblivious to the fact that she needed the pole to finish. "You'd think he was tired after the road, but his energy level is comparable to that of Sea-Hawk's", the Salinean raised an eyebrow, slightly impressed. "Do you think I could make my robots run as fast?", Entrapta asked, throwing a popcorn in the air and catching it with her mouth. Mermista was about to reply when she saw Frosta run up to them. "Guys, we could use some help", she threw them a glare while trying to get some feathers out of her hair. The girls sighed before getting up. The sooner they do something, the sooner they can go back to snacks and jokes. Twenty minutes later, Adora's managed to get Swift Wind to stop by giving him one of his favorite toys to play with, after finding it at the bottom of her backpack. The cleaning was resolved by Entrapta, who's turned one of her smaller robots into a surprisingly functional attempt at a vacuum cleaner. The others didn't know how she'd managed to make it work but hey, it was Entrapta. They were past questioning it. --- A dimly lit fire and a group of 6 people gathered around, laughing and enjoying each other's company. Is this what friendship feels like?, Entrapta thought, looking around. It was well known that Entrapta had been alone before meeting Adora, Glimmer and Bow, who would later introduce her to Mermista, Perfuma and Frosta. She grew up in an isolated city called Dryl, as an orphan. They met during their freshman year of high school and her life changed almost instantly. She wondered what she would have been doing right now if it wasn't for them. The girl  was awaken from her reverie by the sound of Bow opening one of the many bags of marshmallows he'd packed. A campfire wouldn't be a campfire without s'mores and the squad had relied on him, as resident "mom friend", to bring the goodies. Now, it was true that in a very characteristic excess of zeal, he'd packed a lot more than they needed, but Frosta assured them that she'd take care of it. He gave each one a bunch of marshmallows and biscuits and they soon started chatting, sharing their fears, hopes and dreams. "So what are you doing this fall, Entrapta?", Adora asked, not long after they'd replaced the s'mores with hot cocoa and gotten all wrapped up in blankets. Everyone except Frosta, anyway. She was surprisingly resilient to cold weather. "Yeah, good question.", Glimmer said. "I've heard about the others, but you never mentioned anything." Entrapta looked down on her own cup, trying to find answers in her drink. Sadly, it didn't answer. Stupid hot beverage. It was true though. On their way here, everyone's shared their plans for the future except her. Bow was planning to go into psychology and become a counselor, helping people who were doubting themselves or their path in life, like he used to at some point. Mermista would start preparing to take on her parents' business-they owned a few ships and offered tours of Etheria's coastlines. She's always liked the sea, so taking over the business with her boyfriend, Sea-Hawk seemed like the natural option. Adora has been training to become an agent for Etheria's crime fighting agency for a few years now and would take her exam in September. It sounded more like a formality for her though, since she'd aced all the other required tests and practiced every day. Glimmer had decided a long time that she wanted to take a leap  year instead and figure out things before making a decizion. She'd already signed up for a bunch of clubs and volunteering associations to test things out in the meantime. She had the freedom that she didn't have before, when she was a kid trying to graduate and to make her strict mother proud. Last but not least, Perfuma recently got offered an internship for an enviroment-focused international NGO that she was excited about, while Frosta was still in high school as the youngest. And Entrapta? She did get an acceptance later for a course she applied out of boredom-Etheria's best engineering course, offered by a prestigious, modern university with a big library and an even bigger research lab. It sounded like a dream come true. But she feared it'd turn into her biggest nightmare-losing her friends and being alone again.  She'd be far from everyone else, while her friends would each go away their separate ways. If she turned it down, she could at least stay with Frosta for another. She was afraid of what would happen if she didn't. Before she knew it, she'd started crying in front of her friends. "Hey, are you ok?", Bow asked, taking a seat next to her. The others followed him, forming a circle around her. They were looking at her, eyes filled with concern. She revealed the acceptance letter that had been hidden in her backpack. She'd brought it with her to think about it-having physical things to thinker with always helped her figure out solutions. The only problem was, you couldn't fix fear and insecurity using equations. She heard the others gasp at the sight of the letter as Glimmer snatched it from her hands. She read it out loud before they all congratulated her. "This is amazing, Entrapta!", Adora exclaimed. "Totally. I mean, I didn't expect any less but you know...congrats", Mermista patted her on the back. "So...why are you upset?", Bow was confused. "Is this not what you wanted ?", Perfuma raised an eyebrow. "I...I'm afraid", was all Entrapta could say between the tears. Once Bow handed her a box of tissues, she was able to continue, "Of what will happen...once college begins. Of losing you guys." After a few seconds, Adora broke out the silence, "Not a chance", she said, slinging an arm around her shoulder. The others nodded encouragingly. "Yeah, we can totally still hang out whenever we find the time. Etheria isn't that big.", Glimmer chimed in. "And group chats are still a thing as far as I know", Mermista added. "Knowing you, you'll probably invent holograms or...teleportation and what not. That'll make things a lot easier", Frosta said, inciting a chuckle from Entrapta. "Yeah, you're a genius, Entrapta", Bow said. "And you deserve the chance to reach your full potential", Perfuma smiled at the purple haired girl. Slowly, but surely, Entrapta began feeling relieved. And maybe she wasn't so alone after all. "Thank you, guys", she sniffled."I've decided I'm going to accept the offer...and I'm going to treat it as an other scientific experiment. With courage and curiosity." "GROUP HUG", Bow announced loudly before giving the girl a hug, followed by the others. Entrapta smiled once again, looking up at the stars. This is what friendship feels like.

[sgt-nerd-plays]

Week 5: Battalion of Brothers

Another weekend, another thrilling battle report from Herosand V!

Game Setup:

We've reached 600 points! Normal detachment rules now apply, so I've expanded to create a battalion:

Our Heroes

We have Captain Incusator in Grav Armor. I've increased our intercessor count up to 15 for three squads. You are all of course familiar with Reginald, our Dreadnought. Finally, we've added Lieutenant Marculus, wielding a master-crafted stalker bolt rifle. Since I now have eight CP to play with, I've spent two to make Incusator a Chapter Master.

The mission type was Secure and Control.

Match 1:

Imperial Guard

Their Forces:

Company Commander, Tank Commander, 3x Infantry Squads, Astropath, Bulgryns, and Heavy Weapons Squad with Mortars

My Narrative:

After word reached back to Medusa of the difficulties the Iron Hands had faced, they were bolstered with reinforcements, with the third and sixth squad filling in. Captain Incusator was given an updated list of the latest in tactics and strategy and promoted to Chapter Master. Now suitably fortified, it was time to march across Herosand V and take back the planet from the vile forces of... Well, pretty much everyone else. There had been a lot of confusion and fog of war, and now even Imperium forces were fighting each other.

Soon, their mettle and metal would both be tested.

quote:

"It's good to have you aboard, Lieutenant," Chapter Master Incusator said, patting the young man on the shoulder. Marculus stumbled forward, nearly losing his footing. "Erm, yes sir," he said. Then he flinched and nearly fell again as an explosion shook the earth beneath his feet. "What in Terra's name was that?" he said, his voice cracking. "Oh, it seems the Astra Militarum are getting ideas again. No worries. The Medusan Academy might have taught you a lot, but one thing they didn't teach you: The flesh is weak!" "But... but they did teach me. That was in Tactics 101, Iron Hands Doctrine, and Advanced Ways in Which the Flesh is Weak. It was on every test!" But the chapter master was already walking away, ready to give those pesky guardsmen a pop quiz!

Tanks for the Memories

I got to pick the deployment, and I picked spearhead. My idea was that I didn't have much anti-armor and I'd need to get the dreadnought and chapter master up where they could open the tank like a can opener. Armor is honestly my biggest weakness right now, and I'll probably struggle with it until I get to 800 points at the earliest. We each had an objective in our backline. Mine I had in some nice convenient ruins that partly blocked line of sight. I parked a group of intercessors on it (just out of sight to the right) and deployed the rest of my forces with an eye to moving them up the board. He parked his mortars behind a magic box and set of the rest of his gunline.

Ignore the strip of tape. Previous rounds were 2'x4'. We're now playing on 3'x4' sections of table to accommodate our larger armies.

I seem to remember there being guardsmen here.

Two rounds of shooting saw all of his troops gone. By this point, though, my dread was down to about half health and I was starting to realize that getting all the way down to the other end of the field was easier said than done. However, I also realized that I had first blood. So long as I could keep control of my objective, and not let him kill my warlord, I'd win on points at the end of the game. If the tournament was tracking how many points people got, I might have considered keeping up the fight, but as it was, only victory mattered. I had a near-guaranteed shot, so long as I could get my army into cover and out of range of most of his guns.

"Why is the dreadnought ticking?"

The bullgryns held me in combat just long enough to help him get another round of shooting. My dreadnought died finally went down to the tank commander's weapons. I probably should have used Vengeance of the Machine Spirit to give him one more round of damage on the enemy. I didn't get my stratagem cards out, and I ended up with four CP left at the end of the game unspent because I kept forgetting what I could do, aside from Duty Eternal to buff my dread for a phase.

However, by this point, I had gotten the Tank Commander down to just a few wounds left, so its movement wasn't up to chasing me all the way down the board. It was now time to make the march back to my objective. You can see where I have my intercessors parked in a cozy little hut with the objective.

Snug as a Bug in a Rug

I was down to four intercessors in three squads, my lieutenant, and my captain left. I was about to have my army either in cover or behind boxes. So long as he didn't take out my captain by the end of the game, I was going to be a point ahead. We were starting up round six. I would have at most two more rounds to survive his mortar fire.

Then one of my intercessors managed an extremely lucky shot and took out his tank commander. He rolled a six on the explosion, and it also took out his astropath and hurt his company commander. At that point, he conceded the game and we shook hands.

I'm starting to learn to think a bit more tactically. At the start, I felt my best route to victory lay in getting into melee with the tank commander. But once I realized I had the advantage on points, I went for the surer path.

I will say that the Chapter Master was pretty clutch. Being able to reroll all hits was a lifesaver at points. The rerolling of 1s on wound rolls was helpful too, though not quite as clutch.

I also need to remember to use the auxiliary grenade launchers. Frak grenades are better against armor than stalker bolt rifles. When I can, I need to remember that I have them.

Match 2:

Necrons

Their Forces:

Overlord, Necron Warriors, Flayed Ones, Lychguard

quote:

"What did I tell you, Lieutenant?" the Chapter Master said. "Hardly broke a sweat." The lieutenant looked at the repairs on Reginald, who was booping and beeping in a rather sad way, and then insisting that he was not actually sad, as robots do not have emotions. "Er. Yes sir. Though, the tank seemed a bit of a problem." "Bah. Easily dispatched with a little stalker bolt fire. After all, Marculus, flesh inside of a tin can is still nothing more than flesh! Right, Sergeant?" "Yes sir. Very good, sir. Almost self aware," said Caminus. "Yes, rather, I--Wait." The Chapter Master started to turn to the sergeant when a green flash flew past his head. Necrons surged over the hill in closed silent ranks, completely refusing to provide witty banter for the battle report. The fiends!

Iron and Steel

My opponent chose the deployment zone. He put his flayed ones into deep strike, hid his warriors behind some LOS-blocking terrain, and kept his overlord with his lychguard. He went first, and he started moving his lychguard and overlord on the far side of the field. He moved his warriors forward, putting as many as possible on top of the building in front of them. They managed to take out an intercessor, but with most of them still behind cover, he wasn't able to do much.

My dread went and took out eleven of his 12-necron squad. I was also able to take out all but one of his lychguard with stalker bolt fire. The remaining warrior in the squad skedaddled in the morale round. The other warrior squad would stay in cover for the rest of the game, around his objective.

Warriors from the Dark

On his next turn, he brought his flayed ones out of deep strike. And here I made a mistake that screwed over my opponent. I used Auspex Scan and played it on my dreadnought, who promptly took out the entire unit. I missed that Auspex Scan can only affect infantry. It likely didn't change much, but it would have at least kept the gaming going another turn or so, depending on what he ended up charging. I brought it up to him after the game, and he was fairly cool about it. We're both learning the rules of the game. I'll remember next time.

His lychguard regenerated two models, and he used a special ability to move his warlord and the lychguard into my backline, charging me. The lychguard made it into combat and took out all but one of the intercessors in that squad. I removed all of the models near his lychguard to get out of melee range. We both forgot about the consolidate part of the fight phase, so the lychguard ended up getting shot up when my turn came.

Hmm...

And now he only had his remaining warriors behind cover, and his warlord.

Hmm!

With his warlord dispatched, he conceded and we called it.

I feel pretty bad about the rules I forgot here. I need to read my stratagems more clearly so that I don't make errors, especially not ones that give me such an advantage as forgetting the Auspex Scan limitation. I also keep forgetting the pile in/fight/consolidate order. In this case, we both forgot, but if he'd remembered, removing the models as I did would have given me no benefit (especially since I took out my sergeant to try and build space).

Still, I'm looking up less than I was last week, and far less than the week before. I'm starting to get better at grasping the fundamentals. I just need to get the details of my army down.

quote:

"Ha!" said the chapter master. "Xenos steel can't stand up to good Imperial Iron!" "Our armor is actually made of plasteel and ceramite," said Marculus helpfully. "I was being poetic!" Incusator snapped. "Can't a man have a moment of quiet glory?" "Ah, um, sorry, sir," the lieutenant said. "Oh, go drill the men." Incusator turned and brooded as he looked to the horizon. Soon, he thought, they would be marching across it, bringing the glory of Medusa to all before them. He was, in fact, turned around and facing the way they'd come. But in a more poetic sense, his point still stood. What adventures await them?

We're now halfway through the League. I'm 6 for 8 fights and standing at #11 in the league. I'm currently at halfway through painting my 800 point increase, and then just three units to get me to 1000. It's very exciting, and I can't wait to play some of these units!

[thelittlefanpire]

The 100 Ask Game

okay, I was searching through @dylanobrienisbatman’s echo tag for some head canons awhile back and stumbled upon this! I’ve tweaked it a little and added some things from S5 and omg this is so fun! thanks to whoever made this ask game! S6 STARTS TONIGHT!

1. What Station on the Ark would you be from?

Farm Station. I grew up in the south and my great/grandparents all owned farms so yeah, probably Farm Station.

2. What would you get arrested for on the Ark?

I think this happened to a character in the book...I would probably get locked up for getting pregnant as a teen! lol

3. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground?

If Bellamy Blake asked me to, you bet I would.

4. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..)

an eagle 🦅

5. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be?

WELLS DESERVED BETTER JAHA

6. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they?

The Leaders: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin

The Brains: Raven Reyes & Monty Green

The Muscle : Lincoln kom Trikru

7. What Grounder Clan would you belong to you?

Geographically, I would probably reside in Trikru somewhere. But I really want to live in Shallow Valley. I wish we had seen more of that clan!

8. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? (example: Octavia=Okteivia…just make it up!)

sara - sera ? I don’t know. lol

9. Thoughts on Finn? Some people hate him, and others love him, so I’m curious

He was okay in the beginning. I was pissed when I found out he had a girlfriend in space and was trying to get with Clarke on the ground. I did not like him at all in S2! The guy really lost it in the end.

10. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does?

I would have been able to resist in the beginning. Maybe took a step back to watch others take it first. But peer pressure, man. I would have given in eventually.

11. What character do you relate to most?

Clarke Griffin. She’s been isolated a lot and that’s something I relate to. And her Mama Bear instincts.

12. What character do you like the least?

S1- Finn, S2- Cage Wallace, S3- Pike, S4- Echo, S5- Kara Cooper

13. Describe your delinquent outfit. (Would you wear something like Murphy’s jacket with the spikey red shoulder patch or have a trademark like Jasper’s goggles? Be creative, yet practical)

Clarke’s soda tab jacket or Raven’s red bomber jacket!

14. Favorite type of mutant animal?

The blue butterflies! 🦋

15. What would your job be on the Ark?

A teacher! Teaching Earth History! Oh, that sounds amazing.

16. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked?

Barf.

17. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, but she was still alive then who would have made the best commander?

Luna. Is there any other answer but Luna?

Nightblood aside, I think Octavia (with Lincoln still alive to influence her) would be a cool choice too.

18. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty?

Paranoid af.

19. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake approach?

Bellamy Blake approach.

20. Who should have been the Chancellor, if anyone?

I don’t care who is the Chancellor, but Clarke Griffin is in charge. lol. Kane was the best leader for Skaikru on the ground.

21. Would you have been on Pike’s side like Bellamy or on Kane’s side? Or Clarke in Polis?

Kane’s side! Viva la revolución!

22. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s Ipod) What is the one thing you would snatch while there?

Chocolate. All the chocolate!

23. What would your Grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint?

Tattoos: let me get that eagle across my back or on my sternum that I’ve always wanted

Hairstyle: the most epic Harper style braid please

War paint: no thanks

24. Favorite quote?

”In peace, may you leave this shore.

In love, may you find the next.

Safe passage on your travels,

until our final journey to the ground.

May we meet again.”

-The Traveler’s Blessing

Or literally anything Bellamy Blake says. lol

25. If all of the characters were in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning?

I feel like as unlikely as it is, the show really has Octavia set up as Warrior Princess Goddess Hero and she would win. lol. As far as forming alliances and making it to the end...Clarke Griffin could make it with Bellamy Blake by her side throwing back nighlock berries till the end.

26. Least favorite ship? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non canon ship? NOT INCLUDING CL OR BC OR BE

Least: Mackson

Favorite canon: Zaven

Favorite non-canon: Sea Mechanic

27. A song that should be included in the next season? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo?

Radioactive needs to make another appearance in S6

Musical Guest Star: how about Hozier?

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time?

We’d probably go crazy.

29. Your an extra that gets killed off. How do you die?

Bellamy Blake choking me to death... (can’t believe this took me so long to answer. Is there really any other answer from me?)

30. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of?

I would have liked more flashbacks of Roan and Luna and Lincoln. Spacekru on the Ring. Emori? Harper? literally everyone, right?

31. A character you’d bang?

Bellamy Blake. All day. Every day.

32. Would you stay in the Bunker? Go up to Space? Or live on your own in Eden?

SPACE!

33. In the Bunker, would you follow Octavia? What would you do to pass the time underground?

Sure. I don’t think I’d have much of a choice. I’d probably help take care of all the little kids!

34. What crime would you commit in the Bunker that lands you in the fighting pits?

Okay, so the way my life works I would probably get pregnant...again. And steal some blankets or something that I needed for all my kids. I’m not even going to front and say I survive that fighting pit sooo hope Blodreina trains them little squirts well!

35. Up in Space, who would you bond with first? Who would be the most difficult for you to get along with?

I’m instantly bonding with Harper. She’s the sweetest.

I’m going to be a little leary of Bellamy Blake during his Clarke ‘I left her behind’ Griffin Depression hour. So he’s probably really mopey and moody. And let’s just avoid him for a while.

36. How long do you think you would last on Earth by yourself?

Two weeks? I’d probably starve to death.

37. When the Eligius ship lands what do you do?

HIDE! And then spy on them. Figure out who they are and if they’re friendly. Go to them for help if they are. Take them all out in their sleep if they’re not.

38. Favorite Eligius character? Least favorite?

Miles Ezekiel ‘Zeke’ Shaw!

That creepy Kodiak guy.

39. Would you Spacewalk?

Hell yes!

40. Would you prefer to eat Windshield Bugs, Space Algae, or Bunker Meat?

Bugs, definitely bugs.

41. Would you start a war for the last spot of green on earth? What would your solution be to avoid it?

I’d fight for it.

42. Would you rather dig out flesh-eating worms or stick thumb drives into bullet holes?

BAND-AIDS DON’T FIX BULLET HOLES — AND NEITHER DO THUMB DRIVES. That was such a clever move. I’m going with thumb drives over worms. I hate the worm scene. gross!

43. Are you willing to poison your sister for the Traitor Who You Love? What would you do to stop Octavia?

I’m not a big fan of my sister, so yes. Was there any easier way to stop Octavia? I mean, Clarke wanted to kill her. They wanted to protect Madi. As much as that scene pained me I think Bellamy did the right thing soooo I would poison her.

44. Would you go to sleep in cryo or stay awake like Marper?

Stay asleep. Unless I’m living my entire life with Bellamy Blake by my side I dont want it.

45. Who are you waking up first to explore the new planet?

JR isn’t going to give it to us so I’m waking up Octavia so her and Jordan can have a First One on the Ground Pilot parallel!

you may have already done this so I’m sorry! But the bottom questions are new!

tagging...everyone :) : @the-most-beautiful-broom @baellamy @youleftme-clarke @chants-de-lune @asroarke @marvelscaptainss @pawprinterfanfic @octannibal-blake @thehundredtimesobsessed @tabatharich @sly2o @grumpybell @galaxyblake @mjlupin22 @probably-voldemort @twd-is-life-98 @ghoulbrothers @ponyregrets @bettsfic @chancellorgriffin @sometimesrosy @sclestial @johnmurphysass @peterstarkss @clarkegriffintitties @daeneryskairipa @nikitajobson @perpetualbbps @lieutenantshaw @talistheintrovert @diyozas @llysandra @morleybobs @mamabearsdontthink @angelwingsnaya @selflessbellamy @hopewolves @kinetic-elaboration @raven-reyes-of-sunshine @anne-shirley-blythe @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold @el-corazon-y-la-cabeza @chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky @catastrophic-chloe @lovethyblakes @ellaalyse @eyessharpweaponshot @clarke-kom-eden @viviansternwood and anyone else who wants to join!

[svucarisiaddict]

can you do one where the reader and nick are dating but break up when he leaves for californa and the reader doesn’t want to leave svu, and slowly falls in love with carisi? sorry if it’s too broad ahah

//this turned out longer than I thought. I’m going to be doing a part 2! In this fic the reader is a forensic DNA analyst.//

“I can’t believe you’re really not coming with me.” Nick held your hand swinging it back and forth. “Are you sure I can’t change your mind?”

“We’ve talked about this, Nick,” you replied gently.

“I know. Can’t blame a guy for trying.” He smiled. “Well, I should get going if I want to make Indianapolis by dark.” Nick pulled you to his chest. “I don’t want to let you go.” Nick’s voice cracked.

“Me either.” You squeezed him back unable to believe it would be quite possibly the last hug you would ever get from him. Leaning back you looked into dark brown eyes.

“I will always love you, Y/N,” Nick pressed a soft kiss to your lips.

“I love you too, Nicky.”

Nick climbed into the moving truck. “I'll call when I stop for the night.”

“Okay.” ‘Don't cry. Don't cry.’ It had been your mantra all day.

He waved one final time then drove away. You watched until your tear-blurred eyes couldn’t see anymore. Turning you made the sad walk back into the apartment.

Later that evening you were shuffling around what was now your apartment. Just yours. All alone. Maybe you should get a cat. Or a dog. As you rummaged through the cabinet looking for the peanut butter the doorbell rang. “Ugh.”

Swinging open the door you found Sonny standing in front of you with a pizza box in one hand and plastic bags in his other hand. “Can I come in?” Sonny breezed into the apartment. “What? Do ya not check to see who is at your door first?” Sonny placed the pizza box on the counter along with the plastic bags.

“What are you doing here?” You lifted the lid of the pizza box. “Is this extra cheese with pepperoni and pineapple?”

“I was sittin’ at home bored so I thought I’d come over and bug you.” Sonny smirked. “Got ya some butter pecan ice cream, beef jerky, orange soda and salt and vinegar chips.”

That was the last straw. You covered your face with your hands and started sobbing.

Sonny came around the table and gathered you in his arms. You buried your face in his chest grasping at his soft flannel. He soothed your hair swaying back and forth. “Shhh..doll. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Sonny just held and comforted you until your sobs turned into soft whimpering. He leaned back and tilted your chin up. “I got you the wrong ice cream didn’t I?”

You giggled. “No. It’s all my favorites.”

“Here.” Sonny pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Thanks.” The gesture made you made you smile. You could remember the first time you met Sonny. It was during a night out with the squad. Nick become upset about a guy hitting on you. The two of you got in a fight after Nick punched the guy. You had had enough of his temper and fighting. He got mad and stormed out leaving you at the bar. Sonny gave you a handkerchief and comforted you that night too.

“Better?” Sonny asked.

“Yeah.” Smiling up at Sonny you said, “Ummm...I was going to watch I Love Lucy.”

“That happens to be one of my favorite shows. Hands down.”

You and Sonny were laughing so hard you snorted which caused Sonny to laugh even harder. Hearing your phone buzz on the kitchen table you jumped up and answered. “Hello?” you said in a breathless voice.

“Hey. What are you doing?” Nick’s voice sounded tired. “I made it to Indiana.”

“Oh good to hear. How was the drive?” Sonny laughed making you giggle.

“Long. Is that Sonny?” Nick asked.

“Yeah. He-”

“What the Hell is he doing there? I’m gone for 12 hours and he swoops in?” Nick’s voice changed from tired and soft to angry.

“Nick if you remember right, you’re the one that moved across the country. We broke up. Sonny is a friend,” you said. “You know what? I don’t have to defend myself to you. I’m glad you’ve had a safe trip so far. But don’t call me anymore.” Ending the call you leaned against the kitchen counter and pinched the bridge of your nose.

“I hope I wasn’t the reason for all that.” He waved his hand around in the air.

“Nope. Just Nick being Nick. Let’s get back to Lucy.” You gave him a small smile then walked past him to the living room.

At 1am your phone rang again. You fumbled for your phone not bothering to look at the screen before answering. “Hello?” Your voice was raspy from sleep.  

“Hey,” Nick said softly. After you didn’t say anything Nick continued. “I’m sorry for earlier. You’re right. It’s not my business and I know Sonny was just being a good friend.”

“Thank you.” You took a deep breath and sighed.

“Well, that’s all I needed. Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Nick.”

[From:Sonny 4:55PM] We still on for pizza and movies?

[To:Sonny 4:59PM] Well it is Friday…

[From:Sonny 5:02PM] Great see ya at 6

For the last few months, you and Sonny had a standing date every Friday. Usually, it was pizza, junk food, and movies at one of your places. When Nick first left it was one of the things that helped you get through the week.

At 6 sharp Sonny walked through the door pizza in hand. He leaned down and kissed your cheek. “TGIF am I right?”

“Amen. Want to see the movies I picked?” Sonny nodded as he took plates from the cabinet. “So. I’m feeling chick flicky today. Must be PMS.”

Sonny raised his brows. “Oh boy. I hope I bought enough chocolate.”

“Hush you.”

Sonny studied the cases as you held them up. “Beaches, Steel Magnolias, Marley and Me. Wow. That’s the tearjerker collection.”

At some point in the evening, you fell asleep. The last thing you remembered was Marley trying to jump out of Owen Wilson’s car. Sonny woke you when he shifted. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay. What time is it?”

“11:30,” Sonny responded. “I was just getting ready to go.”

You sat up. “No, stay here. It’s too late. Couch pulls out. I’ll grab some fresh linens.” Getting up you stepped over Sonny’s long legs. Being the graceful person you were you tripped and fell into Sonny’s lap. His hands grasped your waist and your faces were so close, lips so close...both of you leaning closer, lips brushing.

“I-uh-sorry.” You pulled back. “I’m going to get those sheets…”

Sonny brushed your hair from your face. “Don’t be. I’d really like to kiss you-”

He was interrupted by the ringing of your phone. You jumped up from his lap. Nick’s face popped up on screen. “Hi.”

“Y/N? It’s Zara! I miss you!”

“Hey, Zara. Miss you too toots. How are you enjoying LA?” You pointed to your phone and mouthed Zara’s name to Sonny to which he smiled.

“It’s so fun and always warm,” she responded enthusiastically. “Here Daddy wants to talk to you.”

“Oh uh, I don’t really-”

“Don’t really want to what?” Nick asked.

“Nothing. How are you?”

“I’m doing really well. Miss you though.”

“Hmmm...me too. How is working for the Parks going?”

Nick sighed. “Boring. But I’m okay with boring.”

Sonny pointed to the door then waved.

“Nick. Hold on a sec.” You placed your hand over the phone. “No. Stay.”

“I’ll text you when I get home.” He gave you another wave then was out the door.

“Sorry. I’m back. So boring huh? Tell me about it.” You pulled out a stool.

The next evening was a girl’s night out to celebrate your best friend, Christy’s birthday. You had just downed another shot when Sonny walked through the door with a woman. She was tall, thin, gorgeous. The exact opposite of what you were. Jealousy surprisingly sprung up in your eyes out of nowhere.

“Isn’t tha ole Sonny boy?” Christy asked.

“Yup. Looks like he’s got himself a lady friend.” You stood to take a second to regroup and steady yourself. “I’m gonna go say hi.”

Christy giggled. “Didn’t want to kiss you just last night? Now, look at em got some Victoria’s Secret model on his arm.”

“Stop it,” you giggled and swatted at her hand.

He spotted you when you were halfway to him. He stiffened and averted his eyes.

“Fancy seein’ you here,” you slurred.

“Y/N. Are you drunk?” He grasped your shoulders to steady you.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” You covered your mouth to suppress a giggle. “Who’s your friend?”

“I’m Lisa,” the tall blonde replied. She extended her hand.

You ignored it crossing your arms over your chest. “What are your intentions with Sonny? You’re so tall.”

Now it was their turn to giggle. You narrowed your eyes at both of them. “What’s so funny?”

“Lisa is one of my oldest friends. She’s in town for a couple days so we’re getting a drink to catch up.” Sonny explained.

You nodded eyes half closed. “Hmmm...well enjoy your evening. With your “friend”.” You wavered when you turned to go back to Christy.

Sonny caught you. “Let me get you home,” Sonny offered. “Where’s Christy?”

You waved in her direction. When you focused you could see Tyler, Christy’s boyfriend had arrived at some point. “Interesting,” you slur. “Why does everyone have someone but me?”

Sonny wrapped his arm around your middle to support you. “You have me.” He went to the table to retrieve your purse letting you say goodnight to your friends.

Sonny led you to the door, Lisa following behind him. You gave Sonny a questioning look. “Why’s everyone so tall tonight? I wanna be tall.”

“That’s not somethin’ you can change doll.” Sonny gave Lisa a hug.

Once outside Sonny hailed a cab. He helped you climb in then slide in beside you. He gave the taxi driver your address. You laid your head on his chest and was out before the cab pulled away from the curb.

“Hey. Y/N. Y/N. We’re home,” Sonny said softly then gently shook you. When he realized he wasn’t going to wake you he paid the driver then climbed from the taxi. He pulled you from the car picked you up cradling you and closed the door with his foot. Adjusting you he took the key from his pocket.

You woke up enough to convince him to sit you down. Sonny unlocked the door and helped you to the bedroom. He went to the dresser. “Where are your PJ’s?”

“Don’t wear no PJ’s.” You stood and slipped you jeans of over your hips then kicked out of them which didn’t happen since your shoes were still on.

Sonny reached you in a couple steps. His cheeks were slightly blushed. He helped you out of your Converse, socks then jeans. “Under the covers. Let’s go.”

You crawled to the top of the bed. Reaching around your unclasped you bra sliding the straps down your arms then pulled it through an armhole leaving you in nothing but a T-shirt and your panties.

Sonny chuckled when you slingshot it across your bedroom landing it on top of your mirror. “Nice shot.” He kissed your temple then tucked the blankets in around you. “Night. I’ll call ya in the mornin’”

“Do you love Lisa?”

He chuckled. “Not in the way you think. She’s like a sister.” He turned to leave. “Get some sleep.”

“Sonny wait. Stay here tonight. Please.”

“I dunno if I should,” Sonny said the look on his face conflicted.

“I’ll behave. I promise. I’m just tired of being lonely. Just one night I want to feel arms around me when I sleep. Please.”

He studied you for a minute then sighed. “I can’t say no to that face.” Sonny turned to the door and shut off the light. You heard his shoes come off then his coat. “Scooch over.” Sonny settled under the covers with your back against his chest. You could feel your body relax almost instantly. His arm draped over your middle. “Night doll. Hope you don’t snore.”

“Night Sonny.”

The next morning you woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. And...was that waffles?

You pushed the blankets off your body, slipped on a pair of Nick’s old sweats. The nasty taste in your mouth prompted you to brush your teeth then padded down the hall to the kitchen. “That smells amazing.”

Sonny turned from the stove and gave you a broad smile. “How ya feelin’ this mornin’?”

Raising your arms over your head to stretch then crack your neck. “Good actually. Can I help you with anything?”

“I got it under control. Besides, I’ve seen you in the kitchen and it ain’t pretty. Just sayin’ I love ya but you-”

“You...love me? Cause I’ve loved you for-”

Sonny reached you in three long strides. His hands found your hips and pulled you to him yours grasping his biceps. Sonny leaned down pressing his lips to yours in a sweet, gentle kiss. Closing your eyes you leaned into the kiss deepening it. Sonny broke from the kiss and rested his forehead to yours. “Does that answer your question?”

[yourereallyhere]

tagged by @historyandships @iishallbelieve <333

1. What Station on the Ark would you be from? Uhhhhh I literally have no idea bc we don’t really know about a lot of the stations / what they did. I’m in pre-med so maybe Go-Sci because that’s where Ark Station Medical is? I just looked up all the stations but I really have no idea. good question though. if anyone wants to respond with what they know about they stations that’d be !sick!

2. What would you get arrested for on the Ark? I’m kind of a goody-two shoes but if there was a curfew then maybe that. Or defending someone (I'd like to think)

3. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground? It’s hard to think of what I would or wouldn’t do considering that I've never even been close to being in their shoes but I don't think so

4. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..) hmmmm maybe a dog??

5. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be? wow so many minor characters have died it’s hard to remember. Is wells a minor character considering he was only in a few episodes? if yes then him. if not then Jake. let us go back in time and bring him back season six </3 but not like before Clarke was arrested like present show time bring him back

6. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they? Clarke, Bellamy, Murphy, Roan, Monty. I wanna say Raven but we’re in a fight right now.

7. What Grounder Clan would you belong to?  Louwada Kliron Kru SO COLORFUL

8. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? Lian (?? whatever Leeann is in trig)

9. Thoughts on Finn? Some people hate him, and others love him, so I’m curious. Honestly I never liked him he was so weird and cocky and in his first 2 seconds in the show the people who followed him died and then he jumped off the drop ship in front of Murphy like wooOOWW Finn ur sewww coooool and and then he cheated on his girlfriend who risked her life to be with him like idk? couldn't you wait more than a week and half??? and then he literally massacred a village like ik people have done a lot of shitty things but they were posing no threat whatsoever. they tried to redeem him with the spacewalker backstory but I didn’t really feel for him :/ I don’t think he deserves the insane amount of villianization (is that a word?) he gets in fits and stuff but I also don’t think he’s the good guy they introduce him as

10. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does? I think without knowing most people would say yes and on one hand I don’t do drugs and it seemed super drug-like so I probably wouldn’t but on the other hand emotionally this has been the worst year of my life bc I went through a medical thing so maybe?

11. What character do you relate to most? I think lately Murphy bc my life is literally Murphy’s law ( ha ha no pun intended ) and I kind of feel like a lot of things are working against me but I'm still here bitchesssss

12. What character do you like the least? ABBY I literally have hated her since the first episode and I wish she could die without it breaking my baby Clarkes heart but I know it would kill her to lose her so I'm kind of in a pickle. and jaha before he died was the WOAT 

13. Describe your delinquent outfit. (Would you wear something like Murphy’s jacket with the spikey red shoulder patch or have a trademark like Jasper’s goggles? Be creative, yet practical) Loose jeans or something similar and a t-shirt with a comfy jacket and the closest thing they have to Blundstones boots

14. Favorite type of mutant animal? butterflies

15. What would your job be on the Ark? something in med bay

16. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked? obvi

17. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, but she was still alive, then who would have made the best commander? Aiden

18. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty? if I was around other people and it was a good effect then lots of dancing I think but if I was alone and it had a bad effect like with Clarke and Bellamy then I would be pretty sad 

19. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake approach? Neither. id probably try and set up some sort of judicial system and figure it out with a group of people

20. Who should have been the Chancellor, if anyone? Clarke with Bellamy as her right hand and some others (including Kane) as a council. Their main concern was relations with the grounders and the people who have actually communicated with them should be in charge of that 

21. Would you have been on Pike’s side like Bellamy or on Kane’s side? Or Clarke in Polis? Kane’s

22. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s Ipod) What is the one thing you would snatch while there? the iPod. idk how they survived this long without music.

23. What would your Grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint? I don't like having permanent things on my body especially when its not symmetrical asdfghjk but maybe like a small meaningful tattoo?? hair would be two dutch braids or just down and war paint maybe the black line on the face like in season five?

24. Favorite quote? too many to choose from but literally anything bellarke. a few that jump to mind are “but we need each other Bellamy. the only way we’re gonna pull this off is together” “you keep her centered / you got it backwards” “I’ve got you for that” “if I'm on that list you're on that list” “we can’t lose her” oh and non bellarke “If only a conscience was a free pass, and not just a voice in your head you pretend to listen to between unspeakable acts.” is a good one

25. If all of the characters were in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning? Murphy or Bellamy 

26. Least favorite ship? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non canon ship? NOT INCLUDING CL OR BC OR BE Braven (I don't mean to offend but they just used each other for sex, I love their friendship) / but for actual canon relationship Kabby (but only because everything abby does bothers me), marper (too pure for this world pls let more good things happen on this show), niytaviah (so! much! sexual! and! romantic! tension!)

27. A song that should be included in the next season? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo? Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen for those rover ~vibes~ / Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing by Aerosmith / Love Like by Peter Collins, and show guest star Brie Larson, Gemma Chan, or, selfishly, Chris Hemsworth 

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time? party and watch movies and sexy time

29. You’re an extra that gets killed off. How do you die? I’m the guy who died first when the scouts attacked in season 1 bc that’s my luck

30. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of? Bellamy

31. A character you’d bang? umm if you know me you know the answer to this is my homeboy Bellamy he can do whatever he wants to me

32. Would you stay in the Bunker? Go up to Space? Or live on your own in Eden? I wanna say eden but being alone would suck so space

33. In the Bunker, would you follow Octavia? What would you do to pass the time underground? I guess I'd have to because if not I would die uk and I would read if that was possible. if not I'd get some friends

34. What crime would you commit in the Bunker that lands you in the fighting pits? stealing supplies

35. Up in Space, who would you bond with first? Who would be the most difficult for you to get along with? Harper, and if Bellamy wasn’t too depressed to hang out then him too. Most difficult would be echo

36. How long do you think you would last on Earth by yourself? not long at all

37. When the Eligius ship lands what do you do? Hide, the valley is literally huge. or wait in the village bc no one is taking it over bitchhhh if they wanna talk then talk

38. Favorite Eligius character? Least favorite? Diyoza, McCreary

39. Would you Spacewalk? no im so scared of getting lost in space

40. Would you prefer to eat Windshield Bugs, Space Algae, or Bunker Meat? space algae

41. Would you start a war for the last spot of green on earth? What would your solution be to avoid it? nahhh I said the valley was huge before and I meant it, they're all overreacting just share it bruh

42. Would you rather dig out flesh-eating worms or stick thumb drives into bullet holes? thumb drives into bullet holes

43. Are you willing to poison your sister for the Traitor Who You Love? What would you do to stop Octavia? 100% also he kind of knew she would wake up. if I was her sister then the same as Bellamy. if not then kill her.

44. Would you go to sleep in cryo or stay awake like Marper? Cryo

45. Who are you waking up first to explore the new planet? Bellarke

tagging @chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky @anne-shirley-blythe @fen-ha-fuck-you @talistheintrovert @prophecy-gurl @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold

[brianna-lei]

Anonymous Butterfly Soup asks, batch 6

IT’S RIGHT NEXT TO THE BIG TOBLERONE I’M ALIVE

Being covered by a big gaming news site was one of my fantasies, so I’m elated this happened. The article is here, for anyone curious! 

More asks under the cut!! 

A note before I start -- if you submitted a bug, I saw it!! Thank you for reporting them!

Yes, she did! Her Facebook profile pic is her posing in front of a store at the mall, and you can see Jun’s reflection taking the pic in the store window

Akarsha didn’t realize, but Noelle totally heard it. Noelle kind of had a sense of what was up already, but actually hearing it worried her. She was debating whether or not to intervene when Min showed up. 

On a small note, Min trying to cheer Akarsha up slightly improved Noelle’s opinion of Min (even though Min and Akarsha almost end up fist fighting again afterward).  

Min plays video games too, imagine them playing Team Fortress 2 and later Overwatch together... Diya, Min, and Noelle have all seen some basic anime like Pokemon, Digimon, and Yugioh, but Akarsha’s the only real hardcore anime fan. I’m glad she met “Sakura”, “Yuki”, and Ester through the baseball club, because now she has weeb friends to talk about that stuff too. 

(Ester is less obvious about liking anime than “Sakura” and “Yuki”, but you can still tell by her outfit’s style. Lowkey but not lowkey enough)

I can totally relate to all of them, but I’d say Diya!

Yes, they grow close over the course of the year and Noelle has to try really hard not to cry LMAO They still keep in touch afterward. 

Yep, they both feel this huge gulf between themselves and their parents due to cultural differences. Many Asian immigrant parents are extremely conservative so it feels like they’re on a completely different wavelength from you, and at the same time they have complete power over you. It’s kind of a bad feeling.  

...Also, shadowing their faces saved me the work of drawing their different facial expressions. 

Min was actually out of town when the fire happened, so Diya had to call her and tell her what happened :( Diya (and eventually Min) sleeps on Noelle’s couch for a bit. Noelle and Akarsha aren’t living together at the time and Noelle has the nicer/cleaner apartment  

It sounds really miserable, but they’re ok in the end

Noelle's passion is math and science, so she definitely ends up doing something in STEM that she likes, just not what her parents were expecting. Akarsha is similar and becomes a software engineer -- They’re actually both naturally interested in those subjects, which says a lot about how bad the parental pressure really is.  

I like to think Diya and Min actually manage to break into minor league baseball and eventually MLB

Most of my outfit inspiration comes from my tumblr/twitter feeds. I wish I could recommend you fashion blogs, but I’m not following any?! They’re all just fandom mutuals who randomly reblog cool clothes sometimes. 

I used to have trouble deciding what clothes characters should wear, so every time I see an image of a cool outfit I save it for reference. After doing this since high school I now have...uh...

And those are just the unorganized ones, the ones i have in folders are like...

Now if I’m stumped for what a character should wear, I just browse these massive folders for inspiration. I can actually pinpoint the omocat jacket that gave me the idea for Min’s:

I thought, “it should be a warning: high voltage sign on the back!”, and then I just went on Google images and looked them up. 

Sorry if this isn’t helpful! 

I don’t think Min really minds, but The Squad is even better! Deke squad

Yeah, Akarsha’s parents wouldn’t approve either. Out of the main four, Diya is actually the only one whose parents are fine with it 

Ooh thank you this is an awesome compliment to receive!! 

I REALLY want to make merch some day! I’ve never made physical merch before and I’m a bit intimidated not knowing where to start/how to handle shipping, so it may take a while, though :( 

I didn’t give anyone last names and I doubt I ever will, sorry! Feel free to give them your own if you want 

This was intentional, but at the same time I can’t believe everyone IMMEDIATELY noticed. You guys are so in tune with 4/20

Diya and Akarsha are Indian, Min-seo is Korean, Noelle is Taiwanese, Chryssa is black, Liz is…mostly Irish, I think? “Sakura” is Pakistani, “Yuki” is Filipino. I’ve heard a lot of guesses for Ester, but she’s half black and half Chinese!

i got u son!!

Thank you, I really love hearing this because the feeling that this narrative was missing was what made me want to make this game in the first place! 

you might feel a bit more sympathetic to min when you reach her part of the story! Your mileage may vary, though

If you want to make a game like Butterfly Soup, try the program Renpy! It doesn’t require programming experience to use and there’s a lot of guides online on how to use it.  My NUMBER ONE BIG ADVICE IS MAKE A REALLY, REALLY SMALL GAME FIRST. My first game, Pom Gets Wi-Fi, was only 30-45 minutes long. If you make it any bigger than that, you almost guaranteed will never finish it. The dream game that you want to make is probably longer than that, so don’t make your dream game first! That’s kind of why I was so alarmed when Pom Gets Wi-Fi took off -- I’m very proud of that game and still love it, but it was like my test for the games I dreamed of making like Butterfly Soup. (Also, 17 is a great age to start making games, good for you!) Other stuff I’ve learned:  Programming: I mostly learned super specific things that can’t be easily applied to other situations. If you want to know how I did a specific thing in Renpy, message me! 

Writing: If you’re struggling to write something, it might be for a good reason. Maybe the scene is unnecessary or boring, your mental image of the scene doesn’t translate well to the format of your work, or the character motivations aren’t convincing enough. Deleting a scene altogether isn’t defeat, sometimes it’s the best path forward! Give up more! 

Artwise: Drawing for non-pixel art games takes FOREVER. The sheer amount of time it’d take to draw all the characters and backgrounds was so demoralizing that I found myself procrastinating because I didn’t want to tackle it. Not only did I have a large cast of characters (9 in the baseball club alone), but because of flashbacks, I had to draw half of them again as kids!

To anyone thinking about making a game by themselves, SERIOUSLY consider making it a pixel art game. If you’re that set on making a non-pixel art game, SEVERELY limit the number of characters and backgrounds you have to draw!! I’m begging u...learn from my mistakes... 

You’re welcome!!! :> 

I loved USC! The Interactive Media major was cool and fun -- I met a lot of good friends through the program! It was probably the best few years of my life. 

Unfortunately...I felt like it did nothing to prepare me for finding a job. There are very few classes for aspiring game artists and game writers. There wasn’t a single professor who worked as an artist at a triple A studio while I was there, and only one who was a major writer. I get that you gotta be self motivated, but I wish I had someone in the faculty I felt comfortable discussing my career path with. Some of the professors had clear favorite students and if you weren’t one of them, they’d make very little effort to reach out to you or interact with you. I know I'm introverted, but I never got this feeling with my general elective classes -- I had plenty of chances to talk to my writing professor, architecture lab professor, art teacher, etc., yet I came out of a lot of my Interactive Media classes wondering if my professors even remembered me.  

If you want to be a game designer or maybe a writer, and are really focused/outgoing with your professors, it could be the major for you, but if you want to be a game artist I’m not sure it’s the best place to be. 

I was actually crazy stressed out when it came out, so nope! It’s happening this weekend  

I was super nervous right after it came out because I was worried people wouldn’t like it! I put a lot into it, and actually teared up writing parts of it, so it was a ridiculous relief to see that people were touched by it. I’m really happy now and really want to make a sequel.  Also, I’m beyond grateful to my friends/mutuals/fans spreading the word and tweeting/posting about the game and making fancontent ;~; I really owe everything to them!  A few people wondered about how I was holding up attention-wise, and actually...as a fanartist I sort of thrive on this, haha. Also, this is much less intense than when I released Pom Gets Wi-Fi. For perspective, it took Butterfly Soup a week to reach the number of downloads Pom got in one day. 

Good!!! You’re welcome! 

you’re welcome!!! 

[iamanartisttype]

Is Dawn of War Soulstorm really so bad?

Soulstorm is definitely the black sheep within the crop of the Dawn of War games. It was the one expansion Relic had nothing to do with. They were busy working on Dawn of War 2. That left Iron Lore Entertainment to do the job. Some will say they did a horrendous job and others say they did okay. I personally think they did better than people give them credit for. Given that they’d never made a strategy game, especially one as niche as DoW, and the only game they’d made was Titan Quest, an action role playing game, and an expansion for it. I’m willing to pull back some of the blame for inexperience. So, how did they do?

I’ll start off with the gameplay. Having been playing it for the last few weeks, I have to say at times it’s both better and worse than Dark Crusade. It’s superior since it adds two more races and gives them their unique roles and playstyles in the game. I have to give them this point for doing so well with the new races. The worse comes in with the gameplay itself. The controlling of the units can be a bit off.

The Sisters of Battle are where they should be as a mix between the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines. They also have the attribute of powers given to them through their faith. The powers are there to offset the lack of a super tank and elite infantry. They do have the saint, but because they’re like the Guard and Marines, they only get one or the other. The saint was good enough for what they do. They’re a  much better armed horde army with the boost of FIRE, lots of fire to cleanse the impure, and to also break morale. It’s an interesting concept that brings the player back to the basics of the game where morale breaking is your best friend. It’s the saints best friend too.

The Dark Eldar, much like the normal Eldar are just infuriating. A different kind of infuriating. They go a lot further into the blood, guts and gore of combat while the normal Eldar are clean and quick. That’s really it. The Dark eldar are just darker slave trading Eldar with some interesting warp powers that will build up over the course of a game to make up for the fact that like the normal Eldar they’re underpowered in the early game.

I hate the Dark and normal Eldar, so that’s fine with me, but from a balance standpoint they’re pretty weak. They are movement races, so it could just be my lack of experience with them in this regard. I am a Guard player after all. Staying stationary is what we do best. We die standing.

Here’s where the chinks in the armor start to show up. The gameplay itself is lacking in comparison to Dark Crusade. There’s a weird bug where I’ll tell my guys to go in one direction and they’ll take an off route. If a base is right in front of them they’ll attempt to go around it instead of into it. It only occurs when I’m attack moving, but it has messed me up on occasion and given the enemy a superior position.

Otherwise, the combat feels lifeless. I don’t get this rush during combat that I once did. In the previous games when you entered combat it was an epic battle. Tanks firing ordnance into melee skirmishes with gunfire galore flying all around. Now it all just feels stale. I feel like this is for two reasons.

I’m used to the combat by now. It’s been a game and three expansion packs. It makes sense I’d grow tired of it, but I’m not tired of the other games. Winter Assault, to me, still has the most epic feel when it comes to combat. I think that’s because of the second reason.

The games been so streamlined by this point. You can only have X amount of this troop while the rest of your troops are barebones basic. Winter Assault allowed me to field any kind of army to combat whatever was in front of me. Orks? Break out the hellhounds. Space Marines? Chimeras with lots of Kasrkan with plasma guns. Eldar? Ogryn tended to do the job right. Chaos required a mixture of hellhounds and chimeras. There was so many ways to field an army. Now it’s two Russ’s, three Basilisks, one Kasrkan and one Ogryn squad. I do get a couple of bombers and heavy weapons teams, but it was more fun when I could field an entire elite army. Now, it’s just Guardsman.

I’ll move onto looks now. The game definitely looks prettier with it’s uptick in graphics. The expansion packs have all added to the graphical fidelity of the base game. Especially with Dark Crusade that brought in 1920 by 1080p resolution. If you’re like me and own the games outside of steam the updates are not easy to comeby without risk. If I was to take one shot at steam, It’d be that, but old games are just that, old.  

The problem with the look of Soulstorm is that it’s too clean. Look at Dark Crusade, Winter Assault and the base game's campaign. The maps were grainy and dark with a lot of history behind them. This is supposed to be a war torn system from years of battle between the orks and guard, why isn’t it shown? You see it in in the previous installments. The world of Tartarus and it’s dead Guard and demolished cities, Lorn V with Its Guard inhabitants eradicated, It’s Chaos and Orks inhabitants strewn about fighting each other with a massive destroyed base of operations just ready for the winner to claim. It looks to have a massive amount of history to it everywhere as you march through it with your army to take it back. Dark Crusade has the feel of a guard/Tau planet in that they weren’t really fighting until everyone showed up, which is fluff friendly. The Kauraven planets feel like noone was there fighting, ever. You’ll find a couple of areas if you look hard enough, but most of the areas are squeaky clean. It doesn’t feel grimdark.

There’s also an odd mesh of the tabletop terrain with the game's background. It comes off as eye popping in some areas. The destroyed buildings just don’t mix with the pretty foliage that looks like it has not been affected in any way by the war torn years of strife.

Sound and ambience I’ll summarize quickly. It’s stellar just like the rest of the series. The new tracks of the holy organs really capture what the Sisters of Battle are fighting for. Their scorching xenos filth in the name of their glorious God Emperor. I much prefer the chanting and war drums laced with flashlights/laser pointers, but that's me. The Dark Eldar’s soundtrack is just menacing, evil and extremely epic. It truly reflects who the Dark Eldar are. If you don’t know then go and look up their history. Don’t if you’re against pure sin.

Now I come to the story. The story is pretty much the first game with a cluster of extra races thrown in. Orks and Guard and are fighting each other for control of the sector. Obviously, that’s a secondary goal for the Orks, but it helps their primary goal of “fightin” and “winnin”. Then all of that changes when near every single other race attacks. Once they’re all there a massive warp storm traps them all in and their left to fend each other off. It’s not entirely like the first game, but it’s close.

It’s not a top notch story that truly exceeds either of Winter Assault or the base game's story. What it is is a typical tuesday for Warhammer 40k. Everyone killing each other off in the most brutal of fashions and only the strongest can come out on top. Who wins? You’ll have to judge that yourself. Unless you want a lore winner, that's where you find out the lore is quite fond of a certain blogger. Too bad everyone hates this game.

The last thing I'll look at is the voice acting. Honestly, this aspect of the game gets far more scrutiny than it deserves. The only voices that hit me the wrong way were Commander Boreale, who just sounds off. He sounds as if he came from an entirely different universe and can barely get into the way Space Marines talk. It’s just offputting. The other voice is Gorgutz, I am so used to his original voice being hammy and amazing in representing the Orks perfectly. Hearing him talk like he just smoked his voice away just saddens me. One other complaint with the voice acting, the characters hardly intermigle. You got a mixture of everything in Dark Crusade. Everyone had something to say to each other and here it’s just everyone talking amongst themselves. It’s not as fun when there’s no banter involved. As bad as Gorgutz and Boreale sound, I bet some banter would have helped out the situation.

Looking back I didn’t have the hate that some others have towards it. I treated it as a lesser expansion than the rest, but it was still good and that hasn’t changed. Being older and more experienced with games and being far more observant, I have to say I found a lot more problems than I used to see. To me, the weakest part of the game is the feel to it. I don’t feel these worlds are as wartorn as was presented. They just seem like a little bit of war happened. Both the Orks and Guard had been stalemating for years and now everything else has shown up and are wiping each other out. It just needed to be shown more.. Everything else wrong with it can be overlooked slightly since it was Iron Lore’s first and only crack. I feel like if given another shot they’d have hit the mark. The gameplay had very little problems and the banter they’d have picked up on if given more time in the world. The voice acting wasn't perfect, but the marks that had to be hit with the new races were spot on.

Give it a shot if you haven’t. It’s still worth a playthrough or two.

Thank you very much for reading!

May the Emperor guide your blade.

[cleanfreakandshittyglasses]

Hey since you said you're soooooo bored...I dare you the answer all of them! Lol you're welcome bud :D

1. Who was the last person you held hands with?

-answered-

2. Are you outgoing or shy?

neither

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing?

my eldest sister kyla will be home in a few days after her eight months job contract in ncl. i’m really excited to see her :)

4. Are you easy to get along with?

lol no

5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you?

-answered-

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

-answered-

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now?

no.

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind?

-answered-

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

i don’t think so

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

mama. argued about how abusive and stupid religious people here in my country are. 

11. What does the most recent text that you sent say?

“niks sapna ka tulo takad”

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now?

-answered-

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair?

NO.

14. Do you believe in luck and miracles?

-answered-

15. What good thing happened this summer?

ohoho definitely not the australian like heat and fucking bugs everywhere

16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

no.

17. Do you think there is life on other planets?

it would be stupid to not to. even the tiniest organisms can be called a life out there.

18. Do you still talk to your first crush?

i can’t even remember who that was now

19. Do you like bubble baths?

sure

20. Do you like your neighbors?

no but i like their pets

21. What are you bad habits?

other than procrastinating? hmmmmmmm ._. 

22. Where would you like to travel?

some other countries in asia, africa and europe 

23. Do you have trust issues?

-answered-

24. Favorite part of your daily routine?

sleeping and eating

25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with?

my chest

26. What do you do when you wake up?

i die

27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker?

i’m contented with my skin colour 

28. Who are you most comfortable around?

guillermo

29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up?

i don’t have any exes

30. Do you ever want to get married?

i don’t think so

31. Is your hair long enough for a pony tail?

yep. it’s shoulder-length tho so it can still be a bit messy.

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?

none.

33. Spell your name with your chin.

no

34. Do you play sports? What sports?

swimming

35. Would you rather live without TV or music?

what the hell :/

36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them?

HAHA

37. What do you say during awkward silences?

either make it even more awkward or plot my escape 

38. Describe your dream girl/guy?

myself but already a billionaire and successful in life with a mansion full of my beloved animals.

39. What are your favorite stores to shop in?

40. What do you want to do after high school?

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

-answered-

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean?

…i’m always quiet tho

43. Do you smile at strangers?

if necessary

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean?

s p a c e boi

45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

the thought of my pets getting hungry & thirsty

46. What are you paranoid about?

-answered-

47. Have you ever been high?

48. Have you ever been drunk?

yes

49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about?

why the fuck would i write that here if i want no one to find out about it

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore?

black, i think.

51. Ever wished you were someone else?

sometimes…

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself?

53. Favourite makeup brand?

54. Favourite store?

55. Favourite blog?

56. Favourite colour?

black, crimson, grey, white, maroon and any dark shades of blue

57. Favourite food?

any, as long as it’s edible and not a bad food. i hate bad food.

58. Last thing you ate?

chicken curry

59. First thing you ate this morning?

sandwich

60. Ever won a competition? For what?

61. Been suspended/expelled? For what?

62. Been arrested? For what?

63. Ever been in love?

uh no. i don’t think so.

64. Tell us the story of your first kiss?

lmao

65. Are you hungry right now?

not really

66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends?

i don’t really have tumblr nor real life friends, except of my pets.

67. Facebook or Twitter?

68. Twitter or Tumblr?

69. Are you watching tv right now?

nope

70. Names of your bestfriends?

guillermo and eren

71. Craving something? What?

-answered-

72. What colour are your towels?

white, blue and green

72. How many pillows do you sleep with?

six. two for my head, two for both of my sides, one for my feet and one small for comfort/hug pillow or for covering my face when i sleep.

73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals?

no, they’re itchy.

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have?

my siblings and i had a lot, ma donated them to some orphanages as we grew up.

75. Favourite animal?

any!

76. What colour is your underwear?

yellow green

77. Chocolate or Vanilla?

chocolate

78. Favourite ice cream flavour?

anything with strawberry and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

79. What colour shirt are you wearing?

yellow

80. What colour pants?

i’m wearing shorts. 

81. Favourite tv show?

82. Favourite movie?

83. Mean Girls or Mean Girls 2?

84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street?

85. Favourite character from Mean Girls?

86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo?

87. First person you talked to today?

my little sister

88. Last person you talked to today?

probably myself

89. Name a person you hate?

90. Name a person you love?

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now?

92. In a fight with someone?

93. How many sweatpants do you have?

at least four, i think.

94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have?

five.

95. Last movie you watched?

i rewatched pacific rim the other day

96. Favourite actress?

97. Favourite actor?

98. Do you tan a lot?

99. Have any pets?

two! a dog and a cat.

100. How are you feeling?

bored.

101. Do you type fast?

if necessary

102. Do you regret anything from your past?

103. Can you spell well?

i coconut

104. Do you miss anyone from your past?

105. Ever been to a bonfire party?

at the beach yeah

106. Ever broken someone’s heart?

LOL

107. Have you ever been on a horse?

unfortunately not yet :(

*side-eyes jean*

108. What should you be doing?

doing #107

109. Is something irritating you right now?

FINISHING THIS THING??? HA HAHA?

110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt?

the moon.

111. Do you have trust issues?

-answered-

112. Who was the last person you cried in front of?

ugh. a classmate

113. What was your childhood nickname?

114. Have you ever been out of your province/state?

115. Do you play the Wii?

116. Are you listening to music right now?

y-yes…it’s on every time we touch by cascada……

117. Do you like chicken noodle soup?

sure.

118. Do you like Chinese food?

i’m in for any good food son

119. Favourite book?

…it’s personal

120. Are you afraid of the dark?

no, it’s actually calming for me.

121. Are you mean?

depends

122. Is cheating ever okay?

no, but that doesn’t mean i won’t do it tho.

123. Can you keep white shoes clean?

no. my body can be clumsy as fuck when it wants to be.

124. Do you believe in love at first sight?

@HANJO 

125. Do you believe in true love?

love isn’t really just about two people and romance so duh. plus levihan exist, of course i believe in true love.

126. Are you currently bored?

very

127. What makes you happy?

levihan, guillermo and eren.

good food

comfortable bed

nice clean dust-free room

my laptop and wifi

128. Would you change your name?

i don’t know. maybe? after all my entire name is too long.

129. What your zodiac sign?

eh…i’m taurus but i think capricorn is more accurate for me

130. Do you like subway?

no.

131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

nothing.

132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

-answered-

133. Favourite lyrics right now?

“This is just my way of unleashing the feelings deep inside of me.This spark of black that I seem to love.”  

lmao don’t search it up, it’s nsfw.

134. Can you count to one million?

just counting 1-100 already bores me out so probably no

135. Dumbest lie you ever told?

“no.”

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed?

closed. who the fuck sleeps with doors open?

because that’s just tragic

137. How tall are you?

i’m 170 cm, 5′7.

138. Curly or Straight hair?

i don’t really care, as long as it’s thick.

139. Brunette or Blonde?

brunette.

140. Summer or Winter?

winter ffs

141. Night or Day?

-answered-

142. Favourite month?

-answered-

143. Are you a vegetarian?

i don’t think i could ever last a week without meat man.

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?

dark chocolate

145. Tea or Coffee?

coffee

146. Was today a good day?

meh

147. Mars or Snickers?

snickers

148. What’s your favourite quote?

“Look, Squad Leader Hange is great, but they don’t have a life plan. They don’t even have a day plan. I once found a note they wrote to themselves that said ‘put on pants’ followed by a question mark.”- Moblit

pffft,

149. Do you believe in ghosts?

sure.

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

“Few of us were immune from occasional lapses in self-control.” -The Tuntsa, page 42

whoever u are fucko, thanks for sending? :)

[actutrends]

The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2019

Games grew to a $148.8 billion market in 2019, up 9.6% from 2018 and reaching over 2.5 billion people across the globe. Console games, the lion’s share of the industry a decade earlier, were smaller than mobile games in 2019, a continuation of a multi-year trend, according to research firm Newzoo.

We watched the further growth of esports and game watching expand this year, and we saw the introduction of subscription gaming for Apple Arcade, Google Play, and Google Stadia’s cloud gaming service. Hyper-casual mobile games that last 30 seconds emerged, but big mobile titles like Call of Duty: Mobile emerged to hold their own against the nanosecond attention spans.

I didn’t think we could match last year’s brilliant titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, and Marvel’s Spider-Man. For me, last year was the triumph of traditional narrative triple-A games that blended open worlds with deep narratives.

But the highest end of the industry didn’t rest on its laurels in 2019. As usual, I didn’t have enough time to play it all. But I enjoyed everything across the board, from Sandbox VR’s Star Trek: Discovery — Away Mission virtual reality experience to episodic games like Life is Strange 2 to mobile titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Apple Arcade’s Where Cards Fall. I re-engaged with favorite maps from years past in Call of Duty: Mobile and plunged into battle royale maps with squadmates in the multiplayer action of Apex Legends. And I was scared out of my wits playing titles like The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan.

It felt like I had less time to explore indie experiences that my peers played, so I wasn’t the first to stumble on titles like Untitled Goose Game. But I enjoyed delving into my own passions, such as the World War II real-time strategy game Steel Battalion 2 from Eugen Systems, where I could zoom in on a single tank in a battle or pan out to see an entire division marching across the Russian landscapes. Toward the end of the year, I rushed to finish titles such as Remedy’s Control and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

For the sake of comparison, here are my favorites from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011. In each story below, the links go to our full reviews or major stories about the games. And be sure to check out the GamesBeat staff’s own votes for Game of the Year and the best individual favorites of the staff soon.

Check out our Reviews Vault for past game reviews.

10) Sayonara Wild Hearts

Above: Sayonara Wild Hearts takes you on an impossibly fast ride.

Image Credit: Annapurna

Developer: Simogo Publisher: Annapuana Interactive, iam8bit Platforms: Apple Arcade/iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows, MacOS, tvOS

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this dream-like game, as music games don’t usually get me dancing. But Sayonara Wild Hearts has an artsy combination of dance-fighting, pop music, and high-speed motorcycle chases that clicked for me. I played it on an iPhone with Apple Arcade‘s $5 a month subscription platform, and I used a Rotor Riot wired game controller to play it rather than brave the untrustworthy touchscreen. You can also play it on an iPad or Apple TV.

It’s a high-adrenaline game where you tap, jump, and maneuver to collect little hearts in a beautiful neon-and-black landscape. And it isn’t that long with 23 levels. The neon-on-black art is beautiful. It’s hard to believe a small game studio put it together, because the art is so well-crafted. There isn’t much of a story, but the developers tell you what you need to know.

In Sayonara Wild Hearts, you play as a young woman who suffers a heartbreak. A tarot card pops up and dubs her The Fool, transporting her into an alternate universe. She sets out to restore the harmony of the universe hidden away in the hearts of her enemies. As you take control of The Fool, you speed along on a motorcycle within a tunnel-like view of the horizon.

The fusion of music and gameplay reminds me of music games like Rez from 2001 or that wacky and artistic “Take On Me” music video by A-Ha in 1985. The gameplay in Sayonara Wild Hearts seems impossible, and it takes a lot of skill to avoid crashing. But it’s whimsical and forgiving at the same time, as you can start up right where you crashed to try again. I thought songs like Begin Again were catchy and hard to get out of my head. I’m not going to say that this was far better than many of the triple-A games that debuted this year, but this is my nod in the direction of creativity, fun, and the indie spirit on mobile devices.

9) Rage 2

Above: Rage 2 couldn’t fight the dying of the light.

Image Credit: Bethesda

Developer: Avalanche Studios and id Software Publisher: Bethesda Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows

When id Software’s Tim Willits visited Avalanche Studios in Stockholm, he told his new compadres to ignore constraints. “When I met with the team in Stockholm on the whiteboard, “More crazy than Rage” That was the first pillar of this game,” Willits said.

And he got what he asked for. Rage 2 didn’t get the best reviews, but I thought it was underrated, as I played it through the end of the single-player campaign and played a lot of silly side missions as well. Rage 2 had a lot of environments, ranging from the Mad Max-style desert to jungles and cities. The script was a bit weak, but the enemies were tough and the weapons were glorious. The “nanotrite” capabilities that you discovered along the way are critical to defeating the biggest bosses. The art style was absolutely wild, with plenty of bright pink and yellow colors splashed across the punk habitats. And I enjoyed reuniting with my old friend, the Wingstick, which is like a boomerang that could slice an enemy’s head off.

If it had flaws, it was that it wasn’t Red Dead Redemption 2. It often littered the landscape with side missions and enemies to kill, to no purpose. You could get damaged on your way to an important mission, and then have to figure out a way to recover. It’s good if you stayed on track, built your capabilities up, and stuck to the good stuff.

The final part of the game lasted a lot longer for me because I had trouble taking down General Cross, the bad guy, and his pet monster. But to me, it was a thrill when I finally succeeded.

8) Days Gone

Above: A horde of Freakers chases Deacon St. John in Days Gone.

Image Credit: Sony

Developer: Sony Bend Studio Publisher: Sony Platforms: PlayStation 4

The amazing success of its first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) hampered this game, as did a couple of years of delays. By the time it came out, many were sick of it, and it suffered from having some of the worst bugs I’ve ever seen in a triple-A game. Others wrong wrote it off as a copycat of The Walking Dead, World War Z, and The Last of Us.

But I admired Sony’s guts in standing by Bend Studio, and I stuck by it too as my colleagues ragged on it. I played it for perhaps 50 hours over several weeks, and I was quite possibly the last critic to review the game. I rated it only as a 75, because of the bugs. But without them, it would have been more like a 90, based on the quality of its story and the thrill of fighting the hordes of zombies, or Freakers.

I was drawn to the story of Deacon St. John, a bounty hunter in the Oregon woods and a broken man in a fallen world. He had a death wish and could ride a motorcycle through a horde of zombies just to get them to chase him. But Bend Studio delivered on the big scene where a few hundred zombies chased the biker through an abandoned lumber mill. It was a thrill to figure out how to beat that challenge, and I was hooked on the story of how Deacon was haunted by the memory of his lost love Sarah.

The adventure took me across the beautiful Oregon landscape into horrifying creature battles, motorcycle chases, infected crows, memorable horde battles, stealth missions tracking the secretive government agency, and just plain-old surviving in the wilderness. It was kind of an art to orchestrate your escape from several hundred Freakers. And it was good to see Deacon change and become the person that Sarah would have wanted him to be.

7) Steel Division 2

Above: Your forces appear as icons when you zoom out in Steel Division 2.

Image Credit: Eugen Systems

Developer: Eugen Systems Publisher: Eugen Systems Platforms: Windows 

There are no Metacritic reviews for Steel Battalion 2. I may have been the only one who played it. But I saw the game being played on YouTube by some dedicated influencers with tiny audiences. And I was fascinated. I’ve been playing the Total War series of real-time strategy games since they first debuted more than 15 years ago, and I played Total War: Attila for hundreds of hours in 2015.

And I was glad to pour scores of hours into it this summer into Eugen Systems’ real-time strategy World War II games, which are a niche within a niche. It dwells on a bit of war history I didn’t know much about, Operation Bagration. It was the Soviet Union’s huge summer offensive in Belarus to take back big chunks of Eastern Europe from the Nazis, as the Allied invasion of Normandy was gathering steam in 1944. It was a massive set of tank, infantry, and air battles that left the German Wehrmacht in full retreat on the Eastern Front.

It has a steep learning curve. The game has more than 600 historically accurate units, 18 divisions, and an astounding level of detail in its graphics. You can focus in on an individual scene, such as above, or zoom out to get a birds’ eye view of an entire battle with thousands of soldiers. Your job as general is to constantly feed the right kind of troops into the fray to make the enemy’s forces melt away from you. This is easier said than done, as you can dislodge well-trained enemy squads from a forest trench, even if you’ve got superior armor. The enemy AI is smart, taking out your anti-tank guns on a hill with artillery or air power.

I lost dozens of skirmish matches against the AI before I figured out how to win. On top of the tactical battles, I also got hooked on the Army General mode, where you moved around divisions like chess pieces on a map. But you can still choose to play those huge campaigns, one tactical battle at a time. That’s what is amazing about the title.

6) Gears of War 5

Above: Kait gets here close-up.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Developer: The Coalition Publisher: Microsoft Platforms: Windows, Xbox One

Coalition head Rod Fergusson humbly said that Gears 5 was the best entry yet in the Gears saga. And he wasn’t making that up. I was gratified to see the developer get the balance right when it came to creating a wild action game with an emotional story with strong characters such as the hero, Kait Diaz.

Gears 4 got pretty goofy at certain points in its narrative about the human race losing its battle for survival against the Swarm in a world gone mad. But this story balanced that goofiness that brought us chainsaw bayonets with the moments where you mourn the death of a lost friend. These are tough moments because the cast of characters has survived some very tough times, and they’re a close-knit group. When you rip a character out of that group, it leaves deep wounds.

The campaign’s longer than usual, and it features cool features such as a skiff that sails across both the desert and ice. shoot out the ice under the feet of the Scions, the heavy tank bosses that carry a heavy weapon and are often shielded from attack by flying drones. This was very different from past Gears games. I remember spending an hour battling a blind boss, slowly figuring out a kind of choreography to stay out of its way, replenish my ammo, grab new weapons, and spray it with the frosty freeze guns. The title also had some cool additions to multiplayer and co-op play.

Gears 5 delivers a sense that you’re losing a big war at the same time it delivers the blow of a personal loss. And it generates a resolve to hit back. I like how this team outgrew its urges to be goofy and shocking and instead opted for something closer to fine art.

The post The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2019 appeared first on Actu Trends.