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starshipsofstarlord · 4 years ago

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Growing Pains | TFW

Request: Hey! Can I please request a platonic x reader with team free will 2.0? The reader gets turned back to a toddler by a witch and they try to ask Rowena for help but, the spell lasts for a week and it's just plain chaotic. The reader is extremely clumsy and hungry but knows a few words like "Hungry" and "Thirsty". The rest is up to you 😊. Thanks in advance!

A/N: It is a little different from the request, so I hope you don’t mind, also it’s not great. And I’m terribly sorry for the wait, I hope you can understand why xxx

Walking around the lab, you screwed your face up at the mess. It was like toddler’s had been let loose in the room, there was glass broken upon the floor, paper thrown out of the shredder, and worst of all, no one to condemn for the death of the scientist.

Sighing, you shut your eyes, leaning back into one of the counters. “So, the guy that was killed had like a dozen or so kids and we can’t find a single one of them, or the mother?”

You pinched the bridge of your nose as Cas circled the room once more, seeing if he could find anything that your human eyes had missed. But alas, there was no ultimatum, nothing that could direct the pair of you to answers.

“That sounds about right.” Dean’s gruff voice came from the doorway, stepping on shards of glass as he came closer to the two of you. “Although at this time, I am calling shots on the mom being the killer.”

“We don’t even know if this is up our alley Dean.” You sighed, opening your eyes and looking at the older hunter. “Did you get anything from the co-workers?”

“Not a peep.” His tone was almost too cheerful, especially considering the circumstances. The group of you were nowhere near completing this case, and all he could think about was the burger joint around the corner. You were close enough to it, that you would give in and accompany him. “Who’s hungry?”

“After the sight of the guts strung in the ceiling fan,” you looked up to emphasise your point, “I think I may have lost what appetite that I had left.”

“Bad luck. You snooze, you lose.” With that he left the room, presumably heading off to stuff his face. It was impossible not to roll your eyes at his childish behaviour, although in all fairness, you should have been used to it by now. However your dear angel friend remained with you.

“We should meet with Sam and Jack, and see if they have found anything in the house.” Castiel spoke, confused by the lack of evidence in this death. There was nothing that could have helped, even the majority of the man’s body was gone.

“Why would someone have that many children?” It was a rhetorical question, but just the thought of your body going through it’s natural process that many times made you shiver.

“To repopulate.” Cas put simply, although that was a straightforward fact. But that was not what you had meant, admittedly you had a soft spot for kids, even missed being one sometimes.

“I know, but doesn’t that seem sort of strange to you?” Your mind was spinning with all sorts of possibilities, of what could and couldn’t be going on. Unless, well... “It could be like some sort of supernatural litter, or they’re breeding test subjects. Is there even any record of them having that many children?”

Your conclusions made your friend frown, and he pointed his finger up, unintentionally pointing to the tendril of flesh that was hanging from the fan above.

“We should check the records.” And with that he grabbed your bag from just outside of the room, pulling your laptop from out of it. Just then, your phone began ringing. It was Sam, and so you answered.

“Hey, you find anything?” There was silence on the other end, until you heard the shrill sound of what you supposed to be a child.

“Was that Jack or -”

“Hey!” The nephilim retorted. You could already picture the child like frown on his face, but before either of you could bicker about your comparison, the Winchester on call spoke first.

“She left one of her kids, and we found hex bags.” He breathed, relieved that this did in fact involve what you all were guessing to be a witch, yet also frustrated about how messy this all was. “But the thing is, this son of hers was closed in the basement, and the only thing down there for him to eat down there was a man’s leg...”

“We should get that tested, it could be the father.” You said, trying to think about this case adjoined with all of its new revelations. “So, what is her goal here, she’s trying to turn her own children into cannibals?”

“That’s how the ‘myth’ of the wendigo started in human folklore.” Jack commented, before he frowned. Him and Sam both let out shouts, making you fear for the pair.

“Sam?”

“She doesn’t have any children, nor did he.” Cas spoke, the content on the screen disarranging this entire predicament further. “What just happened Sam?”

His breathing could still be heard from the other end of the line. It seemed like he was in shock of some sort.

“You’ve got that right, Cas.” He breathed, referring to the fact that she had no spawn. “And I suspect the others are like him. He’s just turned into a grown man, we’re going to attempt to get an answer to who he is. Be careful if you encounter Mrs Fletcher, both of you.”

So, now you had a presumed answer on how Mr Fletcher had died, you had to tell Dean. Quickly, you and Cas left the scene, looking for the elder Winchester, remembering to take any of your items with you.

“Thankyou.” You nodded, doing all of the talking to any police whilst Cas held your phone at an arm’s length. “Got any clues on where our witch works?” You asked him.

Sam replied soon, making the matter of reaching Dean that more prominant. “West Street, not far from where you are. At the burger joint, Paula’s.”

“Shit!”

When you and Castiel arrived, Dean Winchester was nowhere to be found. That fact had you deeply concerned, more so than you would usually be on a hunt. This presumed witch was targeting adults, and not only did he and the majority of you fit the agenda, but you didn’t want to know what would happen if you ended up disturbing her crosshairs.

There was no one inside, excluding yourself and the angel. It was eerie, almost too quiet to be owned by a witch. Scratch that, definitely too quiet.

“Behind the counter.” You nodded towards the door, taking the lead first, lightly pushing it. The bell atop of it jingled, making you blink hazily, before all turned to a deep gaze of pixels.

Castiel walked closer to you, tapping your forehead, but to no avail was your state resolved. Instead, you felt the need to collapse and keep your eyes contained behind their lids. And so you gave into that feeling, only hearing the voices of Sam and Jack before it was over.

When you awoke, you were in your bed in the bunker, but it felt much larger than it ever had before. There was so much room to move upon the mattress, the duvet even felt bigger.

As you looked down at your hands, you realised they had shrunk significantly. For all you were aware, this could all have been a very lucid dream, but you doubted that. As a hunter, the strange things were never false, they were real.

Attempting to leave your bed, you dropped your legs over the side, although they were now incapable of touching the floor. Instead of landing upright, you fell, causing a thud against the floor.

The sound had obviously rendered, and it removed all thoughts that were rattling around in your mind. Memories flashed before your eyes, sending a haze of dizziness to your shrunken body, until they all left, making you aloof in your own adult room.

Dean rushed out of his own reside as he heard the thud. He had followed the witch around the back and shanked her, but there had been a second plan up her long black sleeves. And he should have known, as he walked into your room, only to find a little girl with a strong resemblance to you.

This was her charade when alive, and the issue still stuck even now even when she was dead. Dean rubbed his face, feeling the muscles that were tensing beneath the skin. And now they were left with the outcome that they and you had tried to resolve.

Looking down at your youthful silhouette reminded Dean as to exactly why he hated witches so much. They were deceitful and cruel, and unfortunately so much more. “Sam!” He called out in a hurry, cradling your small, whining body in his arms.

You tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but your once fellow hunter would not allow you to do so. There was no logic turning in the cogs of your mind, instead, you were much rather shy to someone that you were viewing as a stranger.

In a flash, Sam was at the threshold of your door, looking in as it was ajar. He saw Dean with a kid, and there was only one explanation for it. They had been hustled whilst the witch turned in her grave...

Cas examined a book in the war room, whilst Jack followed his actions. Sam was on the phone with Rowena, asking, some would see it as begging, the witch to come and fix you up. And thus, Dean was left with you, whilst he nursed a beer in his opposite hand.

You tried to reach the glass bottle, but Dean jerked it away from your grasp. “No.” He warned you, having continuously done so before when you were too lazy to fetch your own from the fridge. But that didn’t stop you, instead it humoured you, making you laugh at the perceived game.

“Stop it.” He spoke again, making Jack laugh at your stubbornness which clearly hadn’t changed. For once, it was nice for him not to be the youngest in the room, even though technically he still wasn’t. But all got distracted when Sam huffed a sigh of relief over the phone.

“Okay, great. Me and Dean will meet you there.” And then he hung up.

Rather than being in Dean’s arms once again, you had been traded to Sam’s as the eldest drove Baby to the destination that Rowena had proposed. “Thirsty.” You mumbled, a gurgle following your very short sentence.

Sam looked at Dean, who only shrugged. He was unsure of what to do, they couldn’t stop at a gas station, otherwise they would miss their meeting with Rowena, and as they knew far too well, she was a tricky one to get a hold of.

“No you’re not.” Dean told you, trying to convince your mind otherwise to its actual thoughts. For the moment of which you were silent, he thought it may have worked, however the peace was not eternal, for you spoke again.

“Hungry.” You managed to speak next, making Dean huff from exhaustion. He thought of your need for a drink, and then it clicked, he tipped his head back at Sam.

“There’s a beer in the back.” It possibly could have rolled under his seat, these roads to the witch were bumpy. Sam gasped at the statement, placing his hand on your back as he bounced you and kept you distracted from your desires.

“Please tell me that you’re not serious.” At this point, Sam would not be surprised with his brother. Quite clearly, as much as the man adored kids, he was getting quite fed up with you in this state. It was day in, day out and yet the effects still hadn’t worn themselves out.

“She’s technically of legal drinking age.” He shrugged, remembering all of the times that you would steal his beer from the fridge, or even sometimes his hands.

“Technically,” the younger of the two pried, glaring at his brother, “currently she isn’t,”

“We’re here anyway.” Dean cut the conversation short, putting the car in park. For the first time in his life, the hunter and legacy was eager to see Rowena. Never did he think that day would ever come, but somehow your obliviousness had landed you all here, and he hated it.

Sam got out of the car, carrying you to a bench that Dean had decided to park his own rear on. There was a nice breeze whipping his hair before his face, and this younger you mirrored the reaction the elder one would have had.

You laughed, watching the swarm of locks cover his face, and move to the other side, with the swiftest and slightest motions as the direction switched itself up.

Footsteps, clearly heels, could be heard clicking their way over. It was isolated in this park, presumably the redhead’s doing as she came into view with an amused grin stretching her chin.

“Well, if I was not already quite acquainted with the pair of you, I would presume the two of you were fathers to dear little (Y/N).” Rowena bent forward, ignoring the glares she received from the men, ogling at your youthful expressions. “Are you sure that you don’t want to keep her like this? She is quite adorable when she hasn’t got the brains to work with my son when the two of you dimwits think it fits into your narrative. Or hold a gun to the back of my neck and blackmail me with my own security.”

“Definitely.” Was Dean’s instant response. He could not do another day with baby you, he’d start going grey, or his eyes would turn black all of a sudden from pent up rage.

“Yes, Rowena.” Sam answered, bowing his head, as your fingers decided to thread themselves through his hair.

“Shame.” She pouted briefly, before waving her hand, and then you were, dazed, but sat in Sam’s lap, full size. As soon as you came to, your eyes widened at the position you were in, and you were quick to launch yourself out of it. He however sat there stunned. “Told you we should have called her earlier.” Sam said, still feeling awkward from your exchange, and Dean only grunted in a reply.

Dean knew for sure though, you had been a pain in the ass. If it ever happened again, he would just leave you with Jack and Cas.

#supernatural imagine #supernatural one shot #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural prompts #supernatural requests #tfw x reader #tfw imagine #team free will #team free will x reader #dean winchester imagines #sam and dean #sam winchester imagine #cas x reader

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border-spam · 4 years ago

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Leech Lord - The thought that counts

Troy

Calypso is a bizarre, very weird man who's concept of a "gift" can be some hot drink Ven brought for him to a late night meeting, the time JK handed him a slightly rusted 1/4 socket wrench they'd spotted on a scrap pile while patrolling the slums and recalled him saying he'd have to ask Sei for the day before, or a photo of a flower Eli saw and sent on an incognito chat line.

What he considers gifts aren't usually that tangible so aren't things he can show to others, but there are some actual gifts he's held onto for far too long and people are fucking sick of being shown.

You ever see a coffee cup that hasn't been washed in eight years??

Well his friends have. Weekly.

Ty had "made it" for him in their first year planet-side, a shitty white .50c mug she'd crudely painted "Best Bro, lol" on in now peeling enamel. He knows it was a joke, but it doesn't change how that stupid gross mug has made him feel when things have been so bad that he's spent nights rolling it gently between a flesh and metal hand, reassuring himself with memories of the good times.

I mean he.. he cleans it, he rinses it out, but if he washed it properly the paint would just come straight off and that ain't happening. He drinks so much coffee. The poor thing gets refilled 4, 5 times a night sometimes, it's VILE looking. Brown and black stains, more rings than a felled steelwood tree running down the inside..

Ven hates it. Sei hates it. Eli smiles and tries not to die when he sees it. JK FUCKING LOVES IT. That mug is more Troy to them then his cruel prosthetic is, that mug is the most Troy thing on his damn ship.

Seifa has "politely" insisted on sealing it for him so he CAN wash it, but she's been told with frightening clarity that she’s not allowed near it. Leave it alone, it's fine.

Ven joke gifted him a pair of cursed-text booty shorts after two years of seeing The Holy Father’s ass crack daily and feeling his soul leave his body every time.

Troy took it as part insult / part challenge and made sure to actually wear them around Ven and make sure the other man was aware.

It went from hitching his pants just low enough in public to show their hem and smirking as they were recognised, to just straight up wearing them instead of his usual baggy harem pants some nights when he knew Ven would be spending a few hours in Sanctum.

Sei was completely in on this and acted nonchalant as her friend would desperately try to look around the room for support as his life-force withered while having to sit next to his boss in cursed hotpants and everyone else treating it like it was completely normal.

That stopped when Sei wasn't around, that kind of bullshit just didn't feel right.

He still has them though. They'll.. make a return one day, and Ven won't be ready.

Seifa

On the gift front, she's got 2 modes

1 - Extremely expensive item of value:

Munny. Nice. Highly appreciates it but won't from a personal level ( unless it's also exceptionally catered to her like very carefully chosen jewelry ). She'll secure it somewhere behind lock and key in her ship, and take it out to fondle on her floor like a goblin if she's feeling down.

Sei won't use any expensive gifts for fear of somehow "wasting" then, a weird after effect of poverty and a knife edge upbringing, but she'll cover herself in platinum and diamonds AT HOME while watching bullshit on the E-Net and drinking wine. Think Jenna Marbles leeeshuring. Only does this in private, it's some odd way of enjoying the things she's been given without fear of somehow devaluing them. She's fuckin weird. She is a weird person, she's just very close to even weirder monster twins and they distract a lot of attention from her strangeness.

2 - Piece of shit someone found in a flea market and thought of her or made for her poorly:

What the fuck. What the fuck. Treasure. Will go all red eyed and mouth wobbly when given it, won't know what the hell to say. Will use / wear / show it off daily. Will proudly point out gifts like this in her ship to visitors, go over who gave it to her, where it's from, what that person means to her, everything.

If it's wearable it will be patched into or worn with her best outfits bar ceremonial garb. She's covered in little mementos of friends and colleagues she takes massive comfort from by having close to her at all times, 'specially as some are too far away to see that often, or aren't around at all anymore.

The pendant Ven surprised her with has found its way into almost every ensemble she wears, it's on next to scrap chains and fool’s gold when she's elbow deep in a Mechanicum's process machine's axle oil, and it's on when she's dripping in platinum and faux giggling at a gala. This is... noticed by Troy, who is silently aware of how the shockingly expensive jewelry he's been gifting her for years remains stashed in lockboxes around her ship while Ven's bit of glass rarely leaves her skin. He finds it harder to ignore the blue-green glint of it far more than he'd want anyone to know.

He sent her a droid, years ago. She picked it up from a holding dock in a grimy but carefully packaged parcel and loved it at first sight. Tiny little hive-drone, smaller than her fist and mashed together from what looked like scrap - ancient LED screen able to just about render a simple smiley face with oversized pixels. A chicken scratch note about how they were doing well, things had been going great and they'd really started to find their footing now.

Lines about Tyreen being a pain in the ass, how he'd been having fun with this stuff - droids, that she'd been right that he should try messing around with the amount of scrap bots you could find in any junkpile across Pandora. Said he'd made this for her because he remembered her ship had no V.I. network and how half the rec-room was covered in notes she'd end up having to take to keep on top of deals and interesting tips. This little floating ball could link with her E-Dev and convert audio into notes, calender bookings, maybe make her life a bit easier? Cause she had made theirs easier, him and Ty's, hadn't she. He wanted to give her something back. When would she be touching down again anyway? Been nearly a year since they’d left her ship to make a name for themselves.. and he had a lot to show her...

She still uses that little droid daily, chats idly to it as it sits on her office desk in the Mechanicum, blinking crude emojis at her as it happily translates Sei’s cranky mutters into a schedule that makes her life just a bit easier.

JK's silent hand over of something heavy and palm sized wrapped so beautifully in patterned cloth had keyed her in on not opening it till she was alone, but that prescription lens...

Fitted so carefully onto a hinged frame she knew at a glance would socket over her favored welding goggles? The crude but confident metal work, the tiny flicks of coloured paint she recognised and warmed her heart immediately? That asshole.. that beautiful, clever bastard.

Said nothing, knew she didn't need to, but it's been YEARS and she still notices the slight puff to their chest and way they straighten a little taller when they spot it perched over her right eye.

Asks are open!

#borderlands #borderlands 3 #bl3 #troy calypso #tyreen calypso #calypso twins #leech lord #seifa #ven #jk #jak-knife #oc:ven #oc: jak-knife #my hcs #my writing

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chappybird · 4 years ago

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How to Get Roleplay on F-List: A Guide

Hey all. So I’ve had a few people ask me how on earth to get RP over F-List, or for those that have tried, say its too confusing. While F-List is a much different format than I think a lot of people are used to, it’s a pretty reliable source of RP once you get used to it. So I’m going to walk you through, step by step, how to start from nothing and get a profile set up to start RPing. F-List is 18+ Only and is a Restricted To Adults® Verified website. You can learn more about it by clicking the RTA logo at the bottom of f-list’s main page.

F-list’s main landing page can be located at https://www.f-list.net/.

Note that my f-list may look different from yours because I’m using dark mode (which can be set in the account tab) and I’m a subscriber, so I don’t see ads.

Step One: Make a Profile

Making a profile, or as they’re known on F-List, a character, is your jumping off point for getting started. There are three main factions on F-List: Anthro Characters, Canon Characters, and Original Characters, with subcategories of each. You also have hub profiles. There is a right way to make a hub profile, but that’s not something I’ll be talking about on this post. Hub profiles are pretty universally disliked on F-List and are often seen as a mark of laziness, and I do not recommend making one to look for RP on. You should make a separate Profile for each character you want to play as. If you have a normal account, you can make up to 150 different characters. If you’re a subscriber, you can make significantly more than that depending on your tier.

Choosing a name for your character is very important! You want something attention grabbing, but since each character has to have a unique name, this can get a little tricky. Today I’m choosing to create a Link from the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. As this is a popular character, it can be difficult to track down a good name. You can be clever with naming conventions, while making it obvious who you’re playing, or you can add in underscores, hyphens, numbers, etc. It’s really up to personal preference. I advise not getting too abstract with your character name. Just pick something easy to read and to the point. Once you’ve decided on a name, click the create character button to open up the character editor.

Step Two: Holy Fuck Dude That’s a Lot of Shit To Fill Out

Take a deep breath. The character editor is very intimidating to those that haven’t used F-List before. Perhaps you have used F-List for it’s old intended purpose, just to list your kinks to link people to when RPing on other sites. Your first instinct might be to scroll down there and start picking kinks willy-nilly. Stop. In the grand scheme of things, this is not as important for getting Roleplay and if you do it incorrectly you might actually hurt your chances.

Now that we’ve calmed down you’ll notice two things at the top of the page. A big white text field, and this guy:

This, more than anything on your profile, is the most important thing. If you have this on profile, you will almost never get any roleplay. This is your character icon, and it’s the first step on your journey to doing this whole thing correctly. All you need to do is find an image that’s 300x300 pixels or smaller and upload it with the Choose File button. Then scroll down to the very bottom of the page and hit save. Search on google, and if you have a hard time finding something of that size, A great site to use is https://lunapic.com/ to edit pics if you don’t have Photoshop or Gimp. Choosing or creating an image with some sort of transparency layer is recommended because it makes your icon look more polished, but you don’t really need to do that. This isn’t an image software guide so I’ll leave that to you to figure out. If all you can do is crop an image into a square, that will do perfectly. But you need to have something here. Besides your character name, it’s the first impression you’re going to give to people when using the site. I have honest to god had people message me on empty profiles that having nothing but a character name and an icon.

Sourcing your images is a bit of a grey area on f-list. It’s not really an art sharing site, but if you choose fanart that someone doesn’t want to be reposted, it can be removed by the mods if you’re reported for it. So we’ll just use some official art that already has a transparency channel and crop it using Lunapic.

Step Three: How To Set the Profile Up

If you’re following along, you should have something like this by now. This already gives us an idea of who you’re playing, and what they look like, and while you might get a couple of weirdos messaging you already, there’s still a lot to do. So let’s go over what to do next.

Now that you’ve already created a character, it will be listed under the character tab. Further characters will be listed in alphabetical order. Navigate to your character and click the “Edit” button underneath their icon.

We’re back to the big scary page. Remember that big text field? We’re going to ignore everything else and focus on this first.

F-List uses standard BBC code tags with [square brackets.] You can find some buttons that will give you tools like bold, italics, color, hyperlinks, and quote blocks. There are many different ways to create eye-catching descriptions. I would say the three basic ways are minimalist, inline based, and heavy BBC code. We’ll go through the first option in detail but if you’re interested in the the latter, there is actually a few F-List profiles that teach coding and even have a few templates to use. User beware, though. Many F-List users use these templates and they can sometimes look a bit generic as they are overused.

Templates: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20templates

Coding Help: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20references

If you want to make an inline based profile, having access to software like Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, and similar content is good to have as well. You can also make a blend of the three styles of profiles. I’ll link some examples of my own profiles for reference. Some of these have text included in the inline. Some of them just have an image with the text written out underneath. Again, it’s really up to your personal preference.

https://www.f-list.net/c/Rival%20II/

https://www.f-list.net/c/Lion%20Heart/

https://www.f-list.net/c/The%20Fire%20of%20Tamaran/

Now would also be a great time to familiarize yourself with the rules. Keep an eye on these, especially if you play contentious content.

https://wiki.f-list.net/Code_of_Conduct

Some big things to look out for and not to do: Photographs and realistic images of animals are not allowed. Even Nonsexual ones. Photographs and 3D renders of minors (even nonsexual images or nonsexual profiles) are not allowed. If there is even a hint of the character being a minor, do not use photographic or 3D renders. (For example: Tom Holland’s depiction of Spiderman. Even though Tom Holland was an adult when he played the role, the character is a minor.) Sometimes these can run into a lot of grey areas, but it’s better safe than sorry!

Step Four: Creating A Minimalist Profile

We’ll start with a short description. It’s really important to make sure your character’s name is present in your descriptio, especially if it’s not the profile name. If you’re feeling particularly lazy, you can copypaste something from a wiki or official description. Let’s start with something like this.

Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.

Shoving this into the Description box and hitting save will generate something like this.

You might notice that this looks like crap. And it does! however, we can very easily fix that with the power of just three simple BBC tags. Those being [center], [color], and [sub]. plus a little something extra I’ll explain in a moment. Let’s add those in like so.

[center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center]

Instead of hitting save at the bottom of the profile this time, we’re going to click “Preview BBC Code” to get a look at what our coding has done.

Fancy.

But it could use a little work. When I’m making minimalist profiles, I like to make the lines of text a little shorter so it’s a little easier to read and looks nicer. Make sure each line of text is about the same length as the previous (minus any BBC tags)

[eicon]blank[/eicon] [center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center] [eicon]blank[/eicon]

You’ll also notice that I placed an eicon tag with a “blank” body. Eicons are essentially image macros that can be used all over the site. Using the blank one here is a good way to put a block of empty space on the top and bottom so the text isn’t too crowded by the frame of the description box. Another couple to keep in mind are [eicon]under construction[/eicon] or [eicon]WIP[/eicon] if you want to save your work now and get right to chatting and exploring the site. This signifies that you’re still working on your profile and more will be added later. You can create your own eicons by going to Account > Icon gallery. Keep in mind each eicon must have a unique name across all users. Inputting this into the description and checking how it looks in the preview, we end up getting something that looks like this:

Looks like we got a bookmark while we were setting the profile up. That means someone saw us while browsing new characters and decided they want to keep an eye on our profile and are likely interested in RPing! If you like, you can disable bookmarks per character in the character editor under settings. Generally speaking though, bookmarks are your friend and it’s how people will find you to RP later.

Optionally if you want to add an inline, just upload an image of your choice in Account > Inline Images. You can then add it in the character editor using this button.

This isn’t a tutorial for creating inlines, but a general rule is to make sure it’s sized well, and transparent images tend to look better than non-transparent images.

Step Five: Character Details

Opening the Character Editor once more, a couple basic things should be filled out. We will take this section by section.

Settings: Some general tweaks to change and edit. Personally, I like to turn my timezone off, and besides that, I like to have my Guestbook and Bookmarks turned on as well, but all of these settings are up to you. A big one a I suggest turning on is “Custom Kinks Sort First.” This will come up later but it’s good to turn it on.

Character List: For now, you can ignore this part. You can use this to have certain characters grouped together and will show up in the sidebars of these characters. I haven’t run into any limits for how many character lists you can have, but keep in mind a character can only belong to one list at a time.

Images: If you have any images you want to upload, this is the place to do it. Headcanons of body types, additional art you’ve drawn or found, can be added here. You can add descriptions to each image that will appear when a user hovers over the image. Keep in mind, again, that usage of fan art is a grey area on F-List. It’s not an image posting site, but some artists do not want their art reposted at all.

Profile Info: You don’t need to fill out every single detail here. Bits that aren’t filled in will just not appear on your profile. It’s a good idea to fill out your gender, and in many cases, your orientation. Both are under General Details. Filling out RPing preferences is also a good idea. It’ll keep people from approaching you IC using first person posts if that’s not your thing.

Step Six: Kinks and Custom Kinks

This is probably one of the most overwhelming parts of the process. My first tip: Ignore the Kink section for now. Instead, skip ahead to the Custom Kink section.

Custom Kinks are a good way to tell people what you really want. Click the Add +1 Custom Kink button to make a new custom kink. You can fill out the basic title of the kink, and a description. Or if you prefer to leave the description blank, just press the spacebar. Select what category you want the kink to appear in (Fave, Yes, Maybe, No.) Try to avoid using inflammatory language against different races, genders, identities, and don’t kinkshame. This is a site based primarily around finding rpers that have the same interests and kinks that you do. Save the profile when you’re done and we’ve got something like this.

And really, you can probably start roleplaying like this. Maybe add a couple of images, and tweak a few things. So if you like, skip to the next step. But for now, I’ll go over the kink list.

The most important think to remember is you don’t have to add every single kink to your profile. Try to select the most relevant things, and avoid redundancies.

For example, I’m not interested in Vore of any kind. So I can put the kinks Vore (Being Predator) and Vore (Being Prey) Into my No category. Or, if I want to make it even more simplified, I can add a custom Vore kink and put that in my No category. Likewise, if I don’t want to do any sex driven play, I can probably go ahead and just put sex driven there and ignore most of the kink list. Kinks that are not relevant such as Vaginal Sex (Receiving) on a cis male can also be ignored. Kinks are broken up into sections, and while it is a lot, just take your time, go through it sensibly, and take a break if you want to. Remember you don’t have to add every single one to your profile. This will ultimately be easier on you and make your profile easier to read.

After a bit of editing, this is what my kink list ends up looking like:

You can try exploring the Subfetish editor but it’s a little confusing to navigate and isn’t very necessary. And now, your profile is done!

Step Six: Using F-Chat

So now that we have a profile set up, it’s time to find some partners. Regardless of what way you want to connect, if you prefer script or para, the main place you’re going to find RP is through F-Chat. There is currently both a desktop and mobile client. if you select Chat you’ll see the option for both, and clicking on them will take you to instructions on how to set those up. We will however be using the Browser client in this example. Go ahead and select F-Chat 3.0.

You will be taken to a landing page with a drop down of your characters, with the first character you created selected as the default. (You can change your default character in your account settings.) You can have up to three characters online at once. Keep in mind this goes by IP address, so if you have a roommate that also uses F-List, those will count towards your total number of online characters. If this becomes a problem for you, just use a virtual machine or connect to the internet via a different method, such as with data. (F-List is not that much of a data drain.)

Here is what you’ll see when you open F-Chat. You’ll see I already have people in my friends list and my bookmarks (that I’ve blurred out for courtesy.) These will appear the same on all the characters you sign in as. I will be notified whenever one of my friends signs in or sets a status. You can set these notifications to show only on the console if you’d like to in the settings. Let’s set a status first.

Here, you have the options of selecting from the default Online status to Looking, Away, Busy, and Do Not Disturb. These all do what you’d expect, with Do Not Disturb turning off the sound that would play when you get notifications from personal messages or pings.

The Status Message is an optional addition, and it’s great for if you’re looking for specific things or want your friends and bookmarks to know what you’re doing. Be careful not to post anything that breaks F-Lists code of conduct. F-List does have an aggregate of every status you ever posted logged on their server, so throwing a temper tantrum and posting something inappropriate and then taking it back later might still get you in trouble.

While the Character Search Option is available to you, I’ve personally never found it very effective. You can search users by kinks, but keep in mind it doesn’t search by gender or orientation, or what species or even if they’re canon or original. Instead, we’ll go right to the settings tab.

General: Just your general settings. You have a few options here to tweak and while most of it is personal preference, I’ll highlight a few to keep in mind.

Disallowed BBC Code Tag: good for if you find a particular colour particularly garish as a text colour, or if you find an eicon that you no longer want to see anymore. Enter Sends Messages: I have this set to off so I can avoid accidentally sending a message for when I post. When this is enabled, just press the send button on screen to send messages. Otherwise, if you want to linebreak in one post, just press Shift + Enter. Animate eicons: If you’re running a slow computer, or have a slow connection, turn this to off. Eicons are used as memes a lot in F-Chat, and some of them can get a little ridiculous. (Someone has compressed the entire Shrek movie into an eicon and uploaded to the site in very poor quality for example.) There can also be bright flashing colours or even nsfw images. In general these eicons are all 100x100 pixels in size, but some users like to tile them together to create bigger images so it can sometimes get out of hand. This is something up to personal preference, and while I have Animate eicons turned on, I can see why some people wouldn’t like it. Idle Timer: If you are the kind of person that walks away from your computer without changing your status, or you have fallen asleep with F-Chat open, it’s good to set this to a reasonable time. If you’re in Online or Looking, after you’ve been inactive for the depicted number of seconds, your status will be set to Idle. This is so other users know that you’re not ignoring them if you don’t respond to their messages. A downside to this is if you’re tabbed out or multitasking, it’ll set you to idle when you may not intend it to and going back to the window switches you to Online again. It can be a little spammy if you’re constantly switching between Online and Idle. Font Size: If you find F-Chat’s font too big or too small, you can edit that here.

Notifications: While this section is pretty self explanatory, I’d like to specifically go over the Custom Highlight Notify Words.

Now, because each profile has to have a unique name, you might want to select additional pings. For example I might want to add Link,Zelda,Hyrule,Hero,Hero of Time to my list. Everything is comma seperated and not case sensitive. There are a few things to keep in mind.

Common word pings: If I add Link to my list of pings, I might get pinged whenever someone talks about a url link, or a chain link, or any other common use of the word link. It therefore might be better to not use the word. If you have a profile name that is a common word, it might be better to also uncheck the option for Notify Messages Containing your name.

Similar Profiles: If there’s another Link in chat, then I will be notified everytime someone refers to him by name as well. This is less of a problem on more niche characters, but it’s something to keep in mind! You can set pings by room, so perhaps a solution to this is using Link as a highlight word in the Canon Characters room, but not using it as a highlight word in the Nintendo room. More about how to do that later.

Hidden Users: Pretty self explanatory once click over. If you keep seeing an ad you dislike, you can hide all advertisements from said user (re: character) going forward. Keep in mind this is not your block list.

Import: If you make two profiles and want to have these settings copied from one to the other, just log into the profile you want to import to, and select the profile you want to import from. Make sure to go back to change your pings if needed.

Lastly, we’ll be looking at the channel section.

You might be starting to be overwhelmed again, and that’s okay. There are a lot of options, but most of the time, you’ll only want to select the options that are relevant to us. Check off the list of rooms you want to open a tab for. These will begin to be added to your sidebar. the number in brackets signifies the number of users thats joined that room. By default, this list is most popular to least popular, but I personally prefer alphabetical. There may be some channels that you find inappropriate, offensive, or contentious, but your best bet is to ignore those parts of the site. It’s an Adult site that is heavily moderated by a mixture of paid and volunteer staff. Every effort is made to ensure that no real people get hurt, but it is understood that as an adult, you are responsible for curating the content that you consume. This is one of the fundamental principals that F-List is built upon.

For now, I’m going to go with Canon Characters and Canon Characters OOC from this list.

You will also notice an Open Room tab. Unlike the Official Channels which are moderated by F-List staff, Open Rooms are chat rooms created by the userbase, and moderated by the userbase. While the standard F-List code of content is applicable to all areas of the site, special rules may apply in these rooms, and you’ll find things like rooms dedicated to certain kinks, species, and fandoms. I can try searching for a few things I think might be applicable to me, such as Hyrule, Zelda, Nintendo, and Elf. Some of those get hits, and some of those don’t. I can also check them off to add them to my list. (Note that search terms have to be entered one at a time. I cannot search for multiple things at once.)

Once you’ve selected the channels and rooms you want to join, you can click and drag on the tabs to reorder them on the sidebar. If you’d like to pin a chat, You can just press the little push pin symbol, which will then turn green. (You can do this for User Messages as well.) This means when you sign out, these chats will still be there when you sign back in. Note that settings and pinned chats are device by device only, and furthermore, channels and logs will not carry over between characters.

Make sure to read the description of each room you join. There are often specific rules (such as no ooc talk in the canon characters room, and no male characters in the lesbians room.) Clicking the gear will allow you to change settings on a per-room basis.

Step Seven: Actually Finding some RP

Now, after all that effort, we’re finally ready to find some RP. You have a few options on how to do this.

You could just join a few rooms and set your status to looking with a status message on what you want, but this is considered very passive. You may get some people that reach out (As you saw, someone had bookmarked my Link less than an hour after I made the profile before logging into f-chat.) But your best bet is one of three options.

Look at the Ads: Whenever you’re in a room that allows ads, you will sometimes notice a differently coloured message fly by looking for roleplay. This is an ad. If you see one that seems to fit what you have to offer, you can right-click on their username and select “Open Conversation.” A chat window will be open under the PMs section on your sidebar. You can view this conversation like you would a channel. Keep in mind that users are not notified if you open a conversation with them, only if you send them a message.

Create an Ad: Make sure you are in a room or channel that allows ads by checking the description, you can select the ad tab in the lower right hand corner above the text input box to write an ad instead of a chat message.

Making a normal chat post saying “hey does anyone want to roleplay with me” is considered spam and could result in the mods having a word with you.

You have similar tools to what you do in the character descriptions, and clicking each one will automatically place the tags in the text box, with the eyeball being a preview and the question mark being a how to. You want your ads to stand out, but you don’t want them to be too obnoxious. Take a look at what kind of ads other people are posting to get an idea of what’s expected.

Talk to Others: And lastly, you can just play in public rooms or chat with people in ooc channels. This is a great way for others to sample what you’re like to play with and vice versa, or even just to get to know potential partners. In my general experience, you’ll have more luck finding people to play with long term in the user created Open Rooms than in the Official Channels, but ever case is different. There are a vast number of styles, methods of RP, and types of partners you can find.

That’s basically the ins and outs of F-List! The more you’ll use it, the more you’ll understand how it works and the social etiquette on the platform. Like many sites, it certainly has it’s share of dark corners and flaws, but all in all it’s a pretty good website to find people to play with! Have fun!

#cherp #mxrp #rp #tumblr rp #flist #no tea no shade for tagging other RP sites #just giving people more options and I've been asked about it a few times

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comic-brew · 4 years ago

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In my arms

@whumptober2020 days 4. Collapsed Building, 7. Carrying, 8. Punctured (Alt), 25. Blurred Vision | Ringing ears and 30. Internal Organ Injury

Summary: The final stand, the final touch. It was always going to end, and this is good enough. If only they had more time.

Notes: A Jaytemis drabble. You would have gotten a happy ending if yours truly had the tiniest bit of time management skills. Sorry I guess :)

Reading Time: 10 mins (1.4k words)

Warnings: major character deaths, blood, injury, angst

Ao3

***

Jason is inside a building. Details don't matter. The only thing that matters is that he notices the dreadful ticking of a bomb far too late, and that when he does he freezes up in panic.

No. This can't happen again.

A hand grabs his and drags him along, urges him to run. Faster and faster.

It's not fast enough.

They almost make it outside.

Almost isn't good enough.

Through the blinding flash of light and booming sound defeaning his ears, the hands still holds his tightly. The warmth of foreign skin against his own quells the panic rising up to his throat, so he clings to it, in a hopeless search for something solid.

The entire building shakes and starts collapsing on itself, faster than Jason can comprehend, faster than any idea can cross his mind and lead to their salvation.

It's okay, Jason thinks.

And though the time truly isn't enough for any coherent thoughts to form, it is enough for feelings.

Jason's heart is filled to the brim with regrets, but also relief.

This time..

This time, at least he won't die alone.

***

Jason wakes up to a burning ache coursing throughout his flesh like electricity. He winces as soon as his mind associates with reality enough to register the million sirens ringing in his ears, sounds perpetually high to the point of shrieks, piercing through his eardrum.

His vision provides no help amidst the darkness, only the blurry outline of what he supposes are the shattered remnants of the building piling up above his head. A small opening from where gleams of fiery light manage to seep through highlight the point where two large pieces of concrete have been slammed against eachother, shielding his head from being utterly crushed beneath the baptism of wreckage.

It hurts to breathe in nothing but dust, it hurts to try and move, when perhaps tons worth of weight -and intense strain of pain- render his muscles useless.

"Shit" he breathes out. Jason can't hear his own voice in his ringing ears, so he guesses he might've simply thought the word silently in his mind. He tries to remember something, anything, cause his mind is empty like a blank slate. His efforts only contribute to the head bursting headache building up inside his scalp.

Shit, he repeats, before unconsciousness drags him right back under.

***

Jason blinks, and strong arms are pulling his limp body out from underneath the rubble. If the arms struggle in vain to retrieve his still dwelled in corpse, Jason doesn't know. His spine and really every single bone inside him feels encased in a veil of pain, a bond blurring all other senses while its pressure builds up to the point where he can barely stand it. He knows methods to help deal with the pain but it's nearly impossible to concentrate what with the wicked gorgons screeching in his ears.

Jason is reminded of the arm securely latched around his torso in its attempt to free him of the wreckage. Trying to fish the name of the person offering help out of his memory's hazy embers proves feckless. The edges of his vision begin to fade and Jason gladly gives in to perhaps dangerous, but pleasant numbness. The sharp nails scratching his drums wither out.

Good.

He's fought through one death already. If this is truly his time to return then… well.

Jason wants to leave in peace.

***

Jason blinks and the arm is around his shoulder, trying to pull him to his feet. In blurry pixels he catches glimpse of red. Beautiful red, nothing like the horrid hue of blood, although the later still appears in sight.

Artemis.

He recognises the arm to be the Amazon's in a rare moment of clarity. Some of the knots in his brain are untangled, but the pain feels to be spreading to every single piece and bit of his being, he can barely breathe in short and sharp intakes of air that don't quite fill up his lungs.

Artemis is still trying to get him to stand upright by supporting his body and letting him lean onto her but putting even the slightest pressure on his legs is impossible.

Artemis sends him an as always perfectly composed look, expertly hiding all the uncertainty and worry right beneath. She tells him something. Jason can't hear her words, his ears refuse to welcome any other sound other than painfully high pitched ringing.

Yet if he has to guess, she's asking whether he can walk.

Jason doesn't need to question it twice.

He can't walk, he can't even stand. His legs don't respond to his demands.

So he gathers all his strength. He tells her exactly that through gritted teeth, and passes out right after.

***

The next time Jason regains consciousness he wakes up to a warmth spreading all over his left flank, a pleasant change to the constant reminder of excruciating pain.

It soon registers that he's being carried in someone's arms strong arms, and those arms can only belong to Artemis. Honestly, he'd be lying to himself if he insisted that he hasn't fantasized of feeling her taut muscles on his skin, he just wishes the circumstances were a little more… ideal.

He chooses to revel in her comfort for a bit, as it does wonders to soothing the ache in his flesh and bones. Saying he doesn't feel well would be an understatement. Jason feels as if his spine is in the process of being ripped out of his back, yet no mercy is shown in letting him sleep either.

He'd much rather drift off again, where the tremors of pain are duller. But he can't. Artemis might need his help.

He has to wake up. Fully.

When he opens his eyes he's blinded by the unyielding midday sun, as it's reflected on the gigantic sand hills of the desert. He doesn't think he remembers which desert they're crossing, or why.

As he tries to rely more and more on his senses, he notices how Artemis' walk isn't steady, and how she stumbles regularly in the short time he's conscious.

He begins to hear her silent grunts, and how she's panting while carrying him in her arms. He wants to speak to her and tell her to lower him down until she regains her strength.

He can't, because every time she stumbles forward he can only concentrate on the excruciating pain tearing open his chest. When she abruptly shifts him in her arms to not fall, Jason begins coughing and the force grazes and bruises his shattered bones even further.

Along with bile and phlegm blood rises up to his throat. The bitter taste of iron floods his senses and when the sharp pain of being lowered to the ground registers he struggles to roll to the side, so as to not choke in his insides pouring out of him.

Jason's not exactly well, to understate the issue. He supposes he has many broken or fractured bones and he's most likely bleeding internally.

Artemis collapses next to him, just as his esophagus stops guiding fluids that should have stayed inside, to his mouth.

Jason can barely breathe. Artemis is clutching her side, and he sees with an apathy that only the inevitability of death brings that she's bleeding out next to him.

A sharp piece of shrapnel is embedded in her flank.

They both don't have long. Nobody's going to find them in time. They're living the last moments of their life.

"Princess" Jason mumbles. It's the best he can do. Jason kinda likes the thought of it being the last thing he'll ever say. Not ideal. But acceptable.

Artemis turns slowly to face him. Perhaps they have just a little more time. She smiles dizzily and bitterly, but even so Jason is content with it being the last sight his eyes ever see.

His vision begins to fade as they hold eachother's gaze for what feels like eons, sharing every unspoken word that will forever be concealed beneath their ribcage.

Right before the end, Artemis leans in, and plants a tender kiss on his lips. Jason melts into it, savoring its mellow warmth.

Death finds them in eachother's arms.

Night comes, and the wind blows the sand over their bodies, slowly covers their entwined hands.

For Jason, she was the best last thing he could have ever held.

#whumptober2020 #no.30 #no.25 #no.8 #no.7 #jaytemis #jason todd #artemis grace #artemis of bana mighdall #rhato #red hood #major character death #injury #blood #my fic #angst #no.4

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morkhan · 5 years ago

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Playing Jedi: Fallen Order. Thoughts so far:

For a game that is overall pretty gorgeous, those sure are some weirdly janky looking character models! Why are Cere's eyes so big? Why did they give Cameron Monaghan a severe underbite? These are mysteries only the Force can tell us.

The janky models are especially weird when contrasted with the gorgeous environments. I can definitely see that this game had BUDGET, but I think their priorities were skewed. You have permission to use Cameron Monaghan's face; anything less than a digital sculpting worthy of Death Stranding is a disservice to that face. I'm just saying: Kojima knows that when you get a beautiful celebrity in your game, you render the fuck out of them, with as many pixels as your budget will allow.

I'm just past the opening and I can already tell that poor Cal has Generic Protagonist Syndrome. All his dialogue is super basic and purely functional, and I have yet to see any signs of an Actual Human Personality, which is disappointing, but not surprising; Video Game Writing, and such. Only time will tell if his case is terminal.

Maybe Uncharted has spoiled me, but the incidental gameplay dialogue is just so... flat. EXAMPLE: Cal is climbing around a train car moving at high speed. "Gotta go down." "The only way is down!" A Tie Fighter shoots the car, partially destroying it and drastically changing the way forward. What does Cal say? Does he comment on his sudden change in predicament? Does he briefly panic at his incredibly perilous circumstance before rallying his courage and pressing forward? Nope! "I should go up!" "Up is the only way!" This is what I mean by "purely functional." It tells the player where to go, and that's all it does. Come on, writers! Dialogue can do more than one thing at a time!

Cameron's performance is a little flat so far, but I honestly think that might be partially because of the aforementioned Generic Protagonist Syndrome. Some of the stuff they ask him to say is just dumb.

EXAMPLE: Cal has the power to sense Force Echoes, which tells him about the history of a location or object. Cal walks into an abandoned kitchen. Uses the Force to sense its history. What does he find? "Whoever lived here used this place to store food." No shit, Cal! You don't need the Force to figure that out!

Actually, maybe Cal's personality is that he's really dumb. I mean, he did apparently carry a Lightsaber on his person for years despite knowing the Jedi were marked for death on a galactic level. You go for years without using the Force at all, even in subtle ways that might help you out with your job and be completely unnoticed by your coworkers, but you come to work every day with a fucking Lightsaber in your back pocket? Come on, Cal.

All that said, I am enjoying it as a videogame thus far. What can I say? It's fun to be a Jedi. Even a really dumb one! Hee hee, lightsaber go fwoosh! Bzzzz! FWOOOM!

#Star Wars #jedi fallen order #cal kestis #Death Stranding #hideo kojima #cameron monaghan

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superchartisland · 6 years ago

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Lemmings (Psygnosis, Amiga, 1991)

Gallup all formats individual formats chart, Computer & Video Games Issue 114, May 1991

[Elements of this post are based on sections of a previous piece I wrote on Oh No! More Lemmings.]

AAA of the 1980s has been a story of computer games as a source of surging creativity in the UK, but also a story of a local audience in splendid isolation. The compromised remakes of Japanese games that made it to #1 in the UK were pretty much a one-way trade. By the end of the 1990s, British developers would be responsible for two of the world's most famous and successful games. Those games would be made to a much bigger scale. In 1991, as mainstream games got more complex, for them to be the effort of one or two individual programmers was already increasingly rare. It was a time when having the right conditions for teamwork paid off.

A small team called DMA Design made Lemmings, which is not quite one of those giant British games but did sell millions and get ported to a large proportion of the world's game formats. Lemmings’ hook is inspired by the Disney-constructed idea that the rodents of the title deal with over-population by rushing off cliffs en masse. The game’s ‘lemmings’ are more human, tiny people with white skin, blue clothes and green hair who drop into each level from an undisclosed location and walk steadily forward until instructed otherwise, even if it's to their own doom. Each level has an exit back out of its world, and your task in Lemmings is to use a set of limited abilities to work out a route to get your team of charges from A to B, where sometimes B is across the C, or A and B are both in L. You can get lemmings to knock through walls, block others from moving forwards, build bridges, blow shit up, and so on, with each level giving you both a different map and a different number of each of the abilities.

Once Lemmings has got through teaching you how its abilities work, it moves on fast to both using them in increasingly complicated combinations and making you think laterally about ways to use each one. The form of the appeal of this is highlighted in a mock warning on the game’s cover and title screen text scroll disclaiming responsibility for “loss of sanity, loss of hair, loss of sleep”. The suggestion is that the appeal to the player lies in their own frustration, or at least in building that frustration to the point where the relief of release from it is ecstatic. The ideal Lemmings level, perhaps, should appear initially impossible until a sudden mental breakthrough that reveals it’s really easy, followed by the realisation of a complication that renders it impossible again. And so on, perception swinging wildly but settling in on a mid-point final realisation that yes, everything is accounted for and it’s just about doable. Here is where the decision to make each level goal a percentage of lemmings safely to the exit, and often a percentage below the optimum outcome, is a particularly smart one. The slack sometimes allows a sudden realisation that you are losing lemmings to lead to an improvised solution on the fly and resultant success, and that’s another exhilarating feeling of its own.

As a logic puzzle loving, computer game playing child, when I got a brief chance to play Lemmings on a family friend’s Amiga it immediately became one of my favourite things ever. It was an unusual type of game, but it’s easy for me to see how its developers’ policy of getting as many demos of it as they could out there worked so successfully, and how Lemmings had such an impact across the UK and beyond.

There is still a statue of lemmings in Dundee, the game’s hometown. A port city on the East coast of Scotland, Dundee is something like the 50th biggest urban area in the UK and has a totally outsized place in the UK video games story. You could put it down to random happenstance that the handful of people led by Dave Jones who made up DMA Design were from Dundee. But a game like Lemmings coming from Dundee is no more complete coincidence than the procedural space exploration of Elite being the work of Cambridge maths and science students was.

Dundee was once the centre of the jute industry, making fibre for bags and ropes. As the economic viability of that dried up, many skilled (and mostly female) workers transferred to working in a new form of production at the Timex watch factory. Later on, watch sales not being what they had been, that factory diversified into making other technology. It was perfect for our old friend the ZX Spectrum. For Dundee, that meant lots of Spectrum computers available on the cheap, a low-risk chance to experiment, and other opportunities besides. And with that availability, there was an increased chance for connections and community. The Kingsway Amateur Computer Club, where many of the makers of Lemmings met, for instance. For Dave Jones in particular, the Timex connection was more direct as he worked there as a Spectrum tester. When he was made redundant, he used the money to support him and his friends in Dundee to form DMA Design and a few years later they developed Lemmings.

With their own experience with home computers and with British audiences in mind, they made Lemmings for the Amiga first. DMA also drew on a recent British lineage of games led by resource management and clicking on menu options, like Supremacy and Populous (almost as crucial to Lemmings’ form as the lemming was that other rodent-derived computer item, the mouse). Lemmings was a collaboration right from the start, even the most basic animation of the tiny characters being the work of two people. Lemmings wouldn’t be the same without all of those contributions. To take one obvious example, it wouldn’t have the same warmth without Brain Johnston and Tim Wright’s familiar but copyright-avoiding soundtrack, taking “Ten Green Bottles”, “London Bridge is Falling Down” et al on a toytown funk trip. Beyond even a list of credits though, as the series of particular circumstances which brought DMA together in Dundee show, every game is the result of a whole community, providing skills and resources in the right place and right time along the way.

Even above its problem-solving, what stands out about playing Lemmings is that the same message of collaboration is integral to the game itself. So many games that I’ve played for AAA have been about the lone wolf, the highly able individual prevailing against the odds. In the Britain of the late ‘80s, perhaps it’s no surprise that messages of individualism resonated with the prevailing culture. For alternatives, we have seen sports games where you take collective charge of a group of people, and there were precedents for successful games that had you overseeing large populations, even if Populous and SimCity didn’t make it to my UK #1s list. But sports games are limited to a different kind of competitive narrative, Populous had the player as a God and SimCity as combination planner-architect-builder. You were still the one responsible for taking all of the actions. In the more radical Lemmings, you can’t create earthquakes or new electricity supply lines or do anything at the macro level. All actions must be carried out via an individual lemming. The player is but an advisor, or as Martin called the player’s role in the Lemmings post for his original AAA, “an avatar of community spirit”.

It’s not long into Lemmings before you reach situations where you need different lemmings to support each other. Two lemmings might need to be send ahead so one can turn the other around to dig their way back to the group. One lemming might need to build a staircase to put another in place to remove another obstacle. Individual lemmings take actions but afterwards they get subsumed back into the herd. You can only succeed by getting lemmings organised to work together, and they succeed or fail as a group. Each lemming that reaches the end of a level has depended on the resources of the level and the skills of other lemmings being in place along the way. Text on the title screen tells players to remember that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

The lack of narrative ego is striking. While as the player you are in a head-to-head battle of minds with the level designers, within the narrative world of Lemmings the player is taken out altogether. Even outside of the game itself, Lemmings welcomes further collaboration. There are tests of physical precision and speed in some levels, but with so much of test the game provides being mental, it lends itself to sharing thoughts and ideas. My best memories of playing Lemmings aren’t of playing it by myself, but of sitting with my mum and my brother and working as a team to come up with different possible solutions. Fittingly, it turns out that this was similar to the process by which DMA themselves designed the levels.

There are signs of something darker in Lemmings too, particularly in hindsight. It's in the choice it offers you each time you play a level, a more dramatic version of the deal in Dizzy that if you lose, at least the game will entertain you in the process. If you decide that you can’t complete a level, or you just get bored, you can double click the mushroom cloud icon and watch all of your lemmings explode to maximum dramatic effect, a choreographed carnival of cute violence. The lemmings’ tiny stature and outsized physical expressions, wonders done with a few pixels like the way they shrug when they finish building a staircase, encourage the player to care for them, but the player can blow them all up too.

That’s only a discordant note if you don't look too closely. The game is filled with grizzly traps that kill lemmings in inventive ways, squashing or incinerating them out of nowhere. It turns out, in fact, that those animations were the origin of the whole game, the point in another project at which it became clear that the tiny animated people had the personality to stand alone. There's an irreverence and black humour very recognisable from other British culture in going on to make the cute save-the-lemmings game but still leaving the horror in there. Lurking within Lemmings is the power of a particular kind of anarchic freedom and its possibilities. DMA would go on to take the idea of just letting the player blow everything up and make Grand Theft Auto, after all.

Wherever it started from as a game, though, the strongest message that comes through from Lemmings is the generous one about the importance of people working together. Without everything that community and collaboration provided along the way, Lemmings wouldn’t have been possible, just as its lemmings can only reach their goal by building on the work of many.

#every number one #Lemmings #Amiga #retrogaming

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gatoinq · 6 years ago

Photo

it never occurred to me to write about my ii experience on tumblr, but i figured it could be helpful for those who would appreciate a lil story time like this.

essentially, to make a very long story short, i ended up getting my vip tickets at 2am the morning of my show. i had a fantastic time meeting them and an even better time watching the show! a more in-depth story under the cut, per usual.

needless to say, i was equal parts excited and terrified of what was to come. i hate last minute planning more than anything else so i really had no idea what to say, what to have them sign, what pose i wanted to do with them, etc. (yes, i’ve been a fan since 2013 and have had numerous scenarios of me meeting d&p playing in my head throughout those years but the second that that somehow become a reality ALL expectations and year-long plans flew out of my head instantly).

so to start off, i had to plan what exactly i wanted dan and phil to sign. at first, i wanted to draw something from scratch to have them sign so that it would be that little more special, but i simply couldn’t muster much of anything with the limited time and my shaken nerves, so i settled with printing out two copies of my fanart of dan and phil singing the ii song. in the end, i figured that this piece was a lot more meaningful to have signed instead of a random fanart that i made at the last minute, and i was completely right to do so.

fast forward a couple hours, and i’m trying to get into the vip line for ii. i made a rather lengthy thread on twitter about this experience if you’re interested but again, to keep a long story short, it was quite a hassle for me! but in the end, i manage to get in.

the meet and greet starts. i’m trying to play it cool because the people i’m with start to completely freak out once dan and phil round the corner to say hi to the vips and all of a sudden the reality just runs us over like a train! what was once a distant “oh yeah we’ll get to that bridge when we cross it” became “OH MY GOD WE’RE AT THE BRIDGE WE’RE CROSSING THE BRIDGE NOW AND THE BRIDGE IS ON FIRE” for me, my big moment was realizing that, finally, after over 5 years of watching these two weird guys on the internet i was actually going to get to meet and hug them and that realization was absolutely WILD.

so, i’m at the front of the line. my sister is in tears and shaking because of how nervous she is to meet them. marianne, being an absolute sweetie, tries to comfort my sister by telling her that dan and phil will be happy to see her and that she shouldn’t be afraid of them. in a way, i kind of needed to hear those words too, so i use that opportunity to go meet them before my sister does so that she can gather herself in the mean time. marianne takes my gift to them (the other copy of the fanart i made) and i go for it.

first thing i see is phil, and wowow holy shit people are 100% not lying when they say he is 569845x more handsome in person. even worse, you can see practically every freckle he has and his eyes are so vibrant!!!! in a way, i would describe it as being used to seeing a pixel art of a character to all of a sudden seeing an 8K render of said character. i knew what i was in for so i immediately dive into phil’s hug before i stare for too long, and i’ll say for sure that the information overload of not only seeing phil in person but also getting to feel how he hugs you made my brain short circuit and i blacked out in phil’s arms for 0.01 seconds so i don’t fully remember exactly how his hug felt like. (UNFORTUNATELY!!!! AHHH) also at this point the first thing i say to them is “oh my gooood y’all are so beautiful!!” whilst squealing incoherently. i don’t know if they said anything in response to that because, again, information overload!!!

next i hug dan, and that goes perfectly fine. he greets me with a big smile and that’s about as much as i can remember of how he looked like. from this point on i’m too scared to look at them in the face so i settle for looking at myself through my selfie camera that i already had prepared or through the middle distance of them lmao.

i’ll say that for the m&g, dan 100% took charge and was the person who responded to me. i give them my art to sign and they both ooh and ahh enthusiastically while signing. dan in particular goes high pitched with his praise and said “this is so good!!”. i explain to them that i’m an animation student and that they are one of my biggest inspirations in art. dan looks up at me and thanks me. once they’re done signing, dan hands back my art to me and compliments my outfit, “i noticed that you’re matching the show’s theme, i appreciate that” and i tell him something along the lines of “yes of course i had to i’m an artist” but like. i think i flubbed my words and it came out mumbly so idk if he heard me try to be funny dnfvjscs

next, i hand my phone to dan and he and phil immediately go into their standardized meet and greet pose. i had to quickly interject because I PLANNED OUT THIS POSE RIGHT WHEN I GOT THOSE TICKETS and i told them “hey so i have an idea for a pose. basically y’all take a cute selfie and i’m in the bg looking pissed”. i swear i didn’t even get the chance to finish my request because both dan and phil seemed to telepathically know what i wanted and they go into the pose no questions asked and i had to scramble to catch up with their efficiency. we take the picture and dan says something along the lines of “okay now lets take a cute selfie”. we do the normal pose and i’m beaming like a mfer because phil’s holding me and his chin is on my shoulder???? what the heck i stan one man who didn’t talk to me at all during the m&g kdfjcnkjdsncjkdsc (obvs no complaints phil owns my entire heart and soul)

of course, now because i’m a little delirious from phil holding me and dan’s kindness i say “thank you so much” and try to leave so that i can actually breathe but before i go dan stops me (like. he legit looks at me straight in the eyes right as i’m about to walk away and i FREEZE in my spot) and says “keep it up with your art career” and me. kind of extremely shocked that he would be so pointed with his encouragement towards me goes “okay thank you!!” and fucking BOOKS IT.

the only thing after that is, of course, ii. i won’t go into too much detail about the show but i’m so so so so glad san diego got one of the special versions of ii with the phil bucks and phantastic phacts included. by far the best part of the show was the getting real segment though, as phil lester himself walked to the edge of stage RIGHT WHERE I JUST HAPPENED TO BE SITTING IN FRONT ROW and sits there for a good 5 minutes. needless to say i took this time to freely stare at phil so close to me and i truly felt blessed for the allotted amount of time. i love phil a lot.

(the next day, my sister drops the bomb on me that during her m&g she pointed me out to dan and phil and they gushed about me to her saying things like “aww yes you two are matching her art is so good she should keep it up!” just aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

so yes, ii was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life and i could not be prouder of dan and phil for being able to pull off a second world tour that is, in my opinion, so much better than their first. i adore them so much. heck.

#dan and phil #daniel howell #amazingphil #interactive introverts #iistory #i think that's the blog idk???#anyways.

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whotookcheesuschrist · 7 years ago

Text

Some excerpts from the playthrough

I was pretty close to getting chills from that intro. That is the most atmospheric video game intro I’ve experienced thus far. All the way from the menu to the actual game. Fucking damn. (Apart from maybe Dragon Age Inquisition.)

Made it through the first part on the first try. Saved. It didn’t save as far as I thought it would and I had to do it again, failing four times. :-(

“Behold, my amazingly rendered abs. And flat-ass face.”

You can tell this is game was a first attempt in many things; such as delivering awkward, awkward lines.

There is a mission briefing mimicking VHS tapes and I fucking love it.

Whuh... COLONEL DID YOU KILL HIS DOGS? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So... that was intensly antagonistic of a character who have up to this point been delivering barely any support apart from diet-coke Sun Tzu.

Speaking of Sun-Tzu...

As of writing I’ve finished MGS2, and there’s a certain related part of that that I will get into on a later date, but this one, more than what’s to come, reminds me of that police interrogation in The Venture Bros.

YOUU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

In the most threatening way possible, say the words: Follow the mice.

These controls are hUaORRIBLe

In one way, yes, it adds to the difficulty without being forced, but good fucking god, trying to figure out which direction I’m supposed to push the stick while pressing up against a wall is a nightmare. And having to stand still while shooting and not being able to move while aiming at all is... not very user-friendly design. Thank God for auto-aim

In a similar vein, a third-person shooter with the camera angle being from what we Norwegians call bird perspective is a bit of a challenge

The game play is still pretty dope though

Bee tee dubbs, the ex-Fox unit is hereby dubbed the Suicide Squad

(I would totally play a super-hero video game with that kind of lay-out of the villains and the hero. I think this could actually transfer to comics as well, the way the villains are set-up, introduced and used.)

First meeting with Metrosexual Noodle Eastern.

"I love to reload during a battle! There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well greased chamber." — Revolver Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid.

I bet you do, Ozzie

This game is not complete without a ninja.

There’s a masturbation joke lying in there somewhere.

So far this game has been surprisingly Not Gay. Except from Snake’s sick abs, but then comes Otacon and fucks my shit up on so many levels.

Johny’s grand introduction: Face down, ass up

Meryl... I really like Meryl, but she is so obviously one of the “not like other girls”, tomboy-ish archetype that isn’t really all that useful. It’s pretty sad, because we see her kick ass. We know she can, so it’s a little sad that she isn’t properly utilized.

Poor Otacon.

The ninja was depressingly easy to best. I know the TWEETHT!! that comes later with this guy, but man, you’d think it’d be more of a fight.

OH. MY GOD. Let me count down how many ways Otacon’s introduction is gay.

After being saved from death by katana, Otacon stares at Snake downward-up. When the camera stops, we get a damn good shot, yet again, of Snake’s Sick Abs.

“You’re uniform is not like the others...”

The disappointment in Otacon’s voice upon learning that he was not the goal.

The symbolism of Otacon literally coming out of the closet.

Snake sitting with legs crossed like a fucking femme fatale as he and Otacon catch up to speed

Snake inspecting Otacon, crotch on up

Snake walking up to Otacon until he’s one foot away, laying his hand on his shoulder and asking “you okay?” in an uncharacteristic, caring voice: and Otacon being weirede out by it, commenting: “What’s wrong, getting all friendly all of a sudden...”, to which Snake just awkwardly backs away and says “uh nothing, just... glad you’re okay”

Forget Meryl, Hal’s your love interest and we all know it.

“I’ve been therapied into not having an interest in men and no one can break the spell at all none at all nuh-uh...” And of course Snake is going to prove them wrong. Eww. Call it a product of its time, but still, gross.

Bee-tee-dubbs, Otacon and Snake discussing Meryl’s low-pixelated ass strikes me as hilariously “no homo”. I’m pretty sure, given how Hideo is on the subject in later games, that all of it is intentional. Subtext included.

Psycho Mantis, stop dissing my game stats

Poor dude. Seriously, that is a sad and solid backstory for a character

“Riussiain lieady rieportyingk in on wieapions” I like her tho

Man, this game... In all of the silliness it is STILL on-point with its social commentary. Nastasha’s talks about the START programs, nuclear disarmament, the money involved, the ultimate plan of the Foxhound members, nuclear programs made for short-range launches... All of these are things that I’ve seen in the news this week, and what goes on in the game takes place in the year 2005. Not to mention us becoming more and more desensitized to violence and warfare. It is frightening to behold. I wish I had it in me to talk about all of this at length, because there is really a well of subject matters to discuss here.

Once again I experience a video game trying to impose on me that, in the story, something is urgent, but in reality, I have hours of backtracking if I want to.

I... kinda like the voice they gave Sniper Wolf. And that she’s Kurd; it is nice to see that Hideo remembers a little history. And it brings a little variation in a very formulaic artistic industry.

There is nothing so jarring as video game characters talking specifically about the controls on your PS controller. Abs are still sick. I like the little touch that this death will be different from the others, and set you somewhat back in progress. Not enough for it to make an impact, but I appreciate the effort; the game is present even on its own metalevel

Otacon, you sap. Oh and thank you for massaging my arm, Naomi

If Johnny were ever to be in a Rambo-parody the first movie would be called Johnny - First Brown

My old enemy... Stairs...

OTACON DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT SUBTEXT MEANS

My tactic for handling this: laying down land mines whenever possible and run like a pussy.

Sniper’s demise, the entire scene for all parties involved, is pretty heartfelt still you two should kiss

I have literally played Die Hard.

HUHHHH! THE PLOT THICKENS! WE’VE BEEN BETRAYED!

Vulcan Raven has no sense of humor. I am big man McLargebeef. Fear me.

One of the greatest things about this game is the boss fights. All of them are different and interesting, fun to play. Same goes for the rest of the game: nothing ever gets to the point of being samey.

I mentioned atmosphere earlier, and oh how I do love this for keeping it throughout. This feels like a beautiful tribute to the 80′s action movies, in tone and spirit as well. This is what the 80′s style tribute that we’ve seen lately really ought to be: specs of hilarity and ridiculoussness mixed with complete sincerity and genuine, dark depth, without getting to caught up in aesthetic.

Metal Gear Chicken.

How can anyone survive working on that thing.

I wonder what Ocelot really thought of Liquid.

GAAASP! MILLER IS BRITISH! OH NO!

Liquid is just an asshole, but if that was his upbringing I feel a little bad for him. No wonder he hyper-compensates.

Snake takes these news surprisingly well

Snake being made into a weapon, robbed of information that he really needs: this game makes his feelings and responses, however douchy, feels quite earned

I am fighting a giant mecha and this is STILL a stealth game.

Okay that... that surprise from Gray Fox actually was a surprise. And what the fuck is he MADE of.

So Richard Dawkins is to blame...

OF COURSE-

SHIRTLESS BATTLE! OVER A WOMAN!

“MACGYVEEEEEEEEEER!”

Surprise bitch I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me

Liquid’s death is surprisingly evocative for me. I really do feel like Liquid’s plan is more important to him than anything, because he that desperately needs to prove himself in the light of his “father”.

...

. . .

WILL YOU SHUT UP

BTW I made it through without sacrificing Meryl. I’ve learned what happens in the other ending, and it is pretty dumb how that one leads so much better into the next game than the other. And while on the subject

Woah, yet another twist. Although knowing what I do about Ocelot now it is hardly that surprising. The impact of this is still satisfying and intriguing, because there are things in the game that for someone who isn’t already completely familiar with them seems a bit weird. The reveals here makes some things falll into place, and I am surprised that the game actually did specifically build up to a sequel

It strikes me that I haven’t talked once about the performances. While there are a lot of them that don’t go all in, you gotta give David Hayter props for this, as well as several of the others. This must’ve been so very strange to work on for all of them: not quite a translation from a japanese work, not quite American either, giving this exposition-heavy dialogue a unique life of its own

And the game naming Snake after him is a very cute touch, one that I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t thought of before. And no one could give Snake the layers of believable capability and apparent ineptitude better than he. IQ of 180 my ass.

GOD that ending dragged on.

#Cheesus games #Metal Gear Solid

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cortex-reaver · 7 years ago

Text

Chapter 63: Jailbreak Prep

Warnings: language, cyberspace surreality

Masterpost

Been a while. I’ve had this with a 15-plus chapter buffer sitting on my hard-drive for a while. Just now starting to get back into things again.

Chapter 63: Jailbreak Prep

Warnings: drugs, language, cyberpunk horror-ish mention

Hacker stared morosely at the Cortieball in his lap, gently running one hand along its surface. Cortie's gaze darted around uneasily as she contemplated the psychological clusterfuck that would be his rescue mission.

He sighed.

A clatter interrupted his reverie. He glanced up to see the Stooges shuffling in to watch the goings-on. He waved half-heartedly.

“You think you guys could give me a quick Reaver c-space tutorial?” he asked tiredly. “I took a look in local c-space already and it's nuts. Also there might be some monitors out there. I noticed a couple floating skulls like the old-time Reavers”--

Moe: Dude that was us. Didn't you see the glitch art?

Larry: DUDE I had the whole Pirate Pixels hack going. BOOYAH.

Moe: C-space here is WICKED SICK! You're gonna love it. Well once you're over the whole neon overload shitfest. It uh, takes some adjusting.

The Stooges grinned in perfect unison, letting out little burbling moans. Hacker blinked. Then blinked again. Cortie giggled from his lap.

“No wonder you didn't freak out when we showed up at the door, huh? Okay then. Anything I need to know?”

Larry: Bottomless 1-ups. Seriously. Infinite c-space reloads. Get zapped, come back pronto.

Moe: You're still gonna feel those hits, but they're just not gonna wear you down. You've got a big-ass machine, CPU and all, sprouting outta your brain. So you can take 'em better.

Curly: You also got a deeper health pool. Like, triple cuz of the cyberware. AKA: More hitpoints. I mean, from the gamer perspective....

“Nice. Now I just gotta brace for the incoming Berserker trip dipped in acid and Stam-Up then,” Hacker muttered, then fished in his armor's pockets. “Pretty sure I got a patch in here somewhere.”

Larry moved forward, waving their hands to catch Hacker's attention. He glanced up in surprise at the Reaver's wicked grin.

Larry: Nawww you're not gonna need that. Our rigs feed us the pharma shit. Yours probably does too. Just look for a Stam-Up option in the menus.

Moe: DUDE do you reaaaaally wanna enable him?

Curly: Do you seriously NOT want to enable him? We're in SHITFUCK CENTRAL here. Better he know where to get his Stam-Up NOW before he needs it. Cause we just TOLD him about the health rundown, 'member? Not as fast, but it's still gonna happen. Specially with SHODAN-flavored c-space shit.

Moe: Good point, bro. Good point.

Dazed, Hacker checked his menus.

Sure enough, there was a pharmaceutical menu with such a long list of assorted drugs to replicate for his body. He knew only half of them. Fortunately he recognized the Stam-Up option, and cackled softly.

Moe: Don't forget the Genius stuff. We get those by default whenever we go into c-space. Probably why you got back out as fast as you did. Helps with the fast reloads. Annnd you're gonna want a double-dose to start.

Hacker: Oh yeah right. Lemme just turn both of those on...

“Permanent life-time supply of Stam-Up,” he said in wonderment as his new Reaver frame promptly began feeding his body a moderate dose of both drugs. The world felt brighter, crisper, even more saturated now. He grinned.

“If I'd known a Reaver rig could do this”--

“WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU TELL HIM THAT?!” Goggles yelled in exasperation.

All three Reavers backed up. Slightly. They shot her offended looks, folding ther arms.

Larry: He's gonna need it! Specially Genius. Dude's not used to the c-space here.

Curly: C'mon, you don't know how SHODAN is in c-space. We heard plenty from the Cerberus guys here. He's going up against all her crazy-ass shit.

Moe: HE'S TOTALLY GONNA NEED IT OKAY? This IS SHODAN we’re talking about here--

“I'm gonna stop you right there,” Goggles let out a low growl as she clapped a hand to her face, then dragged it down to stretch out her skin. “I've fought SHODAN in an FTL warp that turned c-space into fucking reality. I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“SHe d-dOesSS,” SHObeta hissed.

“AnNd he WiLL neED aLl the Help he Can gET,” Cortie spoke up.

Goggles sighed, then held up her hands as she backed away.

“Okay. Fine. Ignore the sensible voice in the room.”

“All right, anything else before I go in there to break Cortie out?” Hacker asked the Stooges.

“MiND yoUR RanGE,” Cortie interrupted softly. “YoU Will KNow whaAT I meaAN. I am UNabLE to SPeaK theEEr-r-E, so I wiLl w-waRn yoU nOOW. I suSPect The SUper-ReaAVer-r-rRs kneW how To bYpasS it. It wAs the ONly DeFEnSE I haD RuNNinG TheEEe-RE.”

Hacker froze, his entire Reaver rig raising abruptly.

“You kept...that system?”

“HOw DO yOU thiNK I PuLled mY ForRK out of RebeCCA's boDY?” she asked so pointedly that SHObeta flinched.

Goggles and Hacker could only stare.

The soldier dug into one pocket, and pried out a large black bandanna, and passed it to Hacker. Only then did he realize he'd broken into a sweat his new Reaver technology couldn't counter. He gratefully took it and dabbed at his face.

Cortie drooped inside the ball, her eyes wide and sad.

“I wouLd Not be ABle to StoP thE neuRaL RoOTKit if tHe ProtoCols actiVAte it,” she whispered, her eyes welling with glittering digital tears. “P-p-p-pLeASe...s-t-t-taAY saAFe.”

“Y-yeah. Okay. N-no problem,” Hacker squeaked out. “But it's being run by an ethics program, right? That limits the kinda commands it's gonna try running on my brain...r-right?”

Cortie blinked.

“What's the worst a neural rootkit run by an ethics program gonna do, paralyze him?” Goggles asked, surprised.

“I...w-w-wOUld raTher-r-r NOt KNoOW,” she whispered. “JuusSt StaY s-s-saFE.”

“R-right.”

He closed his eyes, blocking out all his various inputs as he settled himself back on the regenerator room's floor. He settled into a nice comfy cross-legged position, and put Cortieball securely in his lap.

He tried to replicate the search for the Visible Spectrum View. Two tries flavored by constant mental cussing later, he finally found the C-SPACE ENTRY button he'd missed in his earlier fumbling.

Cyberspace bloomed in his mind, all neon outlines and utter blackness beyond. As he squinted in the new landscape, he spotted distant shapes in the darkness past the glowing walls of his immediate area.

Three large pixilated skulls hovered in front of him. One sported an equally pixilated eyepatch, while the other had animated red-and-blue flames playing across its face. The third gleamed a brilliant silver which rippled lazily from gunmetal gray to dazzling platinum.

Hacker recognized them as the ones he'd seen earlier. Then he wondered how he'd assumed they were hostiles when they looked like flying retro-ware hacker icons instead of Citadel programs. He mentally shook his head. His brain's been through a lot right now. Best to forgive and move on.

Moe: Yo.

Curly: DUUUDE that is a sick-ass avatar.

Larry: DAAAAAAMN man that makes me look like a sad troll.

Hacker: Oh? What do I look like?

The pirate-decorated skull spat out a gleaming metallic mirror which unfolded, then floated to hang between it and Hacker. He stared at it, then reeled backwards while screaming in horror.

He looked like a hyper-realistic neon green skull, complete with glittering fractal-covered orbs for eyes, and crackling lines of energy for teeth.

“WHAUGH!”

He blinked as the regen room swam into view in front of him. He glanced about wildly as Goggles eyed him quizzically.

“Dude, you okay?”

All three Reavers burbled mischievously. Hacker quickly rearranged his disarrayed Super-Reaver limbs back around him, and forced himself to settle down. Cortie stared up at him with confusion.

“Eh, not a big deal. I just...”

Larry: Little avatar shock heh heh heh.

Moe: I guess skulls aren't your thing huh?

Hacker shot the Stooge an irritated glare as he straightened. Goggles snickered as she realized what the Stooges meant, shaking her head with a lopsided grin.

“Big bad Super-Reaver scared of his own face,” he heard her mutter.

He flipped her the bird. She folded her arms while still chuckling. He rolled his eyes, then turned to the Stooges.

“I can change that, right? Is there a menu for those kinda things?”

Moe: Oh yeah sure it's probably the same on your stuff as ours. Look for Avatar Customization. You could prolly set it back to your old c-space avatar. Go to the menus before coming back, ok?

Hacker: Okay, will do.

Moments later, he found the menu he'd been looking for, and plowed into the customization options. Another few moments got him a decent replica of his old c-space avatar – a copy of his younger self's appearance with simplified polygons making up its shape. It was very in with the pixel-rave style at the time of Citadel, something he remained fond of even when it was forty years out of date.

Once he was sure he had his appearance the way he wanted it, Hacker returned to cyberspace.

The skulls looked him up and down, then nodded in unison.

Moe: Totally you, dude.

Larry: Yo Hacker, welcome back. Smart move going with your old Citadel look.

Curly: Oooh likin' the whole pixel-retro getup there. Sweet.

Hacker: Thanks. Suprised you guys even remember that interview I showed it in. Some things...eh...back to business. So where are we? Local regen-room c-space or a junction?

Hacker peered about the room. The walls here glowed from deep blue-green grid, rippling with lines of energy and code. One set of green lines pulsed horizontally from the left to the right, while a set of blue lines pulsed vertically from top to bottom. Code streamed along the lines here and there, sparking blue and purple pixels where they intersected. Beyond them lay a rippling black nothingness, which was a real feat of virtual rendering - he registered it as both a squirming solid surface and a complete utter void.

A quick scan with his software told him the walls were made of a super-dense, multi-layered ICE that would require considerable time and processing power to crack. It was the cyberspace equivalent of bending a black hole into the shape of a room. No signals got out past it, and no signals got inside.

Moe: Actually, both. It's the Med room but Cortie stuck a junction in for us. Asked us to monitor it for her. Keep out any skeeveware or whatever else her bitchzilla fork stuck in the station. As for the room? It's rigged as a Max-Sec Area surrounded by sickass ICE walls. Cortie's stuff.

Curly: It's wicked strong. She also put in in this network of high-end EMF blockers, so no signals get in or out of the area. You basically walk inside and you don't exist, as far as the station cares. Might as well be a Faraday Cage. Cept a Faraday Cage is like, Stone Age shit compared to this.

Larry: The defense perimeter is ten meters in all directions past the doorway. She took out all the cameras between the elevator and here to help with that. So the station and by extension, Crazyfork, doesn't know what you've been doing with a dead Super-Reaver. Heh heh heh.

Curly: OK back to the present, kids. Look to your left, Hacker. That's all the regenerator systems. You'll see the other operations systems as little diamonds around the room. They'll shoot data around here and there. Don't interrupt 'em. They'll bork up systems in the room if they don't get their bits and bytes.

Larry: You got into the junction when you popped in the first time cause you were just outside the doorway and inside the perimeter. So long as you're in the perimeter or in the room, you'll pop up in here whenever you reload. Got all that?

Hacker: With you so far.

Larry: If you go outside of all this, you ain't popping up here, and well, I'm not gonna speculate on that. Cause FUBARDAN.

Hacker: Oh. Thanks.

He turned to face four large glowing green wireframe boxes lined in a row. Within them moved dozens of shapes resembling bones or organs made up of very tiny flickering pixels. They floated in groups, resembling stacks of Tetris blocks coming together in lines as the regenerators went through their restorative work. Once the icon of an organ or other biological system turned from red, through yellow, and finally green, it dropped from the top of the box into orderly rows of green items at its bottom.

One box had more green icons piled at its bottom than the other, with a timer indicating sufficient cycles to equal roughly fifteen minutes. Judging from the patient picture plastered across one of the box's walls in bright black-and-yellow, Hacker guessed he was looking at Rebecca's regenerator. The other three boxes indicated bodies in worse shape – particularly the one for Suzi.

Not too different from the other regenerator icons I've seen...hmm...basically just higher-resolution, and higher complexity to match. Hokay. Making more sense here now.

Nodding to himself, Hacker did a slow 180-degree turn. Now that he had a better sense of how this higher-resolution c-space worked, he could figure out what everything was.

He quickly recognized the assorted software and data-input icons for the replicator hovering in an orderly multi-colored sphere to one corner. Then he spotted the flat blue-gray diamond shapes of the local systems icons – life-support, lighting, temperature control, gravity, and the doorway. Indicators glittered and flashed from their surfaces in shades of red, yellow, and green. Data, arranged in lines of bright geometric icons, flicked between them in orderly rows of pixels zipping across the room's c-space.

The systems' indicators were mostly green, except for a haphazard flicker between red and orange glowing from the doorway's diamond. Data sputtered erratically from it to the other systems. An error icon blinked above it, indicating some sort of software conflict with the outer doorway mainframe in the station. He was too far away to read its message to be sure.

Then came a familiar sight hovering in the empty space between the regenerators' systems and the replicator's.

A familiar cone, twice the size of his c-space avatar, drifted lazily near him. Its smooth surface shone a dark gray covered in tidy blue and gray lines. A staticky face stared at him from its flat circular top, its eyes wide with horror. Unlike SHODAN's avatar from Citadel's cyberspace, this cone didn't have the curving tentacles along its top at quarter-intervals. Nor did it emit SHODAN's characteristic green glow.

Hacker: Damn, Cortie. You're definitely locked down. Oh. Right, you can't talk. S-sorry.

He watched as the cone continued its slow floating trajectory, nearly bouncing off a flitting data icon racing between a regenerator and the replicator. Its face flicked through several expressions – horror, anger, sadness, hopefulness, and then sadness again.

He glanced to his cyberspace weapons menu, noting that a Super-Reaver had a lot more options than he ever did on Citadel. Pulsers. Megapulsers. Rapid-fire virus projectiles. Energy beams for weakening ICE shields. ICE picks, even.

Between his loadout and his Super-Reaver capabilities, Hacker would likely survive whatever battering Cortie's ethics systems put him through long enough to get her free. The problem was more how close he'd have to get to Cortie to send that code to her.

Hacker: Okay guys. If I get close to her, the ethics params are gonna pick me up as an intruder and start shooting. My range on the filesend is about the same as her brain-rootkit system, so I'm gonna have to chance it on the range to get null.ethic to her.

Moe: Right.

Hacker: Fan out and try to keep any projectiles or shit from hitting regenerator systems. It's gonna get ugly real quick in here.

Larry: Gotcha.

Moe: Good idea, that.

Curly: We'll back you up if you need it.

Well, here goes nothing.

Hacker headed towards the tumbling cone, pulsers at the ready.

Intruder detected. No Tri-Optimum authorizations activated. Security systems online, spoke a familiar voice – SHODAN's flat pre-hack voice – as the ethics systems' ICE suddenly activated. A glowing blue bubble popped into existence, encapsulating Cortie's cone.

Hacker: Figures. Let's see if I can punch a hole in that...

Hacker opened fire with both the pulser in one hand while holding an ICE pick in the other.

#System Shock fanfic #post system shock 2 #The Hacker #Goggles #SHODAN

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danielricciardos · 8 years ago

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lol i just found an old fic of mine (sebson bc what else) and damn its so well written why cant i write like this anymore

Seb is haunted by the memory of a painfully drunk Jenson hovering above him, lumbered movements and slurred oh god yeses. He remembers the not-always-pleasant friction and the harsh touches of Jenson’s hands, pressing into his stomach and against his shoulders. It catches him out, leaves him a sick combination of floating and falling. To sleep in the same bed is almost impossible, Seb struggles against himself, desperate to let go and hold on at the same time.

He and Jenson don’t talk about it. They continue to spiral round each other, the odd “Nice race, mate,” or “Better luck next time,” but nothing remotely close to what needs to be said. Seb would like to keep it that way, facing up to that means facing up to something much bigger. His stomach twists at the thought, he’s not sure he’s ready for that yet. Oh god, what if he’s in lo- no. No.

It’s a few hours after they share a podium at Spa that Seb’s luck runs out. Something mindless and catchy is filling his room from the small radio on his bedside table, almost covering the sharp trill of his phone. He rolls towards the sound, shoulders aching, grumbling to himself. “I was just getting comfortable.”

(19:13) Jenson: We need to talk, Seb

Whatever calm has settled over the German in the past two hours is instantly shattered, his heart goes from resting to racing in half a second. He fumbles with his phone, fingers clumsily swiping over the keyboard. He types out several responses, gets the words wrong and tries again.

(19:15) Seb: Okay

He feels like he could vomit. Shifting to stare at the ceiling, Seb drops his phone onto his chest and squeezes his eyes shut, only to have it vibrate wildly fractions of a second later.

(19:15) Jenson: I’m on my way over.

No. No no no no no! Seb sits up, panicking. He could do this via text, the pixels on a screen not able to convey his feelings. It would be a bland admittance. A quick let’s-agree-not-to-do-that-again and done. Even if that’s not what Seb wanted, that’s what he thought he was going to get. This is a face-to-face confession and Seb’s not even sure what he’s confessing to yet.

When the three quick rasps on the door come, Seb is frozen in his place. He gulps, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Jenson knocks impatiently again, smarting Seb into action. His movements are boxy and awkward as he flicks the radio off, the room falling into a still silence.

Seb opens the door just as Jenson is about to knock again. He aborts the movement, clenched fist suspended just inches from Seb’s face where it peeks out from behind the door. Jenson doesn’t wait for an invitation inside or a ‘hello’, he forces his way past Seb and comes to stop in the middle of the room. Seb spins on his heel, almost vibrating with nerves.

“Hi,” He squeaks awkwardly, to say something, anything.

“You weren’t drunk.” Jenson says shortly.

“No,” Seb mumbles, feeling his face burn. He stays a good distance from Jenson, shying at the edges of the room.

Jenson sighs heavily. “Why?”

Seb shrugs unhelpfully, the words he’d been saving have deserted him.

“Why, Seb?” He repeats. Seb shrinks away from Jenson’s stare, wishing he’d evaporate through the walls.

“I don’t-”

“Don’t what?” Jenson says impatiently.

Seb can’t lift his eyes from the floor. “Don’t know, Jense. I don’t know.” He clamps his eyes shut and waits, rendered completely helpless.

“Fantastic.” Jenson breathes angrily.

“Sorry?” Seb says, not entirely sure if he means it or not.

Jenson moves. Begins to crowd into Seb’s space, forces him backwards until his shoulders whack against the wall. It should be scary, intimidating, the way Jenson’s eyes fix him. Seb bites his lip, the pain jolting the thoughts in his head. No no no no no Sebastian you stop that right now.

The wall bears Jenson’s weight as he leans forward, hands planted either side of Seb. Jenson’s face is so close to his that Seb can see the creases under his eyes and the subtle pallet of his skin. The last time they were that close they were Seb seriously stop it!

“Don’t.” Seb feels the angry puffs of air on his face and it should make him uncomfortable but god it doesn’t. Jenson moves closer until their lips aren’t touching but aren’t not touching. “Lie to me, Sebastian.”

Pushing back, Jenson leaves Seb breathing heavily against the wall, struggling to stand. He can’t move though, not until the slam of the hotel door breaks his paralysis and Seb ends up with his head on his knees.

Shit.

They still haven’t talked about it. They haven’t talked, at all. Sebastian is hell bent on avoiding Jenson. Avoiding talking about Jenson, about his team, about his car, about his race, about his anything. He shuts off completely, silences when he hears Jenson’s name mentioned in conversation. He tries not to make it too obvious. Either Heikki knows him too well for it to be overlooked, or he really didn’t try at all.

Heikki has the amazing ability to confront Seb without saying a word at all. The expression he’s wearing says come on then, out with it and Seb’s almost ready to spill before Heikki’s even opened his mouth. It’s scary, how Heikki can do this. But that’s his job, Seb guessed, he’s hired to know him better than a lot of other people. Probably knows him better than Jenson ever will stop being pathetic Sebastian.

“Jenson?” Heikki assumes out loud. Seb’s stomach does a weird half flip, half cramp at his name and he doesn’t need to give him an answer.

“You slept with him.”

Seb winces, but nods.

“Good?”

Seb whips his head up so hard he might’ve broken his neck. “Heikki!”

“Drunk?”

Seb drops his head back down again, letting it be his answer.

“Ah. But you remember?”

“I wasn’t..” Seb mumbles, eyes finding Heikki’s.

Something flashes across Heikki’s face, it either goes so fast Seb can’t see it or he just doesn’t have the energy to see it. It’s probably the second one. Heikki whistles lowly, shaking his head.

“Did you lie?”

“Heikki,” Seb says, tiredly. He can’t go through all the accusations again.

“Seb.”

“He hates me, Heikki. For so long I just.. I just wanted it and didn’t know how to get it. He was drunk. He was offering. I wasn’t going to say no.” Seb loathes how desperate he sounds.

“You think he wouldn’t offer if he was sober?” Heikki says this like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He feels like shaking Sebastian, partly through irritation and partly through sympathy. Although if there’s such thing as a sympathetic shake, Heikki’s not discovered it yet.

“No.” Seb sighs, defeated. “Why would he?”

Heikki holds back his exasperation. “Because he fancies you, you dick. Go find him, right now. Do I have to march you to the McLaren garage myself?”

“Heikki, stop it. Let it go.” Seb’s not sure if he’s really talking to Heikki or to himself.

“I will chase you there.”

“I can’t go there. What will the press say?” Any excuse.

“Give me your phone.” Heikki holds his hand out expectantly. Wiggles his fingers for emphasis. Seb doesn’t like where this is going, but groans and retrieves his phone from his pocket. Heikki taps his fingers furiously across the screen, having snatched the phone out of Sebastian’s hand instantly.

“There. Now go. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“Heikki..” Seb tries one last time.

“Seb.” Seb knows not to argue.

He swipes his fingers over the screen, bringing up his sent box with a sick sense of regret.

(14:54) Seb: I need to talk to you. Now.

The message screams at him in Heikki’s voice, will Jenson realise that it’s not him that sent the text? What if he does? Thinks Seb’s a coward? He’d be right.

A message vibrates back within two minutes.

(14:56) Jenson: Okay. Where?

(14:56) Seb: Back of the motorhome. Don’t let anyone see you.

Seb doesn’t think he’d know what to do if the media saw this. He doesn’t think he knows what to do anyway, beside the point. It’s tempting not to move, just to stick it out on the sofa here and keep up his avoidance. Heikki’s threatening face is enough to make Seb move, but it doesn’t inspire anything else. Scared of Heikki’s less-than-gentle persuasion, Seb goes to wait behind the motorhome.

It’s very possible he feels more nauseous now than the previous times. Before, Seb could convince himself that this thing he’s feeling isn’t anything, but in avoiding Jenson it’s manifested into a great big something that he still doesn’t want to name yet. It’s settled uncomfortably on his stomach, steadily pushing up on his lungs and threatening to send things he’s not ready to say yet spiralling up and out of his mouth. To occupy his hands, Seb begins picking at the sleeve of his jacket. If Jenson doesn’t turn up soon, it’s highly possible Seb will end up unravelling his jacket completely. Shadows flit between the motorhomes in the gap where Seb hides, each time it is not Jenson his heart does this strange clenching thing halfway through a beat and Seb’s sure the effect Jenson’s having on him isn’t healthy.

He watches the main path running through all the motorhomes, eyes flicking between the random people that happen to pass and don’t glance in his direction. Seb stumbles, ready to run, as a tall figure steps into the space. He recognises Heikki only after his physio has flashed an overly confident smile and a thumbs up and disappeared again. Seb turns, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the motorhome, trying and failing to get his breathing back to normal. The gentle touch on his shoulder makes Seb jump, elbow flying backwards to hopefully bury itself in the stomach of whoever’s found him.

#sebson #does anyone even write f1 fic anymore lmao its been so long

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shutupxdance-blog · 6 years ago

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THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES! 3

『♬♬♬』

It’s the FUTURISTIC SPACE YEAR OF 2002, and a HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN logo bounces around the sky behind Cíoroc, as pixelated stars shine above a poorly 3D-rendered city. “And in the end, it turns out that all Arno Cyberspace 2, the evil one, ever needed, was to be loved, and also for the evil AI that he made for some reason to be destroyed because nobody had thought of doing that before. But enough about our serious lore, and on to what really matters: the characters. They’re what we’re all here for, after all. That’s what some of our producers forget sometimes, you know? What we’re really here for. Welcome back to another segment of 『THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!』” He pauses. “It’s a pun this time.”

“When I was younger,” Horang’s, or rather, Chan-yeol’s voice begins in the interview footage, “I would look at kkachi horangi paintings, which were totally weird looking, but fun at the same time. They meant something back then, but I don’t remember what.” A young boy and his slightly older sister sit alone in the house, while a festival goes on outside. The footage, no longer as grainy as the VHS footage from previous segments but now afflicted by screen tearing, pixelated noise, frame skipping, and a wide variety of other playback glitches, switches to two adults, clearly the parents, gambling away in a smoky room. “Tigers are known to keep evil away and good luck in, which is what I fucking need. I’m not that superstitious,” Chan-yeol continues as the young boy gets older, attending high school, walking curiously down the streets of a red light district, surrounded by adverts for strip clubs and bars, “But taking on the name might give me something at least. Maybe at least confidence.”

“It sounds over the top and glittery,” STELLAR —Seishirou — says from across the table, green hair in stark contrast to Cíoroc’s pink, as a young boy in the low-res archival footage is shoved against a well by a trio of larger boys, a glitch obscuring the screen before he’s left wiping a bloody nose and being comforted by another boy as he cries, “I’m really into that.”

“What’s your price, baby?” Cíoroc asks, voice crisp and clear, winking behind his shades at the unfortunate souls on the other side of the table.

Chan-yeol walks into a cabaret, music thudding, drunk patrons cheering, someone dancing on stage. “The cabaret, as it is. My boss... y’see...” After the show, he approaches the dancer, the words they say to each other inaudible as the voiceover takes precedence, but a few months later he’s back, waiting tables, and even later than that, the footage flickering as it fast-forwards, everything advancing at an incredible pace, he’s a singer up on the stage, getting money and spending it as soon as he gets it, an unending cycle of fluorescent lights and the bottom of a bottle. One day, he comes in, and the man who he talked to on his first night is nowhere to be seen, a number of people hurrying to show him a pile of paperwork left on a table which he stares at with bleary confusion. “He ran away after signing my name under everything. All of it. He was the piece of shit who got me here in the first place and left me behind.” Meetings with unsavory people, men in black suits, midnight drives. “I... can’t keep a whole business afloat and worry if these people are gonna die because of me. I can’t live with that. “

Seishirou’s voice is as calm and conversational as ever, the version of him in the glitchy archival footage studying late nights, getting more and more confident as the years flicker by, the same boy who comforted him by his side the entire time. “Simply put; my medical license.” Seishirou is wearing a white coat and a smile as the voiceover continues, studying even harder. “It was more than just a piece of paper. It was even more than the proof of some years spent at school. I can earn it back if I make it through, of course, but nothing will replace that… physical proof that I survived.” He walks with his friend, the two happily talking, when all of a sudden the boy, now a man, is struck by a speeding bus. As the Seishirou in the footage runs over, forcing his panic aside to begin performing medical procedures, the voiceover is calm, if a little wistful. “That I didn’t kill myself and got to study what I love. The reminder of everything Hideki has done to help me… It meant a lot to me, that silly piece of paper. But Hideki means so much more to me.”

There’s another glitch, strange colours and dead pixels radiating out from the center of the screen, the sound alert of an error message playing over and over again, layering over itself until the voiceover is now Memory’s voice. Meri’s voice, cheerful and lighthearted. “Hmmm....Aha, you caught me there!” A building collapses violently on screen, an accident that must have killed dozens or hundreds and that likely doesn’t cross the mind of the young girl, no more than a toddler, being delivered to the front door of an elderly couple, far too old to be her parents. She doesn’t mourn, she doesn’t cry, she just goes about her life, going to school, talking to her grandparents, and going up to her room to use her computer, a cycle that just repeats over and over again, each brief conversation barely worth a frame of video. “I just thought it sounded cute…but I suppose I could say because I’m very reminiscent of the past, haha.”

A young Meri does make a friend, walking everywhere with a girl, wearing matching outfits, and then one day, she says something, her posture making it clear what it is: a confession. The girl shouts at her, recoiling, and leaves. Meri looks crushed, and the next few years of her life are dull, colours drained from the footage, going by in a low-res blur. The cycle continues, a non-existence, until she starts taking photos of herself in different outfits and a screen tear causes the audio to jump; when the video resumes, Meri is posing for the cover of a magazine. “My medicine. For my illness, that is,” she says, as the magazine crumples and falls out of view, Meri now dressed not in any designer outfit but in a hospital gown. “Haha. It was only important to me...like...physically. To keep me alive. I don’t really give a shit about them. Without them, I’ll probably die way sooner than expected. That’s fine though. I’d rather live a few weeks in happiness opposed to living like this for another miserable decade.” An IV is hooked up to her arm and she lies in bed, checking her phone, refreshing repeatedly before putting it down. “I can’t keep living like this anymore.”

The footage is crisp and clean now, right from the show, ad banners running along the bottom of the screen, and Seishirou, Horang and Meri are talking, laughing together, sharing a moment. A roll of distortion obscures them and then Seishirou is standing over his friend, lying with his eyes closed in a hospital bed, another doctor saying something that can’t be made out, vague electronic beeping the only indication that this footage ever had audio. “It’s nothin’ more and nothin’ less than the knowledge needed to cure,” the doctor keeps talking, and Seishirou’s posture gets tenser and tenser, “Full body paralysis, specifically, irreparable nerve damage, anything I need to know to prevent unexpected complications. I want to-... I need to be able to do it myself. I can’t fail again.” There’s a skip, another barrage of error messages and for a few moments a frame of Seishirou’s friend lying, against a storefront is interposed on a frame of Meri sleeping in a hospital bed and then with the rapidly flickering images of Horang and Seishirou’s bodies. “Why? Maybe because I’m selfish. Maybe because I can’t let go of someone I care deeply about. Of course, Hideki is the only thing on my mind most of the time, but… That doesn’t mean I can’t keep using that knowledge for good after, right?”

“Everybody wants to feel secure, right? Everybody wants to feel like they can take care of themselves in the future. That they don’t have to spend their rent money on food or lose it all because... ha. They gambled it all away.” That’s Chan-yeol’s voice, of course. The scenes of footage are brief. Dancing. The bottom of a bottle. Singing. Wads of cash, thrown at him. A meal at a restaurant. Gambling. Dates with a number of different people; a graphical glitch seems to blur them all together at one point. “I just want to finally... settle my debt. I want loan sharks off my ass. I want my name off of any papers I didn’t actually sign. I just want to get out of the fucking underground.” The cycle repeats and it doesn’t stop, but soon there’s conversations with shady-looking men, and the dancing and singing are replaced with carrying strange packages, a man in a too-nice suit helping him go over paperwork. “I could... buy back jobs. Build a new cabaret. I could send my sister money. Ji-min... I could fund her whole life for her, if she wanted me to. Fuck, I’ll even send my parents to a retirement home in the future.” The lights of the red light district pulse and throb like the lights of the faerie world. “I just. I just want control, for once. Money has always been control.”

Chan-yeol is sitting in a casino, and then there’s a wipe and it’s Meri in a casino, faeries each jostling for her business, wide smiles and glowing eyes and eclectic outfits. A text box offers GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE and she smiles at the faerie behind the table, who holds up a deck of cards enticingly. “I don’t actually care about modelling all that much. I just want the fame I used to have before it was taken away from me.” Archival footage is intercut, a girl who looks just a little but not quite like Meri wearing outfits like hers, smiling like hers, on the cover of every magazine. “Everyone who admired me. I want them back.” Back to the show, and Meri is staring into the distance, shellshocked. In her room, she puts on a mask. “I’m scared to die alone,” she admits in the voiceover, as the Meri on screen grips a sword tightly in her hand. “My career...The fame that came with it...it’s the only thing that’s ever made me truly happy. It’s the only thing that made living feel different from being dead for once.” There’s another digital glitch, and Chan-yeol — or should that be Horang? — goes down, blood staining his clothes. “I’ve never felt that before..besides when I found out I was dying and lost all that I cared about. Then dying felt much scarier than living. I don’t want to die afraid and alone.” Seishirou’s eyes widen as he looks at the scene — Meri turns to him and says something, the movement of her lips blurred out by errant slides of colour. “I want to die while I’m still happy. I want people to be sad. I want them to miss me. I don’t want my existence to be forgotten and meaningless.”

She’s talking to Cíoroc in the interview, happy, ready for the show to begin. “After all, I don’t have any family left to carry on my blood. I feel bad that...I don’t miss them like they deserve. I’m rather hypocritical for not wishing the same upon myself, huh?” Cíoroc listens, smile serene and implacable as always. Seishirou, or, well, STELLAR, bleeds out, expression peaceful. Horang lies on the floor.

Chan-yeol’s voice speaks as Horang Lee bleeds out on the floor. “...I visit my sister. I tell her... as much as I can about all the years we were apart. I don’t tell her about this show, but I tell her that some... big local talent show gave me a shot and I won. I tell her something, but bottom line,” and the footage begins to fade into nothing but electronic noise, “I spend the rest of my life taking care of her. I find everybody whose lives I ruined because of the cabaret and send them money. I buy a real apartment. Maybe I’ll get a cat. And I just... live as quietly and as peacefully as possible until I die. That’s my plan.” The lights of the red light district flash and pulse. It’s always the same; prices and prizes.

STELLAR and Meri… well, it’s Memory, right? — talk as the former dies. Instead of their voices, it’s Seishirou’s dub. “Help Hideki. He… Ahah, it’s weird. I know he wasn’t too keen on staying alive, especially the past years. How the tables had turned, right?” He looks serious as he gives the interview answer to Cíoroc. Far away, a man lies motionless in a hospital, hooked up to wires and monitors. “But I can’t… let him meet his end like this. Withering away in a hospital bed. Lucid but immobile. I want another chance at making him happy. Doing for him what he did for me. And, selfishly, I... don’t want to live without him. “ On the stage of HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, STELLAR breathes his last breath. “After that, well… I just hope we can keep living. Together.”

The rest is familiar. Memory at the trial. The execution. Her smile at the interview table is bright and cheery. A glitch causes another screen tear, half of the pixels of the hospital bed visible onscreen instead of what should be there. “Live for however long I have left. Enjoy the admiration. Die happily and surrounded by people. Be remembered. I don’t care if it’s only a few weeks or so. As long as I...get it back. Hey, even if I don’t win though...hopefully I’ll be remembered- no, immortalized...through this show?”

And with that, it’s back to Cíoroc. He’s still smiling, but it’s a curious smile. It’s not a happy one. Is he, perhaps, actually sad? Nah, that’s impossible. “Hahahaha… it’s a funny thing, right? She’s just like me when I was younger. Oh, the good old days. Who’d have thought old Watershed from season three would end up a star like Cíoroc Mair, huh?” A pixelated portrait of Memory flickers into existence behind him inside an empty Paint window. “Don’t worry, Memory. Nobody’s going to forget a performance like that. Nobody. You don’t get the fame you wanted, but you’re not in bad company there, not with Kleos from season one, Taiyang from season two, Cathode from season five, Divinity from season seven, Gloria from season nine, Starlight from season ten, Parameshwara from season twelve, Sveca from season thirteen, Five from season fourteen, Yeong-gwang from season sixteen, Shirley from season eighteen, Ursula from season nineteen, Bundy from season twenty-one, Uzuri from season twenty-three, Alexandria from season twenty-five, Glamorama from season twenty-seven, Shrine from season twenty-eight, Takibi from season thirty, Ganymede from season thirty-two, al-Aziz from season thirty-four, Zhuchiren from season thirty-six, and Blue from season thirty-seven!”

Although he names a lot of names, Memory’s portrait remains central, each portrait of another contestant circling hers in a curious sort of mosaic. After a few seconds, Cíoroc reaches out, taps the ‘save’ button, and continues as Horang’s portrait appears. “Wishing for money to get out of their problems we find Scoop from season one, Rat from season three, Cooper from season five, Marie Antoinette from season seven, Flashpoint from season ten, Don from season eleven, Real from season thirteen, Jinzi from season sixteen, Penny from season seventeen, Boxcars from season nineteen, Grendel from season twenty-three, Gatsby from season twenty-five, X from season twenty-nine, Rembrandt from season thirty-four, and Kisamata from season thirty-eight.” With another tap, a portrait of STELLAR joins them. “And wishing for the skills to save a friend or loved one, we see STELLAR joining up with Chaos from season four, Desperado from season eight, Bonnie from season thirteen, Sun Wukong from season nineteen, Gwydion from season twenty-five, and Sancho Panza from season thirty-two.”

He pauses. “This show’s been going on for a long time, huh? Kind of makes you wonder when it’s going to grind to a stop. Oh, wait, that’s right, never! The show must go on, and we’ve got an audience who wants to keep watching, right? Still, the longer we make it, the more it feels like everyone’s moving on. Even the people watching right now, you know? They’ve moved on in their hearts already. Showbiz, baby. It can be tough. See you all next episode, where we’ll be challenging our contestants to survive in the deadly wilderness of an on-studio location with a full camera crew! Constant scenery changes keep things from getting fresh and stale by letting characters interact in new settings, you know? That’s just a little showbiz secret!”

Cíoroc then proceeds to make robot noises for the entire remaining thirty-minute duration of the broadcast.

#episode three #plotline #thanks for the memories!

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