#So sorry for posting less I was focused mostly on this for few days

[infernothechaosgod]

A little comic for a competition :)

[teshadraws]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Seekers of Soul

[Chapter 55]

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Tobias and Nia tie up some loose ends around the guild in preparation for their journey to find Will, and Tobias shares a special pastime with his partner.

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Team Evergreen doesn’t make an appearance after their mission in the tunnels, though Jaz stops by Tobias and Nia’s room at dawn two days later to give them an update on Andyn's mood.

“She was quiet for a while,” the stufful says. “Thinking, I suppose. But otherwise she's acting fine again.”

“Did I actually get through that thick skull of hers?” Tobias grumbles. He’s tying Nia’s scarf around her arm before they leave for the day, and it’s slipping annoyingly through his fingers.

Jaz sighs. “No, unfortunately not. It’s going to take more than a few heated words to get her to change her mind about this. Ezra and I have tried. But...”

Nia’s ears perk. “But..?”

“Something you said did make her think, Tobias. Maybe you planted some seeds that just need a bit of time to bloom.”

Pretty words for such a nasty conversation, Tobias thinks idly as he finally ties Nia’s scarf tight. He doesn’t have nearly as much faith that Andyn will turn over a new leaf any time soon.

Nia smiles at Jaz. “Well, I’m happy to hear she’s back to her normal self, at least. Sorry again that our group mission wasn’t, uh…as fun as we might’ve hoped.”

Tobias opens his mouth to say that that was Andyn’s fault, not theirs.

Jaz beats him to it, laughing softly. “Not your fault. Neither of your faults, really.”

Nia doesn’t argue that point, and the stufful leaves shortly after with a word of luck for their mission today and a promise to pass their hellos on to Ezra.

“Well, I’m glad we don’t have to worry about Andyn too much,” Nia says as the two of them pack up for the day and head down the Lexym Tree to the mission boards. “Are you still doing okay?”

Tobias is doing fine. Probably better than he should be, honestly. While Andyn hit a sore spot and he was much harsher than Nia would’ve been regarding the deerling’s parents, he stands firm by his conviction that Andyn needs a wake-up call. His words didn’t manage to get through to her, but he doesn’t really regret what he said, either.

“I’m fine. Just wish she’d wake up and realize her parents are the problem here.”

Nia is behind him on the steps, but Tobias can feel her attention on him, laser-focused. “You fought about her parents?”

Belatedly, Tobias realizes that this is the first time he’s said what his argument with the deerling was even about. Nia has been careful not to push.

“They suck, okay?” Tobias growls. “If they’re the reason she’s like that, then she should know that that’s messed up.”

Nia hums, but otherwise falls silent. That’s as good as an agreement for her, so Tobias doesn’t let the issue linger as they reach the ground floor where the mission boards are posted.

They’re still waiting to hear back from August about traveling to Will’s human settlement, so they’ve been avoiding any missions that would wear them out too much just in case they need to leave on short notice. Still, Tobias does have to swallow his pride when he realizes that leaves them with just a few very basic mission options for the day.

It’s not that he thinks the jobs are beneath him or anything, but they are undeniably…boring. And they give them less Seeker points, too. But he refuses to throw a fit like Andyn did.

“Well, let’s get this over with.”

“Hey, it might be fun!” Nia says, looking genuinely excited about the mission she’d picked out for them. “I haven’t tried cooking since waking up in this world.”

Tobias gives her an appraising look as they make their way back up the tree’s staircase. “Did you cook a lot as a human?”

Nia shakes her head. “Just basic stuff. Baking, mostly. But if it’s a low-level mission, it can’t be anything too complex, right?”

Tobias shrugs. For all his years at the guild, he’s never actually helped out in the cafeteria kitchen, always too busy trailing after Maggie and helping with medicinal duties.

He’s surprised to find that the day is actually pretty interesting, tucked away in the guild’s sprawling kitchen. They’re put to work under the command of the cooking staff, and their mission for the day is to provide breakfast and lunch for the entirety of the guild.

The vespiquen in charge has Tobias use his flames often, lighting fires in clay ovens and carefully toasting nuts and vegetables. He isn’t sure whether to be offended or proud when the chef looks at him with delight halfway through the morning with a clap of her hands and proclaims that they must make occa berry flambé for dessert today, with a fire type’s flames so readily on-hand.

He is proud, in an embarrassed sort of way, when the bug type compliments him on his temperature control with his flames. He manages to avoid burning a single pot or dish. While it’s a strange feeling, he likes the appreciative looks he gets from the other workers when he uses his fire, rather than the guild's usual wariness.

Tobias actually ends up enjoying the day more than Nia does, if the way she drags herself to the stairs at the end of their shift is any gauge. Her fur is caked in flour from a few ingredient mishaps, and Tobias has to bite back a laugh at her appearance.

She gives him a tired, playful glare in return. “Want to share with the class?”

“You look like a fidough.”

“Fidough,” Nia echoes, squinting. “Is that…a dog Pokemon? Oh my God, is that a bread pun?"

“It’s their species name. They are kind of…doughy, though. Yeah. That's the joke.”

Nia barks a laugh, and Tobias grins.

“Pokemon names are so silly! Hahaha!”

Tobias shakes his head as he leads the way up the stairs to their quarters. “Hey, at least they make sense. Who looks at a riolu and calls it a dog? What even is a dog?”

“Me! I’m a dog!”

“Yeah, yeah. And I’m Reshiram. C’mon, I want to have time to clean up before supper. You wanna eat with Maggie tonight? We can brag about the food we helped make.”

“Oh, that’d be perfect!” Nia says. Her fatigued posture lifts at the prospect, like a flower wilting in reverse. “Don’t let me forget, though, that I really need to talk to Avery sometime about the whole species naming thing. And the Pokemon language in general. Ordirune? It makes no sense that you and I can talk and read the same language when it’s, well…not the same language!”

Tobias vaguely remembers Nia mentioning this before, when they were in Ghatha with Junie. “Does it need to make sense? It works. We can understand each other. That’s what matters.”

“How are you not curious about it? It’s so wild to me!”

“It just doesn’t seem like something you’re gonna be able to figure out, so why waste time thinking about it?”

“Because it’s fun!” Nia counters. “I like trying to figure stuff out, even if it doesn’t really matter.”

Tobias can’t really argue with that. Nia’s just different than him in that regard. Still, as a nincada and surskit pass them on the stairs, he gives it a moment of thought.

“Giratina said that Mew made your Pokemon body, right? She probably did something with your brain so you could understand Ordirune, so you wouldn’t be totally lost in our world.”

“But language isn’t genetic,” Nia argues. “It’s something you learn. That’s true for Pokemon too, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Then it doesn’t really make sense that she could just…imprint it onto our brains, does it?”

Tobias frowns as they finally reach their floor, his legs a bit tired as usual from the climb. “It doesn’t make sense that she could just make you a whole body, either, but here you are. If she made your brain for you, why couldn’t she make it familiar with our language? Pokemon hatch knowing survival instincts because those things were ingrained into our bodies from birth. Like…charmander hatchlings knowing to keep their tail flames small if they’re in danger. Maybe Mew did something similar and built your body so you already know Ordirune and your brain sorta just…translates for you without you realizing it.”

Nia stops behind him right before they reach their door, and Tobias turns to look at her.

She’s staring at him with wide, almost awestruck eyes. “Tobias, that’s such a cool way of thinking about it! Oh man, you should come with me when I meet up with Avery. They'd find that idea super interesting. Plus, I’m sure Xander and the others would love to see you! I think you and Kry are like…bros or something now, after your spar the other day?”

Tobias snorts and turns back to the door. “Yeah, I’m sure they’re all dying to see me.”

His hand settles on the knob, but Nia reaches out to cover it with her own paw. She gives him a long, searching look. “Hey, you know I’m not joking, right?”

“They’re your friends.”

“Well, yeah, maybe first. But they want to be your friend, too. They aren’t just…putting up with you to hang out with me.”

Tobias feels all too seen, suddenly. Like his scarf got lost somewhere and left his neck naked and vulnerable. Tobias shifts on his feet, looking away.

That…doesn’t feel right. But aside from Nia, he hasn’t had a friend his own age since he was nine—and that was his sister. He isn’t exactly an expert on how friends work.

“They’re kind of stuck with me, if they want to be friends with you.”

Nia gives him a light bat of her paw and a scolding smile. “They’re not stuck with you. You’re fun to be around, Tobias. Whether you want to acknowledge that or not.”

Tobias thinks of how he yelled at Andyn just two days ago. “Sure.”

Then, unwittingly, he thinks about the rest of that mission. Thinks about Ezra’s cheeky, playful comments and Jaz’s calm confidence when she encouraged him talk to Andyn alone. Thinks further back, to Kry punching his shoulder during training and Xander and Felix’s lighthearted smack-talk and easy conversation. Thinks about Avery’s gentle smile and full attention when Tobias spoke.

He doesn’t think he’s their friend, not really. But the idea that he might be, someday, doesn’t seem quite as ridiculous as it once was. Tobias has…a lot of mixed feelings about that. Fear that he’s going to royally screw it up is somewhere near the top, though, so he shoves away the warmth the idea brings. No use worrying about it unless it actually happens, after all.

Tobias finally opens the door to their room, only to stop as soon as he notices a piece of paper resting on the floor near his feet. Tobias picks it up, and feels his fingers tighten around the sheet as he realizes what it is.

“What is it?” Nia asks, peering over his shoulder.

“It’s from August,” he summarizes, skimming through the short message. “We have permission to head overseas and find Will first thing in the morning.”

“Giratina was telling the truth, then?”

“Or they think it’s too big a risk to ignore, if nothing else,” Tobias murmurs. The bottom of the note says that the funds for their flight have been dropped into their mailbox, so Tobias digs that pouch out right away to add to their own money. He moves to where their satchel was left to rest against the wall for the day.

“Tomorrow,” Nia says, sitting heavily in her nest and wrapping herself up in one of their blankets like a swadloon. “That’s…so soon. I know we were waiting to hear back from them, but…well. I guess we’d better let everyone know we’re leaving again?”

Tobias drags their bag over and sits to sort through it, catching the disappointed note in his partner’s voice. He doesn’t really mind traveling again, even if their time back at the guild has been fine. Good, even, for the most part. But knowing they’ll have to say goodbye to Maggie again so soon does have something in his heart squeezing tight. He hopes she doesn’t cry.

“Yeah,” he finally answers, pulling out their meager collection of items to sort through. “We can tell Maggie when we eat with her later.”

Nia voices her agreement, watching Tobias as he puts everything together. Her mind is clearly miles away, though.

Tobias leaves her to her thoughts, making sure they have the usual essentials that they travel with: apples and berries for food and status ailments, their map, and a canteen of water for Nia. He would grab some hydration berries for himself if they didn’t shrivel so quickly, but at least fire types don’t dehydrate easily.

Anything else? They could go down to the item dispensary and peruse the orbs and seeds available, but their funds still aren’t overly impressive. And they aren’t planning on getting caught in any dungeons or intense battles.

...Okay, he knows better by now than to assume that will hold true. Still, by this point they’ve mostly gotten by without items, so he thinks they'll be all right without any fancy aids.

Besides, Nia will probably want to bring a book, and their sparse packing leaves plenty of room for that. They could almost pack up Nia’s beloved new blanket too, if they wanted to squish everything in, but that feels like a waste of space if they'll be indoors most nights. He’s basically a walking heater for the riolu at this point anyways.

Tobias looks around the room and his gaze catches on his guitar, leaning carefully against the wall by the window. He frowns at the instrument, fingers flexing as he itches to hold it. He’s been enjoying relearning it, and it calms him down on late nights, but it isn’t really an essential item. Their pack would be better off carrying something actually useful.

“You’re taking your guitar along, right?” Nia asks, startling Tobias out of his thoughts. She must've followed his gaze and guessed what he was thinking.

Tobias shrugs, looking back at their satchel. “Probably not. It’s not exactly useful.”

“It makes you happy,” Nia protests, like that makes it useful, somehow. “Plus, I like hearing you play. So if we’re taking a vote…”

Tobias flushes, falling still. Part of him still wants to argue, rationality over sentimentality and all that, but. Well. If Nia doesn’t mind him taking up the space, then…

Tobias silently gets up to retrieve the guitar. He tucks it away in their bag amongst the other items, pleased with how neatly it slots in between their supplies and a book about abilities that Nia had handed him to bring along.

Packing complete.

It’s only a few short hours later that they go to the medical floor with trays of food in hand, including some of the occa berry flambé that they’d helped make earlier in the day. They call a greeting to Fen and drop off a meal with the leafeon that has them purring their thanks. Next door, Maggie seems pleasantly surprised by their appearance.

"Hello, you two! Good to see you."

“You eat yet?” Tobias asks, holding up one of the two heavy trays he’s carrying.

Maggie smiles, taking the meal with a single vine and settling down in her nest to eat. “I was just starting to feel peckish, actually. Thank you, dear. Will you stay and eat with us tonight?”

“If that’s all right!” Nia says, holding her second tray—which she was insistent on—out to Sage with a smile.

The ivysaur, who had been eyeing the door as if it was just expected for him to leave any time Tobias showed up, blinks in surprise. Then, with a bashful smile and a murmur of thanks, he takes the meal with his own vines.

Tobias and Nia sit down close to Maggie and dig in.

Off to the side, Sage shifts awkwardly on his short legs. His leaves sway with the motion.

“Sit down already,” Tobias grumbles. “We aren’t chasing you out.”

Sage looks even more thrown by the peace offering, but with a glance at Maggie and Nia, he finally settles down as well on Nia’s other side. Maggie smiles soothingly at her apprentice's nerves, and Tobias is surprised that the open affection doesn’t feel…grating, this time. In fact, it feels kind of ridiculous when Maggie immediately turns her attention back to Tobias and Nia with bright eyes, clearly thrilled to have them here.

Tobias wonders how he was ever threatened by Sage’s appearance. Maggie has more than enough love to go around.

As they eat, Maggie questions what they’ve been up to today with a note of amusement in her voice. Her gaze lingers on the patches of flour still caught stubbornly in Nia’s soft fur, even after the riolu had scrubbed at them for a solid half-hour earlier.

Nia groans and dives into her mishaps in the kitchen, including when she’d tripped over a morelull and knocked over a slurpuff who was busy mixing up dry ingredients for a crust. Tobias laughs as he replays the scene in his head, but flushes when Nia follows it up with an exasperated comparison to Tobias basically being “Gordon Ramsay” in the kitchen, whatever that means. It’s clearly a compliment.

Maggie laughs. “That doesn’t surprise me, actually. Tobias was always very careful with measurements when he helped me make our medicines, even when he was small. He has a good eye for detail, when he’s invested.”

Tobias feels his face grow hotter as Nia and Sage look at him with astonished expressions.

“You don’t have to look that surprised."

The ivysaur winces and looks back to his meal with a quiet, “Sorry.”

Nia just shrugs with an easy laugh, as if to ask if he could blame her.

The conversation flows smoothly as they catch up. Sage is quiet, almost silent, but he’s clearly listening, tracking the conversation with pricked ears and sharp garnet eyes as he picks delicately at his meal. Tobias isn’t sure if it’s because the ivysaur is still cautious after Tobias’ initial hostility, or if he’s just that quiet by nature.

Nia tries to pull the grass type into the conversation a few times, but after a few short, almost shy answers, she relents and lets him bask in the conversation without necessarily participating. Maggie doesn’t seem worried about the ivysaur’s silence, so Tobias doesn’t concern himself with it either.

During a lull in the conversation, Maggie says, “You know, your mission from today has me thinking. Sage and I might have to steal you for ourselves soon—we could use some extra hands to gather the last of the autumn herbs later this week. The northern part of the Haven will likely have its first heavy frost soon.”

“Oh. About that…” Nia trails off, giving Tobias a pleading look.

Tobias sighs, putting his fork back onto his tray. Leaving it up to him, huh? “We’re actually heading out again tomorrow morning.”

“So soon?” Maggie asks with a bewildered expression.

“August dropped off a letter today approving our travel, so…” Nia says, dejected.

Maggie smiles, leaning over to brush her muzzle over the top of the riolu’s head. “You’re fine, dear. I knew as soon as we spoke with August that you would be traveling again soon. I’m just going to miss you. And worry, of course.”

“We’ll be fine,” Tobias says. “We always are.”

“You’re always getting into trouble, you mean,” Maggie corrects with a playful glare. “Let a mother worry, Tobias. And just do your best to come home without any new scars, all right?”

Tobias’ hand drifts up to his scarf. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nia wince and trail a paw over the scarf on her own arm, right where she’d gotten bit by that panpour outlaw moons ago.

“We’ll be careful!” Nia finally says, though her smile doesn’t look nearly as confident as she sounds.

Maggie doesn’t seem convinced either, but drops the conversation to return to lighter topics. Such as how, just yesterday, Sage had given his first bitter medicine to some of the guild children who had come down with a cold.

Tobias laughs at the distraught expression on the ivysaur’s face, more than familiar with the experience after years of doing it himself. “How’d you like giving Bella her dose?”

The little bellsprout could be a menace when she wanted to be. Tobias can still feel the phantom smacking of her tiny root-arms.

Sage groans and drops his face into his tray.

“He made a valiant effort,” Maggie says, patting the ivysaur’s shoulder with a vine. Which means that Sage was surely near tears by the time they were finished.

Tobias uses his fork to point a bite of occa berry dessert in Sage’s direction. “Word of advice? Honey. Drown her dose in the stuff, but don’t tell her it’s anything but what it is. She can’t resist honey, but she won’t eat it if you try to trick her. Stubborn as a mudbray, that one.”

Tobias half-expects the ivysaur to dismiss his words, since Sage is older than him and the one actually in the medicinal role now. Instead, the ivysaur perks up and nods, reaching over his shoulder with a vine to pull a notepad and inkwell off the nearby desk and start writing something down.

Tobias blinks. He didn’t mean to actually take notes. The earnest faith in the gesture has his face heating. He looks away, stuffing a bite of occa berry flambé into his mouth. It’s delicious.

Soon enough, they’re all finished eating and it’s time to head out. Sage quietly insists that he can take the trays down to the cafeteria, leaving Maggie alone with Tobias and Nia.

“You two be careful on your trip, you hear?” Maggie says, voice firmer as she pulls them into a hug. “I don’t want to hear about you getting caught in any more fires or deadly fights.”

“No promises,” Tobias mumbles.

Maggie gives him an extra hard squeeze before releasing him.

“We’ll be careful, Maggie,” Nia says, stepping away with misty eyes. “See you soon, okay?”

Tobias can’t seem to say anything. The words stick like sap in his throat. He swallows against the lump of them and bumps his head against Maggie’s leg once more before stepping away.

The meganium sees them off as they pad down the hall and back down the tree.

“Xander’s team next?” Nia asks.

“You could go on your own, you know.”

“I could. But..?”

Tobias huffs, but doesn’t argue as he follows Nia to Team Shellshock’s quarters. The riolu knocks on the door, and childish shrieks rise up from behind the wood. Luca’s distinct little voice yells, “Hide! Hide!” and Tobias grins.

Avery is the one to answer, the kirlia’s gentle expression lighting up. “Nia! And Tobias. Lovely to see you two.”

“Good to see you too,” Nia says warmly. “Could we come in for a sec?”

Avery steps aside for Nia and Tobias, and as soon as Tobias crosses the room’s threshold he’s tackled by a writhing mass of blue and black fur.

“Gotcha!”

“Surrender, outlaw!”

“Lainey, sit on his head!”

Tobias puts up a halfhearted fight as the shinx cubs work to hold him down. Tiny paws step on his arms and belly and legs and his vision is taken over by lashing tails and gleaming, golden eyes.

“Don’t suffocate him, kids,” Xander calls idly, before his voice is drowned out by childish peals of laughter.

Tobias lets the cubs think they’ve won for a few moments, before twisting and gently throwing them off with an exaggerated roar. Leor squeaks and scrambles away to dive behind Team Shellshock’s items chest. Laine and Luca hiss playfully at Tobias before following their more timid brother, probably to come up with a new plan of attack.

Tobias smirks and moves to join the other occupants of the room.

Xander, Avery, and Nia are watching the cubs peek over the items chest with fond, amused looks. Felix is crouching beside the kids’ hiding place and murmuring something that quickly catches their attention. Kry is nowhere to be seen, probably out training or something while the cubs are here wreaking havoc. She doesn’t seem like much of a kid person.

Tobias stops at Nia’s side, purposefully putting his back to the shinx cubs to make himself an easy target.

“So you’re heading out again already?” Avery is asking.

“You two are the most restless ‘mons I’ve ever met,” Felix calls idly from beside the chest. “Try not to come back all banged up again, all right?”

“I’ll second that,” Xander says, and Tobias is surprised when the luxio’s golden gaze focuses not only on Nia, but Tobias as well. “Be careful.”

“Always!”

Xander chuffs a quiet laugh, as if well aware of how untrue that statement is. “Regardless. Do you two have everything packed up already?”

“I think so?”

“We travel light,” Tobias says.

Xander flicks his tail, looking thoughtful. His eyes stray over to the items chest on the side of the room, though Tobias thinks he isn’t focused on his siblings at the moment. Avery follows his gaze, and Tobias wonders if the kirlia is reading the luxio’s mind, since they apparently use telepathy with each other fairly often.

Avery must be, because they smile at Xander as if pleased with something he’d suggested, then back at Nia and Tobias. “Do you two have any orbs in your inventory?”

Nia looks to Tobias. He shakes his head.

Xander nods, and Avery goes to the chest, murmuring a quiet, “Excuse me,” to shoo the kids off the lid before opening the top and rummaging through it. They find what they’re looking for quickly, returning to Tobias and Nia with a shiny blue wonder orb in hand. Without hesitation, they hold it out.

“Take this with you. Just in case.”

After a beat of surprise, Tobias reaches out to take it, rolling the surprisingly heavy orb around his hands. “What kind is it?”

“An all power-up orb,” Avery answers. “It raises your team’s attack and special attack for a few minutes.”

“But...aren't these really rare or expensive or something?” Nia asks, gently taking the orb from Tobias’ hands to peer closer at it.

“The two of you seem to attract danger wherever you go,” Xander says, not answering the question. “I’ll sleep better if you take it.”

“We both will,” Avery amends.

Tobias’ immediate impulse is to reject such a rare, pricey item just being dropped into their laps. However, he remembers how desperately he’d wanted any kind of helpful item back on the Aqua Jet, when they were traveling via the river and the mystery dungeon hit. It would be undeniably good to have as a back-up measure.

Nia seems equally unsure for a moment, but then she smiles and cradles the orb closer. “Well...thank you, then. It’s really too much.”

"Not at all," Avery says.

Xander’s shoulders lose some of their tension once they accept the gift, and that's what convinces Tobias not to put up a fight. They mean it. They're just worried about their safety, about Nia and maybe even a little about Tobias. And somehow, their concern doesn't feel like pity, but something warmer. Something easier to stomach.

Nia gently bumps Tobias with her hip, so he rolls his eyes and tacks on a quiet, “Yeah. Thanks.”

Xander opens his mouth to respond, but before he can say anything, his ears swivel in the direction of the chest.

That’s Tobias’ only warning before the shinx cubs yell, “Attack!”  and charge Tobias once more. Felix must’ve been giving them battle tips, because this time they move as a coordinated unit, tackling Tobias’ legs. The charmander lets himself go down with an exaggerated oof, and the kids shriek as they swarm his chest, pinning him down with their soft little bodies. While he could still wriggle free if he really wanted to, their combined weight does hold him down pretty effectively. Tobias “struggles” for a few moments more before going limp with a dramatic groan.

“Victory!” Leor says.

“Drag him to jail!” Luca shouts.

“Throw him in the pit!” Laine adds.

“Whoa, where’d you hear that last one?” Felix asks, startled.

“From a cool story Bella found in the archives!"

Bella. Of course. Tobias has said it before and he’ll say it again: that bellsprout is a menace.

“Looks like I’ll be having another chat with Arlo,” Xander sighs, sounding all too much like a father.

Nia and Tobias head out shortly after, despite the shinx cubs’ whining over losing their playmate. At the door, Xander catches Nia in a one-armed hug, brushing the top of her head with his chin. The familiarity of the gesture catches Tobias off-guard, but Nia simply hugs the luxio back, unsurprised by the open affection.

As they leave, Felix and the kids’ loud goodbyes and Avery’s much quieter farewell following them into the hall, Nia hesitates.

“I feel like we should tell Team Evergreen that we’re heading out again, but…”

Tobias can only imagine the awkward tension that would rise if he was shoved into the same room as Andyn right now.

“I’ll leave that one to you.”

“That...might be for the best. I won’t be too long.”

Tobias waves her off, turning to head back to their room. He can get some more practice in on his guitar before they sleep. “Just remember that we head out early.”

“When do we not?” Nia counters, giving a wave of her own before setting off towards Team Evergreen’s quarters.

Tobias is relieved that Nia didn’t want him to join for that last visit. Between working in the kitchen this morning and seeing Team Shellshock and the shinx kids earlier, Tobias is just about done socializing for the day. He’s more than content to flop down in his nest and strum at his guitar for the rest of the night before they get back on the road tomorrow.

To Tobias’ surprise, Nia returns not long after they parted ways, when the moon is just starting to rise into the sky. She assures him that it went well, even if Andyn was a little quieter than usual, and that they all wished the two of them safe travels.

“Wished you safe travels, you mean,” Tobias snorts as he plucks away at an aimless melody. “Andyn probably hopes I fall off our flight ‘mon and into the ocean.”

“I don’t think she’s that upset,” Nia says, lying down herself. She eyes Tobias for a moment before reaching into their satchel and pulling out her book.

The night is peaceful, after that. Tobias works his way through some of the simple melodies from the music book they’d picked up in the archives, familiarizing himself with the easier tunes before trying anything more advanced. Nia reads her book, kicking her legs and occasionally mumbling something to herself.

It’s getting close to midnight when Nia finally yawns and slides her book back into their satchel. She curls up in her nest, blanket pulled tight over her shoulders until it bunches up by her chin, and watches as Tobias plays.

Eventually, Tobias figures he’d better get some rest too and slides the guitar and music book back into their satchel. He closes the curtain until the room is only dimly lit by his own tail flame, and curls up in his nest. He doesn’t realize until he's settled in that Nia isn’t actually asleep yet. Instead, she’s watching Tobias, clearly still wide awake.

“What’s up?” Tobias asks.

Nia shrugs. “Just…can’t sleep.”

Tobias knows the feeling. While it was easy to get lost in his music for the evening, Tobias won’t be surprised if he’s up for a while yet. Especially with their flight tomorrow, he has a lot on his mind.

For a moment Tobias just gazes back at Nia in the dim light, wondering if either of them are going to be well-rested come dawn. Then, he thinks of similar nights long, long ago, of looking at his sister or parents with a similar restless itch under his skin.

An idea pops into his mind.

For a moment, he hesitates. This is something��sacred. Something he hasn’t shared with anyone else since he lost his family. It feels wrong to even think about sharing it.

Then again, that’s what he’d thought about discussing Vivi and his parents at all, before the cart ride from Asra to Shivergleam. And that was…nice. Really nice. Swapping sibling stories with Nia. It hurt, but it also made something in him feel…looser. Like stretching out a stiff muscle that he hadn’t exercised in forever.

Tobias sits up before he can second-guess himself. “C’mon. I have an idea.”

Nia props herself up on an arm. “What?”

He climbs out of their nest and holds out a hand. “Trust me. It’ll help.”

For a moment Nia looks unsure, but then a smile crosses her face. Tobias helps her to her paws, and she doesn’t let go once she’s standing. He decides not to think about it too hard and gives her paw a squeeze, grabbing Nia’s beloved new blanket and slinging it over his shoulder.

“C’mon.”

Nia laughs under her breath as they leave the room, making sure to shut the door extra quiet behind her so they don’t disturb the other Pokemon on the floor.

“Where are we going?”

“Sure, just let me ruin the surprise.”

Nia's brows raise, but she doesn’t ask any more questions and just follows with an air of palpable curiosity. Tobias leads them to the staircase and starts climbing up, up, up through the guild.

“Are we visiting Maggie again?” Nia whispers.

“No.”

Tobias has done this many times over the years, since first arriving at the guild. But he’s always done it alone, sneaking past Maggie’s sleeping form to climb up to his favorite spot. He’d thought about asking Maggie to join before—she would’ve indulged him. But somehow it had always seemed a bit too painful before now. Before Nia. Now it feels less like chasing something he can’t get back and more like…sharing something he loves. Making it new again.

They finally reach the mail floor, evident by the cool breeze blowing into the staircase. There aren’t many fliers that work at night, so the floor is empty, the platforms bordering the edges of the room opening up to patches of clear night sky.

“Oh,” Nia breathes, registering where they are.

She follows him wordlessly as he goes to one of the far platforms and sits down at the end of it. She sits beside him, then casts a nervous glance below them to the Haven's trees, black and spindly and thin with the coming winter. She scoots back an inch.

Like this, they’re sitting at the edge of the world, the sprawling forest below and an ocean of stars above.

Tobias hands over Nia’s blanket, now heated by his own scales, and she gladly takes it to wrap herself up. He’s hardly surprised when she still scooches over to press against his side. The night air is cold, after all, chilly enough that he won’t argue against a little extra warmth himself.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Nia says, hushed. “I couldn’t really appreciate the stars in Asra, since we were on a stakeout. But here…”

“Peaceful, right?”

Nia hums her agreement.

For a moment, they’re quiet. The wind whistles by them this high up, stronger without the blocking force of the forest and carrying with it the crisp scent of the Silenfroar Mountains. Tobias can kind of see where the mountain range sits, a void of pointed black on the horizon that blots out the sky.

Tobias moves his eyes up to stare at the stars, feeling something in his throat tighten even as the rest of him relaxes. Even when he was a child, scared of nothing more than shadows on cave walls, his parents would lead him to the mouth of their cave to look up at the stars when he couldn’t sleep.

It makes him feel small. But in a comforting way.

“This is where we became a team.”

Tobias looks at Nia. “What?”

“Well. Technically we became a team down in the tunnels.” Nia smiles at Tobias. “But I consider this to be where we actually became one. For real.”

Right. After Afon’s Cap, when Nia finally stood up for herself and Tobias agreed to stop being so awful to her. They shook on it. Tobias can still see Nia in the pink evening light, paw outstretched and smile hopeful.

He flushes and looks away. He gestures vaguely with a hand. “Sorry. For. Y’know.”

Nia barks a laugh. “Being a bit of a jerk at first?”

He grunts.

“It’s fine. You’re much sweeter now.”

Tobias shoots her a look. “I’m not sweet.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Nia coos, giving his arm a patronizing pat. He shoves her away, and she laughs, immediately swaying back to his side.

“You have been so sassy lately,” he grumbles.

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll be nice.”

A brief moment of quiet. Then, a giggle from Nia.

“What?”

“I was just thinking about when we first met.”

Tobias has a brief flash of memory, from months ago. Spotting a strange, unfamiliar Pokemon—a riolu—unconscious in the middle of a nearby field. Waking her up to make sure she wasn’t hurt. Getting a blank stare and rising panic in return before Nia bolted into the woods and right into a mystery dungeon, Tobias hot on her heels.

Tobias snorts. “You were a mess.”

"I was!" Nia laughs. "I'm actually kind of embarrassed by it now. Can you imagine Kry’s reaction to seeing me run away from everything like that?”

“You were terrified of a seedot,” Tobias agrees, amused by the thought.

Although, knowing now how wildly different the Pokemon world is from Nia’s own, Tobias can’t blame her for being so freaked out. If anything, he’s a little embarrassed by how harshly he’d treated her. He wasn’t exactly a comforting presence at the time.

“But look at you now. Taking down steelixes all on your own.”

“Are you ever going to let that go?” Nia whines, paws coming up to hide her face.

“Nope. It's objectively awesome. And you aren’t going to tell anyone, so.”

Nia snorts another laugh. “I can’t believe I was so close to becoming a researcher instead of a Seeker. I can’t believe I fight on a daily basis!”

Tobias blinks, looking over at her. “You almost became a researcher?”

“I never told you that? Before I thought of teaming up with you, I thought becoming a Seeker was too scary, so I was going to become a researcher instead. Like Alistair and Tawny.”

Tobias wrinkles his snout, trying to picture it. On one hand, Nia would be right at home surrounded by all those books and the cozy environment of the guild every day. He could see her getting along well with the gardevoir and ribombee down in the archives.

But on the other hand, Tobias has also seen Nia’s eyes light up when she travels somewhere new. Seen how insatiably curious she is about the world and all the Pokemon in it. He's seen how her riolu nature shines through when she’s defending someone in a fight, and how genuinely happy she is when she can help out a client. All of that good would be smothered, stuck here at the guild.

And where would he be, if Nia hadn’t decided to come rescue him in that dungeon? Dead, at worst. Stuck in the medicinal quarters and miserable at best. Maybe Nia would’ve been happy as a researcher, but Tobias is immeasurably glad that they’re here together instead, as a team.

They both fall quiet again, looking up at the stars. The moon overhead is bright, painting everything in shades of black and silver.

“Humans went to the moon, y’know,” Nia eventually says.

Tobias gives her a dry look. “Ha ha. Funny.”

Nia blinks, looking genuinely caught off-guard. “No, really! Not, like. All of us. It was only a few. But we really did.”

Tobias squints at her, doubtful. But Nia doesn’t break. “…I thought you said humans couldn’t fly.”

“We can‘t. Or, well. Not on our own. But we built machines that can!”

Machines. Right. “Like…the cars you were talking about on the way to Asra?”

“Yes!” Tobias can hear Nia's tail give a happy thump against the wood. “Cars are great—they're so much faster than walking. And I loved the train in Ghatha. It was really similar to our own trains, so I wonder if a human had a hand in inventing that.”

“Probably. Don’t know if a Pokemon would’ve come up with something like that on their own. It was…kind of cool, I guess.”

“Oh, just you wait. There are so many cool human things I wanna show you! When I—"

Nia’s words cut off abruptly. Tobias feels a jab at his heart, knowing exactly why she'd clamped her mouth shut so suddenly. He wouldn’t ever get to visit, of course. And Nia wouldn’t get to visit him, either, if she left and went back to the human world. Giratina made that pretty clear. Tobias’ hand drifts up to his scarf, skimming the worn material comfortingly through his fingers.

The dark feels heavier, suddenly. Pressing down on them. Suffocating.

“I’m scared,” Nia eventually murmurs, curling tighter into her blanket. Her breath billows into the night air. “Of what will happen if we can’t do this. If we fail.”

Tobias knows the feeling. While Nia has two worlds’ safety on her mind, Tobias is struggling with just the one. He tries not to think about it too often, or it settles on his chest like a rock slide.

“Do you really think we’ll be able to find Xerneas?” Nia whispers, eyes trained on the mountains in the distance.

Tobias takes a moment to think before responding. “I don’t know. It’s not a great sign that Xerneas and Yveltal have been hidden for so long without anyone stumbling across them, but…”

“They’re the only lead we’ve got.”

Tobias swallows. “Yeah. But if worse comes to worst…we’ll just have to figure something else out. Failing isn’t really an option.”

Not with how much is on the line. They have to find a way to fix this if they want to keep everyone and everything in both of their worlds safe.

Nia turns to tuck her head into Tobias’ shoulder, her breath tickling his skin. The touch is grounding, somehow. Distracting enough to keep him out of his own head. They need a distraction. They can’t do anything until dawn anyways.

“Have I told you how much my family loved stars?” He blurts.

Nia’s breath catches, audible with her so close. “…No?”

Tobias wants to tell her. Wants to share. It’s still a terrifying feeling. His heart beats hard in his chest.

“We…lived in the mountains. Not the Silenfroar range here, but across the sea. Near a little village. But we lived way up, in a cave.”

Nia is silent. Tobias thinks she might be holding her breath.

“The sky was really clear, up there. It felt like we could reach out and touch the stars at night. Like…like it was just us and them.”

Tobias kind of feels like that now, actually. It’s a strange sensation. Deja vu, in a way. A little painful. A little sweet.

“And if it was ever too cloudy to see them from our cave, my…our parents would take Vivi and I flying. It was…”

The most magical thing he’d ever experienced. Something that makes a deep longing ache in his chest, even now. He hates that the world took that away from him. Won’t let him evolve to fly himself.

Nia’s hand slips free of the blanket to hold his own, her fur almost as warm as him.

Tobias takes a deep breath. “It was one of my favorite things. Vivi’s, too. When we couldn’t sleep, we’d sit at the mouth of the cave and they would teach us about constellations. Sing us stories.”

Nia is silent, hanging onto Tobias’ every word. Tobias closes his eyes. He can almost imagine it, fuzzy but warm. His father’s wing around him and his sister, keeping them sheltered from the chilly mountain breeze. Their mother humming and singing folk tales about the constellations. Tobias’ head bobbing as his eyes slipped closed and sleep washed over him.

“Do you remember any of the stories?” Nia asks.

Does he? He’s kept his memories locked away in the back of his mind for so long that trying to excavate them feels like wading through a sea of cobwebs. His eyes scan the sky, landing on a bright constellation vaguely resembling a head with big, round ears. He points at it with his free hand.

“That’s the teddiursa cub.”

Nia follows his gesture. “Teddiursa?”

“We saved one on our first mission. Uh. Small. Orange fur. Claws.”

“Oh! The cute little teddy bear!”

"Yup. He pairs with the ursaring.”

Nia follows Tobias’ finger as he trails up and to the right, where another collection of stars create the larger, blockier form of an ursaring head.

“Ursaring?”

“It’s what teddiursa evolves into. The story…” What was it again? “The story says that the teddiursa got lost one day. The ursaring was his mother, and she looked for him frantically, for three endless nights.”

Nia makes a sad sound in her throat.

“Desperate, the ursaring prayed to the stars, asking Jirachi to help her find her cub. Jirachi, the wishmaker, heard her and made her a part of the night sky, to be seen by all. The teddiursa saw his mother in the night sky, and wished to join her. Jirachi granted it, and the two have lived together in the sky ever since.”

Nia hums. “We have a similar set of constellations in our world, actually. Ursa Minor and Ursa Major.”

“Really?”

Nia nods, stars reflecting in her eyes. “I don’t remember much about the story associated with it, but…I think it’s sad.” She turns a smile onto Tobias. “I can’t decide if your world’s version is happier or not.”

Tobias blinks. He’d always assumed the story was a happy one, because the mother and child were reunited. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…they’re trapped in the sky, right? Are they happy there?”

Tobias frowns, looking back at the constellations. “…I like to think they are.”

Nia laughs softly. “Look at me, being the pessimist. I like your way of thinking better.”

Tobias makes a vague noise in his throat. They have enough things going wrong with the real world. Why not choose to believe that at least the teddiursa and ursaring got a happy ending?

“Thanks, Tobias. For sharing with me.”

Tobias isn’t sure if she means the story, or his memories, or his spot here, looking at the stars. Maybe all of it. He shrugs, embarrassed. “Who else ‘m I gonna tell? Xander?”

Nia gives him an exasperated, fond look. “I wasn’t kidding earlier. Maybe you can’t see it, but they really do want to be your friend. You guys seemed to be having a lot of fun when we sparred the other day.”

It can’t be that easy to make friends. Not when Tobias has spent the last eight years of his life almost entirely alone. But Nia is better at emotions than he is, so…

“It wouldn’t be…too terrible. Training with them again sometime.”

Nia grins, a teasing glint in her eyes. “Come on. Is it really so bad to have a few friends? You and I are friends, right?”

Tobias scoffs. “Duh. You’re my best friend.”

Nia’s smile drops with surprise, and Tobias tenses. His face burns with heat, and he snaps his gaze out to look over the trees, mortified.

Why did he say that? And so naturally, too. Best friend. What is he, five?

(Then again, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?)

Tobias can still feel Nia’s eyes on him, and steals a glance to find her eyes a little shiny, her expression a bit wobbly. “Tobias…”

“We should get some sleep!” Tobias says, too loud as he jumps to his feet. Nia nearly falls over in his haste. He doesn’t offer her a hand up this time, pacing a few steps into the flight floor and willing his stupid nerves to calm down.

He doesn’t hear Nia follow after him, but in a few short seconds she’s at his side again and stepping in front of him. “Tobias?”

He grunts, staring at his feet. At least the night hides how red his face is.

“Hey, I'm...I'm going to try something, okay? Feel free to tell me to stop.”

Tobias looks up, confused.

Nia looks just as embarrassed as he feels, somehow, shuffling in her blanket. But slowly, slow enough for him to stop her, she steps closer to wrap him up in a hug, cheek pressed into his scarf and blanket enveloping them both in warmth.

“I’m really glad you’re the one who found me in that field,” she murmurs. “You’re the best friend I could’ve asked for.”

Tobias feels his throat tighten up. As much as he knows that that’s not true—he’s a pain to be around more often than not—he also believes that she means it. His hands fall to the arms around his torso. His chest feels uncomfortably warm, a completely different sensation than when he uses his flames.

Nia squeezes him once before stepping back, closer to the stairs. She has a shy smile on her face. “C’mon, we should get to bed. One of us needs to be awake for tomorrow’s flight.”

Tobias relaxes, relieved to settle back into their usual banter. He moves to follow her down the stairs, ignoring the heat lingering in his cheeks. “I still don’t get how your two modes for flight are either screaming in terror or passing out.”

“It’s exhausting to be scared out of my mind! And I’m not scared when I’m sleeping.”

“Until you slip off our flight ‘mon and fall into the ocean.”

“You wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I might, if you insist we meet up with Junie in Stonebrook.”

Nia laughs. “C’mon, avoiding her won’t do you any good. You know she’d find us eventually anyways. And if you don’t want to fend her off alone, then you have to keep me alive.”

“Darn. All my plans, foiled.”

Nia laughs. Her tail wags as she talks, the blanket over her shoulders swishing with the motion. Tobias will never admit to finding it adorable. "Hey, do you think we’ll get to see Fliss tomorrow?”

“The braviary? Sure, if she’s around.”

“I hope so,” Nia says, “She was so nice, and she knew a lot! And she didn’t change how she treated us after she found out I was human, either. I wonder if—”

Tobias listens idly as Nia chatters on, the sound of her voice a comforting background noise for the short trip back to their room. Sleep sounds less daunting, after getting to unwind with Nia a bit. He’d been worried that sharing his space, his memories, would feel wrong, but instead it’s the opposite.

He feels…lighter. Ready for the journey ahead, no matter what it may hold.

[puckpocketed]

inspired by yesterday’s ovechkin-posting and the stick story, because. i had as much fun as anyone with the idea that riding a camel over all-star break is what jostled the goal-scoring back out of him, but at the same time... i am frothing at the fucking mouth about ovi × The League × national hockey media. where is his respect? where is his hype? where are his roses???? please !!!! understand !!!! that i find sidney endearing as a guy and he is undeniably incredible as a player and he deserves the love that he gets. but from day one, ovi has only existed to them in relation to sid and that makes me lose my fucking mind. 

and general hockey fans through the years loved ovi, and then they hated him, and then they said he was an overhyped washed-up old man who doesn't care anymore (starting in like 2013 lmfao). like, I'M sorry, back in the late '00s and early '10s he was being hounded for days about his cellies, and being booed every time he came out on the ice—and you're mad? that he looks like he's lost his love and enthusiasm for the game???? (i cannot for the LIFE of me find the podcast ep where i heard this, so. grain of salt. but a former teammate talked about how startling and upsetting ovi found the booing, bc it was such a sudden change, and meanwhile, ovi was just the same guy he’d always been 😭).

and then, idk, we went through hate again, and then indifference, and now in the 2020s we're back to "oh, his production has dropped so therefore he's overhyped, can’t wait ‘til he’s gone"?? the season ovi was 36 he had more points per game than sid did last year at 36 (90 in 77 vs 94 in 82). or how about. please remind me how many goals gretz scored the season he was 36 (25 goals compared to ovi's 50). or what about when gretz was 38 (9 goals compared to ovi's 31)? i am NOT trying to say that ovi is "better" than either of them—this is just me saying that people are completely irrational about him. like back when he was drafted and people were saying "oh, he's not actually as good as he looks, because he's lying about his age" bc he looked 25 instead of 18. like. okay lmao. and then what? his NINE rocket richards count less bc he started later? he's actually older now and scoring more per game than gordie howe was the first time he retired? like what are we doing here??? i'm not an empty-netters-pod guy, but they talked about it in the first few minutes of this ep; like... yeah, why was everyone so fucking excited to dance on his grave at the start of last season? and then again in the playoffs? he’s NOT DONE YET, and even if he were, i would hope to see a modicum of respect for the player he’s been and the career he’s had! 

the point is. ovi has scored 30+ goals per season every single year since his debut except the pandemic-shortened season. his teammates, current and former, love him and say what an awesome, generous, team-focused guy he is. he has literally dozens of nhl records already, some of them previously belonging to gretzky. and yet! general hockey fans and the league and national hockey media all refuse to take him seriously. and caps fans (mostly) and dc hockey media (mostly) (barry svrlugas i do not forgive you... dan holmi i would just like to have a fucking word with you....) are all just standing here like hello? alexander ovechkin is RIGHT HERE and he is very good at hockey. hello he is GOOD at HOCKEY, can you hear me????? is anyone seeing this, HELLO???? 

i don’t get it. i simply and entirely don’t get it. there are so many excellent players on teams that i hate! there are players i dislike and i can still point to many impressive things about their game!!! WHAT is the mental block that happens for everyone when it comes to ovi, and how tf has it been going strong for nineteen fucking years? 

thank you for listening!! i swear to you that the vast majority of the time i am simply having a fun time with whatever my terrible children decide to do, admiring ovi’s fashion choices, cheering on my number one babygirl dylan strome, and enjoying whatever horny, incomprehensible nonsense they get up to. it’s just that sometimes i gotta go guard dog mode about alex ovechkin 😅

Hello!!! First of all, thanks for going to all the trouble of typing all that out and including links. I have loved sifting through your citations, and felt very much like a floor dwelling sea creature eating nutrients from the silt <3

I believe you all when you say Ovechkin's not done yet. Shaking my entire clenched fin at everyone calling him a washed up old man!! Fascinated by the Caps' attempt to pivot into being competitive long enough for him to break the record, because what of the After? The Rebuild of Damocles beckons!! Except, having paid some attention to prospects I see they've got a pretty interesting crop of talent coming through. And there are those big contracts they just acquired (hello Dubie and Roy). I just feel like have to be on this train so I can say I was there to see how it all shakes out. History Witnessing type beat <3

and I'm SO endeared to Caps rituals. What little I've seen of them is so fun, so silly. Exactly my vibe. MUST a team "Play Hockey Well"?? can't they just be obsessed with each other . can't they torture and embarrass each other . being stressed about strange concepts such as ""Winning"" is so., passé .

Thank you again for dropping by and for the essay! and I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, it was such a meal I was digesting it for days :>

extended thoughts/discussion under the cut.

From the outside looking in, I think can speak to how compelling it is to pit Crosby and Ovechkin against each other. As your ESPN article puts it: "Crosby was careful, corporate. Ovechkin was unpredictable, borderline dangerous. The key word was passion, and even though Crosby had it inside, Ovechkin oozed it. He was the anti-Sid, possibly the better player, and soon a cult hero." (x, y) I know you're frustrated by this, but they do sort of exist in relation to each other. Maybe I've fallen for the propaganda, but it's very literary <3 You could write their story down and present it to a novel studies class, and the easiest thread to pull on would be all the ways in which they're each other's narrative foils.

IF you held a gun to my head and made me guess at the 'why' of it, I'd probably agree with Eric Adelson! It really does feel like Crosby's image is who hockey wants to be seen as. A Good Canadian Boy; humble, no conspicuous expressions of his wealth, no partying, and of course no on-ice flash! I think I can understand the backlash somewhat; in such a team-oriented game, one with all these arcane honour codes and the emphasis on humility and respect and not rocking the boat, I could see why the spectacle of Ovechkin's personality would've grated. Crosby's an easier pill to swallow for the conservatism of hockey culture. (And I specified 'image' because there's the reality of what it is to be famous, deified, and torn apart each time you don't quite measure up. I hate to be the guy who says there's another side to this but, like, I'm sure plenty of people who are more familiar with Crosby's story could come out and tell me about the unique challenges that come with being considered The Next One.)

And obviously, your specific frustration is coming from the fact that Ovechkin is, somehow, seen as the inferior superstar, and that his achievements - which either equal or surpass Crosby's - go uncelebrated by mainstream media. and ough. man. I'm not as invested in this as you given I just got here, but your emotion is palpable!! I have... complicated feelings about his whole deal wrt geopolitics I won't lie, but I am serious about the whole "Is it the Russian thing?" I wouldn't, like, submit this as a legal document or anything, and I doubt I'd be the first to point it out, but there has to be a level of Othering that comes from his nationality, right?

So there's my thesis: he's not like them, he's not from there, and his image is not who they want for a star. Being so undeniably good for so long probably bought him some time in their good books, but the moment he looked a little bit mortal any grace they had to give was dispensed with. It sucks for you as a fan of course </3 I don't mean to sound so morbidly curious about it all,,, like i get that a real wrong was done to Ovechkin by the establishment that refused to recognise him!! But . well. I'm looking at this through a nonfiction writer's lens. I do hope someone who was there for the whole thing writes a book or two about this, because it would make for a really interesting story. I get the feeling people will look back on this stretch of time and think the world went a bit crazy for believing Alex Ovechkin was done.

[diagonal-queen]

Hey, I wasnt able to find rules for requests so Im assuming this is fine. May I have angst to fluff (comfort) for Sigma? Sigma got anxious or something happend and reader comforts him. Like gives him kisses and hugs and cookies, just the sweet stuff yk. He deserves it💕

i think sigma really does need some comfort after that elevator stunt...T-T also no this doesn't violate any of my rules at all! they can be found in my pinned post 🌸

Home Is Where the Heart Is

♡ pairing: Sigma x gn!Reader

♡ synopsis: After a gruelling few weeks of work, Sigma is worn out and the only way he'll feel better is with your comfort.

♡ wc: 1.2k

♡ cw: Sigma has an anxiety attack.

note: This MIGHT be the last thing I post in a little while, because plague has befallen me (covid) and I fear I may be playing a game with death (my head hurts). Very sorry friends :< Apologies for errors and I hope you enjoy x

Sensing the moods of others was essentially second nature to you by now. It was an ever-growing skill, disproportionately rocketing when you met and fell in love with Sigma (and became acquainted with his strange coworkers). You mostly used this ability when you needed to adjust your behaviour in the casino to maintain your boyfriend's professional reputation, but it had its other uses.

You understood that as the manager of a luxury casino, Sigma had his work laid out for him every waking hour of the day. There was seldom a period where he wasn't insanely busy. Though he was a strong man, you could tell when it weighed on him. Today was one of those days, in terrible transparency.

Sitting on your shared bed and scrolling your phone, you hadn't expected him to be back so soon. You'd returned after spending some free time in the casino with the assumption that you'd have a couple hours to yourself, which is why you were surprised when you saw Sigma burst through the door before slamming it behind him. Leaning against it and combing a hand through his hair, he let out a long, languid sigh.

You sat up, the movement causing his eyes to flicker towards you before widening.

"I didn't know you were in here," he gasped. You tilted your head.

"Are you alright?"

"...I..." Sigma straightened and wrung his hands together. "...it's fine."

"Hey, c'mon, it's clearly not. What happened, babe?" You asked, standing up and approaching him. "You look so worried."

Sigma didn't seem to want to meet your eyes, instead staring a hole into the ground with a concerned expression. He was clearly still focused on whatever had just happened outside.

"...Sigma?" You frowned, before blinking in realisation. You took him by the shoulders. "Look at me, Sigma." His silver eyes finally flickered up towards you, almost as if he were ashamed of his panic. "Come over here."

You took his hand and led him to your bed, where you two sat side by side. "Take a breath, and then talk to me, alright?"

Sigma slowly inhaled. "...it's the casino. And the Decay. Things are just really getting busy right now- which is fine, it's fine, but, uh...they're not going the way I anticipated. On top of that, I'm having more and more customer service issues, which distracts me from my other work, and then when I actually get to said other work I barely have time to complete it- let alone have any time to spend with you, and it's just..." He trailed off as his voice cracked.

You had actually noticed that Sigma had much less free time recently. He went to bed later and got out of bed earlier, and you had started feeling rather lonely. You knew that Sigma was busy and you didn't blame him, but at the same time you felt bad for not bringing it up with him. It seemed he could really have used your company.

"Sigma..." you started, "...c'mere." You pulled him into your arms and felt him return the hug instantly. He squeezed at your torso as if he hadn't felt your touch in ages.

"I'm sorry-"

"Take your time, Sigma," you encouraged him softly, as you carded your fingers through his hair. You felt his grip on you tighten, but he said nothing. His form was shaking slightly, and his breaths wavered as he appeared to be resisting the urge to cry.

You pat the back of his head as your other arm trailed down to his back to give it a comforting rub. His body was tense, you noticed. Sigma's fingers curled into your back as he let out a long sigh and buried his head into the crook of your neck.

"It's okay, honey," you said. "I've got you."

Sigma made a small noise, almost like a sob, before he pulled away from the embrace.

"...thank you for this," he told you, a tear finally spilling down his cheek. "Sometimes I just...all of this is overwhelming. I feel like I can't do anything."

"The both of us know, realistically, that that's not true, Sigma," you ran your thumbs over his knuckles. "There's nobody more dedicated to this casino than you. That's why you're the only person capable of managing it."

"...that's true, yes," he nodded, slowly. "Still, I can't help but feel like a fraud. I'm scared of the day that I'll be found out as someone...completely unremarkable."

"You're not unremarkable at all! You're such a special person, not just to me. Where would anyone in this place be without you? Where would the rest of the Decay be without you?" You asked, giving his hands a small shake. "You might feel like you're a nobody, but there's not another person who feels the same. Especially not me."

Sigma sniffed, before bowing his head with a smile. "You always know what to say, don't you?"

"I wouldn't say...normally. But when it comes to you, I just...I dunno. There's nothing that stops me from wanting to help you," you explained, feeling your face grow warm at the admission. Sigma seemed mildly surprised, before his face also turned red, probably more so than yours.

"You..." he began. "That's..."

"...something I got from you, I think," you finished, with a chuckle. Sigma tilted his head at you, eyes glistening.

"...you...mean that?" he whispered. You nodded, and his face broke into the sweetest smile. "...Y/N..."

"What?"

"...nothing. I love you." Sigma caressed your cheek and kissed you softly.

"I love you too, babe," you beamed, before raising your eyebrows. "Oh, here's an idea! We should have dinner together."

"...s-sorry?"

"Room service!" You suggested, in excitement. "We can chill out and spend the evening here together. You need a night off, Sigma."

"I don't think that'd be very beneficial to my workload, Y/N..." he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "...though I don't know even if I'd be able to get it done in this state, anyway."

"That's what I'm saying!" you insisted, standing up and approaching the phone on the wall. "I'll order for you while you get changed. What do you want? We can get dessert too- I'll get you some cookies. The real nice ones with salt sprinkled on the top, I know you like those."

Sigma watched speechlessly as you blabbered on during the process of making the call. It wasn't until you looked at him and insisted again that he change out of his work clothes that he nodded and stood up. Once he entered your shared wardrobe and closed the door behind him, he stood idle for a moment listening to your muffled voice on the phone, happily listing off your order that, if he weren't the manager, likely would have come with a hefty bill.

He let out an amused smile and loosened his tie, realising how much he was truly looking forward to the next few hours. There really was nobody quite like you to calm his anxiety and worries, and because of that he truly did consider you to be his respite. His home.

i loosely based this off a real scenario. and no, i wasn't in reader's position, i was in sigma's position lmao

[umepnnn]

3DOLC x ROE — results.

challenge created by @starliet and @cleostoohot 🖤

sorry (and not sorry) for the long hiatus cuz i'm enjoying life :)

so a few days ago i came across several posts about their challenge and i decided to try it out ! i didn't plan to post or anything so there wasn't a "what i'll be manifesting" post, but the results were so insane i had too make one.

ଓ affirmations i used:

regardless of everything...

nothing can ruin my manifestations

i always manifest within 3 days or less

i have everything i desire

ଓ what i manifested:

always confident and friendly, good at socializing

that's exactly what i did. i feel like a social butterfly at school and it's easier for me to join in convos now. making friends and having small talk just became easier for me. and i don't overthink so much anymore

being more included in my friend groups

i have a group i hang out with at uni for like 4-5 months now but i wasn't rlly active until this challenge LMAO now i'm like so comfortable with everyone and felt more like a part of the group. it also went like this with my other friend groups that i just started hanging out since this year. i actually speak to people individually now woah :)

getting closer with an SP

idk i thought this guy was cute so i just included this and at first the situation was: he's close with my friends but he's not in any of my friend groups so we don't hang much at all. but then after 2-3 days since this challenge, our mutual friend suddenly ADDED HIM into the group out of the blue and we all started going out and he is SUCH A GENTLEMAN to me + he added my socials as well hehe

school is fun, assignments are easy & no stress

literally came to school to chit chat and i'm not stressed at all. i get my work done on time and everything goes so smooth fr. and the best part is my classmates are the sweetest ugh SCHOOL IS FUN (they are the uni friend group i just mentioned up there) and they'd always gather around my seat lol and we'd chat the whole class.

bright smooth clear skin

same skin care routine – skin clearer than ever. no longer uneven dark spots or small little bumps <3 smooth like a baby's bottom :) my mom actually thought i was wearing makeup when i literally just washed my face n removed all the makeup !!

no dark circles

i slept like usual but my dark circles rlly went away since this challenge i'm actually surprised (even tho it should go away cuz it's the law lmao) and usually they'd still show when i have my makeup on but now it's wayyy less noticeable

friends from other countries coming to mine so we could hang out

just went out with one the other day lmao so check ✔️ i guess

everyone cares about me and is very nice to me

yoo my friends were so patient and attentive to me and even the taxi drivers are nice, they'd start convos and not in a creepy way. everyone is so nice for real <333

ଓ what i did:

i just read the list and affirm whenever i can, mostly focused on the 4D and know it's inevitable that they'd manifest <3 cuz it's already mine the moment i think i have it. and honestly the "nothing can ruin my manifestations" line helped me a lot.

other than that i did nothing in the 3D. i never initiated anything. they all just came to me just ✨ like ✨ that ✨

i got most of my desires within 3 days but i still continued affirming after 3 days cuz like why not? it's like i'm doing the challenge again or sum but yes i still get desired results after that.

btw i also listened to quite a few subliminals alongside doing this challenge just because i can xD even for the same desires and like they both manifested but anyways i'll make a separate post on my subliminal results.

© umepnnn 2021 – all rights reserved.

[note from a later date //29 jan 2024]

i have been on a hiatus since then until now, because i was busy with a lot of stuff i didn't have much time to learn and post astrology stuff here ~

i am still busy as ever and i don't plan on coming back here anytime soon (mayyyybee idk) but i still come on tumblr quite often cuz i loveee our astrology & manifesting content

and somehow today i checked my draft and saw this whole post here from three years ago i'm like wuhhh totally forgot.

BUT! everything i said is true fr like the "friends from other countries coming to mine so we could hang out" last year literally TEN of my friends came to my place (they're from 4 different countries) and I even went on trips with some of them — mind u i havnt seen most of them in like 2 years at the time

trust me manifesting is sooo easy just think u have it and u have it

thanks for reading and stay healthy stay safe everyone <3 cya

[yuristarz]

Hello! Welcome to the first real chapter of Krampuslauf. I know i just posted the prolouge a bit ago, but I'm so excited about this concept right now that I just had to continue writing. I hope you guys like this one!

Prolouge

(English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes)

🌲Krampuslauf(1/?)🌲

Summary:

A nice Christmas getaway, this is what this should've been. An out from your regular stressful life, but things quickly turn from sweet to sour after a certain someone or something invites himself into your life.

A König x fem!reader fanfic inspired by the folktales of Krampus

Disclaimer: he talks about hurting reader but not in detail!!!

This is an 18+ story, so minors please dni!

The bathwater is luke warm when you get out, the wine glass is empty and you're well relaxed. After taking one of the fluffy towels you wrap it tightly around yourself and go towards the sink it's time to get ready for bed. Your luggage can wait, you'll have time for that tomorrow.

Reaching the master bedroom after quickly pulling your pajamas out of your suitcase you smile to yourself. This bedroom is a massive upgrade from yours back home. A king-sized bed a great view and even a fireplace. Yeah you can definitely manage with this place.

Falling into the bed felt like falling on a cloud, soft, warm, and fuzzy. The amounts of blankets and pillows comforting to the touch. Immediately the exhaustion sets in, the jetlag and the long drive finally catching up. After getting comfortable you quickly fall into a dream-less sleep.

You made it almost pitifully easy for him to stalk you. Leaving your curtains open like this, like you want someone to watch you be so vulnerable. His masked head tilts as he focuses on you. Leaning against the windowsill, his eyes glowed an ominous redish blue through the two holes at the front.

After a while of watching you a thought made its way to his head, he could just break in right now...do horrible things to you, unspeakable even. Make sure after he's done with you, people will fear him again. No, not tonight it's too early he tels himself. he'll let you live a bit longer.. let you settle in.

And when the time is right, he'll make you wish you had stayed wherever you came from...

The morning sun makes you squint your eyes as you slowly rise from the bed and stretch. You look around the room again, and your gaze stops by the window. Weird... yesterday an even coat of snow covered the windowsill. You were sure of it, maybe it was a bird or squirrel or it was always like that. Probably nothing to worry about.

After getting up and making your way downstairs you rummage through the cupboards and fridge. There isn't much to eat, mostly dry stuff and a few cans of fruit and onw with stew. You'd definitely have to drive to the small village at the bottom of the mountain to get some more things to eat.

After a quick meal consisting of crackers and some marmalade, you take your suitcases and drag them up the stairs to your bedroom. Opening the big doors to the wardrobe you start to stuff your clothes in it, making sure to put together an outfit together on the way. Now done with stuffing the wardrobe, you push your empty luggage under the bed and get changed.

You walk down the stairs once more and put your winter boots on by the door. As much as you'd love to just stay holed up here in the mountains for the next 14 days you still need food, so that meant driving down the snowie roads and getting enough food as to not make another trip down.

He watches silently as you walk out of the cabin and get in your car and start the motor. Good. That would give him some time to think about the best way to go about this.

_________________________________________

Hi! Thanks for reading chapter 1 of Krampuslauf! It's a bit short but I think as the story continues they'll get longer. I hope you guys liked it. Constructive criticism is always appreciated <3

Since you wanted to get tagged :) @kneelingshadowsalome

[violetlypurple]

With the Windows recall shit rolling around, I'm going to be That Girl and put it out there that Linux is, indeed, still a thing, and a thing that has come a long way with regards to user experience and gaming. And a thing that runs 75% of the internet but anyways Saying, "Linux isn't just for nerds and enthusiasts anymore!" wouldn't be an entirely truthful statement, but if all you do is play games, go on socials, and hang in discord... It'll work? I'm speaking to a target audience here, posting from an FFXIV-focused blog, so let me dive into it a little for that target audience, with the assumption that none of you are out there being sweaty over Apex, Overwatch, Fortnite, or whatever zoomers play these days. Basically anything you play through Steam will run flawlessly* on Linux. Valve have baked the Proton compatibility layer into Steam for a while, and since Valve's Steam Deck runs on Linux, they are on point with updates for it. This means that Steam will do the work of making Windows games run on Linux for you without any additional software or tinkering. This includes the Steam version of FFXIV**.

Now, I can't speak to or ensure that reshade or any 3rd party plugin will work. In my case (details below the cut) reshade was more or less intact but all the presets broke so I just kinda said fuck it and removed the remnants. But thats ok, right? You want to try out the 7.0 graphical updates without instagram filters, right? Don't you..?

Mods and other plugins? Don't know, don't care, frankly don't like that they exist outside the narrow window of seeing people's fun screenshots. Sorry not sorry. That said, I have seen some things on the googles.

There are obviously various things that work differently/don't work on Linux like they do on Windows. I can't account for every case, so google is your friend here. The one particularly notable case I ran into was screenshare with Discord being unable to deliver audio, which makes group watching things like netflix a bit of a problem. There are technically workarounds but again, Target Audience.

Sooo... Yeah? If you're mildly tech savvy, go get Ubuntu, install it on a second drive, external drive, or even just try it out from the usb you put the install media on for an hour. If you wanna get spicy with it, do some looking around to see what distribution of Linux might suit you better. Pop_OS is also pretty beginner friendly. Yes, there are some adjustments and some things to learn, but if you have the energy to be mad at what Microsoft is doing, you have the energy to learn a few new things to get away from it. As with anything related to messing with your operating system; back up your important things, just in case!

The Notable Caveats:

*I can't speak to all multiplayer games, since some use anti-cheat or DRM that may not work on Linux. But frankly, a quick google of "will [game] run on Linux" can get you a quick yes or no on if this will be a problem for you. In my case, I mostly care about Helldivers 2 with its nProtect, and it works fine. BG3 has no problems either.

**You might be thinking, "But Basement Witch Noone Knows, I don't use the Steam version of FFXIV!" And yes, that does complicate matters. My brief tutorial is below the cut, should you find yourself committed to this notion, or just have a morbid curiosity.

Ok, so I don't have the Steam version of FFXIV either. There are two ways around this that I am aware of.

The first, which I would not recommend, is to get a 3rd party Linux launcher. If you care about this Windows recall thing, you probably fully understand why I would advise against using a 3rd party app to put your username and password into. If you are willing to do some research into the providers of these tools to determine their trustworthiness, I can't stop you, but I wasn't interested.

The second is Steam! Again! A fun fact about FFXIV is that it runs pretty self-contained in its folder. I have shit internet, so I have been just copying the whole ass SquareEnix folder off my drive and onto other drives to save myself two days of downloading for years now.

If you have Linux installed and familiarize yourself with the Home folder where your usual Documents/Pictures/Videos folders are, I just copy pasted my whole SquareEnix folder in there, to the cries and lamentations of Linux nerds everywhere that would insist I put it somewhere proper. Anyway. Once it's there, all you need to do is add it to Steam. In the Steam Library there is a button to Add a Game in the bottom right corner. When you click that there is an option to Add Non-Steam Game. When you click that, you will get a prompt to locate and select the game. Here you want to hit Browse, navigate to your Home folder, SquareEnix, FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn, boot. in the boot folder you will need to select ffxivboot.exe. Once you have selected it and clocked Open, it will return you to the Add Non-Steam Game list and you should see ffxivboot.exe selected. Hit Add Selected Programs, and that's it! You can now launch your bodged-in copy of FFXIV through steam, and it will apply the necessary Proton layer to make the launcher and the game work as normal. Yay Linux!

i use arch, btw

[bread--quest]

sunny being a spooky little guy in their first ever interaction :eyes:

actually y'know what this is basically at a ending point anyway and i've just been looking for an excuse to post it so. surprise sunny treat!

By Season 22, Day 70, Liquid Friend has more or less gotten reacquainted with the Vault. It and Plasma have dusted off their office and gotten it back in working conditions, said hello to their old friends, and reintroduced themselves to the people who have come here since they left. The Vault's gotten bigger since it was last here, but Liquid still knows its hallways like an old friend, and it knows all the people in here by name at least, if not more.

Which is why it's taken completely by surprise when it rounds a corner to see someone it's absolutely never seen before standing there, happily dusting a wall.

Liquid runs through all the people it knows of in its head. Obviously this is not Uncle Plasma. They are also obviously not Clare (although they do have little wings and a glowing, flickering halo), Parker, New Megan, or Fletcher. They could be Cote, maybe, since Liquid's never actually seen Cote, but that would raise a lot of other questions. Definitely not Nagomi. Not York. Not Chorby, Aldon, Goodwin, Pitching Machine, or Valentine. Not James Mora either.

Well, what the heck.

"Hey there, uh..." Liquid takes a slight step forward. The person(?) turns to face them with wide golden eyes. "I'm Liquid Friend. It's nice to meet you! Are you...lost?"

"Are you lost?" Liquid Friend's own voice says, and Liquid jumps, startled, and thinks for a second it was an echo, but one of the many strange things about the Vault is that it doesn't usually echo, and anyway that was far too pitch-perfect and crisp to have been a quirk of architecture, which means...

"Did you say that?" Liquid says, and this time it keeps an eye on the person so it can tell for sure— when their mouth moves, what comes out is Liquid saying "Say that?" A perfect echo.

Okay. That's a little creepy.

The person moves forward, towards Liquid. They're keeping one hand on the wall, Liquid notes— maybe for comfort? To keep from getting lost? For steadiness? They move like someone who's not quite used to having a body. Their hand leaves a bright gold streak behind it as they drag it along the walls— do they have wall polish on their hand, or something? (...Is wall polish a thing?)

The person stumbles a bit closer and then stops. They don't seem threatening, exactly, but Liquid's getting the willies for sure. It might be time to call in backup.

Liquid turns around and calls "PLASMA? THERE'S SOME KIND OF...HAUNTED BABY OVER HERE!"

Haunted Baby makes a startled yelping sound and Liquid looks back to see them stumble backwards a few steps, plastering themself against the wall, eyes wide.

"Oh no! Did I scare you? Was I too loud?" Liquid says, bubbling in distress.

"Too loud," echoes Haunted Baby, looking very betrayed.

"Aw, I'm sorry," Liquid says, kneeling slightly to be more on their level. It notes a couple interesting things about their appearance—same golden tint to their skin as the Replicas, the little halo and wings that look like a mimicry of a Legend, hair orange-brown but golden-tipped in a way it doubts is hair dye—but mostly focuses on the fact that they look, more than anything, like a frightened little kid. "I'll be more quiet now, promise. I didn't mean to scare you. It's okay. Do you need help? Are you– do you know where you are?"

Haunted Baby visibly brightens– as in, they look happier, but also as in their halo and wings glow slightly and, unless Liquid's mistaken, their eyes get brighter as well. 

"The Vault," they say, in a voice that isn't Liquid's but seems like it shouldn't be theirs either, far too big for that tiny body and with an echo of its own, like the hallway itself is trying to amplify it, and it's Liquid's turn to rock backwards slightly, very startled and the tiniest bit afraid.

"Liquid?" Plasma's voice says, and Liquid finds to its great relief that the voice is coming from Plasma's mouth this time (inasmuch as Plasma has a mouth, anyway.)

"Plasma!" it says, scrambling back to its feet. "I'm so glad you're here." If it was possible for anyone to pinch Liquid, it might ask Plasma to pinch it to make sure it's not dreaming.

Plasma nods towards the tiny figure standing across from them, looking blissfully unaware of the mega-spooky thing they just did. "Is this the...Haunted Baby?"

"Haunted Baby!" chirps Haunted Baby, in Plasma's voice.

Plasma's expression doesn't appear to change much, but Liquid's known them long enough to know they're startled. "Ah."

[devil-on-acid]

The Heart of Eywa Chapter 1: First Connection

Genre: Thriller/Isekai/Fantasy/Sci-fi

No Pairings yet

Word count: 3396

Pilot

Sypnosis: a Regular teenager get transported to the world of her obsession in her dreams, but upon arriving there she never could have thought the possibility of it being real and not just in her head. She could never have anticipated what she would feel and discover. why was she here ?

A/n: here i am finally with the official chapter 1. Sorry that it took so long since i posted the pilot. I need to mention i am a fulltime art student so i’m usually busy or too exhausted. When i write i try to make each chapter as vivid as possible so i really have to take my time to use the right words and to decide the pace of the chapter. I really wanna post a high quality story. Once again English is not my first language so my vocabulary is still improving. Let me know you thoughts and any ideas in the comments. I would love to hear them (same goes for feedback) for now i hope you enjoy this first chapter. 😊

ps. if you wanna be tagged for upcoming chapters let me know in the comments ^^

(y/n) Pov

Previously

Meanwhile the girl was still drifting, unaware that she was being watched. Shock settling into her body as she was still accepting and processing what happend to her. All that matters now is staying alive long enough to find the only people she might know, the Omaticaya.

-

It took me only 10 min before i could hear the sounds better, the river water drifting down stone. I sped up my pace now. And soon i reached the river. The water was so clean i could see right through it to the bioluminescent water plants at the bottom. I hastly scooped up water to drink from, the thirst coming back to me now. putting some water on my face i feel a lot less faint but i was still getting tired. Shutting my eyes for a second to blink properly i look at my surroundings again. The small river has a stone wall where the water came from like a small waterfall. Insects are even louder in this area. Always hearing a nice buzzing of some sort of cricked, and occasionally birds. All around me the bioluminescence was bright. Lighting up the entire river area. I started to wonder towards everything. I mostly have questions that i don’t know who to ask. ‘’why am i here ?’’  

‘’how am i here ?’’

I didn’t know what to do or if i even have to do anything. The only chance of survival i have is finding a clan, but Omaticaya is the only clan where i know i might talk my way out of getting killed. Watching so many fantasy and action movies can teach you some skills in speaking differently then you do. I can only speak a few words na’vi and that wasn’t enough. Speaking English is the only option. Na’vi are extremely bright, they learn English faster then someone can teach them.  

It might be my only option to avoid getting killed by them. They are fiercely protective and loyal to eachother, they don’t trust easily. Especially after what the Sky People did to them and their world. Whether that is still in motion or already passed is another thing i wondered and remember it for the next time i might figure it out.

I decided i am too tired to move right now. But i can’t stay here for too long. ‘’i guess i can just take a little nap right ?’’ i thought to myself. A little away from the water in the shadow of some plants i lay down on the soft moss and close my eyes. Focusing on the sounds around me. I was laying comfortably on the ground on my back. Like the feeling of coming home and dropping into your bed after a long day of work. The backache from stress lessening and disappearing every minute. My thoughts are blank, which surprised me. Most people would be having racing thoughts. Especially about home, in my situation in particular. Do my parents know i’m gone ? or has nothing changed while i’m here ? is there still a possibility this is all a deep comatose sleep ?. I do have these thoughts, but they don’t bother me. It feels like time has stopped moving both here and back home.

After what felt like an hour or longer of laying there, unable to fully fall asleep i decide to move forward. Looking around me to make sure i’m in the clear i slowly let myself sit upright. I feel dizzy. In a way it feels like i’m under the influence of something. Standing up i almost have to sit back down but keep myself grounded looking for anything to hold onto. Getting lightheaded while standing up is not going to help me right now. Walking along following the river i the area cleared a bit with less plants to avoid. The soft moss underground all i felt that ripples with light every step i made. The noises in my ears started to become stronger. it felt like i could hear the noises like ripples in my body, as if music was in the back of my head. I can hear people talking in an undetectable language, children laughing, people singing. it was keeping me on edge. But also grounded to the earth.  

After only minutes of walking i felt hopeless already. I was so dizzy my head started to spin, looking at my feet and the ground and taking a deep breath i hope for the spinning to fade away. after looking at the ground for a minute i looked back up and almost stepped back. Right in front of my face was an atokirina. It’s light movements like a small jellyfish or a dandelion seed in the wind. A faint light comes from it as it moves over my shoulder and gets close to my hair. Mesmerished i keep my eyes on it. it didn’t move from my shoulder. Looking up into the sky i was hyptonized by what i saw. Hundreds of atokirina are floating down from the top of the forest . atokirina are signs for the na’vi. A pure spirit to give them a message or quide their path.

I was paralyzed in my movement, i didn’t dare take another step. Reaching out the atokirina softly floated down to cover my hands and arms. More of them placing themselves on my chest and my head, softly tickling my skin. I look behind me to the other sprites floating behind me. They connected to my shoulder and my back mimicking a cape in the motion of a wave. The sounds i hear become stronger and stronger. the voices overwhelm my senses. The sounds of nature mixing and harmonizing with them. My sight was starting to become blurry. I try to blink to focus but it didn’t help, it only made it worse. My mind keeps spinning and spinning. I can’t stand without having to balance my weight. i feel so tired i stopped fighting and let it overwhelm me. In less then a second i can feel my eyes roll back into my head and falling back to the ground. But before i feel the impact everything goes black.

Third POV

This could mean only one thing, a sky demon invading into their land. No matter how outnumbered the demon was it was still a cause of concern in the mind of the na’vi hunter. As quiet as he could go he ran to his ikran in a hurry, making Tsaheylu and flying back to the village. He knew where the sky demon was headed and he wasn’t far from the village, if he was fast enough he could warn the other warriors and the Olo'eyktan about this and they would be back before she drifted to far from this part of the forest.

The Hunter was able to reach the village in a mere 10 minutes of flying. Landing his Ikran upon the branches of a tree, many more trees around it connected by long green vines serving as a pathway between the tents and little homes build around him. As he got off his ikran he could hear the gentle singing of people and drums playing music a little down below, where many of the omaticaya where eating communally around a big bonfire. Climbing down from the tree to one of the lower and larger tents he looks for his fellow hunters and the Olo'eyktan. People greet him and he greets them back without betraying the the urge and panic he feels. As he approached the leader he crouches down next to him greeting him formally.

“oel ngati kameie Jake Sully. I need a word with the Olo'eyktan, it’s urgent.’’

Jakes eyes widened in alarm for a split second before composing his face. It wasn’t often one of the hunters or clan people had an emergency or something urgent to tell him. After spending years with his people as their clan leader he learned about their behaviour and was better able to read their emotions and was able to make opinions about the situations going on around them. The look on the hunters face gives jake a sense of worry. Which didn’t happen often.

the na’vi was feeling a mixture of shock, fear and anger under the surface of a calm face. But Jake could see right through him, he knew better. His body language was stiff and panicked. Jake conteplated what had the hunter in such a state and he needed to know more immidiatly. Jake stood up passing one look to his mate who sat a little further away with the tsahik.

‘’come with me’’  he said as he walked a little further tot he side of the large tent so they could speak in whispers.

‘’speak calmly, what is wrong ? the look on your face troubles me’’

‘’while out hunting i saw something that shouldn’t be possible. I saw a dreamwalker, a sky demon’’

Jake was immidiatly alarmed. the skypeople are back ? since when. How can this have happend without his knowledge.

‘’a dreamwalker ?, are you sure about this. Did you recognise the avatar ? are you sure it wasn’t one of the scientists ?’’

‘’she’s not familair to us, we don’t have any children avatars from the humans.’’

‘’She ?, it was a girl ?’’

‘’yes Olo'eyktan, a young girl, a mere child.’’

Jake was confused by all means the scientists have no one except for Spider when it came to children, and no other than Norm and a few others had their own avatar. But they are all adults. Unless the RDA succeeded in making a young/child avatar.

A different scenario : this is a young girl from another tribe who is completely lost. But that would be an unlikely thing. He also trusted in the hunters and the other Na’vi. They can immidiatly tell who is and who is and who isn’t a sky person, even if you took the physical aspect of the avatar away. The 5 winger and eyebrows, they can always tell. It was something Jake as a former avatar wasn’t able to sense.

Then  there was the worts scenario : The skypeople have returned to Pandora, How is the question. If any spaceship comes in Pandora’s orbit they would’ve seen it sooner, they would’ve seen a new star in the night.

‘’Have you told this to anyone else ?’’ Jake asked.

‘’No, Sir’’

Gather a group of hunters, bring them together at the totem. Do so quickly and calmly. I don’t anyone question what is happening.

With that he sent the hunter on his way to gather the others. Meanwhile he walked back to his mate who was currently giving out food to their children and feeding their 2 year old baby. As he came closer his children as wel as his mate looked at him expectantly, turning towards him or looking up at him. As Jake stood before them he crouched down to properly speak to her and silently observe then infant she cradles in her arms.

‘’Ma Jake ?’’ is all Neytiri needed to ask. She knew the look on her mates/husbands face, she could tell he was holding back from telling her something. The worry and confusion starting to become visible on her face.

‘’Ma Jake, what is happening ?’’

‘’Me and a group of hunters are gonna gather at the Totem, i need you there.’’

‘’is there something wrong dad ?’’ his 13 year old Daughter asks. Kiri was looking at her father with wide curious looking eyes. Usually he would expect this question from Lo’ak, but this time it came from Kiri.

‘’No there is nothing wrong babygirl, can you and Neteyam take care of your siblings and go to Grandmother. Me and your mother have something to discuss.

Rectuantly the children all gathered and stood up, taking their food with them to finish with the tsahik. Lo’ak turned before walking with them conteplating to ask his father questions, but the look Jake gave him told him no in an instant. This was absolutely no good time. So he stays quiet and goes with his siblings, Neytiri still holding small Tuk stands straight and determinded, Like a proud mother ready to protect as she looks back at him.

‘’twawne, what is happening ?’’

Jake looks back to her trying to calm his expression for what he was about to tell her.

‘’they, the hunters, saw a dreamwalker, not one of our own.’’

Neytiri looks at Jake with shock written on her face. From all the things she was expecting him to tell this was not one of them. But her shock from this knowledgequickly turned into frustration and anger.

‘’what are they ? is it the skypeople ? are they back ?’’   ‘’they never should have dared to return’’

Before she could say more Jake cuts her of without angering her more.

‘’We don’t know who they are or how they came here. Appareantly they are alone, but we don’t know if more are out there. A hunting party and me will go out to track her, they we’re spotted not far from here’’

Neytiri looks Jake in thee yes with determination, her voice not wavering or stuttering for even a second.

‘’I am coming with, i need to see this demon for myself’’

‘’Neytiri, this could be a trap, we don’t kniow how many there are or what they have, we need to be carefull about this’’

Neytiri didn’t back down ‘’i am coming, you can’t convince me otherwise. We’ll track the demonand stop them from coming here. Especially this close tot he village.’’

Jake recuantly agrees, Neytiri is a fierce warrior. Nothing will stand in her way or hold her back. She can handle herself.

‘’okay, but i have to tell the people over at the lab and warn them, or at least Norm and Max.’’

‘’you want to involve the humans again ? they’ll only be in our way.’’

‘’no they won’t, i make sure of that. They can help us. We just need to warn them for any possible outcome. I’m gonna as kif they might have a theory or have picked something up at the lab. See if they may have a clue on how they’ve gotten here.’’

With that Jake hoped Neytiri would agree with his choices, her and Jake never always saw eye to eye with some things involving leading the tribe. But whatever happens they still trusted eachother. Mo’at still being the Tsahik often agreed with Jake.

‘’i’ll inform the Tsahik, Go and prepare. I want this over with quickly’’

with that she walked away towards the Tsahiks tent to drop of Tuktirey for bed and inform het mother of the situation. Hoping everone who will come with the hunters remains uninjured.’’

Jake went tot he Totem to inform the warriors/hunters of the planand prepare. This needed to be done carefully and silently. They’ll track down and observe the dreamwalkerand see if she has any contact with anyone outside the forest. Adrenaline shot trough his body prepared for anything that could happen.

-----

‘’Norm, Norm do you read me ?’’

The radio comes to life with it’s spheric static noises. A few seconds went by before the radio picked up a reply.

‘’Jake, i’m here i read you. Is everything alright ? you hardly ever use the radio, what’s going on?’’

Norm, i need you and maybe max or someone else to check anything you can off the satelites still working. See if something came into Pandora’s orbit. Or try to see if you pick up any signals unfamilair to us. Anything like a habsite or a ship.’’

‘’Whoah, whoah, slow down. You want us to look for any unusual activity ? what for. Did you find something?’’

‘’Or someone’’ Said Jake. The radio went silent for a second, the words he said came out quick and without thinking.

On the other end of the radio Norm sat in the lab at the remains of Hells gate. He was still awake in his human form to look at samples he picked up earlier in the day. Now listening to what Jake called him for. It wasn’t unusual to hear the radio every once in a while come to life. Wheter it be random static noises or Jake calling in to check up on everyone if he was too busy to stop by. And he usually was. What was unusual is for hi mto call upon them this late at night.

‘’wait Jake i couldn’t hear you, can you repeat that.”

‘’i said…..i said we didn’t find something we found someone. we found a dreamwalker, potentionally.’’

‘’wait, there is a avatar out there, are you sure?’’

‘’well i wasn’t the one that found it, or sa wit. One of the hunters did.’’

Jake had to start thinking of a plan, what if there really was an avatar walking in the forest right now. What do they do ? kill them on site?. There should be another way, he still needed answers. And now whether he had to or not the scientists would be involved.

Norm was silently having a whirlwind of thoughts running trough his brain.

‘’Norm you still with me’’ Jake asked

‘’sorry, yes i hear you, i was…thinking for a second’’

‘’Norm. Can you only inform max and whoever needs to know about this. I don’t wanna cause unnecessary panic if it is a false alarm. A hunting part is going to follow this ‘someone’ they found, i’m going with them. But i need a favor’’

‘’thats the first time you ever asked for a favor, but yeah how can i help?’’ Norm questioned, he had a theary what Jake was up to but he would let him do the talking for now. Still too preocupied with his thoughts to start arguing with someone’’

‘’if there is an dreamwalker alone, i need to get them to Hells gate. We can keep them there, we can’t let them know where the village is’’

‘’then why do you want them here ? they’ll know where we are, what the thinking ?’’ Norm said as he contignues

‘’I don’t think the’ll be much better of here’’

‘’no they are. We need to keep them isolated to confuse them, not knowing where they are is the best option to pin them down.’’ Jake trows back

‘’Well, you’ll need to get them to a holding cell further inside the buildings we don’t use. But how do you even wanna get them here.’’

‘’the hard way i figured’’

‘’Jake, don’t do something unnecessarily stupid’’

‘’Can’t promise anything at this point’’

‘’Okay i’ll inform Max and the others’’

‘’Thank you Norm’’

Jake then ended the radio call. He needed to get the other hunters ready to depart. They couldn’t wait another second.

-

i can’t see, i can’t hear. All i see is blackness. No colors or images and no dreams. The lack of sound was giving a tingling sensation in my head. Occasionally i could hear a peep on one side of my head and it fades few seconds after. I don’t know where i am, or what is going on.

I turn and turn in the hopes of seeing anythng in the distance but the blackness was messing with my sense of direction. A cold wind comes from behind me and my first instinct is to wrap my arms around me and sit down, curling myself up shielding my body from the cold. turning to look where the wind came from it starts to get warmer. when i face behind me a bright light blinds me from under me. glowing gold and orange like the sun and warming my body. As i try to open my eyes my sight is still completely blinded. It felt like i couldn’t choose between waking up or staying asleep.

I can faintly start to feel the sensations of my body again. A pressure or support under my knees and spine, my head falls back too tired to support my neck. As i faintly hear some voices around me all the sounds completely stop again giving back the tingling sensation in my head. And the loop starts all over again. Trying to see, hear and feel.

-

Tag list: @cleverzonkwombatsludge  @lovelyygirl8  @ambria  @lainekyuu  @meobvii

[eccentric-nucleus]

anyway wrt 'other projects i am thinking of working on' here is a kind of enormous worldbuilding document about Setting Stuff

sorry for some of the formatting; the tumblr editor seems to be literally incapable of handling paragraphs inside of lists, whether that be in markdown or in actual html; you have to go to rich-text and then manually fiddle with stuff. this is also the only way to add a readmore now, i think?? god why is the tumblr editor so bad. i should just post this on my dreamwidth tbh

so it's a desert planet overall, inspired in some mix of... dark sun's athas, kenshi, morrowind, trigun, gears of war, westerns generally, etc. there's a big crater at one pole (at least one pole) that's a water ocean; it's called the sea of fog b/c the actual ocean is hidden beneath hundreds of meters of local cloud cover. there's an equatorial acid sea & the overall landmass is more-or-less divided into northern and southern halves. there's probably an isthmus somewhere that connects the two but it's kind of out of the scope of my current worldbuilding.

mostly my current worldbuilding has focused on one specific region that i'll say is 'roughly the size of russia'. the 'great desert' (tho as you can tell from the planet description, it's mostly desert all over). loosely: bounded at the north when the desert turns into steppe and corn fiefdoms start to dominate around the polar ocean; bounded at the south by the acid sea; bounded at the west by a huge mountain range; bounded at the east by... less discrete geographical features, but eventually there's perpetual sandstorms and huge unstable fissures that are difficult to pass.

(yopa, in the new hive, is in some variant of this setting. as you might recall, they're down south a few days travel from the acid sea. that's the southern border of the world map! arguably i should have had 'acid rain' as a weather type instead of 'sandstorms', but w/e there's plenty of other things i'd tweak now if i could. weird how i say going north leads to a lowland instead of a highland. that would be below sea level!!)

also there's likely gonna be some level of procgen integration for any game i make with this setting, & so i'm not really 100% on whether this is gonna be a template to build off of, in terms of 'these are the kinds of organizations and cultures you'll see emerge' vs. a specific idea in a specific world. it depends on how good i get at world history simulation, really.

a few notes on the various peoples that inhabit the great desert:

the corn kingdoms of the north. on rolling prairie/steppe with occasional rocky obstructions erupting through. very scattered trees, w/ more cultivated around villages. corn (or a corn-like grain, you know how it is with fantasy worldbuilding) is their staple crop, and pretty much every little village has their own heirloom variety. corn patterning is a highly political subject. every time some new attempted-ruler tries to unify the disparate fiefs and villages the big visible symbol of that is them growing their preferred kind of corn. food tithes only desiring the proper kind of grain or demanding more if it's 'unsuitable varieties', that kind of thing. one of the major strains is a bitter, rich cyan color that needs heavy nixtamalization to be particularly edible & only grows well in the regions immediately ringing the sea of fog; outside it grows pale and reedy from nutrient deficiency. meanwhile another one is a sweeter, mealier red variety that grows well in southern desert soils. i have a whole document on corn varieties and the political implications of growing each one. this is very much inspired by like... japan pre-unification, warring clans kinda situation. they probably have a higher % urbanization than most of the other peoples on this list b/c they actually do food importing i wrote a bunch of stuff on them and only later realized that even if the planet overall is hotter & so they're only just approaching temperate regions at the poles, they're still at the poles so presumably they have like 18 hour nights at winter or w/e. i don't know how that's gonna work out as a farming society. i might have to do some math about axial inclination and revise this section some. occupation-wise: lots of farmers. lots of lawless roving bandits from released conscripts after one clan or another had a military offensive collapse. that kind of thing.

the nomadic tribes of the great desert. there are a bunch of them (12? 13?) but i only came up with names of some of them major tribes. each tribe has a specific variety of weird mask that they wear as face coverings b/c of cultural beliefs about not showing yr face to those outside yr immediate family. the ash tribe wear masks of pitted volcanic rock that are just like, weird rocks. the masks are like a 'public face' in the same style as having a public name vs. a private name, & they consider everybody else to be weird uncivilized faceless demons each clan is made up of several smaller tribes, & they loosely confederate with each other as needed. the clan names get translated into other languages as things like "ash" or "vulture" or "fire-eater", but in their own language there's a chunk more nuance that's not really translated well. each one is associated with a loose constellation of concepts & there's probably some kinda inflectional state that refers to ones own subtribe or family lineage within the larger clan that tends to get removed in translation. anyway they travel along routes in the desert between various oases & are generally considered to be bandits or evil spirits by many of the other peoples who try to inhabit the great desert. there's a lot of king of dragon pass style "it's just friendly social behavior to sometimes raid a nearby camp and steal their goats" activities going on. sure, you don't want to murder the people you're raiding but sometimes they get a cracked head and that's just the cost of having sociable relations. this is how they figure out their relative ordering of power among themselves, but this behavior is not well regarded by the settled villages that get raided. they're just evil bandits who steal their stuff. occupation-wise, i have these put down as producing an awful lot of witches. witches, poets, warriors/raiders, artists. presumably also animal caretakers and scouts/foragers/rangers, too

very far south, along the edges of the acid sea, there are stilt-villages of fisherfolk who catch the weird things that live in the acid shoals. they build from some kinda tree-like acid vegetation and they have to cover everything they build in thick layers of resin pitch to make it acidproof. lots of waxed leather raincapes. pretty much everybody has pitted acid scars all over regardless. there are probably some villages out on islands in the acid sea that are totally disconnected from everywhere else save for like, shingle-bottomed resin boat travel over the acid sea. these are the only peoples who might plausibly have traveled to the other continent. if we're assuming the world used to be more watery & then the oceans sublimated away leaving behind mostly acid, these people would be living on what was formerly the abyssal plain. but maybe that's not what happened!

there's some striped canyons somewhere with big cities carved into the walls & bridges made between them. not a lot of notes on these people aside from lots of artists and bards

there are also the big mesa-temples. big mesa. hollow it out! temple complex at the top. big warren cave-city. they worship families of great beasts they consider to be divine messengers. brulvundojn is from here! it's not great. they're very eugenics-y in their attempts to breed humans into a great beast lineage. generally it doesn't take. when i was rereading the ancient nanowrimo novel that brulvundojn is actually from, i was like "oh noktigo is great" so i guess in this continuity he would be one of the rare true chimeras to come out of the breeding program, & his response was to immediately get the fuck out of there. i'm not sure if brulvundojn is 'from there' in the sense of being some offshoot of a royal lineage, or if he's from there more broadly as in he was once a peer to one of the lineages that got fixated on breeding themselves out into the world & he got out before anybody started worshipping him. the thing with the great beasts is that they are less, like, physical animals that are big and weird, and more like a physical embedding of a physical rule or structure. well, 'the new hive' is an extremely low-fantasy take on things so nobody in that really has magical powers. but in general. brulvundojn embodies the principle that those who trespass boundaries are doomed to death for their violation of the natural order & he doesn't really like being that very much. usually when a great beast breeds w/ a human you just get like, a human with some claws. whatever. sometimes you get another great beast, who is less a separate individual and more a different facet of the great beast's concept. a true chimera who has some of the conceptual nature is very rare. they're also very dangerous b/c great beasts are kind of circumscribed in their capacity for free action by the strictures of their concept, & chimera don't have that. they just have spooky powers and the capacity to do whatever they want with them. anyway some of the older lineages of great beasts are no longer living in a mesa-temple with their families so much as they are unweaving the conceptual boundaries of reality and reweaving it into something more aligned with their conceptual judgment. you can think of it as a pocket dimension if you like. or like the oblivion dimensions in the elder scrolls.

the walled oasis cities! they're also in the middle of the great desert, maybe a little on the northwestern-ish expanse. these are the most dark sun aspect of the setting really. ancient mages, maybe responsible for the ruin of the world, decide to set up a civilization to serve them. the big capital city-states all have the mage's domain (big tower, w/e) at the center, & the entire industry exists essentially to serve them. over time they've allowed lesser mage families to spring up (they need somebody to do the weak magic, after all) and those sometimes establish smaller cities with their own mage towers at the center. most of the original mages have retired from public position as official dictatorial mage-emperor for life, b/c they're perfectly capable of keeping the society tuned to their needs without also having to do any of the actual work of running it. meanwhile, all the citizens in the cities are like "wow we sure are lucky to be born in the only true, free society!!" while they are busy having their labor exploited and having their unions crushed by mage-knights and dying young of poverty and sickness. i feel like it's a little too on-the-nose tbh. architecturally they're very persian-influenced oh yeah so a few centuries ago a mage constructed some helper workers in the form of chesspiece/chaturaji golems. pawns to do simple menial labors, and then rooks/boats for building, knights for scouting, elephants/bishops for simple magic and the management of other golems, and then finally royals to create new golem pieces. then the royal pieces killed him because he was the last remaining inefficiency in the perfect automated world he had built for himself. that's how the cautionary fable goes, at least; maybe their true motives were different. anyway now there's a whole subspecies of chesspiece golems & i have a big gay romance outlined between a black knight & his childhood friend. they lived in some outlying mage-compound that ended up collapsing & most of the servants escaped and became outlaws. theyre gay fantasy cowboys.

there was at one point an empire of the frozen phoenix, though its lands have receded extensively & its former lands are mostly a few handful of former-peasant tribes picking out a rough existence in the ruins of former cities. only a handful of their cities remain, with more splintering off into rebellion each day. in the remixed version of 'the new hive' the defecting soldiers will probably come from here, which is maybe a problem b/c in my docs i only really have about one line about them, like: 'phoenix empire: former empire, decayed/decaying.'

one of the eastern borders is a land of unstable ground where fissures that ooze blood and rotting meat break open. sometimes acid springs seep fumes down into raw meat and send up charred fumes. there are small, scattered villages of rot-fishers, who live on the edge of the more stable fissures and fish up chunks of meat. they're pale and red-eyed and frequently have bizarre bloated deformities. a lot of people consider them to be harbingers of plague and pestilence. sometimes instead of growing old they metamorph into sinewy flesh monsters with intense psychic powers. i'm sure it's fine.

another one of the eastern borders is a land of perpetual sandstorm, kept going by spells from an order of witches, to hide away their lands from outsiders. how mysterious. wonder what they're up to.

there are moon-rabbits who say they came from the black moon. they live in warrens in the hulls of ancient machines that are strewn across the wasteland, and almost never leave. they're very nervous and conflict-averse. they have a prophecy about the end of the world they've read in the movements of the planets. there's a splinter race of jackalopes who are bigger and much more likely to travel outside. also, they have horns. occupations: engineers, glassblowers, astronomers, artificers.

the northern foothills of the western mountains are sparsely covered with vegetation and sometimes broken up into karst mesas, and clinging to the tops of some of them are the remnants of old forests. they're inhabited by remnants of some druidic order, mostly goatmen and humans, and they mostly stay to themselves and aggressively attack any outsiders

the western mountains proper are the eastern edge of some vast and sprawling orc / ogre empire. there are small outposts on the mountains themselves, and vast machine-cities on the far foothills over the main mountain ridge. the springs on the western side of the range seep black oil instead of water, & there's a sea of ichorous oil even further west, beyond the mountains

there's some cenote-cities along the mountains too, probably in the southwest expanse as it peters out for the descent down to the plains of the acid sea. natural cenotes of lightly brackish, highly mineral water have been expanded and cultivated into tiered cenote-cities, mostly inhabited by reptile-people. maybe a bridge to the underground. like the underground with the gheist in it?? we'll see how things shake out

these get shorter and shorter as i go further b/c i want to be closer to the end of this post. i haven't even touched on whatever astau is. anyway.

broadly speaking this is a world where the vast majority of it is rocky, dusty inhospitable wasteland, with scarce outposts of habitable land. travel between the regions is uncommon, though it does happen, and large-scale travel, like with an army, is pretty much unheard of due to the lack of supplies. it all comes back to logistics.

anyway this is the setting/project that a lot of the things i've been talking about over the past few, uh, years have been about? or at least circling around. guess why i was trying to work out medieval crop yields in the first place. i want some numbers here for population and arable land!!

[daddyboyhalo]

Hey! I saw your post where you expressed how you were feeling these days, and I want to give you all my support. I agree that this is a very difficult time, being this involved in something and it being turn around in just a few days, changing everything about it... Personally I struggle a lot with the fact that the other streamers, and mostly communities, are kinda "allowed" in a sense to just continue as it was? It might not be very clear but in a lot of discord servers and all people are not AT ALL up to date to the admins stuff, and are just enjoying their daily qsmp stream. I'm not blaming anyone, every streamer takes the matter how he wished, and playing doesn't mean working on things, but I guess it feels a little unfair in a sense? like Phil saying Chay and Tallulah admins are well and waiting to come back stings a little after seeing pomme and dapper leave :( It's hard to feel happy for this when you have the short end of the stick I guess

And the French might be a little too forceful on the ccs ; they are obviously not ready to talk about it, and waiting to talk to Q, but bagh and antoine still said that they watched the awards. I am quite uncomfortable with everyone assuming they will just leave when most of them didn't even had time to look more into the matter, Antoine being on holidays, baghera on her dance show, and etoiles having health related issues... I'm just afraid that it will put pressure on them while the other ccs are kinda free to not talk about it you know?

But yes, I personally try to focus on my uni work, to go out a little, to watch other content. For me the hardest is definitely the fact that all of this happened while etoiles had to take a break. I'm very happy that he's doing it, since he needed it. But since he is my main streamer since a few years, going from having him in the background for hours and hours to nothing during now three weeks was hard, especially in a time when I wanted to change my mind. I kinda felt like an orphan lmao, and hearing that he a was going to the hospital every day, still made me sad despite it making me happy that he was getting treatment. He wanted to come back soon but a said he had a relapse in his health two days ago :( My only wish right now is to see him get better, and stream when he'll feel well ! But yes it's rubbing me the wrong way that ppl are assuming "etoiles will boycott, he'll do this, that" when the guy is really not well, the qsmp is not is priority at all these days...

Sorry for the long text, but your feelings spoke to me and I also felt the need to vent a little, sometimes it's better than just keeping things for yourself, you are free to ignore this!

Hope it'll get better for everyone <3

-🦦

aw anon no worries, i’m glad you were able to vent here!! ; ; sorry for the late response, i’ve been incredibly busy, but: i agree, i really don’t like when people put expectations and pressure on a cc to take a specific action, ie boycott, especially when they’re going through it outside of the server. it might be that people just don’t realize, because i actually didn’t quite know how etoiles was feeling and struggling since i haven’t been keeping up with his streams for awhile and don’t really use twitter, so i wasn’t aware until i looked into it more. i really wish the best for etoiles and can imagine how that feels with him being your main streamer!! ; ; the person who’s comforted you so much without even realizing it is struggling, and that’s not a good feeling. but i’m glad you’ve been focusing on uni and getting out, focusing on other content, because those are all important coping mechanisms and can make it just a bit less painful! you have my full support too!

and yeah, it really does short when we get the short end of the stick here; i was both comforted that chayanne and tallulah’s admins are doing well and just… i’m not sure of the right word, but bitter knowing that some people were treated well and others weren’t? i also worry with that being the only perspective some people get that they’ll assume that must mean everything is fine when it’s not true. honestly, i wish i was just a casual viewer for example watching qsmp with no knowledge of what’s going on and that my enjoyment could just continue as normal, but instead the burden of knowledge and loss stings and aches so badly. it gets to be business as usual for some but for others it’s this horrible loss and grief, and it causes such a dissonance—“like, do you guys not see the dead and dying on the floor? am i going crazy? why are you walking straight through them?”. don’t mind my own rambling, but yeah anon, we’re in this together :(

[jahayla-parker]

Hii, I was wondering if you had any tips for us ADHD folks for focusing on tasks because I’ve had a horrible week with focusing on tasks even as small just doing the dishes and it’s really stressing me out. No pressure to answer this, I really like your Freddy fics btw, they are soooo comforting and your most recent was is PERFECTION.

Thank you for your question. I’m sorry you’re struggling! As a fellow ADHDer, I know how difficult this can be and that many people don’t understand what it’s like and that it’s NOT laziness or a lack of willpower.

I have put a readmore break for those not interested or otherwise trying to get to other posts. 💜

Sleep! Omg sleep is ssooooo important. I struggle with this so much! (If you need more advice on how to fix this lmk). But sleep is crucial otherwise the symptoms will get worse as sleep deprivation only increases adhd symptoms.

Write down notes/ideas as they come. Don’t try to make yourself memorize or remember things when you don’t need to. My iPhone notes are so random but helpful! This will help get take the pressure off and allow your brain to rest.

Focus on easy wins! I cannot stress this enough!!!! ADHD paralysis/executive dysfunction can make everything feel overwhelming. Breaking tasks into smaller and more manageable tasks seems simple (and in terms of application it is) but it helps more than you’d think! It takes the pressure off of each task. Don’t forgot in getting it all done. Choose one task. Then, chose the first step(s) of the task and set some time (what seems manageable currently not what “you should designate” to it) aside to do it. Then give yourself some rest (see ideas below). Then repeat as needed.

Unless you have to, don’t force yourself to stick to a strict schedule. You might want to choose one important task to schedule if needed (ideally still do it the way mentioned above though). But don’t map out your whole day if it can be avoided. This feels, looks, and in many ways is, far too much. Ideally plan a rest activity too if you’re going to schedule anything.

Rest and self care is super important. This can look different from person to person. Especially downing on what your triggers are or what type of stimulation is best for you. For me and many others (but not all) prefer/find calming stimulation to be easier/better aka grounding. Examples of common grounding techniques include: painting (I alternate between my nails and a color by number set personally), coloring, drawing (for some, not me personally though), reading (varies a lot on effectiveness for people), yoga, etc.

Physical activity can help too but is understandably hard to do when these symptoms hit. Smaller/shorter/less intensity exercises are typically better and easier to get done when it feels like this. The key is rhythmic movement as studies have shown this to help (can help with ptsd too!)

Rhythmic activities examples (both physical and otherwise): Things like a few minutes of yoga/stretching, rolling/bouncing/tossing a ball, (drawing/paint/color can be included here too), tap feet/fingers/etc at a calm but steady pace, find something that makes (or can make) a soft sound and initiate that sound in a calm steady pace, listen to meditation music, petting/brushing a pet, etc.

Don’t strive for perfection. This is a hard one for me too. But, aim to complete something even if it’s not perfect. The pressure to perform well can in itself make the task harder. In these times, completion (even of a tiny step within a task) is perfection!

Motivate yourself! Completion isn’t enough motivation, so don’t even try to argue that idea lol. Instead, reward yourself for reaching small milestones. Motivation is a great psychological tool to overcome this. It can be whatever is the most exciting for you (please consider your health as well. -mostly referring to avoiding substance and addictive behaviors)

Hopefully this helps!💜

[sineala]

Do you know of any Captain America comic where Cap thinks about or does go back to his original time, but then decides he doesn't belong there anymore and comes back (or decides not to go back at all idk)? Is that a thing, or did I make it up in my head? I figured you might know, but if you don't sorry to bug you!

You are thinking of a real comic! The comic you are probably thinking of Mark Waid's five-issue miniseries Captain America: Man Out of Time, which is a modern retelling of Steve's origin story. Man Out of Time is probably my favorite Cap comic, specifically because of the decision Steve makes.

So there's him getting frozen and found by the Avengers in Avengers #4, but the retelling also covers a few more of the issues after that. In particular, it goes up through Avengers #8, which is the first appearance of Kang the Conqueror. (Though, technically, of course, he says he's also a couple other villains who have already appeared. Kang's gonna Kang.)

What actually happens in Avengers #8 is a fairly standard supervillain fight -- the Avengers fight him, mostly get captured and taken to his spaceship, get rescued, then punch him some more. They destroy some of his weapons and reflect others, and then he gets in his spaceship and retreats, zooming away. So that's canon. Just so you know what canonically happens. Nothing that happens in Man Out of Time is technically 616 canon. But that doesn't mean it's not a good story.

So this isn't how it goes in Man Out of Time's version of Avengers #8. At all.

I was going to make this a much longer post with many more panels but the very very short summary of the miniseries is that this is a version of Steve's early days in the future focusing heavily on his alienation from modern society -- he spends almost all of Avengers #4 convinced he's dreaming and he's going to wake up any minute.

He must be dreaming. Why are the Dodgers in Los Angeles?

When he finally accepts that it's real, he immediately wants to find someone who will send him back so he can try to save Bucky.

Reed Richards has a time machine, so Steve does possess the capability to go back.

Tony takes Steve on a date to the Smithsonian (as well as a private Radiohead concert and apparently Steve likes Radiohead?) and tries to sell him one last time on the wonders of the future, like how we have space travel now and less sexism and less racism and way fewer vaccine-preventable diseases and God I liked this book so much better when I thought people would all want to be vaccinated against diseases that could kill them.

Anyway. Steve can't be convinced; he still wants to go back to the forties. Eventually the president has to tell him he can't go back because he knows too much about the future.

Steve's not happy.

I was going to say that Mark Waid did not have to go this hard but I think maybe he did.

So Steve has to stay and he's miserable and then he starts to hate a lot of things about the future that are still bad. He finds out human trafficking exists. He finds out the designated-hitter rule exists. These things are not really comparable but he's upset about both of them. He finds out about domestic terrorism. The Vietnam War. MLK's assassination. This wasn't what he thought he was fighting for.

(The events of Avengers #5-7 happen in the background.)

And that's when we get to Avengers #8 and Kang. Kang captures the team. And Kang sends Steve back in time. To 1945. To V-J Day. So this is after Bucky is gone, but still, this is Steve's home, right? He should be happy. And for a bit, he is. He's a returning soldier, just like all the other GIs. A hot dog costs a nickel, like it ought to.

And then things start to fall apart. He goes to a Dodgers game, the Brooklyn Dodgers, as they obviously ought to be. I don't know why so much of Steve's personal betrayal by the future and also the past is about baseball, but, yeah, it is. So he watches the game and he starts talking to the kid and his father sitting next to him and the kid's a big Dodgers fan, right? Loves baseball. So Steve asks him if he wants to play for the Dodgers when he grows up.

Relevant information: the kid's black.

(Other relevant information, if you're not a baseball fan: Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in major-league baseball, started playing for the Dodgers in 1947. He was in the minor leagues in 1946. But this story is set in 1945.)

So naturally the father would like Steve to stop lying about how his son could ever play for the Dodgers because obviously integrated baseball is a fantasy.

Steve is starting to suspect that maybe the past isn't as great as he remembered.

(Incidentally, a nice development in actual baseball news a couple years ago is that Baseball Reference, the big baseball stats organization, finally integrated... their data. All of the Negro Leagues statistics are now listed as major league, so a lot of good players are finally getting the recognition they deserve.)

Anyway. Steve can't find most of the people he knew in the war but then runs into a GI he knew, who wants to talk to him about how great life is now. He's not feeling it.

He realizes it's because he left the Avengers. He couldn't save Bucky. But he can still save the Avengers from Kang. He needs to help them. That's where he needs to be.

Luckily, he has his identicard still on him! And he can leave them a message!

He tells Rick when and where he is, and Reed comes and picks him up in his time machine.

And then he and the Avengers kick Kang's ass.

The miniseries then ends with Steve going to the Grand Canyon, where Bucky said he always wanted to visit. So Steve draws Bucky. But Steve knows now that he can't live in the past. It's tempting, he says. But it's where fossils come from.

So he lies there. He goes through his CDs. He sets aside Bing Crosby. And he listens to Radiohead. Because he lives in the future now.

So, yeah.

I love this miniseries and it really shaped how I view Steve as a character and I love that he got the chance to make this decision and he made it and I really didn't like Avengers: Endgame.

(There is another universe where Steve faces a similar decision. This is probably not the issue you were thinking of, but Marvel Adventures Avengers #37 has a plot where the Invaders -- who seem to be some kind of combination of the Invaders and the All-Winners Squad, and also it's the 50s -- come to the present and offer Steve a chance to come back. Steve seems to be seriously considering it but before he can decide whether to use the doll that will send him back to the past, Wolverine destroys it because the future needs him here and Steve's like, yeah, you're probably right. So he's still in the future but... he didn't actually get to decide that.)

I hope Man Out of Time is the comic you're thinking of! If you like Steve at all, you should read it. It's the best.

[boyfhee]

can you tell me what your routine was like when you were in 11th or 12th grade? or basically when you were preparing for neet? alsoo, how did you even do both your school works & your neet?? did you go for any coaching?

Sorry if this seems annoying 😭 i am currently preparing for neet & it's such a headache, like i can barely manage my schoolwork + my neet preparations 😭😭

adding both the asks here because the context was quite similar. i've said this before that you need to find and maintain your own discipline and can't follow someone else's schedule, but i hope my sched can help you navigate around ><

11th & 12th SCHEDULE

the remarkable thing about my senior high was covid ! i never attended a single offline class in those two years— only practicals and exams. that gave me a lot of time to focus on competitive exams, even though i lowkey fucked up my 11th, i was on track the next year.

school work wasn't an issue with online classes. i barely attended those and mostly focused on my coaching institute ! i went to a local coaching, although very reputed, and bought allen's distance learning course for questions. unfortunately, i wasn't able to appear for neet the very year i passed 12th due to a minor surgery. so i took a year to prepare for neet and my schedule was as follows :

6 : 00 am - 7 : 00 am — waking up, going for a walk, exercising, whatever morning routine i had went there. i kept it relatively short because i wanted to put as many hours as possible in studies.

7 : 30 am - 10 : 00 am or 12 : 00 noon — studies ! i usually had my breakfast during that thirty minutes gap between first and second slot. i not, i sat down to study early and got up for breakfast around eight or nine.

12 : 00 noon - 2 : 00 pm — break yayaya >< i watched tv, used socmed and had lunch during this time. again, i wouldn't take this break if i woke up late or got some work that i wasn't able to finish. i left for classes at / around two ^_^

2 : 30 pm - 8 : 30 pm — my classes ! i joined allen last year since it's fifteen minutes to where i live and i needed some sort of guidance to proceed. after my classes, i got back home by nine, sometimes a bit late if i stayed back to discuss a few things with the teachers.

9 : 00 pm - 10 : 00 pm — dinner and rest after classes. tv, phone, or just helping mum in the kitchen if the day was good lmfao. i hate being in the kitchen :/

10 : 15 pm onwards — studies again :> fifteen minutes break to sort get my stuff and all. besides, my dad asks for every update of my day and what i have planned to study the next day etc etc. if my schedule was relaxed, i'd sleep by twelve or twelve thirty but as neet approached, i slept by two and woke up at around eight lmfao TT good thing was, i didn't have classes after february so i followed the same routine except, i started studying at nine after breakfast, till one, got up for lunch, then studies from two to six sometimes seven, an hour break for dinner ( had early dinner during that time ) then studied from either to two at night.

to the anon to asked how i write fics during classes : i had wednesdays off / tests so i used that one day to relax. i usually wrote on wednesdays, sometimes on other days when work load is way less and i mostly queued by posts since i had pre-written ones from when i had time. sometimes, when i finished by studies before 1 am, i took 30 mins to write if i felt like it. besides, my uni was well ... it wasn't my focus. i took biotech and kept it on the side incase i can't do med. lectures were online, no one demanded full attendance, i got notes from friends and only gave tests. my focus were these pre-med classes i attended, and the sched is what i mentioned above.

also, my study hours are higher during classes. i barely have time to write, so i'm not active every single day as you might have noticed before may this year. the time table i mentioned above is an example of timeslots and how i used to manage. 10 hrs avg is now, give and take one or two here and there. also, i never stick to one schedule. i might have exams again this month and i might just dip completely. if not, i won't have to study at all and i might just stay on blr all day.

for neet : juggling between school and coaching can be hard but i don't think i can give appropriate advice since i never had to experience that. if you're in 11th, focus more on coaching ( because 11th science is more difficult imo, and more fundamental when it comes to neet ) and if you're in 12th focus more on school because of boards. the best thing to do is finish chapters ahead of time. say you're learning mechanics in school and thermodynamics in coaching. try to finish thermodynamics from school textbooks as well so you won't have issues when they teach it in school and can focus on what they're teaching in coaching. utilize your breaks and holidays to finish easy chapters, especially biology as a whole and organic and inorganic chem since there's nothing to do except remembering stuff.

this is so long TT i'm sorry and i hope this is helpful even though it's lowkey all over the place .. i'm not as organised as it seems and my sched varies a lot depending upon the day, if i have to go out, tests, etc etc.

[claudiajcregg]

S5 Pregnancy AU - I’d love to hear about!

Welp, this is embarrassing – mostly because this has been sitting in my inbox for almost two weeks, and I kept saying “I need to write something up!” and then… I didn't. (Or rather, I did, then I forgot to post it.) Sorry for the wait, Lil! Thank you for asking <3 (I'll divide this up because I keep writing about the process and how it came to be, instead of any actual, interesting facts.)

I have talked about this one in the past though I don't have a tag for it. The gist is what it says… (Early) S5 but CJ is pregnant. I had this idea over a year ago when I hit mid/late S4 in my rewatch. I thought it'd be interesting to explore some of her disappointment at that time if you added an unexpected pregnancy to it, even if I had the idea before even getting there, lol. Think, the ending-ish of Han, or parts of Disaster Relief. (Both of which do feature! I surprisingly focus a lot on Disaster Relief.)

The thing with S5 is that the timeline is so weird, and I feel I've also created one that isn't entirely realistic but I think it works within the story. (IIRC, the season starts in “May” but also July, then the Shutdown is in November, lmao. A few of the episodes are sneaky two-parters that flow into each other… See 5-6, 7-8.) I've finally gotten out of the no-man's-land I wrote myself into and the next chapter or two, knowing myself, will deal with 7-8! There are a couple of scenes that should be fun to write! (There are so many details I want to mention that are technically spoilers for early twists…)

Every time I had the urge to write it, I'd edit whatever outline I was working in, and though I kept some details… my muse decided to make a big change early on that completely changed the fic's direction. That, and my inability to write anything succinctly. No reason why this story will cross the 100k barrier in a couple of chapters, tops. (It's sitting at 85k across 12 chapters. I think it'll be less than 20 chapters total. Hopefully.)

This might be too long to share snippets, but I've shared some either on the server or here, a couple of months ago.

For more irrelevant details on the “process”…

As I hinted at, I wrote an outline or two around this time last year, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I say outlines, it's a general path for the story to follow – ideas, suggestions of dialogue and/or scenes I write to myself; all focused around some sort of chapter structure. I find it much easier to write if I write down where a chapter might go, even if it's just a few lines saying “This happens → then this → finally this;” otherwise, it takes me months. Some would say that I should post it and get encouragement that way but… I hate being dependent on something I can control even less than my muse? That's not for me, thank you. Mad respect for those who work like that.

It was meant to be short – 1-2 “long” chapters per trimester, more if needed, but then interludes in between trimesters. It's not that. Most chapters currently cover 1-2 weeks, but there is not really a pattern. I was afraid of having a fic that would take over my life like the WOWO did three years ago… And it has, but I've also taken breaks and not felt too guilty about them. I definitely don't want this one to sit in my drive and have me wondering what to do with it.

(The novel, aka WOWO, aka IM AU (2021): 150k written in a little over five months, even with extended breaks over the summer. Still hits, even with all its crazy decisions, maybe because of them, but it's also been too long, and it will always remind me of someone who kinda hurt me. Attempts to replace those memories by sharing the story with others, trying to gather whether it's worth posting, have failed, lmao. One day! Maybe!)

But yeah. Uuuuuhhhh. As I've said… Twelve chapters in ten months, 85k words… It's still not done. In fact, I've repeatedly said I am unsure of how to end it (beyond the obvious), but I'd estimate it to be under 20 chapters. I'm not posting it anywhere yet because I want to be able to edit it as a whole and try to make it more consistent; to add little details as I come up with them. There's also the fact that I am not skilled enough to write a compelling story that mixes politics and emotion into something remotely engaging. As a result, the story's politics are very surface-level, and probably repetitive at points, but it's also true I've always been more interested and focused on the emotional journey and the relationship(s) at its center. (Which should surprise exactly no one who's ever read one of my stories.)

But, as critical as I might sound of myself here, I am having fun writing this and I'm committed to seeing it through. I just keep having ideas for stories down the line, putting actual show events through a 'but she also has a kid' perspective.

[lifeonthemurdersim]

🥑 🔪 🧩 🌿 for the writer ask meme please :3

Thank you 😊

Writer's truth or dare ask meme

🥑- you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help?

C'mon, obviously YOU and @cptsadist. I mean technically not text, who texts anymore? But message. Obviously there would be a severe geographical hindrance to either of you physically helping but I'd need the moral support. Plus I feel like both of you would genuinely come up with some creative solutions 😆 Win-win.

🔪- what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Oh my god so many 🤣 I'm counting RPs in this bc they are collaborative writing as far as I'm concerned. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

How to perform a relay attack to steal a car.

How dark you can tint your windows in different states.

Lot of shit about Michigan slang and phrasing.

The route from Washington DC to NYC. But like in great detail.

Like practically everything I could find about Lawrence from Gato's old ask tumblr.

So much drug stuff. How to knock someone out for example, and how long one can be unconscious without brain damage. Effects of various recreational drugs too and crucially, how to actually take most of them 😅

What a full-body orgasm feels/looks like for an AMAB person. And stuff like refractory periods and such.

On that note, actually, average distance of ejaculation 🤣 OK that one was for an art piece but it had text so I technically "wrote" it.

"Do Americans say (word/phrase)?" 😅

Less deadly bullet wounds, dangerous but healable bullet wounds etc.

Quite a lot of BDSM stuff.

Stalking people's OCs to write them correctly.

If MI5 are watching me, I'm either a very kinky fucker or a serious threat.

🧩- what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

I'll preface this by saying I don't really read much fanfic, in fact I don't read books either anymore, so the fact I can even write coherently frequently surprises me! I generally have read mostly smutty oneshots in the past which is why I think I'm pretty hypocritical for writing a 300k word fic and expecting people to actually read it(there is a lot of smut though)!

I mean there are a lot of things I wouldn't click on in the first place, underage and incest for example, I'm also very wary of non-con even in the context of murder sim fandoms bc it's hard to know what I'll personally find triggering.

There are writing/layout choices that my brain would struggle with, but I feel like I can't really think of an example? I try to keep an open mind with things like point of view, tense and spelling.

I'm also fairly neutral about most kinks I'm not into and will read stuff if it's recommended to me or I otherwise think I might enjoy it. I have a few nopes but I feel like if I get specific that's being critical of those kinks? When really it's just things that personally don't appeal to me.

Yes I have turn offs. Sorry to shock anyone. 😅

🌿- give some advice on writer's block and low creativity

Possibly controversial. If you're not loving it, don't do it. Go do something else, whether that's switching to a different project, a different media or just going to do something else entirely.

By all means let your friends and/or fans know you'll be taking a break! But for me, I have to be passionately focused on something for it to work.

I do have one other tip though. If we're talking fanfic, weigh up the pros and cons of when to post. If you have more ready, it gives you time to catch up. I managed to get weekly 8k chapters out of my old longfic because I had 60% of the thing written already. I made it through several writer's blocks and only got a little behind. Thay said, there were days when the regular comments were the only thing keeping me going. It's difficult to find a balance. I guess it's a personal thing, but as I say, weigh it up.