#THEY ALL KNOW MY STANCE ON MODS OF ANY SORT GO TO HELL

[reassambled-dragoon]

SHUT. THE GODDAMN. FUCK UP. ABOUT MY DPS. SHUT UP. ABOUT PARSING ME. SHUT UP. ABOUT BEST IN SLOT. WHEN NONE OF US ARE DOING SAVAGE.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP I AM SO GODDAMN DONE WITH THE NUMBERS RACE LET ME MURDER SHIT AND HAVE FUN. I HAVE TO USE THE ENTIRETY OF MY COGNITIVE ABILITIES EVERY WORKDAY AND I AM D O N E WITH HAVING TO THINK WHILE PLAYING MY STRESS RELEASE GAME OF CHOICE.

[crush3dmary]

Remember how I got home from work and said "if I wake up to more drama I'm going to be a very, very unhappy camper"? Well, colour me impressed at best and furious at worst.

If you've "heard bad things about me", then I'm sure I know exactly who you are, and if that's the case - it's been 3 years of this, why can't you leave me alone already? You doxxed me, you put my safety at risk, I had to stay with my mom for a week because people were threatening me and I was worried someone was going to show up at my apartment and hurt me. Haven't you done enough?

I'm assuming you haven't seen my own posts about the situation, nor have you seen my replies on the fic itself on ao3. I went to catch up on the latest chapter last night only to look in the comments section and see that absolute clownery trying to be pulled out in my name. It was very important to me to say something in Kit's defence, as I've already made my stance on the fic clear: I genuinely enjoy the fic, and I DO NOT feel like I am being ripped off. I actually really appreciated that they owned up to taking inspiration from it because I thought that was very mature of them, and I'm happy something I wrote could inspire someone else. That's what we as writers SHOULD be doing in a community like this.

I've made my stance on the fic abundantly clear, so why am I being accused of sending hate to this same fic I've left a multitude of positive comments on, and on top of that, for the person who is clearly trying to frame me to use my old flambydelrabies moniker which is publicly connected to me. That's some Scooby Doo ass "the note from the killer said Sair did it" bullshit. You'd think if I WERE to leave hate on a fic I wouldn't do it under such a goddamn obvious name, nor do I type anything remotely like that, and if you want me to post my recent emojis to show I don't use the yellow heart, hell, i'll do that too, because I won't stand for being smeared in yet another fandom.

I have no commentary on the "make it look like you're sending hate to yourself" bit. I know people have done that before, but I'm sort of assuming nobody would want to go through all this trouble of dealing with pushy anons to the point of having to turn off anon comments on here and ao3. I'm convinced I know who you are, and you need to leave me alone, and you need to leave Kit alone. This has nothing to do with them, and I'd appreciate you keeping both of our names out of your mouth to try and fuel some sort of beef that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. I have no bad blood with Kit. I never have. Get real.

And as for the zine? We were never going to kick anyone from the zine over this. The mod team has already talked it over and are committed to keeping an eye on the situation in case it escalates, and you have clearly done so by spreading rumours about me. If Kit is by any chance uncomfortable working with me then we have another mod who is willing to look over their work for the zine. Nobody is being kicked. That was never even vaguely in the question, unless we could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that one of our contributors was the one sending these messages.

Leave me alone. Leave Kit alone. If this is who I think it is you've done enough already. If you wish to discuss this further you're welcome to message me off anon but that might be too scary for you I guess, because if you're smearing me and harassing contributors of my zine then I'm not going to be particularly nice to you.

Get lost.

Hello, I saw those comments on your a03, I'm sorry your dealing with that. I'd hate to start drama but I heard some bad things about crushedmary, and I genuinely believe they sent you that stuff.

I know that this seems cruel to say, but I heard that the mods on tendershippingzine (especially Sair) are thinking about using this to kick you. (I'm sorry I can't tell you where I heard this from, I know it sounds a little crazy) but I'm pretty sure som people think your intentionally sending yourself hate to cause drama and stuff.

So this is the biggest sack of shit that anyone has ever tried to feed me. I normally wouldn’t engage with this kind of thing, but I feel like I need to make my opinion on this matter very clear:

Sair has been exemplary in their every interaction with me. They are an immensely talented writer and I hold them in the highest regard.

To the anon who sent this, I know who you are. Stop trying to drive this wonderful person from our fandom. I’ve turned off anonymous asks as well as guest comments on my fics. Any further attempts to involve me in this blatant slander will be ignored.

To my mutuals, I apologize for bringing drama onto your dash, but I felt you should be made aware in case this person tries something similar with you.

[beiplaysffxiv]

I dunno why I am writing this, honestly. Probably because the wisdom tooth eruption has been ruining my week and I am just fucking annoyed at the discourse. I don't really have a following here yet, so I essentially risk nothing.

---

There's an on-going discourse on Twitter dot com, about whether or not Lalafell are kids and should they be allowed into NSFW content. This came up after Lalafell players started speaking up about the unnecessary hate and harassment they receive from others, simply for choosing to play the potato-shaped gnome race.

Lalafell are NOT children. They are NOT child-coded and regardless of what some of you think, they were NOT based on human toddlers. I don't know how many times it has to be said at this point. Pretty much all of the Lalafell we meet in game (including our WoL) are adults. The only exceptions are maybe 1-2 vague NPCs, that appear in a seasonal quest of some sort and only exist, because the Devs don't bother making child models for every existing in-game race.

All of the Lalafell/Dwarves we meet in sidequests and MSQ are adults. Some of them are middle-aged. There are in-game mentions of them being in romantic/sexual relationships - interracial as well. There are married Lalafell. There's a pregnant Dwarf in the Nier questline as well. Hell, everyone's "favourite" Lalafell villains in pre-Heavensward story are adult men.

---

The general argument against Lalafell being adults are their "child-like movements and high-pitch voice" along with some piece of Lalafell description, mentioning how "difficult it is to tell their age". I'm going to go into realism right now, but do you know who else fits under this description? People with Achondroplasia.

They exist. Due to their bone development their movement is obviously different from your regular person, which is sometimes compared to how a child moves. They often have a high-pitched voice as well and in many cases it is difficult to tell their exact age until they grow much older (look up Quaden Bayles and the whole drama surrounding his age). These people are the actual closest irl example of what Lalafell would be. Not literal fucking children.

---

Does that make Lalafell fitting for NSFW content? I'd say that depends on your approach. Canonically Lalafell do have sex and nothing you do or say is going to change that. I sincerely do not see any issue with people who portray their very obviously adult Lalafell in mature situations (sex, drinking, smoking etc.). They do not hurt anyone by doing so and they make it clear they do not infantilize their characters. Hell, I see a lot of people wishing they could at least modify their Lalafell to have more mature features. Which is somehow ALSO frowned upon?? and pretty much all Lalafell modders have been shunned by the community at this point.

That being said, people who sexualize Lalafell while also purposefully infantilizing them are still creeps. They do not represent the Lalafell community. Just like people modding their catgirls to wear diapers do not represent Miqo'te players.

---

tl;dr - My stance on Lalafell is that they are absolutely NOT children and shouldn't be seen as such, unless the player very clearly and specifically makes it known their character is underage. Lalafell should also be allowed in NSFW content without being ostracised as long as they're not purposefully infantilized.

[amlovelies]

from which they never recovered

fandom: fhr pairing: Julia Ortega/f!sidestep (Cynthia Basri) rating/warnings: M--alcohol use/abuse as well as death/suicide reference. light spoilers for retribution. there’s some soft fluffy moments, but it ends with pretty heavy angst  words: 2.4k read on ao3

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise 

 1525 days before            

               Julia winces and drops her hand. The angle she needs to start the braid is putting too much pressure on her injured shoulder. Her long dark hair is still damp after the shower washed away all the traces of blood and grime and God knows what else the fight had left on her. She could just leave it alone, let it air dry, but that’ll just mean a bigger fight later. Better to grin and bear it now, get it braided and tucked away even if hurts. It’s just pain. Julia is no stranger to pain.

               “Let me idiot” Sidestep says from as she rises from her chair on the other end of the breakroom.

              “What are you plotting?” Julia narrows her eyes. She never should have introduced her to Anathema. Themmy had always enjoyed pranks, but they had gotten much more effective ever since Sidestep had begun hanging out at HQ.

               “Nothing, I promise.” It’s amazing how Julia can hear the eye roll behind the unmoving mask. “It’s just a little pathetic watching you struggle, old woman.”

              Not afraid to ruffle feathers this one, maybe that’s why she likes having her around, even if the old barb stung a little. That’s fine, two can play at that game, “do you even know how to braid? For all I know you could be bald under there.”

               “I know how to do lots of things, Marshal.” Sidestep crosses to stand behind the couch, and Juila has to tilt her head back to keep her in her sights. Is she flirting?

               “Oh really? Have any other skills you’d like to show me?” Julia replies with a wink. Is she flirting back? This is new.

               “Do you want help or not?” She doesn’t wait for an answer instead pushing Julia’s head forward and beginning to gather the hair in her hands.  

               Julia is used to other people touching her. The doctors checking on her mods, the media team preparing her for an appearance. Hair and makeup and wardrobe buzzing around her making sure she looks presentable, attractive, heroic. It comes with the territory. So why then is a quiet tension building in her stomach, a fluttering awareness of how close Sidestep, no not Sidestep—Cynthia, stands? It’s still a new concession, the name, a small piece of the mystery of Sidestep. She rolls it around in her mind, still not used to it, but the moment feels too personal, too intimate for aliases.

               Her gloves are off, Cynthia’s bare fingers brushing against the shell of her ear, the back of her neck as she gathers all the loose strands together. Cynthia’s breath ghosts over on her scalp, her body standing so much closer than usual. Cynthia’s movements are soft and timid; the braid is looser than Julia would prefer, as if she’s afraid of making it too tight of pulling her hair, of hurting her.

               A world of difference from training where she never pulls her punches. Julia had gotten more than a handful of bruises from their sparring matches. Had given them too, Sidestep was never one to tap out, just a single minded intensity and desire to win. Julia could understand that.

               “I should have been quicker,” Cynthia’s words breaking the silence. Her voice cracking, just a little, just enough to make Julia reach back and grab her hand. Her skin is cool, softer than she expected.

               “And I should have been more careful.” A gentle squeeze of the hand

              “Fat chance of that happening,” Cynthia says with a laugh, extracting her hand, and returning her attention to finishing the braid.

              “You know me,” Julia’s chuckle is soft, her hand slowly returning to her lap. Her skin tingles, itches and she fiddles with the emitter. “I’d be a hell of a lot worse off than a sore shoulder if you hadn’t been there.” Hospitalized for sure, maybe dead.

               “I couldn’t let that happen when you owe me dinner.” A final twist and the braid is finished.

               “I better clear my debt then; c’mon I know just the place.”

1329 days before            

               “You don’t even know what I look like.” Cyn paces back and forth in the empty training room.  Frustration rolling off of her in waves.

              It had been six weeks, two of which Julia had spent worried sick because Cynthia wouldn’t return her calls. Finally breathing a sigh of relief when she’d shown up at HQ as if nothing had happened, resolutely sidestepping all of Julia’s attempts to get her alone, to talk to her about the kiss.

               Like dealing with a skittish animal, Julia had done her best to give her space. This was all new for her too, but dinner was a safe place to start, wasn’t it?

               “So?” Julia smile is soft her voice certain, “I know you.”

              “You only think you do” Cynthia scoffs, her pacing finally stilled as she stands with her arms crossed. No doubt glaring behind the mask.

               “Then show me, tell me.” Just one step closer. She isn’t moving away.

               “Nosy.”

              “I am.” A pause, “I would also like to kiss you again.” It comes out softer than Julia had intended, more an admission than a tease.

              She waits. Waits for a quip or an insult, something caustic and sharp, a way to put more distance between them, but it doesn’t come. Just silence.

               A deep breath, and then quick, so quick, Cynthia’s hands are moving and the mask is off. Her voice is hard as she asks, “still want to kiss me?”

               She looks smaller without the mask, smaller and younger and fragile. Just Cynthia, not Sidestep. She won’t meet Julia’s eyes. Her stance rigid and fierce as if expecting some sort of condemnation, as if Julia would take one look at be disgusted.

               “Very much so,” Julia admits, and it’s the truth. She’d hardly allowed herself to speculate on what lay under the mask. There were things she knew; facts gathered from the bits and pieces she had seen. The warm tawny color of her skin, the full swell of her lips, the way her smile goes crooked, images which had haunted the edges of her dreams.

               “You’re ridiculous,” Cynthia’s voice is brittle, all the hardness from before falling away.

               Had she really expected rejection? Couldn’t she see how beautiful she is?

               “I’ve been told that once or twice.”

              She’s rolling her eyes, but she isn’t pulling away as Julia tilts her face up. Her lips are chapped, but still soft. Soft, like the gasp that falls out of them just before their lips meet. Cynthia’s arms rising to wrap around Julia’s neck, and the kiss deepens into something molten and breathless.  

               The kiss breaks, and Julia pulls back. Not far, just enough to watch Cynthia’s face, to try and memorize her features and make them fit into the idea of Sidestep, for her brown eyes to begin to replace the white of her mask in her mind.

              She kisses her again, a small peck, and Cynthia chases her lips. Pulling her down, the kiss is hungry and unexpected. Soon, too soon, she’s moving away. Mask pulled down, features concealed, only the familiar blank visage of Sidestep and even that is turning away.

              “I should go,” mumbled almost as an afterthought as she nearly runs for the door. Julia watches her go hoping it won’t be weeks until she sees her again.

 518 days before

               Cyn is sleeping again. Good. Maybe those dark circles under her eyes will start to fade. She’d slept for most of the drive, passing out almost as soon as they left the city limits. Something is wrong, has been wrong for weeks now. Should have forced her to go to the hospital after the nanosurge. Thrown her over her shoulder and carried her there if she had to. It wasn’t right to see her this way. Julia knew using her telepathy took a lot out of Cyn. Had seen her drained and exhausted, but never like this.

                The city would be smoldering ruins if the military had their way.  Julia would be . . . she shudders at the memory. There wouldn’t be anything left but her mods. No piece of Julia left to bury, just Charge.

               Cyn had saved them all, and maybe broke herself in the process.

              At least she’s at the ranch now. Oh, it had taken days to get her to agree, but in the end, Julia had worn her down.  Mama hasn’t quit fussing over her; Cyn has offered little resistance, probably just because she is too sleep deprived and weak to protest, but it’s still a victory.

               Julia rejoins her mother in the kitchen. The last thing she needs is for Cyn to wake up and accuse her of watching her sleep. It would be true, but she can’t let her have the satisfaction.

               “You should have brought her sooner,” Elena admonishes.

               “I tried, Mama. She’s stubborn.”

               Her look is pointed, “so are you. Never stopped me.”

              “It’s not the same, Mama.” Julia sighs. They’ve struck a delicate balance the last few years. Cyn still disappearing on occasion, but only for days at a time. Not like before when she would be gone for weeks at a time. Reappearing with no explanation, but always looking worn. She keeps hoping that one day Cyn will share her secrets and let her help.

              Mama purses her lips, and Julia knows that look, knows she has more she wants to say and prepares herself for the old arguments and questions. Questions she wishes she had the answer for. Or at least wishes she knew Cyn’s answer. Julia knows hers, has for a while now.

              A shuffling sound as Cyn joins them and stops the lecture in its tracks. The circles are still there, but the deep crease between her eyes has softened. Good.

               “Did we wake you mija?” Mama voice is gentle unlike the glare she shoots at Julia. As if she hadn’t been talking too.  

               “It’s fine,” Cyn says with a yawn. “I’ve been napping too much today as it is,” she adds as she leans against Julia.

               It’s still a surprise when she’s willing to do that. To lean in, to hug, to kiss, to initiate contact rather than waiting for Julia to bridge the gap. Perhaps it’s a testament to how much stopping the nanosurge took from her. Cynthia not just accepting comfort, but seeking it out. The nosebleeds haven’t stopped, but at least they are less frequent. Leaning down, Julia presses a quick kiss to Cyn’s temple. She doesn’t even push her away.

              “Well, in that case, come help me with the vegetable, and Julia can work on the sauce.” Mama says as she begins grabbing ingredients and piling them on the counter.

               The three of them work well together, and Julia doesn’t even mind being the butt of all their jokes. Not that she’ll let them know that, after all she has a reputation to uphold. The bruising to her ego is worth it though, because at least Cyn is smiling and laughing. Almost looking like her normal self. Julia doesn’t trust her when she says she’ll be fine, but she hopes its true. Maybe a few days away from the city will be enough.

              Later, Cyn joins her outside. The stars are an unfamiliar sight, so used to the neon haze of Los Diablos, it’s easy to forget about them. It’s strange to think that they are still there, just hidden. They feel so much a part of the ranch and the open air, of childhood and more innocent times. A different world than the one of heroes and villains.

               Slipping her hand in Julia’s she whispers, “I won’t say that you were right, but thank you.”

              Julia can’t hide her smile as she captures Cyn’s lips in a kiss, but at least she resists the urge to say I told you so.

6 days after      

               She’s out of tequila. Fuck. Her edges are coming back into focus and there’s nothing to dull them.

              There’s a bar in walking distance, or she could get a cab. Have it take her to the wrong part of town, maybe get into a fight. Feel someone’s bones crunch under her knuckles, pretend it’s her own face. It’s all her fault after all. Should have trusted her instincts, should have made her stay out of it. Should have been quicker, should have had a firmer grip. Flash of green and the sound of breaking glass, right there in the back of her eyes. Nearer is better. Just need to get another drink. Need to make it all disappear, stop feeling the skinsuit slipping out of her fingers. Stop seeing her face (oh god she’ll never see her face again, never hold it in her hands, never see her crooked smile). Tequila, she needs more tequila.

                Her braid is a sad and tattered thing in her hands. Jagged edges where she’d had to fight to get the knife through the thickness. She shakes her head and it feel light, her hair swinging around, wrong. It feels so wrong. Everything feels wrong now.

               It still feels unreal. An empty coffin in a grave marked by a fake name, it can’t be real, it has to be some cruel joke.

               The braid goes in the trash, she can’t look at it anymore. Can’t look at it without feeling Cyn’s ghostly hands. Always so careful and thorough (not anymore, they can’t do anything anymore), pulling loose strands back from her temple. It had been such a fragile thing at first. A closeness she hadn’t looked for. She could never have expected the way the touch of her hands would make her breath catch. Need more tequila. Have to keep the memories at bay.

               The feeling of loss when the braid was finished and Cynthia stepped away. As if she knew the first thing about loss then (is that her laugh?)

                She’d been such a coward. So afraid of pushing too hard, but she’d lost her anyway and it was her own fault. She’d lost her anyway and the words she never said burn in her stomach. Tequila. She wants to drown them (it won’t be enough) wants to drown herself.

               Tequila. She’s no stranger to pain.  She just needs (needed to tell her, will never get to now) more tequila.

tagging: @lord-king-saint, @roses-and-roo @lilyoffandoms @pearlsandsteel @kittlesandbugs and @bunny-loverxiv

[rpbetter]

I genuinely don’t think the problem is as deep as people are seeing it as, with that whole resource blog and vent blog drama. I was there when it began, and it started because someone sent a submission that was recognizable enough to trace to that resource blog, who ended up calling themself out, and then a bunch of people dogpiling them, and then it turned into the 2021 edition of good old tumblr wank, mocking sockpuppets included. I essentially watched a bunch of 30 year olds call each other doodooheads like a couple kids on the playground, but at least kids forgive and forget after a day or two.

That’s probably why they’re avoiding this situation like the plague. The first time a submission went through about that resource blog, it made people feud like the Montagues and Capulets. Obviously they don’t wanna risk fueling that type of drama again. If it’s true that they aren’t letting these submissions through and it isn’t tied to reasons like tumblr eating the ask, then it’s probably because they don’t wanna be involved in this drama anymore. And I don’t blame them, because honestly, even as an observer I’m tired of seeing it, I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for y’all who are actually involved. Geez. Who even has the energy for this much drama anyway? I’m tired just getting outta bed.

Sorry, Anon, I really had to!

Anyway, I'm sorry it took forever to get to your message, not only did I need a break from this, I needed to space out things related to it, it had taken over the blog. I appreciate that, despite how over it all you are, you were polite about how you feel. I know that is not always easy, and I do really appreciate it!

I hope that you don't feel I am being hostile to you about anything I say, it isn't meant that way. Differences of opinion, when not expressed hatefully, are always welcome here. I'm just going to try to express some of this situation from another perspective, and full disclosure, I'm pretty pissed off about it whether or not I actively want to be. This did impact my hobby, it did hurt people I care about, and I cannot believe such an unnecessary act lead to shit that is still going on.

On the first point...most things aren't as deep as we're given to feel they are after we've been made to feel incredibly unsafe, targeted, repeatedly let down and lied to, and experienced an astronomical level of sketchy behavior out of muns in a position that one is supposed to have some minor level of responsibility (as well as decent comportment) within. So, maybe it isn't that deep, but at this point, I very much cannot blame people for their concerns and suspicions.

And it was incredibly sketchy. CoaR, I'm just going to say it, everyone knows of which blog we're speaking at this point, did all of the following, breaking their own rules for moderation repeatedly:

allowed an actual, openly stated, callout blog to interact with their posts

allowed a meme blog to use their posts for the point of off-blog drama mongering, callouts, and outing themselves

would not moderate this situation as stated in their rules, when they've a bit of nasty record in the not too distant past of mass-blocking for far less and far more questionable reasons

did bother to post about how they weren't getting involved, as though this did not break multiple rules and absolutely is one's problem if it is your vent blog someone is using to create and foster bullying - simply giving the bizarre statement that blocking won't help anyone, when that isn't the point at all lol the point is being intolerant of people using your blog, that has to operate on a basis of being as safe a place as possible for venting (which is drama), this is about a stance and blog security, not being anyone's parent

just as weirdly vaguely threatening everyone first with all the mods "watching," because that's not actually implying an Orwellian parental role no one asked for, then with Sky once again misunderstanding the difference between being a " disciplinarian" and an ass

consistent lack of transparency on all counts

and then, yeah, there is the choice of publishing submissions/rebuttals combined with all of this and those submissions/rebuttals being what they are - not all related to "the drama," or in violation of the rules either, but the apparent willingness to publish them from one side of "the drama" there for a bit

I cannot blame people for feeling like all of this combined is a legitimately sketchy situation. One in which they've already, again, been made to feel unsafe within because COAR was used as a list for callouts.

When people see someone like Raven getting wildly different treatment by not being so much as warned, they're going to feel suspicion about the mod(s). It makes it so much worse that they chose to make the statements they did instead of a transparent, reasonable one like, "We apologize that CoaR was used the way it was, we should have blocked the callouts blog right away, but didn't. To reiterate the rules we've had in place for years, this blog is never to be used for callouts or taking bullying off-blog. Due to how widespread the problem has become, we will not be publishing anything related to it any longer. Submissions will be deleted so we can begin putting this behind us."

Acknowledge fault, apologize for it, say what you're doing to mitigate it now. That's it. Don't actively make it worse!

About the submissions...I know I'm alone in having tested that out. It isn't limited to things that either break the rules or are related to the issue. It's very select topics that are a bit uncomfortably aligned with the bias displayed, and from very select blogs. That's a problem. It's not selectively publishing based on drama-avoidance or rules, what CoaR has always done and no one here is taking an issue with.

I have 0 interest in things like trackers, they're far too easy/tempting to use maliciously for most people, and at the very best, they foster an environment of paranoia. What I know about them comes from really minimal personal experience (I wanted to see what posts people were most interested in on another blog, but it felt creepy with the amount of information I had, so I dropped that very fast) and what mutuals who use them have told me/questions they've answered.

So, is it possible the mod(s) is selectively deleting submissions from blogs they feel are a problem? Yes, it is totally possible. Do I know that for a fact? No, I totally do not. My point is that this is exactly the sort of paranoia that takes off when too many suspicious things happen back to back. You begin seeking the answers you are not getting, and you're seeking them because every day for a month or two, your experience logging in has been one of what the fresh hell. It's a need to insulate yourself from further exposure to harassment.

It's a very simple formula: act sketchy, people look at you like you're sketchy.

And I'm not going to condemn anyone for that.

I will also say that, unless several people deleted their comments or have me blocked in multiple places they somehow know of and take issue with, I did not see what you are describing when I read over the total explosion that happened...what, like a month, two months ago at this point? It was very fresh at the time.

What I saw was someone having submitted about a meme blog screenshotting their mutual's rules. Raven going off about it in a reblog. Two commentators trying to discuss the issue and finally, just saying they weren't surprised what meme blog it was once Raven outted themselves like a fully hinged individual interested in following CoaR's rules.

One of those s commentators is a friend, the mun whose rules were in the posts is a friend. I've never been anything but transparent about that. I'm also familiar with some of the other parties who ended up going on hiatus, but only from discussions on the vent blog over the years. So, yes, I do have personal investment here, and I do not feel like any of those people telling Raven and the callout blog they were at least involved with that their behavior was bullshit can be equated to immature shit slinging. There were even two muns who repeatedly tried to have a civil conversation with Raven, specifically, and for their efforts, got some of the most wildly juvenile treatment.

The worst things I saw came from hate anons and the callout blog.

The people receiving that treatment were largely driven off tumblr. For a time, forever, it differs with all of them. So, I feel like saying that about the thirty-year-olds thing is a little off. I'm not trying to be shitty, Anon, but the muns who tried to address Raven's bullshit were all of that age range. They're definitely continuing the drama, they're not here. They can't feel comfortable enough to be on their own blogs still.

I also am required ethically to say that we all really need to stop with throwing around ages like this. Again, I'm not trying to be hostile to you, Anon. I've been trying to show other people's perspective in this (it doesn't matter if you agree or not, I just think it's important to understanding, stopping, and prevent problems to have a fuller perspective that we often lack because we are incredibly tired of whatever is going on, and you're right, we are all really damn tired and also Tired), and as it is an advice blog, I try to address problems here. The pervasive ageism in the tumblr RPC is a problem.

It's a problem that gets discussed when it involves adults not wanting to interact with minors and, as I've seen it put several times, "treating them like the plague." There are a billion "conversations" and complaints about that, but there aren't many at all when it comes to the RPC's bizarre ideas about what age constitutes an adult (you're an actual child until around 23, you're ancient and need to die already, you pedo, at 26) and what being an adult actually is.

You do not turn thirty and lose your hobbies. You also do not turn thirty and become an ultra-mature adult, no leveling up into arcane Adult Knowledge and Behavior unlocks when you wake up on your thirtieth birthday. Between the ages of 17 and 27, you go through so many rapid changes in your cognition, but it levels off considerably after that. You're largely the same person at 32 as you were at 27, and you cannot say that about being...17 and 20, 22 and 25. It begins to take longer to see changes in who you are, those changes are less extreme - your personality, preferences, and viewpoints remain largely the same, they just refine a little here and there.

There is no line at which people "should" stop engaging in any hobby, and it's incredibly gross that the RPC seems to think anyone out of college-age should have no interests, let alone passionate ones, outside of going to work, having a family, and paying bills. That's a bit horrifyingly 1950's isn't it? It's also really misogynistic, considering that the primary base of the RPC is female or afab. When you deal in this, you're literally telling thirty-year-old people with uteruses that they should have no interests outside of birthing children and caring for them.

This isn't what you were doing, Anon, but it's part of the tumorous growth of this ideology that we casually throw around things like "a bunch of 30-year-olds" to make a point. We've seriously got to stop doing that, it isn't a message that most of us would agree with. There are other ways of saying "I think these people should behave more maturely since they're adults."

If I said something like, "well, they were just in their mid-twenties lol what do you expect?" I'd get hate anons, pants would be shat in, and more importantly, it would be wrong. That needs to work both ways, this isn't a separate issue.

An issue that repeatedly comes down to the absurdity of finding differences and drawing lines into cages around people in an environment in which we have the freedom to be more equal than in offline reality. We're all just people here, all just writing and interacting and loving characters. That's all we need to be, and all we need to be judged on is our behavior.

I'm sorry that anyone behaved in a grossly inappropriate manner during any and all of this. It was a heated thing that came to involve too many people and too much harassment, and those are factors that will always see people behaving in ways they would not normally engage in.

And like I said, you don't become some wise master of maturity at thirty! There is a problem mun I'm currently dealing with on another blog that is my age who is one of the most immature people I have ever run into. I have mutuals and friends in the early to mid-twenties who I'm confident weren't as childish as this mun when they were literal children. So, do people thirty and over behave in a seriously unbecoming, childish as hell manner? Yes, they so do! Whether it should be this way or not, you can't expect everyone to be at the same maturity level psychologically at any given age. To me, that just says that I shouldn't age-type people negatively. It isn't relevant where their behavior is.

Otherwise, I'm holding people at some nebulous age over thirty to higher expectations than other equally adult-range people. It isn't acceptable for anyone to behave in the ways I witnessed and was subjected to. It's not even acceptable in teenagers, it's just more understandable (not excusable) because they're working with many things they quite literally cannot control at all times. To act this way is telling everyone below thirty that they're just immature, irresponsible, dicks. It's insulting to them to be labeled in this way, too, even if too many of them see it as a free pass and are, thus, okay with it right now. They won't be, eventually.

Anyway, again, I'm not trying to be shitty to you! I don't think you meant anything in your message in a nasty way, and I cannot say how much I appreciate that after the bullshit brought to this blog and that I've been dealing with privately to help some of those affected feel like the RPC is a place they're safe and welcome in again.

I am definitely tired! Everyone else involved is as well. At least, on what I have to term as "this side" of the equation. I cannot speak to the other side, obviously, but I think they got tired enough of it not being tolerated to be quiet at least. When you make it unfun for people like that, that's usually what happens, after all.

So, I don't think it's them trying to continue the drama. Most of the people I know have remained in their corners happily or been obliged to leave for a while. As for the other people with suspicions...like I said, there are a lot more factors going on here than wanting to perpetuate drama. Sometimes, when we try to make ourselves feel safe, vindicated/vindicate a friend, there isn't any other option but to have the topic come up or breed into suspicions, correct or incorrect ones.

It's a situation that CoaR had a great deal of culpability in, and as such, had a lot of power to mitigate this well before it got to suspicions of who was modding the blog. That wasn't done, and won't be. Like Raven's antics, I have to feel like they've brought some of this on themselves. I do not and will not condone any hate messages sent their way, but again, right or wrong, people do have a right to feel the way they are.

If I were you, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. I don't go on CoaR unless I have to in order to answer something. I had a single blog blocked over here until this all went down (hilariously, it happened to be one that was involved, too, sometimes the red flags are legit, folks), now I have a sadly large number of them. It's now added to liberally, and I hate to do that, I like this blog to be open even to people who disagree with me. I can't deal with the constant drama, though, and I'm not going to be in a new callout every month until I die. Outside of being true to my word about accepting any and all vent messages, I don't want to see it, I don't want to be involved with it. I tag the posts so that followers can filter it, but I'm not going to function as a semi-callout blog by telling people who they should avoid. Just that they should avoid anyone who is making them feel this tired and done. Myself included.

I hope things have settled down in your corner of the RPC since you sent this! They have over here, thankfully. I think most people are staying away from the vent blog and hoping a new and better one comes along. It's back to the usual drama of "stop calling muns pedos for aging up characters."

[yourdanganronpaneedshere]

heya long time no see! remember that time i made a request but the requests were closed?, welp now that they're open again, im here to re-send mine as i promised owo; how would rantaro, kokichi, shuichi, kaito and kiibo react when they see their (S/O) escaping from her execution, and when everything is over, she appears behind them all tired and exhausted saying "did ya' miss me?"

HeY GUYS, sorry for the long absence lmao, but it’s one in the morning and I need some ANGST. Anyways, I’m glad you’re back hun! I was really excited to do this ask!

~ Mod Hiyoko

Amami, Ouma, Saihara, Momota and Kiibo’s Fem! S/O escaping her execution!

Rantaro Amami

There was a dark aura in the trial grounds as everyone’s chatter continued on. Rantaro had a feeling since they first exited the elevator that you were hiding something, and as the trial went on, the sinking feeling in his stomach only got worse.

He didn’t really care so much how or when you committed the murder, he just wanted to know why.  He wouldn’t even have imagined his dear S/O committing such an atrocious act.

You began to grow more and more nervous as you felt his stone gaze beat into you… Like he was staring into your soul. Finally, you just admitted it was you.

Rantaro let out a sigh. Definitely not one of relief. More like a weight he had been carrying was now off his shoulders, but in the worst way possible.

It was a particularly messy kill, so people didn’t have too hard of a time believing it was you. The vote was cast swiftly and everyone stared at the screen as your portrait appeared. You were the Blackened.

Your classmates looked at you in a mixture of pity and remorse. They demanded you explain your actions in minute detail, but the only voice you could register was that of your boyfriend’s.

“Why?” Rantaro asked you simply. “Why did you do this?”

“B-because…” It was hard to speak with everyone’s gazes upon you, but you managed to choke out your explanation, and everyone appeared satisfied, aside from a few snide remarks from Miu and Kokichi, but Rantaro shut them up with a harsh glare.

You couldn’t tell if he was disappointed, sad, angry, or a mix of the three, but all you felt in that moment was shame so heavy that you felt like you deserved whatever Monokuma had in store for you.

Rantaro approached you, and you braced yourself for harsh words, but instead he gently wrapped his arms around you in a loving embrace. His hugs were always the best, but this one was tighter than usual, and he was slightly trembling.

“I love you S/O. I’m so, so sorry.”

He tried to grab you again when you were dragged off to face your execution, but there was nothing he could do. He felt empty. The anger and depression wouldn’t sink in until much later, all he could think about was that you were gone. Or else he thought.

“Did ya miss me?”

He stared at you, mouth agape, but he nodded in response. He gently placed his hand on your cheek and caressed it with his thumb before leaning in to kiss you.

 “Yeah, I did.”

Kokichi Ouma

For once, Kokichi almost lost his composure. He knew it was you from the very beginning, but a part of him thought maybe, just maybe there was a chance he could be proven wrong.

He kept his arms carelessly rested behind his head, he had the same mischievous grin, and he still toyed with your classmates like it was all a game to him. But inside, he was panicking. He finally found someone he could trust, and she had to go and kill someone. He felt betrayed, but the common sense in him told him not to jump to any conclusions just yet.

To your surprise, Kokichi barely acknowledged you at all throughout the entire trial. But then again, you knew him long enough to know that he probably had connected all of the dots long beforehand. Was he pissed off? Did he not care? There was no way for you to know.

Everyone else came to the same conclusion he had, and trial ended with you being voted as the Blackened. Since you were dating Kokichi, everyone had assumed that you were as nasty as him by default, so no one was really surprised.

“Why did you do it?” It wasn’t Kokichi who had asked this, but Shuichi. Your boyfriend was still actively ignoring you.

“I…” You explained to the best of your abilities. Your motivations came to a bit of a shock to the others. They expected something more… Sadistic.

You knew every second drew you closer to death, and you wanted to break the silence between Kokichi and yourself before you left him for good. You spoke his name, but he cut you off before you could say anything else.

“Wait!” He turned towards Monokuma with a desperate look on his face that surprised even you.

“Execute me instead! You want someone to die, right? Kill me in her place!”

You stood there blankly, unable to process what was going on. Kokichi, who had been ignoring you for the whole trial, who hadn’t even reacted to your confession, was now pleading for your life.

Monokuma just laughed at him. The black and white bear pulled a lever and the chain gripped your neck in a tight hold and yanked you backwards.

Kokichi screamed out your name as you disappeared. Shortly after, you reappeared on the large screen, and everyone watched as you withstood indescribable torture. Kokichi couldn’t even watch the end. He turned away, a dark shadow covering his expression. You were gone. The only person who had ever truly loved him. The Mastermind would be put through hell. He would see to it personally.

There was a tap on his shoulder, and he whipped around to see your triumphant smirk.

“Miss me?”

“W-what?”

Not much time was spent before he tackled you in a hug. His heart pounded in his chest, and he fought to hold back tears. His stance on the Mastermind still stood. They would pay in their blood for what happened to you, but that would have to wait awhile. Kokichi didn’t plan on letting you go any time soon.

Shuichi Saihara

Shuichi couldn’t believe it. It was Kaede all over again, but this time worse. At that point, he was convinced God wanted to see him suffer.

It hurt him immensely to do so, but as the Ultimate Detective, it was his job to root out the truth and save his fellow classmates from impending doom… Even at the cost of his lover’s life.

The entire time he followed the trail towards you, he felt the lump in his throat getting ever bigger. He knew without a doubt you were the killer, but he couldn’t bring himself to flat out say it. You both made direct eye contact, and though your lips were in a straight line, and your eyebrows rested comfortably like you could care less about the world, your eyes spoke to him in a way that said “it’s okay. You can say it.”

And so he did.

“…and my deductions have lead me to believe that… S/O is the killer.”

Everyone gasped. Partly at the fact that he thought you were the killer, but also because he could accuse his girlfriend of murder so calmly. It was a whirlwind of emotions in the trial room, but no one’s shock could outmatch the pure despair you and Shuichi felt in that moment.

Before he voted, Shuichi insisted you explain your actions, and internally begged that you at least killed them on accident, and not in an act of cold blood.

After you had explained everything with tears in your eyes threatening to spill over, everyone cast their vote, and all that was left to do was wait.

Shuichi didn’t waste anymore time on talking, tears fell from his eyes like a waterfall and he solemnly walked up to you and pulled you into his arms. He didn’t even care why you did it. He was about to lose the most important person in his life, and it was going to be shown on a huge t.v. like it was some sort of joke.

“I’m so sorry Shuichi.” You felt like you had to say something, something to calm his nerves, and to atone for the emotional strain he was put through, but he just shook his head and squeezed you tighter.

“No, I’m sorry. I should’ve prevented this from happening, I should’ve-”

“Let’s give it everything we’ve got! IIIIIIIIIT’S, PUNISHMENT TIME!”

In the blink of an eye, you were ripped from Shuichi’s grasp and pulled onto the execution grounds. It happened so fast Shuichi couldn’t even react. He just watched in silent agony as you went through your death. It was torture. There was no way he would be able to bounce back from this. But… maybe God didn’t hate him as much as he thought.

“Ya miss me?”

Of course he would ask a million questions once you got out of there, but at that moment all Shuichi did was hold you while the sobbing started up again.

Kaito Momota

Kaito was yelling throughout the entire trial. It wasn’t unusual for him to be vocal during trials, but this time there was unadulterated anger and frustration lacing his words as everyone began to accuse you of the murder.

“W-What the hell are you guys saying?! S/O would never kill anyone! Shuichi-”

But even his sidekick wasn’t there with him this time. Kaito desperately looked over at you, inwardly begging you to show any sign of innocence, but the look of guilt in your eyes said it all.

Even after everyone had voted and you were revealed to be the Blackened, he was still in denial. He tried to run at Monokuma, yelling various insults and curse words while Shuichi and Kiibo both held him back.

Nobody would ever catch him cry, but the sadness in his eyes was enough.

“S/O, why?”

You explained everything, expecting Kaito to be furious with you. He was furious, all right, but not with you; with the Mastermind.

He panicked when Monokuma announced that it was time for your punishment, and ran over to you, wrapping you in a protective embrace. But the chain grasped your torso, and even Kaito’s strong hold wasn’t enough to keep you from being yanked backwards.

He watched your execution, gritting his teeth the entire time.

“DAMN IT!” He yelled, pounding his fist on a nearby surface. It wasn’t fair. You shouldn’t have been forced to kill. He was going to stop this killing game. For you, and for-

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from behind him.

“Did ya miss me?”Surprisingly, his shock didn’t last long before he pulled you into a hug. Like I said, nobody would ever see him cry… But at that moment, he was pretty damn close.

K1-B0

Kiibo couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t wrap his head around how you could get yourself in this position. Whether you killed on purpose or by accident, he was just… dumbfounded.

The entire trial he was silent. Normally he would chime in, as eager to solve the murder and get back to his life as everyone else. But now he could only watch in depressed silence as the trial continued on. You had told him beforehand exactly what happened, and though Kiibo did have his own sense of justice… he still couldn’t send his lover to her death.

But once the trial came to a close and your face appeared on the large t.v. signifying your guilt, his silence came to an end. There was a flood of emotions he didn’t even know he could feel. Sadness at your impending death, fear at what said death would hold in store for you, and anger that you were forced into this situation in the first place.

Everyone asked why you did what you did, Kiibo included, and you answered honestly. Monokuma’s shrill and ugly voice rang out, saying it was time for your punishment. You ran to Kiibo to share one last hug, and kissed him gently on his cheek, apologizing for leaving him. Kiibo assured you he held no hard feelings, and himself apologized for letting it come to this.

He broke down in tears when the chain yanked you backwards into the black abyss; into the trial grounds fit only for the Ultimate (Talent) herself.

You two were always together… How could this happen? You swore to protect each other, and he lost you. Throughout your execution, he was thinking of ways he could destroy the Mastermind and end the killing game. Kiibo couldn’t allow anyone else to die.

He didn’t even notice the amazed gasps coming from his classmates as you stumbled up behind him, at least, not until he heard your voice.

“Did you miss me?”

“S-S/O?”

Kiibo wasted no time in rushing over to you, wrapping his arms around you, which, needless to say, was a little painful, but at the time you didn’t care; you simply hugged him back and cried with him. As emotional as this moment was, you would have a lot of explaining to do later… As well as a very pissed off Monokuma to deal with.

[malereader-inserts]

Non Omis Moriar [2]

Fandom: Avengers Pairing: Tony Stark & Son!Reader Summary: Not all of you shall die, so it’s all or none.  Word Count: 3,762 A/n: ANGST ANGST, I hope this makes sense plot line. Also, I apologise for like basically writing the plot out again, you get the gist. Part one here!

“That’s not how time travel works,” You responded dryly.

Your eyes on your new suit as Scott tries to grab your attention, but you give him no consideration. He sighs as he watches you rewire your suit, stats on the screen for you. 

“In Layman's terms, it means you're not coming home,” You continued as you sighed, put your tools down and looked at Scott.

“I did.”

“No, you accidentally survived. It's a billion to one cosmic fluke,” You responded, sighing, “Look, Scott, as much as I want to believe, this whole time heist is laughable, it’s a pipedream.”

“You have to be optimistic, (Y/n).”

You looked behind Scott and see Bruce, glowering over the two of you at the Avengers base, specifically in your dad’s lab. Bruce smiles at you as you shake your head, scoffing.

“Bruce, I’m not the one to preach about optimism, that’s Steve’s sort of rodeo but what have you been doing for the past year? You’ve lost to Thanos both times in both forms - look at you.”

“But, I’m willing to do something if it means we can save people, I know it’s not you or your thing to save people, but we’re the only people left. Remember what Natasha always says?”

“Whatever it takes.” Sighing, you shake your head, “I can’t, Bruce, I’m sorry.”

Bruce nods, leaving as Scott sends you one last look but as he watches you play with the screens of the stats of your suit - he leaves you be. A year had passed since the snap and all you’ve been doing is fixing Avengers’ equipment, updating the little things as you don’t have their suit. 

Isolating yourself.

You made your own suit, the one you and your dad made was hard for you to work on because you made it with your dad. It’s didn’t feel right for you to work on something you and your dad made.

Within the year, you’ve been taking medication for sleep too. Nightmares of the time on Titans kept you all night and when you’re sleep deprived the voice and vision of your dad appears. No matter how much you want to see your dad, you were not going insane.

Within the year, the bond between you and Bruce had become strained, you don’t call him uncle anymore, not out of malice, but a family doesn’t seem complete anymore in your heart. 

“I’m blaming Strange,” You muttered to yourself.

“Sir, you’re talking to yourself again.”

“It’s okay, Fri,” You reassured, smiling to yourself.

Friday has been ultra protective you, she may be an AI but in a sense, she was like your sister as Tony created her. Protecting her big brother from losing himself. Friday lost Tony, Pepper, Rhodey. She was not going to lose you in any circumstances. 

“Hey, Fri?”

“Yes?”

“New project,” You called out as you watched Bruce and Scott figure something out across the building.

Glass walls work wonders, you move your suit to the side and Friday brings up a new slate of holograms for you to mess around. 

“Hey, kid,” You hear your dad’s voice next to you, you could sense him probably leaning against the table to examine what you’re up to, “What are you doing?”

“Sir, what is this new project?”

You looked off to the distance as you smile to yourself, a mirror across the way. You looked at yourself and the hallucination of your dad next to you, you look too much alike. Same snarky smile of pure happiness and a confident stance.

“Thanos knows Stark men, he invaded my dreams since I was a child and corrupted my dad’s mind, if Strange says I’m needed then I’ll damn well avenge my father.”

“Hey,”

You jumped at the sudden voice of your dad in your ear, rubbing your eyes out of sleep as you realised that you’ve been sleeping in the lab,

“What day is it?”

“You’ve been passed out for two days sir, you fell asleep the moment you sat down, you haven’t even started your new project.”

“Way for a dramatic flair,” You commented as the AI buzzed in amusement, “What’s going on with shorty and Professor Green?”

“I believe they are ninety per cent in finishing what you have called time-heist.”

You nodded, “I’ll start it after I get food.”

When you had returned back to base Bruce and Scott was nowhere to find as you sat down and got to work. You didn’t know how long you were in the lab for as you reclined in the chair, groaning, your head hurts.

“By the looks of Scott and Bruce out there, Scott turned into a baby?”

Friday didn’t respond as she pulls up the video of Scott and Bruce wild attempt of time travel, as you chuckle as they were entertaining, you shake your head. your shoulders tensing. Getting back to work into the nightfall.

“Look at a mod inspiration, let me see what check out. So, recommend one last sim before we pack it in for the night. This time, in the shape of a Mobius strip, inverted, please. 

”Processing...”

Friday was processing as you wandered around the lab, kicking a soccer ball into the glass walls, you could hear your dad scowling at you for leaving ball prints on the clean glass.

“Give me that eigenvalue. That, particle factoring, and a spectral decomp. Gotta take a second.”

“Just a moment.”

“And don't worry if it doesn't pan out. I'm just kinda-” You were interrupted by Friday.

“Model rendered.”

In a complete shock of amazement, the render comes back as successful. You smacked the ball so hard into the glass that it bounced back into your face, but you didn’t care because you were too bewildered by this discovery.

“Holy fuckin’ shit,” You breathed, then laughing in joy, opening the door of the lab, “Bruce, Scott!”

They peaked out, seeing a stupid grin on your face, Bruce couldn’t help but smile. It’s been a while since you smiled like that, it’s been a while since you got excited over something.

“Call Nebs, we’re doing a time heist...”

“Aw hell yeah!” Scott celebrated.

Bruce looks over to you, watching smile to yourself, you glanced up and did a small nod to his way.

“I’ll make suits, it’ll be the four of us and we need a test run, Scott, you’re up for it?”

“Hell yeah, I am,”

“Okay, so the "how" works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where.” Bruce speaks as he looks at the three remaining people of heroes.

“That’s easy,” Bruce looks at you with a raised eyebrow, “With all data collected throughout the almost ten years you guys have been Avengers, it has the location of most Infinity stones.”

You looked at the blank face of the green giant, you scoffed as Bruce shakes his head, “I’m confused.”

“Am I seriously the only one who reads the paperwork after your missions and I’m not even part of the team, man.”

“Well... You and your dad are very much alike,” Bruce offers weakly as you pulled a face.

“Anyway...”

As you started your rambling with Bruce trying to write everything down despite Friday recalling your words and putting on the hologram, two stones were talked about by Nebula, after a short silence of awkwardness as she mentions that her sister was murdered by their dad, Thanos. You, Nebula, Bruce and Scott examine the screens.

The holograms displaying the different location, the Soul and Power stones in space in 2014. the Reality stone in Asgard, 2013; and the Space, Mind, and Time stones in New York City 2012.

“Bruce, Scott, you two will go to New York City, Nebula and I will go to Asgard and space,” You initiated s they all nodded.

You never thought you would come to a point that you were a leader, in fact, you hated taking responsibility, you hated leading stuff and people looking up to you for direction - it was too much greatness upon your shoulders in your eyes.

“Don’t fuck it up,” You narrowed your eyes, “I mean it-”

“Yes, sir-” Scott says as you looked at him weirdly, “I mean, Mr Stark, er, no, (Y/n).”

As you suit up, you stare at the old suit that you built with your dad, packing it up into a compressed case and held it together on the transporter. Nebula and Scott give you funny looks but you decided to ignore it. 

“Alright, simple in and out mission,” you called out one last time, “Whatever it takes.”

“You know, to obtain the soul stone you have to sacrifice something, Nebula came back with you,” Bruce says as you looked at him annoyed as you tried to assemble a gauntlet.

“The suit, dad and I made together,” You responded, you shoulders deflating, “Technically, it’s last thing I have of him, not the lab, not his tools, not even Friday. Scrap metal of memories left of my dad. I have nothing left of him. I need my dad back, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

Bruce nods, “Carol hasn’t responded to your messages.”

“It’s fine, I’ve been updating her anyway,”

“You talk to her?”

“She’s a good listener,” You shrugged your shoulder, “Even if I’m talking to her through a hologram. Now, uncle Bruce, silence would be nice.”

Bruce opened his mouth before shutting it closed when you give him a pointed look, you cast your eyes towards the gauntlet again as you picked up the stones gently. With nervous precision, you manipulate the machine and carefully places all six stones into the gauntlet.

“Alright, the glove is ready, the question is who will wear it and bring everyone back?” Bring the iron man like gauntlet out to show to Scott and Bruce, “Where’s Nebula?”

“Toilet?”

“Androids can go to the toilet?” You asked Scott, tilting your head at the man who answered your question.

“It’s 2019 man, anything is possible.”

You gave it some consideration as you agreed as you looked at the two men, you placed the gauntlet down on the table to suit up for any accident, your new suit is something you’ve been working on a few months, full of your ideas and ideas that you found from your dad’s blueprints of your old suit. 

“I’ll do it,” Bruce calls out as Scott and you looked up at the half man half hulk, “But the radiation's mostly gamma,” He takes a good look at the gauntlet, “It's like...uh...I was made for this.”

You nod as you helped Bruce place the gauntlet on, watching the metal adjust to the size of his big hand. Scott and you took a few steps back as Bruce lets out a shaky breath.

“You remember... everyone Thanos snapped away a year ago and just bringing them back to now, today. Don't change anything from the last year.”

“Got it.”

“Hey, Friday, do me a favour and activate dad’s Protocol 8,” You called out as the facility goes down into lockdown.

You bring your mask down of your metal suit as you watch Scott do the same thing. Bruce starts to bring his thoughts into what he wants, electricity running through, Bruce was grunting in pain. You wince to see him in pain.

“Uncle Bruce?”

“I’m good!” Bruce managed to spit out, “I’m okay!”

Bruce screams, fighting through the intense pain coursing through his body courtesy of the gauntlet, and manages to snap his fingers. He faints and the gauntlet slides off his arm. You kick the gauntlet away as you and Scott looked over the giant.

“Brucie?” You asked, your mask coming down as you cooled down his burnt arm.

“Did I do it?”

Scott looks outside, it was brighter and birds were chirping, Bruce managed to open his eyes and see your smiling face.

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” You say as Scott laughs, looking relieved.

You looked over to Scott with a smile, hoping you’ve completed what you wanted to do, hoping you have your dad back as you looked back at Banner, a smile had fallen off his lips. Looking up the skyline and seeing the Sanctuary II up in the sky and a single missile heading towards the base blowing away Scott away. Then a continuous array of missiles destroys the base completely.

“Sir?”

You groaned at the voice of Friday, you get up to your feet and see Thanos sitting by. You breathed heavily, your suit covered in ash and dirt.

“Bruce, Scott?” You called out to your comm, it felt funny for you to be participating in hero action as you were not a hero yourself.

“We have the gauntlet,” Scott calls out, he sounds drowned out, “We’re underground but we can make it out.”

“Keep that damn thing away from Thanos,” You growled.

Your suit whirling, tightening. You breathed heavily, it all or nothing. You started to make your way down there, Thanos smirking as he recognised you when he has been invading your dreams as a little boy.

“You could not live with your own failure. And where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive. But you’ve shown me that’s impossible. And as long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist.”

You rolled your eyes at his monologue, “Yeah, we’re all types of stubborn.”

“I'm thankful. Because now, I know what I must do.” He stands up, “I will shred this universe down to its last atom. And then...With the stones you've collected for me, create a new one. Teeming with life, but knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given. A grateful universe.”

You put your mask up as he placed his helmet on, “As long as I’m alive, I’ll be damned.”

“I’ve admired you, (Y/n) Stark, from your pretty little dreams, I find a lot of interesting information about you. You are courageous, I commend you for that. But, unfortunately, as much I would love to keep you around, I can’t have you stand in the way.”

“Tough.”

You weren’t a skilled fighter, but you knew the basic of the Iron Man suits. You were able to hold him back off, and in fact, you were surprising yourself in how well you were fighting a Titan. 

Smacking you into debris as you stumble to stand up, using energy to blast Thanos before he gives you one last kick to the ground. Spitting blood into your suit as you pant, struggling to get onto your feet.

“In all my years of conquest...violence...slaughter... It was never personal. But I'll tell you now... what I'm about to do to your stubborn, annoying little planet... I'm gonna enjoy it. Very, very much.” 

Thanos’ entire army is summoned to the ground which includes the Children of Thanos, Chitauri, Outriders. Upon seeing the army descending on Earth, you straighten your back with a fierce determination, you allowed your suit to self-repair and stand against Thanos' giant army alone. Suddenly, a crackling comes in on his communicator.

AC/DC blaring in your ear.

“Hey, kid!”

You stopped, now is not the time to have a hallucination of your dad.

“Kid? You hear me? Sonny boy?” The playful tease of your dad called into your ear. “(Y/n), incoming!”

You pulled down your mask in confusion as you looked around, seeing a yellow portal open up at your left. Three members walk out with two flying above. The original team. Your dad landing on your right with Cap on your left. Natasha on Steve’s left whilst Thor stood on a rock behind you with Clint comes next to your dad.

Another portal opens up, three figures step through; Okoye, Shuri, and Black Panther, fully restored and ready to fight with Sam zooms in from above in his Falcon armour.

Dozens of more portals opening up all around the battlefield. Through one of these, we see Doctor Strange descend in. He is joined by Drax, Mantis, Star-Lord, and Spider-Man.

Everyone watches in confusion and awe as more and more heroes arrive from all corners of the universe, all backed up with forces of their own including Black Panther and his Wakandan army, Valkyrie and the Asgardians, Wong and the Masters of the Mystic Arts and several Ravager ships.

Amongst the throngs of heroes, we see Bucky, War Machine, Rocket, Groot, the Scarlet Witch, the Wasp, and Pepper Potts (clad in her own iron suit) arrive. Nearly every hero has magically been transported to the battlefield to face Thanos' hordes.

“Please, say I’m not hallucinating,” You muttered to yourself, but Tony puts a hand on your shoulder.

“You’re sane, (Y/n).”

You huffed out a burst of laughter, Tony smiles missing your smile and laughter, “Scott? Bruce?”

Giant-Man emerges from the rubble of the Avengers facility with Professor Hulk. The Avengers, Guardians, Wakandans, Asgardians, and Ravagers take up battle positions. The heroes standing across Thanos' forces.

“Your call, kid,” Steve says to you, patting your shoulder, he figured that you were taking lead.

You pulled your mask up, taking your stance as your side looking at the other side. Thanos makes a fist of fury, angry at the outcome. You saved people, you brought them back, you were not letting them go.

“Avengers Assemble!”

“That thing needs to go back where it belongs!” You shouted in the midst of the fighting, Scott had dropped the gauntlet and with Clint, “He might have broken the quantum tunnel but we need another time machine!”

“The van!” Scott calls out as your team hears you groan.

“Anyone see an ugly brown van anywhere?” You yelled, punching one enemy away from you.

Valkyrie answers back it’s whereabouts as Cint passed the gauntlet over to T’Challa, who was far quicker than Clint. 

“Hey kid,” Tony greets, pausing in his fighting to lift his mask up, you do the same.

“Dad,” You breathed out, embracing him into a hug, “I’ve missed you,”

“I missed you too, bud,” Tony sighs happily, kissing your cheek, “I love you son.”

“I love you too dad.”

The gauntlet managed to get into Peter’s grasp as he flew on the back of Valkyrie's Pegasus. Wanda keeping Thanos preoccupied as the cannons of the ship starts aiming towards the battlefield before it all turned up to the sky.

“What’s going on?” Steve calls out.

“Friday, what are they firing at?” You hear your dad through the communication, as you paused your blasting, looking up to the sky.

“Something just entered the upper atmosphere,” Friday replied.

You smirked, “Hey Carol!”

Captain Marvel flies through the ship, and it results in an explosion and the ship crash-landing in the lake, she hovers over and waves at you.

“Hey, little guy,”

“We need an assist here, Carol!”

As Carol makes her way to the van, you, Tony and Peper form a hovering triangle, blasting in each angel as you spin in a circle, having your back faced to each other. You, Tony and Steve all head over to where Carol was. She flies through all of them easily and reaches Thanos. She keeps punching him, but he knocks her to the ground, wears the gauntlet and tries to snap. But Captain Marvel arises again and stops his fingers from snapping. 

Thanos headbutts her, but it does nothing. 

Thanos pulls the Power Stone out of the Gauntlet and uses it in his free hand to hit Captain Marvel away, then puts the stone back into the Gauntlet.

“(Y/n)!” You turn to see Strange with a questioning look, “You’re needed!”

Strange simply raise one finger, reminding you that the one win over Thanos he foresaw is now at risk. You breathed heavily, everything sounded muted out as you watch the team you grew up and admired struggle. You could hear in the background Steve shouting orders as well as your dad.

You just got your dad back, and yet you were easily going to make the decision that he will live. You nod and attack Thanos, pulling on the Gauntlet before Thanos punches you away.

“(Y/n)!” Tony shouts in desperation at the attack. 

You were on your knees, back straight as you looked at the Titan King, “I am the new beginning.”

Thanos snaps his fingers, but nothing happens except a metallic "clink." He sees the Infinity Stones are missing. You have the stones on your own gauntlet, to Thanos' shock

“I think not.”

You snap your fingers with a loud "CLANG" and a blinding flash of white. Rocket fires at a Leviathan and before it devours him, it crumbles into ash. The Black Order starts crumbling to ash. T'Challa and Quill look around in surprise; Steve looks on in exhaustion, knowing that they won. 

Thanos, in horror, looks around and sees his entire army disintegrate. He looks at Steve, who just stares at him. Thanos sits down and mourns before slowly being erased from existence himself.

Tony snaps his head over to you, your metal suit releases you from inside as you crumble down onto the floor. 

“Kid? Buddy? (Y/n)?” Tony frantically calls out as he gets out of his own suit.

He runs up to you, pulling you into his arms. Your breathing is shallow and your right side is completely destroyed as he clutches you tight in desperation. Pepper, Rhodey and Peter all fly over to you.

“Come on, (Y/n), you’re gonna make it,” Tony’s voice cracked, crumbled, tears forming and staining his cheeks.

“My sweet boy,” Pepper coos, fixing your hair as tears were building up in everyone eyes.

Peter gasping, unable to breathe, he found a family, a brother who would tease him and love him no matter what, fading quickly. Rhodey looking at his godson, Tony was not a religious man but they all pray for a God now.

“I did....” You croaked out, you stare at your dad, “it for you, dad...”

“You’ve done me proud, you always make me proud,” Tony chokes, pulling you closer, allowing you to rest your head on his shoulder, your face buried into his neck, “I love you.”

He could see your mouth move, but nothing seems to come out but he hears one last thing, Tony Stark breaks down. He gets you back, you did it for him, only for him to hear your last breath.

Not all of you shall die, Tony decides, your legacy will continue. 

[wisteriafield]

Wisty Plays Cinders DS3 mod part 1

Initial Impression: “Lets make DS3 more like DS2″

We’re off to a good start

Demon’s Souls items are really noticeable in texture quality but it can’t be helped.

Expanding on initial impression

I start at the bottom of Firekeeper’s Tower

So many pieces of armor have passive effects

Gundyr’s location is now Corrupted Gundyr who is absurdly powerful and starts in Pus Form, there are fonts that form a ring around the arena of Dark damaging Curse that slowly encroach on the center creating a sort of hotplate.

Lots of NPC invaders

HP scales exactly like DS2 (exact 20 per level, always divisible by 20)

Roll stamina consumption is pretty nuts, being able to only roll 3-4 times can kinda fucking suck.

Many items and armors that were notorious for their rarity are now also placed somewhere on the map

It’s an unpopular opinion but I hate passive poise so much, fucking naked Ricards Rapier man has enough poise somehow to tank me, why is it like this. All it does is make the many more NPC fights so much more tedious when I don’t know when I’ll stagger them or not

FP regenerates a la Order of Ecclesia but slightly slower speed, every FP cost has been revamped

Infusions come with their own unique passive effects

Again, like DS2, any weapon can be infused now (unlike DS2 these infusions are actually worth a damn and don’t fuck up scaling, S dex scaling on elemental infusion my ass). I’m almost certain any weapon can be buffed too

Many original weapons and spells or adapted spells

Very much more Video Gamey in an attempt to be more open ended routing (Lordvessel in High Wall takes you to Archdragon Peak LOL)

Replaced bonfire locations, to an obnoxious degree in certain locations (more on that later), many bosses don’t leave bonfires anymore, defeating certain enemies or NPC invaders will make one

Ton of new covenants both returning and original each with their own passive and currency that you get just from defeating any enemy which you can trade in at certain people

Movesets for borrowed weapons unfortunately don’t replicate their home series animations (Velka’s Rapier R2′s are just Estoc’s, but at least it has Rapier Stance). Trick Weapons are here, but they don’t seem to have the same complexity or beauty (I only found Tonitrus so far)

There are memory items like Sekiro to rechallenge boss fights at any time, they have an altar in Firelink Shrine to apply debuffs to self a la Chalice Dungeons to reap greater benefits and chances for special items

Of course when playing God there’s hubris involved

Archdragon’s Peak was AWFUL

Ancient Wyvern is there, with the bonfire outside, BUT

You don’t teleport to the Dragon Kin Mausoleum after (so you have to run the Gauntlet again)

There is No Bonfire At the Dragon Kin Mausoleum

You have to make it through the entire area (don’t be like me and forget to activate the elevator shortcut to avoid the gauntlet next time.

You can either run straight through underneath Nameless King’s boss arena in which there are like 30 snakes not placed with any forethought, beef gate of the highest caliber, or go through the area normally, neither option is particularly appealing

Lastly, stat requirements for weapons are generally pretty fucking high, seems I’ll have to grind a bit in some places for new weapons (on top of actually needing 40 END in this mode because stamina management hell)

Still having fun, it’s a new trip through an old park. Wonder if there’s cyclical coop but you have to get yourself softbanned to play online (don’t really wanna even do family share)

They made an Irithyll Straight Sword Greatsword variant, a lazy but fun asset reuse, its got the hollowslayer moveset which is great because I have to grind for the HSGS in this mode.

[funkymbtifiction]

Hi - can you help me understand what an ESFP with enneagram 4w5 would be like? I test ESFJ/ESFP, and my therapist says they are two sides of the same coin. I test type 2, but it didn’t feel true (even though it’s how others view me), and my therapist said, per Jung, you can have an ‘outer personality’ and inner, and that she would type me as 4w5. I do not need typing assistance, but I would like to know what those two types mean together, as I so rarely see anything with ESFP type 4. When I do it’s with wing 3. Thank you in advance for your help :) 

I don’t necessarily agree with your therapist, since ESFPs and ESFJs aren’t alike. Neither are 2 and 4 alike... but you can read up for yourself on my Enneagram page on the wordpress blog. Just... ah, prepare for a good kicking, since the book I took it from pulls no punches. If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not your number. ;)

5 is a weird wing to a 4 in a Se-dom, because Se-doms are all about hands-on-learning through direct experience and picking up things as they go along, whereas 5s are so afraid of being incompetent in the outer world, they resort to detachment from their emotions, and their surroundings, and to living life on the sidelines rather than through direct engagement. Which, as you can imagine, would frustrate the hell out of a Se-dom, whose natural tendency is to want to leap into action and learn as they go. So, it would make for a rather frustrated, emotionally conflicted, internal, introverted, broody ESFP, torn between their fear of failure / being inadequate / unwanted and their desire to engage and not just lurk on the sidelines of everything all the time. Like any 5 wing, they’ll run to books, to analyzing, to detached observation, to logic, or to fantasies rather than just ‘do the thing’ whenever they feel afraid. With 4 of course making them ‘very, very Fi’ -- fiercely independent, more about what is “not me” than what “is me,” taking on an anti-establishment stance of some sort (usually through how they dress / present themselves / do not want to ‘be like you plebs’), etc.

4w5 is much more common in ISFP than ESFP, because introverts are already removed from the world and feel isolated, they are more prone to hesitation before acting (even ISPs), and a Fi-dom is primarily focused on being ‘authentic’ to their judgments. ESFPs more have their instinctual ‘hand’ on the ‘beating pulse’ of what is going to happen next. It’s not an impossible combo, it’s just less likely than 4w3 since 3 and Se-dom are more complimentary to one another. :)

If you scroll down on my Enneagram page (again, on the wordpresss blog) you’ll find brief paragraph-long write-ups of what each core looks like with each type.

- ENFP Mod

[marshmallowprotection]

Oh! I have an idea if you dont mind. Saeran, unknown and Ray with an MC who has a really high pain tolerance? Like, they could have a huge cut on their leg or smt and not even realize it until someone points it out and even when they do shes just like "oh i do... huh." (Sorry if the request is a little odd T^T)

I don’t think it’s all that weird, anon. I don’t really react when I get hurt or anything, either, I just kinda go, “oh, well, time to die.” lol 

Ray + Unknown + Saeran w/ an MC with high pain tolerance. 

Ray

“Um… Oh, goodness, Y/N. You’ve got a cut on your hand. I knew I shouldn’t have let you help me out here, I don’t want your hands to wind up like mine.”

You glanced down at your hands. 

Sure enough, he was right, there were the telltale signs of a cut across the top of your hand. You hadn’t even noticed that something had nicked you, no would you have noticed if Ray hadn’t said anything to you, or at least until the two of you had finished what you were doing. You had really wanted to spend some time with him, and when he mentioned that he had desperately wanted to go to the gardens- 

how could you have said no to that? 

“Y/N?” he repeated himself, worriedly. 

“Jeez, I didn’t even notice, Ray. Haha, s'okay, I don’t really notice things like this anymore when they happen. It doesn’t even hurt. I kind of have a high tolerance for pain.” You smiled at him, reassuringly. “I wouldn’t have even known until later if you hadn’t said anything. It’s alright, I don’t really feel it.” 

You moved to brush some of the dirt and blood away. 

Ray had noticed a few things were out of order and he instinctually wanted to make everything look nice for you! Of course, you weren’t the type to let anyone do something without lending a hand.

In the midst of helping him, you must have brushed against a patch of briars. It wasn’t impossible, just the quickest answer that you could reach as you wracked your brain for answers for how you had gotten hurt this time. If anything, you kind of wanted to make yourself feel a little more independent than the soft princess Ray had been convinced you were. 

So much for that.

There was a small frown on Ray’s face. He shook his head, mumbling underneath his breath, “No, no, this isn’t how this should be.”

“Ray?” 

“Y/N,” he said suddenly, catching you off guard. 

“Um, yes?” 

“Let me take of that for you.” His green eyes met yours for a moment but like usual, his gaze dropped to the side, or to the ground immediately after his courage had died down. “Please? I’m the one that got you hurt in the first place so I need to take responsibility for this and make sure that you’re okay. I’m sorry, Y/N. Please, let me do this for you and then I’ll be off for the night.” 

You stared for a minute and then shook your head. “It’s not your fault, Ray, I did this to myself, I’m just kind of clumsy. I’ve told you that before so don’t blame yourself for it.” 

He was quiet. 

Often as he was when he thought he caused something bad to happen, and you knew that he was internally blaming himself no matter what you tried to tell him. Which was a shame, because he didn’t deserve to be kicked like that. He did help you get patched back up, but he was nonverbal, and only apologized once again when he was done covering your hand.

“Thank you, Ray,” you told him. 

“…You’re welcome, Y/N,” he mumbled.  

“I mean it. You didn’t have to touch this up for me. I usually don’t do much when I get hurt besides try to clean it up and ignore it if it aches at all and I can feel it. Anyways, haha, it’s really nice to have someone around that cares about me enough to do this, you know?” 

That seemingly perked up his mood a lot. 

His face was flush and he couldn’t look you in the eyes. “I’m... I’m... thank you for saying so.” 

Unknown

“What the fuck? Do you realize you’re bleeding like a waterfall right now? You’re such a careless dumbass, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes before otherwise you trip and knock your head the fuck open on a damn counter. Are you trying to piss me off, or are you really this dense? I honestly don’t even fucking know.”

You blinked.

Sure enough, you looked down and saw the familiar trickle of the red stuff on your arm. How had that happened, anyway? “Oh, looks like I did hurt myself. I guess you’re right,” you said. “I didn’t even notice that I had done it.” 

His eyebrow twitched. “How in the hell did you not notice something that big?”

Well, that was a complicated answer! You hadn’t meant to cause any trouble for him but it seemed like he wasn’t going to budge until you gave him an answer. You hadn’t even thought that you had done anything but it seemed as though your high pain tolerance had caused you some trouble, your body wasn’t immune to pain but it took a lot before you cried or had to take care of something.

It took a lot out of you to make sure that everything was in order in this mess of a room that he called a workplace. You must have hurt yourself tripping over your own two legs at some point and hadn’t even noticed that it had happened. 

“Well,” you started to explain with a weak laugh. “I kind of am immune to pain, it takes a lot for me to feel anything.” 

“Ugh.”

Before you could say anything to get him to elaborate on his sudden attitude, he took you by the hand. You didn’t even wince when Unknown grabbed you by the wrist and carted you away to the bathroom. He didn’t say anything to you, he just took care of your injury and dressed it without a single grunt or complaint, which was rather odd for him, but you weren’t the type to complain about that. 

When he was done, he let go of your limb and took back to examine it. It seemed like he was pretty good at that. You wondered why that was, but it was better not to press him for answers. You had learned that the hard way long ago. 

“Thanks,” you whispered. 

His hardened gaze didn’t waver in spite of those polite words. He just kept that tough stance. “…Just don’t go and do it again, I won’t waste my time on someone who can’t take care of their damn self.” 

The fact of the fact was that he probably would take of it if you didn’t do something again. He said that he wanted people to take care of themselves but he got pissed if they didn’t do it fast and the right way in his eyes. 

However, you weren’t going to say anything about that. 

You just nodded. 

Saeran

“Hey,” he gently chastised. “You’ve gone and hurt yourself. ”

You looked at your leg where you had managed to trip over your own two feet and get a small gash. 

You had thought nothing of it when you were cleaning but now that Saeran pointed it out, it appeared as though you did had a small injury. Well, this was embarrassing.

You patted down the cut and pressed to stop some of the bleeding from seeping any further out of your body; It was nearly dried up but in need of some cleaning. There was a sheepish smile that crossed your lips as you laughed this observation away as if it were nothing more than a small problem.  

You laughed, a little bit embarrassed that he had noticed that you had hurt yourself way before you ever would have. “Oh, I didn’t even notice that, Saeran. Jeez, it’s really bad this time, isn’t it? I really need to start paying more attention to myself before I really wind up getting hurt like this. I’ll go and take care of it, now.”

The look in his eyes was exasperated, as was the worried sigh that left his lips. It was one of those kinds of looks that seemed to say with one single glance: What am I going to do with you?

It had only been a nice day for both of you. That was something that the both of you were due by a long mile as the past few months had been so hectic and chaotic more than a few reasons that could be listed and counted on your fingers. There had been no worries or concerns, but here you had gone and managed to make a mess of yourself and you couldn’t even recall how it had happened this time around. 

Typical, this was the price that you paid for having such immunity to pain and its feelings. 

“C’mon, I’ll help you take care of it, Y/N,” he said. 

You tried to wave him off. It wasn’t exactly pretty and you doubted that he had the stomach for this stuff anymore being so far disconnected from that turmoil. This had the tendency of happening sometimes and you usually took care of it before Saeran could even say something about it. It was normal for you to have bumps and bruises, you just told him you were super clumsy. “I can fix it myself, you know? This sort of thing just kind of happens sometimes. It’s no big deal.” 

“Y/N,” Saeran repeated himself in that familiar tone. He didn’t have to say it. You knew what he was getting at. This relationship was a partnership, even with some of the less conventional and soft things. You didn’t have to walk around eggshells around him; Nor should you have felt the like you had to do the same for him. 

“Alright, alright. I’ll concede. You win.” You smiled, giving him your hand. He helped you get cleaned up within a couple of minutes, and once that was taken care of, it was all spic and span. You were just dinged up a bit, no more than usual, that is. 

“You really should be more careful,” Saeran warned. “I’m more than happy to take care of you when you get hurt, but I hate to see it happen in the first place, Y/N.” 

“Mhm, yeah, I thought that’s what you’d said, I just didn’t want to worry you about nothing, because this just happens sometimes,” you nodded, leaning up to brush your lips against his cheek. “I’ll try to not hide it from you when I do get some bumps and bruises from now on.” 

“It’s not nothing,” he reminded you, “Your feelings and what you’re dealing with is always important, not to just you, but to me as well. So, please, let me into your heart a little more.” 

[fallenhero-rebirth]

OUT OF CANON BACKGROUND SNIPPETS.

Since people were asking in the discord, some old Ortega/Steel snippets from before they got yanked into the Fallen Hero universe. Not canon, just inspiration. From the same universe as the JUMP one before, back when Los Diablos was still in ruins, before it became Fallen Hero. Also, this is TEN YEARS OLD so my writing was fuuucked.

One:

The wind howled murder in Ortega's dreams, tonight like every night.

"Come on Ortega, move your feet, the day ain't getting any younger." Marek was all smile and camera, and there was no turning back now. He had to make the jump.

There was a feel of crumbling rocks beneath his feet as he threw himself off the edge of the cliff, the ruins far below greeting him with concrete teeth. Base jumping was a thrill, the first moment of freefall a kiss snatched from death's cold lips. He knew he should have prayed, but he'd left all faith behind him long ago. These days, his gods were ones of preparation and caring for your equipment.

Behind him, rocks cascaded down the uneven cliff face, a stampede of debris racing him towards the ground below.

Falling.

Weightless.

The wind roaring in his ears and his heartbeat so loud it hurt.

And then the chute snapped open, tearing him sideways, away from the cliff, away from the falling rocks, away to safety and a glorious descent and a rush of adrenaline that nearly dampened the pain as the wind slapped him in the face and smashed him into the rocks.

That day death hadn't been satisfied with just a kiss, she had wanted to go second base. And Ortega had ended up broken and trapped in a bed, surrounded by wheezing machines, waking from dreams recapturing his last moment of freedom.

...

"Move your left toe, please." Dr Burton said the words blandly, like she had a dozen times before, leaning over the man on the table.

He was lying limp, like a filleted fish, the healing flesh on his back parted to reveal the grafts all along his back. Titanium fused with plasteel, faintly glowing cords and connections burrowing into the bone to make up for neural connections lost in the accident that had smashed so much of his spine. It was a work of art and wonder, military cybernetic technology adapted to a less lethal use. If only she could make it work.

"Still nothing," Ortega said, watching the floor.

Not dirty.

Nothing here was dirty.

He hadn't seen a speck of dust since he had woken up here, no doubt thanks to his father pulling strings. Again. Patching up his wayward son. Trying to make him walk once more. They had an awkward reunion after he had regained consciousness, his father looming in the background, impassive in his uniform. Such a shield it was to hide behind. His mother had been on her knees by the bed, praying, thanking the Lord for saving her son's life.

In his opinion, the Lord had little to do with it. It was his friends that had managed to get him down and keep him alive until help got there. He'd asked what become of them, but they had been found in a restricted area. Los Angeles was in ruins after the Big One and anybody who came there without permission were trespassers. Possible looters. Maybe his friends were let go. Maybe they were doing jail time. He had no way of knowing. Nobody would even answer his questions. His friends were as lost as his own mobility.

...

His spine whirred, and that was a sound a body was not supposed to make. Standing up hurt, every muscle ached as Ortega leaned on the handrails, forcing himself to stand.

"Move your feet," Sammy said, his physical therapist refusing any other form of addressing him. "It's not that hard."

"Says the man without the metal eel pretending to be a spine." No, Ortega thought to himself. An eel was the wrong word. His first thought when he had seen the spine all rolled up on the table before him was that it had been a snake, ready to strike. And now it had, inserting itself into his flesh, bonding with his bones, theoretically making him all that he had been and a lot more.

Freak.

Experiment.

Military property.

"You're only going to tire yourself out if you keep standing there." Sammy placed a hand on his shoulder, making Ortega flinch a little. "I know it hurts. I know things need time to heal. But you need to start moving for that to happen."

"Bit too valuable to be left in the bed now, am I?" There was a hint of bitterness to his voice as he moved his left foot forward, letting his weight come down on it.

Blinding pain shot through his body, but his knees didn't buckle. The whirring shifted in tone, and his body held. The next step was easier, the spine adjusting, microscopic chipbrains memorizing stance and weight. It hurt, but he could walk. He actually could put one foot in front of the other again.

Right then and there, that moment that felt like a bigger achievement than any of his many jumps.

Two:

"We're going back, you know." Chen held up the pads so Ortega could throw another punch.

"Going back where? Panama?" Ortega punched and shifted his balance, the soft whirr of his implants nearly imperceptible. Or perhaps he was simply getting used to them. The scars had faded to an angry red by now, and his body was adapting. Good as new. No, better than new.

"Hell no, I hope not. Los Angeles." Captain Wei Chen was a veteran of Panama, and in the military hospital for much the same reason as Ortega. A broken body fixed by state of the art technology, the difference being that Chen was military through and through, and Ortega was here because his father had pulled some favors.

"Don't you mean Los Diablos? That's what everybody calls it these days."

Whoever chose to rename Los Angeles after the Big One was not far off. The quakes had ripped the entire west coast to shreds. Cities burned, millions died, and when the smoke had cleared the name had stuck. Los Diablos. At first the government had tried to rebuild what had been lost, but as the aftershocks continued and the years passed, a crashing economy forced the politicians to focus on salvaging the heartland and the east.

How the west was lost. Not a catchy title for a movie in a country used to winning.

"Yeah, whatever smartass, hit me harder. I know you can." Chen clapped the pads together, then held them up again.

"Quit giving me orders, I'm not in the army." Ortega hit the pads despite his complaints, because it felt good. It felt good to move, to be able to sweat and train and not be looking forward to a lifetime in bed.

"Might as well be, I know how these contracts work. The military own your sorry ass now. Unless you want back in that chair."

"No way." Hard punches, sweat stinging his eyes.

"Then you play ball." Pads removed, a towel tossed instead.

"I never was much for playing ball." Ortega wiped his face with a grimace.

"So I've been told. They're gonna offer you a shot at joining the team anyway."

"What team?" Ortega asked, by now actually curious to what the other man was angling for. "Not football I hope."

"I wish," Chen said with a laugh. "No chance to join the league for us Mods."

"Ugh, I hate that nickname. Modified humans. Makes me feel like a car or something, and you still haven't told me what you're angling for." He dropped the towel, popping his neck a little. The cybernetic joints still felt slightly off, but he was moving smoother by the day.

"Not me. Them. The Government. They've dropped the quarantine, and are renaming the areas affected by the quake the 'Free Territories'."

"A catchy name is not going to make people move back there. Last I saw, there was not much left standing." Last thing he had seen had been a fabulous sunset from the Hollywood Cliffs, the ruined skyscrapers leaning drunkenly against the encroaching sea.

"Oh it's more than a catchy name. It's free of government control. Free of taxes. Free of police. Free of pesky environmental regulations. The new west, like the old west if you believe the slogans. I hear companies are already moving into the less destroyed areas. And with companies come roads, electricity and jobs."

"Jesus," Ortega said, looking at Chen as if he couldn't quite believe his words. "It's gonna be dog eat dog out there."

"It sure will be. But with the economy crashing and unemployment being what it is, there's enough people willing to take a chance that they can build a future for themselves. It's the American dream after all. And with Asia finally regulating things, there's few places left where anything goes."

"They sure got you drinking the Kool Aid. And what were you talking about before? About the government and joining teams?"

"Companies ain't gonna bother with things like police or firemen, there's going to be private security forces for their facilities and to hell with the rest. The military's been asked to help put together a special task force of people charged with keeping the peace."

"Because military rule has always been such a grand idea." Ortega walked over to the treadmill, striking up a steady pace. He was still getting used to the new weight of his body and the way his implants handled. Maybe he was more like a sports car than he liked to admit.

"I said the military's been asked to help." Chen leaned against the wall, settling for watching. "It's gonna be an autonomous organization, deputized directly by the president. More like the Marshals of old than navy seals."

"And they want me in? Forgive me if I sound a bit disbelieving."

"Oh trust me, if the military had a choice, this would all be staffed by trusted officers, but the President is keen on making this an independent organization. He wants civilians too. And you're already sort of famous after your daredevil exploits. You're a perfect candidate."

"Yeah, right," Ortega said with the deepest of cynical looks.

"I'm serious. It will be a team consisting only of Enhanced, don't tell me you'll back away from a shot at being a legit hero? And it will get you out of here."

Ortega stopped jogging, catching his breath. He was covered in sweat and far too out of shape, but he knew that would change in time. He wanted out of here any way possible, and if this was a way out without living in crippling debt for the rest of his life… could he afford to refuse? He'd never really considered any real career in life if you didn't count crazy stunts, but living on the edge meant you had an expiration date, and this… he hated to admit it, but it spoke to the twelve year old in him. The part of him that thought it was fun to fling oneself off tall buildings for sport. What did he have to lose anyway? Except his life, and he was already prepared to risk that on a daily basis. Had nearly gotten killed more than once. And this? A shot at respectability? At fame? At a limelight far shinier than he could ever have hoped for before?

"What the hell," he begun, shrugging a little. "I am in."

Three little words. Changing his future.

Three:

The hangar was flooded with lights, the air filled with the sharp, acrid stench of spray paint. In the middle of the floor loomed a massive suit of armor, a decommissioned military model with the weaponry removed and replaced with non-lethal varieties. It still towered over the head of the two people eying their handiwork, facemasks pushed up now that the worst chemicals had dissipated.

"Looking good," the tall woman said, hair tightly tied down by a shawl to protect it from the paint.

"A work of art," Ortega agreed, pulling his gloves off.

The armor said nothing. Without a pilot to bring its cybernetic systems to life it was looped in standby mode, ready for action at a moment's notice. A small light started to blink on the helmet, reacting to the presence of said pilot.

"Uh oh," Ortega said, just a moment before Chen barged past, pushing them both aside so he could get a look at his baby.

"I can't believe you did this!" the former soldier complained, about to touch the armor before he realized that the paint was still wet. "How could you?"

"It wasn't easy. Luckily Ayesha rigged us up a sandblaster so we could get down to the plasteel." Ortega gestured to the tall woman and tried to continue to explain, because it had been a lot harder than he had anticipated. But Jake interrupted.

"That's not what I meant! My armor... it's blue."

"And gold," Ayesha supplied helpfully.

"We thought about white, but decided that would get dirty right away."

"You're wearing white," Ayesha pointed out.

"That is because I am smooth," Ortega preened. "And it's mostly blue."

"You are so full of yourself. You just want to stand out the most."

She laughed and hit Ortega on the arm, something which made him wince. Unlike the men, she did not owe her status on the team to technology, but to drugs. And in that particular lottery of death or debilitation, she had hit the jackpot. Stronger than a bull, faster than a striking snake and able to take a point blank shot and be able to complain about it afterwards.

"No, I swear, it's a theme," he defended himself, rubbing his arm. "Lightning is sort of bluish white, and I run on electricity so..."

"Excuses, excuses, you're such a narcissist Ricardo."

"You painted my armor?" Chen finally managed to get out, having completed a full circle around his suit. "Why for the love of God would you do such a thing?"

"Because we're not military," Ortega said, their old arguments coming back for another round, the military man and the thrill-seeker, united for a common cause. "We have to look the part. We can't walk in like paramilitary forces and expect to be treated like proper law enforcement."

"Hence the police blue," Ayesha supplied.

"The gold is pure flash though. We can't just be cops. We have to be more." Ortega had spent a lot of time thinking about this, thinking about what impression they had to make. He had talked about it at length with Marek, and as the filmmaker had said, they couldn't allow themselves to be goons. They had to be more. They had to be heroes.

"It was a perfectly sensible camouflage." Chen kept walking around his armor, the helmeted head shifting slowly in response to his actions, close enough for the sensory weave to pick up his distress.

"We are supposed to be seen, not hiding." Ayesha stripped off the coveralls that covered her own suit, a protective nanomesh weave of the kind that had been used as the basis of space suits before earth became too much of a problem to be able to afford such flights of fancy. It was boldly blue and red, as much of a statement as the woman herself.

"Face it Wei, you're not in the military anymore." Ortega couldn't help it; the look on Chen's face was just too funny. Of all the indignities his friend had expected to endure here in their improvised base, having to deal with a repainted armor was apparently not one of them

"And you are not the leader of this merry outfit," he snapped, poking a finger in Ortega's chest. "I can't believe Marshal Burke authorized this."

"Authorized it? He thought it was a brilliant idea. Even the code names."

"Codenames?"

"You're Sergeant Steel, Ayesha is Sentinel and I am Charge." Ortega wasn't too happy, he'd spent last night tossing names back and forth with Ayesha, but none had really seemed to fit. This would have to do for now, maybe he would grow into it.

"How come I'm just a Sergeant?" Chen asked, momentarily distracted from his armor. "That's lower than my actual rank."

"Ahah!" Ayesha said, sliding up next to the man, looking like a lioness leaning in for a bite. "I told you he'd come around to the idea. And it's not about rank. It's about alliteration. Unless you want to be named something else?"

"I... don't want to be named anything at all, we could have proper codenames."

"Nobody is going to ask Bravo-6 to get a kitten down from a tree." To his credit, Ortega managed to say that with a completely straight face,

"There are no kittens in trees here anymore," Chen argued. "The city is wrecked!"

"My point still stands."

"Fine. I suppose it will have to do."

Capitulation at last, and it was all that Ortega could do not to rub his hands. Marek had been right; the lure of being something grander than what they really were was a seductive one. Why be a peacekeeping force, or government watchdogs when they could be heroes? Why have utilitarian outfits like the military when they could be larger than life? They were after all, all of them changed into something more than human. Enhanced.

It wasn't narcissism, it was just common sense.

[blacklistzine-blog]

Meet the Mods

Name: Mix

Pronouns: They/Them

Age: 23

What is my experience with zines/leadership positions in general?

I’ve moderated/am moderating several other zines, and among the current zines are Please, Bokuto-san Zine, Aite Zine, and My Love, My Life Zine. I’m acting in a head moderator capacity for PBS and Aite, and for all my zine projects I have a specialization in finances, audits, and budgets as a result of my job.

I’ve worked as a bookkeeper/night auditor for a profitable restaurant/sports bar since Spring of 2014 and, on any given night I work, I handle and balance between $20,000-$25,000 (sometimes more, depending on how busy that audit day was). Through past work with zines, I’ve established relationships with manufacturers and I’m familiar with leading/organizing large groups of people. Some of my most recent experience with this, outside of zines, is through my University’s marching band, where I’ve been Student Leadership (Personnel Manager, Uniform Manager, and Section Leader) for three years and in charge of working with groups of people to help a 150 person band reach its goals.

Why am I heading this zine?

For a fairly well-written explanation regarding censorship that I support, you can click the link [Here]. For my personal opinions, keep reading. (Content warning for references to past sexual trauma, nothing explicit)

(Following section under Read More for length)

I grew up— and still live— in a conservative, rural area (I’m poor). There are many things I love about where I live. It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, I can see the stars and the Milky Way at night, and the full moon hanging over the mountains and illuminating the valley is so ethereal that it still makes it hard to breathe, even after almost 16 years of living here.

That being said, there are many other aspects of this area that I hate, and among them is the idea that some topics are inappropriate and thus not to be discussed, not to be brought up, not to be considered at all. My high school never offered a comprehensive sex education. I was never taught how to use a condom, or what types of birth control existed. In our Musical Theater class, the one (openly) gay kid in our school wanted to play the role of the heroine in a melodrama that maybe 30 people would attend, but was told he couldn’t because “some of the student’s parents wouldn’t like it”. Our theater department as a whole was stuck using musicals from the 50s (and then only select ones) because our schoolboard wouldn’t approve anything else as “appropriate” for high school students to perform. At one point, I wasn’t even allowed to say “Pour the wine” when performing a piece for an assignment because it wasn’t “appropriate” for a high school student to discuss alcohol, even when playing a character in a skit. I did competitive speech and debate, and my senior year I wanted to do an original oratory about gay marriage (then not legalized in my state) and the LGBT+ Community as a whole, but my coach told me that “judges wouldn’t like it,” so I backed down and got myself stuck with an Oratory that was dispassionate and lackluster.

I’m not campaigning that we should be talking about sex around five year olds, or showing porn in schools, but to try to police content, especially when its creators have been very clear in tagging that content with appropriate warnings and ratings, is abhorrent to me. Let me make my stance crystal clear: Censorship is a conservative agenda to police minds and thoughts, and to disengage critical thinking. Censorship breeds Authoritarianism and I refuse to live my life afraid of the hammer of a new age McCarthyism.

We don’t purchase tickets for an R-Rated horror film only to stand up in the middle of the film and start accusing its viewers and/or director as being murderers or serial killers. My mother loves Silence of the Lambs, but she is not a cannibal. I enjoy Pretty Woman, but I am not a sex worker, and I’m sure as hell not a billionaire (my student loans wouldn’t be quite so pressing if I were). Humans have a natural curiosity about the world in which we live, and other worlds in which we do not, and it is physically (and sometimes morally) impossible to actually experience every story, every sensation, every perspective that creative media allows us to.

Sometimes the stories are dark, but humans have dark thoughts, that’s inescapable. No one wants to have a serial killer after them, but every year hundreds of thousands of people sit down to watch Halloween or Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street because we want to experience the rush and the adrenaline and the question of “What happens next?” in a controlled environment where we are, ultimately, safe.

Sometimes stories don’t have any deep meaning, and exist only to make the audience feel some sort of emotion, be it fear, sadness, happiness, humor, or anger. Sometimes stories involve sexual, physical, or mental abuse, and sometimes stories don’t have happy endings. Sometimes dark stories are created as outlets, or mediums, for the pain and suffering a creator has gone through.

If you are an audience member who has gone through some form of trauma or abuse in your life, and you don’t want to engage with these stories then that’s okay. If you are an audience member who has gone through some form of trauma or abuse in your life and you do want to engage with these stories, then that’s also okay. How you choose to process trauma is your prerogative, and no one else’s.

I am a victim of Child Sexual Assault, and my assaulter was a member of my family who was trusted to babysit me for the night. I was four years old. He never faced any legal consequences for his action, and my family hushed it up and swept it under the rug. To this day, I’ve convinced my family that I don’t remember this happening to me— that I was too young and the memory didn’t stick— but I remember. I remember, and I am 23 years old now, but I am still not ready to tell my story in detail. I’m not ready to tell my story, but I don’t want my story trapped inside my head, and I’m not the only person in the world who feels like this— far from it.

Maybe some creative media involving sensitive topics is just porn, pure and simple, and— well— so what? Porn exists, and it’s never going to stop existing. The Sex Industry is home to the oldest professions in the world and people have been trying to stamp out the sex industry for thousands of years on account of its obscenity. However, they’ve never been successful, and they never will, because, while Asexual individuals absolutely exist (I should know, I’m on the Ace Spectrum), the majority of humans have sex and enjoy it.

However, there is too large a percentage of creative media intended (and marked for) adult audiences that isn’t just about sex, and to ban one is to ban the other— to open people and creators up to questions of “artistic quality” and “social relevance” that are subjective to the individual and can never be anything but.

Stories, artwork, film, literature— they’re all ideas, not actions, and when we try to censor ideas or behave like they have the same weight as an action, we have allowed Authoritarianism to rise, and critical thinking and engagement with media to fall by the wayside.

This is the reason I choose to work on Blacklist, and why I’m determined to see this through. I don’t want to live in a world where ideas are policed, and where adult spaces that have been marked as such are invaded and told they shouldn’t exist. No one deserves to be told their story isn’t okay to tell.

[galacticvampirisms]

@peachie5000​

Figured I’d just make it clean so if you don’t want to interact, then you don’t have to. 

A. They don’t want to help real people - they claim they do, but then they will go and attack people who use fiction to cope or explore and understand difficult, complicated concepts. 

B. Pro-censorship is a slippery slope.

C. They’ve taken heavy language and twisted it to fit their own needs; words like pedophile no longer hold the same weight when it’s tossed about as an empty threat towards people they don’t like.

D. By attacking creators of appropriately tagged content, they’re discouraging the creation and utilization of these tags. But the fic and art won’t go away. They’ll just get filtered into the mainstream tags and fandom and will be  accessed by people who don’t want exposure to that sort of content. 

E. They blame the content creator and not the abuser for the abuse.

F. They brigade fandom creators and not mainstream media. Fandom creators often utilize tags and appropriate warnings. Mainstream media rarely does to the same extent (movies have a rating system, but an R for sexual themes does not tell me if there is rape involved. A rape/non-con/dub-con tag does). 

I keep having to rewrite this because I’m not very good at giving my thoughts but I think what’s stuck with me the most lately is the fact that antis attack small time people who may have an audience of thousands max and not the abusers. 

They say the people who write these stories are for incest and pedophilia, but the writers and artists who utilize the tags don’t support it. They’re giving people a chance to create their own safe spaces. It’s the artists and writers who don’t tag it, who let it leak out into the mainstream that should be spoken to. Not brigaded with hate, but asked if they understand what they’re writing is a problem and if they don’t give them the tools they need to educate themselves.

They attack victims of abuse, they send gore and porn to people they disagree with. And I’m not saying some anti-antis aren’t guilty of that too, but when I see the vitriol of the anti community versus how the anti-antis will normally interact a few times before just blocking someone - I know whose stance against hate I like more.

Also the idea that you write it and then tag it as abuse means you actually like and support that irl is just ??? to me. Sorry that’s actually why I commented to start with. I know some people do genuinely think this shit is okay and MAPs and other shitheads can go to hell for all I care. Nonoffending or not they don’t deserve a space or voice in the general public and fuck them. But saying people who often are an oppressed minority and/or victims of what they’re actively creating to explore believe it’s okay just because they used a content warning. It baffles me.

Oh and like most of the underage tag on AO3 is teens having sex with other teens. And most anti rhetoric sounds hella like “You can’t headcanon a 14 year old fictional character as asexual! It sexualizes them! They’ve obviously never thought about sex a day in their lives because 14 year olds don’t do that!” I mean

And I feel safe spaces can and should be carved out as needed. I was fine with a zine I’m in choosing to cull any Rei/mob shippers because I’m not a fan of that ship either - but the mods were so understanding about stuff like A Breach of Trust and age difference fic in general (we ended up talking about it a lot because I wanted to let my opinion be out there and if they weren’t comfortable they could kick me to the curb). But the thing is, you can’t turn the entire world into a safe space. If you did, and you start talking about actually burning books well. 

Ugh I hate this is so helter skelter. Sorry. I’m just super scattered and all over the place.

[parugi]

My time in the Jedi Academy RPG community

Alternative title: How I helped destabilize four forums worth of RPG players!

So I recently started posting my first let’s play, and the game I decided to play first is Jedi Academy. My reason for going with this game was not random by any means. In some ways, I attribute many of my current set of interests and skills to it--and not for particularly great reasons. Still, I can’t deny the impact it has had on me, and I feel like it’s worth it to share the absolutely insane experience that I had in the Jedi Academy RPG community back in like, 2003 to 2005ish.

I’ll be the first to admit that some of this is going to sound... very outlandish, but I guarantee that it is all 100% true as far as I can remember it. Unfortunately, for the most part, I only have my word to share, because the forums that hosted all of the evidence for this have been either shut down or archived when InvisionFree/ZetaBoards shifted over to “Tapatalk.”

Anyway, bear with me. This is me performing a sort of self-therapy after 16 years of half-repressing the memories. I’m also not sure quite where to begin, so this might jump around a bit. Again, please bear with me.

For a bit of backstory--Jedi Academy is a Star Wars game. It’s built on a system that is very mod-friendly and possessed a rather large multiplayer community back when it first released--dozens and dozens of servers with up to something like 36 players each, many of which were always full and impossible to get into. And the mod community thrived, too--there were hundreds of downloadable maps, vehicles, character skins, even mods that changed battle stances and mechanics. It was neat.

One mod in particular was called ForceMod 3, which completely revamped the multplayer so that you could select between different classes to play instead of having just a bucket of things to choose without any nuance--from Jedi Apprentices, to Jedi Masters, to smugglers, to Imperial officers followed by Stormtrooper NPCs, even a custom Yuuzong Vong class with its own adjusted mechanics. Each came with its own number of Force points, its own designated weapons, even differences in health/shield distribution. Obviously, this made it perfect for role-playing, and more than one set of users recognized this.

I don’t know exactly when or how my brother and I discovered FM3, but at some point I logged on and noticed something different about the servers being run on it. For one, there were not as many; the most I ever saw was 8 at a time, quite different from the standard 30+ on vanilla multiplayer. More than that, there were servers designated as “RPG” servers, a term I, at the time, had never encountered before. When I first discovered this, there were only three big RPG servers:

ForceMod 3 RPG Server

((RPG_Server))

and one whose name I do not remember; it was something like Jedi Enclave

The third does not matter as much, because it only suffered from the following series of events as a side-effect of the other two causing them. But we’ll get to that.

Also of note, this list would later include [[RPG_Network]]--my server.

Keep that in mind. Its resemblance to ((RPG_Server)) is not an accident.

Also keep in mind that I was 9/10ish at the time.

So, back to the list. I saw these “RPG servers” and joined one--((RPG_Server)). It didn’t click to me that it wasn’t the same as a free-for-all server at first, but I soon realized the difference when I noticed that people weren’t just randomly going around and killing each other. They were interacting as if they were characters.

That was interesting.

Interesting, and yet I thought nothing of it.

A couple of days later, though, I decided to give it a try. And it was fun! And interesting! I got to pretend to be a Jedi instead of just playing as a Jedi! Nice! That was in ((RPG_Server)). And it was super relaxed! Basically we got to do whatever, as long as we were playing characters. It was a nice community, and it got me hooked to RPGs, which I continue to play to this day.

They also had a forum. I would later join it.

But first, I had something to learn about RPG communities: They are not all fun and games.

((RPG_Server)) was not always up; sometimes it would not appear on the list. Usually, but not always. One day it wasn’t there--but FM3RPG was. That was fine; these RPG servers were all pretty lax, right? I’d just join it and do as I do, right?

Wrong.

I joined it, I did my thing--and got pretty immediately kicked.

FM3RPG was more of an “elitist” server--they took their RPG very seriously. That meant that you couldn’t play as certain classes without approval. In fact, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, you could not join the server at all without first getting a character approved on the forum. This was not a simple process, particularly for a 9 year old. They expected an elaborate character sheet to be submitted, with a full history and details down to the character’s height and weight.

I joined the forum. I submitted a character. I didn’t get approved.

That’s fine. ((Server)) was back up, so I went there and joined the forum, and that was dandy. But that also made me not like FM3RPG, so I didn’t go back there. I did ghost their forum, though, and it became clear that they held a low opinion of ((Server)) because ((Server)) wasn’t as stringent as FM3RPG.

IMO, that was a blessing. But not everyone thought that way.

Quick side-note--FM3RPG had a specific moderator who became infamous within the community for many, many reasons. This person went by Naru. Naru was petty to the point of banning players for expressing political views that they did not agree with.

Keep Naru in mind.

I don’t have a great recollection of what all occurred in ((RPG_Server)) before everything went to shit, but I think it was mostly fine. There were a set of three mods who had created the place, and these were the only mods/admins when I joined. They were Subrerec, Mose, and I think Maverick was the third one? They would later be joined by Marrin (replacing Tarrin, who supposedly died in a car accident about a month in (and I only say supposedly because Marrin and Tarrin were... suspiciously similar people in hindsight) and Aitrus, my friend who actually was very helpful in showing me the ropes.

Later-later, they would be joined by Docco.

Oh, Docco.

Docco was actually my friend for a while. Pretty much everyone was, actually. It was a good community when I first joined. But I was not good at accepting changing times, so that didn’t last--and here’s why.

The first crack in the structure, so to speak, came from a really petty conflict. There were these official profile avatars available on the Jedi Academy website. Subrerec, Mose, and Mav all had one, as did Marrin. I liked them, so I used one. It got reverted. I thought that was weird so used it again. Mose reverted it again and gave me a warning because “Only the mods got to use those.”

Twas a very petty thing to get someone in trouble over, and it made me dislike Mose. But whatever, find a different avatar and move on.

The second crack was a certain player named Dorian Remedy. Dorian was an... immigrant of sort from FM3RPG. He had played there and then joined ((Server)). Note, however, that he didn’t leave FM3RPG, he merely also joined ((Server)).

He was also the biggest fucking prick that I have ever had the displeasure to encounter to this day.

His modus operanti was to criticize. Not in a constructive way, either, but in the rudest way possible. And I say that even with hindsight. Dorian made no effort whatsoever to come off with any sort of empathy or tact, because he didn’t care--he was the embodiment of the elitism that pervaded FM3RPG. Anyone who wasn’t interested in a more structured RPG system, he couldn’t be bothered to give the time of day to, because they were too incompetent to understand why FM3RPG’s system was superior.

I was one of those people. Because I was 9. Do I think differently now? Certainly. At the time? No. And would I act anything like he did if I were in that boat? Hell no.

The problem with Dorian was that it didn’t matter how rude he was, because the mods, particularly Mose, agreed with him and wanted to revamp ((Server)) into a lighter version of FM3RPG. That itself was not a problem, but because of it, they would not take any sort of action against Dorian regardless of how he talked to anyone. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I feel as though that would drive anyone insane.

Dorian would cause many, many problems for me, personally, but he did not cause this particular incident that really broke the camel’s back.

At some point, I had suggested to Subrerec and Mose the introduction of the Sith into the plot. It was a surprisingly good idea for a kid, imo, and I was allowed to do it. So I created a Sith Lord and chose an apprentice. That was my friend Docco.

And that was cool. I had fun. Until I didn’t.

One night I logged on and had this really brief message from Docco and someone else whose name I don’t even remember. It basically just said, “We need you to log on ASAP.”

So I did, because I was 9 and didn’t think to ask questions.

Turns out, they were performing a Sith coup.

They killed my Sith and overthrew me and I wasn’t allowed to do anything about it. I felt hurt and angry and betrayed because they hadn’t given me any indication of what they were planning. I like to think that if they had, I would have been fine with it, but who knows? I was 9, so maybe, or maybe not. Hard to tell.

The short of it is, Dorian made fun of me, Mose didn’t care, Docco didn’t apologize, and I was pissed off. There were some players on my side and some who weren’t. What erupted after that was basically an all-out war of constant fighting and name calling and getting suspended and everything. In a matter of weeks--or maybe days? Months? Time is an abyss--the forum had gone from something great to just this cesspool of people constantly at each others’ throats.

I was mad and decided to split off and make my own forum with my brother (also involved in all of this, unfortunately) and a friend who went by Mara Jade. We made a forum called RPG: Palace of RPers (a very not-redundant name) and it lasted about a week before Mara Jade gave admin rights to Dorian, who proceeded to change everything and locked the three of us out.

So that was the second betrayal by a friend in less than two weeks. I did not talk to Mara Jade after that. And I was stuck in ((Server)) because I am not a quitter--even at 9.

Around this same time, someone else joined the forum, and this is where things went from just a singular forum issue and cross-contaminated the entire community.

FM3RPG ousted Naru. Naru’s already tenuous popularity had tanked. And why? For a couple of reasons. One, Naru was not a teen girl, as she had claimed, but a 30-something year old man. On top of that revelation, it came out that Naru had engaged in cybersex with several underage children.

So Naru was banned from FM3RPG.

Someone named Cassandra joined ((Server)).

Immediate. Chaos.

Some people figured out pretty quickly that they were the same person. Some were doubtful but said they should get a chance even if it was true. Some just did not believe it.

I was 9 and did not believe it.

I did not believe it because Cassandra was on my side in the Sith debacle and was nice to me and Dorian, Docco, and Mose did not like her so therefore I should like her.

Docco and Mose tried to convince me otherwise and I ignored them because I was mad at them about my Sith. Dorian continued to make fun of me.

More and more people were starting to catch on, though, and at some point it was just me left defending Cassandra. Around that time, my brother and I made another forum, with help from some different friends (Reverser, Bane, Heero, Inuyasha, Duo, and Cyran Ciin--remember that last one). This was [[RPG_Network]]. We set it up and actually were able to host a server on occasion because of Reverser. So that was cool--we were sort of official.

But there was still the Cassandra issue.

I can only guess that Docco and Mose and others were just frustrated with trying to--what I realize in hindsight--protect us from an actual, straight-up child predator. I say this because they joined the [[Network]] forum and just started causing chaos, spamming and using what I consider highly disgusting images for their avatars and signatures.

They made it pretty clear what would make them stop, and that was banning Cassandra.

Which I did, but not because of their stipulation.

Around the time we got our server running, ForceMod 3 updated and did something... interesting. Whenever someone joined a server, it would show that they were joining, and it would show their IP address. At some point, Naru joined a server--don’t remember which one--and we got a picture of “her” IP.

IPs were also visible to admins of InvisionFree forums.

Naru and Cassandra had the same IP.

She tried to tell me that it was done via proxy, but even a 9 year old can experience clarity.

So I banned Cassandra from [[Network]].

I’m lucky to say that I had this revelation before anything bad happened. So I have that to be thankful for.

Anyway.

((Server)) shifted officially to a strict system like FM3RPG. It still bore the ire of FM3RPG because FM3RPG was the only “real” RPG server. Dorian got what he wanted and made sure to lord that over everyone. I didn’t want to stay, so I left and went to [[Network]].

And you know? That could have been the end of it. It really could have. But people like Dorian can’t just let kids be. So instead of letting the servers coexist--maybe not peacefully, but certainly coexist--he instead made a point of popping onto [[Network]] not infrequently to throw his weight and insults around.

I wanted to ban him, others wanted to give him his chances.

That splintered the [[Network]] admins.

Some other things also splintered the [[Network]] admins, including these key points:

Revenge of the Sith had come out pretty recently and some of us, myself included, thought a Jedi Purge copycat would be cool. Others did not. None of us agreed on what to do.

Inuyasha did this plot in [[Network]] where a 17ish year old Jedi apprentice got captured by a Hutt and violated by said Hutt’s Twi’lek slave. It was not vague what happened. I was not a fan.

Myself and Bane concocted a plot to kill multiple characters. This included multiple of Inuyasha’s characters. Bane later went public with this. This was very hypocritical of me and I am now ashamed of my involvement. It stemmed entirely from the previous point.

Everything after this is kind of a blur. The [[Network]] stuff was going on in 2005 just before my family moved to Oregon, and after we moved I kind of just dropped out--mainly because all of this drama had spread so far and wide that a large chunk of the entire RPG playerbase had up and quit. That and I’m pretty sure my account was banned from ((Server)) at some point. I do know that during that time, my remaining Jedi character was killed in their Jedi Purge. I do have to give Dorian some credit for giving Master Kyle South a cool death scene, if nothing else.

Anyway, [[Network]] was basically dead by the time we moved, ((Server)) was barely on its last leg, and FM3RPG was ruined because of Dorian’s attitude across Network, Server, and Enclave (which also just died without much fanfare). At some point my brother attempted a revival of [[Network]], but that did not really take off and the entire thing just became a board full of spam.

Buuut that revival was after a certain event that served, I think, as just the final nail in the coffin.

And that was caused by one Cyran Ciin.

I was not around to witness this, but here is what I understand occurred:

Cyran Ciin did something to [[Network]]. This basically killed it. I don’t know what he did exactly, just that there was something done.

This got him in the good graces of Mose, and he became an admin on ((Server))’s forum.

However, Cyran Ciin was actually also from FM3RPG originally, and had a thing against ((Server)) and the other RPG servers. So, now an admin, he was free to just completely demolish ((Server))’s forum.

Just, everything moved into a trash bin, the forums rearranged, the background changed to a spam image, and all of the other mods and admins revoked of their privileges.

Karma? Maybe. 

Additional karma? Those actions getting Cyran Ciin banned from FM3RPG.

He didn’t care, though. He thought it was hilarious. I think he was an actual sociopath.

Anyway, FM3RPG was done. Their players had a reputation now and no one wanted to be associated with them. That’s my assumption, anyway. They might’ve just died to time like everyone else.

It doesn’t matter, though. The FM3 RPG community was dead--r.i.p 2003-2006ish.

There is an epilogue of a sort.

((Server))’s forums and [[Network]]’s forums were dead, but not gone--for a while. I found I was able to get back to both by correctly recalling their addresses--s6_invisionfree.com/rpg_server and I believe it was z11_invisionfree.com/rpg_network. Neither works now, of course, but they did for a time.

My brother gave me his login information for Network, so I was able to look around and see all the great things I had missed after the reboot. Luckily everything else was gone--during the reboot they had completely wiped the forums of everything from the first run, including the evidence of what I had done as a bad admin. That was nice. But I didn’t like what I saw, so I locked the forum, forgot the login information, and only occasionally looked at it via a throwaway account that I had made under the name of boxabox (password: boxabox).

The forum is gone with the change to Tapatalk, so that information is all useless now.

The real “heartwarming” epilogue comes from ((Server)). For a while, again, the forums remained accessible, and so I logged on back in like, 2013 or 2014. Surprisingly there was a thread that ran for a few days where someone was basically like “yo anyone still around?” A few people responded, including Docco, which was astounding. No Dorian, which was great.

Somehow I still remembered my login and password (although I don’t now) and decided to post on there.

The initial response was, unsurprisingly, not friendly, but long story short, Docco and I made amends and never spoke again after that.

By what I am sure is sheer coincidence, the forum got locked only a couple of weeks later, with only admin access enabled. So everything from there was already gone, and is now double-gone with the switch to Tapatalk.

I did discover that FM3RPG’s forum remains open, though. I won’t link to it because I don’t want to, but if you really want to, you can certainly find it--no login required.

Aaand that’s that. That’s my sordid history with the Jedi Academy RPG community. I won’t say I killed it, because that would be taking way too much burden of the responsibility, but... Well, let’s just say that I found a wikipedia-esque article about this same community several years back and I was mentioned as an important figure in everything that transpired. I have no idea where that page is now, but hey, it existed at some point, so I gotta own it.

Peace.

[perilinpeace]

Defining Us, Part I

12 Days of Starmora Day 1: “Tradition” 

This story is part 5 of my series at https://archiveofourown.org/series/776979. 

Defining Us, Part I

Rating: T (very mild language)

Word Count: 2912

The only “label” that ever really meant anything to Gamora was the word “family.” The things that went along with it… home… love… belonging. Those who made a family real and not some forced, manipulative thing like Thanos had--

Her family had once been her parents. Her Mother and Father. She knew there were others. Her brain told her that… some small thread in her heart told her that, but she didn’t remember. She tried, thought she owed them that. To remember. But had to admit, she couldn’t… Even her mother and father’s faces had smudged and faded, the sounds of their voices so distant, that she couldn’t tell between what she really remembered and what she made up for the sake of feeling like she did.

Her family was Nebula. Her one real constant for so long... the anchor in the swirling storm of misery and pain and grief and rage between lifetimes. And learning with her, how to really be a sister, since.

Her family was Drax, who laughed a little too often, but sometimes still surprised her with the depth and wisdom of his words; and Rocket, whose nods and darkened eyes beneath biting wit spoke of a shared understanding every time he fixed a misbehaving mod of hers or she one of his; and Groot, who still looked up to her (figuratively) when she tried to teach him something, even though he pretended not to.

It was Mantis, who delighted in being helpful to those she loved, because she wanted to and because she loved them; and Kraglin, who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, quietly looking out for Peter all while giving him shit because that’s what brothers do. And it was even an old dead Centaurian Ravager whose little trinkets still littered the bridge and occasionally surfaced in the engine room.

Her family was Peter, whose mere presence slowed her heart and cut her strings and eased her nightmares away.

So when Peter’s grandfather asked Gamora one night, on the long haul back to Earth from Xandarian space, if she was Peter’s wife… she was unsure how to respond.

It was a term she had simply not considered.

Of course, she was… familiar with the concept. Marriage was ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, a legal and sometimes religious rite on the vast majority of worlds.

But they were spacers. With no real allegiance or citizenship, for that matter, to any established governing body to even oversee such a thing. None of them had any religious affiliation to demand a formal union. (Notwithstanding Peter’s harried invocations to the “Jesus” from his Spirit in the Sky song in times of crisis or frustration--which, she had learned quickly, his grandfather similarly made… perhaps it was a family thing?)

Drax had Hovat, of course. He’d told them of the cultural significance of the traditional family unit on his homeworld. Marriage and procreation were practically an expectation of his people.

Gamora thought her own parents were married. It was hard to remember, but they had all lived together, she knew… they had been happy. Before. She had a very vague, hazy, snapshot of a memory of her mother presenting her father with a gift to commemorate some kind of milestone in their relationship…

“Gamora?” Pops asked gently, pulling her out of her own head. She looked up, squinting at him.

“Hmm?”

“You okay, kiddo?”

She nodded quickly and got up from the too-deep chair she’d sunk into and made her way toward the door of the common room, half forgetting that they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“Take that as a no…” she heard him mumble after her.   

__________________

“Are you… satisfied with our… arrangement?”

Peter stopped just shy of shorting out the new control panel for the repulsor array and flipped up his goggles.

“Huh?”

“Us.” Gamora continued, her face a little crossed between frustrated and confused. “What we… have… our… I don’t know, status.” Peter could practically hear the air quotes around the word. “Are you happy with the way things are?”

He sat back on the wing of the Milano and dangled his legs, fiddling with the arc spanner as he looked down at her, then around the hangar, as if Rocket or Groot were going to jump out to take a picture of the look on his face. Where the hell was this coming from?

“Where the hell is this coming from?” he asked incredulously.

She rolled her eyes. “Can you just tell me?”

Peter resisted rolling his eyes too, but didn’t manage to hold back an uncomfortable shrug.

“I-- well, yeah… Wait--no? Is this a trick question?”

Gamora groaned and threw her hands up, turning on her heel and stalking away. He clearly heard her grumbling about his being of no help at all.

“Wait! What’d I--” he made to slide down to go after her, before realizing that Drax was inconveniently below him, ready to pass up the power meter he’d asked for moments ago.

“Imbecile,” Drax stated, shaking his head. Peter did roll his eyes at that, waving Drax out of the way.

“Asshole,” he bit back, landing hard with both feet on the deck. He pointed at the ship and glared at Drax. “Don’t touch anything.” Drax opened his stance and held up his hands innocently.

Satisfied, Peter jogged after Gamora, slipping through the blast door and into the corridor just as it was closing behind her.

“Gamora! What the hell… can you stop, please?” he huffed. She paused a few paces ahead of him and turned around. He held up a hand at her in thanks as he leaned up against the wall and caught his breath. “You just… ask me a loaded question like that out of nowhere, and expect me to… what… quote Shakespeare?”

“I…” Gamora had the grace to look a little guilty, her arms uncrossing a little and her face softening. “What?” Her forehead creased back up as she registered a reference that she didn’t know.

Peter waved his hand and shook his head, pushing off the bulkhead and stepping toward her. “Nevermind…”

“I’m sorry, you’re right, I…” she bit her lip and looked everywhere but at him. He wanted to hold her, but she had gone from having her arms standoffishly folded over her front, to awkwardly held around her, sort of hugging herself.

Whatever this was, it was actually either really bugging her or really important to her.

Peter studied her face, her stance, the way she clenched her fingers around her own arms. He took a deep breath and leaned back on the wall.

“Okay… ask me again. I want to make sure I really understand the question.”

She quirked an eyebrow, then visibly relaxed. “Are you… happy with the way things are… between us… as… partners?”

Peter frowned and watched her watch him for a second, before swallowing hard and staring at his boots. “Honestly? Right now, I kinda feel like if you even have to ask a question like that after all this time, I’m doing something wrong.”

He looked back up at her, to see her arms dropped at her side and her face drooping and contorted. She hadn’t meant it like that. Peter sighed.

“If you’re asking if I’m happy with you, that’s a dumb question. You know that,” he said softly. Gamora stepped toward him and leaned against the bulkhead beside him. She curled her fingers between his as they slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I love you so much,” Peter whispered into her hair. He could feel her smile and relax a bit against him. “Of course… of course I’m… you’re my world. You and our whole… messed up crazy awesome family... There’s no place I’d rather be than with you.”

He paused, thought for a moment, then hesitantly asked, “Are you? You know…? The same?”

“Yes.” And really, it was all Gamora needed to say. She squeezed his hand, though, and he smiled slightly.

“Then why did you--”

She shook her head. “It’s silly.”

He eyed her. “Probably not, knowing you.”

Gamora ran her thumb over his knuckles. “I… was talking with your grandfather. Relationships came up… he asked about my family, my parents, Nebula… told me a bit about his family--yours--back on Earth… your mother and grandmother… and then… he asked me if we were married...”

The oohhhh formed on Peter’s lips almost involuntarily.

“...I hadn’t actually thought about it before,” she continued. “But once he said it, I--”

“Started thinking about it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Gamora nodded.  

Peter’s eyes narrowed.

“So, wait… was all that, like… a proposal, or something?”

“A what?”

“Are you asking me to marry you?” He enunciated each word carefully and distinctly, like a statement of fact instead of a question.

Gamora’s face scrunched up like she’d just sucked on a lemon. Peter couldn’t help but sit back and grin.

“Yes?” she answered after a moment. Peter quirked an eyebrow and smirked.

“Was that a question or an answer?”

Gamora groaned and let her head fall back against the bulkhead. “This is foolish.”

Peter thought for a moment, then nudged her shoulder, trying to steal her attention away from the ceiling.

“Is it?”

______________________

It wasn’t that Peter had never thought about it before.

But honestly, it was much more when he was a kid.

He very, very fuzzily remembered attending exactly one wedding in his entire life. Back on earth, when he was maybe five or six… a friend of his mom’s, one of the few other single mothers in town. He’d played with her son a lot, but didn’t remember his name. Their moms took turns watching each other’s kids while they were at work.

He remembered sitting on a hard wooden pew in the church where he had to go to Sunday school on Christmas and Easter. But all he could see was the backs of people’s heads. He’d pretty much gotten through the ceremony by squirming and when his mother shushed and glared, he got on by making up stories about the scenes in the stained glass windows… and the weird strangers seated nearby.

For some reason, his most vivid memory of the boring church part was the terrible toupee on the guy sitting right in front of him. Probably only because when he pointed it out to his mom, she’d tried really hard not to laugh.

Peter remembered a bit more of the reception.

There was a good band and a dancefloor. And his mother took off her high heels and danced with him for what seemed like hours and hours.

The point was… after the wedding… they didn’t see those friends much anymore. The boy he’d played with… had a dad all of the sudden… and from Peter’s little kid point of view… his friend’s whole life had changed. They might have even moved away.

He was embarrassed, thinking back on it now… Peter had gone through this whole phase after that, of pathetically trying to set his mom up with any guy remotely in her age range that smiled at her as they passed. He wanted her to get married, so that he could have…

Peter shook his head. “God, are all kids morons, or was I just special?” he murmured, checking their heading one more time before kicking his feet up onto the console and unwrapping the earbuds from around the Zune.

He heard a distinctly Pops-like snort behind him.

“You don’t get to comment. Do you have any idea what you started?” Peter said without looking back.

“Yeah. Drax was real… animated in the retelling of the ‘hangar tift.” Peter twisted around and glared at his grandfather with the one eye that could peer over the back of his seat. Pops raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not the one draggin’ his feet, here.”

“Dragging my… we’ve been together for four years, man.”

“Exactly. What’s that song by that famous lady… Put a Ring on It?”

“Huh?”

“Lock it down, kid. You’re never gonna find another girl like her.”

“I’m not looking!”

“Then what’s taking so long?”

“Look… things just… don’t work that way out here. Maybe for regular people who never leave their homeworlds, have holidays and traditions and... who live regular lives and know that space is out there but never… we… Gamora doesn’t have a homeworld anymore and I coul-- wouldn’t… couldn’t… go back to mine. Things are different for people like us.”

“People like you,” Pops deadpanned. “You say that like you’re--”

“What? Not normal? We’re not, Pops.”

Peter quit fiddling with the earbud cord and dropped the Zune to his lap as Pops slowly walked up and stopped next to his seat, hands in his pockets and staring out the front viewports.

“What’s so wrong with that?” Pops said casually, shrugging. Peter’s eyes flicked up.

 “So, you’re scared of screwing it up, ‘cause it’s not something you’re used to. Your whole life has been getting used to new things.” Pops looked over at him. “Tell me you’re really opposed to it.”

Peter shook his head. “No, I’m not. We, uh… we talked about it.”

“And?”

“And… and…” Peter lowered his voice, dropping his feet from the console and leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I think we kinda started to like the idea… and then I realized I had no clue what to do.”   

Pops took a deep breath and strolled over to the co-pilot’s station a couple meters away, dropping into it and mirroring Peter’s pose before looking over at his grandson, then back down at the deck.

“You know… I got no illusion here, that once we finish with this job, you’re not gonna swan back off and I may never see you again--”

“Pops--”

“No, don’t tell me it ain’t the truth. You’ve got a life out here, and no one’s expecting you to play house back on Earth. And you’ll say you’ll visit, and you’ll have every intention to… but weeks’ll turn into months, and then years, and... hate to break it to ya kid, but I’m damn old.”

Peter tried to find something to disagree with, but if he was honest… he sighed.

“So what, this is a guilt trip now? ‘Missed everything, so let me see you married off before I die’?”

“What? No--” Pops gritted his teeth and took a deep breath before continuing. “No,” he said firmly. “I’m saying that you missed everything. And maybe I was reading things wrong, but… something about being home did you some good. And if I’m not overstepping… it did Gamora some good too. Maybe you guys need a little normal, need to feel a little like you’re home, and now that you have one again, can spend some time there, you oughta make it count… maybe you’re not so different from those folks who have homes and traditions and holidays and shit… or you don’t have to be, anyway… ” Pops trailed off; losing steam, but having made his point.  

“We should get married on Earth,” Peter concluded quietly, absently twisting the earbud cord around his finger.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Peter couldn’t help but consider the possibilities.

He thought about Gamora in a white dress, like in a movie. Rings. Music. Dancing with her on the green grass of Pops’ yard. Tying cans to the bumper of the Mustang… wasn’t that a thing?

He smiled a little to himself.

__________________________

“What do you think?”

Gamora secretly loved it when Peter got excited about something. The way his hands moved just a little bit more, and how his eyes got just that much more wide and expressive.

“I mean, it’s not like we have to do some crazy huge, like, Princess Di thing,” Peter waved his hand around, and she knew he was imagining something elaborate from his memories of Earth. “But… there are all kinds of little things… nice things.” He smiled at her, shifting so suddenly to a look of quiet sincerity that she almost felt compelled to cry.

“Meaningful,” he said, taking her hand. “Like rings. We give each other rings, and it’s all symbolic and sappy, but… you wear it, and everybody knows; ‘Hey, that guy’s married to her.’” Peter grinned and she shook her head, trying to hide a smile of her own.

“And you gotta stand up in front of everybody and do the vows part. That’s not so different from say, on Xandar or Shi’ar or anywhere else… but… here, you can bring up as much backup as you want.”

“Backup.” Gamora raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“Yeah, brothers, sisters, best friends, whoever… can stand up next to you through the whole thing.”

Gamora considered this. “I… like that. Making the others you care about part of your expression of commitment.”  

“And…” Peter continued. “We get to throw a party afterwards.”

“Naturally,” she teased.

“Hey, do you wanna do this right, or not?”

Gamora drew closer to him, brushing her hand down the side of Peter’s face and pulled him in for a slow, long kiss. She waited for him to weave his fingers into her hair at the top of her neck, then waited some more, digging her fingertips into his back.

She finally pulled away, with a whisper of a smile at the bleary, satisfied look on his face.

She secretly loved doing that to him.

“Yes.” She said. “Let’s do this right.”

A/N

Okay, so... I don’t know about ya’ll, but I worked 8 years in retail through high school and college, and even years later, I am still straight up scarred by the holidays. I have reached a point where I tolerate Christmas music (in moderation), but I still don’t see a day where I will ever again put up a tree or lights, and I truly abhor going anywhere near a mall in December.

So call me a stick in the mud, but my work with the prompts will be mostly holiday agnostic (holiday adjacent, at best... some of those prompts were hard to twist). But all about the Starmora (and isn’t that what really matters?).

Part I is “Tradition,” Part II will be “Dancing.”

[praeuro]

So, this is the long ass post with my thoughts and generally blabing about DMC5. I will cut it so that people don’t have to suffer through my screams but yeah...

So first thing’s first I just wanna get out of the way the styles I used with Dante and give them a sort of ranking and comment about them for this game around. Last time I went full into Swordmaster and just cleaned faces off the screen. This’ll be an ordered list 1-4 in order of my favourite to least favourite, with consideration to all devil arms and guns.

1. Gunsilger

I wanted to have a crack at gunslinger style again since it destroyed my hands in 3 and I never really went back as much but this time around it was really enjoyable and didn’t drive my hands into a craze. Eb & Iv were fun to use with this stance though I could see them getting lack luster by the end, I just wasn’t hitting as hard which is understandable. I only used Cyote-A to get myself out of crowds, or to occasionally push back. Kalina Ann I actually loved this time around because of it’s functionality with you know what...I can’t believe gunslinger could turn Dante into a fucking Ghostbuster. Nah I loved using both Kalina Ann, and it’s second counterpart. God throughout the game after I found that I just wanted Dante to show lady I found her old gun, but no Dante had to be a fucking pest and-FUCK I JUST REALISED THE BITCH STILL HAS IT POOR LADY—FUCK...*sigh* okay Dante you owe Lady big time (does this mean she gets a third iteration????). What were the other ones....? OH RIGHT Dr. Faust. I didn’t want to touch that one, it was a double edged sword and it was fun for a time but I felt like I was just going to use it all up and suffer with it. After I got KA2 I just abused the gunslinger stage 3 mechanics and blew shit up with my LASER lol

2. Swordmaster

It’s really hard not to fall for the one thing Dante is good at. It just boosts his Devil Arm’s power by so much. I loved the swords, I LOVED USING BALROG man that was a good devil arm, nice throwback to the ifrit, and I guess the gilgamesh. CAVILIERE WAS PRETTY DAMN NICE although I’m an average to high speed weapon user so slowing down that much was pretty painful for me (I didn’t use it for long), though I did like it’s swordmaster ability—that came in handy to break so many blocks. Oh and now I welcome the throwbacks and go _**AHH **_because of Cerberus, or now it’s King Cerberus I guess. VERY NICE UPGRADE THOUGH. But yeah sword master was nice in the end...as usual.

3. Trickster

Gonna be honest here and say that I only ever used this as either an evasion mechanic, or when platforming was involved. I just never use trickster offensively.

4. Royalguard

Sorry but I hardly touched this. I still have troubles with the timing, and idk why. It’s just not my style...heh. However it was nice to use occasionally to block certain horrible things. I’m not a tank, but eventually I’ll learn once I do another playthrough.

Okay so with that out of the way I just wanna throw out there that god this was refreshing to have. I do find it weird that this time we have a playthrough that’s intermingled instead of separate start to end. However it’s nice and lengthy still and blends quite nice. Although before I go further I fucking hate that I can’t read the mission descriptions in time before the level loads, even though it’s just a small recap of what happened before I STILL WANNA READ D:

Okay another thing I wanna bring up is Gold Orbs. They THREW them at me like no tomorrow. I used a few yeah but I always had like 8 on hand and I didn’t go looking for them actively. It feels like the kupo coin from KH3, too much power with too much convenience. I liked the blue and purple orb stands though, they were a nice touch instead of just throwing them on the floor or something.

I liked how the story went, though by the middle I picked up and gasped at a few things, and the throwbacks/callbacks holy crap they were nice to mention all the crap and people you know. Even fucking Patty and Kyrie got some nice kicks into this game damn, honestly wasn’t expecting patty. *SLAMS FACE INTO THE TABLE* GIVE. ME. MORE. SIDE. CHARACTER. CONTENT. Sad to not see either of them in person but oh well, maybe next time.

I wanna throw a shoutout to my best friend BlueSpiritFire1 for watching the DMC anime with me because I was a bitch who forgot that shit was a thing. Thank god because it came in handy so much.

Vergil actually fucking stopped being a stabby little bitch for once who’d of thought! I just wish while those two are together they’ll actually start acting mature with one another instead of bringing up the whole POWER and STAHP BEING A DORK thing. I do want Vergil to get an appropriate standing with Dante and Nero because he just needs to slow down and start cooling off. I would love it if they’d just talk for a bit you know, more time to chat.

Controlling V was nice because in other games I like the mage/summoner/support role. He was nice to use and I actually got heaps of Ss ranks on him which is great.

Nero’s new devil breaker arm took some getting used to especially when controlling his magazine and how you can’t gently detach the arm like a fucking normal person would. No instead Nero has to go “Sorry Nico!” *BIG ASS EXPLOSION*—*cocks next gun arm into slot* .Giving up so many arms to make room for new ones was painful but in some way fun. Although loosing a few certain arms when I didn’t have any copies in stock or in mag was sad. However the convenience of finding them out in the open was nice but story-wise...confusing. Especially with Nero saying “Oh, Nico must’ve left this here!” like *confused noises* how the fuck did she find time to throw arms everywhere!?

SPEAKING OF NICO—THOSE ARRIVAL CUTSCENES JESUS. And well that one Lady one where she sticks her head out to openly put out she’s still dangerous guys. Nico was pretty nice and boy was it weird to find out she was related to Mr. AHHHHHHHH. Like fucking hell, least she doesn’t have a stutter because idk that annoyed me on her dad and she really didn’t deserve to have a painful reminder of a deadbeat dad about her. Glad she DIDN’T CARE ABOUT DADDY because fuck that would’ve been awkward to explain, but glad that wasn’t an issue and she knows about it all.

Okay just a few words to open this paragraph up...The Hat Scene. I am so happy that Dante is still quirky as hell. He made Nico happy so I’m happy too. The hat and scarf is cool but gameplay wise still nervous using.

Not having a DT on Nero was fucking weird but I’m glad we got the new arms to compensate. Kinda weird looking back and thinking for a moment that his DT was kinda a pity DT until someone just had to lop his arm off. Ah well least it got resolved and my boy is a lizard. Speaking of DT’s now Dante and Vergil are both that fucking meme about the two hotdogs in terms of DT. Because now we have Devil Sin Trigger. Pretty neat but honestly I found the cheese mechanic in no time. Buy the gun mod for the DST and just hold down RT/R2 to unleash massive fucking damage.

I just need to scream because my tired ass didn’t realise griffon, shadow, and nightmare for what they truly were and in the back of my head I knew something was up but I just didn’t LISTEN. Honestly when the time came to verse nightmare I was crying the back of my head “please don’t return to your OG form I’m begging you, that shit was too painful” but once again the throwbacks were amazing.

Overall I’m happy with the game but I’m super upset that now I don’t have any more DMC to moogle over and I just hope to god they have DLC. I keep hearing that Bloody Palace will make a return so that’s nice, but I want other playable characters ya know, maybe something to fix that itch for more story. I wouldn’t be out of Itsuno’s power to give the fans what they want considering what Capcom did for him to make this game live. He HAS THE POWER!!!! I’m begging for a Vergil story for either a prequel, or a mini sequel. It would be interesting to hear about how he survived all...the mess? Because I think the last time chronologically we saw him was...Neo Angelo blowing up? God it’s been a while.

It’s late where I am and I’ve come back from work so splurging all of this has given me some relief to all the crazy information I wanna just blab about but I think I’m just coming up dry until I playthrough again. So for now idk what to extend this with but I think I’ve gone nuts with a few things that satisfy me enough for now. I’ll probably fan over it more later on in the tags or whatever.