#and involve less busywork to fill out!

[sukimas]

the whole libertarian bear village in NH (grafton) thing is especially funny to me personally because most people become libertarians because they don’t want the government to fuck with them, right. however generally speaking you can get the experience of ““who give a shit” -the government” from any small town in the state. the people you have to worry about bringing the force of the law on you are your neighbors- and if your town is small enough, they usually live half a mile or more away. live on a road that isn’t the main thoroughfare and you don’t even get it plowed for snow and you have to call your buddy who has a plow on his truck (or get one yourself!) just don’t be a pest.

grafton just removed basically all the ordinances that let your neighbors bother you about how you’re being a pain in the ass. it did very little in terms of changing anything legally besides slashing the town’s budget. the problem was almost 100% on the population going “well, it’s not my fucking business” about everything their neighbors did- an issue with the attitudes of the people in the town (20% population increase thanks to freestaters) rather than the town’s nitty gritty governance choices themselves.

basically what i’m saying is that there’s an opposite to suburban moms who run HOAs and it involves bears. try to find a happy medium.

[quarra]

This is fair and true.

... but also there is a shocking amount of paperwork involved with most jobs. Does your job deal with money? There are ledgers and piles of invoices to handle. Does you job deal with building things? There is paperwork for acquiring, storage, and tracking of materials, and then more paperwork for the storage, sale, and distribution of finished products. Do you build experimental shit? All of that materials nonsense is still there PLUS now you have math and extremely detailed models to do to make sure your thing works. Over and over. Along with a whole lot of data for every test run, and then a lot of math and comparing numbers.

Is your job talking to people? Welcome to the world of correspondence, which, yes, a lot is verbal, but just as much is written, not to mention all bullshit to set up to maintain those networks and keep updated on any various projects or special interest groups that may be relevant, plus any/all reports required to keep your superiors (if you have any) updated on progress. Business communication counts as paperwork (where are my office workers out there who have spent three hours on an email so you dont get fucking roasted later, or so your project gets approved?).

Do you have a military command? Omg welcome to paperwork central (as confirmed by a friend of mine who is an O4), because everything needs to be tracked, and all things run on bureaucracy.

Lawyers? Holy FUCK the paperwork. Court documents don't write themselves, and there is a LOT of specific language, AND it needs to have references cited (there was a pretty spectacular couple of court case fubars recently about a couple lawyers trying to us chatgpt for it and fucking themselves and their client over HARD).

Are there folks who are "important" enough that they can push off any and all paperwork onto minions? Some, but they tend to be few and far between, and even very powerful people often like to personally ensure that said paperwork is being done right, which at least requires a review. Get enough projects going and employees, and even a basic glance over of each team's work just to make sure that the end product isnt a steaming pile of shit can turn into a LOT of reading. And potential editing, too.

So. Like. Yes. The mindless paperwork that a lot of fic authors use to fill in the narrative gaps in fic is amusing and sometimes ridiculous, especially if the character.in question doesn't have a 'job' per se, they just go DO STUFF. And yeah, there are definitely characters ans stories that excess paperwork doesn't make sense for.

But a lot of the background busywork is based in what a lot of jobs are really like. And the more action-based a character's job is (ie a mechanic fixes things, a jedi talks to people and potentially stabs them, a race car driver drives cars), the less happy they are likely to be about doing any required documentation, invoicing, or book keeping to sustain that job.

We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing

[itswavelengths]

Good Sudoku is a Roguelike

Along with the rest of the US in the early 2000s, I found myself getting extremely into Sudoku for a short while in middle school. I was never even remotely good, but ripping through the first 10-20 puzzles in a given book or app — generally labelled "Beginner" — made me feel okay about myself. As far as I knew at the time there was an extremely simple ruleset to the game: Place the numbers one through nine in columns, rows, and houses with none of those numbers repeating in any of said columns, rows, and houses. Armed with literally only this information I would often find myself wildly frustrated the moment more intricate solving techniques became necessary to progress. I simply didn’t know such techniques existed as none of the resources I used to play Sudoku had any interest in teaching the skillset required to move past the most basic set of puzzles. And so I'd bounce.

Enter accomplished game designer, artist, and talk-giver Zach Gage, a guy whose new project announcements cause me to drop everything I'm doing to check out immediately. In collaboration with Jack Schlesinger, the two have created what is without question the most streamlined Sudoku experience available for iPhones (and iPads!): Good Sudoku. A lot has been said about what makes the app so special, but to quote the official website:

Good Sudoku turns your iOS device into an AI powered Sudoku genius whose only mission is to help you learn and love this classic game.

This "AI powered Sudoku genius" accomplishes its godquest via a series of tools that not only remove the inherent friction of the game itself, but aim to teach the player high-level techniques used to solve more difficult puzzles further down the line. One such tool is called "Auto Note," which with one tap fills each blank space on the grid with notations indicating every possible answer. Gone is the tedium of starting each puzzle going square by square, using a finicky note-taking tool to get to a point where you can maybe begin to fill some spaces. Auto-note has you covered, my guy. Another tool — “Focus Mode” — allows the player to tap on any of the nine numbers to highlight every spot within the gamespace that number might fit. These two tools in conjunction with one another remove so much of the busywork involved with playing sudoku, I started to question if it should be considered cheating. It's not cheating though, because instead of just straight-up giving you the answers, they allow you to see patterns with more immediacy which means more time spent solving and less time staring blankly into the grid-void.

Those tools by themselves in conjunction with the app's beautiful aesthetic would have probably been enough to get me on board with Good Sudoku, but where Gage and Schlesinger (a good band name) have really outdone themselves is their incredible Hint system. Throughout your experience, the AI is quietly solving each puzzle in the background based on the answers you've managed to fill in. Every time you enter a new piece of information, the AI updates its path to victory. With the tap of a “Hint” button the player can see what the AI has determined to be the most logical next step in that path based on all of the current variables. In most Sudoku apps, one such button would fill the next answer... and that's it. On to the next one. Good Sudoku changes the game (in every sense) by showing you exactly how the AI was able to find that next piece of information, complete with a helpful tooltip explaining the strategy and walking you through the steps required to get there. By surfacing the processes involved, the app teaches players these techniques through repetition. You might not know what a "Locked Candidate" is now, but you absolutely will after seeing one for the tenth time. Through extended play, the game transforms from an unparsable grid of numbers and blank spaces to an exercise in pattern recognition. As these strategies slowly burn themselves into your head, you become a better Sudoku player. It rules.

After playing daily for about a week after its release, I've noticed Good Sudoku activating the same brain-space as roguelikes in the vein of Spelunky or The Binding of Isaac. These are games meant to be played hundreds of times, and for thousands of hours. After years of playing Spelunky I immediately go into auto-pilot when starting a new run because I've seen so many permutations of the level generation I can't help but feel as though surprise is unlikely. But that comfort with such a hostile environment has come from thousands of runs. I've died in Spelunky more times than I can count, and each death brings with it a small lesson for survival in future attempts. At this point, my head is crammed so full of strategies and techniques and possibilities that I feel more equipped than ever to survive the next run. I mean I probably won't… but it's nice to feel confident sometimes!!

It's in this way Good Sudoku has, oddly enough, turned the base game of Sudoku into something actually resembling a roguelike. Each tap of the Hint button reinforces the toolset I'll need to make it through the next attempt down the line. Sure I'm not getting impaled by spikes, but at least I'll be able to spot a Split Naked Pair or a Hidden Triple or something. What Gage and Schlesinger have accomplished here is extraordinary in its execution mainly due to its subtlety: Although the pitch is "to help you learn and love this classic game," so few apps actually accomplish this in a way that feels so lightweight, you'd be forgiven for not even noticing when you've started to solve Expert puzzles without hints for the first time.

Good Sudoku calls itself a sudoku that loves you, and for once in my life, I agree. It was built to care about me, about my mental load, about my time in a way no virtual agent every possibly could. Good Sudoku has more humanity in it than GPT-3. via @jag_pag

Good Sudoku is free, with a $4 in-app-purchase. I don't actually know what happens when you pay the four bucks because I did it immediately. Support cool stuff if you can!

You should download it, and probably everything else Zach has made. Alright ttyl!

⏆

[nobodyfamousposts]

Miraculous Prompt: Resigning With Grace (And Spite)

You know what I want to see?

A common trend in a number (not all, but still quite a few) Miraculous salt fics is that the class forces a vote for a new Class Representative and Lila ends up winning. This is always used as a major blow for Marinette, full of angst and hurt feelings that Lila turned everyone against her and no one trusts her anymore. Sometimes this also eventually results in Lila ignoring her duties and/or putting them off on Alya, with the class giving barely any notice until it’s far too late. Usually long after Marinette has transferred to a different school or class and far long after the class should have started to notice the complete lack of any progress or even effort on Lila’s part in following through with any of her claims.

So much like the “torn notebook” plot, I’d love to see this turned on its head. Because reasonably speaking, the Class Rep position is actually harder than it looks and involves a lot of planning, coordination, requests to the school administration, and just a whole load of busywork to get anything done. And most people don’t realize that.

So let’s go with the general concept: The class have been taken in by Lila, following her like she’s hung the moon and believing her lies about Marinette being a “bully”. Adrien does nothing to help. And all of her now former friends completely neglect to notice all the ways Marinette has been going well out of her way to help them, both as a friend AND as the Class Rep.

Then eventually, under Lila’s manipulations, the class figures that since Lila is so awesome, she could do a much more amazing job as the Class Rep than Marinette. She could call in favors to set up awesome trips, bring in celebrities she knows for little Q and A sessions, and use her great skills to set up great events like the school dance! Surely anything she is involved in would be a hundred times better than what Marinette could come up with! Ignoring, of course, that Lila doesn’t HAVE to be the Class Rep to actually help in any of those things, but salt fics in general and even the show itself as a whole haven’t exactly shown the classmates to be smart unless they specifically are needed to be for one reason or another.

Thus the class demand from Ms. Bustier that they do a new vote for Class Rep. And of course the rest of the class insists they want it to be Lila.

Lila of course gasps and puts on an act of being surprised and completely unaware they were planning this, how wonderful they are to consider her for such an important role, and while making less than subtle jabs at Marinette in any number of ways (her “bullying”, her “inability to handle the role”, etc). All while sending secret smirks at Marinette when she thinks no one is looking.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, Marinette doesn’t get upset. She doesn’t get mad or despondent. She’s not even hurt. Instead, she smiles.

Lila thinks she’s trying to hide the pain. The class is uncertain. Adrien is worried. All of them were thinking Marinette would respond quite poorly to being ousted from her position.

In actuality, Marinette just had a whole lot of weight taken off her shoulders.

It is either at this point or the next day that Marinette drops the bombshells. All of them. At once. In the form of a multitude of papers and documents on Lila’s desk.

These papers include a booklet of all of the Class Rep’s responsibilities, including regular daily/weekly meetings, tasks, duties, assignments, and of particular note: the process to go about arranging any of the number of things the class was wanting Lila to do. They also include forms. Forms upon forms. Some in triplicate. All empty and requiring Lila to fill them out.

Field trips? School dance? Any special events? They have to be requested and approved by the school board. And each one has to have a set budget and detailed plan prearranged before they will be approved. Meaning the Class Rep’s job is to contact the places, get the dates and times for reservations as well as the cost, and ensure safety and adequate personnel to man the events.

Not only that, but these events cost money. Money that the school has no reason or desire to shell out. So that requires student-planned and operated fundraisers. Which also require planning, locations and times for the fundraiser to be run, details of what they’re intending to do to earn money, forms to fill out, and a request to the school board for permission to do.

While Marinette had been the Class Rep, she’d already had all of this planned out to a T. The necessary fundraisers. School trips. The school dance. Even entertainment for the dance, which was a shame, since she had made arrangements for Jagged to come play the music for the night. The documents had been filled out, signed, and every line dotted. The only thing left to do had been to go to the school board and convince them...requiring a meeting with all parties that had to be scheduled and conveniently enough, had actually been arranged for that very week.

And no, Lila isn’t going to get by on Marinette’s plans.

Since Lila and the class insisted the liar already had better plans lined up than anything Marinette could come up with, Marinette happily steps aside and tells her to go for it.

In fact, she has such faith in Lila’s abilities, she’s going to step aside and let her shine. By taking all the arrangements she’d made for the class and cancelling every single one of them. So she starts calling people, all the different groups and agencies and businesses involved in these plans to apologize and retract her reservations. Maybe even going so far as to do so in front of the class as proof.

The high end hotels she had already made reservations with? Cancelled.

The popular museums and tourist sites she’d reached out to? Cancelled.

The transportation needed to get to those places? Cancelled. 

The caterer she had been working with to set up food for the dance? Cancelled. 

Then she calls up Jagged, on a video call in front of the entire class, apologizes for wasting his time, and cancels his appearance at the dance.

Oh, and the fundraisers? They were all going to be bake sales. With contributions from the Dupain-Cheng bakery to be used as products FOR FREE. So the kids running the fundraiser would have gotten a net profit automatically since it IS Marinette’s parents’ bakery. But since Marinette isn’t the Class Rep anymore, she doesn't have to run it or work out any special arrangements with her parents to get the goodies to sell off (which she reminds the class would be at a loss to her parents, no less). And no, Tom and Sabine aren’t going to extend Lila the same deal.

And let’s not forget, there are the forms that Lila has to fill out to get permission for any of it. The multi-paged, mind-numbingly evil forms that no normal person can make sense of. And she has to fill out ALL of them.

All are things she had worked out ahead of time. All were needed to arrange any of the special events the class wanted. Now Lila is going to have to do it all herself, and no, Marinette isn’t going to help her with any of it.

Because, after all, they said themselves that whatever she’d planned won’t be nearly as great as what Lila can come up with.

So Marinette sets the pile on a paling Lila’s desk, cheerfully tells her that from here, it’s all Lila. And proceeds to thank Lila for taking the job off her hands since now that she’s no longer the Class Rep, she’ll have more time to finish her commissions and devote to her gaming.

“Thanks, Lila! I couldn't have asked for a better replacement.”

[a-morality]

@camaronas​

The Witch World was cast in its usual burnt golden hue, despite the sun being high in the sky. Lobco had been here on a number of occasions and with the exception of when she, with her former master, had visited during night time, this world was always cast in that golden glow. She wondered why that was. Was it merely coincidence? It was hard to tell time when one was world hopping and typically their visits were quick and filled with busywork that distracted her from such trivial thoughts. At the end of the day, it probably was mere coincidence, and if not what difference did it really make?

Yet these days her mind wandered so often.  Her contract with Chlomaki was over. She had managed to slip out from Hijoushiki’s hold. Here she was in the Witch World still too afraid to return home. Perhaps one day when she could be certain that he wasn’t searching for her.

For now she would just try to make her way on her own. Chlomaki had shown her own kindness in offering to teleport her back to the sea, but Lobco had instead chosen to come here. It was a place that would be very difficult for anyone not a witch, nor a familiar to one to come. It was much safer here than any other she could think to go to, but she also felt rather out of place. She was no longer a familiar, and what little magic she had was certainly not enough to categorize her as a witch.

Which meant she could help but shake this feeling like she was intruding. Logically she knew that no one cared and that she was far from the only one who was neither witch nor familiar here but still.

It was hard not to feel that way…nor to shake the feelings of loneliness off.

With a sigh she pushed herself off the bridge she’d been looking out over and finished making her way towards the guild. It was a rather convenient place she hadn’t known of until recently–meant specifically for hired hands. Not quite mercenaries but something akin to that–perhaps apprentices or familiars in training? People would turn in applications with their skill sets, and witches would take them on for single jobs. From what she had heard often contracts were made via this system. The shrimp had no intention of starting something so serious after having just voided one with Chlomaki, but she needed to make money some way. The cushion she had built up for herself over the years wasn’t going to last forever, and she needed some way of staying here permanently until she found some other solution.

Figured out what she wanted to do with her life.

She had gotten notification that someone had wanted to meet with her, thus she finished on her trek over.

Once she checked in at the registry she made her way to the room where her client was waiting.

“Hello.” She closed the door behind her and gave a deep bow. “My name is Lobco.”

Tokinome was rather quite decidedly not a witch who kept familiars. It was, for her, an ocupational hazard - being the time witch, she had a tendency to experience it in a less than linear style, which tended to present a bit of a memory problem, if the familiars were left behind. And, unfortunately, she hadn’t quite worked out how to prevent the ravages of time safely on others, which meant that if she did bring familiars with her, then they tended to suffer the tragedy of aging. So, she didn’t keep familiars.

For the most part, this didn’t trouble her - she was happy to spend her time bouncing around, visiting various other witches and people, or simply to spend it alone, performing her research. However, she had recently struck an issue that she didn’t seem to be able to solve herself. This was honestly something which she found rather quite annoying, this persistent annoyance she’d been unable to solve with neither magic nor time.

She was lonely.

This wasn’t to say that she didn’t have people she considered friends, indeed she spent time with other witches, interacting with them and talking to them, befriending them and doing her best to remind herself of what their lives involved. She had journals upon journals for each witch she talked to, detailing where they had last left off, dated chonologically so she could refresh herself and act like she still remembered them. But, despite this, she was lonely. She missed true companionship, even if such a thing was more a distant shadow of a memory by this point, any true recollection of those moments of her youth lost to the ravages of time. She missed being able to laugh with someone over a hot drink without having to pause time to check back for references, missed confiding her secrets in someone. She missed being able to meet someone and not have to struggle to remember their name.

She didn’t miss it enough to stop messing with time, of course. She was in far to deep to do that - she’d already paid so much, to stop now would be foolish. No, she wasn’t going back on her choice, but she was planning on pausing her temporal machinations for a little while, to experience life as it was like for others.

Lobco’s contract had caught her eye - she sounded like an interesting person, and failing that, she could always use a hand translating some of the older scrolls she’d ‘borrowed’ from distant times.

As the door opened, she looked up with a smile, a light chuckle causing the clocks suspended from her hat to bounce as the former familiar bowed. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance! I’m Tokinome, Witch of... Well, I trust my outfit gives that away, at the very least. Now, do you prefer to do more in depth introductions, or shall we discuss the terms of this arangement?~”

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

I’ve not really been giving much updates on Xenoblade 2 as I’ve been playing through it, so since I’m at like 103 hours or something maybe now’s a good time to do that.

Last story thing I did was the big Amalthus boss fight where Jin sacrifices himself, and so my next objective is to hop into an elevator. The story stuff’s picking up really nicely, ngl I didn’t pay full attention during one of the bigger backstory cutscenes so I’ve sorta been losing myself, but everything that’s happening is honestly pretty cool and we’re getting decently solid character moments from everyone involved. Never thought I’d like Zeke but here we are.

And then outside of main story content I’ve just been questing and levelling and shit, I’ve had really shit gacha luck even from legendary orbs because this game is fucking garbage, so I’ve not really had the opportunity to do many Blade Quests, but I mean other sidequests are going pretty well, I’ve done all the like Bana related sidequests and Poppi QTπ and the fuck off long Nopon Murals chain, the school in Fonsett, just general shit like that. And god as I do more sidequests do I really feel how dramatically improved these are from 1, there’s just so much more attention given to the writing and creating quest chains that are actually worth giving a damn about, it’s fuckin great.

Between doing all those sidequests I’ve done as well as going out of my way to uh, look at a guide so I could get every location and fast travel point as possible, I’ve managed to level my party a fair bit as well. We’ve got Morag and Tora at 76, Rex at 75, Zeke at 77, and fucking bizarrely, Nia at 80. I’ve not been playing as Nia, and in fact I’ve pretty much just got her Blade form on Rex at all times since hey that fits thematically. And yet here she is at level fucking 80?

My usual part configuration’s been Morag, Rex and Tora for a good bit now. Morag I just have the most fun playing as, dual whipswords are sick as hell, I’ve actually maxed Brighid’s affinity chart, and I also keep Aegaeon as my 2nd blade because hey story stuff. Blade 3′s generally just whatever rare blade I need at that moment. Between giving him exclusive access to Nia, Nia and Pyra getting a cool level 4 special together, being able to use every other blade, and of course Pneuma or whatever’s entire existence, the game very obviously wants you to be playing as Rex, and I mean he can be pretty fun, but like, eh, Morag’s more fun. I played as Tora a little bit in the early game plus when I got QTπ, and he seems kinda cool, but he leans more into the slow side than Morag and Rex so he’s not totally for me. Also I literally cannot be fucked with Tiger Tiger so my Poppis are all kinda shit but oh well. Zeke was cool to play as, felt like a fast and solid damage dealer, I really was just so deep into Morag at that point that I can’t be bothered with Zeke. And then Nia doesn’t even get a unique weapon lmao fucking fag, I don’t play healers byeeeeeeeeee.

God, uhhh, I beat Territorial Rotbart, that was pretty cool. Certainly combat’s sped up quite dramatically at this point in the game, building up and using specials to fill out blade combos and then fucking shredding enemies apart with chain attacks is a pretty damn satisfying system, ends up making battles feel like they could go in more different places than those of 1 honestly. I don’t think I can say I prefer this to 1′s combat but at least on paper it does seem better, and execution’s still pretty good, even if it took like 70 hours to really get there.

One thing I do really like over 1 is the area development, it’s arguably just area affinity but easier to cheese since you can just bulk buy and bulk sell gold cylinders, but since I like the conventional shops more than I like trading, and getting discounts is cool, and merc missions are fun also, and most of all buying deeds that give you permanent buffs is just super fucking sick, it feels significantly more rewarding and like there’s less busywork involved with area development. Cause yeah the other thing I’ve been doing is buying every deed I can to the best of my ability, and that’s really rewarding to do also. 

Anyway I mean, I think I’m pretty close to beating the game, I know that there are only 10 chapters after all and I’m in chapter 10 so. I’m not really sure how ng+ works in this game with its only 1 save file as far as I know, and I mean maybe I should be doing DLC stuff before I start ng+ (if I even do ng+?) and uhh, we’ll fuckin see. Need to buy the DLC first ofc.

Quick question for anyone reading by the way, when it comes to Shulk, Fiora and Elma as Blades, if I were to equip those to Morag, Rex can still do his “borrowing your blade” thing, yeah? Cause I wanna equip them to Morag since she’s my main, but then I think it’d be fitting for Rex to be able to use them also since like, hey MC, and perhaps I’ll start playing as him a bit more anyway. Idk.

Anyway I can’t think of anything else to say.

[elizabeth-234]

The Supplejack

Previous Chapter Nine: Progress

Summary: Peter Parker has been alone his whole freshman year but finds hope when Stark Industries announces a science competition. The prize? An internship with Tony Stark.

Chapter Ten: Fast-forward

-

Beginning of February  

“I think we might be able to start the full-scale model soon.”

Peter looked up from his phone, which he was reading his notes he doodled in class off of. Mr. Stark offered multiple times to get him a new phone but he preferred the simplicity of this. When he told Mr. Stark it was easier to use the man acted all offended under his smile. Teasing Peter about his inability to figure out a simple phone when they were working on building a full-scale code and model of tech for cars. It was also easier to understand his thoughts written down. While they didn’t look particularly neat on the page it made more sense to him. Mr. Stark seemed to understand that.

He snapped his jaw shut when he realized it was hanging wide open.

“Really?” He said, dropping his eyes back down ignoring the sinking feel in his chest.

Mr. Stark chuckled and went back to scanning the algorithms.

“We can get a full team in here to work on it. Whatever we need.”

A whole team? Someone to take over what they were doing? Peter flinched.

Their work had come so far. From car models went from mere imaginations, to metal models, and back to hologram full scale models. Their protocol were written in C++ after debating between the Python coding.

Peter found the time… soothing to his mind. Sometimes coming in late at night to work by himself even if Mr. Stark wasn’t there. Friday always let him in with a kind word.

He remembered the first couple of times they worked together Mr. Stark would get into a kind of trance, rock music blaring in the background. While Peter liked the music – he made his own playlist to all the songs they listened to – his head rang after an hour or so.

His expression must have revealed more than he wanted to because without comment the next time Peter arrived the music was quieter.  

It was little things like that and the temperature which had Peter settling into their work focusing more on Mr. Stark and less on Tony Stark.

With summer coming up in less months than he thought Peter was sure their time would be cut short.

What he wanted to do was ask the man himself. To beg him to continue working through the summer and next year and the next even if it meant bringing in fifty other people to work on it. He wanted to finish their project, to see their models turn into something real. Something that could help people. The selfish part of his brain suggested that what he really wanted was to continue working with Mr. Stark even if it didn’t end up helping anyone.

Instead what Peter did was stay silent and hum slightly to the music nothing about his appearance gave his thoughts away besides the fists he made every so often looking at Mr. Stark working.  

Would he even want to continue working with Peter?

-

End of February

Julia sat next time him while the subway rumbled forward. He kept his legs folded in front of him, fingers grasping backpack which rested on his knees in order to take up less space.

They already passed his stop but he stayed on like he always did riding with Julia.

“Do you really think the permission will go through?” She asked quietly. Julia had fidgeted today in the lab. Her eyes scanned the paperwork over and over making sure they filled out every form correctly. Their whole team practically had their proposal memorized with the amount of times they’d reworked it.

“I’m sure they will.” He said but continued when her expression didn’t change. “It was really good, Julia. You did a great job.”

Peter stared at the glass window on the other side of the subway. Their reflections looked back and he saw her head duck down.

The subway came to a stop and she stood to leave. She ran her hand through her hair and looked at him.

“Thanks for riding the rest of the way with me. Text me when you get home?” Her tone was quiet and it was Peter’s turn to drop his head. “You’re a great friend, Peter.”

He mumbled something and she smiled over her shoulder walking onto the platform. The doors closed behind her but he didn’t lift his head.

Peter switched trains but couldn’t stop the smile from coming over his face.

She thought they were friends.

-

Beginning of March  

“Kid… Peter?”

He blinked. Mr. Stark’s hand landed on his shoulder. His muscles tensed under the sudden intrusion but Mr. Stark’s eyes never left his face.  Slowly, he squeezed, calming Peter’s pulse, and stepped back.

Mr. Stark ran his hand through his hair.

“Time for food.” He said and waited for Peter to put all his notes away.

“I can just go home, Mr. Stark. It’s no problem.”

The man chuckled and Peter flushed knowing he said that every time.

“I already ordered your favorite from that Korean place down the street.”

Peter stopped walking before hurrying to catch up. They settled around the table piled with way more boxes of food they could ever finish. Sure enough a container of Bibimbap with all tofu, no eggs, and spicy sauce was waiting for him.

Mr. Stark began telling him some gossip he’d heard around the office.

“And how do you know about poor Mr. Singer?” He said, scrapping the crispy rice off of the bottom of the takeout box.

The man didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed when he spoke. “Oh, I just happened to be walking by when his wife came storming in.”

Peter snorted. “Friday told you. Didn’t you, Friday?” He asked over Mr. Stark’s copious denials.

“That is correct, Peter.”  He smiled upward at Friday and failed to notice the soft look Mr. Stark was giving him.

“You caught me, kid.”

-

End of March

It would have been easier to accept if the letters were stamped permanently in red across the whole paper. It would have made since in a way – been final. Instead they received a formal reply. One with fancy wording and apologies that had the vague pretense of sounding sincere and apologetic.

This made the news so much worse.

Their proposal had been rejected or as the letter said: “at this time we are not allowing student groups access to our facilities.”

Julia’s face crumpled while Frank swore. Monica began typing frantically but through it all Peter just sat there.

What would they do now?

-

Beginning of April

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still a lot of good in the world."

They were watching The Outsiders while he waited. Peter had read it the year before in English but had missed the movie day because he had been sick.

The rain pelted down against the glass windows. Thunder and lightning battled in the sky only an arm’s length away from where they sat. He’d watched many storms pass through from his fire escape but here, this high up, Peter felt like he was inside it. Every clap of noise sent a pulse into his bloodstream pumping the blood through his veins. It didn’t key him up like it did in the apartment. The sounds were loud enough to sooth his racing thoughts enough so he could focus on the movie playing in the background and the soft sounds of response Mr. Stark was making to the movie. He felt safe there in the storm.

Of course, Peter had put up a mild protest. He’d been fine to go home, he told Mr. Stark. But the man took one look outside and suggested the movie. Food was involved, too.

It took Peter exactly thirty-two seconds to decide he could wait for the rain to pass.

An hour later, laden with stir-fry and popcorn Peter was boneless on the couch. He smiled as Mr. Stark leaned forward, his eyes focused on the screen. It was the man’s first time watching it as well and though Peter knew the ending, it didn’t stop his enjoyment.

He yawned and sank deeper into the cushions.

The day had seemed unending and filled with busywork assignments. Things that weren’t teaching him anything but would take all night to do. Ned was gone so he spent all lunch listening to Mike debate the pros of anarchy with everyone at the table. He stared at MJ until she caught him and he ran away to the library. It wasn’t until he got to the lab that he had a moment to breath.

Something touched his shoulder and then with more force he was pulled away from the couch.

The sound of the credits rolled. He didn’t realize his eyes had shut.

Peter could hear Mr. Stark’s voice whispering something and a feminine answer but his eyes stayed closed, blessedly on the brink of sleep.

His head was against a hard surface, a chest, and Peter was lulled deeper by the heartbeat within. A hand brushed back his hair after he was placed on something soft and he could swear the voice said something important but Peter was too asleep to make sense of it.

-

Ned leaned across the lunch table. His hands bordered their lunchboxes in a protective frame as Peter relayed the news from his meeting the previous week.

“I just feel so bad for those Frank and Monica. I mean they’re graduating and everything. This was their final hurrah.” He said, nibbling on a carrot.

“Dude, that sucks. What are you going to do?”

Peter nodded at the question. As it was they weren’t sure.

The prototype of the machine was necessary for them to see before they could come up with a model for themselves. He had thought about going to Mr. Stark and asking him for advice, but he decided not to in the end. It was an unfair advantage that the other teams couldn’t use. If no one else could go to the owner of Stark Industries for help, why should he?

Peter was also proud of the work they accomplished so far. Sometimes he forgot how young they all were, given the amount and quality of work they completed.

The whole experience had changed him more than that though and he was loathe to sit there and do nothing.

“I don’t know, Ned. We’ll figure something out though.”

He could only hope.

-

“Look, Peter. Mr. Stark will understand if you can’t make it today.” May spoke with an edge to her voice. “I forbid you from going.”

“May, I have to go. This is important.”

“Peter, you’re sick. It’s okay.”

He coughed into his elbow, sniffling and meagerly taking a tissue May was holding out to him with pouting lips.

Peter whispered something to her. Something he was too afraid to think but needed to say.

“What sweetheart?” She said and even though he was sick and had a fever May sat on the edge of his bed.

“It’s just,” he licked his chapped lips. “What if he finds someone else to help out?”

He thought of the team Mr. Stark mentioned before. Peter looked away from the piercing glance. His fingers fidgeted with the blanket wrapped around him.

“Peter, he would never do that. You know he wouldn’t.”

She said it with such conviction but his stomach sank. Did he know that?

May kept talking, running a reassuring thumb over his knuckles but Peter was too wrapped up in his thoughts. He went through cataloging every interaction and every word spoken between them.

Peter thought of the way Mr. Stark smiled when he came into the lab and how he would always check the temperature to make sure it was warm enough. The man practically bought the whole menu at a restaurant when Peter stayed for food and it was getting more common for him to stay after a work day. Sometimes they would watch a movie but most times he would just work on homework as Mr. Stark continued with business. But were those concrete signs? It certainly didn’t mean he would abstain from finding a replacement if the work needed to be done. Peter sighed into his hoodie, wincing at the way his stomach was cramping.

It was with the image of Frank helping Mr. Stark in the lab that Peter made his decision.

He realized May had left when she popped her head back into the room.

“Stay home, Peter. Okay? I’m sorry I have to go to work.”

His cough wracked his chest but he managed to tell her he loved her. She gave him one last searching look before she left for work.

After he heard the door shut with limbs groaning Peter got out of bed. He toggled back and forth as the blood ran to his head but with careful steps made it out of his room. His hand swept across the length of the highest cabinet and found the last packet of powdered vitamin C before mixing it in his water bottle.

There was sweat seeping into his sweatshirt and on his forehead by the time he made it to the subway platform and he shivered into it. His breath shuddered when he finally sank down into one of the empty seats, making sure to touch as little as possible. He kept his hoodie up and took small sips of the vitamin infused water, praying for an instant cure.

Friday greeted him when he got into the elevator but he didn’t lift his head up to the lights like he normally would. They burned his eyes.

“Hey, Friday.” He said rubbing his hand along his chest to stop a cough. Even to his own ears his voice sounded tired.

“Are you alright, Peter?” Friday said, softer than normal.

“I’m fine, just a cough.”

Friday said nothing but the elevators opened.

The room was void of people and Peter sat down with a heavy breath. He crossed his arms on the table in front of him. Thankfully Friday must have forgotten to put the lights on so it was dark in the room.

Every minute he sat there, Peter shrunk down until his head came to rest on his arms. Wet coughs racked his chest and he shivered again. It was cold in the room but he didn’t want to bother Friday. The curt tone he used earlier with Friday sent a guilty tendril tightening along his spine.

The doors swept open and bursting into the room with wide eyes was Mr. Stark. Peter tried to smile but from the furrow in the man’s mouth, it wasn’t as reassuring as he meant it to be.

“Kid, what’s wrong? You okay?”

Peter sat up trying to relax the ache in his muscles. He flinched back when rough hands touched his cheek before moving to rest against his forehead.

He felt silly to realize Mr. Stark had moved across the room and was now kneeling beside him. Peter concentrated on the small lines forming lightly in the corner of his eyes. For a moment he imaged being younger and being sick at home, but instead of Ben kneeling in front of him it was Mr. Stark making sure he was okay.

With a shake of Peter’s head Mr. Stark removed his hands and walked away. His voice rung out as he barked orders to Friday and then he was on the phone.

Peter gripped the edges of the counter, tears blurring in his eyes. How could he even think that? The betrayal of his thoughts sent a tear over the edge and down his hot cheek. Worse than that though was the longing he’d felt – still felt - when Mr. Stark looked at him with such concern.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t his to want.

Mr. Stark came back and led Peter into the elevator. His tone was quiet, soothing, and Peter weakly followed him after brushing his tear away. Friday chimed in to give reports on his temperature. His brain felt fuzzy.

There was an arm, guiding him, warm across his back.

“Come on, Kid.” 


They arrived into a bedroom and dimly Peter realized this is where he fell asleep the previous month. He stopped short at the door.

“Peter?” The man spoke softly and the back of Peter’s throat itched.

“But… we have the meeting. We were going to work on …” His brain failed him at the end.

“Hey, kid. You’re in no position to be working. Hell, you’re burning up.”

He sent Peter to the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Peter sat at the very end of the mattress, his butt halfway off the edge. It wasn’t his bedroom, just one for guests. There was nothing in there that was his, but Peter noticed that the lamp was where he moved it before when he tried to get some reading in the morning when was there.

He moved closer to the headboard, eyes on the light in the bathroom, and switched it on.

Peter could still convince Mr. Stark they could work today. It would be fine. Mr. Stark wouldn’t have replaced him then as long as he remained useful.

“The work will still be there later.” Mr. Stark said emerging from the bathroom as if he read Peter’s thoughts. “Drink this while you take this.” He gestured to the water and Tylenol in his hand.

Peter’s protest died on his tongue and Mr. Stark spoke again.

“I’m not in any hurry to finish the project. As long as you get better.”

He blanched at the implication of the words.

There was no anger in the man’s face. Something uncurled in his chest when all he saw was concern. Ben used to wear that face well.

Peter’s eyes dragged on his cheek. Another cough stormed through his chest.

“I’ll go fill this up again. There’s sweatpants and t-shirts in the dresser.”

Peter stood up, feeling red on his cheeks. There were clothes there?

He browsed the drawers looking at the various t-shirts - all avengers themed. Quickly he got into sweatpants and sweatshirt glancing at the door back and forth.

With a speed he used when changing after gym class he shucked his shirt and pants off and into his chosen clothes, grey sweats and Stark Industries shirt. His hand brushed over the ironman one but he couldn’t quite make himself put it in.

He settled on the bed again just before there was a knock on the door. Dizziness wavered through him and Peter grasped the bedside table for support.

Mr. Stark came in carrying the glass. The covers were pushed back and Peter found himself lying down. The man hovered for a moment, his hand came up from his side reaching out before dropping back.

“Get some rest, Kid. Friday will be here if you need anything and I will just be in the living room outside.”

Peter’s eyes closed of their own accord and he nodded. Footsteps swept across the room but before the door could close Peter thanked Mr. Stark, wishing he had the right to say more.

“Of course, Peter.” Peter’s throat went tight. The door shut and Peter spun around. He didn’t want to look at the lights shining through the cracks in the door.

Of course, he said like he would look after Peter. As he would have if Peter’s mind conjured up sound for his imagination. Like he cared.

The knot loosened in his throat and Peter locked the guilt away for a moment, instead basking in the knowing someone was waiting up in case he needed them right outside this room that wasn’t technically his.

He reached up, adjusting the pillow under his head and closed his eyes.

-

Middle of April

Peter’s stomach protested as the smell of leftovers wafted from the lid he opened. The nausea from being sick still lingered and Peter found his appetite was suffering because of it.

The cafeteria, loud as ever, raged around him. He pushed the container of food away with a grimace.

Something nudged him from the side and he saw Ned’s profile looking straight ahead. He shrugged and went back to staring at his lunch. Ned’s elbow dug into his upper arm and Peter looked over while rubbing the spot of impact. Narrowly dodging another nudge, he got the hint and followed the boy’s gaze.

Peter blinked at the figure coming forward.

Flash waded through the crowds and tables. His gaze was fixed forward and now that they weren’t precisely enemies Peter let himself feel intrigued by how people just seemed to get out of Flash’s way.

He wondered why Ned was so interested in Flash until the boy in questions eyes moved and landed on Peter.

He was making his way in their direction.

Peter knew from the previous eight months how rare this was and his stomach cramped in response. His eyes flounced back to the Tupperware.

“I wonder where he’s off to,” Ned said.

Peter watched Ned in his observations not wanting to be caught blatantly staring at Flash himself. Despite the itching feeling crawling through his limbs Peter smiled at his friend and the way he moved forward so Flash’s view of Peter would be limited.

Under his lashes he looked up to see Flash continued the straight path to them. Peter held his breath and watched his legs, which seemed much safer than his face.

Flash continued forward until he was a table away. Peter finally looked up at a sound from Ned and met his eyes. The boy stared straight at him and Peter forced himself to maintain contact. Flash glanced toward the doors and back at Peter, his brow quirked when Peter’s face remained in ignorance. He did it again before veering off toward the exit.

The doors closed behind him blocking Peter’s curious gaze, food dilemma forgotten.

Should he follow?

Ned began talking about how weird Flash had been lately and Peter nodded along. His hands twisted in his lap, bouncing in time to the rise and fall of his foot against the ground.  

Without breaking eye contact with the door, he stood up, murmuring something to Ned whose eyes flickered to the door. Ned nodded without missing a beat.

As Peter was passing toward the door he briefly reached out to touch Ned on the shoulder before hurrying away. Ned was such a good person…. A good friend.

Backpack slung over his shoulder Peter followed the path his eyes traced before and saw Flash leaning against the lockers down the hallway from the cafeteria.

“Flash. Hey.” He said trying to keep the weary tone out of his voice. They’d seen each other off and on at their time at the Tower but hadn’t seen much of each other at school. In fact, the last time they talked was when Peter had a meltdown in front of him, which was slightly awkward to realize how Peter yelled at him before. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

The boy’s arms were crossed in front of him. Peter could see his shoulder’s tensing and he held his body still. Peter forced his hands to stop fidgeting by shoving them in his pockets. A blush worked its way onto his cheeks when neither of them spoke. Was he wrong? Was he supposed to follow Flash?

“So, I hear you need a connection at Oscorp?” Flash said uncrossing his arms and casually raising his eyebrow at Peter.

His jaw dropped. This was not what he expected.

“Uh… How did you hear that?” He said trying to find a semblance of rational thought.  

Flash had the decency to look embarrassed but he answered anyway, if a little cautiously. “That Mike kid is loud as shit. Anyway, do you?”

“Why?”

Flash sighed and crossed his arms again.

“Listen, I’m trying to be... decent. My dad has connections there and I could see if something could come of it.”

“Why?”

Was that all he could say?

“Is that all you can say?” Flash snapped.

Peter shut his mouth and thought about the options. He could lie. Say that they didn’t need this. Then he wouldn’t need to repay Flash for anything. But the image of Julia’s clenched hands and the hours they spent working came to mind. And he decided he didn’t care if he was put in Flash’s debt or that he didn’t know the motivations behind this act of supposed kindness.

Plus, Flash proved changed – sort of – mostly. If he wanted help, well, Peter wasn’t going to say no.

“Yeah, Flash. We do need help, if you’re willing to offer it.”

They nodded at one another before walking down the hallway too close to be considered friends but too far away for anyone to perceive them as enemies.

-

“Sorry, Monica couldn’t make it today but she said as long as we take notes it should be fine.”

Flash stood shuffling on the balls of his feet in the doorway. Julia and Frank were clearing off a spot for him to sit at the table while Peter motioned him forward.

Frank clapped Flash on the back in greeting and welcomed him.

“Thanks man. This is going to be a great help.”

When Flash sat down, moving his backpack to rest against the leg of the table, everyone stared at him. It was the first time after their sandwich fiasco that Peter had seen him look so embarrassed and out of place. He withheld a smile.

Flash got straight down to business, explain the security and how his father got them a tour and question time with the person in charge of the prototype. Julia’s hand flew over the paper trying to write every word he spoke. Without breaking his speech Flash slight a typed-out sheet of all the information. Her hand shook slightly and thought she thanked him, Peter noticed she didn’t look him in the eye.

The meeting passed quick and Peter was pleased with how much Flash got along with everyone. He and Frank spent a bunch of time talking about sports and the playoffs. After some cajoling he even got Julia to talk about their new kittens at home. In turn, Flash smiled as she told him how BOGO would steal all of Free’s food.

Flash smiled at the story. A real, teeth-baring smile.

-

Peter was used to things happening slowly in his life.

It took him almost half a school year to decide to participate in the S.T.A.R.K competition. Days avoiding the sign in sheet until finally he took the plunge. Months after dreading nearly everything he settled into a routine. He was opening up to the people around him.

He thought back to how scary it was considering Ned’s offer to sit with him at lunch. It was weeks until he was able to go more than once a week.  He even went over to Ned’s house over break.

But all these things took time and much thinking on Peter’s part. He weighed the consequences of everything before stepping forward and rarely out of his comfort zone. That was safe.  That was good.

Things happening quickly were never good in Peter’s opinion. Ben’s funeral came and went so fast. The whole thing sped up like someone was pressing fast-forward. Though he was careful and took his time letting Sam into his life; it took but a second for her to break his heart.

That’s why when Flash sat at their lunch table at the end of the week, Peter’s stomach turned sour. He knew to expect the worse. He foresaw the worst. But there was nothing he could do or say in the moment.

Ned, after a moment of scrutiny, looked between Flash and Peter, then stuck out his hand for the two of them to shake, forever reminding Peter how forgiving Ned was.

How many second chances had Ned given him?

Just like that Flash began to eat lunch with them sometimes. Not every day, but throughout the week he would stop by and join an argument between Mike and Midge before wandering off again. Somedays he would even find Peter in the library when the cafeteria was too much for him to get through.

Flash was quieter than Ned. He would hold himself still, aware of his space at any given time and there was still tension between them sometimes. But it was nice all the same.

Peter didn’t find it so strange that Flash and him became friends so quick this time.

-

End of April

Peter looked around the lab. Scattered on the tables were scraps of paper, all smudged with crunched writing, and metal shavings discarded from the models they had built. His backpack was folded over itself on the floor by the door on top of which his jacket was crumpled.

Mr. Stark stood beside him and if Peter turned his shoulders slightly to the left he could see the slight furrow in his brow. How his hand would come up and rest under his chin while his finger traced his goatee every five minutes or so.

It was his thinking face, Peter knew.

Months of working together and Peter’s steady heartbeat was proof he was relaxed. Content.

He didn’t think about the fact this would all be ending come summer. And he absolutely ignored the itch in the back of his throat thinking about the possibility of never seeing Mr. Stark again.

“I’m still thinking we are going to totally have to overhaul the thrust mechanisms on this side, Mr. Stark. It’s working now, but barely, and it could be so much better.” He said breaking the silence.

Mr. Stark’s eyebrows rose in response but he didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed trained on the new schematics displayed in front of him. He grumbled something under his breath and Peter cracked a smile knowing he was right.

The lab settled under the silence again. Peter moved around to Mr. Stark’s other side and grabbed a Stark pad off the table.  Easily Mr. Stark stepped to the side to accommodate his reach and giving Peter enough room to work at the table.

-

Peter yawned as he opened the door to the apartment. He grabbed a box of Chex mix and sank into the couch. His phone vibrated again and shoving his hand into the box checked his messages. The group chat between everyone went off with a near consistency putting his flip phone into overdrive.

There had been time of the subway to look at it but he ended up falling asleep, waking only to find drool gathering on his sleeve where his head rested and to hear he missed one his stop.

Even though he was barely awake now, Peter considered the walk home beneficial. The moon hung in the middle of the sky decorated by a vague face and stars all around.

It let him think, at least.

His third handful came away as the rest, only the little breadsticks and the occasional rye chip. May must have eaten her way through the bag first. He set it aside feeling a cramping in his stomach. Maybe he was still sick.

He yawned again and sank further into the couch knowing he should go to bed, but his bones felt too brittle to get up.  

Everything was coming to a head soon. Midterms, Mr. Stark and their work, and the tour were compounding at an exponential rate.

It was all amazing. Peter knew he was so lucky and at times thought he dreamed it all.

But it was sometimes too much.

He wasn’t used to having so many people in his life or having to check his phone throughout the day to see who was texting him.

Who would have thought at the beginning of the year Ned and Flash would send each other memes? Or that Julia would come out and lead one of their group meetings?

Peter smiled remembering how Monica’s jaw dropped when Julia, gently, corrected her on some of the analytics. Or how she gave everyone in their group, Flash included, a newer version of the pen that landed her in the internship program.

He felt so full of life, something he’d never thought possible for someone like him.

And right now, it hurt that all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep for the weekend. He wondered what would happen if he told them. If he just needed some time to disconnect for a bit.

He knew he couldn’t do that though. They would be fine without him, they would move on and continue texting minus his phone number, and Peter wasn’t ready to get rid of them so soon.  They deserved someone who was normal, who could sit in the cafeteria for the whole week without feeling bone tired, or someone who could be fully present without worry about sneezing the wrong way.

Peter would get through it and soak everything up. Every laugh, and debate at lunch. Flash’s and his new acquaintanceship. And especially any time Mr. Stark was willing to work together. He could push through it for now.

It would be fine.

He groaned against the couch pillow thinking about everything he had to do and after looking at the calendar on the way he realized something.

It was only a week until they would tour Oscorp.

It's always one step forward and two steps back for our Peter isn't it?

a/n: Hi sweet friends. I hope you are all doing well and you and your loved ones are staying safe. This semester has been crazy, as things get in real life. My classes have been moved online so I can finally start writing again which makes me so happy. I also just wanted to say thank you for continuing to read this story. Every comment and kudos make my week so bright.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Taglist: @verdonafrost @demi-starzak @whatisthou

Next Chapter Eleven: Welcome to Oscorp

[myfriendpokey]

50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole. 

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another.  So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg  Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the  mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view”  and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it. 

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

[volunteeriowavistas]

Voices from the Past: Advice from Last Year’s VISTAs

By: VISTA Leader, Helen Bisioulis

We are at that time of year where we have had many of our VISTAs end their terms and many new VISTAs start. To our VISTAs who have ended their terms: thank you for spending a year of your life tackling poverty here in Iowa. We are so appreciate of your service. To our new VISTAs: welcome on board to the Volunteer Iowa VISTA team! We are so excited to have you as part of our team. Thank you too for dedicating a year of your life tackling poverty in Iowa. Check out the advice that last year’s VISTAs have for you! 

Mariah Himes, Iowa Mentoring Partnership Project Coordinator AmeriCorps VISTA July 2016-July 2017, Volunteer Iowa AmeriCorps VISTA Leader August 2017-June 2018

“Make a list of all your big ideas—or small ideas. Just have a handy list of things to do that may or may not relate to your VAD that are NOT urgent, that you can do for fun when you have less to do than is ideal. You make not think so when you first look at your VAD, but there will come times when you will get bored and need something to do, especially something that doesn’t involve being on the computer.

Go to as many conferences and trainings as you can. Meet people from fields you are interested in. Ask them to lunch or coffee; get their story. Make the connections you want.

Constantly seek out new opportunities to learn about things that interest you. Peruse local job opportunities and see what sticks out to you. Look at available positions and, for ones that interest you, review the requirements. Pursue experiences and trainings that will bolster your resume to meet some of those requirements. Use your year of service to build your resume into something with which you can walk confidently into an interview for a job you actually want.

Use your passions and interests at work. Chances are you have lots of room for influence, innovation, and initiative at your site. Fill these spaces with (or create spaces for) activities you love and find creative ways to link them to your VAD. For example, if you are an artist, find or create ways to use your artistry in support of your organization and use it as the asset it is to build capacity in unique ways. One VISTA member was working on recruitment for a nonprofit agency. She was an artist and missed painting, so she developed toolkits to help the volunteers she was recruiting work better with her organizations clients—children in need. The toolkits provided a pathway for the adult volunteers to engage children artistically as they went through tough times at home. These toolkits were not on this VISTA’s VAD, but she used her creativity to link her passion to her work in a way that would leave a lasting impact. Those toolkits will be available to volunteers long after she finishes her service site.”

Helen Bisioulis, Dubuque Circles Initiative AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer Coordinator August 2016-August 2017, Volunteer Iowa AmeriCorps VISTA Leader August 2017-August 2018

Take advantage of professional development opportunities and networking.. Even if you have been in the social sector for awhile, there is always more to learn. Networking is a great way of securing a job in the community after you are done with VISTA and may even help you get some projects done during your VISTA year. When I was a VISTA at Circles, I volunteered at a local community fair where I met AmeriCorps NCCC members. I was just curious about what they did so I talked to them about it. Well I found out that they were looking for volunteer hours in the community and when I started at Circles, we did not have enough volunteers for the 30 children that we had. This team of 8-10 AmeriCorps NCCC members volunteered for the whole first month of my service term until I was able to recruit volunteers and interns from the local colleges. My co-worker’s jaw dropped when she saw that I had recruited so many volunteers in only a month. You never know where networking may lead! 

Furthermore, if you would like to do add more projects to your VISTA year, do not hesitate to do so. While you do have a VISTA Assignment Description (VAD) that lays out your activities for the year, look for gaps that lie in your organization, think about ways that you can improve it. That is the purpose of the VISTA. The VISTA can come into the organization with fresh eyes and see things that others who have worked there for awhile may not have. While I was serving as a VISTA Leader at Volunteer Iowa, I noticed that there was a need for affordable, relatively nice, and safe housing for VISTAs. So, I went about to research such housing in all of the communities that VISTAs are serving in across the state of Iowa. This turned into a 30+ page Iowa Housing Resource Guide that I frequently show to potential employers as an example of the hard work that I am willing to put in, my attention to details, and my ability to address gaps and needs. This was not on my VAD, so don’t be afraid to try something that’s outside of it. A VAD is supposed to be a living document, too, so if you and your supervisor feel the need to change it, do it! With Volunteer Iowa’s permission of course.

Also, if you’re fresh out of college, there is a lot of adjustment that will need to be made to what it’s like to be in the work world. For example, employers like initiative, learn how to take it and be a self-starter. Learn those little things like how a scanning machine works or how to send a fax. All of your work will now be at work so when you go home sometimes, you may be bored. This is where adulting like grocery shopping, cleaning, etc. comes in. Volunteering at a local organization can curb boredom and is good for networking and resume building, especially if you want to stay in the social sector.

And when I say leave work at work, I highly recommend that you do so. For your own mental health and the sake of the organization that you are serving in, take care of yourself and don’t overdo it. If you get burnt out, that not only negatively effects your health but the well-being of the organization that you are serving at because they are missing out on all of your great energy and ideas! Burn out will happen but doing things like setting up boundaries between work and home, will lessen the impact of it. I also recommend the following very basic self-care tips:

1. Drink enough water.

2. Eat at least two meals a day.

3. Get between 6-9 hours of sleep a night. Set a regular bedtime.

4. Make room for something fun everyday.

5. Exercise daily, even if it’s just going for a 10 minute walk, it’s something that is getting your body moving.

Benet Conlin, Iowa Community Action Association VISTA March 2017-March 2018

“I'm not sure what I wish I knew before getting started. I was prepared to be it on my own- I didn't know anything about a vista leader or that even when applying you could talk with them.”

Jasmine Sronkoski, Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Community Engagement VISTA, April 2017-December 2017

“Capacity Building and indirect service is tough and a slow but important process

Your VAD is important, and be open for it to change. Let it guide the work you do, but don't feel like you have to be rigid to it

Discuss compensation time during the first few weeks of service and get it in writing - this is important when taking care of yourself. Although service  is a 365 day position, there comes a time when it is necessary to take a     break. Don't feel like you are lacking in doing so. 

Get to know the support systems in place in the community and ask for help when necessary”

Jackey Melton, United Way of Wapello County Literacy Coordinator AmeriCorps VISTA, April 2017-April 2018

“1.       Make friends with the other VISTAs.

2.       Be helpful.

3.       You must step out of your comfort zone.

4.       Be patient. You will learn and understand your VAD.

5.       Have fun. Life is short.”

Kay Wolfkill, Iowa Mentoring Partnership AmeriCorps VISTA May 2017-April 2018

“The only thing I wish I would've known is more about my service site. So like I wish I would've taken more time to get to know the organization I signed up to serve in, what others' experience is, how prominent they are in the nonprofit scene, etc.

I would also add in there to never be afraid to ask your supervisor or coworkers for growth opportunities or any projects they have to pass down to you so you can learn something new. You'd be surprised how often you have the opportunity to gain experience or exposure to something if you just ask to sit in on meetings, help with a task, etc. This was especially helpful for me because part of joining VISTA was to figure out if I even wanted to continue on in the nonprofit sector so I wanted to take advantage of every possible opportunity to learn.”

Connor Milliken, Iowa Community Action Association AmeriCorps VISTA, June 2017-June 2018

“Be flexible to change. As a VISTA, you have to attend to different activities. Don’t let it overwhelm you, just embrace it. VISTA is not only about your host site but connecting to other VISTAs. There are a lot of different avenues to be involved. It is important to take direction & collaborate. Embrace the inbetweenness, don’t let it make you anxious. You may have some downtime, don’t become complacent. But you’ll also have times when you’re really busy.”

Melanie Bressler, Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Community Legacy Program VISTA, June 2017-June 2018

“I would’ve signed up for government assistance ASAP, knowing that other VISTAs did it, too. You can do stuff that just interests you for your own personal and professional development. And you don’t have to follow your VAD to a T.”

Miranda Bellah, Iowa Public Television AmeriCorps VISTA, July 2017-July 2018

“1. Be assertive.

2. No more than 20% of your work should be busywork.

3. Speak with previous VISTAs about what the workplace culture is like at your site.”

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ - A Movie Review

Here’s how this is going to play out – this first section is a spoiler-free review of the general characteristics of this movie. I still point out all of the films’ accomplishments and shortcomings, but in a sweeping way that’s not too specific about plot details. After the first score which summarises the film in a spoiler-free way, we’ll be diving into complete spoiler territory. I want to talk about the details of this film but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so check out the spoiler-free review if you haven’t seen it yet, then go watch it, and then come back for my full thoughts after you’ve done all of that.

         Avengers: Infinity War would be an impressive accomplishment if it just showed up and existed. Marvel was tasked with its most difficult juggling act to date with this film, having to bring in countless characters who have each had significant roles in their own movies, and find a way to allocate the appropriate amount of time to each of them so that nothing feels forced or clunky. Oh, and it had to convey the established personalities of these characters almost instantaneously so that familiar viewers are happy to see them again, while newcomers get a sense of who they are without too much explanatory dialogue bogging down the run-time / pacing of the movie. Oh! AND it had to introduce a central character who has been hinted at for a long time but hasn’t really had more than three minutes of screentime across any of the 18 movies up to this point, and develop him enough to make him seem like a legitimate threat, as well as a compelling enough character to take the weight that’s placed on his shoulders as the source of conflict in this two-part grand finale.

         Not only does Infinity War pull all of that off, but it does so while telling a cohesive story which constantly marches forward with an unwavering sense of purpose. It delivers on the promise of being this colossal team-up event movie while also taking you by surprise as the scale and stakes of the movie start to sink in. As the film progresses, the tone causes you to feel an ever-increasing amount of adrenaline and uneasy dread. They are both in constant balance with each other, making you wonder when, if ever, one of these feelings is going to win out over the other. Some characters don’t get much room for an emotional scene or to do much more than show up, be themselves, and engage in some enjoyable banter with old friends and new faces they’ve never met before. Even so, there are a great deal more characters who get the chance to have a meaningful moment or just sit down and talk than you might expect. Infinity War is a film that’s filled to the brim with content, but it has a clear focus to it which gives it a coherent theme and makes it work as its own movie, and not just the last act of an ongoing series. I’d be lying if I said that I was as invested in some of its threads as I was with others, and there is going to be a lot of debate over whether every character was handled as well as they ought to have been. But Infinity War, despite the hype, meets many of the lofty goals it has set for itself over the years, and its story also ended up giving me something I didn’t expect which has caused me to sit and process this film long after I finished watching it.

8/10 – I don’t know if it breaks the Top 5 MCU movies, but its tone and impressive balance in many areas certainly makes it one of the better films in the series.

OKAY SPOILER TERRITORY FROM HERE ON OUT GUYS

         After having time to sit on the film and reflect on how each character was used, I’d say that each character was properly represented and used effectively. Given the apocalyptic circumstances and the particular nature of what Thanos is after and what each person involved brings to the table, the film ensures that the characters all act in a way that scans with their personal history and what they would feasibly do in this situation. The fact that the film pulls this off with arguably every single character, whether they’ve got the luxury of time with full emotional conversations like Gamora and Quill, Thor and Rocket, or Vision and Wanda, or if they’re present but not quite focused on like Okoye, Bucky, Black Widow, or Captain America, is hugely commendable. Those are some of my favourite characters in the series, but I didn’t feel short-changed because I still felt that they were the same people I’ve grown to care for, and I’m pretty confident that a good number of them will have more time dedicated to them in Part 2. With the film spinning as many plates as it does, you’d expect one or two of them to fall down and break, and depending on the individual audience member’s level of investment in certain characters, they may well feel like someone they cared about was under-served. But I was personally satisfied with the overall handling of the characters.

         However, one area where the film felt uneven for me was how invested I felt about each of the individual ongoing threads. Character groups move back and forth throughout the film, occasionally overlapping or splitting up, which means that things are constantly shifting, but not so rapidly that you can’t keep track of everything, which I appreciated. I enjoyed the characters simply being together, so ultimately the specifics of what they were doing didn’t matter all that much to me. Nevertheless, two threads which felt weaker to me for different reasons were Thor, Rocket, and Groot’s quest to forge Stormbreaker, and the stuff on Earth with Cap’s group between his awesomely triumphant entrance, and Thor’s group arriving onto the battlefield at Wakanda. I loved seeing Rocket and Thor interact, as Rocket shows some growth and actually reaches out to Thor to try and offer support and check he’s okay, and Thor shows Rocket genuine respect and heartfelt comradery in their conversations. However, while it’s cool to see where Mjolnir and the Infinity Gauntlet were forged, the amount of time dedicated to these guys as they forge Stormbreaker feels like busywork, and lacks the palpable sense of tension which is ever-present throughout the rest of the movie. We don’t doubt that they’ll forge Stormbreaker, and while I wasn’t sure whether Thor would make it through the movie, the danger of the forging sequence never sold me on the possibility that Thor might die here. I do appreciate what this plot thread brings to the ending when Thor uses Stormbreaker on Thanos and comes so close to preventing calamity, but still ends up failing, even after all the work they put into forging this weapon. However, when they’re actually forging Stormbreaker, it all just feels a little too removed from everything to do with Thanos, which makes it feel too removed from the main thrust of the narrative.

         The reason the group on Earth and their fight to protect vision left me a little cold is that, while the other groups get more time to slow down and actually talk to one another, I felt less of that with Cap’s group. More than any other group in the film, their dialogue felt preoccupied with what needed to be done next, making the conversations and character lines feel functional rather than opportunities for unique moments of introspection. Granted, there may have been more of these quiet emotional moments going on than I give the film credit for which could have passed me by, and I might just catch some of them when I go see it again for my second viewing. Still, when I hear some people talking about how they had an issue with how the film never stops moving forward, this is the section of the film that comes to mind for me. Neither of these threads are weak enough to drag the film down all that much, but because the rest of Infinity War felt so lean and well-balanced, they do stand out.

But I’ve danced around it long enough. Let’s get to the real meat of this movie and talk about Thanos and its ending.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SERIOUSLY GET OUT NOW JUST GO SEE THE FILM ALREADY

         As many others have pointed out, this is Thanos’ movie. I love seeing this character land as well as he has with people after all this time, and hearing all the various thoughts about his twisted hero’s journey, his understandable yet inherently broken philosophy and conception of what love is, and all the debate around just how much we’re intended to see where he’s coming from. What stuck out to me was that, when the film is over and the credits have rolled, we see the typical Marvel ‘X will return’, with X being the main character(s) of the film you’ve just seen, and the statement serving as a simple yet tantalising promise that, while you’ve just enjoyed a complete narrative with this hero, their story isn’t over yet. This time, however, the final tagline is not ‘The Avengers will return’ (though that statement would certainly be very confusing to our emotions after that ending); it’s ‘Thanos will return’. That made everything slot into place in my head, and suddenly made me realise that we were watching Thanos’ movie this whole time. This isn’t a film about the Avengers facing a new villain and finding a way to triumph over them like in Age of Ultron. It’s a film about someone with such overwhelming power and conviction in what he must do that he succeeds in his goals, even though getting to that point meant coming close to losing or receiving a fatal blow, and even having to sacrifice everything he cared for in this world. By the end, as we sit and look at this man, we see the scope of what he has worked so hard to accomplish, and his sad acceptance of the role he had to play, and that no one will thank him for doing what he truly believes was the right thing. It just so happens that the thing this man wanted to do is horrifying, and that the people opposing him on his journey are the Avengers, the heroes we’ve grown to care for over this series. Bringing in this villain at this stage in the game and having him land as strongly as he has is a triumph, but it didn’t happen because the MCU spent this long hyping the character up in his brief appearances up to this point. It happened because this film executed the character masterfully through a combination of Josh Brolin’s commanding and nuanced performance, and the exceptional CGI work through motion-capture which creates a kind of villain we really haven’t seen before.

         The ending is profoundly unexpected. Not just because the heroes lose, not just because we see so many of our heroes die, but because the final tone of this huge movie, what all this whole series has been heading towards, is not grand or bombastic, but quiet and understated. It simply lets the horror of what just happened speak for itself, and it echoes out as we take in the stillness of the aftermath and realise just how much has been lost. In our anticipation for this film, many of us thought that the Old Guard, the original six from the first Avengers, would surely fall, dying in a moment of noble sacrifice as they protect the new heroes and the world that these films have built up over the last decade. Perhaps that might happen in the sequel, when things resolve in a way which fixes what lies so immensely broken at the end of this first part of the story. But right now, it just feels so intensely wrong that all of these old soldiers are left behind, while the young, the people they took it upon themselves to protect, are the ones who were snatched away.

         This is why, although I understand and, in some ways, share the opinion that many people have voiced when they say “oh come on, they’re all coming back, there’s no way they’re killing Black Panther, 90% of the Guardians, and Spider-Man, we’re not buying it for an instant”, I still think this emotional ending works. It doesn’t matter if we, the audience, don’t believe that these people are gone forever; what matters is that the characters within the film believe it, and that the emotional performances of the actors portraying them sells us on that idea. We see, in a matter of minutes, moment after moment of intense heartache and devastating loss, and it all registers because of the strength of these performances and the writing which adds so much weight to what each of the survivors has just lost. Rocket’s heartbroken response to seeing Groot die for a second time, Okoye’s world being shattered when her king and the young man she’s protected for so long is suddenly blinked out of existence, Tony seeing his worst fears come to pass when Peter begs him not to let him die, and Steve being overwhelmed by the magnitude of what’s been lost, both on the large scale and on the small scale with his friend and last connection to his old life fading away. All of these hit, and they hit hard. For me, even if next year’s follow up to this film undoes much of this and brings those characters back, that won’t rob this ending of its power. Whenever I watch this film, I will always believe that these characters are seeing their dearest friends disappear, and, within the context of what we see within the borders of this contained film, nothing changes or undoes this. For the next year, these characters are dead. After that, they will always feel dead whenever I finish watching this film. That’s what makes this instalment in this ongoing series as powerful and as praiseworthy as it is.

         Infinity War is both a thrilling joyride with some of your favourite characters and a haunting story about facing inescapable loss even after you fight with every ounce of energy you have. Some of its components aren’t as strong as others, and it hinges on the audience being invested in these characters, which means it’s not going to change your mind about the MCU or be the best entry point for the series, but that much should be obvious to anyone signing up at this point. But in every other respect, this film impresses and surprises, even with all the anticipation that has been leading up to it.

8/10 – Balances countless characters as well as feelings of elated joy and devastating loss. Depending on my ever-changing mood on this subject, this could just be my favourite of the mainline Avengers films so far.

[lonelypond]

Casual Lunacy, Ch. 26

Love Live, NicoMaki, 2K, 26/?

Friction, We Hit Some

The walk to the MidQuads was too solitary, even with company, Eli realized. Nozomi was distant, muttering and frowning, occasionally stopping to stare back at where they’d been. Eli had learned fairly early that prodding Nozomi for insights only led to convoluted and frustrating cul de sacs where Eli ended up knowing less than she had at the beginning of the conversation. Patience was the key to unlocking the secrets and thoughts Nozomi held back. Patience and trust. Eli twirled through a series of brisé en avant, serving the double purpose of working through some frustration and attracting Nozomi’s attention.

“Very pretty, Eli-chi.” Nozomi smiled, her green eyes suddenly here in the now, appreciative.

Eli curtsied, “Thank you.”

Nozomi’s knowing smirk was one of the things Eli liked best about her, but it could be disconcerting when turned on her, “I know you’re just trying to distract me.” A wink softened the accusation, “Doing a good job of it too.”

Eli took Nozomi’s arm and turned onto the path to her dorm, “Thank you.”

Nozomi leaned into Eli’s side, “But wouldn’t knowing why Erena and her friends are bothering Hanayo’s girlfriend help us figure out how to stop them?”

Eli shook her head, blue eyes kind but firm, “We can’t just invade their privacy. Rin obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“No.” Nozomi refused to be convinced, “Hanayo obviously doesn’t want Rin to talk about it. That’s something different, Eli-chi.”

Eli shrugged, “Doesn’t matter, does it. Either way, they don’t want to tell us.”

Nozomi opened the main door to the dorm, “I’m not just curious, you know. I want to help. And the more we know, the more we can.”

Eli followed Nozomi up the stairs, “I know. But we have to be patient.”

Once in her room, Nozomi knelt at her table, pulling out her cards, forcing thoughts and frustration away so they wouldn’t weight the reading, “Time to see what the cards will tell me, since no one else is talking.”

Eli shut the door quietly and stood for a minute, considering what to say, “Want some tea?”

Nozomi nodded, shuffling, “What did Hanayo tell you when you confronted her?”

Eli sighed. She really did trustNozomi, but she also knew her girlfriend was not one to let curiosity fester. “Not much. Just that she was protecting someone too.”

“Rin. That’s obvious. And Rin doesn’t seem happy about it. She was cute though.” Nozomi put the cards down. “And Nico didn’t know Hanayo before Maki, I’m certain of that, even though she claims Hanayo’s a regular at the Cup o’.”

Eli filled and plugged in the electric tea kettle, letting busywork soothe her jitters, prepping two mugs of cardamon black tea. Warming would help. Nozomi continued, “And Nico seemed very concerned. And Hanayo stayed after we left to talk to her.” Nozomi frowned, pulling a card, but leaving it unturned, “And I know Nico hasn’t been bitten by anything that wasn’t a Kashima and Kashima’s not a werewolf. Or a vampire.”

Eli froze, Nozomi’s comment knocked something off the shelf of her memory, “Hanayo asked me, the first time I met her, if you were a werewolf. She seemed really nervous about it.”

Nozomi took a steadying breath and turned over the card. The Moon. A wolf and a dog who might be howling at it. A strange, fairly random mystic lobster to add to the odd feel. “Could the explanation be that easy?” Nozomi whispered to herself, amazed at the thought. “Is there only one redhead?”

“Nozomi?” Eli had poured the tea, setting it next to Nozomi’s hand.

Nozomi met Eli’s gaze. “Werewolves. I’m not a werewolf. But Rin and Maki are.”

“No way.” Eli crossed her arms over her chest, jittery again, “That only happens in movies.”

“Probably not like the movies,” Nozomi continued, picking up the card, “obviously not like the movies. Movie werewolves are never that cute.” Nozomi tapped the card against her chin, “And Nico was missing the day after the full moon, with some kind of a mystery crisis that involved driving to her girlfriend’s family cabin in Wisconsin.”

“That’s a stretch, Nozomi. Surely there aren’t wolves roaming the campus in the d..dark once a month.” Eli sat on Nozomi’s bed, eyes clouded, tea ignored.

Nozomi hummed happily, suddenly sure all the pieces were in place.“Occam’s Razor, Eli-chi. It makes the most sense.”

“Werewolves make the most sense?” Eli couldn’t hide her disbelief, hugging Nozomi’s pillow. Fangs had been giving her enough nightmares, she didn’t need werewolves roaming campus, let alone her sleepscapes.

“You haven’t questioned my insights…or my cards...” Nozomi countered.

“There’s rational explanations....you could just be...it’s not unnatural…” Eli stared wide eyed at Nozomi, not sure how to react to this new possibility.

“Or maybe it is a natural thing.” Nozomi said very quietly, leaning back against Eli’s knees, moon card still in her hand.

“Werewolves…” Eli closed her eyes, “really?”

Nozomi sighed, turning to face Eli, leaning on the bed, “We need to be open to possibilities.”

Eli shook her head, contradicting. “We need to be open to proof.”

“Are you going to ask Hanayo. Or Rin? Or Maki.” Nozomi tilted her head up, green eyes curious.

Eli felt punchdrunk, confused, her lips tight with tension, only able to shrug helplessly as her mind imagined conversations, each segueing into visions of darkness and moving fog that left her shuddering.

Rin was frustrated. So frustrated. People staring at her, poking at her, taking videos, wanting to know things about her, worrying Kayochin...Rin sat on the edge of the bunk bed, staring out the window, watching people walking along the Lakefill, friends playing in the snow. She jumped down, restless, growling, hairs on the back of her neck starting to lift. Locked up, she’d never felt locked up like this before, unable to...run, all because she promised Kayochin. Rin dropped into a hunched ball, spasms suddenly shaking her and shooting pains. Growls turned to whimpers, eyelids closed over swirling neon green and growls turned into whimpering howls. There was no joy triggering this sensation, no thrill to leap toward. The door opened and Rin could see Kayochin in front of her, but as she fell to her side, spasms taking over, she knew this time there would be no promise kept.

Maki and Nico, now clothed, eyed each other warily from opposite sides of kitchen table. Nico slowly stretched her right hand toward Maki, Maki mirroring the motion with her left. When their fingertips touched, Maki grinned while Nico shook her head, “We have to leave the apartment. Do serious things.”

Maki captured Nico’s hand with a quick grab, “This is serious.”

Nico leaned forward and kissed the side of Maki’s index finger, “Don’t you have schoolwork to do? Nico has a busy Fangs weekend ahead and several scenes to rehearse for Acting Class.”

Maki responded in kind, letting her lips linger on the back of Nico’s hand, enjoying the shiver that moved through her girlfriend, “I’ll be fine. I’m a quick study.”

Nico ignored the tingle, making sure her voice was even and stern.“Then why was your mother worried enough about your schoolwork to ground you?”

Maki sighed and collapsed back into her chair, Nico’s hand still in hers, “I don’t need much time. It’s only a paper…”

“Paper? For?” Nico realized she didn’t know anything about Maki’s class schedule. Or major.

“Cognitive psychology.” Maki muttered.

“Cognitive psychology?” Nico remembered something from several days ago, her free hand going to the healed cut on her cheek, “Are you really going to be a doctor?”

“Probably.” Maki dropped her head to the table, Nico’s hand nestled under her cheek.

“Probably?” Nico’s voice was sounding more and more dissatisfied. Maki’s attitude puzzled her, “Don’t you kind of have to be a doctor on purpose? They don’t just discover you on a street corner and say, hey, academic genius, be the next Dr. Mae Jemison.”

“Can’t we talk about how cute you are? How kissable? You like that. I like that.” Maki tilted her head, eyes bright and hopeful, lips in a spoiled, expectant pout Nico was becoming very familiar with.

“No.” Firm, Nico was proud of herself as her memories of the morning started throwing themselves at her determination.

Maki huffed and sat up, arms crossed, “My parents are both doctors.”

Oh, Nico was struck by belated embarrassment, “I called your mother Mrs. She probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

Maki shook her head, “She knows I never tell people anything.”

“Plus,” and Nico worked gentle chiding into her tones, “You were a wolf both times I saw her. Not great for introductions.” Maki’s howled reply sounded aggrieved, but Nico couldn’t help smiling a little at the still pouting redhead, “You were cute. And you owe me a dress.”

“Let’s go shopping.” Maki stood, eager to be doing anything that didn’t involve quizzes.

Nico never minded shopping, even if it only turned into window shopping. But not on a weekday. She stayed in her seat. “Nico has class in 40 minutes. And rehearsal. And work.”

Maki scrubbed her fingers through her hair, barely thwarting a growl. “You’re too busy, Nico.”

Nico moved in front of Maki, hands at the redhead’s waist, Maki stilled instantly, eyes only for Nico. This time, Nico made sure flirtatious notes sounded, “Nico didn’t plan for a smart, sexy girlfriend.” Maki leaned in for a kiss and Nico’s lips met hers, one hand raking through Maki’s hair before she pulled away. “I want us to be together as often as we can, pretty girl, but Nico had things she was doing before you came into the coffeeshop. And so did you.”

“I don’t care.” Maki stole another kiss.

Nico stepped back, hands on her hips, “You sound like a little kid.”

Maki shook herself, throwing out her arms, before rubbing her forehead with an exasperated sigh, “I’m sorry, Nico. I know you’re busy…” She paused. “I’m just excited.” Maki ducked her head and smiled, a little shy, fang peeking out, “About us. About everything. It all...thrums, I guess.” Her eyes glowed at Nico, lavender shot through with lazy, sexy, swirls of green that Nico had to force herself not to swim in.

“You can stop by Nico’s work tonight.” Compromise offered, and then Nico paused, scowling, “No iced drinks.” Maki snorted as Nico continued, “You need to warm Nico up after her long, busy, lonely day. And tomorrow night, I can go to your place to study my lines while you work on your paper, if that’s okay with your parents.”

Maki felt her shoulders relax, this was going to be okay, she hadn’t completely put Nico off. She pulled Nico into a hug, “Stay over tomorrow? Please.”

Nico let herself enjoy the nearness for just a few minutes. “No treehouse. And your parents have to be okay with it.”

Maki nodded, closing her eyes and making as many sense memories of this moment as she could. Nico felt so right in her arms, sable hair with subtle lavender hints tickling her nose. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she grimaced, pulling it out to look at the lockscreen with its Nico in an overstuffed parka wallpaper. Hanayo.

“Hey, Hanayo. What’s up?”

Nico couldn’t hear the other side of the phone call, but Maki’s expression became more and more alarmed as she let the other woman just talk.

“Are you all right?” More things Nico couldn’t hear, but Maki seemed relieved by something, “I’ll be right there. Don’t worry. Stay with her.” Maki ended the call, one arm still holding Nico, “I have to go.”

“Is Rin okay?” Nico took a guess.

“I don’t know.” Maki moved quickly, gathering her wallet and keys, shoving her bobble hat on her head, “She won’t change back. Hanayo doesn’t know if it was an involuntary transformation.” Maki put her hands in her pockets, obviously troubled, “Rin’s never lost control before.”

“Be careful.” Nico’s firm kiss was a ward against harm and a private invitation, “Text me when you know more.”

“I will.” Maki held Nico tight enough to squeeze the breath out of her. Then she bolted.

Nico’s voice was a little weak but she tried, “Take care of yourself, pretty girl. Nico is looking forward to being warmed up later.”

Maki paused halfway out the door, her wink flirty mischief, “You’ll melt.”

Nico laughed, glad Maki could still be a little silly. She wondered if Tsubasa had anything to do with Rin’s situation. And what Maki had meant by ‘thrums.’

A/N: Howdy!Thanks for your patience. One Idol Protection Program Christmas short fluff added to that AU. And a chunk of the larger Christmas project sorted.Speaking of IPP, after the St. Snow centric episodes of LL Sunshine, I'm feeling guilty about having broken up Leah and Ruby and considering if I need to AU my AU...which is a weird feeling.Hope your December is at least a little merry.

[kapanbenernya]

Va-11 Hall-A -- Waifu Bartending Action

Before we start, I wanna make it clear. I’m not that big on “weeb” culture, but I’m totally not against it. I’m quite down with it actually. I’ve watched a few animes, read quite a lot of manga, beaten my meat to 2D stuff, and now I realized I should’ve stopped talking at manga, shouldn’t I?

I feel the same way, self-inserted meme

That being said, I’m not down on the culture that centralizes on cutesy cutesy anime girls that makes your heart go doki doki. I’ve never been down on the waifu-ism thingy that spread along the weeb community like wildfire. So a game about waifus? You would’ve been right if you thought I’m not gonna be interested in the game, but then you’d be wrong because it caught my eye, all because it’s got style. If not for the cyberpunk, neon 80′s aesthetics, bartending simulator, and the game initially reminding me of Hotel Dusk, I wouldn’t have given this game a glance.

Now that the confession’s out of the way, let’s ramble about the game. 

Va-11 Hall-A or Valhalla, as all the other human beings pronounce the name, is a visual novel of sorts about the life of a bartender that works in Valhalla. No, not the Nordic afterlife where shirtless Vikings go to, comparing the size of their dongs while drinking mead on the glorious halls. It’s a dive bar in the questionable part of a town called Glitch City. What kind of decision leads the officials to name a city named after the term for electronic malfunction is completely beyond me. But this is set in a cyberpunk dystopia after all. As usual with popular media and cyberpunk future themes, it’s always a dystopia where the poor are asshole victims and the powerful are so evil and corrupt they eat babies for breakfast. I’ve never seen a cyberpunk story filled with holographic flower fields and government-issued cuddle robot bunnies.

I changed my mind, bring back the homicidal skeleton robots, please

You play as Jill, a bartender, naturally. We do work in a dive bar after all. Your job is to mix drinks from 5 different chemicals as shown on the recipe book available on the interface. The recipes might overwhelm you at the start, with every drink having their own demographic, taste, texture, alcohol content, and plenty of other characteristics. Fortunately, the game pauses every time you have to make a drink, which enables you to open and read each drink’s properties, fluff text, even opening the fucking wiki to stick it to the devs and cheat the system. Don’t lie to me, goddammit! I know the big fat homosexual pushed you over to the dark side.

And there it is, a segue to the other side of your job as a virtual bartender, the patrons. Part of your job is to know what your regulars like: their preferences, tastes, and their favorite drink. While you are not enforced to memorize all of them, it’s going to help you in the long run, take my word for it. 

Of course, the patrons aren’t always gonna say the name of the drink right away. Sometimes they just give you a description of  the drink they would like or cryptic orders that you have to decipher through the power of reading the fucking manual. Another case is when patrons give strange orders that conflicts with their usual thing or their personalities. And that’s when your knowledge of the drink and your patron comes into play, although most of them are heavily hinted by the game. 

no mind reading lessons required

There’s also a secondary objective other than keeping your patrons happy, and that is paying the bills. What, you think you get to ride a cool hover bike by the second chapter? Or maybe a voice activated gun that shoots lightning on the third? Nope, you just got stuck behind the bar, slinging drinks, paying bills, on repeat until it’s finished. It’s kind of basic really, with little to no replayability since your patrons are always going to order the same drinks each playthrough. But even considering all of that, I enjoyed the bartending part of the game. I like me some job simulator, especially ones that goes about like a routine. Perhaps why I also liked Papers, Please and Euro Truck Simulator 2. Something about doing mundane busywork just calms me somehow.

And that’s about all the game play of this game there is. That’s why I called it a visual novel of sorts, instead of say, a point-and-click game, or an adventure game (so no, this game isn’t like Hotel Dusk).

So if the game play’s pretty basic, what else is there? 

If you’re seriously asking that question, I’d say you haven’t been paying attention since I’ve mentioned that this is a “visual novel of sorts” twice already. So of course things are going to be focused on the story, characters, and the drama involving them.

Now, I am not going to discuss anything because I am not good with analyzing stories and characters, also this is the kind of thing that I personally think will be better the less you know about it. Except if you’re the kind of strange person that actively seek spoilers, but I won’t judge. All you need to know is that it’s not the deep philosophical kind, it’s about bartending waifus for fuck’s sake. 

with dialog like this, you know there won’t be a lot of big thonk required

There’s also something that’s bugging me about the whole thing. Why are there no dialogue options? I think this is a really big missed opportunity. I mean we know there are branching paths in the story, so why not implement it more? The one thing I can think of is because this is the devs’ first game, and maybe they just wanted to be safe, like how first-time parents put child locks on everything and go into panic mode everytime their child went near a vaguely sharp object.

But enough about the story, what about the characters? Well I can say they are quite varied and quirky of some sorts. Some patrons I wish I can spend more time with, and there are some that I think are quite confusing. For example, I still don’t know what role the one-armed lesbian schoolgirl ghost is supposed to fill, and she was featured front row and center. Another one is the balding private investigator whose pop culture references are lost on me, so that guy can go cuddle a robot bunny for all I care. I’m just gonna say it straight though, I liked most of them and cared enough to know what their favorite booze is and when something’s wrong with them. Although this pleasure is also robbed from you by very unsubtle hints, provided to you by the game. But maybe I’m just taking the hints for granted, and the game might’ve been much more frustrating without it.

In brief

Either this thing is a hit or miss is completely dependent on your tastes. As I have said, initially this game had nothing to offer but A E S T H E T I C S to me, but the game grew on me, and I liked it almost from start to finish. Maybe it’s the day to day bartending simulator, maybe it’s the characters and their quirks, maybe it’s the cyberpunk setting that’s dripping with atmosphere, or maybe I’ve suddenly gotten into waifus and didn’t realize it. If you like anime and cyberpunk themes without philosophical deep thoughts required, this stuff is tailored for you

It’s time for you to mix drinks and change lives

27/2/2018

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 42

Mehhhhhhh meh that’s kinda how I sum this chapter up is meh. Its not great, its not terrible its just meh.... But whatever, at least its done and we can move onto the main angsty event next! But for now, I hope you enjoy this for what it is! 

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/165635387904/universe-falls-chapter-41

Chapter 42: Joy Ride

XZGY'GI JST TDS CGWNV XS TGAG XLAU WTMKZV OU WYUJ A SEYFVICK GZCRVI SX HAII XZGY SMHF'V AHO, XZGY SMHF'V KCSA BWSI LSO FETT XZG DPRKWT WDYPV IO

Three days had passed since the invasion, and over the course of those days, all of the citizens of Gravity Falls had steadily steamed back into town and resumed their normal, everyday routines. And with the town fully populated once more, the Gems had quickly reached the conclusion that the wreckage near the lake could no longer remain where it was. After all, the last thing they wanted was for any of the less sensible townsfolk to stumble upon the broken, potentially dangerous tech and injure themselves or others somehow. So they had taken to the crash site, with Steven and the twins volunteering to come along and help in their efforts, seeing as how they had all been equally as involved in the disaster, to begin what would no doubt be a lengthy, arduous clean-up. Yet despite how tedious and time-consuming it would be, it a clean-up that had to happen as soon as possible; after all, the sooner Gravity Falls could heal from the scars the invasion had left behind, both physical and otherwise, the sooner things could finally go back to normal.

Or at least relatively normal, in the case usually was in Gravity Falls.

Thankfully, the ruins of the hand ship were finally safe enough to touch, no longer burning or even smoking as they had been three days prior. Its pieces were widespread all over the shore, and most of its hull still lay prone against the base of the nearby cliff, though the Gems had decided to take care of that last. The more readily accessible pieces were of their more immediate concern, which was why they wasted no time in starting to dig up whatever pieces they could with the intent of hauling everything away in successive loads. A task that, given the daunting size of some of the pieces, would be easier said than done.

“Do we really have to get every last piece?” Steven asked as he picked up a smaller piece of debris, one that easily fit in the palm of his hand. He was quickly distracted from it however, as Amethyst dug into the sand near him, pulling out a much larger chunk of metal and letting out a rowdy cheer of success as it plopped down heavily next to her.

“Yes,” Garnet confirmed, easily pulling a piece of debris that was even larger than she was out of the shore. “Having a wrecked ship lying around is too much of a risk. We’ve got to take care of it. All of it.”

“Aw, even these little itty-bitty baby pieces?” Mabel asked, nodding to the armful of very small debris she had collected. “But they’re so cute! I was thinking about stringing them all together to make a super-pretty, super-far out necklace! It would be the coolest souvenir ever!”

“Mabel, those are literally the remains of a dangerous Homeworld war ship that we all almost died on,” Dipper pointed out rather dryly as he passed by, toting a shovel. “Why in the world would you ever want a souvenir from that?”

��...You… might have a point…” Mabel frowned, remembering just how heavy her own initial emotional fallout following the invasion. With a wistful sigh, she dumped her handful of ship pieces into the pile of debris the Gems had already started. “They still would have made an adorable necklace though…”

“You know,” Pearl spoke up as she hauled a medium-sized scrap of metal over to the pile. “We really should start looking for Peridot’s escape pod too, assuming she even made it to Earth.”

“Maybe we got lucky and she didn’t make it…” Dipper muttered crossly as he began digging a piece of the ship out of the sand. The only one who had actually heard this dour, sullen comment was Steven, and while he was somewhat concerned and wanted to question Dipper’s meaning behind it, Garnet calmly interjected.

“Either way, we can’t let her wander around the Earth freely, especially if she intends on trying to start the Kindergarten up again,” the Gem leader mused, her tone firm and determined as she scanned the lay of the shore. “We have a lot of work ahead of us…”

As Garnet said this, Steven was in the midst of picking up a rather heavy chunk of the ship, though he did pause to affirm her resolve. He didn’t do so right away, however, as he glanced over at both of the twins; Dipper was still clearly sulking, not putting too much of an actual effort into retrieving any pieces of the hand ship, while Mabel absently fiddled with a smaller shard she had found, her expression seemingly lost in what looked like dissatisfied thought. For a moment, worry started to fill the young Gem once more as he wondered if they were both still having trouble coping with everything, which was a problem he wasn’t entirely sure he could relate to anymore. True, Steven did still have some lingering dread in light of it all, but for the most part, he largely felt fine. More than fine really; he felt ready to tackle any task that his guardians might entrust him with, no matter how big or how small. Including ridding the lake shore of the extensive collection of scattered debris currently marring it.

“Don’t worry, you guys,” Steven assured to the Gems, catching both Dipper and Mabel off guard by throwing an arm around both of their shoulders supportively. “We’re on it!”

“Uh… sure…” Mabel agreed with a halfhearted grin.

“Whatever…” Dipper sighed, crossing his arms as he glanced away bitterly.

“On it!” Steven cheered once more, ignoring their relative lack of enthusiasm. After all, this mess was partially his fault; which was why he was completely determined to take responsibility for it and make things right. Even if that meant hours of copious, intensive labor under the hot, early morning sun.

Which, as it turned out, was exactly what it meant, as the kids and the Gems all got to work in earnest. The Gems were able to do most of the really heavy lifting on their own, though the kids contributed quite a bit by gathering up the smaller pieces, of which there were plenty. After clearing up most of the central shore, the group split up, with the Gems taking the majority of what they had collected so far away from the shore while the kids stayed and continued working. Or they mostly continued working. For while Steven and Mabel continued digging up all of the ship pieces they could find at a steady rate, it wasn’t long after the Gems had departed that Dipper gradually slowed his pace until he stopped working entirely. Instead, he opted to simply stand nearby, leaning against his shovel as it dug into the sand as he looked out towards the lake boredly and somewhat despondently. Of course, it didn’t take very long for Steven and Mabel to take notice of this as they worked hard to seek out and sort ship pieces, all while Dipper seemed to be declining to help them whatsoever.

“Uh… bro-bro?” Mabel spoke up with a slightly concerned frown. “Are you… gonna get back over here and help us clean this mess up?”

“Or are you just taking a quick breather?” Steven asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Cause if you are, t-that’s totally ok! Just as long as it’s not too long; some of these pieces are k-kinda heavy!” he groaned, pulling a rather large chunk of metal out of the sand, one that knocked him to the ground as it fell backwards towards him. “Whoa, that’s a big one!”

“Huh?” Dipper glanced over briefly, still rather disinterested before he dully turned his attention back to the lake. “Oh yeah, uh, sure, whatever you guys say.”

“Um, did you actually hear what we just asked?” Steven asked with a confused frown.

“I don’t know, something about taking a break?” Dipper shrugged, waving his hand dismissively and still not glancing back at either of them. “Either way, I honestly don’t really care.”

“Oh, for crying out loud…” Mabel sighed in exasperation as she put her shovel aside. “Dipper, please don’t tell me you’re still being all mopey and broody over what happened to-” She abruptly cut herself off as Dipper suddenly shot her a somewhat harsh look, largely knowing what she was about to say, which was why she wisely decided to rephrase things. “O-over what happened the other day. I thought you were finally starting to move past all that and feel better, just like I did!”

Dipper’s already unamused glower turned even more sullen and bitter as he largely scoffed his sister off. “I’m not moping or brooding,” he asserted pointedly. “I’m fine. I’m totally over—w-what happened.” He paused, letting out a terse, discouraged sigh as he glanced over the lake and muttered something else that Steven and Mabel didn’t quite catch. “It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway…”

“So… why do you seem so angry then?” Steven asked, concerned.

“I-I’m not angry!” Dipper snapped, almost proving himself wrong. “I just think that what we’re doing out here is kind of pointless.”

“Pointless?” the young Gem frowned in confusion. “But we’re helping the town by cleaning all this stuff away from the lake. Like Garnet said, all these ship pieces could be really dangerous, and people could really hurt themselves if they got near any of it. What we’re doing here is important!”

“It’s busywork, Steven,” Dipper deadpanned, rolling his eyes.

“Busywork?” both Steven and Mabel asked in unison, neither of them quiet understanding what he meant.

“All this stuff is busted,” Dipper explained, absently giving a nearby piece of rubble a light kick. “It’s not going to hurt anyone just by sitting here. And I’m pretty sure the only reason why the Gems are so insistent on us picking it all up is because they have no idea about what to do next. They don’t know how to track Peridot down, much less what to do with her if they even find her at all. And I bet they really don’t know what to do to save Lap-” He sharply cut himself off, his shoulders tensing as he noticed how the others looked to him with sympathy and understanding as he even partially mentioned the blue Gem’s name, sympathy and understand he didn’t think he needed. “I-I mean… they don’t know what to do about Malachite…” There was an edge of controlled hostility in his tone as he brought up the toxic fusion, not hiding how much he resented the fact that she even currently existed as such at all.

A beat of somewhat awkward silence passed at this, in which Steven and Mabel exchanged a somewhat concerned glance, neither of them sure of what to say to this cynical line of reasoning. Still, if there was anything that was able to counter Dipper’s usual pessimism, it was Mabel’s boundless optimism. “Um, well… even if they don’t know what to do about all that stuff right now, I’m sure they’re working hard to come up with something!”

“Which is why we should work hard too!” Steven chimed in with an agreeing grin. “In fact, I bet if we work really hard, then the Gems will notice and be super impressed with how responsible we all are!”

Mabel gasped in excitement over the prospect of such an idea. “Oh! And maybe they might even take us out for ice cream as a reward! Or take a bunch of celebratory selfies with us!”

“Yeah!” Steven cheered brightly, exchanging a spirited high five with Mabel, much to Dipper’s apparent exasperation.

“Good to see nothing’s changed with you two…” he sighed, looking over to the lake once more and wishing, just as intently and fruitlessly as always, that the blue Gem wasn’t trapped beneath it.

Despite this brief diversion, the trio continued working as the hours went by, with the Gems only returning every now and then and only staying long enough to collect another load of scrap before leaving them alone once more. At first, the only one of them who seemed to be slacking off at all was Dipper, though he still did occasionally help the others in pulling up larger pieces of debris out of the sand. At first, Mabel and Steven were on the same level as each other with their work ethics, until the former gradually started to grow somewhat bored with their task and ended up mostly distracting herself by using smaller ship pieces to construct makeshift mosaics in the sand. That largely left the young Gem to toil away on his own, but he hardly seemed to notice this as he continued dutifully digging, not minding the heat of the summer sun or the fact that he was largely working alone. In fact, his thoughts were so caught up in his work to the point that it pushed almost everything else out, including where the wreckage he was cleaning up had even originated from in the first place. Which, Steven reasoned, was mostly a good thing; after all, he wasn’t too keen on thinking about the past few days in the first place.

Still, the young Gem was so engrossed in his work that he barely even noticed the group that had arrived at the lake until one of their number finally managed to literally snap him out of it. “Steven..? Steven!”

“Huh?!” Steven blinked, startled away from the piece he had been digging up as he looked in confusion. Much to his surprise, it wasn’t either of the twins who had gotten his attention, but rather Jenny, who was accompanied by most of the other teens: Wendy, Sour Cream, Buck, Nate, Lee, Tambry, and Thompson. “Oh! Uh, hi, you guys!”

“Yo,” Buck greeted with a cool nod, his hands in his jacket pockets.

“What’s up, dude?” Nate asked with a friendly grin.

“Welcome back to Earth, Steven,” Jenny chuckled jokingly, though the young Gem certainly didn’t take it that way.

“What? Who told you?!” Steven gasped in alarm, gripping his shovel in surprise over the fact that anyone save for the Gems, the twins, Connie, and his father, knew about his most recent extraterrestrial escapades.

“Whoa, calm down, man,” Wendy smirked casually. “You just looked like you were totally spacing out there.”

“Oh… uh… heh, yeah…” the young Gem glanced away rather bashfully. “I guess I was kinda zoning out a bit.”

“So, what’s with the shovel?” Sour Cream asked, curious. “Were you digging for buried treasure or a dead body or something?”

“Um… no?” Steven frowned. “It’s for-”

“Wendy!” Mabel suddenly broke through the conversation as she returned to that section of the shore, dropping all of the tiny shards she had collected upon seeing the group. “Dipper! Wendy and Jenny and Sour Cream and Lee and Nate and Buck and Tambry and Thompson are all here! Woo, that was a mouthful!” she chuckled as she bounded over to the teens. “You guys should really come up with a group name just to make things easier!”

“Oh, I know!” Thompson exclaimed ambitiously. “What if we called ourselves ‘the Super Neat Wonderfully Living Just Totally Bodacious Teens’! I’ve been coming up with that one for forever now! I-it even incorporates the first letter of all our names in it a-and-”

“Boo!” Lee cut in, rolling his eyes as Nate soon playfully joined in on the jeer.

“I’m not feelin’ it,” Buck shook his head. “That’s one too many names for a nickname.”

“Status update: Thompson is the worst at everything,” Tambry reported dully as she tapped away at her phone.

“Aw… sorry, guys…” Thompson sighed in disappointment as he hung his head.

“Hey! Look who finally made it,” Wendy remarked with a wry grin as Dipper finally made his way over, albeit nowhere near as excitable as Mabel had, seeing as how he was still somewhat sulky. “Good to see you’re still alive and kicking after that whole invasion thing. That goes for all three of you dorks.”

“W-why wouldn’t we be?” Dipper asked somewhat hesitantly, resisting the urge to take a fretful glance back at the lake at this.

“Uh… cause that evacuation biz was totally intense, duh,” Nate said somewhat dramatically.

“Tell me about it,” Jenny huffed. “My dad was flipping out while we were leaving town. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack or somethin’, until Gunga finally managed to get him to settle down.”

“If you think that’s bad, then you should have seen my dad,” Wendy crossed her arms. “I was completely ready to stay here and bash some alien heads in, but then he got all sentimental on me and convinced me to leave…” The cashier grabbed her arm as she glanced away, admittedly flustered as she recalled the experience, though she still managed to mostly play it cool. “But if he hadn’t, then believe me, I totally would have been here, making those intergalactic creeps wish they’d never messed with our turf.”

“Yeah!” the other teens cheered in support of this bold proclamation, while the kids simply exchanged a rather uneasy glance. Fortunately though, Mabel was the first among them to speak up, her tone as blithe as ever, if not just a little bit shaken.

“So, uh… what brings you guys all the way out here?” she asked, giving the teens a wide, rather forced smile.

“We were just about to go chill in a parking lot and freak out some squares,” Buck began.

“But then we saw you guys wandering around out here and we figured we��d come by and say ‘hey’,” Sour Cream added with a shrug.

“But now that we’re here, you guys should totally come with us!” Jenny exclaimed to the kids with an inviting smile.

“Y-yeah!” Thompson agreed, albeit a bit nervously.

“Totally,” Nate and Lee nodded in unison.

“Meh,” Tambry consented, her attention still consumed with her phone.

“Oh, w-well…” Steven frowned, not really wanting to turn such a kind offer down. “I-I personally don’t have anything against squares. I like all basic shapes.”

“So do I! Circles are my favorite!” Mabel chimed in effervescently. “Oh, but octagons are really cool too! And so are parallelograms! Ooo, you know what, I think that one might be my new favorite since its so much fun to say: parallelogram. Parallel-ogram! Para-”

“Ok, Mabel, we get it,” Dipper cut her off, rolling his eyes in slight annoyance.

“Heh, yeah, that’s what we’re talking about,” Buck said with a small chuckle. “You three got that much-needed counterpart to our cynical world view. You have to come.”

“It’s good energy flow,” Sour Cream nodded just as evenly.

“Sounds like it!” Mabel exclaimed, even if she didn’t really know what that meant. “Let’s go! Those old squares will wish they were parallelograms when we’re through with them!”

“Actually… we can’t,” Steven interjected with an apologetic frown. “Sorry, guys, but we’ve got a lot of important stuff to do here. Maybe later.”

“Aww…” all of the teens and Mabel moaned in disappointed unison.

“Come on, you guys,” Wendy said with an encouraging grin. “It’ll be fun. At least it’s bound to beat hanging around here doing whatever all day. Are you sure none of you are not up for it?”

“Mm…” Mabel frowned indecisively, exchanging a glance with Steven who shook his head, reminding her of their shared responsibility. “Nah… I don’t think we should-”

“Yeah, I’m up for it,” Dipper suddenly cut in, his manner casual as he stepped over to join the teens. Steven and Mabel were both quite taken aback by his unexpected choice, as well as the fact that he showed no apparent signs of apologizing to either of them for essentially ditching them both. The teens, on the other hand, were quite excited over having recruited at least one of the kids to join them along on whatever escapades they had planned.

“All right! Dr. Funtimes is back!” Lee cheered as both him and Nate gave Dipper a hearty pat on the back.

“Looks like we’ll have to make room for one more in the car then,” Jenny chuckled.

“We can just make Thompson run along beside it,” Tambry suggested boredly.

“Aw man, not again…” Thompson pouted fretfully.

“Wha—But bro-bro, what about the ship?” Mabel asked. “We still have a lot of pieces we need to clean up!”

“So what?” Dipper asked rather callously. “Mabel, it’s not like any of this junk is going anywhere without us. And honestly, if it did, then it would just save us the trouble of having to pick all of it up.”

“B-but… this is our responsibility!” Steven argued earnestly. “The Gems are trusting us to-”

“To what? Clean up a bunch of garbage off the shore?” Dipper asked, his tone still somewhat harsh and sardonic, something that Wendy in particular took notice of as she looked to him with sudden concern, knowing that such rude behavior wasn’t really like him. “Oh wow, what a huge responsibility! Remind me to thank them for forcing us to do it when I get back.”

“Wait a sec, guys,” Wendy interjected, stopping the group before they could set out. “Uh, maybe we should just hang out here for a while…” she purposed, sparing a rather sympathetic glance Steven and Mabel’s way.

“Aw, what?” Sour Cream frowned. “But Wendy, this place is a total drag. The vibes here are completely cramping my rhythm.”

“Yeah, it’s like some kind of creepy alien junkyard,” Nate agreed staunchly. “And not the cool kind either.”

“Maybe,” Wendy shrugged coolly. “But think of it this way; all this stuff is trashed anyway, which means there’s nothing stopping us from having a little fun and trashing it up even more…”

“Wha—No fair!” Lee scoffed. “You know how we can’t resist letting out all our pent-up teen aggression through breaking stuff!”

“Let’s throw rocks at it,” Buck suggested, just as monotone as ever. “It’ll show the man who’s boss.”

“Yeah!” the other teens cheered, easily on board with this impromptu plan as Steven and Mabel started to perk up a bit, even if Dipper was rather perturbed that they were staying by the lake at all.

“You guys really wanna hang out here with us?” Steven asked with a small smile, though a part of him was a bit irritated at the lengthy interruption the teens had caused in the first place.

“Sure,” Jenny replied with a warm smile. “Who knows? Breaking up all this weird alien junk might be kinda fun.”

“Heck yeah it will be!” Mabel exclaimed excitedly. “And all the extra hands will make things go by…” she paused, quickly counting out how many teens there were. “Seven times as fast! Oh! And I wonder if we could get the people up there in that pretty heart shaped balloon to help us out too!”

“Balloon?” Dipper raised a confused eyebrow at this. “Mabel, what are you-”

“Whoa, she’s right!” Steven exclaimed, pointing up to the sky. “Look!”

The others all turned their glances upward to see what was unquestionably a flock of hot air balloons, coming in all shapes and colors, gently cascading high over Gravity Falls. All of them seemed to be gracefully gliding in the same direction, towards the wide open fairgrounds on the far end of town, as the kids and teens watched the procession in apt wonder and curiosity.

“Oh dude! It’s the Woodstick Festival!” Wendy exclaimed with a newfound grin as the other teens murmured amongst themselves in excitement.

“Wait, the Wood—what?” Dipper asked, unfamiliar with the event.

“It’s this annual outdoor concert featuring Oregon’s up and coming Indie bands,” Wendy explained, snatching Tambry’s phone away from her, much to her protest, as she pulled up a promotion for the concert. “They’re all coming! Scarves Indoors, Wood Grain on Everything, Love God, and a ton of others! It’s like, one of the only actually fun things that happens around here.”

“Looks like that evacuation thing ended just in time,” Nate commented, still looking up to the balloons. “Still, no stupid aliens can stop the WOODSTICK FESTIVAL!” he cheered as Lee loudly joined him while Thompson falteringly attempted to join in.

“Meh, it’d be better if they had some DJs to come in and play too…” Sour Cream remarked somewhat wistfully.

“Maybe this year, SC,” Jenny said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Maybe this year.”

“Anyway, if the balloons are already coming in, then that means the festival probably starts tonight,” Wendy continued, looking to the kids as she handed Tambry back her phone. “You guys should totally go with us! No offense, but you guys seem pretty tense; so maybe a wild night of fun with an awesome crew like us is exactly what you need to loosen up and kick back!”

“Aw, that does sound like a lot of fun, Wendy…” Steven glanced away fretfully. “But… we really shouldn’t. Like I said before, we still have a lot of work to do around here, and-”

“Even tonight?” Jenny asked, somewhat concerned. “Shouldn’t you be done for the day by then?”

“Seems to me like you guys would be all freed up to hang out,” Buck nodded. “When the sun goes to bed is when we wake up. Even if we’re awake right now while the sun is out. It’s like, irony or something.”

“Er—w-well, we can’t hang out at night!” the young Gem hastily exclaimed, not really wanting to turn the teens’ friendly offer down. Still, he knew he couldn’t let himself get carried away with trivial distractions. After all, that was what he felt had largely lent to his complete unpreparedness for the invasion and its aftermath; he couldn’t let himself be caught off guard like that again. “Night is for dreaming.”

“Night is whatever you want it to be,” Sour Cream shrugged nonchalantly. “Time is an illusion.”

“Well then, you can count all three of us in!” Mabel grinned, throwing an arm around Dipper and Steven’s shoulders. “Oh, we’re gonna have so much fun! Gathering around campfires, sleeping in teepees, listening to those old drums made out of animal skins-”

“It’s an indie concert, Mabel,” Dipper pointed out dryly. “Not an Indian concert.”

“Indie, Indian,” Mabel shrugged, mostly just excited at the prospect of finally getting to do something out of sheer, genuine fun again after the intensity of the past few days. And, she also hoped that perhaps that fun would carry over to both Steven and Dipper, neither of whom seemed fully back to their usual selves, even three days after it was all said and done. Certainly a fun evening was good friends was exactly what they all needed to get things back to the way they were supposed to be. “Same difference.”

The teens let out a shared, warm laugh over Mabel’s refreshing enthusiasm, though it didn’t last too long before a low, almost pained groaning rose up over the shore. The group shared a startled gasp at this, all of them surprised at the fact that they apparently weren’t the only ones here in this otherwise abandoned locale.

“W-what was that?” Steven asked nervously, gripping his shovel tightly as he glanced around.

“Shh!” Wendy quieted the anxious murmurs of her friends as she paused for a moment to listen to the ongoing moan. “It’s coming from over there.”

She nodded to a somewhat deep ditch a ways down the shore, left behind by a larger piece of rubble that the Gems had already taken away quite some time ago. The group approached the hole warily, none of them entirely sure what they’d find, especially amidst the wreckage of the ship that had nearly destroyed the entire town.

“Whoa, this is so spooky…” Mabel whispered dramatically as they neared the ditch. “I wonder what’s down there. I hope it’s a ghost! Or better yet, a cute vampire!”

“Only one way to find out,” Nate grinned before elbowing Lee. “Dude, you look.”

“No way! You look!” Lee smirked, elbowing him right back.

“No, you look!”

“Thompson, go look,” Dipper cut in staunchly, much to Thompson’s jolted surprise.

“Heh! Nice use of Thompson,” Nate chuckled as Lee pushed Thompson towards the hole. He was clearly cowering in fear as he stepped towards its edge, but even so, that didn’t stop the other teens from letting out a rowdy cheer as they stood by and eagerly watched.

“Gaze upon death! Gaze upon death!”

This chant only continued as Thompson finally peered over the edge, letting out a fearful cry at what he saw. However, as the others hurried to join him, they were quick to find that what was actually lying in the bottom of the ditch was quite far from terrifying, or even remotely frightening.

“Well, it’s definitely not a ghost,” Jenny remarked dryly, her hands on her hips. “But it might as well be one…”

The others all nodded in agreement as they looked into the pit on Robbie, who lay within it, completely unaware of their presence as he clung onto a picture of Wendy, morosely groaning in emotional agony all the while. “Oh, why did she leave me…?” he asked himself, his tone rife with sorrow and remorse.

“Uh… Robbie?”

The angsty teen perked up instantly, startled by the sound of his ex-girlfriend’s crush as he bolted upright, hurriedly hiding his picture of her out of view. “W-Wendy!” he exclaimed before letting out a forced, nervous chuckle. “Oh, uh… W-what’s up? I’m just hanging out in this ditch, you know. R-regular… regular day for me…”

“Whoa, dude, we haven’t seen you in like, a million years,” Lee remarked, somewhat confused.

“Yeah, we were starting to think that you had like, died, or something,” Sour Cream added, raising an eyebrow. “Where have you been?”

“Wait. You’re not still mourning our breakup, are you?” Wendy asked, rather surprised by such an idea seeing as how she had gotten over it weeks ago.

“What? No way!” Robbie exclaimed defensively, pushing his picture of the cashier even further behind him, even if it was clear he wasn’t really fooling anyone.

“Robbie, look,” Wendy began, glancing away awkwardly. “We split up forever ago. It’s really sweet that you would throw yourself into a ditch created by weird alien scrap metal for me, but man, time to move on.”

“Huh, what? I-I’ve totally moved on!” Robbie protested, though he was quickly proven wrong as his cell phone began to ring with a song he had written and recorded, one that clearly indicated the contrary: “Wendy, I miss you so much! I’ll never move on. Never, ever!” Robbie froze at this, realizing he had been outed in front of all of his friends before he quickly threw his cell phone out of the ditch, not even noticing as it broke against a nearby piece of rubble. “T-that was a different, unrelated Wendy! I swear!”

“Dude, this is getting really awkward…” Lee whispered to Nate, aside, even if all of the other teens, and even the kids, were thinking the exact same thing.

“Seriously,” Tambry remarked, glancing up from her phone. For a moment, it looked as though she was going to say more, but apparently let it go as she glanced down into the ditch at Robbie, glancing away from him while pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear, apparently flustered.

“Good luck with your bizarre coping mechanism, Robbie,” Buck said as casually as ever as all of the teens began to take their leave. “We’re gonna go somewhere where the mood is less…”

“Depressing?” Tambry suggested, seemingly adamantly refusing to glance back at Robbie.

“I was gonna say melancholy, but that works too.”

Robbie simply sighed dejectedly as his friends left, opting to grab a nearby shovel and start pouring sand on his head dejectedly in a false attempt at burying himself. The only one who stayed by and watched this was Mabel, who couldn’t deny that, despite all of the angsty teen’s many, many flaws, she was rather worried for him. While she hadn’t been present to see Robbie and Wendy’s breakup, she had heard from both Steven and Dipper that it had been rather hard on both of them, though clearly Robbie was still taking the brunt of it even weeks later. And while Mabel had started to grow somewhat accustomed to seeing mourning and moping over the past several days, in both herself and her brother and best friend, that didn’t mean she wanted to see anyone else suffer through any such emotional anguish, for whatever reason. Even for something as largely minor and insignificant as this.

“Guys, wait up!” she called after the teens and the boys before they could get too far away from the pit. “Robbie’s in pain. We can’t just ditch him here. And I mean that both literally and figuratively, since he’s in an actual ditch.”

“Come on, Mabel,” Dipper scoffed, rolling his eyes as the teens simply continued on, though him and Steven lingered back a bit. “This is Robbie we’re talking about here.”

“But he’s suffering!” Mabel argued earnestly. “How can I be happy if I know someone else is sad? Steven, you agree with me that we need to help him, don’t you?”

“Uh, well… normally I would…” Steven scratched the back of his neck as he glanced away guiltily. “But we still have so much left to do before that concert thing tonight. I just don’t think we have the time to help him right now. Sorry, Mabel.”

“Yeah, and besides,” Dipper added succinctly. “We’re finally in good with Wendy’s friends. I mean, they even want to take us to a concert tonight and everything! With Robbie gone, there’s a good social balance. Maybe we should just let a good thing be and use this as a chance to just forget about everything and relax, you know? I think we’ve earned that much after everything we’ve just been through…”

Mabel pouted in disappointment as both of the boys headed off to rejoin the teens and get back to work on cleaning up. For as complacent as they seemed to be, she was nowhere close to that level when it came to this situation; her inner altruist was beckoning her, urging her to help mend Robbie’s clearly broken heart in any way that she could. After all, it had been quite some time since she had concentrated her efforts into helping someone other than herself, as the emotional upheaval of the past several days didn’t help much with that. Perhaps working hard to aid a poor soul in need was exactly what she needed to get back to her back to her usual pep and verve. Or, at the very least, hopefully busying herself with something as down to Earth as this could help her finally take her mind off of her last few lingering woes and worries concerning the invasion and it’s still ongoing fallout.

And so, despite the fact that she was utterly alone in her resolve, Mabel glanced back to Robbie with a smile of determination, knowing that she would do whatever she had to in order to help him finally move on.

“Just eat me already, man…” the teen muttered to a vulture that had landed near him, only for the bird of prey to start viciously attacking him. “Ah! I was just being dramatic! Quit it! Ow!” He shrieked as the vulture kept pecking at him relentlessly, despite his efforts to beat it away with his shovel. “Ow! My face! Vulture!”

Of course, Mabel’s resolved grin slowly faded upon seeing this disastrous display, knowing that she certainly had her work cut out for her here.

With the evacuation over and the threat of any immediate danger lifted, Stan was anticipating an upcoming influx of customers coming to the Mystery Shack over the next several days. After all, he knew from experience that in the aftermath of highly stressful situations, that people often tended to flock towards mindless amusement to distract themselves from their lingering worries and fears. And if there was one thing that the conman prided himself on being able to provide, it was mindless amusement. Which was why he was hard at work putting together his latest exhibit, something he was actually rather glad to do after the upheaval of the past several days.

“Puttin’ a rainbow wig on a big fat white gorilla…” Stan sang along as he did just that, sewing a rainbow afro onto a taxidermized albino gorilla. He was soon cut off, however, as the supposedly dead gorilla he was working on gruffly grunted, completely out of nowhere.

“Hey! Who you callin’ fat? You’re one to talk with that man girdle of yours!” the “gorilla” exclaimed curtly, startling the conman quite a bit. He let out a startled cry as he haphazardly fell off his short stepladder fearfully, before he was met with a rouge laugh of triumph, one that he recognized as soon as he heard it.

“Amethyst!” Stan growled, glancing up to the roof above the porch, where the purple Gem had decided to perch herself to carry out her impromptu prank.

“Heh, sorry, Stan!” Amethyst smirked as she leapt down to the ground and casually leaned against the gorilla. “But the minute I saw you working on this big ol’ lug, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use it to get a good laugh. And seeing as how boring of a day I’ve been having, I really needed it.”

“Boring?” Stan raised an eyebrow as he crossed his arms. “Didn’t you three and the kids just bring that giant green space hand down? After something like that, I’d think that you’d have your fill of excitement and thrills for a while.”

“Well yeah, that was fun,” Amethyst agreed. “But now we gotta clean all that junk by the lake up before people can ‘hurt themselves’ on it or whatever. Heck, I bet Garnet and Pearl are gonna show up here any minute now to-”

“Amethyst! There you are!” the white Gem interjected right on cue as her and Garnet arrived from the temple.

“Pfft, speak of the devil,” Stan deadpanned to Amethyst, who simply let out a brief, amused chuckle.

“What do you think you’re doing down here?” Pearl asked her teammate hotly. “Just because we’ve disposed of another load doesn’t mean that our work is anywhere close to done yet! The kids are still down at the lake working and we should be too!”

“Let me get this straight,” Stan interjected caustically. “First you three let my niece and nephew sneak onto an actual alien war ship, then you crash that ship into the lake with them on it, then you get them do community service for you by forcing them to clean up the mess that you made? Does that sound about right?”

“We didn’t let them sneak onto the ship,” Garnet corrected evenly. “They did that on their own.”

“And we’re also not forcing them to help us clean everything up,” Pearl pointed out. “They volunteered to help. Really, they’re free to leave for the day any time they want.”

“Man, I wish I was that lucky…” Amethyst remarked with a tired pout.

“Yeah, well, just as long as you keep the kids from getting tangled up in any more of your ‘intergalactic adventures’, then we won’t have any problems,” Stan said, feigning a lack of concern for his nibblings, even if he did still very much remember Mabel’s absolute breakdown over the whole situation yesterday. “I’ve got a hard enough time trying to keep tabs on those two without having to worry about them getting themselves into all your crazy space operas.”

“No promises,” Garnet replied, adjusting her shades.

Pearl prepared to elaborate on this, but before she could, an abrupt, harsh breeze whipped through the trees, catching everyone off guard. “What the…?” Stan frowned in confusion, trailing off as the wig he had attached to the gorilla went flying off in the wind. However, as he stole a glance up at the sky, he let out an alarmed gasp upon seeing the cascade of colorful balloons peacefully gliding overhead. “Oh no! Hot air balloons?!” The conman’s newfound dread grew even more as a group of teens riding mountain bikes rode by blithely. “Six gear bikes?!”

As the Gems exchanged an admittedly confused glance over Stan’s apparent panic, a colorful, albeit beaten up van pulled up to the shack, another teen sitting atop of it, clad in very casual clothes as he loosely strummed his guitar and sang along. “Singing by the open road! My shoes are so open toed!”

“Folk music!” Stan exclaimed, aptly horrified. “No! It can’t be!”

“Stan, what in the world are you on abo-” Pearl was cut off as the conman suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her frantically amidst his hysteria.

“It’s the Woodstick Festival!” he cried, distraught as he hurried over a nearby box of various supplies. “Soos!” The handyman poked his head out of the shack at his employer’s hasty prompting. “Lock down the shack and hide my shirts before anyone tie-dies them!”

“Aw geez, not that dumb old Woodstick thing again,” Amethyst rolled her eyes. “None of the bands that play there are ever any good. They should get some real music to really pump the joint up instead of all that bogus hipster junk.”

“Hm, I’m surprised they’re still holding that festival this year at all, considering the evacuation…” Pearl mused, looking up to the balloons. “Still, I suppose it gives us all the more reason to hurry up and finish cleaning all that debris off the shore, especially since there’s going to be so many extra people in town…”

“You’re right,” Garnet nodded in even agreement as her and Pearl turned to leave. “Come on, Amethyst.”

“Aw, but I wanna watch Stan knock some pretentious teens outta the sky!” the purple Gem protested, standing beside Stan as he aimed a crossbow up at the flock of balloons

“They’re slow,” the conman commented tensely as he set his sights on the closest one. “I could probably take a few down if I-”

“Wait, Mr. Pines!” Soos interjected, hurrying to push the conman’s crossbow out of the way right as he fired it. Fortunately, it only managed to strike a stray bird, but even so, the handyman began his earnest appeal. “I’ve been thinking. Every year this festival comes by and every year you shun what could be potential customers.”

“You really think I could make money off these free-loading, kale-munching freak shows?” Stan asked, lowering his crossbow in slight intrigue.

“You just gotta figure out what appeals to them,” Soos shrugged, figuring it was worth a try at least.

“Hm…” the conman mused thoughtfully, glancing up at the hot air balloons again and seeing a newfound opportunity instead of an unwanted nuisance. “How do I appeal to young people…?”

“Oh! Oh! Lemme help!” Amethyst exclaimed to Stan with a daring grin. “I may be hundreds of years old, but I’m like, super in the know about what all the really cool kids are into nowadays. Or at least I know more than you do, old man.”

“Hey!” Stan protested crossly. “I know plenty about what’s ‘hip’ and ‘whack’ with the kids!”

“Nobody says either of those words anymore,” Garnet remarked bluntly, hands on her hips.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Pearl cut in, crossing her arms in disapproval. “We don’t have time to waste around here indulging in yet another one of your hairbrained schemes, Stan. We have important business to attend to!”

“What, you mean like picking up a bunch of garbage?” Stan asked with a wry smirk.

“A-and like finding Peridot’s missing escape pod!” the white Gem huffed defensively.

“Who’s what-now?”

“Ugh, it’s this whole dumb thing from a few days ago,” Amethyst groaned with a wave of her hand. “Either way, you guys can go on ahead without me. I’ll catch up in a bit.”

“You better!” Pearl exclaimed warningly. “Because we all need to-”

Garnet cut her off by placing a hand on her shoulder as she started to lead her away, but not before imparting one final word of advice to the conman. “Young people like hot air balloons,” she said, the faintest hint of preceptive amusement in her tone. “Just roll with that.”

Stan and Amethyst exchanged a knowing grin as the pair departed, both of them already starting to conceive largely the same ambitious idea. “So…” the conman remarked, dollar signs practically in his eyes as he glanced up at the incoming balloons once more. “They’re into hot air balloons, are they…?”

Fittingly enough for a teen with a style and attitude as dour and gothic as Robbie, his house was nestled in the town graveyard. More specifically, it was the funeral home, which was where Mabel had decided her first stop should be in trying to lift the teen out of his funk and get him back on track to a proper, healthy romance once more.

“Alright, Mabel,” she said to herself with apt resolve as she approached the funeral parlor’s front door. “Robbie’s a broken teacup, but you’re going to piece him back together! And then he’ll feel great, and I’ll feel great, and everyone will feel great! Great!” With a bright smile, she rang the doorbell, only for her grin to fade as it sounded out as funeral chimes as opposed to an actual bell. “Ok, this could get intense…” she muttered somewhat anxiously, realizing that she had literally no idea as to what Robbie’s family might be like. Though as the door opened, she was unable to hold back a surprised gasp as she quickly found out.

“Howdy do!” Mr. and Mrs. Valentino greeted in bright, cheerful unison, huge smiles on both of their faces as they stood with their arms wrapped around each other affectionately. As opposed to the dark, gloomy manner of their teenage son, the couple seemed fairly normal, if not a bit overly upbeat and folksy. All the same, they both greeted their young visitor with an air of welcoming exuberance, which had honestly been the last thing Mabel had been expecting, though she was delighted it nonetheless.

“It is intense!” she exclaimed with a wide grin as she looked between the pair. “You’re Robbie’s parents?! I always thought he was raised by like, sad wolves or something.”

“Oh, well he doesn’t like to talk about us,” Mr. Valentino chuckled. “He always says we’re ‘too cheerful’ for funeral directors.” Mrs. Valentino joined him in a bright bout of laughter over this before they opened the door wider for Mabel to enter. “Come in! Come in!”

She gladly did so, charmed by the Valentino’s hospitality as they leader her into the den, which, appropriately enough for a funeral parlor, was adorned with plenty of surprisingly decorative urns, headstones, and coffins, a few of which even held actual corpses within them. “Cracker platter?” Mrs. Valentino offered, grabbing a tray off of the coffin-made-table.

“Oh, no time for crackers, sorry,” Mabel declined politely. “I’m here to cheer Robbie up. Cannot have a dry cracker mouth for that.”

“Oh, well then allow me to get him for you!” Mrs. Valentino quipped enthusiastically before calling upstairs. “Robbie Stacey Valentino! There’s a little girl here to see you!” Upon receiving no response from her son, Mr. Valentino simply smiled blithely once more while turning to Mabel. “I’m sure he’s busy brooding again. It’s his favorite past time, you know! You can go on up. And could you bring him his lunch?” she handed Mabel a plate of spaghetti with meatballs arranged into the shape of a wide smiley face.

“Lady, I like your style,” Mabel smirked in approval at this culinary choice before departing to head upstairs.

“You know who would look good in a sweater like that?” Mrs. Valentino remarked to her husband as their guest left. “Mrs. Grabelson’s remains!”

“Oh absolutely!” Mr. Valentino heartily agreed.

Meanwhile, Mabel continued making her way upstairs, her eager smile still apparent as she passed by a row of photos, one that showed Robbie’s apparent gradual progression from a cheerful child to the angsty teen he was now. Regardless of how hard this task might be because of that fact, Mabel was still determined to carry out her self-imposed mission, for more reasons than just the obvious.

“Robbie!” she called brightly as she reached the teen’s bedroom door and knocked. “It’s Mabel!”

“Who?” Robbie asked from inside.

“Remember me? I’m like girl-Dipper!”

“Ugh, go away!” the teen growled crossly.

“I heard a come in!” Mabel quipped as she opened the door, flipping the lights on in the otherwise completely black room as she did so.

“Hey!” Robbie shot upright on his bed, recoiling from the sudden light as he shot his visitor a bitter glare. “Listen, kid. Nobody in the Pines family is welcome here. In case you forgot, your stupid brother is the one who ruined my life!”

“And Mabel’s the one who’s gonna fix it!” Mabel contested, pulling up a chair after sitting Robbie’s lunch down. “Listen, Robbie, I always used to see you as a creepy jerk, like the human version of rat poison.”

“Ugh, go on,” Robbie rolled his eyes, sitting up on his bed as he realized she wasn’t going to leave so easily.

“But when I saw you at the lake today, I realized: Robbie’s not a bad guy. He’s just a heartbroken soul who needs love and gloves with fingers.”

“Hey! Fingerless gloves look awesome!” Robbie protested defensively.

“No, they don’t,” Mabel shook her head, still smiling. “Robbie, you just need a good matchmaker. I guarantee I’ll find you true love, or twice your sadness back!”

The teen let out an exasperated sigh, clearly far from enthused by this plan, though he found himself agreeing with it nonetheless. “Fine, whatever,” he scoffed, though his disinterested did waver a bit as he gave his new matchmaker a somewhat intrigued glance. “But uh, just out of curiosity… d-did you have anyone special in mind?”

“Well, let’s just consider your pool of available romantic options here,” Mabel hopped to her feet as she began to pace around and rattle off names. “There’s… Lazy Susan? No, she’s too old… Grenda? No, too young… Sadie? Nah, her and Lars are clearly already an item… Pearl? No, she still has a huge crush on Rose… Multi-Bear? Hm… We’ll put him in the maybe pile… Who could it be…? Who could possibly be superficial and gothy enough for-” She cut herself off with a sharp gasp of realization, turning back to Robbie with a huge, excited grin. “I got it! Robbie, the girl of your dreams is none other than… Tambry!”

“W-what?!” Robbie exclaimed, shocked. “Tambry?!”

“I can’t believe I’ve never realized it before!” Mabel quipped, clearly caught up in revelry over her idea. “You two are perfect for each other! You’re both so sulky and checked out from reality! You’ll go great together!”

“Whoa, kid, what makes you think I’m even interested in Tambry?” Robbie asked, scoffing. “I mean, dating somebody I already know? It’s kinda like admitting defeat. Besides, if I had wanted to date her, I would have done it by now. She’s a little out of my league.” He paused, glancing down to the corner of his hoodie and noticing a yellow stain. “Whoa, is that mustard? Don’t wanna waste that bad boy.”

Mabel frowned as she watched him haphazardly lick said stain, still determined to meet her goal, even if her initial suggestion didn’t go over as well as she had hoped. “Oh, well, uh… I-I guess you didn’t see the way Tambry looked at your earlier when we were all at the lake.”

“What, you mean with disgust?”

“No, silly! I mean completely lovestruck!” Mabel pointed out, remembering the flustered glances Tambry had stolen in Robbie’s direction. “She’s totally got a thing for you, believe me.”

“Y-you really think so?” Robbie asked somewhat hesitantly, though there were hints of newfound hope in his tone.

“Think so? I know so!” Mabel nodded firmly. “She so wants you! Which means you should at least meet her halfway and give her a chance! Who knows? Maybe she’ll help you finally get over W-E-N-D-Y…”

“…Who?” Robbie blinked blankly, not understanding her pointed spelling out of his ex’s name.

“You know what, forget it,” Mabel smiled with a wave of her hand. “Because tonight, the only thing you’ll need to think about is romance!” Of course, no more than a moment after her bold proclamation, she happened to notice that the teen was still licking away at the stain on his hoodie. “Ok, seriously, Robbie, that’s disgusting.”

True to their word, the teens stayed by the shore to keep the kids company while they worked, even if Mabel had managed to discreetly slip away without telling anyone quite some time ago. Still, despite their former excitement to help break the larger pieces of the ship apart, they soon derailed from this task upon realizing just how sturdy and durable the lingering pieces of its hull were. And so in time, they had pressed back to simply hang out near the edge of the shore, all of them far too excited for the Woodstick Festival that evening to really focus on working. Soon enough, Dipper joined them in relaxing, still not too keen on putting too much of an effort into cleaning up, which left Steven to work largely on his own. Still, the young Gem didn’t complain as he dutifully continued shoveling away at the sand for any stray ship pieces he could find, knowing that it would be worth it when the Gems saw all of his hard work.

“So…” Wendy began as her and Dipper leaned against a larger piece of debris not too far away from where Steven was working. The other teens were also close by, though most of them were engaged in watching Nate and Lee dare Thompson to lick a piece of the hand ship, which he hesitantly did. “How’d that freaky hand ship crash all the way out here anyway? What, did it like, blow itself up or something? Because that’s what it should have done in the first place if you ask me.”

“It’s… a long story…” Dipper said hesitantly, shoving his hands into his vest pockets as he glanced away. “You probably wouldn’t believe it even if we told you.”

“Whoa, wait,” Nate cut in, suddenly intrigued as he looked between Dipper and Steven. “You mean you dudes were actually there when this thing went down?”

“Well… we weren’t exactly here when the ship crashed… as much as we were… on it…” Steven paused from his work, albeit briefly.

Needless to say that the teens all gasped in apt amazement at this, all of them gathering around to hear more. “No way!” Sour Cream exclaimed in awe.

“You guys gotta tell us more! What happened?!” Jenny pressed eagerly.

“Yeah, h-how’d you even get on that scary ship in the first place?” Thompson asked apprehensively.

“And how’d you even survive it blowing up like this?” Lee asked, puzzled.

“Spare no details,” Buck urged coolly. “I have a feeling this is gonna be legendary.”

At all of this prompting, Steven and Dipper exchanged a rather uneasy glance, neither of them even sure about where to start, much less if they even wanted to talk about any of this at all. After all, the wounds they had garnished from the invasion, while all purely emotional now, were still quite fresh; neither of them were really ready to reopen those wounds just for the sake of recounting their intense, rather traumatic experience so soon. But even so, Steven began to explain, hoping that he could get away with only summarizing the less daunting parts at best.

“Um… Well, we came back in the middle of the evacuation,” he began tentatively, glancing down anxiously. “A-and then the ship landed and these really mean Gems got out and they beat the Crystal Gems up and then they, uh, basically captured us and took us into space.”

“So me and Mabel snuck onto the ship to rescue them,” Dipper continued, his tone detached as he left out the part that was still haunting him the most. “Then we took control of it and it crashed into the cliff. And… that’s pretty much everything that happened.”

“Y-yeah…” Steven nodded in hesitant agreement. “That… that’s about it…”

“Whoa, so… you guys fought a bunch of evil aliens and won?” Wendy asked, quite impressed as the other teens muttered their additional amazement. “That’s like, seriously the most hardcore thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Uh, w-well, I dunno if ‘win’ would be the right word for it…” Steven frowned, glancing out towards the lake. “B-but nobody died or got seriously hurt so… I guess that’s a plus.”

“So is that why you guys are here cleaning all this far out junk up?” Sour Cream asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dipper shrugged, still largely unenthused with the task in general.

“The way I see it, we kind of helped make this mess, so it’s our job to clean it,” Steven said firmly as he got back to digging. “It may be a lot of work, but somebody has to do it.”

“Wow, that’s pretty responsible of you, Steven,” Jenny remarked with a soft grin. “But are you sure you’re not working yourself too hard out here?”

“W-what do you mean?”

“Dude, you’re like, drenched in sweat,” Nate pointed out truthfully. “You kinda look like you’re about to K.O. from exhaustion, no offense.”

“Seriously, Steven, you should probably step away and take a break for a while,” Wendy suggested earnestly. “We don’t want you clonking out on us during the concert tonight.”

“O-oh, no, I’ll be fine!” the young Gem reassured, putting on a fake smile and laugh. “After all, the more I stop working, the longer it takes to get it all done! So, uh… yeah…” Steven trailed off awkwardly, subtly putting some distance between himself and the teens so he could continue working without any further distractions. While he appreciated their concern, he admittedly thought that their assumption on his work ethic wasn’t quite accurate; while they believed he was working hard, the young Gem didn’t think he was working hard enough. By even taking the short breaks that he had to stop and converse, Steven knew he wasn’t being anywhere near as efficient or vigilant as he should be. He was there to work, and nothing else; that was what the Gems were expecting of him and that was what he was expecting of him too. The time for fun and games and all of the thing he used to take for granted prior to the invasion were over; now was the time for him to truly be a serious, committed, steadfast member of the Crystal Gems.

Still, despite Steven’s apparent resolve, that didn’t mean that the teens weren’t still concerned for their young friend. For a moment or two, they stood by, muttering their worries and sympathies for him before they unceremoniously split up to help clean up debris wherever they could, hoping that they could alleviate the young Gem’s self-imposed burden at least somewhat. As Wendy moved to help with the clean-up effort, she paused however, upon noticing that Dipper didn’t join her, as he instead remained leaning against the ship piece, staring out at the lake almost wistfully, letting out a small, melancholy sigh as he did so. “Uh… Dipper?” Wendy frowned in slight concern as she turned back to face him fully. “Aren’t you gonna help Steven clean all this junk up?”

“Eh, he’s got it covered,” Dipper replied rather absently, his attention still focused entirely on the lake.

Upon hearing this rather hallow response, Wendy figured that she had more than enough reason to be fully concerned by just how dour and apathetic he seemed to be acting as of late. “Hey, are… are you ok, man?” she asked, taking a step back towards him. “You seem kind of… out of it, and not in the good way.”

“Huh?” Dipper flinched at this, finally glancing over at the cashier with apparent alarm. He was quick to regain his composure, however, upon noticing the worried look she was giving him, almost as if he had been noticeably wounded, which, in a way he had been. But that wasn’t something that he thought anyone, including his former crush, really needed to know. “Uh, no, don’t… don’t worry, I’m ok,” he assured as he hurried to follow after her to go help the others.

“Are you sure?” Wendy asked, not entirely convinced.

“Yeah,” Dipper nodded insistently as he pressed on ahead, but not before sparing yet another brief, longing look towards the lake, silently reminding himself for what felt like the hundredth time now that there was nothing he could do. “I-I… I’m sure…”

As the sun started to sink into dusk, the teens reached the unanimous conclusion that the workday was done for both them and the kids. With the Woodstick Festival kicking off in just a few hours, the collective group prepared to set out from the lake shore and head over to the concert in Jenny’s car, even if it was a bit of a cramped ride for everyone to squeeze into. It wasn’t too long before they left that Mabel finally returned, dragging a somewhat unenthused Robbie behind her, something none of the teens really minded seeing as how they hadn’t hung out with him in quite some time. Still, Mabel made sure to subtly remind the angsty teen about all of the romance advice she had given him on the way there as she ensured that he secured a spot in the car next to Tambry, who was still just as distracted by her phone as always. All the same, after they were all pressed together into the vehicle, the group set out as Jenny took the scenic route on purpose, seeing as how it was such a pleasant summer evening.

Spirits were mostly high amongst the group as they started on their way, with Lee and Nate continually elbowing Thompson for fun as he was sandwiched tightly between them. Sour Cream controlled the radio up front, already not too excited about having to listen to an evening of indie music as he instead turned some more timely beats on amidst conversing with Jenny, Buck, and Wendy. Dipper and Steven were both rather quiet, with the latter only listening in on all of the fun with a small, albeit disingenuous smile, while the former simply stared out the window languidly. Meanwhile, Mabel discreetly supervised as Robbie began chatting Tambry up, or at least as much as he could since her attention was almost entirely devoted to her phone.

“So, uh… T-Tambers…” the teen began as casually as he could, despite the fact that he was admittedly nervous. “How… h-how you been?”

Tambry didn’t really offer much of a response, even though she had heard him, as she simply pushed her phone closer to her face, her shoulders tensing up just slightly.

“Um… y-yeah! Same here,” Robbie chuckled awkwardly, glancing over to Mabel for a cue of advice. She gave him one in the form of motioning to her face, reminding the angsty teen of what they had discussed about compliments. “Oh, yeah! So… um, is it just me, o-or did your whole, uh, thing get a whole lot more l-likable since the last time we saw each other?”

“Huh?” Tambry finally glanced up at this, briefly turning to him with a quizzical expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Wha—N-nothing!” Robbie shook his head defensively. “I-I was just saying that I might think you’re kind of attractive now.”

“Oh, so I wasn’t attractive before, then?” Tambry asked, both flustered and offended by this.

“N-no! That’s not what I-” Robbie cut himself off with a frustrated groan, one that alarmed Mabel quite a bit as she realized her matchmaking skills were failing. “You know what? Just forget it.”

“Glad to,” Tambry remarked coldly as she resumed her rapid texting as Robbie crossed his arms and turned away from her. Disheartened by this, Mabel sank back into her seat in front of them, knowing that she would have to come up with another strategy to get them together somehow. After all, the night was still young, and as far as she was concerned, it wasn’t going to end until she had finally accomplished her romantically inclined mission once and for all.

“Whoo!” Jenny exclaimed as she picked up speed on one of the emptier roads, one that was lined by wheat fields on either side. “Wind in your face, that’s what I’m taking about!”

“Ah, this is the life…” Wendy sighed contentedly as she propped her feet up on the dashboard.

“Guys! Cut it out!” Thompson whined further back as Lee and Nate kept playfully prodding him. “I bruise easily!”

“Breath deep, Steven,” Buck grinned to the boy sitting beside him. “This is the smell of freedom.”

“Freedom smells like pepperoni,” Steven noted after taking in a large inhale.

“That’s just the car,” Jenny chuckled. “My dad lets me drive it only if I use it to make deliveries too. It’s kind of a drag, but its whatever, I guess.”

“You know what else is a drag?” Sour Cream spoke up with an exasperated frown. “Fish.”

“Why fish?” Steven asked, confused.

“Oh boy, here we go again…” Wendy rolled her eyes good-naturedly, already knowing where Sour Cream was going with this, as all the other teens did.

“Preach it, SC!” Nate called encouragingly.

“Tell your life story!” Lee added just as fervently.

“Ugh, my step-dad was all on my case yesterday,” Sour Cream began, crossing his arms. “Saying ‘ma-ma! Ma-ma-ma-ma!’ And I’m just like, ‘I don’t wanna be a fisherman! Everyone knows you can’t rave in a raincoat, step-dad!”

“At least he only bugs you about one thing,” Buck said, adjusting his shades. “My dad’s gotta say something about everything I do, ‘cause I’m the mayor’s son. And I’m like, ‘you can’t tell me what to do, I’m the mayor’s…’ Oh… wait…”

“Pfft, if you guys think all that’s bad, then consider yourselves lucky that you don’t have to deal with my family,” Wendy remarked wryly. “My house is pretty much a madhouse, what with Dad breaking pretty much everything he touches, and my brothers bringing home random wild animals every other day. They’d basically be living like cavemen if I wasn’t around to keep them in check.”

“S-sometimes, my mom gets on my case about leaving the back door unlocked,” Thompson said fretfully. “I-I try really hard to remember to lock it, I really do! But… s-sometimes I just forget, you know?”

“Ohhhh! Mama’s boy alert!” Lee cheered as him and Nate exchanged an amused high five over Thompson’s head.

“Aw, come on, you guys!” he exclaimed, blushing red in embarrassment.

“Puh-lease,” Jenny cut in with a challenging chuckle. “You guys are walking in cake with that talk. You don’t even know what bad is until you have a sister. Look, I don’t know why I have to spell it out that I’m the evil twin and she’s the good one! Don’t ask me to help you with your homework, I’m at some metal concert.”

“Ha! I know how that goes!” Mabel exclaimed in a knowing smirk as she poked Dipper on the cheek as he sat next to her. “Twins, am I right?”

“Mabel, cut that out!” Dipper snapped, roughly pushing her hand away as he resumed looking out the window.

“Yeesh, well with that attitude, I guess we know which one of us is the ‘evil’ twin here, Mr. Pouty-Pants” Mabel remarked rather jokingly, even though Dipper showed no signs of lightening up over her humor whatsoever.

“Family stuff can be tricky…” Steven spoke up somewhat apprehensively. Needless to say that all of the teens expressed their complete agreement with this statement before the young Gem went on with his own familial woes. “About a week ago, my dad and the Gems grounded me from TV.”

“That’s the worst,” Buck said sympathetically.

“Dude, that sucks,” Nate added just as sincerely.

“What a bummer,” Sour Cream finished with a pitied frown.

“A-and then I found out that the Gems are alien rebels,” Steven went on, glancing downward as he decided to just explain it all, knowing he had no one to hide from anymore. “And that there are other Gems out there that want us dead because they think we’re traitors.”

“Seriously, those Gems were the worst,” Mabel added with a dramatic flair, even if she wasn’t too keen on talking too much about the dreadful situation anymore. “Just take our word for it.”

“The worst?” Dipper spoke up with an appalled scoff. “That’s a huge understatement for how awful Jasper was! She forced-” He stopped short as he realized that all of the teens were looking to him in apt curiosity over his sudden angry outburst, which was why he was quick to retract it back into his former controlled bitterness instead. “I-I mean… yeah, they were pretty bad…”

A beat of somewhat stilted silence lingered after this, one that Steven soon bridged as he continued right where he had left off. “A-and they tried to take me hostage because they think I’m my mom. And maybe I kinda am?” he sighed, still truly wondering about that himself. After all, he did have his mother’s gem, and as far as Jasper had been concerned, that had been enough to make her think that him and Rose were one and the same. And maybe in some sense they were; after all, the pink Gem had said so herself in the tape she had left him that she became half of him. So perhaps he was her, in more than just the merit of having her gem alone. But as for exactly how and what that really meant, Steven couldn’t even really begin to understand. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he really wanted to understand that at all. “I wish I could talk to Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl about it, but I think they kinda blame me for my mom not being around anymore…”

In the wake of the young Gem detailing his apparent existential crisis, a deep, rather stunned silence had fallen over the entire car. While both Dipper and Mabel looked to Steven with genuine concern over what he had just admitted, none of the teens knew what to make of it at all as they all simply sat in frozen silence for a while, unsure of how to even approach something so deep and complex. When the ongoing bout of awkward quiet was finally broken, Jenny was the one to do it as she abruptly turned the radio off, knowing that the frantic beats were rather inappropriate at a moment like this.

“That’s heavy…” she breathed, her eyes wide as she started at the road ahead.

“I guess,” Steven shrugged, rubbing his arm.

“But you always seem so upbeat,” Buck noted, impressed. “You’re a real champ, Steven Universe.”

“Seriously, dude, and I thought all of us had baggage,” Wendy commented sympathetically. “But that’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.”

“Yeah, I’d turn to fishing in a heartbeat if meant not dealing with thaaaaat!” Sour Cream’s statement turned into a shocked gasp as he rose up out of his seat a bit, pointing towards something outside of the car in apparent alarm. Startled by this, Jenny pulled the car to a screeching halt, lurching all of its passengers forward as Sour Cream stood up fully.

“Look at that!” he exclaimed, still pointing out towards one of the surrounding fields.

“What?! What’d I hit?! What is it?!” Jenny asked, glancing out of the vehicle frantically.

“Seriously, SC, what the hey?” Lee groaned, both him and Nate having fallen out of their seats with Thompson having haphazardly landed on top of them.

“Thompson, dude, get off us already!” Nate protested impatiently. “You’re like, crushing every bone in my body, man.”

“Oh! S-sorry, guys!” Thompson panicked, trying to pull himself back up into his seat, only to end up slipping and falling back down onto the pair again, much to their noisy dismay. “Oops! S-sorry again!”

“Everyone, shh!” Sour Cream quieted before looking to the field again intently. “Glowing…”

The others finally looked to where he was pointing, all of them instantly spotting what he was talking about from the moment they glanced in that direction. An odd, unknown green aura rose up over the tall wheat, glowing ominously against the natural evening sky. It didn’t seem to move or change as the group stared at it for a moment or two, none of them having even the faintest clue about what they could possibly be looking at, though their curiosity towards it was immense all the same.

“We gotta check it out,” Sour Cream purposed, thoroughly intrigued.

“I’m down,” Buck agreed, leaning back in his seat.

“B-but what about the festival?” Mabel asked, suddenly worried as she took another glance back at Robbie and Tambry, who were still bitterly refusing to make eye contact with each other. She had hoped that the concert would provide an ideal venue to inspire true sparks of romance between the pair, and she was none too fond of the idea of diverting away from their destination like this, lest her plans be ruined completely.

“Pfft, the Woodstick Festival happens literally every year,” Lee said with an unconcerned wave of his hand. “But when else are we ever gonna have the chance to check out some weird glowy thing in the middle of a field again?”

“Uh, probably never, duh!” Nate exclaimed, punching him in the arm before leaping into an excitable chant. “Weird glowy field thing! Weird glowy field thing!”

Before too long, the other teens joined in on this cheer, even if none of the kids were as enthused. Still, it was enough to convince Jenny as she let out a small laugh, shifting her car back into gear. “Alright, hold on,” she said as she drove into the field, her car peeling through the wheat as it steadily approached the light. As they reached a spot in the middle of the field where the wheat seemed to flatten out entirely, everyone got out of the vehicle to get a closer look as the green light grew stronger and more encompassing.

“That’s as bright as like, 600 glow sticks…” Sour Cream remarked, impressed as they approached the ditch that the source of the light lay within.

“Status update: checking out weird, otherworldly light in middle of creepy field,” Tambry read aloud as she typed, much to Robbie’s annoyance.

“Oh sure, bring out the phone,” he remarked crossly, ignoring the glare she sent his way. “Classic Tambers.”

“Whatever,” Tambry scoffed, pressing past him bitterly. At the same time, Mabel shook her head at Robbie disapprovingly as she passed him as well, knowing that he wasn’t following any of the advice she had given him earlier.

“What? What did I say?” Robbie asked in disgruntled confusion, oblivious as to where he had went wrong.

By now, the group had gathered at the edge of the wide crater, all of them tentatively peering down into it to see exactly where the light had come from. Its source was a rather large, rather beaten spherical object, one with a radiant green, heavily dented metallic surface and short stubby legs jutting out of it. And, as it lay prone and decrepit in the center of a pile of rubble in the ditch, Steven, Dipper, and Mabel all instantly recognized it the moment that they saw it.

“Peridot’s escape pod…” the young Gem whispered, his eyes wide as he realized he had accomplished the Gems’ secondary mission in finding it all on his own. But even so, he couldn’t well do anything about it with such a large group of defenseless humans present, lest they all get injured or worse in whatever confrontation with the green Gem that might be in the offing. “Ok, everybody step back,” he ordered firmly, pushing a few of the teens away from the edge of the hole. “This is a Gem machine and it could be extremely dangerous. We need to-”

“We need to get rid of it,” Dipper suddenly cut in, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides as he glared down at the pod unrelentingly.

“W-what?”

“You heard me,” Dipper turned to Steven, his expression still unflinchingly cold and harsh. “We need to destroy that… that thing, especially if Peridot’s still inside of it!”

“Uh, wouldn’t we wanna get her out of there first before we blow that thing to bits?” Mabel asked with a somewhat concerned frown.

“I don’t see why we’d have to,” Dipper simply shrugged, a complete lack of concern in his tone. After all, it was indirectly Peridot’s fault, in expediting her flight back to Earth and taking her captive on her ship, that Lapis had ended up in the horrible situation she currently was in; as far as Dipper was concerned, then the green Gem deserved far worse than simply having her ship crash into the cliff. Still, upon hearing this rather disconcerting sentiment, Steven and Mabel weren’t the only ones to give him a rather worried look, as Wendy did the same thing, knowing that this instance only added onto how noticeably strange he had been acting all day. And while she almost spoke up and said something about it, she was interrupted by Sour Cream as he came running towards the pit with a sizable rock he had found nearby.

“Check it out!” he exclaimed as he threw the stone down into the ditch, cheering as it landed a direct hit on the escape pod. “Boom!”

“Whoa, stop!” Steven exclaimed, his alarm only growing as the teens began to descend into the ditch to take an even closer look at the pod. “Peridot might still be in there!”

“Peri-what?” Buck asked unwittingly as he climbed into the hole.

“This biz is empty!” Jenny announced as a few of the boys turned the pod over to its front side.

“Ugh, it’s just a bunch of broken garbage, just like all that stuff near the lake,” Robbie remarked, rolling his eyes boredly.

“Thompson! I dare you to kiss it!” Nate challenged boldly.

“W-what? Why?” Thompson asked, taken aback by this request.

“So we can take embarrassing videos of it and post them online, duh,” Lee shrugged truthfully. Even, so Thompson was always up for whatever dare was posed to him as he anxiously approached the pod, only to be stopped before he could get too close.

“No! You guys need to get away from there!” Steven begged fretfully as him and the twins climbed down to join the teens.

“You need to relax,” Jenny urged patiently. “It’s not doing anything.”

“She’s right, you guys,” Wendy said to all three of the kids, noticing just how on edge they all seemed to be concerning the pod. “Nobody’s in that thing. We’re safe.”

“Y-yeah,” Mabel tentatively agreed, forcing a small smile onto her face, one that Steven and Dipper refused to share. “We’re safe.”

“No, we’re not!” Steven protested adamantly. “It’s not just the pod. This means that Peridot is just out there somewhere, trying to hurt the Earth!”

“Not cool, Earth forever!” Buck said disapprovingly upon hearing this, making sure to give the pod a kick for good measure.

“Here come the rocks!”  Sour Cream proclaimed, dumping an armful of rocks on top of the pod right as Thompson knelt down to make good on his dare and kiss it.

“No, Sour Cream, wait! I-” Thompson let out a panicked cry as he was pelted by several of the rocks on accident, easily knocking him to the ground.

“Oops,” Sour Cream said stiffly upon watching him fall. “Sorry, Thompson!”

“Oh my gosh, dude!” Lee exclaimed as him and Nate laughed uncontrollably over this. “Tambry, please tell me you got that!”

“You know I did,” Tambry grinned lightly as she uploaded the video she had taken of Thompson’s accident online.

“Ok, so are we finally done messing around with this thing already?” Dipper asked rather impatiently, rolling his eyes as Mabel hurried to join in on excitedly investigating the pod. “Because if we are, then we should really start thinking of a way to getting rid of this thing once and for all.”

“Dude, calm down,” Wendy said with a concerned frown. “We’re just having a little fun. What’s your beef with that thing anyway?”

“I-I don’t have a beef with it!” Dipper protested defensively, even if he knew that was something of a lie. After all, at that moment, that escape pod served as only another reminder of all of the things that had happened over the past several days that he honestly wished he could just forget. “I just don’t think we should be playing on what’s essentially a potentially dangerous alien escape pod.”

“…Well, what about taking selfies with it?” Jenny asked tentatively, pulling out her phone as she stood near the pod. “There can’t be anything too dangerous about that. Come on, you three!” she urged the kids brightly. “Get over here and get some shots with me and this thing.”

“Yay! Selfies!” Mabel readily cheered, rushing over and taking the first playful selfie with Jenny and the pod.

“Jenny, I agree with Dipper,” Steven said earnestly as he headed over to her. “This thing is serious.”

“So am I,” Jenny reiterated, crossing her arms as Wendy headed over to join her. “Sour Cream, Nate, Lee, what about you guys?”

“Sure, I’m down for whatever,” Sour Cream shrugged nonchalantly.

“Only if we get to have Thompson covered in rocks in the background!” Nate chuckled, playfully tossing another pebble Thompson’s way.

“Aw, come on, guys, I seriously might have a concussion from earlier!” he protested, rubbing his sore head.

“Robbie?”

“Pfft, whatever,” the angsty teen rolled his eyes as he headed over. “Just as long as I don’t have to stand next to Tambry.”

“Ditto for Robbie,” Tambry coldly as she joined the group.

“Buck?”

“Nah,” Buck said as he reclined in the pile of rocks near the pod. “I like to just experience the moment for what it is sometimes. Plus, the lighting is weird.”

“Ugh, ok,” Jenny rolled her eyes before turning back to Steven and Dipper. “Ok, boys, last call!”

“No, thanks,” Dipper refused, crossing his arms stoically.

“Uh, yeah, I still don’t think-”

“I got funny stickers…” Jenny cut Steven’s rejection off with what was by and large a very tantalizing offer, one that the young Gem found he just couldn’t refuse. And so a barrage of selfies began, with Jenny being the main photographer as the others all crowded around her and the pod. At first, Steven hung back from the others, only barely consenting to appear in the pictures as he remained stiff and uneasy. Though as time went on and with a little encouragement from Mabel, the young Gem soon found himself joining in on the fun as he gradually started to forget about the nature of the escape pod and instead immerse himself in enjoying himself with his friends. Which, considering the stress he had been under as of late, was a very, very welcome change of pace.

“Oh! These are all so good!” Jenny exclaimed after the selfie round was over as everyone gathered to look.

“Told you the thing with Thompson and the rocks would be hilarious,” Nate chuckled as him and Lee exchanged a high five.

“How do I look?” Steven asked eagerly.

“You look great,” Jenny assured warmly as she stepped back to take another picture. “Ok, stay right there, I’m gonna take one more, and-” She stopped short with a gasp upon seeing the young Gem standing next to the open pod, a sudden, very intriguing idea coming to her. “Steven, you should get in there!”

“W-what?” Steven asked, quite surprised by such a suggestion.

“Just for a second,” Jenny clarified pleadingly. “One picture, that’s all.”

“Go for it, Steven!” Wendy encouraged with a bemused grin. “It’ll be so awesome!”

“Yeah!” the other teens cheered in rapturous agreement, though Mabel seemed to be the most enthused out of all of them.

“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” she exclaimed excitedly, rushing towards the pod herself. “You gotta try it, Steven! Heck, I’ll even get in there with you! That way we can have twice as much fun!”

“You guys can’t be serious,” Dipper spoke up, frowning disapprovingly at the pair upon hearing this. “You’re not really about to get into another Gem death trap after we literally just escaped from one, are you?”

Steven and Mabel exchanged a terse glance at this, a part of both of them knowing that it was a rather ill advised idea, but none of them really caring too much. After all, the escape pod was clearly broken beyond repair; what’s the worst that could happen?

And so, without any further hesitation, the pair climbed into the open pod, both of them playfully posing for a picture as Jenny positioned herself to take it. However, as she snapped a few and Steven spread his hands out for another pose, something in the pod shifted as its interior suddenly lit up and an array of transparent, indecipherable monitors appeared in front of the startled pair.

“Whoa!” several of the teens exclaimed at once, all of them completely dumbfounded by this incredible change. Even Dipper seemed a bit more interested upon seeing the pod reactivate, though hardly out of excitement as much out of frustration, wishing that Steven and Mabel would just listen to him and leave it alone before things got out of hand. Which, considering how things usually turned out, was more than likely to happen sooner rather than later.

“Wow! Forget what I said about this being twice as fun!” Mabel quipped as she shoved her hand through one of the intangible monitors. “This just got one billion times as fun!”

“Tell us about it!” Wendy remarked, amazed. “This is so cool! Tambry, make sure you’re recording this.”

“On it,” Tambry dully agreed as her phone started capturing the moment.

“Hm…” Steven mused as he glanced around the pod, interested in seeing how it worked. He noticed that the spaces around his outstretched hands were glowing somewhat, and so he decided to work with that as he tentatively pressed them forward. Incredibly enough, the pod followed this command, its stubbed legs moving as it lurched forward unsteadily, much to Steven and Mabel’s simultaneous surprise and excitement.

“No way!” Jenny gasped in awe at this as the other teens watched on in immense fascination. “Steven, how are you doing that?!”

“It just sort of-” Steven cut himself off as he moved his hand to the side, the pod doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. “I think it listens to what my hands do.”

“Neat!” Mabel exclaimed brightly, putting a hand forward herself. “I wanna try!”

“Uh, hold on a second, Mabel,” Steven stopped her. “We really shouldn’t be playing with this. We have to take it back to the temple immediately.”

“Or better yet,” Dipper interjected, still rather sullen. “We could just take it up to one of the cliffs and push it off, because that thing has no business staying in one piece! What, do you guys really want Peridot to come back and use it to attack all of us?”

“No…” Steven and Mabel admitted in hesitant unison.

“Aw, but come on!” Jenny whined, the other teens voicing their disappointment as well. “You just got it working!”

“Yeah, Steven, didn’t you say you’re technically your own mom?” Wendy asked with a broad smirk. “Seems to me like you can do whatever you want.”

“For real, you gotta do some donuts in that thing,” Nate encouraged boldly.

“Donuts! Donuts!” Lee cheered in equal rowdy support, coaxing Thompson into joining him.

“At least a dozen,” Buck nodded in agreement. “Baker’s dozen.”

“Seriously, Steven, its sounds like you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately,” Jenny said, her tone earnest and sympathetic. “Don’t you think you deserve to take you mind off things and have a little fun?”

Steven took a moment of pause at this, his expression clearly conflicted as he looked between the teens and the glow the escape pod cast around his hands. He knew full well that if the pod was anything like the ship it originated from, then it was likely very dangerous, meaning that it was far from something that should be taken on a mere frivolous joy ride. And yet… despite his resolve of responsibility, he couldn’t deny that keeping up such a heavy burden was exhausting, to the point of being nigh overwhelming. Perhaps just a touch of levity, however brief and however risky, would serve as a chance to lighten his immense load and lowered spirits if only just a bit. And as he met the pleading expressions of all of the teens, as well as Mabel, the young Gem found that he could no longer deny himself that chance.

So, he took it.

Without any further deliberation, Steven commanded the pod to move with a bold laugh, one that all of the teens cheered on as they began having fun with it. Placing all of his former worries aside, the young Gem blithely directed the pod to perform an array of twists and spins on its short, but surprisingly deft feet. He more than frequently let Mabel take over the controls, such as when she guided it to jump over Thompson at Lee and Nate’s behest. The pair worked together on winning a race against Jenny’s car in it, and they even gave the teens haphazard rides on top of it throughout the field. Needless to say that all the while, they were so caught up in all of the fun they were having that they barely even noticed the irritated glances Dipper was sending their way as he merely stood on the sidelines, the only one out of the entire group to outright refuse to join in on the merriment. Even Robbie and Tambry, as indignant towards each other as they had been all evening, couldn’t hold back a few shared bouts of genuine laughter as they begrudgingly shared a ride on top of the pod together. But by far, the one who was enjoying themselves the most in all this was Steven, as anyone could tell from his loud, enthusiastic, unabashed laughter as he steered the escape pod cheerfully and daringly. By embracing the kind of free, boundless fun he was so used to, the young Gem found himself feeling more relaxed and content than he had felt in a long time, which, all things considered, was more than a welcome change. One that he wasn’t sure he wanted to give up for the sake of his former hardened, accountable mindset anytime soon.

“You two are really getting the hang of that thing, huh?” Wendy asked Steven and Mabel as they both attempted to control the pod at the same time, to surprisingly successful results.

“You bet we are!” Mabel quipped, swerving her hand out as the pod followed along. “I bet even Peridot couldn’t drive this thing as good as we can!”

“Yeah,” Steven chuckled, amused. “It always hooks to the left. Still, we should really be getting this to the Gems at some point, though…”

Upon hearing this, all of the teens immediately voiced their protest, none of them wanting the fun they were having with the pod to come to an end. And seeing as how the young Gem didn’t really want that either, he easily caved in to their pleas. “…Right after we jump that haystack!” he exclaimed boldly, pointing to said stack, which wasn’t too far away from where Dipper had staunchly positioned himself. Needless to say that the teens were all for watching the pod pull off another zany stunt, which was why Steven and Mabel wasted no time in propelling the pod forward towards the haystack. However, instead of clearing over top it, the pod crashed clumsily into it instead, completely stirring up the hay up as most of it ended up landing Dipper as he stood nearby, far from pleased. And while Steven and Mabel let out a hearty laugh over their miscalculated jump, for him, this was, in a rather literal sense, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Ok, seriously, you guys, enough is enough!” Dipper exclaimed hotly as he brushed the hay off of himself. “You need to stop playing around in that thing! You might think you know how to work it, but what if something haywire and you both lose control of it?”

“Pfft, please, bro-bro, as if that’s ever gonna happen,” Mabel scoffed, clearly not worried.

“Mabel’s right, Dipper,” Steven said, his tone a good bit gentler. “We’ve got this thing completely under control. How else do you think we’re able to have so much fun with it?”

“Then again,” Mabel cut in before her brother could get a word in edgewise. “It’s not like you would know anything about that fun since you’ve just been standing over here being all broody and angsty.”

“I’m not broody or angsty!” Dipper protested, incensed by such an accusation.

“Then why don’t you join us in here for a quick ride around the field?” Steven offered brightly. “That way you can get a taste of all the fun you’ve been missing out on!”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not about to-” Dipper cut himself off as a burst of realization struck him, one that gave him an idea to use this opportunity to his advantage for disposing of the loathed pod once and for all. “Actually, you know what? Sure, what the heck. It could be fun.”

At this apparent concession, Steven and Mabel, as well as all of the teens, cheered in excitement as Dipper squeezed his way into the pod alongside them. It was something of a tight fit between all three of the kids, but they managed to make it work well enough as Steven began explaining the pod’s controls to Dipper. “Ok, so to get it to move, you just need to-”

“I got it, Steven,” Dipper stoically interrupted, even if he largely had no idea how to operate the pod. “And now that I’m in here, I’m going to take the chance to do what we should have done when we first found this thing and find the perfect place to trash it once and for all!”

“What?!” Steven exclaimed as the teens voiced their own opposition over this idea. “You can’t do that! We’re having so much fun with it!”

“Oh, yeah, you’re having so much ‘fun’ with a pod that belongs to one of the Gems who just tried to kill all of us!” Dipper deadpanned harshly as he put his hands down into the control space. “How can you not see the huge problem with that?!”

“Because Peridot’s not even here!” Mabel argued as she attempted to steal control of the pod away from her brother. “What are you so angry about anyway? It’s not like this pod even did anything to anyone!”

“That’s not the point, Mabel!” Dipper protested back just as adamantly, trying and failing to shove his sister’s hands away. “The point is that we took our chances with all this Gem stuff before and look at where it got us! Do you really want something like that to happen again?”

“No, but this is nowhere near as big of a deal as that was and you know it’s not, Dipper!” Mabel retorted as they essentially grappled for control of the pod. “You’re just being cranky and stubborn, like always!”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are!”

“Guys, stop it!” Steven finally cut into their heated argument as he joined in the struggle over the pod. All the while, the teens stood by awkwardly, none of them really sure what to do to intervene in this rather intense conflict as they all simply watched and waited curiously to see where it might go. “I-I know we all have pretty strong feelings about the pod, but we should just-” The young Gem’s appeal was abruptly cut off as he tried to physically break through the twins’ fighting, only for his hand to be roughly knocked back into the dented wall of the pod. The force of the impact was actually enough to beat the dent out entirely, the result of which was something that nobody had been expecting.

Dipper and Mabel’s bitter argument was succinctly cut short as the pod whirled with sudden energy, its wide open front slamming shut on all three of the kids, essentially trapping them inside. Of course, all three of them were aptly startled by this, even as the pod’s interior lit up with a sickly green glow. All the same, none of the equally surprised teens could hear their shared frighten cry as they remained on the outside, none of them having the faintest clue about what was happening.

“Uh… Steven? Dipper? Mabel?” Wendy called, somewhat concerned as she took a small step closer to the pod while the other teens anxiously hung back. However, no more than a second later, the vessel emitted a sharp burst of supersonic energy, one that was enough to knock the group back quite a bit, even if the trio inside of continued bickering.

“Oh, this is just great!” Dipper exclaimed crossly, glaring at Mabel and Steven accusingly. “We’re trapped in this stupid thing, and all because you couldn’t just listen to me about getting rid of it! Now it’s probably gonna haul us off to Homeworld, or do who knows what to us?!”

“Whoa, hold on, are you seriously blaming us for this?” Mabel asked with an appalled scoff, not even noticing as the pod began filling up with an odd, pale green liquid. In fact, neither of the twins paid this any mind amidst their mutual anger, but Steven gasped in alarm as he saw it, recognizing it as the same liquid Peridot’s robinoids made use of. Still, even as the young Gem sucked in a deep breath and held it, he soon found that this wasn’t necessary as the twins were somehow able to continue bickering within it, meaning that he could also miraculously enough breathe it in too.

“Of course, I’m blaming you!” Dipper shot back at Mabel, infuriated. “You guys were the ones who were all gung-ho about using this thing like it’s some kind of toy!”

“Oh yeah?” Mabel challenged bitterly. “Well everything was going just fine until you had to come along with all your pouting and pessimism and tried to take it and push it off a cliff somewhere!”

“You guys, please!” Steven interjected fretfully, pushing himself between the twins as the pod began to rattle violently. “We don’t have time for this! We have to look for a way out-”

The young Gem was cut off as the pod suddenly jerked upward, roughly shoving all three of them against the wall hard. What they weren’t able to see was what was happening outside; namely, that the pod had just released a massive energy flare, one that shot upward into the sky and burst across it brightly. At the same time, a barrage of lasers began shooting out from the craft, much to the alarm of the nearby teens as they wasted no time in fleeing from it to take cover from the deadly, uncontrolled blasts.

“Lasers! W-why are lasers happening?!” Thompson cried fearfully as he ran away into the wheat.

“Thompson! Get back here and be our human shield!” Nate exclaimed, just as frightened as him and Lee also ran away.

“Oh, this would be so awesome to rave to if it wasn’t so terrifying!” Sour Cream shouted as him and Buck took cover behind Jenny’s car.

“Aw, man, I knew I shouldn’t have let that stupid kid talk me into this!” Robbie exclaimed to himself crossly as he narrowly avoided a laser blast. “Now, not only am I single and miserable, but I’m about to be fried by a—Tambry! Look out!”

“Huh?” Tambry glanced away from her phone as she attempted to record the disarray, only to notice one of the pod’s lasers shooting right at her. While she didn’t have any time to hurry out of its path, she was rescued from it just in the nick of time by none other than Robbie as he barreled into her, pushing both of them safely out of its path. For a moment, the two of them remained together on the ground, staring at each other rather breathlessly and blushingly before they rushed to pick themselves back up, all while glancing away from each other in newfound flusterment.

“You guys!” Jenny called up to the frantic pod, both her and Wendy remaining standing by to ensure that the kids were alright, even if they couldn’t see them at all. “What’s going on?!”

Needless to say that none of the kids were able to respond to this as they simply tried to remain steady amidst the heavily shaking pod as they crashed into each other haphazardly. None of them had any sort of control over the pod anymore whatsoever, and with no clear way out, the most any of them could do was hold on tight and hope that this incredibly dangerous disaster they had gotten themselves into would end sooner rather than later.

Even though the kids and the teens hadn’t actually made it to the Woodstick Festival, the concert itself was still very packed and very lively. With a wide host of various indie bands and plenty of stalls and vendors, the festival was more than equipped to keep its many young attendees entertained for an evening of fringe music and fun.

Even though they had spent all day hauling away loads of scrap from the lake, upon Garnet’s insistence, her and Pearl made their way over to the festival themselves after most of their work was done. While they didn’t really enter the concert, they ventured onto the hills overlooking it, much to the white Gem’s confusion as she didn’t really understand why they had come all this way in the first place. “Garnet, what exactly are we doing here?” Pearl asked with a befuddled frown. “Shouldn’t we be cleaning up the last few pieces of debris off the shore? Or be searching for Peridot’s escape pod? Or finding Amethyst and telling her to stop lazing around with Stan and actually help us for a change?”

“There will be plenty of time for that later,” the Gem leader remarked, a small smirk crossing her features. “For now, I didn’t want to miss the show.”

“Show? What show? You mean the concert?”

“No,” Garnet shook her head, her smile widening as she adjusted her shades. “You’ll see…” She trailed off mysteriously but nodded up ahead to Amethyst, Stan, and Soos as they worked just up ahead. The trio had been spending all day formulating an advertising scheme that would be sure to bring new, young customers to the Mystery Shack, and by now, their master plan was just about ready to be unveiled to the unwitting masses.

“Balloon faster, Soos,” Stan commanded to his handyman, who was busy stitching together the last few pieces of the hot air balloon. “We need this thing up in the air before the festival ends.”

“All those losers won’t know what hit ‘em when we crash our totally awesome balloon down right on top of them!” Amethyst quipped with a confident, daring grin.

“What?” Stan looked to her, slightly concerned. “Amethyst, we don’t want this thing going down. I paid good money to scrounge up all the materials to put it together and I don’t want all of it going to waste!”

“Uh, didn’t you just steal all the stuff to build this thing from that abandoned fabric store in town?” Amethyst asked knowingly.

“…Maybe…”

“Um, Mr. Pines?” Soos interjected with newfound worry as he looked over their handiwork thus far. “Are you sure that open flame should be that close to that dangling rope and cloth?”

“I’m sure about everything!” Stan remarked bluntly. “Now lube up those engine gears with some kerosene! More kerosene!”

“Oh for crying out loud!” Pearl huffed as her and Garnet made it over to the group. “You three are still working on this ridiculous balloon scheme? Amethyst, you’ve been shirking your responsibilities as a Crystal Gem all day, and for what? To help Stan with that’s bound to be yet another outlandish disaster?”

“Hey!” Stan protested hotly upon hearing this. “I’ll have you know that we’ve been working very hard putting this whole shebang together!”

“Yeah, you’ll see, P!” Amethyst challenged boldly. “Our balloon is gonna make all those other balloons feel like chumps for even being in the sky with it!”

“And once those idiots down there see it, they’ll understand that I love young people!” the conman continued, brandishing his blueprints for the balloon so the two other Gems could see it. By all accounts, it didn’t look too bad on paper; the balloon was meant to be a massive effigy of Stan’s head, smiling warmly and brightly as a banner with the words ‘I heart kids!’ hung overtop it.

“Just you guys wait,” Amethyst assured wryly. “This thing is gonna blow some minds.”

“Either that or it’ll blow its own mind,” Garnet remarked rather vaguely. However, before the conman or the purple Gem could question her on her meaning, Soos spoke up as he stood and stepped away from the balloon.

“Ok, dudes, I think it’s ready,” he reported, giving his boss a confident grin.

“Great! Then let her rip!” Stan exclaimed, sending a smug smirk to the white Gem as Soos rushed to do so. “Prepare to eat your words, Pearl.”

Of course, Pearl merely rolled her eyes at this, but even so, her and Garnet stood by to watch as the handyman turned the balloon loose, allowing it to begin its upward ascent. However, mere moments after he had done so, a sickening tear was heard from the balloon, much to the surprise of the trio who had spent all day working on it.

“Oh no! A letter ripped!” Soos cried, diving out of the way as the r from the banner came crashing down.

“What the H?!” Stan exclaimed in alarm as the h fell too, right on top of him as it easily knocked him to the ground. By now, Garnet had already started chuckling, but it soon turned into full on laughter as the balloon rose to its full height, allowing the crowds attending the festival to see it for the unintentional horror that it actually was.

Without the h or the r, the balloon’s banner ominously read “I EAT KIDS”, a terrifying message that was only made worse by how uncanny and disconcerting its patchwork surface really was, a far cry from the endearing innocence that Stan had originally intended for it. Needless to say that upon seeing this alarming sight, the concert goers were thrown into an absolute frenzy of fear and panic as they tried to flee from its horrifying presence.

“‘I eat kids?!’” one teen asked his companion in outright panic as they watched the hideous balloon hover overheard. “But we’re kids!”

“It’s the heavens punishment for our terrible taste in everything!” the other teen cried as they ran to find cover.

Meanwhile, back up on the hill, Pearl had joined Garnet in taking enjoyment in watching just how much of a disaster Stan’s balloon had turned out to be. Even Amethyst, upon hearing the aghast screams coming from the concert, couldn’t hold back a howl of excitement of her own as she misinterpreted the frightened cries completely. “Woo! Yeah! Go, baby, go!” she cheered rowdily, not noticing the frustrated glare Stan sent her as he picked himself up off the ground. “What do you know, Stan? Looks like those teens are eating our balloon right up!”

“I have to hand it to you, Stan!” Pearl laughed uncontrollably at this sudden turn of events. “It really was worth it to come all the way out here to see how this little project of yours would turn out. This is priceless! Still, we probably should do something about that disaster of a balloon before someone gets hurt…”

“Don’t worry,” Garnet assured with a bemused chuckle. “It’s not going to hurt anybody.”

“Wha—wait! You knew about this, didn’t you!?” Stan asked the Gem leader harshly. “With that… that future sight or whatever it is! You knew this was gonna happen and you didn’t tell us about it?!”

“Course I didn’t,” Garnet shrugged, still grinning wryly.

“Why not?!”

“Because I thought it would be funny,” the Gem leader shrugged. “And believe me, it was.”

Stan continued seething with rage over this as Pearl and Garnet both broke down into a bout of heavy laughter over his amusing misfortune. However, their levity was short lived as a sudden burst of green light shot through the sky in a precise ray, one that managed to strike the hot air balloon right in its engine, resulting in an immense explosion. The crowds below only freaked out even more as the frightening effigy burst into flames as it began to descend down upon them at an alarming rate.

“Mommy, i-is the floating head going to eat us?” a young boy asked his mother as the balloon started plummeting towards them.

“Yes, Charlie! Yes, he will!” the mother cried, holding onto her son for dear life as the other festival attendees ran about in a complete and utter panic.

“Whoa, now we got lasers!?” Amethyst asked, awestruck by what she had just witnessed. “Huh, I guess this festival is cooler than I thought.”

“B-but that blast didn’t look like it came from inside the festival…” Pearl noted with newfound concern. “In fact, it almost looked like it might have come from-”

“Peridot’s escape pod!” Garnet growled, her hands clenching into fists and her former levity completely gone as her future vision filled in the gaps for her. “It’s in the field nearby! Gems, let’s go!”

Both Pearl and Amethyst nodded staunchly at this, knowing that with the threat Peridot might pose, that she had to be taken care of as soon as possible. Without another word, the Gems leapt off, their mission in mind as they left Stan and Soos to watch as the hot air balloon finally came crashing down right into the middle of the festival, thankfully injuring nothing and no one save for the balloon itself.

“Aw, Mr. Pines, I’m sorry your whole balloon thing didn’t work out,” Soos placed a sympathetic hand on his boss’ shoulder.

“Eh, whatever,” Stan shrugged apathetically. “You win some, you lose some. Besides, I don’t know what everyone down there is crying about. In my day, zeppelins fell from the sky like raindrops!”

“It’s him!” a teen down in the festival shrieked upon spotting the conman standing atop the nearby hill. “It’s the horrible old man from the sky!” Upon seeing the balloon’s inspiration in the flesh, a large group of people fled, trying to get as far away from him as possible, even as a beat of rather awkward silence passed between the conman and the handyman in light of this.

“You know what?” Stan remarked a moment later, his hands on his hips as he took this reaction in stride. “Being loved by the youth is overrated. Being feared, now that’s priceless!”

For all the chaos that had just unfolded at the Woodstick Festival, it really couldn’t compare to the pandemonium that was going on back in the field. With the kids still trapped inside the escape pod, the teens had no idea about how to help them get out of it, mostly since they couldn’t get anywhere close to it amidst the barrage of lasers it was still frantically firing off. This was the disastrous scene that the Gems arrived to, their weapons already drawn as they jumped onto the scene, spotting the escape pod first and the frightened group of teens hiding from it second.

“You were right, Garnet!” Pearl exclaimed, gripping her spear tightly. “That laser really did come from the escape pod!”

“What’s goin’ on here?!” Amethyst asked amidst all the disarray. The teens were quick to fill them in with their desperate cries for help as they continued cowering in the wheat and behind the car. At the same time, Steven, Dipper, and Mabel finally noticed the Gems’ arrival from inside the pod amidst their feverish attempts to break out of it, and needless to say that, at least at a hectic moment like this, it was more than a welcome surprise.

“The Gems!” Mabel exclaimed with immense relief. “They’ll bust us out of this thing!”

“Garnet! Amethyst! Pearl!” Steven called to his guardians as loud as he could. “Help us! We’re in here!”

Unfortunately, the Gems weren’t able to hear their young wards’ cries for help as they instead still believed that the one operating the pod was none other than the green Gem herself. “We’ll save you, humans!” Pearl proclaimed, deftly tossing her spear right at the pod. It was a direct hit, cutting through its hull and only narrowly missing Dipper and Steven as it cleanly sliced through the sparse space between them.

“Yikes!” Mabel gasped, her eyes wide with sudden fear.

“What are they trying to do, kill us?!” Dipper asked with apt alarm, eyeing the spear with concerned disbelief.

“M-maybe Pearl was just trying to break us out!” Steven offered hopefully, even if, in reality, that was far from the case.

“I can’t believe if!” Pearl exclaimed to her teammates, appalled as she summoned another spear. “Peridot’s still inside!”

“She’s probably weak from the landing,” Garnet mused coldly, her gauntlets tightly clenched. “Don’t hold back!”

“Got it!” Amethyst shouted tossing her whip out at the pod. The weapon wrapped around its spherical hull tightly, giving Garnet just the leverage she needed to begin pulling it down towards her. The kids inside all lurched forward at this, none of them knowing how to reach the Gems in their currently trapped state whatsoever. Upon seeing the Gems outright attack the pod however, the teens found that they could no longer remain hiding silently on the sidelines, especially if their intent was to destroy the pod without even knowing that the kids were still in it.

“Wait! No!”

“Stop! Don’t hit it!”

“You don’t understand! It’s not-”

The teens’ fearful protests fell on deaf ears however, as the Gems were far too caught up in their shared fury towards their enemy to even listen to reason. “You’ve got a lot of nerve taking refuge here, of all places!” Garnet began hotly as she started pulling the pod down. As far as she knew, she was addressing Peridot, even though the trio of kids who were actually inside of the pod let out a shared gasp of fear as the Gem leader continued pulling them closer to her deadly gauntlets. “But I don’t know here you get off attacking defenseless humans in your dead-beat escape pod!”

“Garnet!” Steven cried from inside the pod, joining the twins in anxiously beating against its side. “Garnet, it’s us! Steven, Dipper, and Mabel! Can you hear us!? Please!”

“And if you think you’re safe here,” Garnet continued her incensed speech to ‘Peridot’. “Well, I got news for you. You lost! Now!” The Gem leader let out a fierce shot as she reeled her fist back and prepared to deliver a devastating blow to the pod, much to the kids’ shared terror.

“Garnet!” All three of them shouted desperately, but even still, she didn’t seem to hear them.

“Stay off my planet!” Garnet shouted fiercely, finally throwing her fist at the pod. However, her hand stopped short mere seconds before hitting it as she noticed that both Wendy and Jenny had suddenly thrown themselves between her and the vessel.

“Stop!” Wendy exclaimed, her arms held out wide as her and Jenny both flinched away from the near impact. “Peridot’s not in there!”

“Yeah! Steven, Dipper, and Mabel are!” Jenny added just as intently, if not somewhat breathlessly.

Garnet gasped in genuine surprise upon hearing this, but as she looked to the pod again, her future vision provided her with the confirmation that this was indeed true. And so, the Gem leader wasted no time in gently lowering the pod and easily cracking it open over her knee, allowing all three of the kids to come spilling out of it and onto the ground, breathless and distraught.

“Kids!” Amethyst and Pearl shouted in shared shock as they hurried over to the trio as they slowly picked themselves up, all three of them still reeling from their latest near-death experience.

“What were you guys doing?!” Amethyst questioned the kids incredulously.

“You found Peridot’s escape pod and you didn’t come get us immediately?!” Pearl asked, appalled.

“Hey, don’t yell at me about this!” Dipper protested angrily, pointing to Steven and Mabel. “Yell at them! They’re the ones who wanted to play around with it! I just wanted to get rid of it from the get-go!”

“Yeah…” Mabel frowned, rubbing her arm apprehensively. “You know, in retrospect, maybe messing with a dangerous Gem escape pod wasn’t… the smartest thing to do…”

“You think?” Amethyst raised an eyebrow. “Dudes, we nearly wrecked you!”

“Steven, Dipper, Mabel,” Garnet spoke up, her tone cold and firm. “This is unacceptable. I’m very disappointed in all three of you. Especially you, Steven. You knew better than this.”

All three of the kids reacted differently to hearing this, with Mabel just glancing down guiltily and silently, not really having anything to say to defend them. Dipper, on the other hand, was more than prepared to retort back, but he was quick to realize that it would be futile, so instead, he merely crossed his arms and glared away bitterly. Steven was by far the most effected by hearing his guardian profess her discontent with them, but even so, he knew he deserved it for straying so far from his duties as a Crystal Gem. Instead of proving to them that he could handle any responsibility or task he was given, he had done just the opposite by indirectly disobeying them and thinking only of fun instead of his obligations, which were by far more important. Which was why all the young Gem could do was hang his head in shame, unable to meet any of the Gems’ gazes as he muttered apologetically: “You’re right…”

“Whoa, ok, hold on just a second,��� Wendy interjected as her and all of the other teens stepped forward to set the Gems straight, none of them able to see the kids so downcast like this. “No offense, but you guys are being way too hard on them.”

“Wendy’s right,” Jenny staunchly agreed. “Cut them some slack, especially poor Steven!”

“The poor kid’s been like, stressing himself to the max,” Lee added sympathetically.

“Yeah, he was even more jumpy than Thompson usually is,” Nate remarked dryly.

“Hey!” Thompson protested, embarrassed.

“Either way, it’s not his fault,” Buck said firmly.

“Just let him be a DJ!” Sour Cream cried passionately.

“Wha…?” Pearl trailed off, not understand this line of reasoning.

“Look,” Wendy said with a resolved sigh. “We just wanted to take Steven, Dipper, and Mabel out and let them have a little fun, to help them clear their heads after everything they’ve been through.”

“Yeah,” Sour Cream nodded in sincere agreement. “I don’t know what’s going on with aliens trying to abduct them, or Steven being his own mom, but it sounds like all three of these guys got a lot on their minds.”

“I’m sure whatever stuff they do with you guys is important,” Jenny said earnestly. “But everyone needs a break once in a while.”

“They’re just kids,” Buck added, not really needing to say anything more.

While the kids looked to the teens in both surprise and gratitude for the defense they had just provided them with, the Gems exchanged something of a guilty glance, realizing that, perhaps, they were right. After all, amidst all of the chaos that had been unfurling over the past several days, the one thing they always seemed to factor out was that, the kids were just that: kids. They didn’t ask to be thrust into the stressful situations they were in and it was clear that they didn’t deserve to bear the burden of its aftermath. And what the Gems had clearly failed to notice, much less do anything about, was try to help them work through it all, something that they were unanimously ready to change in any way that they could.

“Mm… maybe we have been a little hard on them…” Pearl admitted bashfully.

“They did just break us out of space jail,” Amethyst remarked, crossing her arms.

“Kids,” Garnet said, her tone much gentler as the trio looked to her questioningly. “We’re sorry. For everything. Oh, and Steven? You’re ungrounded from television.”

Steven let out an overjoyed gasp at this, not hesitating to rush to the Gem leader and embrace her legs happily. The others all laughed warmly at the endearing sight, all of them more than glad that the drama had passed and that levity and peace had finally arrived in its place. However, as the teens gathered around to take a few more celebratory selfies around downed pod, Mabel realized that the evening was becoming even better as she took a glance over to Robbie and Tambry, who hung back away from the rest of the group. The angsty teen seemed rather apprehensive as he stepped up to Tambry, who did glance up from her phone upon seeing him near her, a light blush filling her cheeks, one that she didn’t try to suppress.

“So, uh… pretty intense night, huh?” Robbie asked, shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie as he looked up at the night sky.

“Yeah…” Tambry said, brushing a stray piece of hair aside as she glanced down. A beat of silence passed before either of them spoke up, but when they did, they did so simultaneously, both of them saying each other’s name at the exact same time. They both blushed at this, embarrassed, though they were quick to regain their composure as much as they could.

“Uh, s-sorry,” Robbie chuckled awkwardly. “You go ahead.”

“Oh, well, uh… I-I just wanted to say, uh, thanks, I guess,” Tambry shrugged, though there was a hint of a smile on her face. “You know, for saving my life earlier and all that junk?”

“Oh, yeah, w-well… I just… yeah…” Robbie trailed off, not really sure of what to say until he let out a small, relenting sigh. “Tambry, look, I’m sorry about what happened in the car. It’s just that stupid kid,” he nodded over to Mabel, who by now had hidden herself discreetly behind Garnet as everyone continued conversing, even if she was clearly still spying on them from afar. “Came up with the bright idea to try and set me up with you and she gave me a bunch of dumb dating advice which didn’t work at all. Crazy, right?”

“Hm… maybe not so crazy…” Tambry smirked, slowly reaching over to pull one of Robbie’s hands out of his hoodie. Both of their faces were bright red as they looked into each other’s eyes intently, the first few sparks of romance starting to light up between them as they exchanged a genuine smile, something that was a rare sight on either one of them.

“Hey, so, uh… you wanna maybe… I dunno, hang out sometime?” Robbie asked tentatively. “J-just you and me? On like, a date or something?”

“Sure, whatever,” Tambry chuckled, pulling her phone out. “Status update-” She paused, glancing between Robbie and her phone before she ultimately shrugged and put it away, reaching to take his hand once more. “You know what? Forget it. Maybe I should stare at something other than my phone for a while…”

Mabel could barely hold back a delighted squeal as she watched Robbie and Tambry draw closer to each other, hands still intertwined as they gazed up at the stars together. “Yes!” she exclaimed in satisfied whisper. “Match made!”

“Hm… It’s a start…”

“Wha?! Oh, Garnet!” Mabel exclaimed, surprised to see that the Gem leader was standing beside her and watching as well as the teens began their latest selfie barrage behind them. “Can you believe it? I managed to get Robbie and Tambry together all on my own! Pretty impressive, huh?”

“Perhaps,” Garnet said, her expression unreadable as she glanced down. “Though I can’t help but wonder if you did this to help Robbie, or to help yourself…”

“W-what do you mean?” Mabel asked, her smile faltering as nervousness filled her instead.

“Mabel,” Garnet began, lowering herself down to her level as she placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I know that what happened a few days ago has been hard on you and your brother and Steven. And I can tell that you’re all trying to deal with it in different ways. Steven by trying to take responsibility for it all, Dipper by lashing out in anger and frustration, and you by trying to compensate for it all by helping others. And while yours is probably the healthiest method of coping out of those, there does come a point where you have to help yourself too. Do you understand?”

“I… think so…” Mabel nodded, even if she was still a little confused. Still, she couldn’t deny that the Gem leader was right in her original motivation for playing matchmaker between Robbie and Tambry. She wanted to have that success so that it would help her feel better in the face of how badly she had been feeling lately. And by all accounts, it had helped her, at least somewhat, by giving her something to distance her mind away from all of her stress. But even so, she also felt like there was still a part of her that felt… empty in light of it all, in a way that she couldn’t really explain. And while she wanted to fill that emptiness up in somewhat, she hadn’t the faintest idea about how to even go about doing that, at least not yet. “But, uh… Robbie and Tambry are still pretty cute together, in like a creepy gothic way, right? I mean, they’re not as cute as a couple as you are, Garnet, but still.”

Garnet chuckled warmly at this as she rose to stand, nodding in agreement. “Why, thank you,” she grinned, her shades sparkling a bit as she adjusted them.

As the teens hoisted Steven up onto Buck and Sour Cream’s shoulders to take another fun, cheerful photo, Dipper returned to his former brooding spot, hardly even allayed or brightened by their reconciliation with the Gems. Not that his frustration even really lied with them, or even with Steven or Mabel over what had happened with the escape pod in the first place. Instead, his ongoing anger ran so much deeper than that, tied to something that he knew he couldn’t do anything about, which only served to upset him even more.

In fact, he was so caught up in thinking about it that he barely even noticed Wendy walk up to him until she placed a hand on his shoulder, startling him out of it. “Hey, man, can we talk for a second?” she asked, her tone and expression genuinely concerned as she looked down at him.

“Uh… sure…” Dipper frowned. “What’s up?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” the cashier said, crossing her arms. “What’s been going on with you lately, dude? Why are you acting all bitter and angry over everything? Only teens have earned the right to angst and brood like this, and last time I checked, you’re technically not a teen.”

“I-I… It’s nothing…” Dipper sighed, not really wanting to discuss the matter in any way.

“Come on, Dipper,” Wendy urged sincerely. “Whatever it is, you know you can trust me. I just wanna see if there’s something I can do to help.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing anybody can do… but… ok…” And with that, Dipper finally caved, detailing as calmly as he could about Lapis’ return to Earth and the all too brief time they had spent together. He reiterated the details of the invasion, only this time, he did add what came in the aftermath of the crash, namely Malachite and her new waterlogged prison, and how horrible he had been feeling in the wake of all of it. And by the time he was done, Wendy was rather taken aback by all of it, especially as she noticed that Dipper was essentially fighting back tears as he finished recounting such a tale of immense woe and anguish.

“Oh, dude…” she breathed, her expression awash in deepest sympathy. “I’m so sorry. That really sucks…”

“Yeah, it does…” Dipper shuddered, gripping his arm tightly to keep his tears in. “And the worst part about it is that not only is it all my fault, but I can’t do anything about it! Lapis is just… stuck down there at the bottom of the lake with Jasper, and not a single thing I can do to help her! It’s not fair!”

Wendy paused upon hearing this passionate, infuriated, distraught outburst, unsure of what to really say to comfort him without making him feel worse. However, when she did manage to come up with something a moment later, she decided to roll with it, hoping that at the very least it could lift Dipper’s spirits in some small way. “Look…” she began with a small sigh, keeping her hand firmly placed on his shoulder. “I don’t really know Lapis, but to me, it sounds like she really cares about you, Dipper, if she’s willing to put herself through… well, that, to keep you safe. So—and again, I don’t know for sure, but—I feel like, if I were her, then I wouldn’t want you to be so torn up over this. I’d want you to keep on going with your head held high, even if it is really hard to deal with, instead of sulking around and lashing out at everyone. And I don’t think she’d want you to totally lose hope either. After all, from the way it sounds, it’s not like she’s totally gone forever, right?”

“R-right…” Dipper hesitantly agreed, even if he was reeling from a rather stark realization amidst all this. Wendy was right, in practically every sense; if Lapis were here, then certainly, the last thing she’d want is to see him so bitter and upset over her sacrifice. True, it was horrible that it was a sacrifice that she had to make in the first place, but even so it still meant something. It showed just how much she did care for him, just how far she was willing to go to ensure that he remained safe and free. But from the way he had been acting lately, he had been far from embracing either of those things like she would have wanted him to. And indeed, she wasn’t gone at all really; rather she was trapped, albeit in a horrible situation, but merely trapped all the same. And as far as Dipper was concerned, then anything that was trapped could certainly be set free in some way, which was the piece in all of this that he realized he had been missing all along. “Oh my gosh, what have I been doing all this time?” he asked himself, face palming as his eyes lit up with newfound resolve. “I’ve been wasting all this time sitting around and moping when I could have used it to come up with a way to help Lapis! Well, that’s about to change right now! I’m done sulking about this; from now own, I’m gonna do everything I can to figure out a way to save her!”

“Now, that’s the Dipper we all know and love!” Wendy exclaimed with a proud grin, glad for his returned verve and vigor as he met her excitement with a thankful smile. “And don’t worry. You’re a smart kid; you’ll figure something out, I’m sure. Now come on! We’re missing out on that selfie party!”

The pair shared a laugh as they hurried over to join in on the fun everyone else was having. With the escape pod no longer posing any kind of threat, the teens and the kids gladly clamored all over it, posing with it and even tossing more rocks onto it to show their boldened defiance towards anyone who might try to threaten their planet. The Gems themselves even got in on the action as they popped up in several of the pictures, waving around the glow sticks that Sour Cream had handed out. Several photos were also taken of the kids, who had all easily reconciled over the escape pod fiasco as everything between them returned to normal. After all, for all of the danger and disasters and drama they had faced in the past several days and for whatever chaos might soon come, none of them could deny that they needed something like this. A bit of levity, a bit of fun, and a bit of laughs, all with the intent of chasing away the stress, pain, and fear. There would be time to deal with all of those things later. For now, this was their break. And even if it was just for one night and amidst the backdrop of a battered, deadly escape pod, it was a break that everyone, teens, kids, and Gems included made sure to enjoy to the fullest.

Next: 

[loth-cat]

@jilliechansimagination

If Anon never answers how about Rexsoka reconnecting after the Ghost crew have recruited him for the rebellion.

 (Note, promps get posted unbeta’d so there may be typos and whatnot.)

Rex squinted at the slowly falling snow distastefully and tugged the collar of his coat a bit higher. Seelos got cold at night, with the sand holding little of the day’s baking heat, but it wasn’t anything close to freezing. The snow was pretty enough he was sure, but it was visible proof of how blasted cold it was. Ahsoka was in no hurry either, hurrying drew attention and they wanted to do anything but draw attention. They were meeting with one of Fulcrum’s contacts, who had information sensitive enough to warrant picking it up in person rather than sending someone else.

 He wasn’t entirely sure why Ahsoka had asked him to come along. He was glad to watch her back, but he knew deep in his gut she hardly needed it. She moved with a confidence that he was certain was well earned, even in an ordinary civilian coat and fairly silly looking hat shaped over her montrails and down her long lekku. Rex wished he could shake the suspicion that it was only because two people out walking through the streets together attracted less attention and it could have been anyone filling his role. She bumped his shoulder, gloved hand grasping at his.

 “Come on, that looks like a good place to eat.” Ahsoka smiled at him, brightly and fake and he tried not to feel unsettled. Why had she chosen him for this mission? Some misplaced sense of pity, that she was doing him a favor and helping him stay useful in the Rebellion?

 “Sounds good to me.” No matter his concern he didn’t pull away as they both headed inside to get a table. He never would have expected his Commander to be so good at this, smiling and making small talk across the table as if they truly were just two people out getting dinner, and then running into an ‘old friend’ who wasn’t nearly so calm. The woman was tense, and looked like she’d be more comfortable punching out Imperials than spying on them. Either way Ahsoka greeted her with the same sort of friendliness, inviting her to join them.

 That was the unease, Rex supposed. As affectionate as Ahsoka was being it was all part of the plan and it made something in him ache for the Commander he’d known, so much like her Master in how she tended to shun the roundabout ways and go for the simple and direct approach to problem solving. He could have read her like an open file, even when something called for subterfuge she only ever put forth enough effort to fool someone who didn’t know her so well.

 He let his mind wander through the rest of the dinner, smiling pleasantly enough and responding when prompted, grateful that his role as Fulcrum’s… something did not demand too much of him. Even watching for it he barely caught the data disk being handed over and tucked away somewhere inside Ahsoka’s large coat and then food was paid for and it was time to head back out into the cold.

 The sun was sinking lower, and the temperature dropping with it. Or maybe it only felt that way because the restaurant had been pleasantly warm at least and now he was full, but Rex tried not to shiver as they walked just as sedately back to the shipyard, nodding and commenting when Ahsoka tugged on his hand to get his attention for some shopkeeper’s bauble or another. Finally it was over and they were stepping back inside the cold ship they’d taken to the planet. Rex didn’t waste any time heading up to the cockpit to turn the heating back on.

 “Brr, oh I know it’s a waste of fuel but I hate coming back to a cold ship.” Ahsoka rubbed her hands over her upper arms through the coat and then took a deep breath, seeming to relax and focus herself at the same time.

 “It’ll warm up soon enough. We heading back now or waiting?” It came out sharper than Rex intended and he inwardly winced. There was no way Ahsoka was missing that.

 “Rex, what’s wrong? You’ve been on edge since we landed.” Ahsoka spoke gently.

 “Guess after all those years in the desert I lost my tolerance for the cold.” Rex tempered his tone, but even if it was true it wasn’t the entire truth.

 “I’d prefer to wait until morning to leave. Most ships refuel and request clearance in the morning when it’s easier to deice the hull, it would look like we’re in a hurry to leave otherwise.” Ahsoka said, making far too much sense. She’d obviously thought this through and Rex felt another pang and just how much he had missed. The cocksure attitude of her youth had matured into well earned confidence at some point, while he’d just existed.

 “Then we’ll wait, you’re right.” Rex did his best to avoid the verbal blank where his mind tried to fill in how to address her. Her name didn’t feel right yet, Commander was closer but still didn’t quite fit after so long.

 “I’m going to get myself something hot to drink, want to join me?” Ahsoka offered, and Rex found himself nodding. The ship was too small for a proper galley, but it could make hot drinks and right now he wasn’t about to turn that down.

 Rex took the offered mug gratefully, sinking into the nearby seat and finally shedding his gloves as the ship warmed. He took a sip and nearly coughed, he’d been expecting fruit cider from the look of it, and there had likely been fruit involved at some point in its production, but it was heavily spiced and alcoholic enough for the warmth to linger in his mouth and throat.

 “Something else you lost your tolerance for?” Ahsoka asked, and Rex could see the amused twinkle in her eyes.

 “Hardly, just not used to anything alcoholic that doesn’t taste like used coolant for the first few sips.” Rex took a second sip, enjoying the flavors now that he was more prepared.

 Ahsoka laughed at that, sounding more like her old self than the giggles she’d been making earlier. “Should have guessed.” She settled across from him with her own mug.

 For a while they sat in silence that was so close to companionable it nearly hurt. Rex didn’t miss the appraising looks she gave him and he turned questions over in his mind until he realized he’d been staring down at his empty mug for a while.

 “Why me?” It maybe wasn’t the most tactful way to start but Rex was always a better soldier than a diplomat. “All of this, I mean. You didn’t exactly need any backup, and if you did I’m sure there would have been a dozen people jumping to volunteer. I don’t need you making busywork for me.” Rex looked up, watching her face.

 “Is that… Rex.” Ahsoka sounded equal parts amused and surprised. “This wasn’t busywork. I wanted to spend time with you, and these missions, when they go well, tend to be pleasant enough. Even if we have to fake shallow pleasantries when we’re out in public, I would rather do it with someone I care about. That’s it, no intricate plot behind it.”

 “That’s…” Rex stared, then covered his eyes with his free hand, leaning his head back and trying not to laugh at himself. It was so obvious he hadn’t even seriously considered it.

 “Maybe I should have started with something a little more informal first. Given us a chance to catch up before I had us play the happy couple.” Ahsoka said, so casually he nearly missed it.

 “Before you had us…” Rex straightened up, meeting her eyes. “I didn’t think that’s what we were supposed to be. People were probably looking at us and thinking I was twice your age.”

 Ahsoka shrugged fluidly. “They could think whatever they wanted. I thought it would be… nice.” And the last part was said almost wistfully.

 “Ahsoka…” Rex scrambled to find the right words.

 “You really thought this was just a pity mission?” Ahsoka didn’t give the silence too long to stretch between them.

 “Something like that.” Rex said, feeling a little foolish now.

 “And now that you know it’s not, do you still want to catch up before we have to rejoin the fleet?” Ahsoka asked.

 “I’d love to hear about everything you’ve been doing all these years.” Rex hesitated a moment. “I doubt my stories will be nearly as interesting. I already told you the gist of it.”

 “They’ll be interesting to me. I want to hear them, everything you can remember that was funny, or sad, or memorable for whatever reason. Don’t worry about them being interesting, you want to know why?”

 “Why?” Rex was equal parts surprised and heartened by the determination in Ahsoka’s voice as she got up from her seat, setting her mug aside and crossing the short distance to crouch and put them at eye-level again.

 “Because they’re about you, there’s no a chance in this galaxy I’m not going to be interested in that.” Ahsoka leaned forward and Rex tilted his head to meet her, the kiss hot and sweet and as perfect as it was unexpected.

They broke apart, Rex a little dazed and unable to help the ridiculous grin he could feel himself forming.

 “Next time I’ll make sure our cover-date goes a little better.” Ahsoka said, sounding as breathless as he felt. Because there would be a next one, and maybe he’d missed watching his young Commander become a gorgeous, confident woman, but he’d been given a chance to get to know her now and he wasn’t nearly foolish enough to pass it up.

[recentanimenews]

Rebuilding the World is Way More Fun With Friends in Dragon Quest Builders 2

When I told a friend that Dragon Quest Builders 2 was one of the games I was most looking forward to this summer, he asked me if I was a Minecraft fan or a Dragon Quest fan. Surprisingly, I answered neither. I played Minecraft back in its early beta days and enjoyed the freedom, but the lack of formal structure left me wanting more to do. I decided to leave the game to those who would happily reconstruct the Great Pyramid of their own volition. Dragon Quest had the opposite problem. Having missed the earlier titles, I never developed the fond nostalgia for what seemed to be fairly rigid, if charismatic, JRPG dungeon crawlers. But when freedom of Minecraft is combined with the structure and goals of a Dragon Quest? There's an incentive structure I can get behind!

    What Dragon Quest Builders really reminds me of is the long vanished "restore the world" JRPG genre that Enix specialized in with titles like ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and TerraNigma. In these games, you usually played an emissary of God tasked with restoring life to a blasted wasteland filled with demons. Nothing quite matches the power trip of turning a poisoned wasteland into fertile fields and building a thriving community where death once reigned. Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 were the last of the genre, which seemed all but dead until Dragon Quest Builders came to revive it in 2016.

  Where the first Builders based itself off of the first Dragon Quest, with its setting of Alefgard and great enemy the Dragonlord, Builders 2 references the second Dragon Quest. Here the foes are the evil cult the Children of Hargon, who despise builders and forbid anyone from improving their lot in life. Also making an appearance from the classic title is NPC Malroth, who assists the main character in their journey. As with the first game, at no point does knowing the Dragon Quest lore become necessary to enjoy the adventure. Fans however will have plenty of in-jokes to appreciate and some foreshadowing of the direction the story will take.

    Development duties for Dragon Quest Builders 2 was handed off to Omega Force of Dynasty Warriors fame, and quite fitting, as as the game progresses a ton of characters and action is happening onscreen. The name of the game for Builders 2 seems to be teamwork. Builders was often a solitary affair, with the hero traveling from stage to stage in a  linear fashion, sometimes making allies they would leave behind to continue in their quest. Builders 2 takes a page from the open world playbook, with a hub world called the Isle of Awakening and three other major islands from which to recruit villagers and building materials. The first Builders had some artifice in its world construction, as portals warped you to stages within stages. It felt very much like a game, but there was always something interesting to do. Builders 2 makes the tradeoff to make the world feel more authentically real, but with most open world games, there's an awful lot of space between points of interest. A lot will come down to player preference.

  Like, for instance, the first game you're given a giant hammer for brute work and gloves for finer work. With the hammer, you can bash up rocks, items, and trees into raw materials. Gloves allow you to pick up and put down individual blocks. Material blocks when set down build walls, and when you enclose a space with a wall two blocks high and a door, you create a room. With crafting stations you can create furniture and accessories, creating specific rooms to your villagers' or your own personal preferences. When you start out on an island, most resource collection, crafting, and building from blueprints is a solo effort. A lot has been streamlined and improved this time around, with blocks and items specially marked if they're needed for a quest, to prevent having to check the quest requirements for a specific building over and over again. Additionally, you're given more inventory storage space early on, meaning you're never at the mercy of having to build chests like the first game. As you complete quests, you get hearts of happiness from the villagers which allow you to level up the town itself. As the level increases, villagers will gather resources, cook, maintain the village, and take care of a lot of the tedious busywork. I never had to go on fetch quests for specific ingredients or rebuild the village after an enemy attack after I had showed the villagers how to do it themselves.

    You can also sail to smaller Fortune Islands where you play a scavenger hunt for plants, materials, and animals for a great reward: Infinite resources of a specific type. Early on I traveled to one of these randomly generated islands for a story quest, but stuck around and searched the island thoroughly for the reward of infinite wood. For the rest of the game, I never had to put my construction plans on hold to go chop down yet another tree. Having all of the minor busywork automated away once it no longer presented an interesting or novel challenge was a wonderful upgrade and made the process of creating these towns much more rewarding.

  One problem that does emerge from this is that near the end of a island's story quest, there is usually an incredibly elaborate building that is constructed with all of the villagers' help. Supermassive, with three floors and over 500 blocks per floor, these projects are not ones you'd want to complete on your own. While you often have missions of your own to complete while the villagers work, you can end up having to wait for the villagers to complete their task. Still, it's a minor nuisance, especially compared to a similar issue with combat.

    Combat has never been Dragon Quest Builders' big draw. The boss battles are fun, but routine combat involves one or two kinds of attacks at best, running away to dodge, and smart use of healing items. In the first Builders, you were often the strongest member of your party due to your ability to craft weapons and armor, and a few NPCs lent a helping hand. Here, you are second best. Your game companion, Malroth, blessed with the powers of destruction, is a much stronger fighter than you. While you, being a creative builder, have a powerful ally of destruction is fun for the story, it doesn't add much to the gameplay. When it works out, it can be convenient to have Malroth take care of persistent mobs for you, or to deliver finishing blows to weakened enemies. When it goes badly, and you have no healing items, you can run around waiting for Malroth to defeat your enemies. Fixes to this would have been reducing the incidence of combat overall, or letting you control Malroth in high stakes combat situations. Playing second fiddle is just no fun.

  The tower defense segments are slightly better, as there you have a group of villagers fighting a group of enemies. Battles are often lost or won ahead of time by making sure your villagers are equipped with the best weapons. You can play a supporting role by carrying wounded villagers back to a bed to rest, but your inventory of offensive building projects like spikes or flame-breathing gargoyles have been reduced from the first game. Again, if a fight goes wrong, you can end up waiting for your allies, especially Malroth to carry the day. I died a lot less in combat in Builders 2 than I did in the first game, but I also can't say I enjoyed battling outside the boss battles, where you always play a central role.

    Considering the mechanics on paper is one thing, but Builders 2 also has a massive amount of charm going for it. It's a beloved world for a good reason, and Akira Toriyama's goofy loveable characters allow you to overlook combat shortcomings. Traveling to an island, seeing the dismal state of the village when you start, and seeing just how vibrant and lively the village is when you leave is a lot of the appeal of the game. On an island, you have a Story Quest necessary to defeat the Children of Hargon, and villager quests, necessary to level of the village itself. These tend to be fairly structured and linear, but there are still secrets to find and bonus puzzles to solve if you check for hidden areas. A new auto-map and fast travel option make this easier than ever. Building the most bare-bones structures to reach the goal, the main story took me over 40 hours to complete. If you work hard to make your villages look pretty and cohesive, this could take even longer.

  The game doesn't end with the story islands, however. You still have the Isle of Awakening to build on, with missions to both improve the landscape of the island with rivers, forests, and greenery, and a variety of building projects, both tiny (an item shop) and massive (a giant pyramid). I haven't had a chance to even dent this postgame content. Although I wasn't able to try out this feature in the review copy, the Isle of Awakening has a portal to allow 3 friends from over the internet visit and work together with you on building projects. You can also take pictures of scenes that impress you and share these on the game's bulletin board system. For dedicated builders and veterans of multiplayer Minecraft servers there's a lot to love here.

    Reservations about the combat aside, I really enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest Builders 2, and I look forward to tackling more of the endgame content. There's something really satisfying about building work that keeps me coming back for more. The addition of a farming village on the first island also gave me some of the same satisfaction I got from the Harvest Moon series back in the day. If you enjoyed the first Builders, you'll probably enjoy this as more of the same, and if you've been looking for a series like Dark Cloud or Actraiser you owe it to yourself to try Dragon Quest Builders 2.

  REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Keeps the fundamentals of the first Dragon Quest Builders

+ 40+ hour story mode plus even more post-game content

+ Building has been streamlined to make completing quests and gathering resources easier

+/- Levels constructed to be like game stages have been replaced with a more open world

- You're the second fiddle in combat, which makes combat less fun

  Are you a seasoned Dragon Quest Builder or still a Child of Hargon? Will you be giving this building thing a try? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments!

----

Thomas Zoth is a features writer for Crunchyroll, blogs occasionally at Hungry Bug Diner, and appears on podcasts at Infinite Rainy Day. You can follow him on Twitter at @ABCBTom.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[ncmagroup]

Written by Keith Johnstone

Keep your churn rates high and your employee satisfaction rates low.

Why put in the effort to keep your top reps happy when you could alienate and push them to work for the competition? Why work to maintain a healthy sales force when you could sabotage them at every turn?

If you’ve run out of ways to push your top sellers out the door, here are 21 tongue-in-cheek ways to make sure they bolt:

1. Cap commission.

High-performing sales organizations consistently attract and retain top sales talent by rewarding them with compensation packages that beat market. One way they do that is uncap earnings. In fact, 79% of sales managers with no compensation cap meet and exceed quota.

Commission caps are the easiest and fastest way to cripple a sales force. It removes the incentive for reps to stay motivated and keep selling once they’ve reached quota.

Steve Richard, CRO of ExecVision, met with a sales rep when the subject of compensation arose:

“We were talking about the comp plan and he mentioned that their pay stub showed a ‘commission deduction line.’ It shows the amount of commission earned and then a deduction for earnings above the limit for the pay period.

Let me repeat this: this company actually shows reps how they are being screwed (ahem, sorry, ‘capped’) as a line item on their pay stub. I can’t imagine anything more demotivating. ”

Rarely is there an economic downside for a company to pay large commissions if the sales compensation plan is structured to be profitable at any level. Companies sell more when they eliminate barriers that hinder salespeople’s incentives.

2. Frequent changes to the compensation plan.

Changing the rules of the game is the fastest way to frustrate players.

Over the next two years, 60% of companies will make a change to their compensation plans. This is particularly frustrating for reps when it occurs in the middle of a sales cycle. Finding out that their maturing leads and opportunities will result in lower payout than expected demoralizes a team.

If an adjustment is necessary, provide ample notice and communicate the ways that it benefits both the rep and the business.

3. Refuse to compensate reps on certain types of sales.

If a rep makes a sale that generates desirable profit for the company, compensate them.

Paying commissions only on the sales of certain products and not others, despite both types of sales generating profit for the company pushes your best people out the door. 

The best sales organizations pay the highest commissions for the sales that generate the highest profits, regardless of the type of sale or type of product.

Rewarding a rep for every sale that benefits the business aligns them with your corporate purpose.

4. Require reps to book the cheapest travel arrangements.

Time is your salespeople’s most valuable and scarce resource. Cheap travel arrangements can take a long time to find, which not only chips away from important selling time, and but leaves reps in poor selling condition. 

Every dollar strategically invested in business travel correlates with an increase in $20 of additional gross profit, according to an analysis of 900 public companies over an 11-year period. When reps aren’t focused on saving money when they travel, they can focus on making money when they arrive.

5. Penalize the sales team for poor post-sales delivery.

Penalizing the team for post-sales delivery is a distraction from making sales. The best companies keep reps focused on delivering sales results by rewarding consistently excellent performance.

Not all reps have the same post-delivery style: 36% of salespeople report that they feel personally responsible and dedicated to a customer’s success and 26% report cordial but less personal relationships, citing busyness on both ends. Only 22% take a hands-off approach.

Salespeople have varying approaches to post-sales relationships with clients. As long as reps are making sales and maintaining healthy post-delivery relationships, however, involved, the desired result is achieved.

6. Fail to provide innovative product and service offerings.

Excellent reps need to sell excellent solutions. They are not satisfied selling ‘me too’ offerings. Top performing sales organizations need to provide products that solve big problems for customers. Otherwise, they risk losing their reps to competitors who develop truly innovative products. 

7. Keep poor performers on board.

If hiring strong salespeople sounds expensive, speak to any business leader who has ever built a team of mediocre salespeople. Underperforming sales reps drain financial resources, strain managerial resources, and damage brand reputation in the marketplace. It can be tempting to fill an open seat quickly. Resist the urge.

Take charge of your company’s future and don’t tolerate consistently missed quotas. Fire poor performers quickly.

In fact, high-performing sales organizations are quicker to terminate — 18% of them fire mediocre reps after just one quarter, compared to 5% of under-performing organizations. Within the span of a year, 78% of high-performing sales organizations will fire under-performers. That number drops to 52% for under-performing sales organizations.

If someone is not a good fit, give them the opportunity to find somewhere where they will thrive. Don’t needlessly cause your team to suffer.

8. Refuse to leave your office.

Managers can’t lead from an ivory tower. Successful managers are fully engaged with customers to discover their needs and are connected with their team. Reps need to see managers on the sales floor with them, modeling the right behaviors and attitudes. This removes the opportunity for reps to harness resentment. 

There’s nothing more frustrating than taking direction from a leader who is out of touch with the realities of the team. The best sales leaders leave the office and invest time developing relationships with customers and employees because it builds trust.

9. Prioritize non-selling activities.

If the consequences for not updating the CRM are heavier than they are for underperforming, your leadership priorities are mixed up. Refocus on the basics of sales. Don’t weigh down your reps with paperwork.

Mike Weinberg, a best-selling author, writes in New Sales Simplified: 

“There are too many salespeople who are more proficient at entering tasks into Salesforce.com than they are at executing the basics, like telephoning a prospect to secure a meeting. Unfortunately, much of the blame rests with sales managers who are more concerned that their people keep the CRM system updated than they are with whether they can effectively sell.”

The focus is critical for your reps to achieve results. Transfer activities like updating CRMs, pulling reports, and creating sales enablement materials to sales support. Your sales reps are best qualified to be generating profit, not doing paperwork.

10. Take credit for your rep’s success.

Taking credit for a rep’s work is one of the fastest ways a sales leader can frustrate their team. Sales managers succeed when they lead their team to victory, using wins an opportunity to reinforce excellent selling behaviors and activities.

Top salespeople are motivated by recognition. Celebrate their work and highlight their accomplishments at all-hands meetings, smaller team calls, and in front of company executives.

11. Step in to take over accounts reps have worked hard to acquire and develop.

Allow your reps to be responsible for their own work. Chuck Blakeman, business advisor, and founder writes:

“Ownership is the most powerful motivator in business and the ability to make decisions is at the core of ownership. Stop solving and deciding for others[…] You, your company, and everyone who works there will all be better off if you do.”

Reps who maintain ownership of a prospect from nurture stage onward stay motivated to close them.

If a manager steps in to take over a rep’s account, however, that ownership is disrupted. This gradually erodes the rep’s confidence and threatens to weaken their ability to sell longterm.

Managers should leave the selling to their reps. Companies with a well-developed sales process are able to trust their reps to be accountable. Managers can use weekly one-on-one time to stay updated on the status of projects, only getting involved when appropriate. The best sales talent will not stay at a company to be hand-held.

12. Focus on hours instead of results.

Results are what matter. Excellent reps thrive in an environment their performance is evaluated based on measurable business objectives. It can feel frustratingly irrelevant when a sales leader places too much attention on a rep’s hours, busywork, and physical time spent “in the seat.” 

Micromanaging your team removes their drive to perform. To keep top sales talent, set clear expectations for success and keep performance measurements focused on those results.

13. Undervalue corporate culture. 

The pressure sales reps face can be disheartening at times. A healthy corporate culture reduces pressure, and instead recycles and plays to rep’s competitive intrinsic motivators. When reps amicably compete against one another, they are motivated to sell more and close bigger deals.

Top performing sales organizations know that they are built on corporate culture. They handle challenges with integrity and treat them as an opportunity to grow. This breeds transparent leadership and allows reps to have a realistic view of their organization, promoting an all-around strong sales culture that top reps are happy to be a part of. 

14. Focus on the negative.

Rejections rack up on a daily basis in sales. But a team’s success depends on its ability to soldier forward in the face of this reality. Sales leaders need to consistently encourage their reps by acknowledging and celebrating progress.

The key is in the small wins. Every victory has a strong positive effect on a worker’s motivation and their ability to tackle difficult work challenges. Sales leaders must celebrate their small successes to keep the team motivated. Zig Ziglar said,

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”

So be the cheerleader that distracts them from their daily rejections and help keep the office a positive place to be. Track daily and weekly wins. Keep a pulse on small positive metrics like leading indicators. Publicly acknowledge progress and remind your team of its overarching mission on a regular basis to stave off the negativity that will send top reps running for the hills.

15. Avoid coaching opportunities.

Not only does coaching benefit the company’s revenue, but it is also a retention tool that is directly linked to job satisfaction. 

A survey of over 2,000 sales professionals found that reps who received more coaching than others were twice as likely to recommend their role at their company to a friend. In other words, they were “promoters,” using the standard satisfaction measure of NPS (Net Promoter Score).

An important note is that there is a disconnect between how much coaching a rep feels they receive and what a manager thinks they provide. Managers survey reported that they provide an average of 3.9 coaching hours per rep per months, while reps reported receiving 2.2 hours. That’s a 40% discrepancy.

Bear this in mind as you coach your reps.

Excellent sellers want to grow and improve and therefore, need leaders to build into them. Managers must provide this support to their teams if they want to keep their top sales talent.

16. Fail to invest in marketing and brand building programs.

Billions of dollars are spent on B2B brand equity. Problematically, despite the immense budget, it found that managers are not focusing enough effort internally on the active brand building.

That is an expensive mistake. Top reps want to work for companies who are mindful of their brand positioning and manage their reputations well. Corporate branding is responsible for 7% of stock performance and the best forty brands outperform stock index MSCI world index by 73%. 

There are two primary ways to invest in the brand. They are internal branding and brand recognition. Internal branding sells your brand to your employees so that they will become promoters to their networks. Market your brand to your employees internally by having:

a mission statement,

an ambitious, long-term vision,

a clear set of action values, and

persuasive, on-brand collateral.

When your employees buy into your brand, they become brand ambassadors to their networks.

Take full advantage of these methods to connect with your audience online and offline to spread brand awareness or risk losing your top selling reps.

17. Pay commissions late.

Ensuring reps can see an immediate connection between their positive activities and their commissions is the best way to reinforce the right selling behaviors and keep them loyal and productive.

It can be demotivating for a top rep to deliver a great sale and not receive a commission when it’s due. According to Mark Roberge, who built the sales team at HubSpot, the rewards must be immediate. 

“When salespeople succeed, they should see it reflected in their paychecks immediately. When they fail, they should feel the pain in their paychecks immediately. Any delay between good (or bad) behavior and the related financial outcome will decrease the impact of the plan.”

When direct return or loss can be felt instantly, the motivating effect is potent. Capitalize on this to drive your reps to succeed.

18. Fail to equip them with best practices and resources.

Talented reps don’t want to spend their time developing resources and reinventing the wheel. Support them with high-quality reference materials, sales enablement collateral, value proposition talking points, and anything else that will make them sell better faster.

Even the best salesperson’s performance dips in the absence of a well-structured sales process. Equip them with best practices, training, and resources. Research shows that high-performance companies are twice as likely to have structured sales process and businesses that want to help their sales reps reach full potential need to support them in this way.

The time they spend creating resources is the time they are not on the phone booking meetings and closing deals.

19. Ask reps to lie to customers to close more business.

Top sales talent values integrity. The best sellers believe that trustworthiness, professionalism, follow-through, product knowledge, and enthusiasm are what customers value most about them. A survey of high-performing salespeople overwhelmingly shows a preference for the truth with 70% of reps preferring to be honest rather than embellish.

Reps stay intrinsically motivated when they believe in their mission and ability to match prospects with a truly good-fit solution. Lying to customers is a lose-lose proposition.

Customers will lose trust in the company and churn. Reps lose their most basic and powerful reason to sell which is faith in the product. On top of this, managers that compel a rep to lie will simply alienate their team and lose top talent.

20. Force reps to attend too many internal meetings.

Time spent in meetings is the time that reps could be selling. Before inviting your sales team to a meeting, seriously consider whether or not it’s essential to have them there.

If it’s not essential, don’t have them sit in. If you absolutely must include them, make sure that you have a clear and specific agenda. Move through it quickly and systematically. The best thing you can do for your reps if they must absolutely be in the meeting provides the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time. Get them in and out as fast as possible.

Instead, begin each meeting with an agenda.  It is critical to stick to the agenda once it has been set. Weinberg has outlined a list of possible agenda items:

personal updates

company vision

results review

product training

success stories

deal strategy

sales training/ coaching

business plan presentation

celebrate

sales wishlist

marching orders

takeaways

These items provide a springboard for discussion while keeping the focus on business and are a starting point for anyone who wants to make their meetings less painfully unproductive.

21. Suggest or imply that selling is the easy part of a company’s success.

Sales reps are the driving force of a company’s growth. It’s critical that managers tie their team’s role into the bigger picture.  Suggesting that sales is the easy part of a company’s success undermines your reps desire to succeed. Poor managers fail to validate the many positive ways they influence the company:

They drive revenue. This revenue translates into the ability to grow the company into new markets, further pursue its mission, pay salaries, and benefit investors and shareholders. 

They face rejection daily. The best ones get back up and continue selling. It can be easy for managers to lose sight of the challenge that is being a salesperson.

There are also less tangible ways that talented reps influence the company as a whole. Reps have a direct line to customers, who are the people that matter the most.

Sales represent the brand. They connect the dots to solve people’s problems. They listen to customer needs and communicate them up through the company.

There is no doubt that they are a key frontline component and to suggest anything less is a big mistake. Underappreciating the sales team is not only detrimental to growth and success at a team level but could be fatal at a company level.

These mistakes could cost you your top selling reps.

If you find yourself doing anything on the list above, stop yourself immediately. None of these items are worth risking the resignation of salespeople you have developed.

The investment you make in your sales team is too valuable to lose.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

21 Ways to Make Your Top Sellers Quit Written by Keith Johnstone Keep your churn rates high and your employee satisfaction rates low. Why put in the effort to keep your top reps happy when you could alienate and push them to work for the competition?