#and then on the other side of the coin is people like [REDACTED]

[topsy-snurby]

Because of this exact phenomenon, the most successful video essayists on YouTube are the ones who actually graduated college — to everyone's surprise, I'm sure.

I think I now understand why I get frustrated with some YouTube essays: They don't introduce what they're talking about quickly or properly.

They don't present a question they intend to answer, or say what they're trying to convince you of.

There's an obvious general subject, the thumbnail and title provides some clues, but there's still context missing, and context affects how things are interpretted.

Not to mention sometimes I click on a thumbnail just to learn the answer of "what's this about", and to not get that answer in any timely manner.

And when I'm twenty minutes into a two hour video, that's about the time when I question why I still have the video on.

[hammerhead-jpg]

Okay okay okay imma talk about something

Redacted ramble number 45 go!!!!!

The potential argument as to why shipping Asher and David is bad could be "yes, Asher and David have shown to be very close in a way regular friendships aren't, literally being "more than a promise " and "two sides of the same coin" and all the other other stuff we've been told, but why can't that be platonic? Why can't we assume that even in a world where they don't already have their own mates that kinda thing couldn't possibly be platonic ? As a society we always assume that if two people that aren't related become closer than your average friendship it automatically means that it has to be romantic, that they then have to start dating, move in together, get married and have children. But Asher and David very well could have all that closeness and still be just best friends."

And to that I would usually say that well, shipping is done for fun. There doesn't have to be rhyme or reason to it. Most people who ship them (at least I think) are able to comprehend the idea that Asher and David could be that close and still consider themselves best friends and not lovers because that is the reality of the series.

But then I thought no- I - uh -NO!!

Because hhejjsjesjsuj EVERY single interaction that implies closeness IS FUCKIN FULL of sextual tension like no joke with the scene in the wedding where David fixes Asher's tie I was actually wondering if they were gonna start making out or somth

I can't fuckin say that their relationship is inherently romantic cuz that would be a lie but LIKE hdkdndmdhjfjj their relationship is so much closer to romance than your average very VERY close friendship

To paint you a picture Milo is also a person that is very very close to David and Asher

Sure, maybe not as much to them as they are to each other, Milo met them later in life, he was never their roommate or David's main support while he was grieving his father's death but they're still very close

Yesterday I read a fic about all three of them as a polycule and it's just felt...wrong

I guess if there are any wolf boys polycule lovers rn I'm sorry but having Milo in there felt wrong in a way I cannot describe

And the imperium AU.....the IMPERIUM AU

The existence of the imperium au inherently implies that if Asher and David didn't meet their mates they would be together romantically. THERE IS A NON CANON YET OFFICIAL AU WHERE THEY WERE LOVERS FOR LIFE SO CLOSE THAT WHEN DAVID DIED NOT ONLY DID IT PERMANENTLY CHANGE ASHER BUT LITERALLY A PART OF HIS MAGIC DIED WITH DAVID.

There is nothing in the story that really needed Asher and David to be mates, so much so that in the original Imperium AU episode Erik had no plans for them to have been lovers until he made the cataclysm sequel it's literally just because Erik wanted to

SO IF the implication is that if they didn't meet their mates they would've have been lovers then you CANNOT judge people for imagining that scenario where it's not in an imperialistic world where one of them ends up dying

Also I can't even say that it's because they didn't meet their mates because although David obviously didn't meet Angel because they were engaged(?) to the king imperial Asher I'm pretty sure meets Baabe around the same time that he meets them in the prime universe so like?????

In conclusion If Erik ships them then you cannot blame me for doing the same thing!!

[bressynonym]

Hello! It is I, the OC loving Anon! I have been sent to ask about your OC... Ahh... *Checks hand* Clover? And his life as he gets together with a certain Fledgling.

Please info dump about this big guy. The people want to know more! 🤍

hello !

HAHA okay so like clover is my combat medic OC that basically just bullies his way into @bunnysnared's fledge's life after his several visits to the medbay.

sit tight and let's talk about all things clover! (ㅅ´ ˘ `)

bare essentials (what makes clover... well, clover):

• big lad (6'3ft/190cm) • 31 y/o • rank: sergeant? (he's been PMC for a while) • clover has this choppy mullet situation because he hates short hair, but needs the sides trimmed for his headset to sit snuggly. u won't see his forehead often lol • piercings that def need to be taken off for an op - 3 on his right ear - 5 on his left ear - a labret piercing (lip) - and many more! (😏) • a neck tattoo of a stag skull and a wreath of laurels surrounding it • his lucky coin (that he bets other's lives on) • a freggie charm (a weird frog thing he adores) • an ambiguous accent (sounds like he's from london, but he definitely isn't)

the story so far or whatever:

Clover was a medic for a task force specializing in interrogations and intel gathering, but was thrown to the wayside after a traumatic back injury that temporarily takes him out of the field. Retirement isn't an option for guys like him, so he's made a medic on a uk base with his own little office. he hates paperwork, but what can u do, ykno. his bedside manners are horrible and his superior Fish isn't too happy about that, but he's too good at what he does to let him go (and even has clover trained for a position as head medic to replace him lmao). he settles into the routine of a sterile environment and possibly says goodbye to getting back out into the field. but here arrives fledge, in for a patch up. and another. and another. clover becomes a lil obsessed with him (read: falls in love with him) to the point of training to get back into a task force fledge's on as their combat medic. the captain likes him, so he's inducted in without any problems. or smth. LMAO. the rest is clvrfldg history.

what the bastard is like:

clover doesn't care for regulations. its obvious in the way he looks. he's one step away from being kicked to the curb and dishonorably discharged from medical malpractice. (i.e: coin tossing if u live or die or if he should give you anesthetic lmao) but he's damn good at his job, so they don't want to lose a great asset like him. all smiles that don't reach the eyes, and eyes that never shine, he's unreadable. you won't get a lick about his past or anything about himself. its like pulling teeth because he'll redirect a conversation back to you. very observant (and a bit of a sadist lol). uses it to his advantage as a medic, its what keeps him sharp (and a bit mean). will notice the little details and patterns and use what he can to turn things in his favor. manipulate mansplain manwhore or whatever lmao

also clover isn't his real name it's [REDACTED]

ty for reading this far and for the ask! hopefully this gives a better understanding of my baby boy!!

[pandoraroid]

The Pack Wedding 💥💥💥💗💥

reaction rambles bc yes

please keep in mind this is meant to be lighthearted i love these men with all my heart n life n soul

THIS IS 43 MINUTES IM SO SCARED WHY CANT I PRESS THE VIDEO this is too much nervousness for seven in the morning im dead

DAVEEEYYYYY HIIIIIII GMORNING MWAAAA

"it's the pack everything's gonna go crazy." bro it's the SHAW pack what does that say about you hm 🤔 /j i love you david 

"reception's gonna be a solstice party on steriods" I SNORTED SO DAMN LOUD 😭

now should be a good time to say that part of the reason why i like redacted so much is because it's so funny and lines like that do it for me every single time.

"i love you angel so very much" BOOGSH 💥 im so in love with you david shaw 

i think bro's in love with us guys idk 

"beautiful... you.." NO YOU 🫵 david we are not doing this back in forth in the morning JUST ACCEPT IT

he's triggering my cuteness/love aggression SO FUCKING SAPPY I LUV U MWAH

"you fucking menace c'mere" HIS LAUGH OMFG GOOD FUCKINH MORNINGGGG

IS ASHER NEXT PLEASE TELL ME HE'S NEXT 

MY MAN MY MAN MY MAN

"oh fuck it's the day" me just this morning

"asher breathe we're good you've been training for this your whole life" ELABORATE???? id love to know how exactly youve been training for this asher

"it's our wedding day. holy shit it's our wedding day. i'm gonna be a husband." KILLL MEEE RIGHT NOW I CAN HEAR HIM SMILEEE OMFG WEAR THAT SHIT WITH PRIDE ASHER

"i've always been husband material look at what we're working with" KILL ME RIGHT NOW /pos baabe smacking him though HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

id kiss you for the rest of my life asher

laughing against/while kissing THIS MAN WANTS ME DEAD

"say how much time do we have before we meet everybody in the lobby" LET THEM FUCKING WAIT

MILO AND SAM???? OH MY GOD???? (should go without fucking saying but... drive safe..... please...)

in my head: sam is driving. david's shotgun. ash & milo are in the back. just because. >> BRO I WAS RIGHT????

darlin driving in another car with the other mates??? that... isnt what i think it is.... is it......

david sounds so tired of their bs HAHAHA "rounded out with a little traditional opinion from them of all people" DARLIN FIGHT BACK

"hey we're fun too, right?" ASHER PLEASE

"well let's see: we've got a grouchy grandpa drivin us-" 

"hey." 

"at least he didn't call you cowboy." BRO

"now don't you start." 

"and we got the grumpy alpha."

"i'm not grumpy. just preoccupied."

"right. right." bros didnt even try to sound convinced

"we're fun." 

"asher. we spent your bachelor party playing destiny 2." 

"and smash!" 

"oh my mistake."

this entire conversation. peak.

"i dont even wanna imagine what chaos those four are getting up to piled in one vehicle." OH WOULDNT YOU LIKE TO SAM 

DEAD ASS SILENCE I LOVE IT i cant fycking breathe this is too funny.

in my head, they were definitely arguing over directions. or darlin's driving, or making fun of the other car.

wait darlin what

"or you'll likely end up staring down the maw of my own beautiful mate-" SAMUEL COLLINS

"oh move it mr. wedding day" WHY DOES THAT SOUND SO GOOD

"and fix your hair."

"it's suppose to look like this!"

"are you trying to look like you got married in a wind tunnel?" BRO NOT ON HIS WEDDING DAY 💀

sam encouraging milo omgomg

"you talk more than anyone i know. and i know asher." AHAHHAHAHAHAHA

"is my tie on straight?" 

"is it ever?" is the one wearing it straight /jjjj

david helping him with his tie someone kill me right now

GABE'S CHILI RECIPE WHAT

"why did you pick me?" OH SHIT

i seriously just listened and payed attention to their conversation so no thoughts head empty only them

"what really mattered in a beta was having a person that was the other side of your coin."

"i picked you because you were the one person i trusted more than anyone else. you made me feel safe at a time more than i couldve explained. you were everything i wasnt. where i was distant you were outgoing. where i was rough you were warm. where i was analytical you were intuitive. you're the other side of my coin. you always have been. so it never mattered to me what anyone else thought of what i needed in a beta because they didnt know me. i did. you did. and i needed the person that was right for me not for anybody else."

i couldve typed out everything david said but THIS!!!! I WAS SOBBING!!!! THEY ARE THE OTHER SIDE OF OTHER'S COIN NEVER FORGET THAT!!!!!!!! their vows to each other fr

this is wrecking me THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH

"you're too hard on yourself too."

"well we had to have something in common other than destiny and smash bros, right?" the range of friendship everyone 

THEYRE HOLDING BACK TEARS IN THIS ONE TRUST ME 

my heart felt so heavy in this WHY

"i think you're the best fucking beta i could have ever asked for. i think you're the besy friend i could have ever asked for. i deserved most of the time."

aaaanndd got heavier 😁

GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG GROUP HUG

"i just feel bad that i'm going to be up there looking this good y'know people are going to get confused on whose wedding day it really is." EAT EM UP SWEETHEART (i meant milo but them too ofc)

"do we get a step stool for behind the podium?" HAHSHAHAHAHHA THE CONCERN IN HIS VOICE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

"i love you milo"

"i love you too asshole" CRYING 

"thank you for doing this milo"

"i got you. always." ALWAYS.

CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY CEREMONY 

"when i was asked by my friends to officiate their unions, i only had one question for them: how much does it pay?" ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS

im really listening on this part so head empty.

oohh asher (i think it's asher) laughing through baabe's vows IS SO SWEET I LOVE YOU AND I ALWAYS WILL

OH DAVID GETTING CHOKED UP ON ANGEL'S VOWS KILL ME

"you're the best part of me. and i'll spend the rest of our lives showing that i'm worthy of that." oh david shaw you dont even have to try

"i now pronounce you all married the-the pairs of you to each other not all together" OH THEY ARE NEVER GOING TO LET HIM LIVE THAT DOWN

THE KISSES OMMMGGGKFHEKHEJSS 

CONGRATULATIONS ANGEL & DAVID

CONGRATUALTIONS BABE & ASHER MWAAAAAAAAHH TO ALL OF YOUUU

[alyssawolf2410]

Prologue - A Coin.

Well, I don't know who I made mad, but someone or something is mad at me. This morning didn't go as planned. First, my apartment building experienced some short-circuiting last night, which caused my alarm to reset and not go off. Consequently, I had to rush to get ready for work. However, when I went to get my clothes from the dryer, I discovered burned clothes due to the circuit issue and struggled to find something decent to wear. So, I ended up missing the bus, having to run to work, and being an hour late. Unfortunately, it rained on the way to work, but I made it nevertheless.

As soon as I entered the office my boss approached me. "Miss [Redacted]! I'm so sorry! You would not believe the morning I have had. But don't worry, once I dry myself off I will start cleaning the rooms." I started but was interrupted by my boss. "I'm sorry to interrupt you but we need to talk", she glances to her side as some of the other employees whisper to each other. " Preferably in my office", her eyes returned to me. "No, it's okay. We can talk here. If my lateness was the issue, I assure you it won't happen again!", I said, a little more desperately than I hoped for. I was praying it wasn't what I thought it was. Maybe she is going to promote me, or wants me to transfer! "It's not about that. It's about our company's policy. Can you please come to my office?", she asked again. Grabbing my bag tight, I responded " No. You can tell me here". My boss lets out a sigh before saying " Fine, I regret to inform you that you are being let go". And now I'm walking home, in the rain, without a job. Dang, I sound like a telenovela. I continue my dreary way home. This rain really came out of nowhere. I reach my city's little park as it seems to be hosting an event. Horrible timing on their part. Well, it's better than being out there in the rain.

I approach a large tent and lift the flap to uncover a soft, yellow light. Lanterns sit in front of small booths. There aren't many people here even though you'd expect more to be in here avoiding the rain, too. Some people go up to the booths while others watch. The booths have a variety of food, shops, and games. There is a group of kids going from booth to booth and the youngest of the group notices me. She shuffles over to me and asks " Why are you wet?" A little girl asked. "Oh... because it started to rain. And I didn't have an umbrella," I answered. "Why didn't you bring one?" She questioned. "Um. I didn't know it was going to rain," I respond. The group of kids seems to have noticed the youngest is missing. The oldest one spots the little girl next to me. She runs up to us. Starts to drag away the child as she scolds the little one. "What did I say about wandering off? Especially when you talk to foreigners!" Okay, rude. She drags the younger one away. While the little girl with brown hair waves goodbye. I give a small wave back. I notice a gentle blue light shining briefly in the corner of my eye. I turned to my left and noticed an empty booth with a blue coin placed on it. I walked towards the booth and examined the coin that was left behind. Curiously, I peeked over the booth and realized that the booth wasn't even set up yet. I picked up the coin and noticed it had no design on it. After looking around once more, I decided to take the coin with me and started to make my way out.

~~~~

The rain had stopped, so I started to make my way home. I continued to explain the weird coin. But as I waited for the green light to cross the street. The light shines on the coin right to see "Make a Wish." A wish? So this might be for some wishing well at the event. Maybe I should have looked around a bit more before leaving. Hmm. What would I even wish for? Maybe a job? Nah, that's too boring! Let's put on my weeb for a moment. Okay, if I was some opening to an anime. Maybe I will be cliche and say I want to be stronger and destroy my enemies with the power of friendship! Hmm. If this is my protagonist moment, I want to be somewhat unique. Oh! I know! " I wish I could go to all my favorite fandoms! It would be cool to get to know the characters and explore their worlds!" I say as I flip my coin in the air. For a brief moment, the coin glows. Before I could catch the coin. Someone shoves me aside and grabs my purse. "Hey!" Ba Bump, Ba Bump.

Everything feels like it slowed down... I angrily try to follow the person, but soon realize my mistake when big bright lights blind my right side. My mind races a thousand thoughts at once. As I turn my head towards the light, my body moves forward. Ba Bump, Ba Bump.

I could hear the driver slam their brakes and try to swerve away from me... But it's too late... Time moved fast again as time stopped being in slow motion. And the vehicle slammed into me... Crash.

~~~~

I jerk upward. I take a quick and sharp breath in and out. In and out. I attempt to even my breath. I think back to chasing the guy, the truck zooming at me, and the pain. A lot of it. Am I dead? I look all over. I might be in a cave. Everything looks rocky. Multiple tunnels are going to who knows where.

However, one of the tunnels has a faint blue glow. I stand up unsteadily and walk towards the gentle blue light. My steps are slow and shaky. At the end of the tunnel, I see an underground lake with all different types of blue crystals on the ceiling. Despite how beautiful it was, it was not what caught my eye.

It was the woman sitting on top of the lake. Which is already weird enough! She had a long blue gown with trims of gold all around it. It is so long that you can't even see her feet. She also had long dark blue hair that reminded me of waves crashing into each other. And on the top of her head is something close to a crown. It is attached to the back of her head with a circle headpiece that has two rings in it with many gems. Her dark skin is also decorated with gold. "You are here early." The woman softly spoke.

I jumped when she suddenly spoke as I wasn't expecting it. "You were supposed to help her. But I should have expected this since you humans are so flawed. I need to rework the plan for you to take her home when she comes of age." The lady stands. And turns to me. I finally get to see her face. She has the crown continue to the front of her face where it dangles. She has her eyes shut. Is she an anime character? The heck. Her lips are a dark blue. However, her eyelashes are light blue.

Dang, this woman really likes blue. "Since you have some time before you are needed, where do you want to go first?" I jumped again. Lord, I need to stop dozing off. Wait. "Huh?' I blinked slowly at her. Which she probably didn't even see.

"What do you mean? Actually, where am I? I'm dead...?" It's now just hitting me that I died. Pun not intended. "You are in the in-between. Yes, you died. Now, where do you wish to go?" She continues to speak softly and flatly. "The in-between? Like in-between death and life? Since you know, I have passed away." I am now curious about this in-between. "Yes and No. You are also in-between worlds but not. We are higher than gods, but not. We are just in-between." She whispered. "Do you wish to stay here? Or do you wish to go to another?" She continued.

"To another? Do you mean another world?" "Of course. You can go to any world you wish. Just tell me its name." "Wait! Am I about to be iskaied!? OMG! I even got hit by truck-kun! And I can choose which world I can go to!?" I screamed. "Their so many to choose from! I'm having my anime/manga mommet! Wait! Can I have powers?! Or love interests?!" I exclaimed. "You can have that if you use your wish coin. And even more." She has been taking steps closer to me without me realizing it. "But only once per world. So choose wisely. If you would like, I could choose a world for you to go into."

I take a step away from her. "Wish coin?" "Yes, a wish coin. It's how you got here." She snapped her fingers. And that familiar coin appeared in her hands. "When you took my wish coin. As well as making a wish with it. You accepted my deal. Thus making you my newest wish child. And until I need you. You may have your fun in the other worlds." "A deal? What deal?!" I asked. "I am bored of this conversation. I will be sending you to a random world now. I will talk again soon." She turned away from me and started to walk back to her lake. "Hey! I'm not done asking -"

Before I could finish my sentence. I see her raise her hand and snap her fingers. There is a bright glow underneath me. I feel myself falling as a bright light surrounds me. I scream as the world changes from an underground cave to a clear blue sky. Is she trying to kill me again! I continue to fall until I fall into cold water.

Splash.

Next

[talenlee]

The Gliscor In A Coal Mine

Gunna talk about Smogon here. Oh, you don’t know Smogon?

Weeeeell, deep breath.

Smogon is a Pokemon fangame played with the basic components of the videogame series Pokemon, which is itself, made by Game Freak and distributed by Nintendo, which you’ll probably recognise as one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Smogon, by contrast, are a forum and some emulators and a surprisingly dense little bubble of Youtube content.

‘Smogon’ in this context refers to a bunch of related games, that form a single fandom game, a folk game. They have, in the terminology I’m fond of using, made a game out of another game, which is a super cool practice I actively encourage. It’s how we get great things like, for example, the entire Legacy subgenre of games, from its dizzying heights of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 to the shocking lows of Pandemic Legacy Any Other Seasons. I like Smogon as a thing to observe through some sort of astrolabe or other technical device. I have no particular interest in engaging with the game itself, as they play it.

I don’t want to get into a play space with these people.

Not because they’re bad or anything, though they are overwhelmingly split between the still-thinks-he’s-on-4chan shithead vs autistic trans girl social binary of internet niches and you’re never sure what side that coin is landing on when you flip it. I don’t want to partake of Smogon because the game they’re playing looks unpleasant to me to play, and because part of Being Into Smogon means looking around at the game Smogon has made and thinking: Yeah, this works. This is a good system.

The current news out of Smogon, such as it is, is that in their OU format (short for ‘overused’), just banned the Pokemon Gliscor. Gliscor is redacted information that doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to know what Gliscor is to come to understand the problem that Gliscor highlights, and the lesson you can learn about making games and control over those games.

Smogon’s banning policy reflects a truth I espouse as a game designer: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

Pokemon as it’s balanced and released and supported and played by GameFreak is, competitively balanced for 2v2, 4-of-6 teams, with information openly available to players through previews. This has some odd knock-on effects, like poor Zoroark kinda got pooched when they make this information public, but whatever, there are more Pokemon than that that aren’t really for playing. This is a kind of game I think of as a ‘pool game’ – the game is built ostensibly around a pool of potential pieces, and you choose which pieces you use and how. Magic: The Gathering is a pool game, Pokemon is a pool game, and even games like Dominion are pool games, because the game pieces that are in the game at the start of each contest are determined by choices outside the game.

In the official tournament context, when it comes to limiting access to Pokemon, there are ‘mythical’ pokemon where you can only have one (or two, depending on the regulation) from that category on your team. The game is broadly speaking open, where almost anything in that pool is available for use. Now, it’s hard to dig into this for hard numbers, because the pool has a lot of stuff in it that isn’t really expected to be played competitively. There are Pokemon who exist for, most likely, their place in a single-player RPG experience, like most first and second form evolutions, and some that exist as more world content. Think Unown and male Combee. Of the pool available, that means you’re looking a pool of, like, around 1,021 Pokemon, you can’t act as if all of those are going to find a place in a competitive head-to-head environment.

The stat site Pikalytics gives us numbers of about 310 Pokemon that showed up at all, and in that space, 37 Pokemon were not allowed. Some of them weren’t allowed because there’s no way to access them, but Game Freak get to make those choices and Smogon doesn’t. Now, that 310 number is a really broad net, and it’s just the stats from one tournament with over 700 players. In that space, two or three people bringing along something for a laff are going to make it show up. And if we say, limit ourselves to anything that had at least 5 people bring it (so, a representation of .71%), that gives us a list of 75 Pokemon that showed up in the tournament. And the stats aren’t telling the whole story just like that — after all, two of the most common Pokemon, Iron Hands and Flutter Mane, were played on 50% of teams.

That’s the metagame for an official tournament, broadly speaking; the full pool is somewhere around 310 Pokemon, but the core of the pool is much smaller. And importantly, when I say there are ’37 Pokemon that were not allowed,’ these are Pokemon who are very specifically set aside by the game experience and with related traits indicating that they are not for typical tournament play. You never could play with them in this format, they are not appearing and disappearing based on feedback.

Smogon doesn’t have tournament-to-tournament kind of environment like this; they instead have a tiered tournament system which cares about usage and then cultivates that usage. What his means is that the Pokemon are divided into groupings described by, well, how often they’re used. That means the main, core space, at least according to the Smogon people I spoke to about it, is ‘OU,’ for Overused. Overused is a 1v1 format. At the moment, there are 31 Pokemon legal in Overused. You can use Pokemon from a lower tier in this tier, but it generally works out badly, because those Pokemon are not strong enough for this tier. There are 19 other Pokemon that were in this tier, but have been banned out of it, sent ‘up’ a tier to the category of ‘Ubers’ for being, well, too good. Ubers, for context, has about sixty two Pokemon in it.

That is, Smogon centralises its design space around 31 Pokemon, and only after kicking 19 of them out.

In the announcement banning Gliscor from their format, there were people calling for bans to Sneasler, Samurott-Hisui and Gholdengo. That would bring it up to 22/29, which feels unpleasantly close to half the format being banned. Even at 19/31, that’s essentially 2/5th of the format banned. And when you dig into this situation, you wind up chasing details that can’t address the whole problem:

Gliscor was too powerful at setting hazards and being hard to kill.”

“Well, why was it hard to kill?”

“Because it could heal from lots of small hits.”

“Well why not hit it very hard with a big hit, since it has a 4x weakness?”

“Well nothing in the tier can hit it hard enough.”

“Well, why don’t you bring up something from a lower tier that could do that?”

“Well nothing in that tier is good enough.”

“Well why aren’t there good ice types in this tier?”

“Well we banned the one that hits really hard.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It was too good at hitting things very hard.

And like, this whole conversation is is continuing to diagnose problem after problem after problem, but never finding anything that solves those problems. Because Gliscor being banned resulted in people talking about how now, there were more problems that had to be fixed.

A lot of this is the peculiarities of what Smogon does and doesn’t allow. For example, hazards are so important because everything in Smogon is expected to swap out constantly, and hazards make that hard to endure over time, meaning that hazards pull the game towards an end state. This swapping out constantly makes some statuses pointless (like confuse) and a lot of setup moves pointless too. It means that multiple sequences of turns can happen where players don’t attack one another because they’re just swapping back and forth to jockey into position. There are whole move types that are banned (baton pass and evasion boosters), because if you didn’t, people would use them. They had to institute a 1,000 turn timer on games because some tournament games ran that far without anyone actually winning the game.

What if those 19 Pokemon were just left as it is? You got rid of the Evasion rules and the banned moves and just let the game settle, as it is, on what people can do, in that space, and see how it works. I’m told it becomes a pretty simple game where everyone does the same thing of trying to get an angry fish into play with baton pass and kill your opponent. This is apparently a bad thing, where by banning a bunch of strategies the format is instead facing a situation where the’re almost halfway through banning the entire tier, to try and capture a way the game ‘should’ be. It seems to me the point of a usage-based tiering system means that if one tier sucks, everyone leaves that tier and recognises that the Pokemon in that space push a style most of the people there don’t like, and instead they go on to play in other tiers, like Underused. The best stuff gets pressurised out of it, pushed up and out into that rarified atmosphere by the math and social pressure of the natural churn of the system, right?

Right?

But they don’t.

They want to play OU.

And they want OU to be the ‘main’ format.

There are two competing challenges here, for me. The first is that Smogon can’t actually add anything to the game. They see their place as having to exclude things. I get this problem, kinda because ostensibly, they want their version of the game to be a thing you can play ‘on hardware’ rather than through their emulator. This ‘on hardware’ play therefore can’t actually add anything or overlay new rules, like, for example, adjusting the stats of Pokemon, or instituting score-based team building or even elimination drafts. And you don’t get to go ‘hey, that’s really obnoxious or hard to do,’ because Smogon’s ruleset is not easily processed or parsed, and it is not welcoming.

The second thing is that Smogon’s process for changing the game is their idea of democratic. It’s voted on by experts who can identify the problems and supposedly make good choices going forward. This means these people need to be socially active and engaged in the forum place and capable of earning respect within the competitive and social environment that represents which, let me tell you, that’s a worrying place.

And the thing is, this is all being done with an assumption that they’re trying to carve away what’s ‘wrong’ with the format to find the right version of it. On the one hand, yeah, that’s cool, they’re making a game out of another game. On the other hand…

Says who?

They use terms like ‘noncompetitive’ and ‘unskilled’ to refer to when a strategy can present a player with an abrupt choice and if they choose wrong they’re at a disadvantage, as if games with sharp swings aren’t competitive games that require skill. The language has the familiar structure of designers discussing problems with games but without the fundamental idea of being able to actually change it. Much like Smash players who try to remove variance from a game built around it, Smogon is trying to take something designed to get out of hand with crits and failure chances and make it fit something else.

Famously, new ideas and new mechanics get introduced and Smogon tries to route around them, to preserve the way things were in earlier generations rather than adjust to what the new generation is doing. Back in Generation 8 of Pokemon, Smogon just straight up banned Dynamax entirely; a mechanic that meant any pokemon could have a big bulky tank mode for a short period of time and punch through protects. That meant they played the entire format without access to a mechanic the main game was balanced around. Anyone who played Smogon exclusively through all the years of Generation 8 is someone who has no idea what a core mechanic of that game does to the game based on their play experience.

When Gliscor went, in that same announcement, people were bringing up, again, that they need to ban Terastallize, for the whole duration of the generation. Because the current format and game’s defining special rule is something they want to ignore, which just further builds on the idea that they don’t want Scarlet Violet OU. They don’t want the Pokemon that would bubble to the top of those usage stats so they could select where else they’d rather play. The only tool is shrinking the game… and it just so happens that it means that each generation kind of slowly but surely winds up looking a lot like the previous ones. They don’t want this ‘Pokemon’ game interfering with their game. And they don’t want to take measures to address these problems,because whatever they’re aiming at, it has to be socially agreed upon, voted upon, enforced by bans only, and only validated by vibes.

It’s all said with the selfseriousness of people sitting on the sofa glaring at the TV that they know what the game ‘should’ be and not considering what the game is. Which is fair! They’re making up their own game out of this other game, after all, and that game could kick ass! It doesn’t look like it, it looks like a rat’s nest of rules corner cases, with a stone-faced defensiveness that suggests newcomers have to Get Good and Do The Readings, and if you’re not involved, you should not dare comment on their game. Any opinion about their game must show due deference, even if it’s just recognising that it exists. An absence of praise is a presence of violence.

It’s very funny when they complain about Gamefreak’s decisions, mind you. Gamefreak’s game is one of the most successful multimedia franchises in the world and Smogon is a forum for a few hundred very sweaty dorks. Like, yeah, I don’t think Gamefreak are thinking about you when they make their choices about how to continue ongoing engagement with their multinational game empire. Which isn’t to say their game is better, the game you play is the game you want to play, but acting as if ‘Gamefreak doesn’t know what they’re doing’ – they do. They aren’t caring about you and the way you play the game, and haven’t for like… fifteen years? Your game isn’t unbalanced because Gamefreak are stupid, your game is unbalanced because you’re playing in the space Gamefreak is explicitly not balancing.

But okay, let’s look at what I said up top: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

These players are able to identify the problems they’re having. They don’t want to play doubles, and the singles game is balanced around a kind of play they don’t like. And when you’re dealing with playtesting of your own game, you need to be able to listen to this kind of thing and accept it as entirely neutral and entirely correct feedback. Players might lie to you about how they feel but you should always trust it anyway. They have identified a problem.

As it stands, right now, Smogon’s only tool they consider acceptable for changing this game is to take things away from it, and for the process of doing those changes being entirely social, and ostensibly democratic, with a real ‘well, if you didn’t vote, you don’t matter’ kind of approach to that.

And this is what you get.

Gliscor was used in somewhere between five and one teams in the Pikalytics, by the way.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[original-character-championship]

Bracket B Round 1

Poll 14

Vida Gwendolyn Firecracker (@overmorrowpine) vs. Forage (@lunartearrose)

91. Vida Gwendolyn Firecracker (@overmorrowpine)

he/it/xe/dew

feral teenager who lives in a realm that is like if the deep sea was magic instead of water. has an old algerian sword dew stole from a corpse (it's called a flyssa :] ). gets in a qpr with a jewish mixed-race lesbian teenager on a quest handed over by an exceedingly creaturey angel. have i mentioned he's absolutely feral. keeps xyr partner & her guide alive in the magicky realm. may or may not have been stuck in stasis and actually be from the last century (or something, that's not too ironed out yet). has loneliness issues & touch starvation issues. knows dews limits well, and will frequently dart off into danger to protect dews partner and the angel. made them promise to take xem home with them.

5'11, a lil stocky, a bit of stubble on its chin, lots of scars due to the environment it lives in. grey eyes, brown hair, dull, slightly tattered clothes for blending in. a little wiry, very strong. necklace of a tooth he took from a monster (not pictured below), and many other minor trophies in his pockets (tufts of fur, scales, etc). xe's right-handed. xyr sword is about 18 inches long, and xe has taken very good care of it because it's what's keeping xem alive.

92. Forage (@lunartearrose)

He/they

Do you like druid tiefling? 6 ft 4 inches of height? Who it was decided by 2 mid campaign coin flips that he did not know what underwear was for the first arc of the campaign, and that They have a biiig [redacted information due to tumblr rules and guidelines]? A fella that was not only raised by a god that was imprisoned at the bottom of the oceanic abyss next to the abandoned island he was left on, only referred to as The Octopus? Do you like birds? Colors? The Vast? Tears apart undead enough to terrify other undead? How about an otherwise caring sweetheart who managed to have several people crushing on him at one time and had no idea? Then this fella would appreciate the vote!

Forage has light purplish skin, long notched ears at the sides of his head, a feathered tail, hair split down the middle dark purple and magenta, green sclera, yellow irises, sharp teeth, and often wears garments modeled after paradise birds! Though his arc 2 outfit is a bit more coherent, black and red with silver accents. He also does makeup with dark red pigments, mostly to hide the scar on his face and just to acessorize further with. His staff, currently the staff of flowers modeled to be a sakura tree, has an orblike water portal for him to communicate with the octopus through.

[astralfandoms]

Because I am a responsible cog (/silly) I am going to make a new intro post because. we should probably make this

Anyway, hi, we're the Astral Abyss system, 23, genderfae, autistic adhd npd system, going by Astral, Neb, and usually Arynn (xey/it/he pronouns unless specified otherwise)

our main is @eldritchtaur and we have some other side blogs, such as @stellarlegionsystem (need to do a rename here) and @mimiscoiningcafe (our coining blog)

so, our front works on what we like to call "autism roulette": where we get into something, we introject a bunch of headmates from that source, they are the only ones who front, and then go dormant until the autism picks back up

so, currently, our main focus is toontown corporate clash, so most of the people who will front are all fictives of corporate clash, but this is bound to change, so expect this post to change as our interests change, people join the system, ect.

But for now, below the cut, are our current fronter roullette (+ emojis + pronouns)

As a note: some would rather remain anonymous (only known by their emoji) so i will respect that and not include them other than their emojis and pronouns

💗.text - Lilac - Xey/It/He

💡.text - Allan - He/Bulb/Radio/Static

💼.text - Barry - He/It/Case/Snap/Close

☎️.text - Belle - She/Chatter

🔔.text - Benjamin - He/Ring/Bell/🔔/🛎️

📺💡.text - Cathal - He/They/Tech/TV/📺

🪚.text - Chip - He/Rev/Chainsaw/Saw

🍒.text - Cherry Pop/Love Bomb - They/Love/Bun/Shark

🌜.text - Cosmo - He/Star/Constellation/Meteor/Planet/🌟/⭐/🌠/✨/💫/🪐

📀.text - Dave - He/Melody/Hymn

🤍🌈.text - Eerie - He/They/She/Rainbow/Color/Iris/Iridescent

⏲️.text - Graham - He/Speed/Fast

⚔️😇.text - Holly - She/Holy/Gold/Knight/Shield

🎩.text - Henry - He/Hat/Smoke

💢.text - Kilo - He/They/It/Gore/Rage/Goat/Horn/Explosion/💥

🐦‍⬛👓.text - Noir - He/It/Crow

🪚🤍.text - Override - It/Its

⛳.text - [REDACTED] - He/Him

⛳⚖️ - [REDACTED] - It/Its

⛳💧.text - [REDACTED] - He/They

🛢️.text - William - He/Oil/Drum

🐭.text - Winn - She/They/Squeak/🐭/🐁/🖱️

[highnoteds]

*    𝐔𝐏 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓  ;      a  recommendation  by   aaron !

hold  your  f***  horses !    aaron  kim  has  just  been  spotted  walking  into  revolution  headquarters.  they  are  best  known  for  being  the  label’s  residential  personal  assistant  and  have  been  working  with  the  label  for  three  months.  they  share  a  lot  of  interesting  things  about  life  in  the  music  industry  on  their  social  media,  so  make  sure  you  don’t  forget  to  follow  them  at  @glacierboy​.  the  office  knows  them  for  being  irresponsible  but  i  swear  they  have  an  emotional  side  as  well.  maybe  that  explains  why  they’re  always  associated  with  pouring  out  your  emotions  in  a  song  that  will  never  be  released,   chipped  black  nail  polish,  &&.  the  scent  of  marc  jacobs  with  a  hint  of  jack  daniels  lingering  on  a  suit  jacket.  their  coworkers  even  voted  them  as  the  most  likely  to  win  a  bar  fight.  we’ll  see  how  they  live  up  to  that  reputation.

*  𝙽𝙾𝚆 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙸𝙽𝙶 .           THE   BASICS

birthname :   aaron  kim  +  kim  youngmin  .

nickname(s) :   ron  (  close  friends  +  family  )  +  utp  .

birthdate  +  age :    september  25th  ;   twenty6  .

ethnicity :   korean .

gender  +  pronouns :   cis  male,   he  /  him  pronouns  .

orientation :    biromantic,   bisexual  .

birthplace :   los  angeles,  ca  .

current   residency :   new   york   city,   ny .

occupation :   personal  assistant  for  redacted  .

astrology :   libra   sun,   sagittarius   moon  .

language(s) :   korean,  english  .

height :   six  feet  [  6′0  ]  .

positive   traits :    flexible,  optimistic,  creative.

negative   traits :   irresponsible,  emotional,  conceited.

discography  inspo :   walk  the  moon,  dnce,  coin,  5  seconds  of  summer.

*  𝙷𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙴 .           AARON  KIM,  SON  OF  FAMOUS  PRODUCER  /  SONGWRITER  K3,  GETS  KICKED  OUT  OF  NIGHTCLUB  AFTER  INITIATING  FIGHT  WITH   . . .

when  you’re  born  as  the  hidden  love  child  to  a  famous  90′s  singer  and  a  well-established  producer  /  songwriter,  you’re  bound  to  be  some  kind  of  star.  or  at  least  that’s  what  aaron  always  considered  himself  to  be,  anyway.

due  to  being  raised  by  his  father  since  his  mother  didn’t  want  to  “abandon”  her  career,  he  was  exposed  to  the  lifestyle  of  the  rich  &&.  famous  early  on  in  life.  celebrity  family  friends  gave  him  gifts,  he  sometimes  attended  award  shows,  he  got  thrown  extravagant  parties  and  had  the  best  toys!  he  couldn’t  have  asked  for  a  better  life.

growing  up,  aaron  always  knew  he  wanted  to  be  in  the  music  industry.  watching  his  father  work  rather  it  be  at  home  or  (  on  the  rare  occasion  )  at  the  studio  inspired  him  to  take  a  chance  down  the  same  path.  but  his  father  wasn’t  having  it,  instead  wanting  him  to  have  a  more  “stable”  career  while  music  sat  on  the  backburner.

he  reluctantly  agreed  --  not  left  with  much  of  a  choice  since  the  man  was  putting  him  through  college  debt  free.  now  a  sophomore  attending  berkeley  with  an  undeclared  major,  aaron  realized  he  only  had  one  life  and  was  going  to  make  the  most  of  it  no  matter  what.  so  he  put  together  a  band  with  some  college  friends  and  decided  to  test  the  water.

their  name  was  ON  THE  FLOOR,  and  had  a  dance  pop-punk  sound  that  was  meant  to  have  people  dancing  on  the  floor  and  letting  go  of  all  their  worries.  they  began  posting  videos  on  youtube  and  was  soon  playing  very  small  gigs  which  led  them  to  being  locally  known.

yet  his  ambition  of  proving  his  father  wrong  outweighed  his  education.  late  night  "promoting”  --  which  was  really  just  him  partying  with  other  up  and  coming  musicians  --  resulted  in  barely  showing  up  to  classes,  and  the  times  he  did  show,  he  wore  sunglasses  and  complained  before  leaving.  his  grades  dropped  drastically  and  soon  he  was  kicked  off  campus  whilst  the  other  members  were  still  enrolled.

aaron  thought  this  was  a  sacrifice  willing  to  be  made  for  the  group’s  future.  so  he  spent  his  free  time  trying  to  get  a  contract  deal  behind  his  father’s  back,  all  the  while  using  his  friends  as  a  coverup  for  school.  things  were  going  fine  up  until  they  booked  a  decent  gig  at  a  well  known  club.  the  whole  night  was  filled  with  small  mishaps :  their  mics  being  faulty,  some  of  the  sound  equipment  messing  up  but  overall  things  were  going  fine!  that  was  before  some  asshole  began  provoking  them  after  their  set  which  resulted  into  a  physical  altercation  and  them  getting  arrested.  

his  father  soon  learned  everything  and  man,  he  was  not  happy.  but  he  saw  the  ambition  aaron  held  and  gave  him  a  deadline.  he  had  a  year  to  make  things  work  or  else  he  has  to  give  the  group  up.  this  seemed  easy  to  do,  but  with  the  others  now  being  juniors  and  having  to  focus  on  their  own  studies,  it  wasn’t  long  before  everyone  just  said  screw  it  and  had  split  up.  (  also  aaron  did  fight  with  another  member  and  threatened  to  sue  in  case  they  ever  used  his  songs  without  him  soo ...  )

years  went  by,  and  aaron  had  nothing  left  to  his  name  outside  of  the  track  record  of  getting  kicked  out  of  clubs  and  the  many  partners  he  slept  with.  soon  this  led  his  father  into  getting  him  a  job  as  a  personal  assistant  to  a  friend  who  needed  one  at  revolution  records.  and  that’s  where  his  new  journey  began!

*  𝙽𝙾𝚆 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙸𝙽𝙶 .           HEADCANONS  +  FUN  FACTS

aaron  considered  himself  as  the  pillar  of  the  band.  he  supplied  the  name,  he  paid  for  the  studio  sessions,  he  made  quite  a  few  of  their  more  favorable  tracks.  he  felt  more  important  than  everyone  else  which  was  another  issue  discussed  during  the  messy  meeting  soon  turned  disbandment.

owns  three  cds  that  were  burned  that  hold  his  group’s  music.  all  are  labeled  with  black  sharpie  and  have  little  doodles  on  them  to  represent  the  theme  of  the  cd.  plays  them  on  the  anniversary  of  them  getting  together  and  occasionally  is  heard  singing  /  humming  his  old  music  absentmindedly.

kinda  envious  of  the  bands  signed  under  the  label  but  that  doesn’t  stop  him  from  peaking  into  their  sessions  and  watching  them  work.

is  definitely  almost  always  seen  with  his  legs  on  his  desk  and  hands  behind  his  head  trying  to  balance  a  pencil  on  his  upper  lip.

likes  to  keep  his  old  group  secret  so  unless  you  were  one  of  them  few  people  who  actually  knew  of  them,  there’s  no  way  you  know.

defender  of  pineapple  pizza.  he  does  not  care!!  

very  conceited  and  likes  flirting  but  really  it’s  harmless.  

*  𝙽𝙾𝚆 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙸𝙽𝙶 .           WANTED  CONNECTIONS  +  PLOTS

other  assistant  (  or  employee  in  general  )  friends  !!!    let  them  talk  shit  about  the  people  they  work  with,  rant  to  one  another,  have  lunch  dates.

out  of  work  friends ?   maybe  they  occasionally  meet  outside  of  revolution  to  just  de-tach  from  everything.  or  they  could  have  met  outside  of  it  first  and  then  found  out  they  were  working  in  the  same  building.  either  way,  could  be  fun!

aaron  could  be  a  third  opinion  person.  in  case  your  muse  is  working  on  something  and  feels  like  everyone  is  saying  something  biased  so  they’re  like  hey!  you  don’t  know  shit  about  music,  what  do  you  think  about  this ??

give  me  the  guy  who  started  the  club  fight  that  got  him  arrested.  i  want  beef!

he  definitely  hooked  up  with  a  revolution  artist.  he’s  utterly  embarrassed  by  being  an  assistant  instead  of  an  artist  so  he  tries  to  dodge  them  like  the  plague.

maybe  someone  who  does  know  of  his  band!  and  they  could  possibly  encourage  him  to  enter  back  into  the  industry!

[bendeevee-blog]

Hello I'm here to talk about 2 ideas for object shows one sound cool the other sounds a little (or maybe more than just a little) controversial so I'm gonna start with the good one and then give a trigger warning when I talk about the other one 👍

So 1.- battle for just 1 more (bfj1m)

This is a "coin flip" strategy, it is basically a normal object show but the elimination thing is what changes, basically: who ever louses or gets voted out instead of getting trapped on a box for the next episodes (or the full season) they get swapped to the other team (there can be max 3 team and the host does a coin flip to choose witch team they join but is recommended 2 teams) and if the same guy gets voted out 3 times in a row the host does a coin flip heads: they stay Tails: they leave and when they get eliminated they go home, due to the elimination function there will be no rejoining and the team that has the most contestants (or least idk I gotta deside) wins the coin that the host used to eliminate people as like a win token or a badge and they also win money cuz yes and that's pretty much it, I really wanna do this one cuz the fact that characters will obiesly make alliances and then get swapped away from each other can make really good strategies for how or who's team to make win or lose. I even made a logo for this

Now the other one so...tw: this involves sensitive topics like depression, schizophrenia, trauma, self harm but most importantly suicide so if I offend anyone with this mental problems I'm really sorry, I know that I don't really know what I'm talking about but I know what these things I'm going to talk about and reference on this object show idea are really sensitive so sorry

Ok. 2.- suicidal objects show (sos)

This is in a way based of hfj one, this "show" is not exactly a competition show yet it still is, the host [redacted] is a therapist, but one that likes to make their patients have fun while also helping them so in a way to do this they decided to do an "object show" on the mental hospital they work in but just as a test they had to get the patients with the "least" needed help (side note: this is not just a object show experiment, it is in a mental hospital building so the contestants and the host do have their breakes cuz it is not torture and also the host stays with the contestants to help them if they need anything. Moving on) all of the contestants have a dead wish so the first 7 episodes (in coanon the episodes are daily so it technicaly passes a week) when someone gets eliminated they are sended home but obliged to go to therapy (for free) but from then on the next episodes (from 8 and on) the characters are presented with a second opinion... Go home but go to therapy or end with their misery, if the character has been able to feel good and have fun they might choose to go home but if they fake it or they just can't change their minds they will choose the second option... [Redacted] will not be able to stop them if they do choose the second option but will take them to a separated room for themselves alone and they can do whatever they want, and this just to try not to influence the fellings of the gone one into the others...

Here are some character ideas:

The two friends: their only will to live is to see who'll die first, like a competition between the two

The one that pretends: they seem not to have any problems in life but they're hiding behind a mask, aka "hide the pain away"

The good voices: the schizophrenic kid who is willing to stay to feel better, and might not end themselves

The one that knows: they know what happens to the people that chooses the second option, they might care they might not

The self-carnival one: they get harmed every time and always bites their limbs, they might have a companion to stop them from terring all their flesh

Edit: I forgot to mention that the host for sos can't get themselves to choose a louser so they have to relay on a really black humorist relative to do it for them.

Ok that's it, thanks for reading

[n1ko-whoisdefinatelynotacat]

Reblog count: 5

(I think I might pin this post just so I can keep track of it-)

Magic within each race + the differences in magic for the 5 saviors

I mentioned before each race was created in the image of one of the five gods. So it would make sense if all of them had a little bit of magic that came from those gods too. I’ll explain.

Avians are the creation of the god of light. So they have light based magic. It’s not super strong, closer to the things Somino is able to do. Flashes of light, maybe using it to light up a room. They can probably also use it as a form of communication by lighting up certain parts of their bodies in a sequence (think aquatic from wings of fire)

Star Strikers probably have some of the stronger magic based abilities. Their magic is tied into the stars, so probably lots of astronomy based stuff. Maybe they’d be the prophecy speakers or something (Actually I’m tucking that idea away for later). They can fly in a sense, but in reality it’s just them lessening the effects of gravity on themselves. Probably some telekinetic abilities too.

Water drakes are probably also pretty strong magic wise. Probably something similar to water benders in avatar? They can manipulate water and things with enough water in them (but like not people because I think that was a thing and we’re not doing that). They also use it for healing magic which is important.

Energy drakes can do the exact thing it sounds like. They can manipulate energy. It could be electrical based, it could be some other type of energy. I think they could also affect the energy of a person. Say someone needs to be awake and they’re struggling with that? They could probably manipulate your energy in some way to help. They could also probably knock you out entirely if needed.

Beastfolk were created by the same god as the fire imps, so they represent one half of said gods magic. Specifically earth related magic. Once again it’s probably sort of similar to an earth bender. Anyone who’s particular gifted in the magic department could probably cause an earthquake if they needed.

Fire Imps are the other side to the coin. All of their magic is fire based. I’m not going to make another avatar reference but like you get the point. They can manipulate fire, probably mess with temperature, and I’d wager their magic also probably means they have a higher body temperature on average.

Onto the 5-

[Redacted] is definitely a unique case among most avains. Even from birth it was pretty obvious he was going to be gifted in terms of magic, because the tips of his wings and the ends of his tail feathers glow yellow, and the glowing star mark on his forehead is also a good indication. I’ve got a list of some of the things he can do, so I’ll write it down. -Stronger than average light flash, constant light aura, the color changing when world hoping, stronger manipulation of light in general, the ability to refract light to either disappear completely or disguise themself for a short period of time, the glowing feathers, (more recently) opening portals in order to jump from universe to universe, telepathic communication with the other 4 saviors at one point, (another more recently discovered power) the ability to sense where anyone who’s bonded to them in terms of magic is (Niko), the ability to sense any light magic being used within a pretty wide radius (his whole being is tied to light magic so it makes sense), some very minor healing magic.

Yeah they’re a little overpowered, but like any good power there is a limit to how much he can use his magic or how many different spells he can cast at a time. It might be a while, but it is there. Also the reason their face is covered and their eye appears as it does is also a spell he can cast. It’s kind of a passive spell, so it’s permanent unless he drops it itself.

Shalara had your typical water drake magic, but on steroids. Her healing magic was possibly the strongest in the water drakes recorded history, and she had better control over water than most. She also had some ice based magic, which was rare for a water drake. Magrieus, being a hybrid, had a mix of both beastfolk and fire imp magic. They could manipulate earth and fire, and mess with temperature. They could also cause earthquakes, but that was more difficult. They didn’t find out until literally right when they were dying, but they could manipulate magma/lava, and if the conditions were right, cause a volcanic eruption.

Fultein was one of the only energy drakes who could manipulate lightning. Most energy drakes could manipulate minor electrical currents, but it took a level of both magical prowess and skill most didn't possess to call down lightning or bring forth a storm. They could also send out blasts of pure energy. She could also take the process of knocking someone out by draining their energy one step farther, and drain them of their energy so quickly that the victim would die on the spot.

Astris had more advanced variations of the magic other star strikers could use. They had better manipulation of gravity, clearer readings of stars, and was particularly gifted in terms of prophecy. As of now I'm thinking it may have been them who was finally able to speak the prophecy they were tied into, but I'm not set on that idea.

Out of Canon lore dump

Let's see how many times I reblog this today with more stuff I think of.

Part one: Main cities of each race

Avians: This one came about from my most recent playthrough of oneshot (we love Switch playthroughs) when Niko has that first dream. I answered Earth for the first thing, and when they asked if I lived underground, I sort of spontaneously hit yes. After that, the idea I now have is something like this. The Avian's main city is located within a huge hollowed out mountain. The reason for this is because the mountain it's located in is considered to have direct connection to the god they follow, Ludeius. The mountain is filled with glowing yellow crystals, so it's pretty well lit. It's basically a metropolis, and even though it's underground, you still see most Avian's fly from place to place. And it's not like they're trapped in the mountain, they can still come and go as they please, through a pretty decent sized cave tunnel that functions as a sort of hanger/landing spot/runway.

Star Stikers: Their main city is also mountain based, but it's located across the tallest mountain range on the planet. It's also the most technologically advanced of each races cities. The mountain is said to have a connection with both the stars they came from, and Stellei, the goddess they worship. It's the second largest city, with the Avian's technically having the largest.

Beastfolk: They have two main cities that each function as a capital of sorts. One is located within the largest forest on the planet, where most mammalian beast folk live, while the other is closer to the ocean, and most beastfolk who are more aquatic by nature live there. Each city is decently sized, and they also each handle different aspects of the beastfolk way of life.

Fire Imps: Their main city is one of the smaller ones, located in the more volcanic region of the world. Because of this, it's not very large, and most of it is cave based, since Fire Imps are immune to the effects of lava and magma. It's also probably the least visited of the cities, due to it's location.

Energy Drakes: They live near a massive river, and their city is also on the smaller side, as they're more nomadic, and don't really stick to one place. Their capital city is sort of considered to be like a holy land for them, where they can return during cold winter months and then leave again once winter is over.

Water Drakes: They actually live on a massive island chain off the coast of the main continent, and their main city is on the largest of the islands. It's one of the larger cities, and while it's not crazy in terms of technology, it's still pretty advanced, all things considered.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google's short-lived data-advantage

There's a lot of ways to think about the movement to tame Big Tech, but one of the more useful divisions to explore is the "Night of the Comet" people versus the "Don't Believe the Criti-Hype" people.

This is a division over the value of the data that Google, Facebook and other large tech firms have amassed over the years - data on their users, sure, but also data on the advertisers and publishers they serve with their ad-tech platforms.

Big Tech companies and their investors are really bullish on the value of this commercial data-advantage: they say that spying on us - the users - lets them manipulate our opinions and activities so that we buy or believe the things their advertisers pay them to push.

More quietly, their investors believe that the data-advantage extends to publishers and advertisers, a deep storehouse of data that makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to do the precision targeted that Big Tech manages, which is why they have such fat margins.

Night of the Comet tech criticism accepts these claims at face value: Big Tech's advantage, they claim, comes from having amassed this insurmountable data-advantage that allows it to both predict and shape what we - and therefore advertisers and publishers - will do.

The implication of this is that traditional antitrust remedies - breakups, say - won't be merely ineffective; they'll be terrifyingly harmful.

If Googbook invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew fidget-spinners, then breaking them up will only make it easier for Robert Mercer to hijack that mind-control ray to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

Googbook's data-advantage, in other words, is like a planet-killing comet heading towards the Earth. If we break that comet up, it will turn into a killing rain of meteors that shower onto every part of the globe - we can't break up the comet, we have to *steer* it.

In this version of tech criticism, the answer is to leave Big Tech intact, but turn it into a utility, or some other highly regulated entity, bound by rules that limit its use of that mind-control system.

Bringing Big Tech to heel by deputizing it to serve as an arm of the state (and perhaps a national champion in the new Cold War with China), like the Bell System prior to the AT&T breakup in '82.

On the other side, you have the Don't Believe the Criti-Hype school. Lee Vinsel coined the term "Criti-Hype" to describe a kind of criticism that actually hypes its subject - say, by repeating Big Tech's self-serving claims.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#dont-believe-the-hype

These claims aren't just self-serving, they're also highly dubious. Everyone who's ever claimed to be able to read - or control - our minds was lying (to themselves, or to everyone else, or both).

The "psychometrics" that all this behavior-modification depends on is - to quote *Nature* - a "scant science." From Big Five Personality Types to microexpression/sentiment analysis, we're deep into the realm of irreproducible results and junk science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03880-4

The Criti-Hype school posits that the supernormal returns to capital for Big Tech aren't driven by awesome ad-tech capabilities, but rather, by monopoly (buying or crushing all competitors) and the fraud it enables (the industry has nowhere else to go).

That is, Big Tech makes money the same way hedge-fund managers make their own stunning returns: by cheating so they get paid whether or not they're any good at their jobs. The mere existence of a profitable industry is not proof that the industry is run by competent people.

And to be clear, there is a *lot* of fraud in ad-tech. Tim Hwang calls it a "Subprime Attention Crisis," where the ads are fake, the clicks are fake, the publishers' inventory is fake, the whole thing *riddled* with fraud.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

As Aram Zucker-Scharff wrote, "The numbers are fake, the metrics are bullshit, the agencies responsible for enforcing good practices are knowing bullshitters profiting off the fake numbers and none of the models make sense at scale of actual human users."

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#adfraud

It's a "bezzle" - a con whose mark hasn't twigged to the ruse...yet.

And while the Night of the Comet side relies on the irreproducible claims of self-proclaimed Svengalis, the Criti-Hype side has an increasingly corpus of cold, hard facts about the bezzle's operation.

Take last November's "Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets," Dina Srinivasan's  superb and detailed dissection of Google's crooked ad-markets, in which they steal from advertisers and publishers by rigging the bids on both sides of the exchange.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#adtech

Srinivasan proves you don't need mind-control rays to explain how Big G makes fantastic returns from the ad-tech market. That prospect is further explored in the UK Competition and Markets Authority's 437-page report on "Online platforms and digital advertising" (Jul '20):

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

Here's where it starts to get *really* interesting. In May 2020, Yale's Fiona Scott Morton and Omidyar's  David Dinielli used preliminary CMA data to publish their "Roadmap for a Digital Advertising Monopolization Case Against Google."

https://omidyar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Roadmap-for-a-Case-Against-Google.pdf

Morton and Dinelli zero in on the actual mechanism of Google's data-advantage, the thing it commands a lion's share of, which advertisers genuinely prize: location data. If I know you're around the corner from my cafe, I might spend a *lot* to show you an ad for my pasties.

This location data advantage is undeniable, but man, it has a short half-life. Thing is, I might spend a lot of money to show you an ad for my coffee shop when you're around the corner, but once you've moved on, you can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. You're dead to me.

This short half-life tells us that we're not living the Night of the Comet nightmare scenario. Break up Google, starve it of location data, and within *hours* most of its location targeting advantage is gone...forever.

As the antitrust cases against Google proceed, more and more of these technical exposes of rigged markets emerge, showing us how monopoly and fraud are at the heart of the data-advantage, and how contingent, time-bound and fragile that advantage really is.

The latest is the bizarrely named "Project Bernanke," a formerly secret ripoff that was exposed when Google forgot to redact a document it filed in its Texas antitrust case:

https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant/status/1379955848118726659

Google used data from recent ad-auctions to help advertisers shade their bids for ad-placements, exploiting the information asymmetry so the ads it brokered won the auctions, ensuring that rivals ad-brokerages were frozen out.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/googles-secretive-project-bernanke-reportedly-093732134.html

Though Google insists that this was just an industry practice, the leaked document reveals that Google kept this a secret from publishers. Its internal presentations claim that they made $230m in 2013 alone from this practice.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke-revealed-in-texas-antitrust-case-11618097760

All together, this constitutes a highly specific account of how a data-advantage worked - and what its weak-point is. Project Bernanke was not grounded in longitudinal market data from ad-sales - it exploited *recent* data to deliver a $230m+/year advantage.

The multisided market - a multisided bezzle - exploits the monopolist's data advantage to harm readers, publishers and advertisers, not by predicting and shaping their behavior by bypassing their critical faculties with spooky, advanced psychometrics.

The bezzle requires fresh data - it's a flywheel that uses the monopolist's god's-eye-view to freeze out competitors and entrap publishers and advertisers to get more data to rig the market to entrap the publishers and the advertisers.

It's not a comet. It's a monopoly. It's not terrifying supergeniuses using machine learning to turn us into clicking zombies: it's garden-variety monopolists using anticompetitive, underhanded, dishonest and (probably) illegal tactics to maintain their monopoly.

Bust the trust, ban the conduct, and the data-advantage evaporates with the half-life of that extremely time-bound data. The criti-hype that says that the data-advantage is a deadly, unstoppable comet is just Google's own sales-patter, flipped on its head.

Don't believe the criti-hype.

[casualotptrash]

Sorry, but [REDACTED] Doesn’t Matter

Spoilers for Persona 3 after October and the ending, and for P4 and P5 “choice moments” or endings

I’m keeping this intro very vague just in case this pops up for someone who hasn’t gotten to this point in the game, or beaten it, but I will go into full spoilers mode under the cut. To give the most basic overview of what this is, it pertains to the loss of a party member in Persona 3.

Now with that over with, welcome to me complaining about a really big issue I have with the whole debate between saving Shinji or letting him die.

Whenever this debate comes up, the number one complaint against the option to let him live is that it “goes against the meaning of the game.” Personally, I find this claim to be untrue for two major reasons. One is that I don’t think it really goes against the meaning of the game in the first place, and also that the game does a very bad job at...making any difference between the two at all?

For my first point, I’ll clarify what I believe the meaning of the game to be. Obviously there are tones of death, and moving past death. However, I don’t believe the message is just “Everyone will die one day, and we need to accept that.” The message is “Everyone will die one day, so we need to make the most of our lives.” This is why Akihiko and Ken find their resolve, because Shinji is gone but they can still continue living their lives for him. This is why SEES continues to live their life to the fullest, because it is what the MC allowed for when they sacrificed themselves. I’m not sure how some people seemed to miss this, or maybe they just didn’t make the same connection, but it seems like it would be hard to miss.

The reason that saving Shinji’s life does not go against this message is because he will still one day die, probably still young because of the drugs, so he still has time to live his life to the fullest. Perhaps you could connect it in a certain way that he is also living for the MC, because they saved his life. The fact that he didn’t die does not take away from the weight that he was willing to die, and thought he would, by saving Ken. It could even go to show that even if you are ready to die, and you somehow get a second chance, that second chance should not be squandered.

That being said, I find the second reason to be a bigger issue for me personally. Before I played P3P, I knew it was possible to save Shinji. I played the Male route first where you cannot save him, so I experienced his death. While I liked the impact, I decided to see the other side of the coin and saved him in my FeMC playthrough. When I actually got to the point where this happened, I was legitimately shocked by how....meaningless it all was?

What I mean by meaningless is that outside of the different scene with Akihiko mourning over his hospital bed instead of the tribute, and the very end of the game where one person who is optional to talk to who says Shinji woke up from his coma (also the NG+ scene but that’s only if it’s NG+ and you romanced him), all of the dialogue is the absolute same. Don’t get me wrong, the two mourning scenes do have a different “feel” to them and are both executed well, but legitimately there are no difference outside of those 2/3 instances, and 2 of those 3 are completely miss-able. Everyone else acts like he is dead. I don’t know how Atlus messed up so bad with not changing any of the dialogue (which is not even voice acted most of the time), but I’m guessing that they just didn’t want to spend the time on it. Even after one quick search on google, I found another person who asked if they actually saved him because everyone was talking the same.

As I mentioned earlier, I knew it was possible to save him and I also knew it was kind of a divisive topic in the fandom, so after figuring out the real “impact” of saving him I was....so confused. I thought “All of that discourse, over nothing?” I at least suspected that maybe the group would visit him, or he would show up in the base game at the end (not NG+ scene), or at the very least Akihiko or Ken would talk about him as if he was still alive, but nah there’s nothing like that. Obviously the player knows he survived and can imagine maybe what the rest of his life will be, but the game does a shit job at actually making the choice mean anything. Both scenes with Akihiko talking to him are sad and impactful, and the dialogue with Ken’s resolution doesn’t change in the slightest. Honestly, like I said outside of those 2/3 possible scenes, I see absolutely nothing to gain in doing one over the other unless you want to see Akihiko cry in an auditorium or in a hospital room.

On top of all of this, there is also the sentiment that this person wrote, and I believe many others also agree with (in relation to FeMC and P3P. I took out the rest of the post because it wasn’t relevant to this topic at all).

Now, they didn’t elaborate much on this, but after what I just said about how the game doesn’t really make any changes at all and sorting out the “meaning of the game” I’d be really interested to see what their reasoning is. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine how this “literally ruins Akihiko and Ken” when their dialogue, cutscenes, and growth are 99.9% the same. That part alone is a bit frustrating, but what really gets me is how they don’t like the FeMC at all (or p3p, which was said earlier in another comment by them) because she can do this optional choice?

Obviously, anyone can dislike choices that are optional in a game. That’s just how it goes if you have multiple ways of doing things. Some you’ll like, and some you wont. However, why is it that basically every time I see someone say they don’t like the FeMC it’s because of a choice in the game and not something about her actual character? I really can’t stress enough how insane it is (to me) that people cannot disconnect what you as the player can choose in a game from the actual character. Because, do you know....believe it or not...there are people who play the FeMC route and don’t save Shinji? Or don’t romance Ken? Baffling, I know!

Is the FeMC somehow a better character if Shinji still dies or Ken isn’t romanced? Not to these people, I suppose. Somehow she’s still just as disliked, because the option was there in the first place. I honestly don’t know why this happens, but it’s also complete hypocrisy on their parts. Do they not like Yu for being able to murder Namatame? Or how about Joker, who can enslave all of Tokyo (the world? I don’t know if it’s made clear) if he accepts Yaldy’s deal? It’s very likely they still love those two, or at least one of them.

“But Casual, those don’t matter because they’re not canon!”

Neither is saving Shinji or romancing Ken, so kiss my ass :)

.

.

Anyway.

Just to make this clear, this post isn’t meant to bash people who dislike saving Shinji (or perhaps the implications of doing so) or dislike FeMC, but to point out how the game really takes none of this into consideration and that it’s a bit ridiculous for people to dislike FeMC for reasons that they seemingly don’t take into consideration for the other protagonists.

It’s kind of hard to put into words, but I’m just utterly baffled on how much trouble this causes when it’s really worth nothing. I can understand how people who only experienced his death could be affected, but only in the sense that they either think it goes against the “everyone will die” message and/or comprehend Shinji’s impact even after the game/story is over (which is done by their own volition and the game does not hint to at all).

However, at least as far as the game is concerned, both choices result in essentially the same outcome. Sorry, but Shinji’s death doesn’t matter (to the game).

[blocksandbloops]

May I interest you in some fem!hermit!Tommy fluff for you in this trying time?

This is set in an alternative version of @redorich 's hermit!Tommy AU. Diverging from the Dream SMP's raid on Hermitcraft. All you need to know is that family trees are convoluted, Tommy's name is Clementine. She's trans, we love her, she has wings and has adopted Grian as her weird almost twin brother.

After the whole "Dreamon" and "invasion" mess the Dream SMP folk didn't expect to hear much from the hermits besides the ones who attended MCC. They thought that the two servers would just continue to exist, independent of one another. Just drifting through the void mere inches apart but never really touching.

Oh how wrong they were.

The hermits were friendly but they had absolutely underestimated just how friendly.

Apparently, the moment Clementine so much as breathed a word about how much she missed her biological family, Scar -ever the kind and helpful mayor that he was- decided to throw a beach party!

Since Clemmy's extended family was pretty large and they didn't want anyone to feel left out, it was an open invitation to everyone on the Dream SMP as long as they behaved.

That point was driven home when a few people, like Antfrost and his unhealed, dog bitten asscheek, mentioned how upsetting the Hermits was definitely not a good idea.

(Deep down they knew that the reason they were really doing this was because the hermits were worried about them. The Dream SMP was just a bunch of traumatized children according to them. They weren't wrong in that assumption but no one wanted to admit that.)

So, when the day of the beach party finally dawned, they all put on their least threatening outfits and packed up their supplies, (where Tubbo got the surf board nobody wanted to question) and entered the portal just like they had done a few months prior.

A few things were different though, the sun was bright and beaming in the sky, soft puffy white clouds rolled by, only promising gentle shade instead of the dreary air of yesteryear.

The shopping district had been rebuilt from it's smoky ruins and they finally all had time to appreciate the lovingly built shops and roads. It looked so beautiful and vibrant, you could practically feel the fact that summer was in full swing.

The smell of nectar and sea salt drifted through the air, sweetening even the sourest of moods. This is what peace was to the hermits. This was their everyday. They were so lucky and they didn't even realize it.

Some people were taking notes of all the different building styles with bright eyes, hoping to replicate some of it when they got home, others were suddenly hit with a feeling of bitter inadequacy of it compared to their homes. Is this what a world without war could look like?

But, no matter the gloomy musings of the few, they were all here to let go for a day! To celebrate the good times and to kick back for seemingly the first time in forever.

Their welcome party this time simply consisted of one person.

It was a strange sight, seeing the Hermits' admin Xisuma without a mask on, wearing a god awful hawaiian shirt that Keralis had thrown at him with glee the moment he mentioned that he didn't have something to wear, and again, were those, gods forbid crocks?

"'Ello everyone! Wow this is quite the turn up. Scar wished he could be here to greet you all personally, but he's still too busy helping the others preparing for the barbecue, so you're stuck with me for the time being.

Now, if you'll kindly follow me, we set everything up pretty close to here, so we'll be there in a minute."

The walk over to the beach was short, but just as scenic as the rest of the server.

Warm, golden sand, gently lapping waves and lush plant life. The sound of the hermits' laughter and soft music filled the air as the smell of the previously mentioned barbecue proved a welcome distraction from whatever the hell was happening on the far right side of the beach (the ZIT trio built a karaoke machine. It was Zedaph's idea. It was also a horrible idea but they didn't seem to realize that yet.)

As they began to debate a plan of attack, no wait. ... fun? enjoyment? eh whatever.

A tall man jogged up to the group. Some people recognized him as Mumbo Jumbo, that one british guy with the mustache. Others, however, as that semi-scary redstone wizard who managed to create extremely powerful potion launchers during the invasion.

He was dressed just as down to earth as the others, holding a tall glass of lemonade in his hand and wearing a (quite goofy) sunhat he borrowed from Ren.

He was explaining something to X in hushed tones (something or other about a minor fire at the barbecue table?) When he looked past the gathering of guests and out towards the path that they had come from, and screeched.

"GRIAN PLEASE I'M HOLDING LEMONADE DON'T!" X reached over and grabbed the glass from his hands just in time for a cackling, feathered ball of something to crash into Mumbo, knocking him into the water with an audible "oof".

There was wild thrashing as the two tried to orient themselves, Grian somehow climbing onto Mumbo's back.

"CLEMMY! COME HELP ME DROWN MUMBO!" Grian waved towards a cluster of trees to their left, underneath which a small gathering of hermits was enjoying a bit of a reprieve from the sun.

"NOT YOU TOO!" came the mustachioed man's scream of distress.

Clementine, the whole terrifying six feet and three inches of a woman that she was, took off running to the water at full tilt towards the struggling brits.

Mumbo, having already formed a strategy in his head, did a perfect T-pose and feel backwards into the water, bringing down a screaming Grian with him. Clementine did a graceful swan dive into the water (how she executed that shall be left for viewer interpretation) and happily joined the fray, even the distressed calls of Stress behind her because "Gods damn it Clemmy! I spent an hour on your hair! And now it's ruined!" couldn't persuade her to give up on her mission to cause as much friendly chaos as possible.

She climbed out of the water a few minutes later, her hair a mess and a bright smile on her face.

"Techie! Wilby! Tubbo! Thank you guys so much for coming! I'm really glad that you could make it." She hugged them each close, enjoying the comfort of having them all together again.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." Techno relaxed his posture, trying not to fidget too much. He was getting better with crowds but it was still a lot.

"You may think he's joking but he literally dragged Quackity all the way to the portal because he was too busy doing his eyeliner and would've made us late." Wilbur snickered when she leaned in to hug him, earnings him one of her patented ear-splitting laughs.

"I got a recording of it!" Tubbo proudly announced, pulling out his video camera

while still holding an arm around her.

"ABSOLUTELY NOT! LET ME HAVE SOME DIGNITY MAN!" The aforementioned Mr. Fattest Ass in the cabinet screamed indignantly as soon as he got within hearing range.

"Quackity you never had any dignity. It's too late for that." Techno flicked the duck shapeshifter on the head, earning him even more annoyed rambling which he just chose to ignore.

"Well, I'm glad that that's settled, now, I have some people I'd like for you to meet."

She directed them towards the group sitting in the shade, which consisted of False, (a now soaking wet) Grian, Stess, Mumbo (who also looked like a disgruntled cat that was just given a bath), Iskall and Ren.

Meanwhile Doc and Cleo had a little cornered off area they'd nicknamed the "cool kids club" (it was because around this time the sun got strong enough to actually burn her and Doc just felt slightly iffy about the water, since he was, ya know, half robot.)

Clemmy threw herself down on a blanket in front of a grumbling Stress who set about actually making her hair look presentable.

Niki sat down next to them and began discussing the merits of different styles to put Clemmy's hair into.

Ranboo sheepishly sat down next to Cleo's lawn chair folding all of his gangly limbs under himself.

Wilbur happily plopped himself down next to Ren on a blanket and began to hum along to the other's guitar.

Techno lay dow his cape, deciding that a nap was the best course of action in that moment.

Fundy hesitated for a second before going down to the shore to relax and just put his feet in the water for now.

Philza, the awkward dad that he was, chose to sit down close enough to the girls that he'd be able to hear what they were talking about without intruding.

Tubbo placed his stuff down by Clemmy's feet and ran out to the shore with his surf board in hand.

Going through so many conflicts in such a short amount of time really tires a person out, especially ones as young as the ones from the SMP so getting this afternoon of rest truly helped ease some of the stress given to them by recent events.

(Beach episode pog?)

Of course, this little get together wasn't without it's faults. About two hours in Doc accidentally trampled False's sand castle, who in retaliation teamed up with Cleo to dump water on him while he was relaxing.

This little conflict evolved into a battle to see who could build the biggest and grandest sand castle between "Team Himbo" and "Team Women" (one of those was coined by Clemmy). Puffy and Stress set up a good system of transporting sand from point A to point B, allowing them to move faster. False got placed on detailing duty while Niki brought refreshments for the rest of the team. Alyssa was mostly helping out wherever she could, as Cleo worked her armour stand magic to make their castle feel even more alive.

Clemmy just shouted encouragements and bullied the opposing team.

(The member list of Team Himbo has been redacted to avoid any drama about who might qualify as a himbo in the given circumstances)

Somehow the guys managed to convince Techno to join them, which immediately stacked odds in their favor to which Eret and Iskall, being the non-binary legends they are, decided to side with Team Women, now renamed to "Team Prettier Than You".

Their building contest laated for another hour before X decided to try to stop them (it wasn't because of the time. It was because TFC and Grian started shouting things about structural integrity and adding stone parts to the walls and the contestants actually listened when he decided that it was getting out of hand.)

Then it was time to actually enjoy the barbecue. Techno surprised everyone with how delicious his baked potatoes ended up. Beef also got to flex his skills a little with, as you guessed it, beef.

Tubbo and Tango sadly had to eat further away then everyone because the moment they got within ten feet of the fire something mysteriously combusted.

After that, the ZIT trio busted out the karaoke machine and the night went from good to great.

The old Team Star was dared to sing a rendition of Hermit Gang and everyone younger than 25 felt physical distress during some parts.

The sleepy bois (+Tubbo) sang a cover of "Your new boyfriend" (Techno got surprisingly into it) and then Wilbur swiped Ren's guitar to sing some Taylor Swift songs (accompanied by Tubbo on a synth he seemingly pulled out of nowhere) in that one weird accent he can do which had most people wheezing on the floor from laughter after the first song.

Niki threw down a german cover of Say So by Doja Cat. Grian, Phil and Tommy were unconsciously doing the parrot dancing thing. It was great.

Quackity sang something in spanish and Karl and Sapnap made over exaggerated swooning noises.

Skeppy and Bad did a duet. It was as adorable as it sounds.

Some other people also came on stage, belting out songs in such horridly broken voices that I'll spare you the details. Let's just say, nails scratching chalkboards would sound better.

And that was most of the festivities over with.

The last thing on the agenda? A meteor shower. How did they set it up? Clemmy's weird star child thing. The aforementioned girl was huddled close together with her family as they watched the comets streak across the clear sky (all electronics and artificial lights were shut off for the night) and Melohi played from a jukebox in the corner.

Fundy was laying his head in Dream's lap, the other boy was softly threading his fingers through his almost fiance's orange hair while leaning heavily on George and trying not to let sleep claim him as it had the fox (no one knew how this happened, all they were aware of is that the three had disappeared sometime during the sand castle contest only to reemerge having finally talked things through and come to an agreement that they all seemed happy with).

Ranboo, Niki, Puffy and Eret were collapsed in a happy pile just vibing.

The sleepy bois, who were for once actually sleepy, all wore matching flower crowns braided together by Stress's experienced fingers (and Wilbur's rather clumsy ones). Phil and her had managed to come to an agreement of unofficial joint custody after he witnessed Techno embarrassedly lean down to let her place a crown of golden flowers upon his head and saw his internal beam of pride when she called him "handsome".

The boys never really had a mother he mused, maybe she could teach them kindness where he couldn't.

Another surprise addition to the family was the owner of the third pair of wings in the cuddle pile. Phil didn't expect to end up with any more children at this point in his life, but Grain and Clemmy were practically attached at the hip and it felt wrong to even think about separating them.

He only hoped that those two wouldn't cause too much chaos especially when teamed up with Tubbo.

In the end, everyone drifted off to sleep, one by one they closed their eyes on their most perfect day. Praying for whatever might be out there, that they'll have many more moments just like this.

Well,

almost everyone.

Callahan chuckled as he walked back up to his spot with Alyssa farther away from the others. shutting off his camera after cycling through the pictures he took of everyone looking goofy while sleeping (His favorite is the one where Clemmy was very visibly munching on Techno's hair). He may not use those as blackmail but he sure ass hell was going to tease them about it later. He fell asleep there on that hill, drifting off to comforting rest like the others.

After that? Life moved on.

It was chaotic sure, and not perfect.

But it was theirs. They grew up slowly, learning to be kind to one another, how to grow with one another.

Life wasn't always perfect but hey, they had each other. And in the end? That's all that mattered.

[sendme-2hell]

Ranking the books I read in April

aka just ranting about the books I read in april pls ignore me

1. The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson 

I cannot believe this book wasn’t nominated for a Hugo! I like the Hugo list (of the books I’ve read) but cmon. This book is like if you combined the social commentary in The City We Became and the queerness of Harrow the Ninth. Seriously this book had everything I wanted: parallel universes, great character development, social commentary, woc sapphic slow burn, satisfying ending. Also I feel like the title is paying homage to W. E. Dubois which is cool. “Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question: How does it feel to be a problem?” Like there is just this very cool idea of talking about other worlds as in literally other universes but also different worlds due to social and racial hierarchies. 

2. Plain Bad Heroines - Emily m. Danforth 

Horror, Hollywood, boarding school, everyone is gay, the narrator talks directly to the reader and it is hilarious, copious footnotes, have I mentioned how many sapphics there are? It’s hard to keep track. Plus polyamory. I just really loved this book and I felt it all came together in a way that was worth it. 

3. Steel Crow Saga - Paul Krueger 

This godamn book. I loved this book so much. I was so ready to yell about it on tumblr and tell people to read it. But apparently the author is someone who has harassed a lot of women so...uh...yeah. Nevermind I guess.

 I do want to say it is the most accurate depicition of a Sherlock Holmes superfan that I have ever seen in media. 

4. The Tiger’s Daughter - K. Arsenault Rivera

What if we went on a long trip on horseback and we were both lesbian warriors...jk unless…

Yeah so I loved this book so much. A lot of it is about navigating familial responsibility, fighting literal and metaphorical demons, fighting the patriarchy, fighting your anger, fighting tigers, etc...and yet I kept thinking to myself “this is the most romantic book I have ever read” and honestly I am gonna stick by that. It also has the “you think me a monster so I will become one” trope which is great. It is set in an Asian-based fantasy world and I did read a goodreads review that said it was as accurate to the countries it draws inspiration from as Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse is to the Russian and Scandinavian cultures it takes from. So that’s not great. 

5. Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo

Speaking of! A few months ago I tried to read Shadow and Bone in preparation for the tv show and I could not finish it. The writing was...bad. Anyway I really liked Six of Crows and even though, yeah it’s tropey (I’m looking at you, Helnik backstory), there’s a reason those tropes work. Plus you cannot go wrong with a heist. About halfway through I did realize that there are six mcs and three couples so its kinda just like a giant triple date, which really changed how I read the whole story.

I’m very glad I did read it before seeing the tv show because I was able to be appropriately excited for the Crows and catch the Wylan reference and everything, but I also got to see the Alina stuff without having to read about it. 

6. Crooked  Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo 

I think I somehow liked this even more than Six of Crows, but for narrative simplicity I’ll put it after. I really like it when you put people in an impossible situation and see how they figure it out. Especially if they get out in a clever and reasonably possible way that ties together many different plot threads and has a few good fake-outs. This did all of that, and also developed every character in a way I found satisfying (except [redacted] *cry emoji*). 

Kaz pulls a Baru Cormorant with some money stuff and now I wonder if they would be friends. 

I read this after watching the show which was good because I knew who Zoya and Genya were but bad because there is a point where Nina is like “here is how shadow and bone ends.” She’s just talking to Mattias and casually spoiling everything for me. So there goes my dreams of living spoiler free until the end of the show. 

7. The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Emily m Danforth

My expectations for this book were....very different than it turned out, and I’m glad for it. After reading Plain Bad Heroines I shouldn’t have been surprised at how well written it is. I really appreciated how nuanced it is. It doesn’t spell out its ideas or themes and therefore lets you really sit with them. I would rank it higher but I don’t really enjoy reading about high school. 

8. Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett

I love a good found family, especially if at the beginning of the book they are on opposing sides. Enemies to friends = best trope! Also it’s sapphic that’s always good. But the best part of this book was the worldbuilding which was so cool. 

9. Malice - Heather Walter

Remember what I was saying about “you think me a monster so I will become one”? This book is the definition of that trope. Women becoming unhinged after being treated like shit, we love to see it! Especially if it’s gay. I do have to say, authors who write duologies where the first book ends on a cliffhanger, I see what you’re doing but yes, I will be preordering the next book. 

10. Fugitive Telemetry - Martha Wells

I don’t have much to say because Murderbot is so consistently excellent.  uh why is it so cathartic when xenophobes disrespect Murderbot and it’s humans step in and shut that shit down. Gets me every single time. 

11. Queen of Coins and Whispers - Helen Corcoran 

This book was like half romance half politics and unfortunately I did not find the politics that interesting or well written. But the romance was A+. It reminded me of Priory of the Orange Tree a LOT. Though significantly less dragons and I’m taking many points off for that. 

12. The First Sister - Linden A. Lewis

I wanted to like this book a little more than I did. There was just maybe too much body horror for me. Interesting characters and world though. There was  a location named Cytherea that they mentioned a lot and it was very distracting. I guess I still have tlt brainrot. 

13. Shorefall - Robert Jackson Bennett 

I think this book was well plotted out but it didn’t quite have my attention like Foundryside did. Also yet another book where a woman’s girlfriend ends up in her head. This time no one had to die so that’s nice. TM and SD take notes! 

14. The Deathless Girls - Kiran Milwood Hargrave 

Ok I LOVED the Mercies by KMH so I was a little disappointed in this Dracula retelling. It got interesting in the last 50 pages, but unfortunately that is not enough for me.

proud of myself for not reading a single straight book this April 

[itsmoonphobic]

𝐓𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤. ☾︎

𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑄𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡!: 𝑀𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑟,𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒.

-> For my friends [a group of losers :)] Thank you,it's been a hell of a run,but all good things must come to an end one day. I will come visit soon,until then: I'll be lurking somewhere in the shadows. ☁️

"𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒃𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓,𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒈𝒐 𝒐𝒏." ❥︎

moon's time on mcytblr election server: 10/12/2020 - 05/17/2021 ❣︎

He felt cold.It had been so long since he felt this cold.His head was clouded,throbbing with regret and guilt of the things he said.It felt like somebody was constantly ripping his mind apart,putting it back together and taking it apart all over again.His hands shook, pale fingertips tracing his black gloves aimlessly and blue eyes shining brightly under the dark indigo sky. Moon ruffled his wings,cupping his back with the furred leather in an attempt to comfort himself and calm down his beating heart. The hollow bones hummed,crisp wind gliding over their shells and further cold nestling into his veins. No clouds were on the canvas above him,only little shimmering freckles splattered across the deep colored tarp. Moon cocked his head to the side,observant orbs gliding over the stretching landscape ahead of him. The tavern was close now,the phantom hybrid could pick up the faint chatter of people,gentle strumming of guitars,and soft ballads. The lights of houses,vibrant mosaic windows of the church he remembered visiting as a child. Moon breathed deeply,closing his eyes and nuzzling his face further into the black mask covering his nose.

His thoughts continue to buzz. He missed them. He hurt them. The young hybrid would never forgive himself for making his family and friends cry,no matter how many times they reassured him they weren't upset. Was he being selfish? He shook his head, black hair messily falling over his eyes,he brushed the strands away with the back of his hand. Teeth gritting and nose scrunching up in the process,his hair was a disaster - just like the rest of him. The assassin sighed,dropping his shoulders and retracting his wings under his black robe. They felt heavy,he didn't want to fly tonight,flying was considered a award and Moon definitely didn't deserve one after what he did tonight.The black haired hybrid rubbed at his eyes tiredly,everything felt wrong.His ears perked up at the far dong of the city bells,it ringed too loud for his liking. His sensitive senses were overwhelmed by every little noise surrounding him. Bugs and mice crawling over the moist grass under him,bubbling brooks and croaking frogs sitting by the flowing water of the river close by.

Moon clasped his hands over his pointed ears,taking a moment to calm himself and cool down. He couldn't keep this behavior up,it was unnatural for him to act like this - act so vulnerable. He hated this side of him,he wanted to cut it off with one of his blades, throw it away and never have to experience it again. Though,like most things are in life,it wasn't that simple. He would pull his knees to his chest,curl his tail around them,drape his wings over his shoulders and turn into a ball of his own fears and worries. Moon dropped his hands down abruptly,eyes filling up with tears and glazing over his blue eyes. Near. Near would hug him. They would open their arms and wait for Moon to accept their embrace himself,not wanting to push the unstable hybrid further by ambushing him with physical affection. Moon's lips quirked up - the motion so small that not even he himself seemed to catch up to it. He will miss that. He will miss it alot.

Moon cracked his neck,straightened his back and rolled his wrists. He needed to keep moving for tonight,he knew a place he could spend the night and in reality it didn't matter when he would arrive there,but his head is pounding and his thighs are aching. He just wanted to eat,drink some hot beverage and sleep. He slid his tounge over his canines,propping his hands on his knees and jumping off of the branch he was settled on. His black combat boots landed soundlessly on the furry moss,it felt nice. After a moment of processing and calculating the route that would lead him to the tavern the fastest,the hybrid was on his feet and running away into the night - his slender form blending perfectly into the shadows.

•

To say Moon was happy to be in the town center again would be a big fucking lie. It was loud,crowded and the smells were intense. Being a ghost story amongst the lands was making his problems only worse,he couldn't stroll carelessly down the brick concrete path,he needed to hide. His black hood covered his head,a shadow casted over his face and keeping him anonymous to the world. He watched the people casually,pings of jealousy climbing along his brain like wines on trees. Little kids were dragging their friends along,enthusiastic hands grabbing eachother's limbs.Their laughter and giggles filled his ears and his eyes furrowed in annoyance.The image of Violet and Rib popped up in his head. Two overly irritating brats that only seemed to get on Moon's nerves whenever he arrived at the guild. Yet the hybrid smirked fondly,he adored the two like his own siblings and would kill anyone who even dared to look at the them the wrong way. It sparked a flame of protectiveness in him that Moon never knew he could have over a pair of bothersome kids.

Moon's head peeked up behind the alleyway,his eyes cold. He scanned the crowd,spotting the tucked away motel in a corner. It wasn't far now,he just needed to successfully navigate his way though the ocean of people. The assasin pushed his back away from uncomfortable surface behind him and looked at it with disgust,middle finger flying up. Moon's hands pulled his hood down futher,extra precautions to keep himself safe. With one final sigh of uncertainty the hybrid collected all of his confidence that seemed to dissapear under all the stress,and headed towards the oak wooden doors. Focusing perfectly still,trying his hardest not to pry his eyes away from his goal and get distracted by the shiny jewelry and crystals being sold all around him. Kiosks lined the streets,both sides filled with diverted goodies that he just wanted to touch and maybe even slip them into his pockets unknowingly.

He had money,golden coins and silver medals. But the thrill of stealing was just so much more fulfilling. He knew it was morally wrong,blinking away the fact that he was a trained killer,but it didn't bother him in the slightest,Moon stopped thinking about morals a long time ago.He shook his head once again,stomach growling loudly under piles of felt and cloth. He cringed,grabbing his belly irritatingly - a pathetic attempt to stop his hunger.His throat burned,a dry wasteland dancing over his tounge. Thankfully Moon made his way over to his sanctuary for the night without problems. His feet stopped automatically infront of the small timber doors leading into the pub,cracks and ripped bark decorated the pale wood. The phantom hybrid pushed against the doors lightly,opening them in a swift motion.

Immediately the smell of cheese,dried ham,honey and bread filled his nostrils. Rum and beer,wine and herbal teas. Smoked salmon pomegranate and roasted oranges. He picked up many fragrances. And he enjoyed them to the fullest, some were stronger than others but he couldn't deny they were pleasant. Bright eyes inspected the large citadel.Dark spruce tables and chairs,cussions made of cotton,soft wool and silk. His fingers twitched,he knew they were soft,he wanted to lay his head on them and breathe in the smell of lavender and mothballs. An image flashed again. Goose used to give him scented candles to help him fall asleep. They were nice to him,they always helped around the guild. He would give them lettuce and greens in return as a thank you.Moon pushed them aside,he needed to focus on the task at hand,getting his hands on some proper food to satisfy his empty stomach.

He dragged his feet across the dirty floor,boards creaking loudly under his heavy steps.The sound attracting curious faces. Silence overtook the room slowly,the sound awfully loud. Moon didn't react,he knew they were directed at him. He could feel more and more sets of eyes settle on his form,unnerving shivers traveling along his spine. His wings shuffled quickly - defense mechanism. Puzzled murmurs filled the space of the bar,the people clearly confused about the mysterious stranger. Moon was pretty sure he looked like death itself at the moment,dark clothes covering his body,knives rattling threateningly,face completely redacted. He didn't spare any of them a glance,knowing how they would react. Fear and commotion was the last thing he wanted to cause with his presence.

'For the love of god I just want to eat some fuckin' food in peace'

With long but slow strides Moon made his way over to the bar. His thoughts from earlier in the forest slowly creepin back into his brain and biting at his cold pricked skin. Goosebumps tenderly rose over his arms and collarbone,he felt them tingle. It almost made him stop in his tracks but he kept pushing his tired feet towards the chair. He gripped the smooth wooden object rougher than intended and a soft 'sorry' brushed past his lips. The bartender stiffened,eyes widening for a brief second before collecting herself again. Moon eyed her carefully under his hood. Her skin was peachy tanned,blonde curly hair pulled up in a simple bun,eyes the color of his birth stone,Peridot. She didn't seem to catch his piercing eyes,instead shakingly grabbing one of the clean glasses and drying them off. Her back was turned to him,but he easily noticed the way she would throw a sneaky look at him over her shoulder. He took in her white dress,spiraling designs flowing over her waist,colorful flowers sprawled down her chest.

Moon breathed. It was hard,exhausting just to take a small huff of air and release it again. He kept the warm air inside longer than expected and huffed it out tardily. His head was still hurting like a bitch,like somebody breaking his shull open with their bare fists. Another imagine crossed his mind. The cozy atmosphere and smells of the motel made him recall buried memories,times when he felt warm and safe. The hybrid dropped his head tiredly,rubbing his face exhaustingly.He pulled at his mask warily,giving it a second thought before finally deciding on not caring any longer. He needed to relax,needed to feel human. His hood stayed up. Songs started playing again in the background,the aura in the pub returning to the one he felt when he entered through the doors.

It was nice. He would occasionally pick up on a few cautious looks but his body was too tired to react. His elbow rested on the desk infront of him,his other hand flying to his knife holder instinctively. Empty. He fumbled with the holsters hastily,sharp blades touching his exposed fingers,but one spot -his favorite spot- was empty. Where the fu- oh.

<- memory lane ->

"Vibes."

The owner of the name looked at the black haired assassin expectedly. Their big grey eyes lightning up with curiosity,soft dimples sneaking onto their face. Moon smiled fondly at his friend, tenderly taking their hand in his - never breaking eye contact. Vibes watched cautiously as the hybrid reached towards his ribs, guiding his gloved hand towards his knife holders. Vibes gasped, breath cutting short as they observed what Moon was holding out towards them. Soft yet fond whispers were heard behind them,yet both of them chose to ignore them and focus on the special moment being shared between them.

"I need you to take care of something very important for me while I'm gone okay?"

The silver blade reflected gleamingly under the torches and chandelier of the guild citadel. Sharp edges and curved points. Tiny,barely visible if not payed enough attention to,engraved lettering on the shiny metal.

Simon.

Vibes' eyes glanced up at Moon contentedly,their grin further widening as the realization finally fully hit them. The masked assasin flicked their forehead playfully,Vibes letting out a small 'oof' at the impact of Moon's slender finger against their skin.The phantom hybrid smirked teasingly,ruffling their hair warmly.His ego tugging harshly at his heart strings in the process. He pushed the feeling far away,concentrating on making his last visit a memorable one. His lips returned to their usual bored line,sharp canines peaking over ever so slightly.

Vibes stopped messaging their now reddened skin and patiently waited for Moon to continue. Said hybrid once again held out his palm,this time however the blade was weightlessly resting upon it. Unsure hands reached out towards the sharp weapon,grey eyes beaming up at the phantom. Moon understood the wordless question: 'Are you sure about this?'

"Go ahead."

Moon couldn't help it,for the hundredth time that night he smiled. He watched as Vibes dragged their finger pads,nails and palms over the knife. Taking in the weapon from every angle in awe.They stopped their movements,locking eyes with Moon once again:

"I'll take good care of him!"

Moon rested his hand on their shoulder,their marigold hoodie crinkling under its weight. He breathed.

"He's in good hands."

<- end of memory lane ->

Right. He gave Simon to Vibes. Moon once again couldn't help but feel the threat of a smile ghost over his lips - Vibes. They were a good friend,somebody he got along with from the moment he joined their little group. His trust in them grew over the months, everyone probably saw it coming that Simon would end up theirs.

"Moon?"

The hybrid's eyes shot up,a little too fast to be considered normal, at the mention of his name. Hands flying to grip his knives and wings threatening to escape under his robes. The moment he caught the female's eyes he stopped in his tracks.

Des.

He relaxed,falling back into his chair. He calmed down the rushing of blood in his ears,head thundering at the combination. His pale eyes watched as the giddy female propped both of her elbows down on the wooden bar table and she comfortably rested her chin on her crossed hands. Her brown hair was disheveled,soft hazel eyes searching for his blue ones. Her freckles dotted over her milky skin as always,a big contrast to his paper white color.She wore her simple white button up,few of them popped open to expose he collarbone,denim overalls keeping it in place.The last time Moon saw her she wore the exact same outfit and the hybrid really started to think that she either didn't own any other ones or that it was simply put her favorite.

She reminded him of Clove. He missed them the most- the two of them had their fair share of memories and even though they still send eachother letters every day,he misses their personal conversations. He left only a few hours ago but it felt like he was gone for months,years,decades. Clove was nice. Moon's eyes filled with a thin cover of salty tears,blinking them away swiftly before they could spill over. Clove and him used to go on walks together, they would talk about all the stupid and useless shit that came to mind,he liked their company.

They would bail him out of time out and sometimes even drag his ass in there themselves.He breathed.

"My,my - look what the cat dragged in." Des didn't even make any effort to hide her surprised and teasing tone while she threw her question at him.Moon shifted slightly in his seat,wings lowering back to their natural pressed form.He slid his mask off of his face, blinking dull up at her. She noticed his unsure movements. Not wanting to further rile him up,Des dropped the joking manner and instead happily asked him what he wanted to order.

"The usual please."

Des smiled,nodding her head at him sharply before turning away and beginning to prepare him his food and drink. Caramel glazed aprikot cheesecake and Strawberry citrus tea,Moon's favorite.The young hybrid had found his way into her hub for many years now and she knew him like the back of her hand. He used to arrive regularly,once or twice a week. She knew the assassin wasn't really able to settle down without bounty hunters being on his tail and searching the whole town when people would say they spotted the infamous 'Nighchaser' running through the streets. But things changed when Moon only started arriving once per month,his attitude along with his hair being well taken care of. She had asked him where he spent his time and he always replied the same:

"With a group of morons."

Des knew,of course she did. She knew the young hybrid found a place where he actually liked going back to,she figured he had people waiting for him back there,somewhere. Time passed and she watched him grow up,bringing back more and more stories from this mysterious place where he stayed at and introducing her to new people everytime he stopped by on his travels. He grew on her and Des knew that whoever those people were,they made Moon feel happy and that's what mattered the most.

Her hands gripped the porcelain plate gingerly,petite hands cartying the sweet goodness over to the tired assassin. She noticed his dark bags the moment he placed down his mask.They were a stark contrast to the color of his skin,ghostly pale. She didn't comment on it,she simply placed down his meal and watched as he stared at it hungrily. Moon gave a low hum of appreciation and started to dig into his food.

•

"So", Des started,Moon watched as she washed off the last of his dirty dishes and placed them organized on the counter above her, "where are you heading to this time?" Moon glanced at his hands, his thumbs twirling around eachother,fidgeting quickly while he thought about his answer.

"I don't know." He had told her truthfully,shoulders shrugging. Becouse honestly? He really had no clue where to go from here. His decision to move on and explore the world by himself was abrupt and sudden but he knew it was right,he knew his friends and family weren't mad at him but he was still angry at himself for leaving them behind. He loved them but he also knew he had to take care of himself. He wanted to scream,cry and rip his hair out becouse he felt like absolute shit. All of his worries and guilt that were lingering at the back of his head now came rushing in and they uncomfortably sat atop of his shoulders. He just wanted to sleep and let the darkness consume him so he could shut off everything around him.He breathed.

He missed them alot. Fox,even if he wanted to bash their head in most of the time made him smile. Dis,his grandma was a kind soul, she was always nice to him even if she did get on his nerves. He knew many people,he still knows them and he will keep it that way till the day he dies,he will carry their names in his head into his grave. Moon shuddered a breath,slowly getting up from his chair, interrupting Des before she could question him further:

"I'll head off for tonight,thanks for the food." With a small wave of his hand,Moon grabbed his bag and climed up the staircase, red rugs removing any trace he stepped on them , where he knew a soft bed filled with blankets and warm milk with honeycomb waited for him.

"Anytime little one." Des smiled.

•

Dropelts of water fell from his hair,the smell of tulips and eucalyptus danced in the air,flushing delicately against his torso. The room was quiet,windows wide open letting him hear the hushed howls of wolves and crickets chirping,moths gliding with the cool summer wind.Moon tangled his hands into his wet hair, fingers untangling his wild locks.His eyes closed as he slowly massaged his scapl,nails ever so slightly scratching the sensitive skin on his head.He had changed his clothes,neatly piling them up on the rocking chair in the far left corner of the small room. His tail swung carelessly behind him,the bones rattling against the wooden floor. He hid away his wings,laying his bare back against the soft,fresh bed covers. Blankets and pillows drowning him in the best way possible. He sighed contently,looking out towards the clear sky and resting his gaze on the moon.

In that moment the phantom hybrid smiled,a tear slipping quietly down his cheek. His hand came up to brush it away - but they kept coming back no matter how many times he wiped them off. The assasin draped the covers over his chest,muscles relaxing into the soft material almost instantly. His head cooled down and for the first time that night Moon breathed properly.

He breathed,closing his eyes and finally got the rest he wanted.

He loved his friends to the moon and back. ♡

<- Author's note ->

Hi. This is a little something I wrote for my dear friends over on the mcytblr election server. You guys changed my life these past months and I can't thank you enough for that. I needed to take a rest,move on and chase my dreams - no matter how cheesy that sounds we simply ignore it. I love you all so much and I will definitely,not only visit,but return one day to tell you all about how crazy the world gets out there.

Love you idiots :)

[Ps: Story is set in my personal AU of the discord - I didn't manage to personally mention all people individually so bare with me: You all are important to me <3]