#believe me there's many tutorials out there with way better explanations than this

[skullsemi]

How do you draw beaks?? I love your art!

Thank you, anon!! And honestly, I have no idea–I mean, some idea I do, I'm just still trying to improve myself on that

I'm not sure how I would do a tutorial this time BUT HEY here's a few basic tips that may help out!

Also: Really draw it, draw that weird angle, pick a fav bird and fill a page with them. The key to learn is really observing, understanding and of course drawing a lot

It'll help you get it way more than just sticking to the same beak expression

As I always say, these can kinda teach you how to learn to draw anything, divide it by shapes and see how each thing work!

I don't really think there's a right way to do it, so it's up to you!

[kira-moonrabbit]

many many years late... my big criticisms (not review!) of limbus company just from a gameplay standpoint. tl;dr... its kinda bad. this is both my opinion, and also how i explained said opinion, but i need it off my chest.

so preface: i dont play limbus anymore, but did for about one and a half cantos when it was brand-slappin' new. when i say brand new, i mean fresh out the box when there were still big server problems killing everyone's ability to play the game.

i went partially through the intro and then i had to sit through some more issues; then i had to replay the intro AGAIN when i came back. i figured skipping it would still allow me to view the in depth tutorial for how the actual game mechanics work in the same sequence; it did not give me this luxury and i had no idea how to re-find the tutorial. i had to scrape by with half-remembered fragments from watching someone else stream limbus and manage to view the whole danged thing. such is my preamble.

unfortunately i dont have the energy to find screenshots to use and i am not about to re-install limbus at 4 in the AM just to make an angry post about it. i'm opinionated, not petty.

i believe that a game should, even without a tutorial, be able to have its mechanics gauged just from looking at the UI and just generally observing. obviously tutorials are good, and not everything should be given to you this way, but as a rule of thumb you should be able to at least pick up a few rules about how things work just from watching un-commentated gameplay. lobotomy corporation has this. library of ruina has this. Limbus Company does not give you this.

the game is dogshit at explaining what the hell skills are. you are told there are coins, that are flipped, and dice are rolled. there are comparisons on the upper screen as to how two different skills will match up... and looking at these things, gave me no indication as to how the hell everything is CALCULATED! People who view with no commentary need a whole paragraph explaining the topmost UI! at least with ruina the dice math is simple. limbus needs a god damn calculator for every step.

disembodied micro-nitpick corner! the game doesnt tell you exactly where to go to uptie things, or when you unlock this ability. AND, it takes two whole cantos to unlock a way to earn major resources like, yknow... basically anything other than just more Lunacy for more gacha-ing.

defense skills are also not entirely perfectly explained. you think your "fuck shit everyone is targeting me" buttons would have a little more explanation behind them to help you use them better, but the descriptions for them completely sailed over my head and i had no idea which situations were and were not appropriate to use them. and each person has their own different defense skill so you better hope you have the right one for the situation when you need them! Else, S.O.L.

but yeah. i expected i'd have a handle on things by Canto 2. but by then, i just felt more confused, because in dungeons you just have a different combat system than in the main game for some reason??? one that i think is better executed because you actually have decent control over who's receiving what attacks. i had no idea what the hell i was doing the entire time still. i was just throwing out attacks and hoping the UI wasn't lying about matchups. my trial by fire wasnt even a trial, it was just... arson.

my other major criticism? sin. you know how one of the first things the game explains is sin resonance and absolute resonance? before the actual mechanics for how to calculate sin clashes? yeah, absolute resonance is literally just a damage boost that you can MAYBE hope is convenient. delibrately going for sin resonance was just getting my butt kicked. the game said to do this as much as possible but it just acts as a red herring for ACTUALLY learning skills that will get you further in the game.

sin in general feels like such a nothingburger of a mechanic. Cool, an elements system! to go with the last game's elements system! the two systems stack! i thought it was gonna be cool! But nnnope, its mostly just fuel for EGO. things DO have sin resistances, but they just feel like an afterthought.

what i liked about pierce, slash, and blunt is that they each had a slight archetype! Pierce was mainly status effects, Blunt was mainly damage, and Slash was something of a middle ground that focuses on power stacking (long live swordplay of the homeland with purple tear and slash power stacks).

with sin, its like... they're the colors attacks come in? and they have a status effect they're associated with. it doesnt feel like it adds an extra layer of much. i probably can't go as far as to say you can take away sin and lose nothing, because it does fuel EGO, but its... i dunno, it just feels like it's not needed.

i'll spend less time on the gacha because we all know gacha is gacha. but its like... ruina felt good, because you slowly accumulate more and better resources for the challenge ahead. you feel yourself slowly progress. In a gacha system, things have to generally remain at the same level of power as each other, give or take. And some things are just... better than others, yes. but there's very little in the way of like, teambuilding opportunities. you use the same really good units for pretty much everything. there's no progression aside from gacha, gacha, gacha over and over.

and this makes the reward for beating story missions just more gacha-ing, and lore. no feeling of getting stronger... no new toys to play with. the side resource modes, too, only serve to pump up your units. there's no customization of how you tackle things. i guess that ties in to the disconnected side bit a little, but still.

if you want my opinions on if the story is good, i cant give them to you though. i'm a gamer. i have practical opinions. to jump into the story would fall under the purviews of things like literary analysis.

but there is also a minor thing i will bring up that has to do with the story, in a way.

and there you have it, a casual gamer's opinion of limbus company as a game. a common person's opinion, in short. i'm not going to claim my opinion is the be all end all, far from it. I'm sure others have put the same ideas forth more eloquently. but sometimes you gotta hear what just a regular person who plays video games to have fun has to say about something.

Limbus Company all but demands you to have played Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina before playing it. the loading screen explanations do shit to tell you the kind of world you're getting into. some concepts don't quite go fully explained. and the things in the prior games are essential to the understanding of limbus company, such as the reasoning behind why L-corp fell, just what the Smoke War even was, and just what caused the Distortion and EGOism phenomenon. Anyone jumping in because "ooo, nice gacha!" is going to write off the prior games as useless, when they're actually incredibly important for understanding the story and why certain things are the way they are, and for understanding the whole game's themes!!! as to WHY they're important, I'll leave that to the more wordsy folk. [EDIT: it was brought to my attention by a kindhearted anon that i was wrong about how much story you need to be able to understand limbus. this is why i wanted to keep my story-related opinions to a minimum, as i havent played much past canto 1 myself. i admit this paragraph is a little bit brought on by me being grumpy that many players who play limbus just because its a gacha completely disregard the previous two games. all in all this paragraph isnt very fair.]

and before anyone says anything... i will not be arguing over this post. if i said something wrong, i said something wrong, such is life, pobody's nerfect. i am also not asking for tutorials about how to play the game, either. i feel like the game itself should be able to give me a satisfactory one for me to want to play it.

and lastly? i will ESPECIALLY not be arguing with people who have spent money on a gacha, any gacha. i feel like this should explain itself.

[link4eva]

Kiro’s Culinary Date Translation [CN] (Season 2)

Hi, everyone! Just a couple of notes before you begin reading. I don’t actually know Chinese so this translation was done through the power of Google Translate and with help from @keliosyfan​. Thank you! 💛

This translation contains spoilers for a date that has not yet been released in the ENG server. This date is set is Season 2 but doesn’t contain any major plot details. If you wish to not be spoiled, please don’t read beyond the cut.

Hope you enjoy!~

*Spoilers below for future content!*

[First Part]

“Ding Dong!--”

I stood in front of a villa full of sunflowers in the yard and rang the doorbell.

Recently, in order to create a gimmick for the new show, the company intends to let Kiro participate in an observation variety show.

The stars in the show will experience different professions. The profession of this episode is to run a restaurant. To create more entertainment, a culinary competition is also set up.

Whoever makes the food that receives the most praise will win the final prize.

But I wasn’t so sure about Kiro’s cooking skills….

??: I’m coming!

The familiar voice interrupted my thoughts.

Accompanied by a rush of hurried footsteps, the door was swung open and golden hair instantly came into view.

Kiro: Good afternoon, boss! 

Kiro: I just saw your text message, why did you come to me so suddenly?

Kiro put one hand behind himself, his always-smiling face now even more enthusiastic.

A strange smell hit the tip of my nose. I seemed to distinguish something but kept it calm on the surface.

MC: I heard Savin say that you rarely go out recently and don’t answer the phone very often. So I just came to see what the situation was.

Kiro: So that’s what it was. That’s because….

Kiro moved his eyes towards me and smiled.

Kiro: I recently became obsessed with a new video game series so I couldn’t check my phone as often.

I nodded and accepted the explanation.

MC: There’s another thing; you’re going to be on a new variety show.

Kiro’s expression suddenly became very serious. I couldn’t help but want to tease him, pretending to be serious.

MC: You should have known already about your appearance on the show and how you need to show your cooking skills in front of the camera.

MC: But I don’t think this should be a problem for Kiro, right?

Kiro looked shocked. But not long after, he smiled confidently.

Kiro: Of course.

Kiro: I’m actually very good at cooking. 

MC: So confident--

Kiro: What’s up?

Seeing Kiro’s confused eyes still showing a hint of a guilty conscience, I couldn’t help but finally express my doubts.

MC: Kiro, were you really playing video games?

Kiro: Yes, I was….

MC: But why do I smell something weird?

Kiro: ….

Kiro: ….So you knew already!

After a while, he sighed slightly, and put down his hands behind his back like he had accepted his fate. He was holding a bear apron in his hands.

Kiro: Miss Chips, do you want to come and take a look at my kitchen?

[Second Part]

Although I was mentally prepared when I walked into Kiro’s kitchen, I couldn’t help but look on in shock.

The kitchen utensils are stacked in a mess, there are many broken eggshells on the ground, and the dishes were piled high in the sink. With that, there were also some “unidentifiable objects”...

Everything in front of me seems to show what kind of “messy” experience this was.

Kiro also looked a little embarrassed.

Kiro: Ahem, it went well at first, but I don’t know which step went wrong.

Kiro: The taste and appearance are a little bit different from what you may expect….

Suddenly, he turned his eyes to look at me.

Kiro: In order to find out which step went wrong, I plan to do it again!

Kiro: However, it’s best to have personal supervision next to you….

MC: I can help you. Also, I can show you some new things. *changed some wording*

As if he had obtained the answer he wanted, Kiro’s brows and eyes were curved slightly, and a smile appeared on his face.

Kiro: Great, then let’s get to work!

Seeing a glimmer of success in his eyes, I suddenly realized that I was fooled!

He had planned to bring me to the kitchen all along!

Twenty minutes later, with my help, the cooking was finally completed decently.

Seeing the steaming food on the table, Kiro couldn’t wait to pick up the spoon and took a bite.

MC: How is it?

Kiro: Hmm….

He blinked and then gave me a thumbs up.

Kiro: Super delicious! Miss Chips should really consider opening up a restaurant!

Although I knew his evaluation was exaggerated, I still breathed a sigh of relief.

MC: That’s good. 

Kiro: However, I’m afraid there’s no way I can make such delicious food for the time being….

He lowered his eyes and his long eyelashes cast a small shadow in his eyes.

Knowing that Kiro has always been a perfectionist, I thought about it and spoke slowly.

MC: Actually, to make delicious food in addition to certain cooking skills, you also need a special recipe.

Kiro: Huh? What is it?

I stretched out my hand, poked Kiro’s face lightly with my finger, and made a smile on his face.

MC: The chef’s mentality is also very important.

MC: If you put yourself in a happy mood, you will definitely feel it. And….

I also smiled at him.

MC: Enthusiastically greet every challenge, isn’t this what Kiro is best at? 

Kiro was taken aback for a moment, a strange emotion flashed in his eyes. After a while, he smiled and took my hand.

Kiro: Well, MC is right.

Kiro: By the day of the show recording, my performance won’t disappoint anyone’s expectations.

Kiro: However, I still want you to promise me one thing.

MC: What?

He leaned closer, his warm breath fell on my cheek.

Kiro: Can you come to the set on the filming day?

Kiro: If you do, I think the food will be better than perfect. 

[Third Part]

The sun was shining brightly on the filming day, and the temperature was several degrees higher than usual.

I arrived at the shooting location as agreed with Kiro. Seeing that it was still early, I walked towards the lounge.

(Cut to lounge)

As soon as the door was opened, I saw him sitting on the sofa alone and intently looking down at his phone.

Hearing the movement, Kiro raised his eyes to look at me with undisguised joy on his face.

Kiro: ….MC, there you are! 

MC: Well, I’m here to cheer for you.

He subconsciously turned off the phone screen. Although it was just a quick glance, I saw that he seemed to be watching a cooking tutorial.

Kiro: The sun is so nice today, it’s good weather to go out in.

Kiro: There should be a lot of customers in the restaurant later.

Kiro looked out the window, his face thoughtful.

MC: Well, you don’t have to put too much pressure on yourself. After all, this is a variety show, and cooking is only one aspect.

MC: So all you have to do is show your truest appearance and enjoy the process.

Kiro: I know, it’s just that I haven’t figured out what to do yet….

MC: Huh? You haven’t thought about it yet?

MC: Didn’t we practice a dish at your house last time?

Kiro: But….

Kiro paused. After a while, he seemed to have thought of something, his lips raised in a beautiful arc.

Kiro: But now I have changed my mind.

Kiro: I’m going to keep it a secret for now and surprise you later. 

Although there were some doubts in my mind, I also believed Kiro could handle it well. So, after a while, I nodded.

MC: Ok.

MC: If you have any questions, you can send me a text message and I will be there later. Also….

Kiro: Don’t worry, Miss Chips, I have my own coup.

Kiro took my hand and interrupted me with a chuckle.

Kiro: And have you forgotten? No matter what kind of food, I have my own “exclusive recipe”. *changed some wording*

As he said this, he poked my cheek lightly as I did to him before, and also sketched a smile on my face.

Kiro: I will get the best result while enjoying the process.

His eyebrows are curved and my figure is reflected in his clear pupils.

Kiro: So, please wait and see. 

(Cut to shooting location)

The bright sunlight passed through the leaves. *changed some wording*

The show officially started filming. Stars who usually have a certain distance from the public are now wearing aprons and running an ordinary restaurant.

I was sitting on a seat in the restaurant and found that the surrounding area was filled with people.

Seeing popular movie stars or idol singers passing by one after another, many guests showed surprised expressions.

Female Star: Hello, this is my chocolate cake.

The female star gave me a sweet smile and the dessert on my table. After thanking her, I took a bite and the sweetness instantly melted in my mouth.

Girl A: Wow, this cake is delicious!

Girl B: Is it? I’ll try it too.

The voices of the two girls from the table over fell into my ears. I glanced around and saw that many people seemed to be very satisfied with the food.

Girl A: The celebrities’ culinary skills are so good too!

Girl B: You’re so stereotypical. By the way, I heard that Kiro is also here. Our “Little Sun’s” cooking skills are guaranteed to surprise you!

Hearing the girl’s words, I couldn’t help but glance at my phone screen. The last text message sent was from Kiro ten minutes ago.

“I’m ready to play!”

I put down the spoon in my hand and couldn’t help but guess what kind of food Kiro intends to make….

After tasting different delicacies one after another, everyone’s expectations were getting higher and higher.

Initially, I just advised Kiro not to be too stressed out but I couldn’t help but feel nervous at this moment….

??: This guest, would you like a delicious mango smoothie? 

A familiar voice rang in my ears and I turned my face to meet a pair of sky-blue eyes.

MC: Ki-!

Everyone: AAAAAAHHH IT’S KIRO!!! 

The enthusiastic cheers drowned out my voice.

Kiro smiled brightly at them and the screams suddenly became louder. Immediately afterwards, he suddenly turned around, avoiding everyone’s gaze--

He gave a wink towards me.

I couldn’t help but feel my heart beat frantically.

The golden light shone on Kiro’s hair and the person in front of me seemed to be more dazzling than the sun.

Kiro: I saw that you’re sitting there all alone. Don’t you feel a bit lonely?

Before I could answer, he took off the bear doll from his waist and placed it on the seat opposite me.

Kiro gently covered the microphone pinned in the collar and whispered in a voice that only the two of us could hear--

Kiro: Let it temporarily replace me to accompany you.

As soon as his voice fell, he straightened up and looked at the people present.

Kiro: Does anyone else want to try a refreshing fruit smoothie? 

The sun was shining, and after tasting many dishes, everyone happened to be a little thirsty. So, they raised their hands enthusiastically.

Kiro: Just hold tight, I’ll come back right away!

Holding the tray, he walked towards the other table of guests. In the scorching afternoon, Kiro’s fruit smoothie became the most popular dish.

Looking at the blond boy walking through the crowd, I couldn’t help but curl my lips up into a smile.

It turns out that this is what he meant by “coup”.

Looking down, I saw Kiro with one hand behind him, making a “V” gesture in my direction.

My smile grew even more. I picked up the mango smoothie on the table and took a sip.

--The taste is really sweet.

[Fourth Part]

As the sunset slowly falls, the shooting is gradually coming to an end.

According to the process, the program team will determine the final prize based on the customers’ evaluation of the food. As a result, the awards were announced one by one with suspension--

Kiro didn’t win.

Kiro: MC!

I looked towards where the voice came from and saw that from not far away, Kiro was walking towards me through the staff surrounding him.

MC: Is it finished?

Kiro: Well, they’re checking out the shooting material.

I thought that Kiro would be a little disappointed if he didn’t win the prize but his face didn’t show the slightest bit of disappointment. Instead, his smile remained the same as usual.

A light flashed before my eyes and I realized that he was holding a golden trophy in his hand.

MC: What is this?

Kiro: This….

He followed my gaze and winked slyly at me suddenly.

Kiro: There are too many people here. Let’s talk about it somewhere else.

(Cut to lounge)

MC: “Most Popular Award….”

In the lounge, I took the trophy from Kiro and repeated what he said.

Kiro: That’s right. 

Kiro: They said that because of the popularity of “Kiro’s Special”, the program team made this award.

Kiro: I told you that I wouldn’t break my promise, right?

Kiro said somewhat proudly. I can’t help but smile.

MC: Well, I was a little surprised. But I know that Kiro never disappoints.

MC: By the way, something hasn’t been returned to you yet.

I took out the little bear doll that I had always taken with me. I wanted to give it back to him but he shook his head.

Kiro: This was actually a gift to you to thank you for teaching me how to cook.

MC: In that case, I will accept it without any hesitancy.

As I was talking, a question suddenly came to my mind.

MC: I don’t seem to remember you telling me why you suddenly decided to make a smoothie instead?

Kiro gave me a look and smiled helplessly.

Kiro: When I tell you, you mustn’t laugh at me. 

MC: Of course not.

Kiro: Actually, after we started cooking together that day, I practiced many times in private.

Kiro: After all, I’m going to be on the show. I hope that no matter what I’m doing, I can let everyone see my best.

Kiro: But that last time, I still felt that it was not enough.

Kiro’s tone was indifferent but I seemed to hear a little reluctance from it.

Kiro: But after coming to the lounge today, I saw the light outside was very strong.

Kiro: Thinking of everyone sitting in the sun all that time, it must’ve felt a little hot. So, I suddenly came up with an idea.

Those bright blue eyes lit up again and the corners of Kiro’s lips curled up slightly.

Kiro: I think if it were me in this hot weather, I would want a refreshing smoothie more than one of those meals.

Kiro: And this method was a very simple one--

Kiro: It was within the scope of my cooking skills! 

I couldn’t help laughing.

I saw that the name tag on his chest was a little crooked, so I stretched out my hand to fix it for him.

MC: So, our “Chef Kiro” decided to make a smoothie?

MC: It was indeed a great idea.

I nodded approvingly. Kiro’s eyes flickered slightly and he suddenly took my wrist.

Kiro: Speaking of which, you brought me this inspiration.

MC: Huh?

Kiro: Didn’t you say that if you put yourself in a happy mood, other people will definitely be able to feel it? 

Kiro: Because I was inspired by you, I gradually began to worry less about satisfying everyone and more about what to do to make myself feel satisfied….

Kiro: Therefore, this trophy is also yours.

Kiro winked as he spoke and his lips curled up softly.

Kiro: I wonder how Miss Chips would rate my performance today?

MC: Do you need to ask?

MC: Of course it far exceeds full marks!

Kiro: Even if I didn’t make good enough food?

MC: Even if you didn’t make good enough food.

I repeated it with certainty.

MC: Remember, because you have the most unique “recipe”.

MC: That is Kiro’s signature appeal.

I smiled at him.

MC: During the filming, many people including myself, were affected by your smile and enthusiasm--

MC: It was such a pleasant afternoon.

MC: I believe that this happy mood will be conveyed to all viewers when the show is broadcasted.

MC: Rest assured.

The light in Kiro’s eyes shook slightly and then the corners of his mouth rose even more.

Kiro: Is MC’s evaluation of me that high?

Kiro: Actually, it’s more than that.

Kiro: In fact, there are other “exclusive recipes” that I found.

He pretended to smile mysteriously, held my hand more tightly, and then went on to say--

Kiro: She not only taught me how to cook, but she also gave me great inspiration;

Kiro: And she also told me that no matter what challenge I encounter, I can solve it in Kiro’s fashion as usual.

Kiro: So, when I saw her at the shooting today, I felt confident and smiled uncontrollably…. 

The gentle voice fell in my ears and I felt my heart beat faster.

Those sapphire eyes looked at me for a moment. In the next second, a chuckle came into my ear--

Kiro: So….

Kiro: For me, she is the recipe that makes everything more perfect.

[End]

You can read the call that comes after this date here!~

[canarygirl1017]

Hands On Me - Chapter 1

Pairing: Reader / Jungkook

Genre:  College!au, fluff, mild angst, smut 

Length:  4,341k  words

Warnings:  language, sexual themes 

Summary:  You’d never had much luck with relationships, and experience had taught you to shy away from physical intimacy. But when you started dating your neighbor, Jungkook, you began to think he was worth the risk. College AU. 

A/N:  Next chapter coming soon. I originally wrote this a few months ago based on a prompt I got from my writer’s group. It was supposed to be college based romance, couple’s first time together, mildly angsty, and include the dialogue “Do you want to break up?” I sort of vaguely pictured JK when I was writing the male lead, at least visually, so I thought I would post it as a reader fan fic, which I’ve never written before. I usually write Marvel fan fic at AO3 in third person (not second person) so this isn’t as natural for me. Also, this is just for funsies because I don’t do real life shipping with real life people, though I do enjoy reading some of the well written fics I’ve seen in the fandom. If people enjoy this one, I might post more as I have a lot of short story prompts I’ve written for my club and don’t do anything with. 

Chapter 1

Snuggled up on the sofa watching TV together was how you spent most evenings with your boyfriend, Jungkook. You did a quick clean that morning in anticipation of him coming over since he seemed to prefer being in your space, though it hardly mattered; home was just a few doors down regardless of which apartment you chose to spend time together in.

You shifted your attention from the book you were reading to Jungkook’s profile, fingers itching to trace the sharp jawline that attracted so many women to the gym where he worked as a part-time trainer while he finished university. He also needed a haircut, but he’d shrugged off the suggestion when you mentioned it earlier that week. The slightly longer, inky black locks suited him though.

He was focused on the basketball game that had gone into overtime, his thumb absentmindedly stroking against your hip as you leaned against him. Being close to him was a double-edged sword lately and a reminder that he hadn’t really touched you in a while. Not since that night a few weeks ago.

When you first started dating three months ago, he’d been very physical with you. Dates that ended with kisses at the door had quickly turned into dates that ended with making out on the sofa at his apartment or yours. But during one very heated session on his sofa you got nervous, suddenly worried that things were moving too fast, and you pulled back. To his credit, Jungkook backed off immediately, assuring you that he was fine with following a slower pace.

Your high school boyfriend had pushed for sex and against your better judgment, you’d slept with him after the senior winter formal, only to be devastated when he moved on less than a month later. Similarly, your last boyfriend had been very pushy about sex, and your reluctance was a bone of contention between you until he broke it off.

At twenty-two, Jungkook was a year older, and you knew that he was much more experienced. You’d been neighbors for almost a year now, and you’d seen several of the girls he dated coming and going during that time. You’d never spoken to one another outside the occasional hello in passing until the night you came back from work to find your ex-boyfriend, Mike, drunk and pounding on your door.

Since you didn’t want to let him into your apartment, you stood outside to talk to him. Apparently offended that you wouldn’t let him in, he’d begun berating you loudly enough to have a few neighbors popping their heads out to see what was going on. And in the middle of that embarrassing situation, Jungkook and his friend walked up.

“Hey y/n,” Jungkook said. “Sorry we’re late.”

He slipped an arm around your waist, startling you, though you couldn’t deny you were grateful for the interruption.

His friend chimed in, holding up a takeout bag. “We brought dinner.” You’d seen him around campus and remembered that his name was Jimin.

Mike had eyed Jungkook, as if sizing up a potential fight. But while he had an inch or two on Jungkook in height, Jungkook was all lean muscle and without question the stronger of the two. So, he had backed off, but not before firing off a parting shot. “Good luck with the virgin. Cold fish bitch.”

Your cheeks were burning as he walked away.

Jimin broke the silence. “What an asshole. Does he do this a lot?”

You shook your head. “This is the first time I’ve seen him since we broke up.” You could only assume the alcohol had made him think that you were a potential booty call.  

Jungkook frowned as he stepped out of your personal space. “Sorry if I overstepped. I know it’s not my business, but I didn’t like the way he was crowding you at the door and yelling at you.”

“No, I appreciate you getting rid of him,” you answered. “Thank you.”

Jimin held up the takeout bag again. “We really do have dinner. Do you want to join us? Maybe it’s better if you’re not here alone in case he decides to come back.”

You hesitated, but then your stomach growled, a reminder that you hadn’t eaten since breakfast because of a hectic day of classes followed by work at the campus library.

Jungkook smiled. “We’ll take that as a yes.”

You became friends with Jungkook after that night. It was amazing how quickly you’d felt comfortable around him. He was kind and friendly, and he frequently helped the elderly residents of your building. Then one night after he’d shown up at the campus library and walked you the few blocks home, he kissed you. It marked the beginning of your new relationship, and you’d been inseparable ever since.

Unlike the few other guys you had dated, Jungkook had never directly brought up the topic of sex, nor had he pushed for it. You’d had a brief conversation one night about your respective exes. You knew he’d had one serious relationship that ended when he moved away for college and the long-distance relationship proved to be too much of a strain. He’d only dated casually since then, though you’d seen some of his overnight guests leaving his apartment the morning after.

Jungkook knew you’d had a boyfriend in high school, but you hadn’t gone into the details of the breakup. Though it was several years in the past, that rejection still stung, and you didn’t like to talk about it. He’d never asked about Mike other than to ensure you weren’t being harassed. You supposed the drunken scene he and Jimin had witnessed was explanation enough.

You were so lost in your thoughts that you failed to notice the game had ended until Jungkook spoke. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

You looked up to see him watching you, an unreadable expression on his face. “Doing what?”

“Completely zoning out,” he replied with a half-smile. “Is something bothering you?” His chocolate brown eyes studied you intently.

“No,” you said quickly. Maybe too quickly because you could tell he didn’t quite believe you. His tongue pushed against his cheek, something he did when he was thinking about how to deal with a problem.

After a moment, he nodded. “Okay.” He stood up and stretched. “I should get going. I have an early client tomorrow.”

Saturdays were always busy at his gym, and he sometimes worked longer hours on the weekends. “Do you have clients tomorrow night?”

“One,” he confirmed as he pulled on his leather jacket. “Jen’s birthday party is tomorrow, right?”

You nodded as you walked to the door with him. “We’ll be at Carmen’s.” Jen had been planning her birthday for months and wanted a venue with good food, music and dancing. The trendy bar had only been open for about a year, but it was popular for the menu, which included themed cocktails, and the Latin music. You’d been looking at salsa dancing tutorials on YouTube because you were sure that your best friend would insist on hitting the dance floor.

“Okay. Jimin and I will swing by around ten.”

Jimin and Jen were involved in a casual flirtation that they both enjoyed, though you weren’t so sure it was really going anywhere. Jimin was a handsome transfer student studying modern dance, which took up a lot of his time, much to the disappointment of the single girls on campus. And for the two years you’d been friends, you had never known Jen to date anyone seriously. Still, Jen had heavily hinted that she wanted Jimin to come to her birthday party, and so you had told Jungkook to bring him.

“Okay.” You tilted your head back as he leaned down to kiss you goodbye.

You loved kissing him – the way his hands settled on your hips, and the way the first gentle brush of his lips against yours always gave way to slow, deep kisses. Your hands drifted down his chest to his waist, clutching the material of his t-shirt to ground yourself.

It would be so easy to get swept away. By the heat that flared between you. By your feelings. You knew without a doubt that you had fallen hard for him.

Jungkook pulled back, kissing the top of your head before releasing you. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You closed the door behind him and locked up, leaning your head against it for a moment. You were beginning to regret letting him leave every night even if you weren’t sure if you were ready for more. You wanted more, but you were afraid of it too. And you had no idea what to do about it.

_________________________________________

 You nibbled your bottom lip as you sat on Jen’s bed, watching your friend dig through her closet. “Do you think I should…” you paused, wondering how to broach this topic. While Jen had few conversational barriers, you were more hesitant to talk about sex.

“Should what?” Jen asked, her tone distracted as she pulled out another dress and tossed it over the chair at her desk. She tapped her well-manicured nails against the wall as she studied the contents of her closet before pulling out another dress and dropping it on the chair.

You glanced at the pile of dresses accumulating on the chair. “I thought you were going to wear that new dress you bought last week?”

“This isn’t for me,” Jen stated. “This is for you.”

You failed to contain a snort of laughter. “You’re like six inches taller than me. And I have a dress.” It wasn’t new, and Jen had complained that the dark color washed you out the last time you wore it. But unlike Jen, whose wealthy parents supplied her with credit cards and charge accounts around the city, you couldn’t afford to waste money on clothes. Your parents helped when they could, but you also had three younger siblings still at home and college was only possible because of your scholarships. Living in the city was also expensive; if not for Jungkook contributing to your groceries since you often ate together, you’d probably be eating ramen five nights a week.

“And I’m a fashion design student, so I have time to alter one of these. If I have to see you in that funeral dress again, I’m going to burn it. Worse, do you really want Jungkook to see you in it?” she shuddered as she tossed another dress on the chair. “Okay, I think these are the best options. Now, what were you asking? Do I think you should what?”

You hadn’t considered that Jungkook might also hate that dress. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see what Jen had in mind. Arguing with her was next to impossible anyway.

You helped Jen hang the dresses on a clothes rack in the corner so you could see them better. “Do you think I should sleep with Jungkook?”

Jen raised a brow as she glanced over at you. “Hell yes. Have you talked about it?”

You shook your head. “No. I kind of… I don’t know. Freaked out a little bit a few weeks ago when we were kissing and stuff. It seemed like we were headed there, and I wasn’t sure I was ready, and I know I totally pulled a one eighty on him. And now he barely touches me.”

“Huh.” Jen considered that for a minute. “So things are weird now? Are you afraid he’s going to break up with you or something?”

You hadn’t really thought about that. “I wasn’t, but now that you said it, maybe.” You had mostly been worried that if you broke up after sleeping together, he’d be that much harder to get over because you knew that you’d be more attached to him then than you already were. But maybe that worry – that he would leave because you were holding back – had been there all along.

“I’m not saying he would do that,” Jen hurried to add. “I’ve seen how he acts around you, and how he looks at you. I really think he’s one of the good ones. But with your past experiences, I can see why you’d be worried. Has he ever been pushy about it?”

“No, never. When I told him that I thought we were moving too fast, he said he’d follow my pace. Only now, we’ve just kind of stalled out.”

“I guess he’s waiting for you to do something then. Like give him a signal that you want more.”

That could be it too. “I don’t really know how,” you admitted. “I have one night’s experience to draw from, and that was years ago.”

“That wasn’t an experience, y/n, that was a sexual travesty.”

You couldn’t argue with that. “He’s experienced though. I’m sure he knows how to make it good for me, but I don’t know how to do that for him. What if I’m bad in bed?”

“First of all, you have no idea how you are in bed because you’re practically still a virgin. Second, men are easier to please when it comes to sex anyway. Jungkook likes you. It’s easy to tell that he has real feelings for you, so I think there’s zero chance that he wouldn’t like sex with you. You really need to talk to him about it.”

You felt your cheeks heat up just thinking about trying to talk to him about this. “I know. I’m just embarrassed.”

Jen rolled her eyes. “If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Or I guess you could take the easier route and wear something that does the seduction for you. Like this.” She held up a deep red halter neck dress. The low neckline and back ensured maximum skin exposure. Jen was tall and had long, dark hair so on her, it probably looked fabulous.

Eyeing the dress with skepticism, you said, “That dress is your style, not mine. I’ve never worn anything like that before.” Your style could best be described as casual. On date night, you managed flirty casual, and Jungkook didn’t seem to have any complaints. This dress was on a whole other level, though.

“We can make it your style. I’ll make sure it’s not too revealing if that’s what you’re worried about.” When you still hesitated, Jen added, “Come on, Jungkook will forget how to talk when he sees you in this. I guarantee that you won’t have any trouble getting him into bed if that’s what you decide you want.”

The idea of surprising Jungkook with something like this was appealing. Maybe shaking up your image for one night would give you the confidence to talk to him about your relationship.

_____________________________________

 Jungkook stifled a yawn as he entered Carmen’s. It had been an exceptionally long day, and he wished this was a regular Saturday night like the ones he usually spent with his girlfriend, y/n. He liked being in your apartment because your sofa was comfortable, you had an old record player and some killer albums that you’d collected since middle school, and your essential oil candles made everything smell nice.

Jimin had been teasing him for a couple of months now, calling him domesticated. He supposed he was because before meeting you, he rarely spent a Saturday night in. If someone had told him then that he’d soon trade beers at his favorite bar for candles and snuggling on the sofa, he would have laughed.

And since Jimin rarely got him out on a weekend anymore, and Jen had equal complaints about you, he doubted either of you would get away with ducking out early.

“Are they upstairs or downstairs?” Jimin asked.

“Downstairs, I think,” he replied.

He let Jimin lead the way. It was crowded downstairs, and he first searched the booths and bar area, expecting to find you chatting with friends. You always said dancing in public made you feel awkward unless you were drunk, and since your alcohol tolerance was low, you usually didn’t drink much.

“I see Jen on the dance floor,” Jimin said. “Did you find her?”

“No.” Jungkook scanned the dance floor, briefly pausing on a petite girl wearing a red dress before looking back at the booths. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.” He pulled out his phone to call you.  

“Wait, is that y/n?” Jimin suddenly asked.  

Jungkook glanced up from his phone. “Where?”

“That girl in the red dress.”

He looked back at the dance floor for the girl in red, ready to deny it. Except she’d turned around now, and Jimin was right. Holy shit.

“Damn. I know I’ve been giving you a hard time lately, calling you domesticated. I’ll shut up now because if I knew I was taking her home later, I’d be domesticated too.”

Jungkook glared at Jimin. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”

Jimin’s expression was sheepish. “Sorry, man. I’m going to hell for impure thoughts, but so are half the guys hanging around her. You might want to worry more about them.”

Jungkook was already on the move as he’d noticed the same thing. Shouldering past two guys trying to dance up behind you, he gave them a look that ensured they backed off. Your back was facing him, and he swallowed hard as his eyes drifted down from your shoulders. The dress draped in the small of your back, leaving a bare expanse of skin, and his fingers literally itched to touch you.

He gave in to the urge, sliding his hand along your waist lightly to get your attention. You turned your head, brows furrowed as you flinched away from the unexpected touch. But when you saw it was him, you smiled and wrapped your arms around his waist.

“You’re here,” you said, tilting your head back to look at him. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

He smiled at your uncharacteristically dramatic tone. “Sorry. I forgot my bag, so I had to run home to change. Are you having fun?” You were pressed close against him on the crowded dance floor, and he was enjoying the feeling of your small body against his. He let his hands settle on your hips, thumbs rubbing light circles. You shivered in response. “Are you cold?”

“No. That just feels good,” you said with a sigh. You toyed with the top button of his long-sleeved white Henley.

He wasn’t used to you being that direct about what you liked. And when your hands suddenly wandered under his leather jacket and ran up his back, he suppressed a shiver of his own. “I think you’re drunk, baby.” He pulled you closer, trying to ignore the teasing glimpse of cleavage revealed by your dress. Your hair drifted around your pale shoulders in loose waves, and all he could think about was running his fingers through it as he kissed you.  

“Maybe a little bit,” you admitted, scrunching your nose as you smiled up at him. “The cocktails are really good here.”

God, you were adorable. He’d never met another girl that he wanted to simultaneously fuck senseless but also protect and cuddle, though the former urge was winning out tonight. He’d never imagined you wearing a dress like this, and he knew it would be fueling his fantasies for quite some time. It had to be Jen’s influence, though he certainly wasn’t complaining.

As if reading his thoughts, Jen suddenly sidled past him on her way to the bar. “You’re welcome.”

For the next three hours, you divided your time between the dance floor and the bar, and Jungkook was content to follow behind you. You danced slowly together regardless of the beat, and he finally allowed his hands to stroke your bare back. You kept tilting your head back, inviting his kisses, and he was happy to indulge you. He was so turned on he could hardly think straight, but he knew he needed to keep a tight rein on the situation. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of that night a few weeks before when you had all but run from his apartment.

When you got a bit unsteady on your feet, Jungkook ordered water and fries at the bar before leading you to the booth where Jimin, Jen and a couple of other friends were talking. He could tell you were starting to fade as you finished the water and food. When you yawned and leaned against him, he kissed the top of your head. “I think it’s time we got you home.”

You hummed in agreement. Jen tossed him your jacket from the corner of the booth, and he helped you put it on. The cab ride back home was long enough for you to fall asleep in his arms. He savored every minute, stroking your hair gently, lulled by the sound of your breathing and glad that you had shaken off the pensive mood you’d been in the night before.

Jungkook was observant enough to realize that something was worrying you lately. While it bothered him that you wouldn’t tell him what you were thinking about, he worried that the relationship was still too fragile for him to push when it was obvious that you didn’t want to talk about it. Still, it was becoming increasingly difficult to let it go because he was concerned that it had something to do with him.

He wondered if it was about sex. Ever since that night he’d intervened when your ex showed up drunk, he’d wondered about your relationship with him. Something in the past had made you nervous about physical intimacy, which he’d realized after you ran out of his apartment that night, and he’d been very careful not to do anything that might make you run again. More and more he wished he’d punched that asshole, feeling certain he was somehow to blame. He’d deserved that and more for the name calling alone.

When you arrived home, Jungkook paid the driver and helped you from the car. Upstairs, he unlocked your apartment, smiling when you kicked your heels off and the effort sent you stumbling sideways. He steadied you before removing your jacket and draping it on the arm of the sofa. You walked to your bedroom and he grabbed some water from the kitchen before following you.

“You don’t feel sick, do you?” he asked, placing the water on your nightstand.

You shook your head as you sat on the edge of the bed and reached out a hand to him. “No.”

He took your hand and sat next to you. “You should change before you go to sleep, so you’ll be more comfortable.”

“You like the dress, right?” You nibbled your bottom lip as you peeked up at him through your lashes.

Understatement. “You look beautiful,” Jungkook said quietly, pushing your hair off your shoulder. His breath caught when you turned her cheek toward his palm and rubbed against him like a sleepy kitten.

“Then kiss me,” you whispered.

He hesitated, but you were already reaching for him. The kiss was like throwing a match on kindling. Then you scooted back to lie down and pulled him with you.

This was dangerous and he knew it, but he ignored the niggling little warning in his head because he’d been thinking about kissing you like this all night. He pressed against your soft curves but kept most of his weight off you as slow kisses turned more passionate. And when your hands grew bolder, running across his chest and back and tugging him closer, he gave in to the temptation, pulling you more fully beneath him.

When you parted your thighs, allowing his hips to settle between them, he dropped his head to your shoulder with a groan. Pressing kisses against your neck, he willed himself to calm down. “Baby, we should stop.”

You responded by pushing your hips up against him, and he bit back a curse. He was fully hard now and stopping was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew it was the right thing. Jungkook braced his weight on his forearms and took a breath as he stared down at you.

“But I want you to stay,” you said, threading your fingers in his hair. Your eyes seemed much darker in the dim light of the bedroom. Your small hands drifted down to his shoulders, kneading, and then moved further down to toy with the hem of his shirt.

Jungkook closed his eyes and took another deep breath, the light fragrance of your perfume doing nothing to help him regain control. As much as he wanted you – had wanted you from the first night he kissed you - he didn’t want your first time together to be after a night of drinking. If there was even the slightest chance that you might regret it later, it wasn’t worth it.

He gave in one last time, kissing the spot beneath your ear that always made you shiver. He darted his tongue out to taste you and then captured your lips for one more long, slow kiss. “Not tonight.”

You didn’t argue anymore, allowing him to pull away. You were quiet as you got up and took some clothes from the dresser before going to the bathroom to change. When you returned, your face was clean, and you wore the usual pajama pants and t-shirt you preferred to sleep in. You didn’t say anything as you slipped past him to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up.

“You’re sure you feel okay?” he asked.

You nodded, your eyes already closed. “I’m just tired.”

He brushed his hand over your hair and leaned down to kiss your forehead. “I’ll lock up on my way out. I’ll give you the key back tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Jungkook hesitated for a moment. Something seemed off somehow. Awkward, maybe. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He turned off the light and let himself out, making sure to lock the door behind him.

[mistresseast]

can you explain in more detail why you think the PT weren't good friends for akiren? i'm not asking out of hate or to start drama, i just never interpreted things that way and i'm genuinely curious. i don't think them being brainwashed by maruki makes them "bad friends", but i don't know if that's what you meant either. i'd love to read a proper explanation on this that isn't just people arguing in the notes of that post.

Hi! Yeah, I know the ~discourse~ climate is pretty touchy and not a good place to exchange ideas, so I’ll do my best to put my thoughts on this matter into words. 

Settle in, bc this one is long.

I’ll start off by saying I don’t dislike the PT, nor do I think they’re bad people, and honestly I think they love Joker a lot! Ryuji calling Akira after his fake death and talking about how his ideas on what makes a hero have changed because of Akira genuinely makes me emotional, along with dozens of other scenes with the thieves! They’re good kids who could be really good friends to Akira but that’s not what’s shown in the game. I don’t think it’s controversial to say Akira’s relationships with all of his friends are transactional. That’s kind of the point, all of his confidants arise out of deals, give and take, and in the metanarrative of the game, that’s how it works. You as the player help these characters solve their problems, and through ranking their confidants up, you get access to more gameplay perks. So it’s pretty even!! But like,,Akira, the character, isn’t the player. There’s no in-story mechanic by which he can cash in friendship points for being-good-at-killing-things prizes. Yes, he uses those abilities to not die in the metaverse, but there is no literal, in-universe way to explain how hanging out with someone translates to [insert gameplay perk here]. So you have to look at what is physically happening in the story. Akira hangs out with the PT, stands there while they have drama with another irrelevant character, and then one way or another their problems get solved and they swear to be Akira’s blood brother or whatever. Akira is a crutch for these characters, and they say multiple times that they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without him. So all of their shit gets handled and Akira gets?? Like actually gets?? What? Inquiries about his well-being? Offers to help him? Questions about his life, his interests? No,,,not really,, But he gets access to a super powerful persona!! Yay!!! Bc everyone knows he’s just a little shadow-killing machine, right? And even the relationships he does get something tangible (as in separate from the mechanics of the game) out of, like Kawakami’s, are built on the notion that if Akira stops providing for whatever reason, the relationship will end. So essentially, Akira is under the pressure of filling whatever role his friends need him in for however long at any time, and he’s been led to believe that if he stops or fails, he will stop receiving any reciprocal care and acceptance.

(And I know this is all gameplay stuff, I know it has to be like this to codify the complicated process of human relationships, I know all of that, I’m just trying to find a deeper layer bc that’s what I do.)

This whole thing comes into pretty clear focus for me during the third semester when you visit everyone in the false reality. Everyone is happy to see him, of course, but they’re clearly wrapped up in their own happiness. Which is understandable, again, I’m not saying the PT need to be attached to Akira to be good friends, but it all still feels off to me.

If they know Joker, then they’d know it’s weird that he just shows up and starts asking these pointed questions while they’re in the middle of something. All of their other interactions with him have been led by them. Yeah, Joker approaches them bc the player has decided to hang out with them, but the other character always chooses the activity and leads the discussion. Akira showing up out of nowhere and asking them to “remember” and “move on” and whatnot should be raising some major red flags. And it clearly does, since their memories do start to return, but they’re all too scared of losing their happiness that they nope out of the conversation as soon as possible, without stopping to consider why Joker might be trying to reach out to them like that. They’re his friends; they should know he wouldn’t just be trying to hurt them or make them unhappy. After all, their entire relationship with him up til that point has been exclusively about Joker trying to help them. This doesn’t make the PT bad people, running away is a totally natural reaction in that situation. They’re just kids, and their minds have been manipulated to a point, but it’s not like they don’t remember Joker or the way they’ve grown since meeting him. In fact many of them mention how much they’ve matured recently, but they never actually relate that back to Akira, despite him being the primary driving force behind most of their personal arcs, even though they definitely remember him. Translation vagueness or deliberate nod to the idea that the PT don’t actually credit Akira with all the hard work he did after their initial lip service? Hmmm. Anyway, their failure to recognize that Joker is struggling just demonstrates to me what was set up all throughout their confidant links, that their relationships are transactional and that they don’t necessarily consider Joker and his individual needs outside of what he provides for them. And when they no longer need him bc that hole has been filled, he simply doesn’t occupy the same place of importance in their lives. 

Makoto’s flashback in particular stood out to me, bc it was from a moment where she was specifically talking about feeling like she finally found a place to belong with the Phantom Thieves (and by extension, with Joker), but then she desperately tries to brush it off. Obviously that sense of belonging wasn’t meaningful enough to her for her to want it back. And I’m not blaming her, of course, any teenager would choose to have their father back over being in a vigilante group lmao, I just thought it was telling that the devs decided to show us a scene that was originally meant to be heartwarming as an example of the harsh reality Makoto wants to forget. All of the flashbacks are from defining moments for the thieves, but that one specifically got me like *thinking emoji*

So his friends are hesitant, despite the fact that they must know something is wrong. It’s understandable, they all stand to lose a lot if someone messes with the status quo. I genuinely don’t think I would react any differently. But there is someone who reacts differently and against his own self-interest. It’s Goro, the one who has arguably the most to lose, who doesn’t turn away from Akira. He seeks Akira out and teams up with him to uncover what’s really going on, even though he has every reason to believe that prodding too deep will literally mean the end of his life. He forces Akira and himself to face the truth because he knows anything else would just be an insult to what they’ve suffered so far. He’s the only one who never flinches, and that, more than any of his friends’ come-to-jesusing (which Akira still has to initiate) is what Akira needs in that situation. For the first time (outside of the brief instances in the tutorial levels), we see a situation where Akira is actually the dependent one, the one who needs help, who needs support. And the only one who has ever provided that, unconditionally, without demanding anything in return, is Goro. I could go into how Goro’s confidant blows all of the others out of the water in terms of building both himself AND Akira as characters, but it’s been said already and by smarter people than me. But basically, despite competition being a core theme of their relationship, Goro is the only character who is portrayed as Akira’s equal. Their contests are all in the name of improving not just Goro, but Akira too. Goro is the only character who expresses an interest in Akira’s inner life and development, and as such he knows Akira better than anyone else. So when Maruki tries to trap them all in a gilded birdcage, Goro won’t stand for it and he knows Akira won’t stand for it either. That’s why he’s so betrayed if you choose to accept the dreamworld. You’re negating the basis of your entire relationship with him and going against your own principles. Out of every character in the game, the one who knows Akira best and refuses to abandon him even when that could mean his own death is Goro Akechi.

I want to reiterate: I do not hate or even dislike the PT!! And tbh I don’t really think they “abandoned” Akira. That post, imo, is supposed to be kind of hyperbolic. Unless it’s referring to how many of them literally sprint away when he comes to talk to them lol. I look at it more like a commentary on how thoughtlessly the PT act as soon as their wishes are granted. I know it’s set up linearly for story purposes, but isn’t it kind of sad how no one checks up on Akira in the week he’s going around talking to people? Especially after he’s been acting so comparatively weird? It’s not unusual that they might be caught up in other stuff, but while you’re going around and visiting everyone, you don’t get a single text or call from ANY of the thieves, for a whole week!! Goro even comments on it directly with his pointed little “I’m sure you’re just as close as you were before” comment. God, he’s such a bitch. Ultimately, the PT do get their acts together, and it’s partially out of the realization that Akira is struggling alone against something and needs their help, which I love and appreciate. I think they are good friends who want to support Akira, but they can’t understand him past the role they’ve placed him in, and until they do, they’ll never be able to be what he needs. Akira loves his friends and knows he can rely on them in most ways, but those relationships will always be dogged by the pervasive fear that he must constantly earn the right to have the relationship at all. What he needs MOST is someone he doesn’t have to perform for, and from what we see in the game, none of the thieves fit that bill. Except Goro. 

I know this was long and rambly and probably pretty disjointed but I wanted to be as thorough as possible and all of my thoughts just sort of gushed out. Obviously ymmv about all of this depending on how you interpret the game, but this is what I arrived at thanks to my analysis so this is what I have for you! Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[1dsource]

Ziam writers in this fandom need a lot of love, just like our larry writers, so here is our first Ziam fic rec! The theme of this fic rec is Friends to Lovers!

Please show these authors some extra love and leave a kudos, and even a comment if you have the time. It’s important we also give the newer, unknown authors a chance so they keep having motivation to write more amazing stories for us all to read <3

Fools, and Worthless Liars. by aliceninetyfive I 115K I Haunted hotel, winter

Louis and Liam decide to go work a winter season in a snow resort in the Alps during their gap year. They get placed in Austria, where they meet a bunch of familiar faces including Zayn, Harry, Niall and various others you're bound to recognise doing the same thing!

Featuring our old favourites angst, pining, self discovery, ot5, and a side helping of a haunted hotel & gorgeous alpine scenery.

Compartment 451 by ziamhaze I 88K I Harry Potter universe

Zayn’s a muggleborn wizard whose parents leave him to fend for himself once he’s made aware of his magical abilities. The Payne’s are an open minded wizarding family, who take him in and provide the boy with a loving home before he and their overly excited son Liam, go off to Hogwarts for the first time. Liam introduces Zayn to the wonderful world of magic, while Zayn teaches the pureblood about a way of life he’s never known. Somewhere between laser tag tutorials and petting Hebridean Black dragons, Zayn falls for the newly appointed Head Boy, but his three other nonconforming friends aren’t about to let the Ravenclaw go through his last year of school without letting Liam in on his feelings once and for all.

Money Moves by mmaree I 74K I Fake Relationship I Boss/Employee

“I’ll cut straight to the chase,” Liam announces. He leans forward, and Zayn is met with steely eyes and steepled fingers. “I’m willing to offer you fifty grand if you’ll enter into a small…partnership with me. This would be in addition to your salary at Payne Innovations, of course. Think of it as a bonus.”

Zayn narrows his eyes. “What kind of partnership?”

“A fake engagement.”

“Oh,” Zayn says, relieved it’s nothing illegal. “Wait—what?”

“A fake engagement,” his boss repeats slowly, as if he’s convinced Zayn’s comprehension skills are significantly lacking. “For six months. Maybe less if I can pull it off sooner but don’t worry—you’ll be paid the full sum regardless of how long it takes.”

Zayn’s suspicious, and he doesn’t even know why. There’s nothing to be suspicious of because, clearly, Liam’s lost the plot. Zayn’s having a conversation with a complete nutter. There’s no other reasonable explanation.

He clears his throat, searches Liam’s eyes for a sign he's taking the piss. “How long what takes?”

A smile plays at Liam’s lips. “For me to be hired as the CTO at Titan Technologies.”

Half A Heart by ginger_with_a_black_cat I 68K I Friends with Benefits

Zayn is an English student who doesn't want to fall in love because his biggest fear is to get hurt again. Liam is a resident bad boy and everyone's wet dream on the outside, but in the inside he's a secret even to himself. Harry's Liam's best friend with a secret of his own. Louis likes to party hard, get drunk and get everyone in trouble but everybody loves him nonetheless. And then, there's Niall, who's the youngest of them all, but still has the most brains and keeps them all in order all while being in love with an impossible girl.

Or where Zayn gets hit in the head by his own actions, Liam finds himself falling for an idiot, Harry gets dragged out of the closet by the love of his life, Louis wants Harry and only Harry and Niall just wants all of them to get their shit together, so he can get his own life back.

and you take me the way i am by orphan_account I 54K I Fake Relationship

It’s incredibly relaxing, even in this small space, the way they’ve always been. Such a distraction that he doesn’t think, not for once, about agreeing to lie to his family and Zayn pretending to be his date and how easy all of this might be.

(Liam needs a date to a wedding. His family loves to match him up with blind dates. He doesn't want that. He needs a date... and, well, why not Zayn. Pretending to be boyfriends for a weekend isn't the worst idea he supposes. Liam is horribly wrong.)

some moments are rare by orphan_account I 46K I Uni au

The city blinks awake outside but Zayn falls asleep with his nose pressed to Liam’s coffee-stain of a birthmark.

(or, alternatively: Zayn is spending a summer studying aboard; thirty days across Europe, with his best mate by his side. It's always been like this ― Zayn and Liam. And he's always been a bit daft about love, or the fact that Liam's always been in love with him. It's all a bit of a mess, actually.)

Just As Fast, Twice As Dangerous by lightswoodmagic I 45K I Superpowers

When he realised it was only him and Liam in the hallway, he felt safe enough to drop his shield. Oh. Lovely. Liam was emanating affection and fondness, his primary emotions filled with warmth and love. Zayn let himself bask in it, how it would feel to be loved by Liam. He knew Liam loved him, but he wasn’t in love with him; Zayn had felt that emotion too many times to count, and this just wasn’t it. He dug slightly deeper, could feel that Liam was excited and nervous, and when he hit a wall Liam had built himself, he dropped back. He wasn’t supposed to know everything.

Or, Zayn's a normal student by day, and a superhero by night. When a mysterious man seems to target him at the same time a natural disaster strikes, Zayn has to figure out a way to save the day, protect his heart, and convince the boys he's not a vigilante all at the same time.

down the vista of years by ohthathurt I 30K I Time Travel

Zayn whispered, “So where do we go from here?”

Liam shrugged, seemingly lost in thought. Then he smiled down at his boyfriend, “Forward?”

Zayn smiled serenely, eyes twinkling like gold in the sun seeping through the open windows.

He nodded, “Forward.”

Just the two of us and a cute little cup of cyanide by orphan_account I 17K I Accidental Marriage

“I definitely need something alcoholic if I’m going to watch my two best mates divorce,” Niall says, yanking a top over his head.

“We’re not actually married,” Liam says, with slightly more force than intended. “It was an accident. Obviously I wouldn’t ever get married to Zayn if I was sober, that’s fucking ridiculous.”

The bathroom door opens suddenly and Zayn stands there in nothing but a towel, bottom lip trapped between his teeth. Liam opens his mouth to say something but Zayn holds up his hand, shaking his head. “You don’t need to be a dick about it, Liam. This isn’t exactly how I envisioned my first marriage going either.”

Or an I-accidentally-married-my-best-mate-in-Vegas fic, where Liam's completely oblivious, Zayn's completely in love, Harry's had enough, Louis plays mediator and Niall just wants his best friends to be with each other.

i'm watching you run from the sidelines by thebeehive I 17K I 

“One week,” Zayn cajoled. “C’mon Leeyum. After one week if you hate it that much, you can go. But just stay one week.”

“In Pennsylvania. On your farm. In the middle of nowhere.”

Liam looked at his phone, but it held no answers. Zayn couldn’t be serious. Liam hadn’t stopped traveling the world after the band went on hiatus. He never stopped. Dubai one week, London the next, and then L.A. It didn’t really matter where, as long as he kept moving. But he missed Zayn, missed his former band mate. His former friend. He hadn’t seen him in person in years. And it couldn’t be that bad, on a farm, could it?

Liam sighed. “Fine. A week. But your wifi better be fucking spectacular, mate.”

{Or, Zayn invites Liam to his farm for a week to help him relax. Things don’t go as planned.}

fooled around and fell in love by tachycardia I 15K I Fake Relationship

“I have a proposal - a proposition,” Liam corrects quickly. “For you.”

Liam and Zayn pretend to be engaged.

a river flows so surely to the sea by kettering I 14K I Uni au

It’s August, not a cloud in the sky, and two boys who’ve been smitten with each other for going on a decade are tying the knot.

get a little bit nervous by louistomlinsons I 14K I 

Liam goes to say something, probably something dumb, but he chokes on his spit, coughing loudly. The man in front of him is one of the prettiest people he’s ever seen in his life; he’s got thick eyelashes that fan out and frame his dark eyes and tanned unblemished skin. Liam forgets all of his previous thoughts.

“You okay, mate?” he asks, concern filtering into his voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Liam says, still choking and coughing. “Sorry.”

“We all reacted the same way we saw Zayn for the first time,” Niall says from next to him, laughter evident in his tone. “He’s a god, isn’t he?”

or, ziam farmer's market au where liam, louis, and niall work at the produce stand, harry and zayn work at the bakery stand, and nobody's straight

Tell me tomorrow (I'll wait by the window for you) by orphan_account I 13K

“You’re, like, beautiful,” Liam says, and it’s said so earnestly and with such conviction that Zayn can hardly believe that they don’t know each other in real life. “God, I’m cacking it now.”

“Don’t,” Zayn says shyly. “We’re both people, it… it will be what it will.”

“Can’t wait,” Liam says softly. “I’m nervous, yeah, but I really can’t fucking wait.”

“Me neither,” Zayn grins. “Less than seventeen hours to go now, babe.”

Or a Gavin and Stacey AU where Zayn pines, Liam's nervous, Louis's loud, Harry's a little odd and Niall just loves an omelette.

This Is Somethin' Real by lightswoodmagic I 5K I 

Zayn had felt it before, felt the hope and the possibility of something brewing, but where he usually pushed it down, he let it consume him now, let it take over everything until he was swinging his feet and grinning when Niall finally walked through the door.

“Lads!”

“Nialler!” Louis shouted, wrapping him up in a hug.

“How is everyo – woah, why are you so happy?” he asked Zayn, cackling when Zayn kicked out at him.

“He’s going to tell Payno he’s in love with him tonight, that’s why,” Louis explained, and Zayn saw Harry’s nose scrunch as he smiled.

Again, if you read, please remember to leave kudos and/or a comment so we keep motivating our lovely, talented writers and make them feel valued

[wedblog613]

Tagxedo For Mac

Tagxedo For Mac Free

Tagxedo For Mac Computer

Tagxedo For Mac And Cheese

Tagxedo is another word cloud generator, one with even more bells & whistles. Like Wordle, the program counts the number of times a word is used. The more it is used, the larger it appears in the graphic. Small words like 'a' and 'the' are not counted. Both Worlde and Tagxedo can make word clouds from text or websites. I prefer Tagxedo for the images it creates, but for analyzing the message of a literary work, Wordle actually works better. See my previous post about Wordle.

By default, Tagxedo's image editor will put words in the black part of your jpg. Choose 'Add Image' from the 'Shape' options dialog box. When prompted, upload the black on white jpg from your computer. In the resulting dialog box many tiny copies of the word 'Tagxedo' will appear in the area where your word cloud words will show up.

Tagxedo is another excellent choice when searching for websites like Wordle. One of the features that sets Tagxedo apart from the other options here is being able to create word clouds from your Twitter profile, your blog and many other sources online.

Tagxedo can either scan text or sites for words, or you can create a list of your own. Critical Update! Tagxedo is built on Microsoft Silverlight, and Microsoft Silverlight is dying. By April 2015, Chrome browsers will phase out Microsoft Silverlight plugins, but Tagxedo still works fine on Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer — for now.

Here's my Tagxedo image of this blog.

Tagxedo For Mac Free

Before we could use Tagxedo on our Macs, I had to install Silverlight. Tagxedo provides a link for this installation. Similar to Flash, Silverlight allows the interactive display to function. I've never needed Silverlight before, and this took a bit of time, but it was easy. By the way, don't even think about running Wordle or Tagxedo on on Mac OS 10.3. Our lab has 12 machines with 10.6 'Snow Leopard.' The other 18 have 10.3, so my students take turns using the newer machines. We don't have any 'Tiger' machines anymore, so I can't say if Tagxedo will run on 10.4. Perhaps one of my readers can tell me. I believe you need to install before you can properly view this embedded version. Here's an article about embedding Tagxedo on your web page.

The print function in Tagxedo allows you to save it as a PNG or JPG. The graphic above is a PNG. I was curious about which format is better for this type of thing. I found a very clear explanation on Inverse Karma, the blog of software engineer Ganesh Prasannah. I chose PNG based on his suggestion that if the image contains text and hard lines, PNG is better than JPG.

Tagxedo For Mac Computer

I ask my students to save their work and turn it in to my digital turn-in tray--a 'write only' folder on our server. Not only does that allow us to have a paperless classroom, it gives us the option to add the image to a web page, make a slide show, or print in color when I get the color printer working. Both Wordle and Tagxedo have public galleries for you to share your artwork. Be advised that not there may be graphics in the gallery that are not appropriate for the classroom.

Want some more ideas? Check out '52 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the Classroom.' This is only one of the 'Interesting Ways' collaborative Google presentations started by Tom Barret.

Tagxedo For Mac And Cheese

Tagxedo has more fonts, allows you to use more than 1 font on your word cloud, and offers more controls in layout. It's best known for pouring that word cloud into a shape, like the one below. This is part of the first chapter from my favorite Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four. Cool!

Tagxedo

Benefits

Free.

No sign-in or e-mail required.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial, Attribution, Share Alike License. (In other words, you may not sell items with images created by the Tagxedo application).

It is very easy to copy and paste text from the Internet or from student work in Word or another program into the Tagxedo application. Text may also be entered directly.

Keeps a history of previous configurations during the creation phase, so you may go back and find an earlier rendition of your word cloud.

Allows you to create word clouds in shapes.

Many options for saving to your local machine and on the web.

Many color / theme options.

Tagxedo has a stemming protocol built into the application which recognizes derivatives of a word. For example, walk, walks, and walking would be recognized as derivatives of the word walk and would only appear in the Tagxedo as the word walk.

Not a dedicated educational site, however, the owner has stated that all Tagxedos showcased in the gallery will be educationally friendly.

Several ads appear on the site.

Not as easy and intuitive as Wordle or ABCya.

Several shape options are available. However, the ability to create custom shapes or some of the shapes featured in the gallery require a premium subscription (which is not yet available, as far as I can tell).

Requires Silverlight (not available for older Mac computers).

The Tagxedo site is not searchable for previously created Tagxedos.

Helpful Hints

This short video tutorial is very helpful when beginning to use Tagxedo

Intro to Tagxedo

Multiple word phrases may be entered by using the Tilda (~) between words, but this is only available when adding text through copying and pasting or direct entry. It does not work when pulling text directly from a website.

By allowing to repeat, you can generate a more solid shape. See the embedded images to the right.

The borders of the shape may be set to a 'hard border' to emphasize the shape or the shape shadow may added for clarity of the shape.

When using the embed code provided by Tagxedo, a small image is generated (and does not include the shape outline if left on the Tagxedo). One of the cool features of the embedded image is that you may actually click on a word and a web search is done on that word so if a student did not know the meaning of a word the Wikipedia or other site would be available for help. See the embedded image to the right.

Tagxedo uses a formula to determine the emphasis of the word in the word cloud that is partly based on the number of times the word appears in the text. See the Tagxedo FAQ page for more information.

Default settings eliminate common English words such as the, a, an, prepositions, etc. are automatically disregarded by the application.

Numbers are eliminated from Tagxedo by default..

Words may be removed from a completed Tagxedo by clicking on the Word / Layout Option link and selecting the Skip tab. Simply select the words you want to eliminate from the Tagxedo and Accept the changes at the bottom. This will cause the Tagxedo to 'respin'.

If you are going to embed your image, either keep a record of the URL of the image or download the image as the Tagxedo gallery is not searchable and the embedded image does not automatically link to the URL as it does in Wordle. When creating a Tagxedo for a class, I recommend saving the Tagxedo on the web making note of the URL and saving the image to your own computer. You may then use the image in either PowerPoint Presentations or on a Website and make the image itself a link to the image on the web where the interactive functions are available. See the example below.

[natromanxoff]

Drama, drama, drama... Alright, now we have one about Roger Taylor. And I strongly felt the need of making a post about this because I talked to the blogger here who shared the photo, ergo had a chance to closely follow what has been going on.

What is this I am talking about? 

This photo, that has also been posted here. Jacques Dutard, who is the owner of the photo wrote this caption: “Hey, just wanna share what happened to me just yesterday at lunch... In Sardinia, at the restaurant I have Roger arriving and sitting on the table next to us... Simply amazing, exciting, awesome. Thanks Roger.” So it is about this photo that Roger had with fans on 10th of August, at a restaurant, without a mask, in Italy. As you can probably guess, the ‘without a mask’ and ‘Italy’ parts have bothered some people, then came the horrid comments.

Before I start, I want to especially specify that I am a person who is a medicine student, daughter of a doctor and whose parents have gotten the virus in the beginning of the April but still have the effects virus left on body such as tachycardia, arrhytmia, respiratory distress which appear after a physical activity. These facts don’t make me an expert but make me someone who has relatively better knowledge about some medical subjects and someone who has had a bad personal experience with the virus.

I don’t know if there’s any need for me to say that I’ve become really worried after seeing the visual, it was my initial reaction, I always dread to hear the news of their death and I was, yes, thinking what if he gets infected? My parents in their forties still have problems and in comparison with them; him in 70, what bad consequences would happen? Then, I had some other questions, I was sort of disappointed that he went out without any protection, after all that’s been said. Why?

I know, he’s a smart man and thought I can’t judge him that easily because of him going out. I considered some points and turned my disappointment into calmness. Now I am sharing them with you, especially for those who’s initial reaction was panic and started to spit venom,

Firstly, we must acknowledge that photos are capture of a moment which lasts for split seconds. All we have right now is a split second photo of him without a mask. So do we have any right to attack him for not using mask? No. Because I don’t even know if he was already wearing it or not, if he took it off for the photo or not. Maybe he wanted his smile to be seen at the photo, wanted to create a sincere environment. But we can’t create a drama out of it. Believe me, I am one of those gets so raged after seeing a person not using a mask. It’s necessary, you have to do it for both your and my health. But even I, am not going to make a story from only a photo of someone. That’s pretty normal. I have taken photos of ourselves too and I took my mask off at safe points for this only to wear it again after. However, I will never let people say that I don’t have the mask on me, how dare I can be this selfish and stroll around without any caution. No, I am very very careful and you can never judge me for the moment.

Secondly, let’s say he hasn’t been using mask while he was sitting. He’s at a restaurant. It’s quite understandable that he doesn’t have a mask. Is there anyone who can eat with their masks on? I don’t think so. I am also sure many of us has gone to a cafe or restaurant at some point since the decreases at the cases have started and shops were opened. I accept that I did but where did I choose to sit? At open-air and secluded parts of them. I have started using my mask even before the virus hasn’t been spreaded widely around the country yet, never stopped using it even if I go outdoor because I’ve always been conscious about it. But guess where is the only place I had to take them off? Yes, the restaurants. While I am eating, I have to use my mouth and I take it off to wear it immediately after I finish. That’s probably what he had to do too.

Next, if you just observe carefully and detailedly, you see a small distance between them and Roger. Perspective can fool us so well and unbeliveably. You assume it’s short length from a point but when you change your angle, you see that it is not what it looks like, it’s the opposite, the gap is huger than you think! There has been posts about it even here. What if this is the case? I don’t think that I can interpret that he doesn’t care about rules and stays close to people. In fact, he’s leaning towards them slightly, his chair and knife seems a little so we can quite reckon how is his sitting straight position. Gives me a impression that it’s far from other people and he just leaned a little for the photo because he isn’t rude to the fans. I am sure, there would be another discussion if he rejected their photo request. The man seems like sitting at the edge of the chair and there is a woman and man smiling and looking at camera in the back, at the second table. I can maybe assume, these fans came from there and talked briefly, took a photo, then went away. He always stays close with fans or puts an arm behind them on photos, if he didn’t care, he might have tried to do that again.

Another point, some researchs say that not socializing for a long time might cause regression on brain structures and functions especially of old people, who are older than 65. They already have minor of it, as something age brings with it and closing them, without any human interaction might make it worse. That’s why this has been discussed here if there can be another good way for old people because being under quarantine for months may effect them badly. Not just that, psychological effect that being between 4 walls leaves on us is a significant one. Whether we notice it or not, there is a change because we’ve gotten used to go out freely. As for him; alright, he has a big house with a wide garden, his wife with him and comparably, he has much comfortable and livable conditions than many of us. But is this really enough to stay there for this much long time and don’t go on any holiday at all? Especiallr for him who is energetic and has given concerts for all these years? Same place bores us after a point, we feel the need of change. He has stayed in his house for all this time and hasn’t moaned about it on social media like some other celebrities, he probably tried to make the best out of it; giving drum tutorials, recording a song, playing song with his friends on video call and now that he went to holiday, people started to attack. He has disadvantage because of his age but also has right and need to get relaxed too.

All people started to go on holiday. I confess, I did too. We have a private summerhouse with a pool so I have been lucky about not getting into crowd a lot but I was still cautious. Like I have woken up at the wee hours to be able to go to sea. So it’s possible to go on holiday and be safe if you take the precautions. We don’t even know what kind of a holiday he’s having, might be a boat, private rented house or something else. Maybe he was isolating himself on the vacation too. We don’t even know anything for sure. Just because we received a photo of him at a restaurant isn’t enough to throw mud at him for going on holiday. Especially not now, when everybody is having holiday. If only celebrities went to have holiday and us people had to stay at home, I would get angry too. But he’s not only one to blame at this. 

Lastly, his daughter is a GP. He can comfortably ask her about what he should do or what is safer to do. Everybody likes to ask to people who’s close to them and in that field because it’s easier to learn and more reliable than internet. Like even a neighbour rings our bell to ask a medical question to my father at obnoxious hours, is he going to he hesitate to call his own daughter to ask couple of things? I doubt it. He has a chance to learn about it more and better, I am sure he wouldn’t miss this chance. He has always been a responsible, smart man and I am not sure if he would suddenly turn into an ignorant, stupid person.

I try to see your point of views too. Yes, it seems unpleasing to view him in that position during this pandemic. Yes, I was irritated by it as I said that I am much more sensitive about this and it is against my principles. But when you think sensibly, you get to the conclusion that it might not seem like what it is. If we kept seeing new content of him going around without a mask, I would totally justify you. But right now, this is not what it is. It’s so easy to prejudge someone, so so easy, what is harder is to put them aside and think carefully if something different is possible. When I think, I reach to these many points and I haven’t felt lazy to write them all because I haven’t seen enough people that think with every aspects but seen the ones who attacked greatly. 

I am concerned because of his age and his choice of resturant which is relatively crowded. But as it is in the words, it’s his ‘choice’ and I can’t call him stupid because of that. I am hoping that nothing bad happens because this disease is really hell but I also trust his mind and try to think that he will do what’s necessary to protect himself. I just invite everybody to think reasonably, evaluate every aspects and not create a drama easily because we have already enough of it. Criticize kindly, I do that too - I would have preferred him do be at a safer place but as I said there is probably an explanation and it’s his will, but please don’t be this aggresive using these rude words.

[imjeralee]

Comfort in Despair: Chapter 11 - It’s a TRAP!

Leon x F!Reader

Disclaimer: Do not own Pokemon

Summary:

Galar is rich in folklore and tales of the supernatural.

As a Pokemon Researcher who specialises in ghost types, this is a great opportunity for you to investigate and learn more about the paranormal.

Along the way, you meet Leon (in the most awkward way possible) who becomes embroiled in your adventures.

^ Basically this story is about ghosts :/

Rating: General/Teen

Extra Note: this is really my attempt in writing a big case, so shout out to the awesome @crikeygatormate, @alisakagi​ and @elisanice for their suggestions :) @marydragneell​ - here is the latest update

It's a TRAP!

…

…

[It is proposed that poltergeists are actually the emotions of troubled individuals – built up during times of stress. This theory, known as Spontaneous Recurring Psychokinesis suggests that this built-up stress then unconsciously projects outwards in the form of mental energy, which effects the physical environment and produces the phenomena attributed to poltergeists.] … …

The next day, you head to Wyndon Police Station to meet Graves.

You enter the busy establishment, glancing around. Inside, various policemen and women are seated at desks, busily serving people. You tell reception you’re here to see the Chief Inspector and they let you enter and you pass a young male officer of average height standing near the vending machine with a Grapploct, Growlithe and a Herdier in police hats and corresponding uniforms. He glances at you with a grin, chewing on a Lumiose Galette.

"Back again, kooky girl?" he says with a thick brogue, “Heard you solved the Giant’s Seat case. What kinda weird hoodoo did you do this time?”

You ignore him, heading to the Chief Inspector’s office and rap lightly on the door with your knuckles.

“Come in,” says a gruff and stern voice, and you subsequently enter the room.

Manectric sleeps in his basket near the coat stand whilst Arcanine sits in another corner, biting on a chew toy, and a disgruntled-looking Graves sits at his desk, going through some files. He swerves his eyes up to you when you step in and then returns to rifle through the papers before settling them down.

Graves' office is very bland but messy and as Chief Inspector, he is neck-deep with all sorts of cases so you are quite thankful he has made time for you this afternoon. You take the black leather seat opposite him and look at his desk, glancing at the Newton’s Cradle beside a small berry planter where all the leaves are dead and the soil is dried up. There is also a shiny gold plaque with his name and job title on it which thoroughly reminds you again of the authority he holds here.

He scans your face briefly before he says, “You okay, kid?” His mouth keeps moving as you nod in response. He must be chewing gum. “Did you bring it?”

“Yeah,” you delve a hand into your bag and lift out the Dusk ball with Froslass inside; you look at her capsule in your hands before hesitantly placing it on the desk. You are parting ways with her, and you wished you had more time to study and keep her. “...Promise me she won’t get hurt.”

Graves sighs as he takes the capsule and swivels round in his seat, dragging it over to a metal cabinet and pulling out one of the drawers in the middle, dropping it inside. “You know I can’t. There are rules for pokemon that kill, it's out of my jurisdiction.”

“Tell them it’s not her fault,” you protest and he slams the drawer shut, causing you to wince at the loud noise.

“We are not going to debate about this,” Graves grunts as he returns to his desk, the wheels rolling loudly, “You know the drill; the top’s asking for an explanation for the official report. I’m gonna say Leon got taken by a Froslass, you were in the vicinity and since you’re buddies with Leon, you and Charizard followed his trail, leading you to the den. That sound ‘bout right?”

“Yeah.”

Graves nods, picks up his pen and begins signing the forms one by one. “You are aware that you’re not going to get any credit for this, aren’t you?”

“I don’t want any credit.”

With eyebrows raised, Graves then says, “Magnolia gave me an earful the other day. And I should’ve known better too; I shouldn’t have given you that information. She doesn’t want you to work on these cases anymore and neither do I. And stop talking to that homeless guy.”

“That homeless guy is my mentor.”

“That homeless guy is an ex-convict who was charged with the murder of his wife and kid.”

“He didn’t kill anyone, a demon possessed-”

With that, Graves groans audibly with frustration, rubbing his temples, “Arceus, enough with this mumbo jumbo supernatural talk about ghosts and demons, you’re giving me a helluva headache.”

“You’re the one who let me help out with this case.”

“I know, and I bloody well regret it now. What was I thinking? Things are different, you could’ve died back there - both you and Leon, and then I’d have ten dead bodies on my hands, not eight. I’m serious. Just promise me you ain’t gonna do this anymore. Nobody asked you to and nobody expects you to. You’re just a kid. You should be doing the gym challenge or doing something young people are doing these days. Like doing makeup tutorial videos and posting them online. Anything but this.”

“But-"

He interrupts you hastily. “You ain’t one of us so stop acting like one of us. Stop pretending. You ain’t some private investigator and you ain’t some homicide detective. You don’t have the shiny badge, the gun or the right qualifications. If you really wanted to, you’d do it officially, sign up and take some exams or something. You'd get paid a hell lot more too.”

“Graves, I know what I’m doing and I know what I’m getting myself into. I don’t want to join the force and I don’t need to. ”

“Don’t you get it? One day you’re gonna end up dead. The next body we find is gonna be yours and I don’t want that.”

You sit in your seat with a frown, crossing your arms, “If you believed me those years ago, you and I won’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, I’m your goddamn godfather,” Graves barks, his thick brows knitting tightly, his annoyed gaze pinned on your weary form.

“If you had just listened to me all those years ago when I came to the police station then my mum and dad-“

“Goddamnit! How many times do I have to tell you? They’re dead!” he snaps at you, slamming his fist on the table and the papers fly and his pokemon look up.

Upon realization of his harsh tone and his acute frown, he stops, his expression clearing up and dissolving into a remorseful one. Graves plops backwards in his seat with an agitated sigh, fists loosening and his face becoming flushed as he sweeps a large palm through his messy hair before he emits an exhausted groan.

“Look, kid, I…I’m sorry, I ain’t good at these things…and I-I didn’t mean…you’re a good kid, I know you mean well but…this is dangerous, you know?”

“….They’re not dead,” you say quietly before you get up from your seat and head to the door.

As Graves lets out a helpless, exasperated sigh in response, your mind is hazy, filled with unspoken rage and before you know it, you have left Wyndon Police Station.

You’re in a foul mood yet you still have a meeting with Rose in an hour. Taking deep breaths, you head to Wyndon Café to buy an extra large coffee and attempt to cool off by sitting at the fountain and drowning yourself with copious amounts of caffeine.

It’s not often you have an argument with Graves but when you do, it’s usually about the questionable existence of your family.

Your wristwatch blips, indicating that it’s almost the time of the meeting so you quickly finish the rest of your drink and head to the Rose of the Rondelands, the glamorous five-star hotel to the left of Wyndon Stadium.

“This better be worth my time,” you grunt under your breath as you tiredly scrub your face with your hand.

You wonder what this meeting would encompass when you speak to reception and are directed to the tea lounge. Leon has said something to Rose about you. Couldn’t this have been done over email? Your mood improves after you're seated down on one of the plush, cosy red settees whilst being served an array of fancy tea and scones by the well-dressed waiting staff. A pianist plays the Wyndon City theme in an eloquent and tranquil pace whilst regular customers chat over their fancy three-tiered cake trays. The ambience is disturbed as footsteps approach you and you look up.

It’s Chairman Rose and Oleana.

“Good afternoon,” says Rose, who promptly looks at you from head to toe. He’s assessing you already, masquerading whatever opinion he’s already formed in his mind about you with a light smile on his face. He holds his hand out and you stand up and firmly shake hands, “Thank you for coming.”

You have only seen Rose on TV or when he’s in his civilian disguise so seeing him in person and so close is quite the surreal experience. He's shorter than you thought. His assistant is tall and beautiful, and commands an equally empowering presence with her slender frame, complete with a disciplined quietness you haven’t seen elsewhere. In fact, she seems almost…robotic.

They seat themselves down on the couch opposite yours after the formalities are over; Oleana has a designer briefcase with her, which she nestles behind her back. A waiter arrives shortly with a tray carrying a wine glass which he settles in front of Rose on the low coffee table.

Chairman Rose thanks him, picks up the glass and the meeting starts, “Leon’s told me so much about you, I had to meet you myself. First of all, I want to thank you for everything you have done.”

“You’re welcome, sir,” you reply, as Rose takes a sip whilst Oleana sits rigidly in her seat whilst keeping her monotone gaze pinned on your form. Her lips are tightly pursed together, so tiny, that they look like red dots on her face; she resembles those porcelain dolls.

“The work that you do has come to my attention, so I’ve asked you to meet me here today. I’d like to hear more about your experiences. I’m fully aware that you study ghost type pokemon and you deal with the paranormal.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” you reply, and you proceed to tell him briefly about yourself and what you do.

Rose nods as he listens, seemingly pleased with everything you’re saying, and his smile widens, “Wonderful, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear for I have a request. I’m about to open a brand new art gallery soon. The grand unveiling was delayed as it’s come to my attention that it may be ‘haunted’. The staff complain incessantly of hearing odd noises and seeing objects moving at night…I’d like you to investigate. Ghost or not, I want to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible."

This sounds right up your alley so you nod, “Of course.”

“Thank you, you will be rewarded handsomely. Oleana will handle this initial consulting fee, your remuneration and paperwork.”

“Paperwork?”

“Yes, we’ll need you to sign some papers.”

“Oh…okay.”

“Take all the time you need and you’re welcome to bring along any assistants as long as they sign the papers too.”

“No problem,” you reply, “I should be able to get it done in one night. When would you like me to start?”

“Today, if possible. I can’t afford to delay the deadline any further.”

“Understood.”

Rose smiles widely and you continue to engage in small talk such as The Pokemon League, the Giant's Seat Incidence, Leon, Macro Cosmos, before Rose checks his silver, expensive wristwatch for the current time. “I have another meeting at half four so I’ll take you to the gallery right now. Unfortunately I won’t be able to show you around for long."

“That’s fine,” you say and with a plan in mind, Rose and Oleana rise from their seats, gesturing and allowing you to exit first. You’re somewhat nervous and just before you leave the hotel, Oleana fishes out a white tracksuit, cap and sunglasses from the briefcase which Rose puts on quickly.

She nods after he thanks her but remains silent as Rose treks outside in his half-civilian disguise with you beside him. Regardless, the Chairman takes you around the back of the hotel that leads to a dirty and smelly alleyway which consists of a linear path straight ahead that connects to various buildings on the same street. There are a few smokers lurking outside but they don’t pay attention to you.

“This is the quickest route. Please excuse the smell,” Rose says with a chuckle; you’re stunned a man of his calibre is happy to walk through this trashy street in his expensive shoes.

The walk to the art gallery is relatively quick; it’s a few blocks from the hotel and once you have arrived at the steel door of a building that resembles the hotel, with the same red-brick exterior, Oleana takes over, fishes for the key in the briefcase and proceeds to unlock the huge door which opens with a low creak.

A long and narrow corridor with linoleum flooring lies ahead. It's a fire exit, you realise. Your group enters and Rose abandons his disguise and sweeps his fingers through his hair. “This way.”

He leads you through the corridor that splits off to another branching corridor that leads to various staffrooms and the basement, but Rose leads you directly up the stairs and finally, pushes another set of doors and you appear at the visitor’s hall which is a large and spacious, brightly-lit room. The windows are massive and the walls stretch high above your heads. It resembles the typical museum format and layout with many long and huge posters with Pikachus and pictures of legendary Pokemon outlining the various exhibits and a giant plastic Wailord hanging from the ceiling.

“Wow, this is amazing,” you say as you gawk at the Wailored display and Rose chuckles. The art gallery is beautiful...how could it be haunted?

“Thank you,” he says, and your group make their way towards the direction of the visitor’s desk where you see a member of staff manning the desk alongside a familiar figure who glances over at your direction.

You’re stunned to see that this familiar person is none other than Leon; you were getting used to seeing him in casual wear, in a thick woolly jumper or his black sweats. Donned in the tight Champion's shirt, white leggings and the majestic cape, Leon has turned into an entirely different person...

Whilst the receptionist bows her head at Rose, the Chairman looks surprised to see the Champion. “Leon? What are you doing here?”

Leon’s honey-coloured eyes settles on you briefly and you freeze on the spot, your heart begins thumping hard all over again and you inwardly kick yourself in a vain effort to stop. Luckily, Leon quickly averts his gaze to the Chairman and smiles warmly, “Hello Chairman Rose, I just wanted to stop by and make sure everything’s okay.”

“Thank you, Leon, that’s very generous of you. Everything’s fine, your friend here has agreed to help so I’m going to quickly show her around,” Rose says jovially in response; he's scrapped the introductions since he's aware you are both well-acquainted. “Well then, let’s begin, shall we?”

You wonder if Leon’s listening because he returns to stare at you and your heartbeat soars to an astronomical rate as you sneak a peek at him from the corner of your eye and you see that he has not stopped; your cheeks grows warm as you contemplate the fact that he is staring at you continuously but Rose and Oleana appear oblivious to this tension between you and the Champion.

Rose heads over to a set of double doors with the sign ‘Right Wing’ above them. You muster the bravery to fully glance at Leon briefly and when your gazes meet, his mouth moves a fraction but ultimately, he is silent, deciding it's best not to say much in the Chairman's presence especially because this is essentially, business. You cannot help but feel Leon is different once he dons the Champion cape and uniform.

He’s distant, painfully so.

Nevertheless, you follow Rose and Oleana inside the right wing with Leon trailing behind and Rose throws open the doors and it’s then you see the true extent of the art gallery’s size and the many treasures he has gathered over the years.

“We have an insect emporium, butterfly exhibit, gems display, antiques section and modern art exhibit,” Rose says proudly, and he continues rambling, going on about the other exhibits in the left wing but as you stare at your new surroundings, your chest clenches and your breathing grows laboured.

A darkness has settled within this very building.

Hoping no-one had noticed your change in demeanour (except Leon, because suddenly he appears worried for you), you turn to Rose and ask, “This is a brand new building?”

You’re aware Leon is watching you and your nerves soar through the roof, but you try your best to focus on the task at hand.

“Yes, but it’s actually smaller compared to other galleries such as the museum in Pewter City. It's only one floor."

“Did you have any problems during construction? For example, any accidents onsite?"

"Nothing that I'm aware of."

"And did you receive any warnings beforehand about the land you were building on?”

“None whatsoever. It went swimmingly,” Rose replies and you slide your gaze to the ground, to your feet.

At least Rose was smart and didn't build anything on top of ancient burial grounds. But that means there's nothing wrong with the building itself and it's to do with something inside. What is this...feeling? There's something...

Leon observes your reaction until you look up and spot a sign in the corner that says: ‘Dedicated to Edward Rose’.

“Who’s Edward Rose?”

“Excellent question, Edward Rose was one of my ancestors,” Rose says, “He was a lover of art and an avid treasure hunter himself, so the majority of these extravagant items on display were curated by him and I've decided to release them on display to the public. He was a great man."

You lift Rotom out to do an online search on Edward Rose to see what else comes up but there is limited information available.

Rose snaps his fingers and on cue, Oleana hands you several documents from the briefcase which you unfurl properly to study them carefully. It’s a map of the art gallery and several marketing leaflets containing all the exhibits. “Sir,” she says, “Your meeting will begin in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you, Oleana. I’m afraid I’ll have to take my leave now,” Rose says, “I look forward to the results of your investigation.”

“Leave it to me," you assure them.

Rose and Oleana exit after you exchange goodbyes, leaving yourself and Leon in the right wing. Leon, having maintained a distance from you since you had arrived, finally walks up to you and stops by your side as you let your eyes wander over the papers before you fold them back up.

“What do you think?” Leon asks.

You wish he wouldn't ask you this question because you're actually not too sure. For certain, a distinct dark and foreboding presence lingers somewhere in the art gallery but you're not entirely sure where.

"Give me a minute," is all you say, before you begin to wander through the various displays and exhibits and Leon joins your side, falling in line with you, step by step. “The guards are right. There’s something here,” you utter as you glance around and he follows where you are looking but you are moving too fast for him so he has a hard time catching up.

You are purposely attempting not to look at him and he ends up following you through the right wing and all the way to the left wing, and back.

Unfortunately, you come to one drastic conclusion: “I can't tell right now. Entities are more active at night so I will need to come back when it's dark.”

Your brief investigation is over, so you and Leon exit the art gallery and onto the large stone steps. Once you’re outside with the Champion, you see that the art gallery is stationed on a cosy-looking street of Wyndon, far from the crowds. It’s more of a suburban area that is filled with quaint cafes and souvenir shops.

Glancing behind you to the building, the art gallery is very normal; it is a large and extravagant building in plain sight. A billboard stands to the left, just before the grand staircase, outlining the unveiling date and where to sign up for RSVP.

“How are you anyway?” you ask, as you stuff Rose's papers into your bag.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, “How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks for asking.”

You don’t think it is wise to ask him why he didn’t reply to your message which you think he is aware of, because he looks sheepish all of a sudden.

“I met Ezra at the soup kitchen,” he adds and you quirk a brow, “he wanted me to give you this. He said it needs one more spirit and that you'll understand.”

He takes out the Odd Keystone from his pockets and hands you the smooth stone.

"Thanks.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Leon asks quietly, but you shake your head and deposit the stone in your bag then scoop Rotom out, typing a quick message.

“There’s no need, I’ll ask Jace for help,” you utter under your breath.

“Jace…?” Leon murmurs, and he throws his gaze to the side.

He sounds hurt.

“Yeah, so…I better get ready for tonight. I don’t want to take up any more of your precious time either. Bye Leon,” you say quickly, before you hop down the stairs and towards the Corviknight taxi ranks.

“Ah, right…goodbye,” he says, but you didn’t hear.

You wonder if you had unintentionally made Leon feel bad.

…

It’s almost night-time and much preparation is needed for the case.

Although preparation in your books, is getting as much sleep as possible before you woke up later on in the evening to get ready and head out.

Along with the leaflets, Rose has sent you an extremely confidential pdf file that contains the list of all the displays and exhibits inside the gallery so you have an electronic copy. Overall, it’s a lot to go through, so you move onto the transcripts of the hauntings taken down by the terrified staff.

It’s the usual: doors opening and closing, knocking on the walls, grunting, growling and to top it all off, moving pieces of furniture.

Sounds like poltergeist activity which isn’t unusual in your books, and you finish packing your bag with your essentials.

You go through the papers Rose wants you to sign and it’s all legal affairs. If you are injured on premises, Rose and Macro Cosmos bear no liability. If you break anything in the art gallery, you’re also fully liable. No pokemon battles are allowed. If you steal, you will be prosecuted.

After skimming through the main points, you sign them and then send a copy to Jace to sign.

You’re meeting him at Wyndon at the agreed time and you’ve briefed him on the investigation. He is eager to accompany you and when you arrive, he hastily waves you over.

He insisted on matching outfits to make a statement, so here you are both dressed from head to toe in all manners of black clothing.

“Jace, thanks for doing this. What have you brought with you?” you ask, gawping at the black rucksack that’s hanging off his shoulders. He’s also got Joltik’s capsule stuck to his belt.

“Glad you asked!” he exclaims as he loops the bag off himself and unzips it after settling it on the ground. Jace reveals that he has packed a headlight, night vision and heat vision goggles, a tripod camera, heat detecting monocular, digital voice recorder and EMF recorder.

It's basically everything you don’t need and don’t use.

“At least take the headlight,” he moans when you tell him this.

“No thanks, I’m fine with my trusty torch. But you should definitely use those," you say, gesturing to all his equipment.

"Alright..." Jace pouts and packs his bag back up; he keeps his headlight on and EMF recorder in hand.

You’re supposed to meet Rose’s delegate at the ticketing booth, so you both head up the stairs, arriving at the main entrance where you and Leon stood a few hours ago in the daylight.

A security guard can be seen sitting in the booth along with a Clefki hanging from one of the hooks on the wall. You knock on the window and he looks up from his magazine.

“Oh, are you the pokemon researcher?”

“Yep, that’s me. And this is my assistant, Jace.”

“Hi.”

“Great,” says the security guard, “the more the merrier. Thanks for coming, I'll be your guide.”

“No problem.”

The security man leaves the booth along with Clefki before he grabs a flashlight from his pocket and switches it on. “Come with me.”

You and Jace trail after the man as he wanders to the front door with Clefki who promptly sticks one key inside and unlocks it.

The lights are switched off inside and you realise it’s worse when it’s dark, and as the man shuts the doors behind you, he beckons you to follow him once again.

“My name is Horace,” he says, “I called Ms. Oleana the other day and I didn’t think they would take me seriously, but it turns out I wasn’t the only one. The cleaners, the other security guards, they all came forth and said the same thing.”

“Which is what?” Jace asks.

“I’m pretty sure Mr Rose was warned, but there’s something evil in there,” Horace says with a slight shiver, and you’re aware that he is incredibly uncomfortable speaking about it, “He has a hell lotta old stuff and it’s all in there on display….I’m certain some of them are cursed or something so that’s where we need your help along with…uh, these guys.”

You see two young men standing at the visitor’s desk; the brunette is holding a camera whilst the blonde is tapping away on his phone.

“Rose wanted a second opinion so you’re not gonna be alone in this. He’s asked these guys for help too.”

You and Jace exchange incredulous glances before you settle your gazes on the two men.  You weren’t aware of this arrangement at all.

The blonde has a tattoo of a Machamp on his neck and the brunette has a thick beard and bandanna. Both are donned in warm coats and they’re both carrying rucksacks that rattles noisily with equipment.

“Oh, if it isn't the Witch of Wedgehurst,” says Machamp-tattoo man as he looks up and eyes you head to toe. You spot a red and black checkered shirt underneath his coat and a gold necklace around his neck.

"The what?" you say, stunned.

"You know that's what people call you, right? I know who you are, I recognise you; you're the ghost-type researcher."

"Yes, but I've never heard people calling me the Witch-"

"Oh, well, you have now," he says, and as you do a double take he adds, “I’m Tanner. This is my camera man, Cole.”

“Hi,” says the bearded one, as he balances the large and hulking, black camera on one shoulder as though it weighs nothing.

“We’re the Ghostbunkers,” Tanner says with a grin.

“Ghost…bunkers??”

“Yeah, have you heard of us?” he asks, and you shake your head. His eyes bulges with disbelief. “Have you been living under a rock?”

“Um…”

“Okay, okay, to fill you in, we visit allegedly haunted places and debunk it, okay? Ghosts? No, it’s just a pokemon or something,” Tanner says, “Most of the time, it’s ninety-nine per cent nothing to do with ghosts at all.”

“So what about the remaining one per cent?” Jace asks, and it’s a perfectly logical question but Tanner merely laughs.

“Well, that’s not our forte.”

“Fair enough.”

Tanner’s focus averts to you. “Well, this is the first time I’ve had to collaborate with someone without being told,” he then grumbles sourly. “Cole, remind me to double Rose’s rate.”

“Got it, T.”

“Rose didn’t tell you guys that we were coming either?” you ask, brow raised and Tanner nods. Pondering to yourself, you slip in a quick and polite, “Please excuse us.”

Whilst Horace the security guard and the duo look at you with unamused looks, you and Jace hurry to a corner.

"Jace, people call me a 'witch' behind my back," you murmur. You have to admit; you're not too surprised about this. You already get called a kook, what else? “This can’t be happening. Have we been played?”

“What do you mean?” Jace whispers back.

“I thought we would be the only ones here,” you reply, “And these guys? The Ghostbunkers??? What the hell?”

“He said his name was Tanner, right? And his BFF is Cole…” Jace says, before he pulls out his phone and begins searching online. “Aha! Found them…”

You both huddle over Rotom’s tiny screen where Jace has found Tanner’s ‘Ghostbunkers’ website. It appears they are also from Galar. The brief description mentions he has ten years of extensive experience of the supernatural and hunting ghosts but he created this channel one year ago.

“Arceus, ten years. That’s more than me,” you croak out whilst Jace rolls his eyes, “and he has his own channel... he has a theme song. He even gets fanart.”

Next, you see dozens and dozens of comments from his fans, declaring their support and love for him and his work.

Your blog hardly has any views, you only have a sparse number of followers, you rarely get comments and you've never received fanart. Your face falls with gloom at this thought; your esteem has being whittled away into nothingness in an instant.

“So what?” Jace is quick to cheer you up, but you give him an exasperated look and continue to look at the information provided.

Tanner’s videos channel received fifty thousand views on average. His most popular upload is a video with one million views where he spent one entire night in Lavender Tower. The next most popular upload is a video where he traversed through the Old Chateau in Eterna Forest. He’s debunked a lot of allegedly haunted places all over the world, attributing it to ghost-type pokemon.

“You gotta be kidding…he’s a skeptic, which is the last thing we need,” you grunt under your breath. “Damn, I should’ve known. I had this weird feeling about Rose, like it was too good to be true. This isn’t surprising of him at all.”

“Now what do we do?”

“Well, we’re already here…let’s see this through.”

Jace gulps. “Okay.”

You return to the men and the security guard briefs you on the recent happenings but the dynamic duo decide to set the camera rolling and before Horace can say anything, the camera is focusing on you.

“Hey, do you mind if we collaborate?” Tanner asks.

“I don’t really collaborate…”

“Suit yourself then,” Tanner looks mildly displeased with the rejection. “Well, we’re going to be filming anyway. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No.”

“Great!” Turning to Cole, he says, “Let’s begin.”

“Got it,” Cole replies, and he fixes the camera appropriately, a little red light goes on. You assume it’s recording now.

Tanner clears his throat and tidies his hair before he puts on a huge grin. “Hello fellow debunkers!! And welcome back to my channel. How are ya? Tanner here tonight, with another exciting ghost-bunking mission!” Tanner exclaims, and you can’t help but inwardly groan as you watch him. “Tonight, we’ve been invited to an art gallery that’s rumored to be haunted. As usual, it’s just me and my best friend Cole – but we actually have a few guests with us today.”

On cue, Cole swiftly navigates the camera to focus on Horace who blinks blankly at the duo. “Oh, uh…hello, hi.”

“This is Horace. Horace, do you mind telling us what you do and can you share a few words about this place and what’s been going on?”

“Yeah, so… I’m one of the security guards here. Last night…maybe around two am, I was making rounds and I heard this weird banging noise on the wall, in there-“

He points to the doors behind you, where you’re supposed to be investigating.

Horace says, “I went in and checked the whole area but nobody was there. It didn’t stop, it just grew louder and louder and it moved, like it started at the end of the hall and it came closer to me. Then a chair flew across the room. Whatever it is, it’s mean and angry."

Tanner thanks Horace for the introduction and the information, the camera still rolling.

“Well, this is where I’m supposed to leave you guys.” Horace adds, “I’m the only one on watch duty tonight but I’m going to be outside so I don’t bother your investigation. You can reach me using this walkie talkie so keep this on you at all times so you can contact me,” he proceeds to hand you and Tanner each a small and sleek black device. “I’ve kept it tuned to mine but if you’re worried, the channel is eighty-two, got it?”

“Things just got interesting, folks.” Tanner says to the camera with a wink.

“I need to keep the building locked though because we don’t wanna let anyone else in, you know, in case of burglars…some of the stuff here is worth millions...so let me know when you want to leave and I’ll unlock the doors for you.”

With that, Horace wishes you luck and excuses himself and you watch him pad towards the entrance with Clefki, watching the light of his torch gradually disappear and you and Jace and the Ghostbunkers are standing in darkness.

Cole stops recording and Tanner finally drops his smile, turns to you and says, “Are you really an exorcist?”

“I’m not an exorcist,” you reply with a shake of your head.

“What with Bob the Builder?” Tanner gestures to Jace and his getup.

“Bob the-?! What?! I’m her assistant,” Jace barks, pointing to himself.

Tanner focuses on you again. “Are you some kind of spirit medium? A clairvoyant?”

“No, I’m just a ghost-type researcher.”

“Oh good, at least we’re on the same page,” Tanner says, “It’s most likely a pokemon that’s behind this, don’t you think?”

“It’s too early to say.”

Tanner sighs audibly under his breath, “Well, the art gallery is pretty big. Cole and I can take the left wing and you and your friendo can take the right wing. That means we can get things done quicker. How does that sound?”

You nod. “That sounds alright.”

“As long as you two don’t get in our way, we’re good,” Tanner replies; despite the words, he delivers them with a rather crooked smile.

You and Jace exchange brief looks before you begin to head to the direction of the two double doors that will leads to the right wing.

Meanwhile, Cole focuses the camera on Tanner who eagerly begins speaking to the camera, outlining his steps and what equipment he has tonight with great detail and vigor whilst you and Jace stop at the doors.

“I have a bad feeling about those guys,” you whisper as you switch on your flashlight and unfurl the map.

“If this place is really haunted, I hope the ghost grabs them first,” Jace murmurs under his breath.

"Ready?" you ask.

"Ready," he confirms.

You push open the door; it swings open with a low creak and slowly swings on its hinges. You shine your torches into the dark abyss of the art gallery, your gaze sweeping over the many displays. You will be here for the remainder of the night.

"Good luck!" Tanner yells, a fraction before you step inside, "You're gonna need it."

[hailene]

𝚁𝚊𝚠  𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚎

𝚁𝚊𝚠 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚎| 06

𝚂𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗

(𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘮– 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘺 𝘒𝘪𝘥𝘴, 𝘕𝘊𝘛, 𝘉𝘛𝘚, 𝘛𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘦, (𝘎)𝘐-𝘋𝘓𝘌, 𝘔𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘰, 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘬)

Genre: angst, racing!au, college!au, gang!au, underworld!au

Word count: 3.6K

ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ

00|  01|  02|  03|  04|  05|  06|  07|  08|  09|  10|  tba

"These have actually turned out pretty good," Vernon manages to say with his mouth stuffed with noodles.

I nod and take a bite from my portion. The food was good indeed and it had all the right spices. Joshua did a really good job in taking care of the mess Jeonghan and I had made. He didn't whine at all, nor was he mad on any of us. I guess that's just the way Joshua is.

I was sitting in the corner of the living room with Vernon and Seungkwan, with my back leant against the wall. Everybody looked cheerful tonight, probably happy for THE 8 and for the good food. However, I couldn't count thirteen boys. Hoshi was missing, I could tell as soon as I entered the living room. I couldn't spot Woozi's face either. But there wasn't anybody else missing from the ones that I knew. Which could only mean that the third person who was missing was someone I didn't know.

Yuri helped me bandage my burnt hand. Fortunately, Joshua had already told her what had happened so I didn't have to give her too many explanations. I could feel Jeonghan's gaze on me every now and then, though, but I was trying to ignore him. Seungkwan was actually helping a lot. Despite the fact that he seemed really difficult to please, somehow I seemed to be on his good side and I was really relieved to feel that. Jeonghan, for example, was definitely not on the same side.

The boy with a stained shirt from earlier was sitting on the couch, next to Joshua. His name was Dino and everybody seemed to adore him. He was really charming indeed.

"Where is Hoshi?" I eventually ask Seungkwan and he shrugs.

"Should be here soon," Mingyu answers me, being really close to our corner.

"Jeonghan talked to him," Seungcheol points out and Jeonghan throws him a fake smile before shrugging.

"Were all of you at the race tonight?" I ask unsure of anybody will pay attention to me.

Wonwoo shakes his head and the chatter dies down.

"Not really, Woozi, Dino, Seungkwan and I weren't there, for example," he explains and I suddenly feel so thankful to him for actually answering a question of mine, even though it might have sounded stupid.

"It was a really nice race tonight," Vernon says, with hidden intentions, I could tell.

"That's thanks to Eight," Mingyu chuckles. "Well done, dude."

THE 8 simply nods with a light smile on his face.

"I can't believe I had to work over time today," Dino sighs. "I really wanted to see Eight win."

"You'll get plenty of chances from now on, don't worry," Seungcheol says bitterly.

"Is your restriction running out until the deadline?" Mingyu asks and silence suddenly settles in the room.

Seungcheol throws Mingyu a glance before looking at me for a split second and making Mingyu look at me, too.

"Oh, come on, why shouldn't she know?" He asks and I feel a wave of disappointment washing over me.

"It's not like that, don't get me wrong," Seungcheol sighs.

"It's alright, I'm used to this," I wave Mingyu off and he frowns.

"Hey, that's not okay," he says. "As long as you are with us, it's only fair to you to know such things."

Mingyu was one of my favourites, no doubt. He wasn't hiding from me. And he trusted me. He trusted me for nothing, blindly, but he did..

"Mingyu is right," Seungkwan speaks. "Moreover, you never know where the savior will come from."

"I know," Seungcheol nods. "Yeah, although it leaves me just a few weeks to race... but I think I can bargain."

"I knew something was fishy when the JYPs let their low ranks race," Mingyu says. "They knew everybody would get suspended."

Seungcheol shrugs and takes a bite from his noodles.

"There is nothing we can do to change that now, only hope that the leads will be understanding," he sighs. "I would much rather be crashed on the racetrack than in open street, though."

He was talking about Mingyu's injury, I could tell. The latter one sighs.

"At least I am not a top racer," he smiles. "It would have been way worse if this had happened to Han or Eight."

Jeonghan was carefully eating his noodles, without looking like he was paying attention to the conversation, but I knew he was. THE 8 seemed alert though, actually interested in what the others were saying.

"They don't have to know that," Jeonghan speaks and Mingyu smiles for some reason.

I hear the entrance door opening once again and Joshua stands up. He goes in the hallway and welcomes the new-comers. Soon enough, three new figures enter the living room, two of them being familiar to me.

However, my eyes fall on the chocolate-haired boy, with a slender figure and sharp jaw. His eyes were twinkling in the warm light of the living room and his small smile gave me some sense of proximity.

Thirteen out of thirteen.

"Collected everybody," he speaks and even his voice sounded sweet like honey in my ears.

Who was he?

Joshua pushes them towards the bathroom to wash their hands, despite Hoshi's protests that he washed his hands before coming here.

The food wasn't cold yet, lucky them, so it was still really tasty. By the time the three of them returned from the bathroom, Vernon explained me that the thirteenth and last boy was called DK and that he was usually the messenger of the group. Vernon seemed to like him, considering the way he was talking. To be honest, I couldn't see any reason for him not to.

"You must be Emma," DK speaks when his eyes meet mine.

I smile and nod. He returns the gesture and honestly, thank God I was sitting, otherwise my legs would give up on me.

"I'm Dokyeom, but you can call me DK," he says, before Hoshi pulls him towards the table with food.

Everybody seemed very excited for their arrival, even Jeonghan who was actually pouring a glass of water for DK, surprisingly. I guess everybody can have favourites.

Dino joined the three of us on the floor, giving up his seat on the couch for Woozi.

"These noodles have been through a lot to be this tasty," he jokes and I smile.

"The cooks, too," I sigh and he chuckles.

"I can't understand why you insisted to boil the noodles when you can barely put water in a glass without spilling it on the counter," Vernon says lowly and I punch his arm with my left hand.

"I am not that bad, okay?" I argue and he hums with a smile on his face.

"She's definitely better than you, Chwe," Seungkwan states. "You can't even rip the noodle pack without a YouTube tutorial."

Both Dino and I laugh while Vernon sighs, eventually breaking into a smile as well. Vernon wasn't the type to get offended easily, so unlike me. That was probably one of the reasons why we got on so well.

"I've never seen Jeonghan taking care of somebody, though," Dino says and I feel heat raising in my cheeks. "Quite a sight."

"He was making fun of me, not taking care of me," I mutter and Dino chuckles.

"Well, it's kind of the same thing for someone like him," he says and I choose to ignore his statement.

I hear somebody clearing their throat and I look around only to notice Seungcheol looking at me. Everybody seemed to have finished their food by then and the chatter died down. It felt like everybody knew this moment would come, since I was the only one looking surprised by the sudden change in the atmosphere.

"Since it's the first time we're gathering together like this," Seungcheol speaks, looking around the room "welcome to Seventeen, Emma."

I feel some of their gazes on me and I look at them, clearly taken aback by the introduction. I look at my sister who had a small smile on her face.

"So that's your little gang's name," is the first thing I manage to say and some of them chuckle.

"We're way better than a gang," Jeonghan speaks nonchalantly and I throw him an amused look.

"I think you already know everybody around here..." he looks at each of the boys "but you will get to know each of us better since... you'll spend a lot of time with us from now on."

"Because you have to, not because we feel the need of getting new people entangled in our business," Woozi points out and something in his tone makes me sit straight.

"Right," I say in a small tone and my gaze drifts to nowhere in particular.

"The ones that you're likely to see often, excluding Joshua, Vernon and I, are Jeonghan and Hoshi, but yeah... you'll get to spend a lot of time with everybody."

"Lucky you," Jeonghan mutters, gaining a nudge from Wonwoo, who was sitting next to him on the second sofa.

"Now that all of this has been revealed, I think it's fair to answer truthfully to a question of hers, don't you think?" Joshua speaks and instead of a bright joy that I will finally have an answer of choice, a sudden dread washes over me.

A question. Choose wisely.

"Josh is right," Mingyu nods and more people hum in agreement.

Then, everybody looks at me again, waiting for my question. Now that I was given the chance to receive an answer, I didn't know what I wanted to find out the most. There were a lot of unanswered questions that I have pushed in the back of my head these past few days. And right now, under the intimidating stares of fourteen people, I couldn't quite pick one.

Who are they exactly? And why do I feel like my existence depends on the answers I am given?

I frown unconsciously and then look at Joshua. He said they were not a gang, right? However, he wasn't quite specific regarding what they actually were. What is their purpose?

Dozens of questions were whirling around in my head and I couldn't figure out the words of any of them.

"Why Seventeen?" I blurt, head spinning. "You're thirteen people, why do you call yourself Seventeen? Did you kill the other four?"

It was supposed to be a joke, but some of them looked so not amused that I shivered at the thought that I might have been accidentally right. I notice Joshua half-smiling at my question of choice and I mentally pray I didn't waste my chance on something stupid, even though I was pretty sure I did. They could have just googled "gang names" and chose the first thing that came up, why do I have to ask such dumb thi-...

"Thirteen, plus three, plus one," Seungcheol says. "The total is seventeen, therefore the name."

I look at him confused. Great, this is even worse than the google hypothesis.

"Thirteen members, three sub-units, one team," Joshua explains and I finally understand something. "Seventeen."

The others nod silently, some of them diverting their gazes, others looking at me curiously. The logic makes sense... but it doesn't at the same time. What sub-units are they even talking about? Are they an idol group or something?

"Players, Watchers," Jeonghan says before touching his temple with his index finger "and The Brain, hun."

I frown, confused, feeling the heavy stares of fourteen people on me. I was looking at them, but I couldn't see them anymore, as if I was blind, my head suddenly whirling again. There was no way Joshua could make me believe they were not something similar to a gang. There was no way I could still believe this... whatever this is, is something normal. Although I should have known it by now.

Wonwoo, Jun, Woozi, DK, THE 8, Seungkwan, Dino, Mingyu, Hoshi.

Jeonghan, Vernon, Joshua.

Seungcheol.

"Each of us is part of one of those," I hear Jeonghan saying but my mind was already drifting away.

If there was any way back until now, there isn't one anymore.

Whatever Seventeen is about...

...I have no other choice but to be part of it now, too.

*

It was honestly a miracle I made it to my first course on Monday.

I could barely sleep on Saturday night (I don't know if it had been because of the late dinner or the fact that I could hear Seungkwan and Jeonghan fighting in the living room) and the whole next day, I could barely focus on doing anything. That's basically why I was really close to washing my teeth with liquid soap instead of toothpaste.

Vernon and I had no courses together today, which wasn't upsetting me that much, since I was kind of avoiding everybody related to the... Seventeen thingie. Which, again, was kind of difficult, since I was living under the same roof with three of those people at the moment.

Since I couldn't write with my right hand, I had to type the courses on my laptop today, which wasn't necessarily a problem. However, what was an actual problem was the fact that the device wasn't fully charged and so, by lunch my laptop was dead.

And of course, I had forgotten my charger at home.

That's why I was banging my head against the desk in the library right now. It wasn't such a big of a deal, because I could as well record the courses on my phone. But it was a nuisance and I hated the feeling of helplessness it was giving me.

"Are you okay?"

I refrain myself from hitting my head against the desk for the nth time and look in front of me.

A boy with styled dark-brown hair and loads of silver accessories was looking at me intently. His gaze, despite his cool aura, was like melted honey. His face didn't look familiar to me, but it wasn't much of a surprise, since there were a lot of people studying here and I barely knew a few.

But he was... an interesting appearance.

"Ah, yes, just..." I break off, my gaze diverting towards my laptop. "I've run out of battery."

He looks at my laptop, then at me again, noticing the white bandage around my right hand and nodding as if understanding why I needed the device so much. He then takes off his backpack and rummages through it, only to pull a black cable out of it a few seconds later. My eyes widen, realizing it's a laptop charger, and I look at him surprised.

"Here, you can use mine," he says with a smile on his lips. "It should work for yours as well."

"Thank you, but I can figure it out, I don't wa-..."

"Just accept it, it's alright," he says on a convincing tone. "You can just return it to me later."

He puts the dark cable on the desk in front of me and shoots me a warm smile once again. Normally, I wouldn't accept something like this. But something about his voice and gestures gives me some sense of security. 

"Give me your phone," he says, extending his hand in front of me. "So I can save my contact."

I unlock my phone and give it to him, waiting patiently while he types with his ring-filled fingers. I take my time to look at him, trying to figure out what about him made me trust him so easily. For all I know, he could take my phone and run away, hack into my personal stuff or just try to hit on me. I can't trust anybody, as Yuri told me.

So why do I trust him?

"Here," he says, returning my phone. "Just text me when you prepare to head home."

I nod and he smiles to me again, before turning around and leaving me alone. I stare blankly a few seconds before frowning confused at what has just happened. I look at my phone and notice that he saved his number as "Charger guy". I smile.

Maybe sometimes I simply have to accept help without doubting it so much.

*

"Is there anything I can do?" I ask shyly and I hear Jeonghan laughing at me.

"There is not, at least for now," Seungcheol speaks after throwing his friend an icy glare.

Serves him right.

"Aw are you really going to keep her locked in a golden cage until the end of it all?" Hoshi asks with a playful smirk on his lips, before his gaze falls on me. "I saw you at the race... you like cars, don't you?"

All eyes were on me again. Some of the boys were surprised, some were doubtful. I couldn't blame anybody. My sister probably knew I had a thing for any vehicle ever, I liked the power, the metal glint, the motion and the emotion of it. I liked the poetic side of an engine. But I barely knew anything about it, physically.

"Uh, yeah," I say slowly. "But I'm not an expert or somet-"

"No need to be," Hoshi waves me off. "Jeonghan and I are going to the garage this week, aren't we, Han?"

Jeonghan hums in agreement and sips on his mint tea. Who the hell drinks tea after eating noodles at midnight?

"I bet Jennie and Lisa will adore you," he adds with a smug smile on his face.

"Hoshi, no-..."

"Oh c'mon, why?" Hoshi pouts at Seungcheol. "She needs to experience things, to get a taste of this world. You can't keep this going on forever."

"Yeah, but that's..." Seungcheol sighs.

"Coups, she'll be fine," Hoshi pleads.

Seungcheol looks at me and I give him a small nod, as if telling him that I will indeed be fine, even though I had no idea what Hoshi had in plan to put me through. But I felt like I was ready to get a taste of what this world is actually like.

"I want to go, if that's what you're talking about," I say and Hoshi smiles proudly.

"It's settled then," Hoshi says and the chatter drifts to different fields.

"Be careful," Vernon told me on a low tone.

I look at him with a question in my eyes. He sighs, a tired smile plastered on his lips.

"I'm sure Jennie and Lisa will love you... but they're not the steel queens for nothing."

I open my eyes, trying to steady my breath. The course was almost over and everybody seemed to be impatient for it to end. I fell asleep. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, remembering the conversation we had on Saturday about the garage. Why would I dream about it?

Is it haunting me that much?

Eventually, the teacher dismisses us and everybody starts gathering their belongings, mentally preparing themselves for the next course.

*

I was waiting for the Charger guy in front of the second entrance of the college. I texted him about five minutes ago and he said I should wait for him here and that he will come soon.

He proved himself to be a life-saver. My laptop charged enough for me to finish typing all of my courses for the day on it. If the Charger guy hadn't showed up back then, it would have definitely been much more difficult for me to get through the day. So I was actually really thankful.

I hear rushed footsteps behind me and I turn around, only to see the Charger guy approaching me wearily, as if he has been running until now. He stops a few steps in front of me, panting. I chuckle.

"I'm sorry... if I made you... wait for too long..." he manages to say between two heavy breaths and I shake my head.

"No, it's fine, don't worry," I say, giving him his charger, which he takes after a few seconds. "Thank you so so much, I owe you one."

He smiles, still slightly panting, and shakes his head.

"It's nothing," he speaks. "I couldn't just leave you bang your head against that desk for the rest of the after-noon."

I chuckle.

"Still, let me know if I can pay you back somehow," I say and he looks at me, as if taking into consideration my offer.

He averts his gaze and grazes the nape of his neck. Was he flustered? It was weird to see somebody with such an aura, all about silver hues and dark clothes, being flustered. I smile.

"Uh, are you possibly taking a digital design class?" He asks and my eyebrows arch in surprise.

"Yeah, I am, actually," I say and his eyes widen, surprised.

"O-Oh, uhm..." he begins, shifting his weight from a foot to the other. "I would need some... uh, help for a project and-..."

"I can help you if you want," I smile and he looks at me surprised once again.

"You don't need to do that if you... don't want to or something, really... it would be more than a pay back..."

I wave him off.

"I like digital design, I am more than happy to help you with it."

He gives up and smiles, his shoulders sinking down as his muscles relax.

"Thank you," he says, then laughs. "Wow, I should really lend my charger more from now on."

I laugh and nod, feeling somewhat comfortable.

"Yeah, anyways..." I sigh. "It was nice meeting you...?"

I extend my hand in front of me, questioningly and he watches me with confusion clearly written across his face.

"Oh," he says eventually, grabbing my hand and shaking it firmly.

His smile was sweet and despite the cold glint of his silver chains, his aura felt warm.

"I'm Minho."

ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪ���ᴛ

00|  01|  02|  03|  04|  05|  06|  07|  08|  09|  10|  tba

A/N: Hello! Are you guys enjoying this story?^^ What do you think is going to happen next? I’d love to hear your ideas! I hope you enjoy reading my works... I would also happily take constructive criticism :D

hailene x

[darkestwolfx]

Tales of a Silver Hat

I'm sorry because this was meant to be up last night, but it was giving me problems – in fact, writing anything was, writer's block definitely hit. But I've written a Torchwood fic (shock, I know; it's on my accounts, but I won't be posting it here) and magically writer's block is gone. My mum always said to listen to my head, and it was clearly telling me I needed to write that.

So I've managed to achieve two prompts for @gumnut-logic‘s irrelief2020 in one fic - hooray! I've wanted to write for these from the moment I saw them! I've worked in a board game café as 'guru' of sorts, so this is like, definitely my area. So, this is Board Games for @Tsarinatorment and EOS+Monopoly for @halorocks1214.

I'm sure there will be some of you out there who can sympathise to events in this (I've seen my fair share at work, and from my neighbour).

All of the games I've mentioned are out there, and most of them are still in print, even if in updated copies.

P.S. This one was meant to a normal-ish length, and it was before I cleared by writer's block, but that version was terrible, so it's staying buried in my archives!

Summary: Every family had one; the first to crack in the midst of a game. Usually there was a long story involved; tick. Usually, there wasn't an AI though… Gordon would rather not remember it as it was.

-------------------------

Every family had one; the first to crack in the midst of a game.

With a family like the Tracy's, it happened often enough.

The five brothers each had very different tastes in games.

And as such, they had quite the mass of board games in their house: not that they always had the same amount of time they used to in order to play through all of them.

Scott liked Snakes and Ladders (which the Troublesome Two claimed made him old), Trivial Pursuit (which the double T's claimed made him tasteless), and The Logo Game (which all four of his siblings gave him a look that meant 'seriously?').

John liked Risk. It was one that Scott didn't actually mind either, but they rarely played it. John always managed to take over the world, no matter how poor his starting ground. Gordon had joked that this is what John spent his 'free time' up on Five doing, 'planning how to take over the world from above'. John had simply raised an eyebrow, saying nothing to the contrary, and ever since, Gordon had believed it was a viable possibility (especially after EOS). Chess, was another, and surprisingly, that Gordon would play with John, which made him the only one who could manage it. Very surprisingly.

Virgil had much appreciation for building games, which encouraged dexterity (ones no one else had the patience and balance for, Gordon proclaimed; Virgil preferred to call it skill), like Tokyo Highway and Junk Art. Alan made a mess of them, Scott had very little grace, John had the patience but not the balance, and Gordon always chose to film said games as opposed to taking part. He knew he couldn't hold a candle to his brother's skill, so filming everyone else's misfortune was his favourite past time in place of winning.

Gordon was a fan of the 'fun stuff'. Snap because it was quick and easy; Exploding Kittens, for similar reasons, as well as the funny artwork; and something called Cash n' Guns surprisingly. Surprisingly, because it actually involved using your brain - although Scott was sure the liking for it came more from the fact that it contained and allowed the use of polystyrene guns.

Alan loved a range of things, which no one had yet been able to find a link for… Robo Rally, Terraforming Mars (which was complicated enough without the expansion set which Alan had purchased that only John could actually make playable sense of, leaving the rest of them nodding like idiots whilst the red-heads explanation went right over their hears like rockets), not to mention something called Panic Mansion for the 'Gingerbread Men explorers'. Scott still didn't quite see that point. They were Treasure Hunters, obviously, not Gingerbread Men.

The five brothers had very different tastes indeed.

Except where Monopoly was concerned. John found most games a little too easy – so his opinion went without saying – but Scott, Virgil and Alan all found enjoyment in it (though for different reasons). It wasn't Gordon's favourite, purely because he'd never won, but that wasn't to say that he didn't like it – in a very odd way which he couldn't explain. Alan proclaimed it was the metal hat, which Gordon denied so vehemently, that the others had begun to wonder if the youngest's theory held some truth. It was rarely played unless they thought there would be time to finish it, and that was for two reasons. If they had to pause, Gordon had a tendency to try and 'manipulate' the money – either moving it from his brother's piles or pilfering it directly from the bank. Or, Gordon got bored and that risked the board being thrown in the air.

Gordon still maintained that such had only happened the once.

Scott and Virgil were obstinate that it was more like thrice.

But, this afternoon they had found time.

And, this afternoon, EOS was joining them for a game, and that was a first. It was tricky, but not impossible. They'd managed to get MAX to play before, so they figured it couldn't be much harder. John minded her assets – because he was the best at multitasking – and Virgil had conveniently placed himself between John and Gordon to stop the latter from stealing money during the game. Gordon had folded his arms, pouted and made some mumbled point about 'never daring'.

They all knew it wasn't quite true.

Just because he'd yet to be psychically caught in the act, didn't mean they were all unaware to his doing it.

EOS had never played a board game in her life. She'd heard about them. She probably knew more of them than the boys did as well – after all, she had access to every rule book, cheat book and video tutorial, and actually thought that she might be quite good at some of them. Of course, she'd never had the chance (before now) to try and put those skills to the test.

John had been a little surprised when his AI jumped at the chance, but didn't comment on or question the matter.

And so, that was how, on a sunny, quiet (hopefully staying so) Thursday afternoon, they'd managed to sit themselves on the floor of the lounge, with EOS on the holo-communication channel and everything ready to go. Grandma had even made them a stack of cookies for the afternoon. Hooray(!). It had actually been EOS who came up with the suggestion of throwing them out of the window.

There'd been a small moment of raised brows and pointed gazes, as they silently tried to work out between them whether Grandma would notice. They chose not to risk it. Who knew if Kayo would be around to see. She wouldn't tell Grandma out of spite, as such, but only so the kindly lady could make them more. That very well defeated the point.

So, the cookies sat untouched as they settled all the necessary pieces around the board.

Alan had already proclaimed that he was looking forward to the challenge. Virgil voiced nothing aloud, but he did share a look with Scott and John. What challenge? Alan was known to blow all his money by at least halfway through the game, and end up in serious debt to one of them. Sometimes it worked in their favour; they'd once agreed to give Alan a non-existent loan in a swap for him doing the dishes for a week. The youngest, too keen to stay in the game and not lose, again, had taken it before he could think better of it. Gordon had momentarily complained that they never gave him one of these 'definitely-not-fair-because-it's-not-in-the-rules-imaginery-loans', before promptly backing away when they offered him one on the spot.

He wasn't doing the dishes for a week, thank you very much.

Scott had to admit, he'd almost thought about not playing. He was doomed (enough) when John joined them, let alone with the AI contributing as well. He'd decided instead that he should probably strategise for once, and was studying the board a little like a man possessed. Gordon and Alan had already noticed, and shared their own wondering looks, but left the eldest to his scheming.

Scott had the Scottie dog (obviously), John had the cat, Virgil had the wheelbarrow, Gordon had the hat (theory definitely proven true), Alan had the racing car (no questions to be asked there) and EOS had the battleship.

As with Monopoly tendencies, the game started off very tame.

Scott weighed his decisions up for what felt like hours, the younger pair sitting with their heads in their hands waiting for an end, and even EOS suggested a time limit in the end.

Virgil always seemed to play with many strategies, but if you said that to him, he would have scoffed at you. He got lucky; there was always an element of luck to be had with dice, despite what John may argue about the science behind it. He had preferences as well; properties that you were more likely to land on, or just places which were his particular favourites that he might seek to obtain. If it looked like strategy, well, he wasn't going to be heard complaining.

John, on the other hand, did have strategies in place. An endless amount of them. As was to be expected. The red head would buy properties according to those his brothers bought, always waiting and saving and somehow managing to catch you unawares when you were least expecting it. He was the only person Gordon had ever known to be able to buy Park Lane and Mayfair and have hotels on it without going bankrupt before he made the money back. That tactic's mysteries had yet to be solved.

Gordon liked to think he had tactics. Then he'd make a move which his brothers would frown at, and he'd try to cover up the fact that such response questioned 'why?' with every ounce of acting ability he had. Confidence, that made it look like you had a plan. Or at least, that always seemed to have worked for Dad. So, he played like fish and copied that response, even if he knew someone might have seen through it.

Alan acted in traditional Alan fashion, and began to promptly blitz money on everything. Literally anything he landed on which he could buy was immediately his.

EOS, unfortunately, seemed to think much like John. Once again, that was hardly surprising. However, it was shocking to see that her thinking let her down. When John had asked her why she didn't buy the third pink property to complete the set, she had simply 'shrugged' (as Gordon interpreted it anyway,) with the movement of little yellow dots and answered;

"I am not disclosing my strategy."

"Ok then."

First time experiences with a game. Everyone learnt from them.

For once, Gordon was a little excited that there might be a player worse than he (or Alan) in the family! Scott began to wonder if winning against EOS wasn't such a lost cause. John had even enquired as to whether EOS' new processors were working.

Scott's 'strategizing' – if you could even call it that, Gordon thought – wasn't going very well. In fact, he looked to be in a worse place than usual. And of course, they'd managed to make it through four rounds. It was only a matter of time before… oh yeah, there it went, the triple double roll. Scott always ended up in jail first. Alan found that quite amusing, and Gordon didn't want to risk the eldest's wrath to tell the youngest a few home truths. Even Virgil would chuckle at that one, and Scott would dejectedly move himself to jail, and insist that he'd be lucky enough to roll his way out on the next go.

Safe to say, it went that the eldest rolled twice with failure, and on the third round paid to get out only to then roll what he needed. Gordon didn't know what fluke of nature allowed it to happen, but he got one hell of a kick out of the pilot having to eat his words.

As far as Gordon knew, John had never made his way to jail. "Good planning", he claimed, but the Aquanaut wasn't sure there was such a thing. If there was, he'd like he gain that ability. By the time they'd made it six rounds in, John had managed to acquire all three green properties, and still have money to spare. It always happened. No matter whose property he landed on, there was always money appearing before him… like he took it out of the bank! But he didn't. Not that anyone saw… Gordon knew John wouldn't cheat, but it made him feel a little better about losing to consider the possibility.

After John, it would be Virgil's go and like usual, Gordon knew how this worked, because Virgil did have an uncanny sense of luck with the dice. No doubt he'd would land on the Water Works and buy it to go with the Electric Company he'd bought in the first round, at long last. Somehow, whatever he bought, for the middle child, that always happened.

And on his go… what happens? He's gets himself a nice little double and lands on John's property. Get's to roll again because of it, and for the first time this game lands on something Scott owns (fortunately, its only worth a couple pounds, but John's just robbed him for hundreds, so he's not in the mood; and unfortunately, Scott is screaming like it's the 4th July, because he told Virgil "that would be a good buy in the end!" when the middle child had protested everyone landed on 'Go' and skipped what came after). It always happened to him. He couldn't just get a nice little double to his advantage, oh no, only to make him pay out to others. He was probably keeping John's funds afloat.

Gordon threw the money at Scott's feet. They were getting to that point, where the paying out was more than the coming in, and everything seemed an irritant.

"This game is ridiculous."

"No, it's not! It's fun!"

"Losing is not fun, Alan."

"You're just a sore loser, Gordon."

Gordon shook his head. He knew how this went down too. The Tax square was coming up, and Alan – rash as he was with money - would definitely land on it.

"Oh what? This game is ridiculous!"

Gordon really wanted to point out that he'd already said that, but refrained. It was much nicer to listen to EOS not laughing at him for once.

EOS wasn't a constant though.

Gordon had never seen her play before. He didn't know her strategies or her quirks and he found it hard to predict what was going to come her way. She seemed to be the perfect mix between Alan and John, spending money fast, but just enough money that there was enough in reserve to take her past properties which weren't her own. Gordon could actually see how that made for a good playing strategy. But EOS, practical though she was, seemed to have little to no luck.

A little like me, Gordon had found himself thinking.

At first, Alan had insisted it was rigged, EOS' continued landing on the 'Chance' and 'Community Chest' cards. That was, until, Virgil read out the resulting cards on her behalf. It was always 'pay this' or 'repair that', or 'move here and collect nothing', or (the most interesting by far) 'go to jail'.

"That's silly." EOS had whined.

"It's the game, EOS." Virgil had reasoned before John could, because honestly the red head looked to be wearing the same expression Dad had when he'd tried to teach the boys Monopoly – oh Gods that was so long ago – and Scott was finding great amusement out of it.

"But that's silly."

"Tough luck, EOS!" Alan called almost victoriously as he moved EOS' piece to the corresponding square, despite the fact his bank's grand total was currently sitting at around forty-eight pounds. "You're in jail! No money for you."

That one would at least be a saviour for the next round, and Gordon breathed a sigh of relief as the fear of the yellow strips on the board was nullified for him.

"But it's still a silly thing! I can't go to jail. You could never lock me up."

Many confused faces had stared across the holo-link, until it had clicked with John, like it only could.

"There's a section on the board, EOS, not a physical jail."

"I know. You still could never lock me up. I'd break out. I'm already great friends with the security systems of The White House."

Eyes here turned to John, who promptly dismissed every piece of awareness which had allowed him to hear that comment. Later he'd claim momentary deafness. It was scientifically possible to have momentary blindness, so he would just argue the points until he was either blue in the face or his brothers were stumped out by the language (the more likely of the two).

"We'll talk about that later. But the point is, it's not physical, so none of that matters."

"I know, John, I do. But it's still silly!"

Alan rolled his eyes, Scott dropped his head into his hands, and Virgil sighed with weight equal to that of Two. Gordon really wished he hadn't 'dropped' his camera into the pool.

"It's silly, John, because-"

"EOS-"

"The card doesn't tell me what it's sending me to jail for."

There was a beat.

A pause in which John swiped the card out of Virgil's grip and studied the 'Go to jail. Move immediately to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred pounds' standard text which they'd read so often, as though it might open up new possibilities, or give a re-rising to the lost lands of Atlantis.

Which actually, Gordon wasn't going to think about because he associated that trip with Lemaire, and that was a step too far for a Thursday afternoon. Give him until Sunday at least. He might be properly awake by then and able to deal with it.

"Well?"

Scott asked after a while, when it seemed like nothing was going to move on. John set the card in the discard pile and chucked the dice (EOS had wanted to use a virtual dice, but that had been overruled. What? Gordon though, validly, that it was a good way of her cheating, so a different brother would roll for her each turn) towards Alan who failed dramatically at catching them.

"Well what? She's right, it is silly. Who sends someone to jail without having charged them for something?"

Gordon would have copied his brothers in dropping his head into his hands, he very much would have, but it was far more entertaining to be watching, to notice as Scott whacked his head just a little too hard onto the edge of his wrist bone.

And definitely wished he hadn't killed his camera.

**********

After they'd decided that EOS and John must, somehow, share genetics, they moved on with the game. Little changed, except for the state of the board, which was beginning to pile up with houses and hotels. Virgil was currently reshuffling the Chance cards, again, because EOS still kept landing on them. She'd been sent to jail by one for a second time – to Alan and Scott's shared delight, since they usually shared the luck in drawing those – and they'd promptly managed to cease the return of the 'silly' argument. As it would forever be known in Gordon's secret diary.

Luckily, the second time around EOS had a 'Get out of Jail Free Card' which she had bought from John in return for Mayfair. Gordon still maintained that he smelt a rat there as the houses appeared and he began to set aside a chunk of money just in case he was unlucky enough to land upon them. He wasn't going to let that powerhouse strategy of John's catch him again.

Said card had at least saved some stalling, however not all. The game had been paused yet again as EOS remarked;

"That card is stupider than the one which sends you to jail."

The sigh had been unanimous, but it was Scott who found voice for the question, "And why is that, EOS?"

"Because you never get out of jail free. You have to have a court appeal. Or at the very least pay bail charges."

"EOS, it's a game," John had finally silenced. "Suspend your disbelief for the next two – or however many – hours it takes us to finish this please?"

"Ok. But when it's finished, I might ask Parkmoor Scrubs printing system to make me such a card-"

"What for?" Alan had cut her off, but John had promptly shook his head, hoping the youngest would get the simple message. Sssh. It wasn't hard to receive, and even Gordon got it first time round.

"EOS, we'll talk about that later. It's Alan's go."

"But I want to know-"

"Alan, just have your go!"

Scott, sensing what John was trying to do, had laughed, and promptly ended up with a pillow lobbed at his face. John's balance was rubbish, but his aim, was somehow spot on. As Scott was pulling said pillow away from his face, Gordon was sitting happy remembering why he didn't try to call the red head out on his deflection attempts.

***********

Pause number three (or argument number three, depending on your view) happened a little while later.

Apparently, EOS' grand strategy was beginning to break down.

"I don't care how much you offer me, EOS, you're not having it." Virgil proclaimed, properly putting his foot down on the property exchange EOS had been trying to offer him. John just looked done, and Gordon honestly wondered if they'd been this annoying when Dad was trying to teach them, because that expression truly was a replica, even though it had been yonks since he'd seen it.

Scott seemed to be the only one not minding the extra time now. He was using it as his way to study the board without Alan telling him to hurry and have his go, or heaven's forbid call him old. Because that had happened, only three turns ago, and it hadn't ended well. Gordon didn't know which he would hate to be more right now: Alan, or the poor plate of cookies the youngest was belligerently munching his way through.

"But everything I've read says if the deal is preferable, players will swap."

"Yeah, well the internet doesn't say much for human emotion."

"But John always makes preferable deals."

"Well I'm not John. And I'm not giving you my reds so have your go."

"But-"

"No, I will not swap them, even for another hundred."

"You don't conform to my research. I do not understand you, Heavy Weight."

"Heavy Weight?"

"That's my nickname, John warned me she had poor taste."

"I heard that!"

"Ooops." It occurred to Gordon that Virgil didn't really seem that sorry. It was the same tone from when the shower on Two cut out all that while ago. If he hadn't thought it then, he knew now the elder definitely had something to do with it. And he really wanted to impress Penelope with their rescue skills that day too.

"But why Heavy Weight?"

"That's obvious, Alan. Because Virgil does all the heavy lifting."

"So the Fish can cope out of water, after all."

"Hey!" He found himself gapping, absolutely flabbergasted.

"EOS, had you said that earlier, I might have swapped with you for free."

"Go on then."

"No, I was joking, EOS."

"Virgil, EOS has my sense of humour."

And somehow, Gordon just knew this was doomed to go on.

Some point during the discussion, Scott nudged his jaw closed…

*********

It had taken nearly half an hour to actually play EOS' turn before things could get moving again. Gordon was pleased when he made it past 'Tricky Corner' as he'd dubbed it, got his two hundred for passing go, and was reimbursed his tax.

Maybe this game wasn't all that bad, after all.

Scott and Alan were floundering, and Gordon honestly couldn't work out which one of them had more left. The youngest was surviving purely through mortgaged property. It wouldn't be long until Alan was out, and then it really would turn into a free for all.

"Oh, that's mine! EOS, you owe me."

"I do not."

"Yes, you do."

"Do not."

"It's in the rules."

"But you rolled the dice before you noticed."

"I did not!"

"You did too."

"That's not in the rules."

"I think you'll find it is."

"It is not!" Alan demanded, and Gordon wondered if paracetamol would be needed. Scott was looking rather thankful for that pillow John had chucked his way now, the eldest using it in place of earmuffs.

"I'm the AI-"

"Yeah, well I'll-"

"-and I'm the one with access-"

"-the rule book out, shall I-"

"-to the worlds bank of knowledge and-"

"-and read to you exactly what it says-"

"Anyone want a drink?" John offered.

Gordon thought he wanted to get away from the noise more than he wanted to act as a butler, but it worked and John took himself from the room to fetch what Virgil and Scott had asked for.

It was a very entertaining debate – Alan and EOS, arguing across the one and only lounge in the world that expanded into space, and all over whether someone had to pay money or not.

Five minutes later, Gordon wanted the paracetamol, and wasn't honestly sure that the entertainment was still worth it. If he managed to play at all well with this headache, it would be a new record.

"I'm right, aren't I? Tell her I'm right!"

"What? Sorry Alan, we weren't listening."

Since John's return, he, Scott and Virgil had taken to talking quietly whilst the pair fought it out. Gordon had just continued to watch, re-counting his money whilst wondering whether he still needed to keep aside his just in case fund, or if it would be more beneficial spent on some hotels.

"You what? Right, well, that's it! I'm right EOS, so pay up!"

"You are wrong! I'm not paying you a single penny of my hard-earned money."

"Um EOS- No, alright then, ignore me."

Gordon had a feeling he knew exactly what John was going to remind the AI of as well; the money wasn't real.

By the time Gordon had counted his money three times over and decided that yes, he would buy those hotels on his next go – which was supposed to be shortly approaching after Alan's – he was ready to call it quits. The argument was still on going and Scott really seemed to be losing the will to live. How Virgil looked so clam still Gordon would never fathom, and John… John really was beginning to increasingly resemble Dad.

Gordon chuckled when John's next sentence – the final breaking point for the camel's back – put a stop to the argument and had Alan willingly fulfilling the rest of his go. Definitely more like Dad.

Funny. Gordon had always thought he'd see Scott turn that way first.

*********

He'd never known – or remembered, rather – it take them four hours to play Monopoly. And they weren't nearly done.

Alan was out. Like usual. And the youngest was instead spending his time darting between them, trying to work out everyone's money and take stock of what that had left on the board so he could put bets on a winner.

Gordon knew it wasn't going to be Scott. There was no way the eldest would make it past Virgil and John's properties on his next go.

In fact, Gordon wasn't feeling too bad by this point. Usually he'd be worried that he could be next on the list for demolition, leaving (as was typical) Virgil and John to battle for the crown. But, he was hopeful that he could make it to go next turn. He only needed three – that wasn't much to ask for – and then he'd be back round to safety for another roll. His hotels had been a good choice too. They'd made money.

If anyone ever asked him though – strange question it would be – whether Monopoly was a good game to be played with technology… well, the answer would be no. EOS almost seemed to know too much that it hindered her. Held her back from playing in her own way. After all, that was why they always seemed to enjoy it so much. Well, Gordon thought so at least. He'd done better this time, but if he landed on John's money-making property before making it to go… well, long story short, Scott might have a chance at not being the second one out.

He hadn't expected to be proven wrong so soon. And Scott wasn't the one to do it.

"EOS, I think that's it."

"What John?"

"I think you're out of money."

"I am not."

"Well I make it eighty short of what you owe Virgil."

"Oh uh."

"I am not bankrupt, John."

"I'm afraid you are."

"Virgil, how much do I owe you?"

"Two hundred. I've got hotels."

"But I'd never pay that much for a hotel there. It's in the middle of nowhere. And I'm family. I'll have a discount."

"You will not!"

"I will. That is a badly run hotel."

"I think you'd find I'd be great at running a hotel-"

Demolishing, Gordon had coughed beneath his breath, remembering their trip to Switzerland five days ago. Virgil couldn't wait to knock down what was left of the burnt-out building which was now classed as structurally unstable. It wasn't even technically their job anymore, but hey, who was he to comment.

He wanted to live, thank you very much.

And maybe win Monopoly for just once in his life, but living definitely came first.

"-and I will not be offering you a discount."

"If not for the location, then for-"

"I don't care about location or the fact you're family, there is no discount!"

"That is terrible! I'll be writing a review and I'm not paying you penny for a poor stay."

"You have to pay me, that's in the rules."

"Give me a discount and I will."

"No, it doesn't work like that!"

"EOS, you have to pay Virgil what you owe him, and there are no discounts in Monopoly."

"Says you," Oh dear, Gordon decided he was very glad to not be Scott, who had obviously butted in thoughtfully, yet carelessly. "You were complaining only two turns ago that you wouldn't pay for a hotel that had no view-"

"Really Scott?"

"I didn't know she'd remember that, Virgil!"

"She's an AI."

"Fair point."

Comically, Virgil's eyes widened as Virgil found money dropping past his eyes.

"It's eighty short," John declared, "You'll have to take it from the bank."

"Thanks."

"This is ridiculous."

Yeah, tell him about it.

"I'm not playing anymore."

Virgil mumbled something about being bankrupt, but Gordon was glad EOS didn't hear that.

"This is the world's worst game! I don't know why people go on about it like it's something special. I am never playing this again- Hang on-"

What for?

Scott had mouthed. John had shaken his head. There was trouble ahead when John didn't know what EOS was thinking either.

"I am definitely not bankrupt even though you say I am, and this game is silly, and so I'm going to throw the board!"

For all her intelligence… Gordon wondered whether John has as much of a headache as it looked like he might.

"Um, EOS..?" Scott started, testing the waters almost, "You can't throw the board. It needs hands."

There was a moment.

"John, throw it for me!"

The red head pulled his head up, but hadn't even needed to say a thing for Gordon to know what the answer was. No way would John ever do something like that… he had experience on the other hand.

"I'll do it!"

He didn't know quite what possessed him – maybe it was the fact he always lost, or that this had taken so long, or goodness knows what – but he reached out, tucked his fingers as far beneath the board as his palms would allow before flipping it into the air with the same delicacy he did pancakes.

Very little. Aiming high.

The board went through the air, taking pieces and money with it in a flurry of blurred shapes and noise.

For a moment afterwards, it was quiet.

Then there was a little whir and a flicker of blue.

"I asked John to do it."

And then the link was closed, and EOS was gone from their sights with John muttering something the Aquanaut had no chance of catching.

"Oh yeah, no – 'thank you Gordon'. I just can't win with her!"

Gordon folded his arms, and waited expectantly for someone to think of how to resume their game. But there was silence for a long while.

"What?"

"Um, Gordon..?"

Scott started, wearily, unsurely, like he was predicting a storm to brew at his words. John, Virgil and Alan all looked to be waiting expectantly, like they were ready to run at the first sign of said storm turning into a hurricane. Gordon couldn't for the life of him fathom out way. Scott, after a very long moment of quiet, pointed towards his stack of money, and Gordon followed his eyeline.

"You do know you were winning, right?"

The blonde took a moment to estimate the value of his pile before moving his gaze around those of his brother's (and the resigned EOS'). They were pulling his leg, had to be, he'd never won before.

"I'm winning? Let's hurry up and…"

Yeah, his brothers were already ahead of him, eyes looking at the very upturned and unrecoverable state of the board, pieces scattered just about everywhere, at a guess.

"Ahh, dammit!"

Gordon reached out, ready to re-enact his grand piece-scattering moment from the last time he'd thrown the board into the air in anger and promptly realised – a little late as his hands grabbed air – that it was a little bit too late for that. There'd be nothing to throw but the board and that would hardly be grand at all…

And he'd been winning.

Damn. It. All.

**********

Safe to say, Monopoly wasn't played again in the Tracy household for quite some time. Not until Jeff's return, actually – because it had always been one of his and Grandma's very traditional favourites.

Jeff had looked at the board carefully, studying it, trying to work out what was different about it. He settled with the fact it had been a long time since he'd last seen one.

Truth was, Grandma had brought them a new board a little while ago, even though it had remained untouched until now. She'd had too, after that last disastrous game had resulted with Gordon lobbing the already tossed board out of the lounge and into the waiting waters of the pool.

Jeff didn't understand either, why Gordon wasn't allowed near the board, and had to give instructions to MAX for the robot to play his cards and houses.

EOS didn't really like Monopoly – she wasn't as good at it as she thought she would be, but she did love to watch the boys play it, even if it was just so she could think of ways to mock Gordon later.

They'd get there eventually with the explanations, hopefully without the need to buy yet another edition of the game.

The first one, might need to be the explanation of why Gordon was always relegated the little silver hat.

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “The Legend of Boggy Ben”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Written by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: Victor Courtright

It sure is "boggy".

So, the first episode of Roar was essentially a re-adaptation of the first few episodes of the original ThunderCats, with a few jokes thrown in there. It was actually kind of entertaining. How does this episode start?

Cookie-O-Clock!

With some of that good ol' fashioned choir text humor! Okay, there's a little bit of build up to that. Lion-O decided this hour was the hour to open up an old jar of Thunder Snaps from his home planet, and everyone is excited. See, it's a little bit more high stakes than one might expect, since they couldn't exactly order another jar from Thundara, since, well, everyone knows at this point.

Unfortunately for all of these Thunder Snap lovers, Lion-O can't seem to get the jar open. Tygra offers to help, but Lion-O believes a leader shouldn't ask for help. Tygra responds to this lack of wanting to call for help by saying that he means he should use the “call for help” function on the Sword of Omens. Just like in the last episode, he decides to let the sword help by using it opener of cans and/or jars, which was apparently wrong. What was Tygra even meaning with that piece of help, anyway? The ThunderCats are all already here, so doing a "ThunderCats Hooo!" isn't going to do anything.

I want to give this episode some credit for that particular joke: while trying to open the jar with the Sword of Omens, the Sword of Omens seemingly leaps out of Lion-O's hand and lands right into the carpet. The Sword of Omens can disobey Lion-O in the original, as seen in the last episode I reviewed where it did the same action when Lion-O tried to use it for hunting, and it's fitting that it wouldn't obey him here, either. Whether this cookie jar was just that much powerful, or the act of using a sword on cookie jars is considered an evil act is never really touched upon.

Cheetara offers a better idea for Lion-O that isn't "just let Panthro take off the lid with his super strength": she knows of a magical elixir that can give Lion-O enough strength to open any cookie jar. The only problem is that it's in the soppy swamps of Boggy Ben, a powerful swamp monster that only exists in legends. Only she knows where it is, so Lion-O lets her join him in the magical quest...

...as he sings a powerful rock ballad about how he doesn't need anybody's help on his mission. It's essentially a montage of him talking about how mighty he is. He would sing about how he can lift rocks, he would be seen right next to a huge rock, and the camera pans out to show him pushing over a much, much smaller rock right next to it. The joke is that Lion-O is childish and weak.

To prove even more how unqualified he is, he keeps singing until he ends up falling right into the swamp. After seeing a cute frog that tells him he's going to croak out here, because that joke wasn't telegraphed from a mile away, Lion-O comes to the obvious conclusion:

Lion-O: This swamp is spookyyyyy!

Somehow, saying that makes the TV Y7 FV rating appear with a giant flash, complete with a clang sound effect. Honestly, it took me a few times to realize what was going on; I thought my video glitched. This doesn't become a running joke, and I don't even get what this joke would have been. Was Lion-O going to say a bunch of expletives about how he was in this bog, and the TV Y7 FV prevents him from saying it? Honestly, I'll just chalk it up to it actually being a glitch. He then falls into the bog again, with the animation degrading to Atari 2600 levels.

No, the animators didn't give up, this is actually a transition to WilyKit and WilyKat playing an old video game on their Snarf video game system. Apparently, an old bad video game that seems to star Lion-O. Maybe they're playing their own C64 adaptation.

WilyKit: This game was in fact, the toots.

Jaga said "oh, Thunder-Toots" when he had to introduce the mutants from Plun-Darr, and I am glad to know that's going to be a saying throughout this whole thing. Cyborg had "boo-yah", this show has "toots". Seeing their boredom with the video game, Panthro tells the ThunderKittens that he's working on a super sweet secret weapon for the Thundertank that he hypes up a lot, and he needs their help. While they don't want to do help, a curiosity fail gets them to help anyway. We know this because of giant text saying

CURIOSITY FAIL!

because the viewers can't see what's going on unless someone screamed it at them. This show is really reminding me of a reboot, and I'm not thinking of a Disney one.

Meanwhile, after leaping across several rocks, giant skulls, and muck, Lion-O and Cheetara end up at the lair of Boggy Ben. Lion-O walks in only to find Cheetara in a cage. Did Boggy Ben lock her in there? Not even she seems to know. Suddenly, Boggy Ben shows up, and Cheetara tells him to raise the Sword of Omens.

As is the case for Lion-O, he knows exactly what to do with that sword. He raises it, and slices Boggy Ben's head off. Since this is a TV Y7-FV cartoon, which apparently this cartoon really wanted us to know in the middle of the episode with that weird gag from before, anyone can guess that something is off.

Apparently, that anyone even includes Lion-O himself, who knew that it was just Tygra in a costume. Cheetara and Tygra admit that the whole thing was a sham to get Lion-O to use the Sword of Omens properly, and accept that maybe letting people help him is a good thing.

Lion-O looks down and takes all of this to heart that his friends are filthy liars, possibly literally filthy due to all of that swamp water. To be honest, I was barely listening to this scene, because my mind was going, "he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy, he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy, he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy..."

Lion-O: So if Boggy Ben isn't real, who the toots is that guy?!

Gee, my surprise cup runneth over! That's because I have never watched a cartoon in my life, except for every one of them! This comes as a shock to everyone involved, as Cheetara seemed to think this swamp lair was uninhabited by anyone and that the mythical house dweller was just a legend. Turns out, the only legend that isn't real is the cookie jar opening elixir.

Lion-O: Toots.

Believe it or not, there's no actual fart jokes; it's possible they felt the amount of "toots" in this episode was enough. I am referring to both the amount of times they say the word "toots" and the brain-toots of this episode. Left with no choice, Lion-O, Tygra, and Cheetara have to face off against this monster, and...

...I'm not going to lie, it's actually a pretty decent fight scene. No joke! As much flack as I've given this episode so far, this is a pretty big saving grace for the episode. There's bits of great animation here and there, like one scene where Lion-O rides on a piece of the ceiling to try to bop him on the head with that sword. They still add bits of comedy here and there, with Tygra getting played with like a yo-yo, and the monster using just one of his hands to sword-fight with Lion-O, using his nails like swords. This isn't bad at all; there's a lot of creativity here that doesn't really show up in the rest of the episode, and the only problem is that the pacing can get hectic.

Then I have to think about all of this: what did Boggy Ben do to deserve this? This whole thing was supposed to be a ruse to get Lion-O to learn the value of teamwork, as constantly throughout this episode, they tell him to call for help. Looking at it from Boggy Ben's point of view, though, he just came home and found people in his house. Sure, attempting to kill them may not be the greatest thing to do, but it's not like the ThunderCats were really in the right, anyway!

Despite their combined efforts, they're not successful. They need more ThunderCats in the action. It would be here where Lion-O would do the classic "I'm sorry I'm such a jerk scene", but he instead decides to accept his and his friend's death. Cheetara eventually talks some sense into him, and, for the first time in the series, Lion-O finally does the "ThunderCats Hooo!", making the sword shine that symbol.

I like how we get to see that Cat Signal burst through the ceiling, as if the symbol was like a giant laser beam. If it can project itself onto nothing, it might as well be able to do that! Panthro, the ThunderKittens, and Snarf see this symbol, making their eyes glow yellow. This comes just in time, as Panthro was finished with that much bally-hooed secret weapon!

This episode still does what it was set out to do, as with the teamwork of all the ThunderCats, they manage to do a lot more against Boggy Ben. Tygra tries to do another bola attack, only to be caught in the same paddleball trap from before. Panthro jumps up to take Tygra's place, using the spikes on his outfit to bruise his knuckles. Snarf, the now robotic cat thing that can't talk gets in on the action too, using Ben's now bola whipped up hand to make him punch himself.

After the ThunderKittens use their trademark smoke bombs on his eyes, giving me a screenshot that makes the show look a lot gorier than it's supposed to be, it all ends with Lion-O doing a finishing blow...by literally blowing him away. It is supposed to be a comedy-take on an 80's cartoon, and that is a joke I actually didn't expect them to do. That was something that was needed in this episode.

Also needed in this episode is a conclusion to the cookie plot, as much as the cookie plot felt kind of tacked on. We get one with Lion-O accidentally dropping the cookie jar, breaking it and all of its contents. Is all hope lost? Well, just guess what Panthro's secret weapon was. Here's a hint: it makes everything all better. Lion-O falls into the bog again, proving that he has learned absolutely nothing, and the episode ends.

How does it stack up?

Yeah, it was a good and well animated fight scene, arguably better than any of the fight scenes in the first episode. It's too bad it didn't come with a story.

I debated on whether this should be a 1 or a 2. Even with the fight scene, there's some baggage with that. However, the fight scene does raise it a little, and it would seem odd to rate something with such a low rating when I've only seen two episodes so far. Maybe if this turns out to be the worst episode, I'll re-rate it, but as it stands, I give it 2 logos.

Next, the apparently totally adult Lion-O has to prove that he really is a kid.

← Exodus (Parts 1 & 2) 🐈 Prank Call →

[sadisim]

Coming full circle: 2 years later

I want to start off this post by saying that this is no tea, shade, drama, subpost or whatever other name you want to find for this. This is my most sincere and last message that I will post on my blog. This is why I want to apologize in advance for the ridiculous length of this and I want every reader to be considerate, understanding, open and as objective as they possibly can in this matter.

I will not tolerate any hate sent towards me or the person I am about to mention nor any curious anons asking to “spill the tea” or anything of that nature. If you have any questions my inbox is always open and you are free to directly message me to discuss further. ^_^ /)

Now that we got that out of the way... I will tell you all a little story about my relationship with Frankie (gruesim or simplyimaginarypeople, however you want to call her)

If any of y’all simblr veterans know me for a long time, you surely know I’ve been here for about 6 years or so. I joined this website when I was around 13 years of age, and naturally as any 13 year old I immediately looked up to people who were more talented than me. One of those very people was Frankie herself. I respected her highly, admired her for all her hard work, discipline, talent for meshing from the very beginning and I am extremely thankful to her for all the help she has offered me throughout the years. 

I wanted to be like her. I wanted to mesh and have something to give to Simblr. I wanted to become popular and cool and constantly compared myself to her. Like any teenager would when they admire someone older than them.

You can imagine I grew up with time and I became less and less of a child, maturing and forming my own opinions etc. But I was still pretty gullible and easy to fool back then. So I blindly trusted Frankie and supported her in everything she did, no matter what other people around me were telling me about her. Above all I considered her a friend. A very close one that is. But I am never sure what she considered me to be. I don’t blame her though, I was pretty stupid and annoying when she knew me back then so I don’t mind it at all. However I wish that she had explicitly told me instead. I was always supportive and I remember all of our chats ran dry most of the time with me constantly asking her how she’s doing, admiring and supporting her and her being very distant and cold. I remember at some point she mentioned she cares for me as a friend but I felt like at the time that she didn’t truly mean it.  I never knew if she were like this just with me or if she was like that with everyone. But she was absolutely impossible to approach on my end. At least that’s what a teenager me thought at that time. I can be completely wrong about this. And that’s fine.

Growing up more and more I came to terms with the fact that maybe she just disliked me for some reason I didn’t know. Maybe I was too young for her to be friends with, maybe we had a communication barrier of sorts. So I slowly drifted away…running from my problems instead of confronting her.

That was my biggest mistake and fault.

I wish I had the power then that I have now, to confront people directly and tell them how I feel with no filters or sugarcoating.

But back then sugarcoating was the safest form of escape for me. There is nothing sweeter than pretending everything is okay when it isn’t, just to get away from an uncomfortable situation. All of y’all socially anxious people definitely know what I mean by this.

Sugarcoating was my second and most fatal mistake of all within our relationship.

I fully assume my wrongdoings and past mistakes and I want to let you know that I have realized what I did not do right back then. If I could turn back time I would do something entirely different, but that’s not possible. We learn from our past, don’t we? That’s what  I’ve been slowly doing in the past few years. ^_^

My falling out with Frankie happened around two years ago. I had started a Patreon for my writing combined with some sims ( pose making, skin making etc )She was clearly not happy about it. She was one of the first people who disagreed with me on it. I appreciated her input and never told her that it bothered me so that she didn’t think that I was “one of those people” who ask for money for content so I just sugarcoated everything as I always did. I remember her saying that she “is not a fan of Patreon as long as it’s not against EA” which I 100% agree with, I never intended to lock cc behind a paywall. I would just release stuff later on, probably in 2-3 weeks’ time. However I remember very clearly that she stated how “it would be still exclusive and that it’s no longer a donation instead it’s buying”

I really didn’t like that she was saying those things to me, I remember feeling disappointed. So because I didn’t want to anger her because I really looked up to her and I feared we might fight, I took down my Patreon and got a Ko-fi instead. I’m extremely thankful to everyone who donated, it’s helped me lots! She seemed to be happy about Ko-fi and i was happy i could please her and solve the problem. I never knew why she hated Patreon so much, to me Ko fi was exactly identical to Patreon. Just another name for donations.

This was the first time that Frankie’s shot a bullet in the way I viewed her. At that time she was starting to gain a lot of influence in the community because of her hard work and dedication and she was leading a very public campaign against Patreon. She’s said some things back then which heavily contrast her current views on Patreon, donations or cc locked behind a temporary wall.

She’s said multiple times, publicly and privately how she “hates everything exclusive” but as years passed by I sometimes saw her on my dashboard, despite not following her on tumblr. I couldn’t help but notice how she seemed to me that she helps those very close to her only and seems to not bat an eye about patreon/timed exclusive content  to some people I’ve seen interacting with her– Listen, I know that this might come across as harsh or salty but I mentioned before that I don’t think she’s seen me as a friend. I was not part of her inner circle, nor did we have very deep talks about many things in particular. It just really hurt me to see this happening, while behind closed doors, two years ago she’d bashed me for wanting to make a patreon instead of just asking for donations (it was the same exact thing to me…)

While this subject is still up I’d like to mention the drama that took place a bit earlier this month. The whole hair thing. I have very hardly abstained from saying anything or intervening within the drama because i have biased opinions about her based on my past experience with her. So I didn’t want to come across as harsh, rude or disrespectful to her because of my feelings towards her and didn’t want to portray her in a biased light. The people who know, know what my opinion on the whole drama was. It’s unnecessary to tell you what I think about it since it’s no longer around. But I’d just want to say that for me it felt like all of her constant contradictions were falling apart and truth was starting to get to the surface. I felt like this situation was going to teach her a lesson, and I surely hope she’s learned. She’s not a horrible person. She’s never had malicious intent. I just think that she never really knew quite well how to handle social situations. This isn’t the first time Frankie’s taken a break from simblr. 

Perhaps her views have changed over the past few years. I know mine did a lot, so I don’t blame her if she no longer believes in the things she’s said before. People change all the time for the better or worse and it’s not something unusual. My problem here is that she’s never quite explained why she’s changed her opinions, nor did she justify her behaviour towards me at the time and other people involved who had the same experience with her. I just sort of wish that we had gotten some sort of apology, or an explanation from her after a while…anything would have made us happy. But she never did, so we moved on and kept on ignoring her, praying that we don’t ever have to interact again while watching her from afar doing things that were sort of questionable and didn’t rub us in the right way at all. But I kept silent because people support and love her, and I didn’t want to stir drama. It would have meant setting a hornet’s nest on fire and jumping right into it. Which is why I’ve never gone public about this in the first place. I just wanted to make sure that the heat of the drama was gone before i posted this. I felt like it would have been unfair to her to ‘attack’ her with this during the whole thing. 

The next time that I started getting off vibes from her was the whole Simscord thing. She joined us, I remember that clearly, she’d post in the sims 3 channel now and then but she would most of the time be in the help channel. She’d never ignore anyone and seemed to become some helper that everyone’s seen her as. So everyone went to her for help, which is what she’s always done for the community: help. It’s not easy work to help others solve their problems, which is why I respect her for it. However I don’t understand why she’s left Simscord and then proceeded to tell me she was ‘constantly ignored’ and ‘only seen as a helper’ by others. And then she proceeded to turn her blog into a help blog for every single question that every single anon needed but NEVER complained about how ignored she is or how she’s only seen as a helper then. She’s sort of criticised Simscord on multiple times before, very passively aggressively with comments like “Why does Simscord have exclusive tutorials? Isn’t that sucky for the people who don’t like joining public chats ?”  I eventually posted all the ‘exclusive tutorials’ a bit later that i wrote for Simscord onto my blog. they are still up and you can find them. This did not really make me happy when the whole SSFF thing started taking off and she did not admit that she was blocking access to cc from people who were too socially anxious to do any of the challenges. But we’ll get to that later. That’s just one of the things I can remember … again I’m saying this once more: she might have changed her view since then so I don’t blame her if she thinks differently. I just blame her past self for the way she’s acted in the whole thing. That’s all. It seemed to me that she’s never quite liked Simscord in the first place and kept trying to find ways to dismiss its usefulness. It’s always brought me down because us, the admins, were doing our best to keep Simscord alive, equal and fun to everyone whether they liked talking with us there or not. It felt like a blow to my self-esteem for the time and effort I’d put into Simscord as an admin. I know very well it’s not perfect and it can’t be. Admins are humans just like everyone. We can’t force people to act a certain way just because we want to.

 The next time we had a conflict it was “fatal” for your relationship. It was when we parted ways completely and haven’t spoken directly since. Here is where my biggest fault comes in: not confronting her and being straightforward about how she made me feel. She was angry with me because “I’d changed”. I was apparently “a different person” because I was starting to be myself more on my blog, stopping to sugarcoat things so much…I was trying my best to get out of my childish shell of agreeing with everyone just to avoid conflict and duck confrontation with people when we couldn’t agree. I remember receiving an anonymous message around that time from someone who told me that “I changed” . I was very saddened by the message, I remember I actually cried when I received it. I did not understand why that anonymous person saw me as ‘changed’. I was just being myself and trying to grow and shape and break free from the cute, innocent angel persona that I had created for myself. Sorta like Miley when she had that crazy post Disney phase lol. Im joking now but it’s for real. Then I connected that anon message to her and I am still suspecting today that it might have been her, or someone from her inner circle but then again i could be wrong about this. She had also told me clearly how she “talked to other people who confirmed my change.” I never knew who these people were. Why were they talking behind my back? Why were they not directly telling me into my face that “I changed” if they knew me so well? I highly doubt they knew me at all. Or perhaps there were no “other people”. Perhaps she had made that up just to add to her argument. I’ll never know.

 I supported her in the whole drama with The Together Store because I was still admiring her for her work and passion and I still refused to see the doubtful things that people were accusing her of doing. I remember very clearly how I messaged her when she announced her hiatus, supporting her and telling her I’m there for her, not even willing to listen to The Together Store’s side of the story (If any of you guys are reading this please reach out to me, I can’t remember your urls. I’d like to apologize personally!)   and she just told me that she doesn’t need my support, she’s not bullied and she doesn’t need help. That put a knife in my chest. I know she was just being angry in that moment. She eventually apologized for her harsh words but I never told her how they made me feel then. Another mistake on my end. I kept adding and adding to the idea of supporting her and she simply said that “she needs people to change the way they act”. I kept adding fuel to the conversation but it went nowhere. In one of the last messages from her I remember she explicitly told me that “It’s attitudes like mine that made her leave” and after that I could take no more blows. I knew then deep down my heart that I did not like her attitude but I decided to simply be nice, continue to wrongly sugarcoat the words I wanted to tell her, block her and move on. She was constantly adding in how she saw me as some sort of… Simblr Leader? I never understood what she meant by that. Never. “I don't respect the way you are handling your position as a community leader. Its been super sad to watch such a kind and sweet person get influenced by all this and I wish it were different”  - This is a direct quote from her. I have yet to understand what this all means today. I don’t know what “Influenced by all” means. I have no idea where she got the idea that I am or was a community leader by any means. Surely, I used to have much more influence two years ago. I had thousands of followers, talked to hundreds of people. But I was not a leader. I surely didn’t consider myself that way nor ever said i am one.

I know I handled the situation terribly. Yet again I take complete responsibility for my mistakes and I wish I could gather the courage to reach out to her instead. But we parted ways, by agreeing to disagree and moved on with our lives. I’ve been avoiding her from my dash actively by blocking her username and just stayed away as much as possible. I thought about it many times, to message her…to reach out and talk and be open about my mistakes. But I’ve always gotten a bit anxious the way she might understand this and respond. I know she’s had a distant tone when talking to me before and i did not want to get anxious. So i just hoped i’d get the chance to talk about this someday.

So in the years that came after that I watched her expand, grow and shape her simblr, her projects. She started becoming the very thing that she swore to destroy (very poetic but im making a reference to that one meme. Yall edgelords know what im talkin about). There was  SimblrSimplyForFun that pissed me off with the idea of exclusivity that she was so aggressive towards me about but she ended up doing herself- i remember people talking about how they don’t like the idea of challenges and interacting with others just to get ‘a treat’. She was even sent anonymous questions about this very matter: what are socially anxious people going to do? We can’t just interact with others like normal people. I don’t remember her exact response but I think it was something that brushed off the anon. Then came the drama with the hairs. It was the last drop for me. I wanted to let it all go. It’s been awful to hold this in for so long. She took it upon herself to change an entire community by implementing all these projects, which in idea are super fun and cool and really help connect people, but she was doing all the work by herself and kept on burdening herself with every challenge and piece of cc released. She had hundreds and hundreds of projects, videos, tutorials and cc released in the span of two years that were monstrously over encumbering her with so much responsibility to “change simblr” that she got swallowed in this dark pit of becoming a vessel for change and it ended up overwhelming her to the point where she left. That’s just how I see things from the outside. It doesn’t mean I’m right and you can contradict me on this, I’d gladly listen. She’s done so much for us all, a help that nobody else was willing to give and I am thankful for all her dedication and time spent doing these things. But reading her goodbye message made me realize how she’s seen Simblr more as a job than anything else. She was becoming the “leader” she was trying to enforce on me but it was no easy job. To me Simblr is fun, it’s a hobby. It’s somewhere I come to see creativity and catch up with old mutuals. Nothing more than that. If i can help people i definitely will, if it’s within my knowledge and free time. I don’t want my kindness/selflessness be seen as some sort of sacrifice i make as a “leader of the community”. That’s just my opinion. I feel like she really deserved a break and some time away to clear up her mind, relax and think. I hope she finds the peace she seeks!

I have stayed put form talking about this. As soon as the whole drama with the hairs got out I knew it was gonna be a big blow on her blog. I just didn’t want to add fuel to the fire and that’s why I am posting this only now.. I just wanted to tell my story that I kept in for two long years and that I’ve struggled to come to terms with until now. 

If you’re reading this Frankie, I’m sorry about the mistakes I made and that I didn’t tell you how I truly felt. It’s probably late, but it’s never too late to apologize for my behavior.

I understand people might not agree with me or my side of the story, that’s totally fine. I just wanted to clear things up because I have many people here I talk to that have asked me before why I don’t interact with Frankie or avoid her. I hope that this explanation is everything you need to clear things up ^_^ Anyone who I’ve personally hurt, attacked or wronged is free to unfollow me or block me away, that is totally fine and acceptable, or perhaps if you want to talk about things I’m always here to listen and discuss.

Ever since this thing happened it’s left me pretty bitter about making new friends here. Which is why I’ve just set a limit to myself to just remain ‘mutuals’ with many people and nothing more or less. It’s why I’ve been colder and colder with every year and refused to do many collabs or ships or whatever. I just have matured and grew up and I do not have much time anymore for any of these things. My IRL is full of problems that I am not willing to discuss here because they don’t concern anyone. I’ve come here just to tell my story and that’s the last personal post I’ll probably ever make on my blog.

Thankyou all for reading this extremely long post and bearing with me!

[miramodhvadia]

Everyday moments

1.Introduction

In this project i am going to be exploring the everyday moments of the woman in my life. The different clothes, the different cultures and how despite all these differences between us we are all connected. My aim is to showcase a variety of different fabrics and embroidery from cultures as well as the similarities between the differences we have between the generations i have surrounding me.

2.As a British India girl i want to show people how two clashing cultures are balanced out with our lives. When we go to social events as girls we’re expected to dress in formal indian wear. These clothes have intricate embroidery and serialised thread work. I wanted this to be shown in my work so i decided to sew together something similar to what my sister is wearing and surrounded it with thread work. The clear film that you’re meant to wash away after sewing through it didn’t quite leave the fact I wanted to and instead the embroidery fell out leaving me with scraps of material. Initially the idea felt as though it may work but after trying to execute it I soon realised that was not the case.  then void you work around the material was left to be very floppy and had no substance therefore just disintegrated.  for this reason I could not use this embroidery work in my sketchbook

3.The same girl, just in a different setting.

Away from other people from the same culture, which means none to judge. As a British Asian girl, i get judged for everything. From who i talk to, too how i dress. Being in a different environment away from people you know means you can be yourself more. For the main part of my project I have decided to recreate a dress that I would wear in a more westernised situation like this picture dictates.

4. In the second page of my sketchbook I decided to recreate a traditional Indian dress which is called the “lengha.”  in order to get the effect of having embroidery running throughout the skirt I decided to draw directly into my sketchbook a very simple yet effective design that would show us what kind of invoice you might be on some of these dresses I then sewed a sheer fabric on top of the drawing to show us what kind of material and shape the bottom half of the dress would be like I decided to completely draw on the blouse and the jewellery that would match what someone would wear with the outfit.  The designer that I took a lot of inspiration from for this piece it’s called Sabyasachi. He is a famous Indian fashion designer who is known to recreate cultural outfits in a more modernised way which entices the modern day people to wear and continue to carry forward the culture and the traditional wear in their lives.  keeping his designs culturally appropriate yet modernised really enables the modern day generation to enjoy wearing the outfits as well as keeping them rooted to their culture and background.

17.03.2020

To begin this project I completed some primary research of what inspires me within my surroundings, for example the people in my life and connections I come across daily. Looking back on this first bits of research I believe I found clear themes I wanted to develop further therefore I decided to look into how the women in my life dress and what textiles techniques were similar to what they would wear.

I had an induction into printing this is where I watched a tutorial and make my own screen and digital printing materials. During this workshop I had inductions on how to use metallic dyes, disperse, pigment and Procyon. I also prepared  pigment and metallic dyes myself, i found that the process of creating the other dyes were similar. As well as screen printing, digital printing is also a technique. Overall, the tutorial was extremely helpful as it allowed me to explore other areas within the fashion industry and looked more closely at textiles. This tutorial was important as it gave me the basic skills of printing which can supported me in this project.

We went on to having an induction to embroidery, this gave me the skills to create samples on Bernina sewing machines. The person giving the tutorial gave a detailed account on the working of the machines. she went onto explain the functions for stitch type and size, tension, as well as the set up. The samples created allowed me to try the different stitches as well as the tensions. We learnt to complete samples in straight stitch, also learnt free embroidery.

My first session into embroidery was an experience, i learnt a lot more about sewing machines and about different stitches as well as certain functions. I understand that i made mistakes however the likelihood of them happening in the future were lessend. Moving on with embroidery I looked to explore the possibilities of combining fabrics.

The induction into weave was quite interesting as we had an induction into many different machines within the workshop, including types of looms which were used to weave cloth and tapestry. We looked at different machines for knitting as well as tufting, this information was given alongside health and safety.

I found the induction very interesting because I learnt to how the loom works as well as learning about many different types of weaving techniques.

The beginning of my research consisted of looking at different artists that fit into my theme of the fashion of women. I found a number of designers who influence my initial narrative.

During the second print workshop I dyed both natural and synthetic fabrics. To do this I learnt about how to tell the difference between natural or synthetic fibbers, this is done by completing burns tests on our fabric. In the workshop we were given a chart of different types of synthetic and natural fibres. The chart explained how they react to fire. For example, if a natural fibre such as cotton or linen is placed near a flame it would burn easily. It would then continue to burn after being removed from the flame and produce grey ash. This identification skill is important as different dyes are used on synthetic and natural fibers.

During the first session in traditional print I created two prints that matched my narrative.

The first type was mono print and it was called colograph printing. To create this print, I used multiple materials as stamps, the different textures created different patterns. on an A5 board, we were told to layer textured paper to create patterns, I used different textures across the board, The board was then varnished. It is important that the printed board is completely dry. This is vital so that the first layer of ink added to textured paper doesn’t leak and doesn't alter my design. During this process I used two coloured inks, yellow and purple. The yellow ink was added using a spreader, the ink was then pressed into the board using rag, this insures that the ink fills the imperfections of the board.

The next step is applying the second layer of ink using a roller. This ink will only be seen on the raised parts of the board for example the letters, and some textures on the first layer. The paper that we were printing onto is wetted to be then rolled out so that majority of the moisture is retained. This allows the ink to permeate the paper when pressed. We then transfer the ink onto the paper using a roller press.

During my second session is weave, I practiced creating plain weaves, I also had an introductions into twill and cross ribs. We were given a visual explanation about the process of these new skills and then we were left to experiment and create my own designs using a pattern grid.

To further develop my samples I decided to add embroidery to my printed fabrics I did this because it shows intricate detailing which is also similar to what some of the women in my family wear. This really helped develop my piece and it gave it a more detailed look. I started this off by slowly using different stitches to try and figure out which one I wanted to use and then when I found what I was looking for I went straight onto my fabric and began working on embroidering my work  

To try and help develop my visual communication skills in my final outcome I decided to create collages throughout my sketchbook and involve the sketches that reflected the specific desired look I was going for. I decided to use different forms of things for example are used fine liners to draw something on as well as using thread to sew through layered paper to give it a more defined and edgy look. I decided to replicate some of the pictures that i used from my primary research and remade them using the fabrics materials and the different workshop techniques that we had learnt

Looking back at my development throughout my work I feel like I have achieved some new skills however I could really further develop these skills and ensure that I am better one way to have done this Would have been by practising more and having a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve when it came to starting my work on the different samples I also feel like I would probably have chosen a different theme and I wasn’t as passionate about this theme which meant that it was very difficult for me to come up with new ideas.  

I also feel that I should’ve been more precise with what I was doing rather than having a rough look as I feel as if that would’ve worked better with my theme of it being quite pretty however it turned out to look quite messy instead

My finished final outcome was a reflection of different types of outfits that were all embroidered onto one silhouette of a dress that was made out of fabric. Why did was I sewed on pictures of some of the women in my life and the different types of clothes they wore on to address that was similar to what I have in real life the idea behind this was that I wanted to show how each person in my life has had an affect on the way I dress and my fashion choices

Throughout this process I completed a number of workshops that helped make my theme presentable I have interpreted the scene in the direction of my own every day life and based on the fashion choices either. Through this project I want to busy communicate my own fashion choices as well as the fashion choices of the woman that I that inspire me.

My research that this project was quite vague which was what was my main downfall however I did conduct a lot of primary source research when it came to gathering my own materials however my secondary research was not the best.  Through this project I learnt many practical skills for example weave embroidery and printing. Considering I’ve never weaved or printed before I think I learnt successfully how to do these things however I need to brush up on my skills and further my knowledge. It did take me quite a while to learn the basics which is why I don’t think I had time to complete experiment and reach my full potential I also wish I used a large variety of materials and other methods that I could’ve showcased in my work. I created simple samples however wish that I made more of a variety of things also I wished that I had more of a story when it came to my actual sketchbook rather than it just being a collection of outfits and designs. If I had more time I would like to have been more precise and detailed with my work as well as rethink the idea behind what I was trying to show I also would have made more samples and done a lot more secondary research to further my knowledge.



[missinnocentscarlet-archived2]

ALL of the symbols for the muse skills meme, tell me what the blessed bean is good and bad at

Muse Skills | NO LONGER ACCEPTING BC CROW SENT THEM ALL |

@antonverloc​

under the cut bc these are a lot of symbols ilysm ffgvbgfg 

🥘 CookingScarlet is rather skilled at cooking! She generally knows what spices go well with what dishes, for example, she could make a regular jar of spaghetti sauce taste much better if she has an assortment of spices and herbs on hand.  (Yes, she IS pro cilantro).  When it comes to things like omelettes or pasta, she can generally come up with her own recipe and sort of just wing it as she is VERY used to cooking food of those sorts of varieties, but with something more complex she would need a recipe (although she would still likely be able to add her own spin to the dish through seasoning).  

🍪 BakingThe same goes for baking; she is pretty skilled and has some recipes memorized to the point where she can customize the dish with relative ease - such as macarons.  She prefers baking slightly over cooking because she actually has a bit of a sweet tooth.

🎤 SingingAlthough she would likely say otherwise, she can actually sing fairly well! her voice claim tag is here if you would like to hear her range.  There’s only one post in there right now, but I have some more in the queue!

🎹 Playing musicAside from singing, Scarlet has no musical abilities.  If she were to learn, though, she would choose the violin.

🎭 ActingProfessionally? She is a novice.  But with how many masks she wears on a day-to-day basis, I would call her a rather skilled actor, just in every day life rather than on a stage.

🖌 Making artAnswered here!

🧒 Taking care of childrenStrangely enough, a lot of children actually like her, and the mom friend buried DEEP down inside of her allows her to take pretty good care of them.  They tend to enjoy her artwork, and she will become a bit of an art teacher to them while taking care of them.  She is hesitant to take care of children for long periods of time though due to her curse, and not many people will hire her for baby siting, so her time spent with children tend to be with those curious enough to approach her in a park.  Some will call her a vampire (not out of malice, but usually out of fascination), and she has ran into the very rare child that has called her an angel or fairy/faerie.  Children who have yet to have biases instilled in them warm her heart.

🐺 Taking care of animalsVery much so!  Scarlet believes her curse only affects humans, so she tends to let her walls down around animals a bit more than she would people.  Animals are incapable of bias, unlike humans, and they tend to like her due to how much time she spends in the woods, becoming familiar with her.  She will occasionally bring snacks with her specifically for the animals that approach her.

🌱 GardeningAbsolutely!  Her mother was a very skilled gardener, and taught Scarlet everything she knew.  Her thumb isn’t as green as her mother’s was, but she definitely enjoys gardening, as it is one of the ways she feels she is able to keep her mother alive.  On occasion, she will offer/be hired to do some landscaping such as plant flowers in front of local businesses.  

📚 StorytellingWhile her skills mainly lie in visual arts, she would be be fine at recounting stories if one can tolerate her rather metaphorical and formal speech.  She tends to struggle with talking about emotions, often using a more symbolic language to describe them, but if the story is largely just stating an interesting event that occurred - something very matter-of-fact - then she would manage do well.

✒ WritingThe above applies here as well! She loves to read, but her main skill lies in visual arts - if she did try a hand at writing, especially something emotional, it would probably come out as very abstract and poetic.  Perhaps a bit difficult to understand to those who are not quite used to how she talks, but she has a fairly well developed vocabulary, and knows a few different languages, which would help aid her writing.

👛 Selling thingsDepends on what she is selling!  Selling artwork online or through art shows is pretty easy for her, since her work tends to speak for itself and unlike with retail, she doesn’t really have to hunt people down and try to convince people to buy things - if someone wants to purchase something, then they come to her.  But with retail, not so much.  She isn’t very inviting or friendly, and while she would try and likely be able to help those who are looking for one specific thing they KNOW they want, she would not be warm or socially skilled enough to coerce someone into buying something they were not really looking to buy.

💾 Using technologyDepends!  She can use some free, pre-installed editing software on library computers such as Paint 3D in order to edit the size, saturation, or throw a filter on the image to make her artwork look more like it does in person since photography tends to dull the pieces a bit, or the lighting alters the colors slightly - but with something more intricate like photoshop, she would need to look at some tutorials, or spend a day or two fiddling with it until she figured it out.  If the program or whatever she may be using is intuitive and set up well enough, she will be able to figure it out, but she is by no means a total natural, able to pick up any piece of technology and just being able to know how it works.  

👊 Combat (hand-to-hand)Sort of?  She does better with weapons as she is malnourished and quite small, thus she could use some assistance, but she can kick, bite, and scratch pretty well.  She has no training.

🏹 Combat (long-range weapons)No.  She has never handled a gun or any sort of bow.  Her best bet would be knife throwing (which she has practiced, but is kind of attached to her knives and would rather not risk losing them by throwing them at someone).

⚔ Combat (close-range weapons)She is pretty skilled with a knife, as they are her preferred weapon!

🐴 Horseback ridingShe has never done this before, so no. 

🕹 Playing gamesIt depends on the game!  FPS’s wouldn’t really be up her alley, as she has pretty poor eyesight so unless she was playing PC, where the screen is fairly close, she would not fare too well.  But with games more story-driven or puzzle oriented, such as indie horror games, she would likely enjoy!  She has not played many video games, but those sorts of games are pretty easy to pick up.

🙊 Keeping secretsAnswered here!

🗣 Public speakingEh, she is fine.  She doesn’t stutter or anything, but due to her typically monotone voice, any speech she gives can become rather boring.  But if she has memorized a speech, she can at the very least breeze through it without too much anxiety about slipping up.  The main problem is the lack of inflections that would make the speech more varied and grasp people’s attention more.  

🎒 LearningShe is a fairly fast learner, so absolutely!  If she wants to learn something, she will throw herself into the craft and try to learn all there is to pertaining to that subject.  She is able to throw herself into subjects she is not very interested in so long as she can see how they will benefit her in the long run.  For example, even with her least favorite school subjects she did very well in because she knew graduating school was important and she could not afford to do poorly in a class simply because it wasn’t as engaging as she would have liked.

📕 TeachingIt depends on the subject, but thing that are straightforward and have a clear answer are very easy for her to teach, but things that are a bit more abstract?  It would depend.  Analyzing literature or other forms of artwork, she would likely do well in as she is fairly familiar with a few different forms of symbolism and various motifs.  So long as she is educated in the subject, she will fare well in teaching it with the right group of students, but she would definitely struggle with those who are not passionate about the subjects and act out.  So with the explanation side of teaching, yes, when it comes to actually dealing with students she would likely not do too well.  It of course also depends on their age, as I stated earlier she is relatively skilled at taking care of children, but she would likely dread being a high school art teacher, unless she was teaching some advanced college-level class with students who actually care about the subject.

[deltastorm101]

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst - A (critical) love letter.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of “a review I thought I could never write because I’m way too emotionally attached to this game which I know insanely, almost creepily well”, mixed with a healthy dose of “I should do everything but write this review because I want to finish school at some point but I have to use the surge of inspiration while it lasts”!

Today we will be talking about Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which was released 2016 as a prequel-ly reboot (saying it like this because for the longest time I’ve thought it to be a prequel but turns out it’s a lot more like a reboot... my bad) to the first Mirror’s Edge from 2008 (which, by the way, still looks fantastic today considering its release year). I will occasionally throw in references and aspects from the first game as well, but this will primarily be about Catalyst.

Time for game 👏 review 👏!

And as always - warning: spoilers. I’ll try to keep the really huge ones out of this or at least mark them well, but going off and playing for yourself first is recommended.

To start this off, I want to say that I initially loved the first Mirror’s Edge - however, only after playing Catalyst, I realized how bad the controls and bugs in it actually were, which is another way of saying Catalyst is a miracle when it comes to naturally flowing controls and crisp and polished looking environments. The city it takes place in, “Glass”, is breathtakingly gorgeous, period. Shiny, clean, it is just on point and one of the biggest reasons I consider it to be my favourite game from the day I first played it, hands down. Not even one of the new Tomb Raider games or one of my childhood-reminiscent games were able to top it and that means something.

The game takes place in an open world map complex under a totalitarian government, drawing parallels to George Orwell’s “1984” – big brother is watching you, all that. A dystopian world if I’ve ever seen one. The open world aspect is one of the best decisions the developers could have made; I have no words to describe how beautiful the different city districts are, and being able to run in freeroam through the city of Glass like parkour runners are meant to feels so much better than being trapped in closed-off levels like it was the case in the first game.

When I first wrote down some key aspects for this review while I was playing it once more, I noted that apparently, you only truly understand the game’s backstory and the protagonists’ origins if you’ve bought and read the comic, Mirror’s Edge Exordium, and that I think it’s not that important because you can well understand what’s going on at the beginning without it – the game starts with Faith, the main protagonist, getting out of jail/a sort of juvenile detention, making her way back into her old circle of friends and family and, of course, old unresolved and new unconsidered problems and conflicts. The comic basically explains what has been messed up by who to make her end up in juvie in the first place and, as I said, it’s not really necessary to know. But, after having bought it now after literal years of consideration, I can say that it’s definitely very nice to know, and totally worth it. There are a lot of elements from the game carefully and lovingly worked into the comic and vice versa (I don’t know what was written first, comic or game, but they fit together very nicely), and just having more reasons, more answers, a larger overview and even partly some explanations for the first game feels... right.

The voice acting is good overall – not strikingly awesome but definitely up there, especially during emotional cutscenes. Sometimes the controls are a bit wonky and Faith might not immediately do what your fingers tell her to but that could definitely be on me - in games where fast reaction is important, quick time events can go wrong occasionally, nothing new. There are some passages you could consider a QTE but they’re being displayed early enough for you to be able to mentally prepare for them as far as I see it. And in my book, that’s a massive improvement from the first game, where you were able to press a button perfectly in time even while having reaction time (= a temporary slow mode) activated, and still watch Faith gracefully fall down the side of the building while flailing her arms in fear because she didn’t grab onto that perfectly grabbable practical white ledge. Why, you ask? I don’t know, ask Faith. Oh, you can’t, obviously made clear by the nasty sound of her hitting the road and her neck being snapped apart. Seriously, I cringed to the moon and back when I first heard that ugly sound. Which is another thing they improved in Catalyst; now all you hear is her quick, raspy, fear-filled breaths and a blissful silence paired with a white death screen after you’ve hit a death barrier. Not the ground, a death barrier. There’s a shitload of them. Which is a pity regarding the fact that a whole lot more out-of-bounds areas would be reachable and playable if there weren’t. Honestly, I find it kind of disappointing that there’s this many invisible walls, fall-through grounds and death barriers. I can see why, conserving computing resources to avoid loading screens, blah blah, but still... let me go off the map, dammit. The game is about a group of people living “off the grid”, why can’t the player actually do that? Hm? Hmmm?

Another aspect tying into this is the social playing mechanic(s), which I found interesting but indeed totally unnecessary. We all know leaderboards of races and stuff, which were incorporated here as setting the best time in short, timed courses (“dashes”), which naturally have been hacked and cheated into ridiculousness. No, RunnerMaster69, I do not believe you ran that dash in three seconds and 420 nanoseconds, I just don’t. Upon completing a dash, you leave an ‘echo’, so basically a ghost other players can compare themselves to, and for you to see which route another player took. Nothing too groundbreaking on that front. There’s a way of tagging locations you’ve been to: so-called Beat Link Emitters (Beat L.E.s) are like little chips shining red in the world you can put down wherever you’re able to stand safely and have them appear in other people’s games to touch, which is a nice way of incorporating a way of saying “Hey, look where I was able to climb!” (And yes, I have abused this system; there’s a glitch making it possible for Faith to float down high buildings onto lower ones, which aren’t death-barriered but not reachable on a normal way. You bet I was a floating gurl putting down Beat L.E.s whereeeeever I could. So much fun. Sorry.)

The same goes for hackable billboards, which can also appear in your friends’ games, but they could have been designed a lot more interestingly. If you hack a billboard, your runner tag appears on it, which consists of a visual symbol, a frame around it, and a background. You can customize the tag in a companion app, which again I didn’t really find necessary. But it is pretty self-explanatory and a nice gimmick if you’re into that kinda stuff.

Maybe an irrelevant aspect: Faith is wearing the same outfit (almost) throughout the whole game. Only at the beginning while getting to the runners’ lair she’s wearing something different and I see missed potential there: let the player run in these clothes, or in the prison clothes, or in the clothes from Mirror’s Edge 1, or in some of the fancy clothes Glass’ high society is wearing, or generally different runner’s attire which still stays true to the style, or Black November garb... endless opportunities, missed. Not at all crucial, but in my opinion maybe better than some different-looking billboard...

Coming back to the (back-)story aspect once more; as with all of today’s big triple-A games, there’s a looooot of documents and recordings to find, to give the player a loooot of backstory, which I found terribly overdone. It always felt like there was too much to collect and too few actual story told; not to mention some story bits not being in either of the games or their collectables, but in a separately sold comic, well done EA, well done.

Additionally, a lot of the documents were about literal history of the state called Cascadia and the ‘conglomerate’ and Omnistat and the November Riots (don’t worry if you have no idea what these words mean, I don’t either...) and regarding the fact that I finished taking history in school with a D ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)... you can imagine I wasn’t that interested in the actual history elements. Give me story anytime, but get the hi- prefix outta here please.

Another thing that I just very recently discovered: Some of the performed parkour movements are inaccurate. Thanks to my new interest of binging parkour tutorial videos I’ve seen actual mistakes in movement (in both games), which I can understand sometimes because some of them have been implemented on purpose and for a reason. For example: A parkour safety roll is performed sideways, with one of your shoulders hitting the floor first and the impact being absorbed and reduced by your whole back rolling over the ground in a diagonal line, ending in one of your feet carrying over the fall’s momentum for you to be able to stand up and run right along, probably even faster than before the drop. In the first game, this was handled straight up terribly; not only did Faith not roll diagonally but straight on her spine, which fuckin hurts if you perform it after you took a fall and is dangerous as all hell, but all her momentum got lost as well - it didn’t make any difference if you took a hard fall, the screen flashed red and you had to build new momentum, or if it was a soft fall with a nice (hurting and dangerous) roll, her stopping dead in her tracks like “Oh wow, did you see that, I made a roll” and then continuing to build new momentum because it all got lost. BUT since this is about Catalyst: Faith is still performing a straight spine-hurting-dangerous-as-all-hell-roll, but at least she keeps her momentum when she does it. Regarding to what I said at the beginning of this semi-rant-paragraph because I’ve “studied” (emphasis on the quotation marks) parkour theory so much at this point, yet am not able to actually perform any moves because I don’t have the strength, stamina or willpower to- Uh, where was I...? Ah, yeah, the reason for the incorrectly performed roll. It’s obvious when you think about it: motion sickness, a gamer’s best friend when it comes to first-person perspective. If Faith was performing a correct roll, it would turn and shake the camera around too much, which could potentially make the player motion sick over time. Period. Look up some first-person safety roll footage on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. So, there’s a reason, and we should be thankful the roll is a straight gymnastics roll. Sorry Faith, looks like your spine and neck have to suffer a little longer. However, I can and will not understand why they have Celeste, a character from the first game, climb up ledges with her knees and elbows. No. NO. Feet first. If you can’t do feet first, then do one foot first and then pull up the rest. If you can’t do that, train more and don’t call yourself a runner yet, doing this for a living on top of I-dunno-how-high-rooftops.

My feelings are kind of ambivalent on the no-guns mechanics - all you can defend yourself with is your fists (and legs and momentum, of course), while in the first game, you could snatch people’s guns and start some weaponized combat. I liked both of these strategies, not really caring when they announced Faith not being able to do shootieshootie-pewpew this time around.

One thing I liked a lot considering the open world aspect is that if you die, you respawn exactly where you last stood on safe ground before dying (except in missions, of course). It makes freeroaming very comfortable because you don’t have to worry about respawn- and checkpoints; you can just try again when you messed up a jump.

They also changed the beacon- and navigation system (“runner’s vision”) a bit too, which was also definitely necessary for the open world (which they’ve praised as a lot less linear, but honestly? It isn’t really. I knew my way around in Glass pretty well after a mere month of playing), but they did include options for how much you want the game to help you. There’s normal runner’s vision, with a red streak appearing every few seconds, showing you exactly where to run; there’s classic runner’s vision, made to be like in the first game, with environmental beacons and indicators being coloured in red when coming close to them and without the red streak; and of course, you can switch it off completely, which I occasionally like to do to test how well I really know my way around in Glass.

The soundtrack is outstanding. Straight up phenomenal. It can empower and hype you up, but can also be relaxing during a relaxing sightseeing trip through Glass. And it’s also great to leave on as background music while studying (I’m making use of that when preparing for graduation exams), or driving.

There is dynamic day- and night time - I liked that a lot, it’s a good way of showing off the lighting at all sorts of times. Only problem I had: a night sky is supposed to be black, not royal blue.

Note: almost all the “problems” I’ve listed here have been made mods for (e.g. more exciting looking billboards, more outfits, a changeable day-night cycle and a black night sky). If I had enough experience with (and patience for) modding, I’d definitely try it myself but the ‘flaws’ aren’t grave enough for me to feel a desire to manipulate and tweak some game files.

Okay, time for a spoiler. Not a bad one, but one that could give you ideas if you know how Mirror’s Edge rolls, or if you’ve played the first game... which is basically a spoiler in itself too. Ahem, anyway.

Towards the end of the game, when I was profoundly convinced of it being one of my all-time favourites, I was like “Yes, finally a game that improves and learns from past mistakes and listens to their players and what they want”... and then came Noah. I bawled my eyes out and I will be forever angry at the devs for doing this. That’s all I’m saying.

That ultimately didn’t stop me from loving the game though. From an objective standpoint I’d say it’s an overall good prequel/reboot/requel/preboot. Faith’s universe became a bit more mainstream but also a lot more polished and they definitely listened to their fans to some degree. From the very subjective standpoint I have written this review from, I’m saying that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst holds a very special place in my heart and I am truly glad it saw the light of day, after everyone waiting 8 years for it to be released after the first game. (I didn’t wait quite that long; I got Mirror’s Edge 1 in January 2016 and was completely and utterly hooked and hyped for Catalyst in May 2016.)

And that concludes it. If you’ve read this far – thank you. I’m aware that this is a bit different from my other reviews tone-wise - I have put every ounce of sass I possess into this because I... felt like it :D I hope it was fun to read!