#but I lose that ability to understand when you’re actively putting more money in her pockets

[just-a-cinnamon-bun]

Having a fearful moment where I think one of my friends might be transphobic.

[ddarker-dreams]

Contractual Obligations II. Yan Childe x Reader

Warnings: Unwanted physical contact, general yandere themes. Word count: 2.2k. →Part I. 

The sound of heavy, wooden doors shutting behind you feels like a premonition of what is to come. 

Fiddling with your skirt, your eyes dart around, taking in Liyue’s signature rich architecture. Fatui building or not, they still must abide by Liyue’s aesthetic. You thought being surrounded by your home’s design would bring solace. Warm shades of mahogany with gold motifs are illuminated by paper lanterns, giving a glow that would be otherwise pleasant, if not for the circumstances. 

You had anticipated a long wait. Ekaterina, upon hearing your name, informed that you would be seen without delay. The others in the lobby of Northland Bank grumbled at this, much to your embarrassment. It’s no secret that getting appointments here is a time-consuming endeavor. Sailors, business owners, and Qixing’s personal assistants alike had to wait. 

For whatever reason, you were allowed to skip ahead of the queue. The glaring special treatment is bound to spread rumors. Now, here you stand, unable to quell your nerves. This is no different than strolling into a ravenous lion’s den. The vulnerability you feel now makes you wish you were facing a carnivorous beast, at least then you might have hope to defend yourself. 

Even with the unexpected privilege of not waiting in the lobby, you’ve been standing here in this private room for a while now. Thirty minutes is your guess, impatience creeping up on you. Your shoulders slump, a sigh leaving your lips. There’s lots of work to be done when you’re done here, time a precious resource. Wasting it to get answers from the blight on your life is infuriating. 

Figures, the one time you need to speak with Childe, he’s nowhere to be seen. Every other time he’d show up at the least opportune moments. He has a habit of appearing uninvited and ruining what would’ve been a pleasant day. Lost in thought, you consider all that must be done when you return to your parent’s shop, too occupied with your thoughts to notice a looming figure. Two hands go out to cover your eyes, the world suddenly going dark. Heart pounding against your chest, the touch is too unexpected, heat rising in your body as protection.

“Guess who?” Childe hums into your ear with a singsong tone. His scent reminds you of the ocean, fresh and light. 

You frown, noticing how close he is to you, his chest pressed against your back. Does Childe not know what personal space is? “The source of my problems.” 

He lets out a scandalized gasp and slinks in front of you. Childe boasts a lighthearted demeanor, mirth dancing in his eyes, and a tight-lipped smile on his face. Inauthentic as ever, you note. You’ve seen what lays dormant behind the thin veil of boyish charm. The infinite darkness that you never wish to see again. He’s still closer to your person than you’d prefer, but pointing it out won’t do any good, so you decide to overlook it. Picking your battles wisely is vital when speaking with Childe.

“Is that the greeting I get, after rushing all the way here?” Childe sighs. Before you could respond, you notice a new scent in the air, unmistakably leather. It takes you a moment to identify the source. A thin, wispy trail of smoke rises from Childe’s leather gloves that had been touching you just prior. Does that not hurt? Childe catches you staring and laughs. 

“So you didn’t notice,” Childe sounds amused, lifting his hands to inspect them. Raising his hands to his mouth, he bites the tip of his gloves and pulls them off. “Looks like I caught you.” 

He nods to your necklace which is tucked beneath your blouse, scarlet light shining through the fabric. Instinctually, you cover it with your hand, the jewel warm to the touch. Childe’s abrupt physical touch had activated your Vision. It’s only when you take a few deep breaths that the telling glow fades away, but the damage is already done. Did he plan this on purpose? Whatever the case may be, Childe is the last person you want having this information.

Sensing your apprehension, he speaks up. “Relax, I already assumed as much, but my interest is undeniably piqued. Why hide your Vision? This isn’t Inazuma, I was under the impression Visions were revered in Liyue.” 

You don’t owe Childe an explanation, but your intuition tells you he’s not going to let this go anytime soon. This isn’t what you came here for, you remind yourself. Don’t let him distract you.

“It’s a long story,” comes your dismissive answer, glancing around to see if anyone else had seen, even though it’s only you two in here. “Can I talk about what I came here for, please?” 

Childe closes his eyes, humming while considering your proposition. Instead of walking behind the desk in the room, he sits on a bench against the wall, motioning for you to come over. At your blatant hesitation, he decides to pester you, which doesn’t come as a shock. 

“What’s up with that look? There’s plenty of room,” Childe pats the spot next to him for extra emphasis. A dangerous twinkle shines in his eyes with a mischievous smile to match it. “Though, I wouldn’t complain should you come to sit on my lap instead.” 

Your cheeks flush brightly, a weak glare being sent his way which he laughs at. “I would never…” 

“Sure, sure. Come over already, it’s the least you could do, considering you just scorched a pair of my favorite gloves.” Childe’s carefree tone doesn’t match his scolding words, stretching out his arm on the back of where you were supposed to sit. Gingerly stepping over the smoking gloves on the floor, you wonder if it’s somehow a fire hazard, but assume Childe’s Hydro Vision could put it out if need be. You stop just short of sitting down, gnawing on your bottom lip at this new internal dilemma. Glaring daggers at his outstretched arm doesn’t seem to faze him. 

“The offer still stands.” He teases, leading you to huff and take your seat by him. You try to ignore the close physical proximity, but it’s rather difficult, as your thighs are touching. Is this a common theme for Snezhnayans? Why is Childe so needlessly touchy? Maybe you don’t want to know. Childe drums his fingers, staring at you with dangerous intent. 

You’ve wasted enough time here. Hoping to move on to the pressing issue, your lips part without further delay. “So, as I was--”

Childe places a finger to your lips, in an act that leaves you speechless. What is his problem? Furrowing your eyebrows together, you have half a mind to scorch the finger in front of you, but dismiss the thought when remembering his strength. Damn him for getting you riled up with such ease. 

“Uh uh uh,” Childe chastises with a shake of his head. “Not yet. Business can come later. First, you’re going to tell me about that.” 

You don’t need to look down to see he’s pointing at your hidden necklace. “It’s... personal. I have no reason to tell you.” 

“Oh, sweet [First]. I wasn’t asking. You did just burn my gloves, didn’t you? Instead of charging you Mora, which -- no offense -- you don’t have enough of to replace it, I want an explanation. I think that’s a fair deal.” 

So he is going to hold that mishap over you. Messing around with a debt collector and money seems counterintuitive, giving a quick explanation the plausible option. Whatever it takes to get him to drop the sensitive topic. Childe must have a semblance of tact to have made it this far in life after all. 

“Fine, fine. It’s not really that remarkable a reason. I have a younger sister, Chunghua. We used to be inseparable as kids. More than anything, I just wanted her to be happy. You’d do anything to accomplish that, y’know? It was… all my fault, really. She wanted a Vision like mine more than anything -- hair accessories, Mora, pretty outfits -- she never cared for that. 

I had no idea why I was given a Vision and not her. She was the one who prayed to every Archon at night for it, the one who burnt incense and gave offerings, not me. I could see her gradually losing hope every day that she woke up without one, like a piece of her was breaking off. At meals, she’d just… stare, silently, at the Vision around my neck. I don’t blame her for starting to hate me. I didn’t notice until it was too late.”

Taking a deep breath, your eyes fall to your lap. “I only wanted to cheer her up. To see her smile like she used to. When I first got my Vision, Chunghua would ask me to do these little tricks. Forming animals or whatever, stuff kids like. Anyways… I tried doing it again one morning. Needless to say, it didn’t go well, she practically screeched at me. I had no idea that was how she felt. But, yeah. That’s why I hide my Vision. See, not that interesting, right?” 

Childe’s expression feels impossible to read. You’re not sure why you even shared so much, especially with him, but his lack of interruption made you keep going. Maybe you weren’t expecting him to sit perfectly still and listen to every word. Whatever the case, you clear your throat, desperate to clear the gloomy atmosphere. 

“She would’ve reacted the same eventually,” Childe says after a moment of deliberation. You tilt your head, the serious answer was unexpected. “That’s what I think, though only older siblings could understand.”

There’s a brief tenderness in his words that leaves you speechless. If he’s acting, you have to commend his abilities, because right now it almost feels like he’s being genuine. Playing with a strand of your hair, you look past him and clear your throat.

“Yes, well, I suppose you’re right.” 

Childe’s somber appearance twists into a more impish visage. “Why don’t I give Chunghua a talking to? It’s a shame seeing your cute face so sullen.” 

Mortified, you shake your head. “There’s no need for that.” 

“Hmm… a shame. I could really take care of everything if you just let me.” 

“Somehow I doubt that,” you shrug with a frown. “What you could help me with is this ridiculous situation at the shop! Why are there Fatui guards outside the front doors? It’s scaring away customers.” 

“Oh, that’s what this is about?” 

Unbelievable. Childe continues to test your patience at every turn. After your previous conversation outside Liyue, which you’re still hoping was a bad joke, you’d noticed an increased presence of Fatui around the shopping district. That was bad enough for business. Now that they’re stationed right outside your parent’s shop, it’s far worse. Rumors have begun to circulate that you’re somehow involved with the Fatui. This has Childe’s doing written all over it.

“Why else would I be here?” 

He smiles and you immediately regret the rhetorical question. “Because you missed me, of course.” 

“I missed when there weren’t Fatui around the shop. Please, I don’t know what you did, but it’s going to be harder to get money for...” you gulp as if saying it cements the reality of your situation, but power through. “Paying off the loan with this drop in revenue.”

“Tempting as that is, I’m already happy with the results. I got you to come to me and learned more about you. From my position, this is a sizeable gain.” 

Everything from your head to your toes feels hot as if molten lava is stirring inside. He’s not taking you seriously, like the time at the stream and all the times before that. Memories flash in your mind. Your father hunched over letters containing bills, frowning, hair going greyer by the day. Your mother, sneaking out when she thinks you and your sister are asleep to pawn off her old jewelry. Even Chunghua, who offered to take time away from her education to help at the shop. It hits you like a pile of bricks, heart twisting painfully and tears threatening to spill from your eyes. 

“What do I have to do,” Your voice is so low that Childe has to careen his head to hear it. He blinks, incredulous, waiting for further clarification. Each breath you take feels like a losing battle, your composure threatening to shatter. “For you to stop… whatever this is. I’ll do anything. Give anything. Please, just leave my family out of it.” 

Childe crosses his legs and leans in closer to you, arm secured tight around your shoulder.

“Didn’t I tell you already?” 

His breath is warm against you, lips ghosting over the skin of your neck. He presses his lips softly against your pulse. Smiling, he notices how it quickens underneath his touch, all too pleased with your physical reactions. 

“That what I want to take is you.” 

[chunhua-s]

WITH OUR HEARTS CONNECTED  ➽ WAKATOSHI USHIJIMA X READER

PART OF THE HAIKYUU SOULMATES! ONESHOT SERIES

genre: fluff

soulmate au: you are able to feel the emotions that your soulmate feels through the bond you share

warnings: none

you don’t think you’ll ever get used to this rush — the strange feelings that swell up so deeply inside your chest and cause the very wind to lose itself in your lungs. they’re so sudden and far in between that whenever they do happen, you’re left reeling from the weight of them as they slam into you. on those days, all the intense feelings that your soulmate unknowingly sends to you through your bond render you utterly exhausted, until you’d be able to collapse into his waiting arms. the strong emotions that so often had your knees jerking and your chest tightening would all melt into something so tender and undoubtedly affectionate when you got to see him at the end of each day, when he bent down so that he could press his nose and his lips against your neck and inhale the cocoa butter smell that he’d long since grown familiar with. his hands would rub gentle circles into your hips as you both came down from the high of his adrenaline, allowing the rush from countless drills and practice matches to slowly flow out of your bodies and leaving you both to finally relax into the other’s embrace.

it was certainly an experience to be ushijima wakatoshi’s soulmate. you’re one of the few people who are born with one — one of only a handful of others who had a partner whose heart would be tightly bound to your own for eternity. thus, you learned at the age of three that your feelings and emotions would be shared through the bond you had with your soulmate and vice versa. at that age you weren’t able to understand the implications of what that meant, and it became hard to identify what you were feeling separately from what you felt through your connected hearts; days where you felt so inexplicably happy that you sought around the house looking for something to do (these days, for ushijima, had been the days when he could play volleyball with his father in their garden); days where you were restless and burning with the urge to fill your long and dragging days with whatever could take that need to be active away (and similarly, those feelings were thanks to ushijima, whose father began taking him to volleyball camps as soon as his matriarchal household allowed it). thanks to those days, you ended up finding your place of relief in dance; your mother had the brilliant thought to get you into it when she realized your restless days were becoming more frequent as you grew older, and so both she and your father put together money and enrolled you into classes after school. thankfully, your being active helped to burn away all the extra energy that had sometimes caused you sleepless nights, and overtime, you eventually found your passion with dance and decided to nurture what ability you had further into your years.

it was when you grew older, nearing the age of 6, when you were hit with strong, torrential feelings of hopelessness and desolation, sometimes strong enough where it would affect you for entire days. the sensation itself wasn’t necessarily sudden, having been building up, like droplets of water slowly filling into a bucket. when that bucket finally overflowed, it felt as if you’d lost something — as if it had been taken away from you, and had gone to somewhere you couldn’t reach. it felt as if your words couldn’t find their way past your throat, stopped by an invisible hand around your neck that you couldn’t go against if you tried to. it made you want to cry and hold yourself, wondering what could be causing your soulmate to feel this way. during those days, you wished for nothing more than to reach out for them somehow, to hug them so tightly until those emotions would be a distant memory. you wanted to take their pain away and make them happy again — to let them know that they had someone who would do their best to ease their suffering in whatever way she could, however they needed from her. the feelings that followed after could only be described as cold and lonely: your head would feel so blank and empty, smothered by a fog that provided you no answers to questions you didn’t have. your days became blurred as you went through your motions and your only solace was in dance (ushijima’s would be volleyball). you sometimes felt so incredibly frustrated that you would lock yourself away and brood, sometimes you were left feeling so broken and abandoned, and no matter how muted the feelings would sometimes be (as if your soulmate was trying to push them away from his mind) they still managed to twist your heart as you could only imagine what must have been happening to your soulmate. 

you couldn’t talk to anyone in your family about it for nearly a year because you didn’t know what was wrong, only that these weren’t your feelings and that they were being shared to you through your bond. your parents didn’t know how to handle it because neither of them had a soulmate; aside from basic knowledge, they were in the dark on how to help you. and so, you could do nothing but try and push as many positive feelings as you could through your bond, hoping that somehow, it would reach your partner’s heart. “i’m here for you” ; “it hurts, doesn’t it? if there was anyway i could help to take your pain away, i would do it in a heartbeat” ; “if you can feel what i’m wishing for you right now, i hope it can bring you some comfort” ; “you’re not alone even if it feels like it, I promise.” it was the only way you could think of to help them through whatever was hurting them so much, and you prayed to whoever would listen that it would lessen the pain they felt. (it was after meeting ushijima that you learned of his parents’ divorce, and even though he was no longer grieving, you could never forget the helplessness and sorrow that he’d unintentionally shared with you as a child. you promised him that day that, whatever it would be, you would always be there to hold him through moments of pain and hurt. he smiled at you so tenderly, the sight of his normally stern expression melting with so much love, and assured you that he would do anything he could to make sure you would never hurt the way he had to).

as you grew older, you started searching online about soulmates, specifically about how you would know when you met them. the answers you found were, at the best, incredibly vague and did nothing to quell your uncertainties and budding anxieties. every forum and vlog told you the same thing: “it’s like the world suddenly grows brighter and you learn how to breathe for the very first time!” or “meeting him changed everything for me, it was like i finally found something i didn’t even know i was missing, you know?” no — you didn’t know, that had been your whole reason for searching in the first place! it didn’t take long for you to give up, growing frustrated after coming across one blog that said “you’ll know when it happens, trust me.”

at the time, you couldn’t predict just how accurate those words would be.

the ac inside the gymnasium effortlessly seeped into the sleeves of your kitagawa daiichi pe jacket, drawing goosebumps across your skin like a pattern. and yet, you felt an indescribable kind of warmth flooding through your entire body as the world around you suddenly grew muted; the screams and cries of your schoolmates, the blow of the whistle that signaled your school’s call for a time-out, it all turned to white noise that faded out of your mind, all turned irrelevant in the face of him. green eyes that reminded you of summer leaves and olive trees stared up at you from the court during his team’s discussion period, and you found yourself drowning in their depth when he became the only thing you could see. his gaze was wide and his body was turned ever so slightly towards where you stood, as if he would take off running to you had it not been for his game. the pounding of your heart, the way the sound of it filled up your ears and the way his heavy, exhausted breathing echoed out to you were like the beating of taiko drums, loud enough that they drowned out the chants of “go, go, kitagawa!” on your side, the overwhelming shouts of “shiratorizawa!” from his. nothing else mattered to you in that moment other than him.

he took off towards the doors of the gym floor as soon as the award ceremony ended and the coach had dismissed his team, not sparing even the slightest second once his gaze found yours again. you didn’t even worry about the fact that your school had just lost its match, or that your friends would be looking for you so that you could leave together. you hurried to meet him, running down the stairs two at a time (forget that you’d injured your ankle during one of your practices, the pain was near non-existent to you in that moment). you found each other in the wide hallway; he stood before you, just as breathless as you felt as bodies passed between you. hesitantly, you took one step forward, and when he did the same, every bit of fear and uncertainty melted away from your body until you were standing directly before him. the light of the sun caressed his skin with such a tenderness, bathed him in yellow lights as his hair stuck to his forehead and his chest rose with his heavy breathing. he was sweaty and worn down from his match, but with the way his olive green eyes glittered like green jewels, he was painted in the sight of something so vibrant and breathtaking; to you he was the most beautiful person you’d ever seen. your own heart was beating so wildly against your rib cage that you feared it would break through and fall into his hands; your breathing felt as if you’d just danced for hours and your throat felt full of all the words you’d wanted to say to your destined partner when you met them for the first time. now, they all poured out from your heart and gathered on top of your tongue like a weight.

he was the one to speak first, the natural baritones of his voice filling up your ears and forbidding that you should hear anything else other than him. “i’m ushijima wakatoshi.”

“i know.”

“oh.”

it was the first thing you thought to say, and despite the initial embarrassment you felt (because how did you even think to respond like that?) gentle laughter bubbled up from your chest and fell out from your lips. you weren’t sure why you were laughing, but your first awkward interaction with your soulmate somehow managed to remove what bit of nervousness sat lurking beneath everything else you were feeling at that moment. “sorry,” you gave him, taking a deep breath and offering your hand for him to shake. “i’m (l/n) (y/n), it’s nice to finally meet you.”

the tender smile he gave to you as he took your outstretched hand was an image that you’d permanently burned into your mind.

since then, the both of you have only grown so much more together. you learned that he wasn’t the most expressive person, where the people around you so often believed him to be an impenetrable man, nothing but the southpaw canon, the dominating power inside shiratorizawa’s volleyball club. to you, he’s your closest confidant, whose heart interlaced so tightly with your own that it was never difficult for you to understand what he’s thinking or feeling in any given moment. while his world meets the unmoving volleyball freak, you’ve been able to recognize the tell-tale signs of his happiness by the fluttering of your own heart since you were three, could so easily take one glance at his eyes and understand when he was feeling particularly affectionate after a long day of practice. the subtle lifts of his lips when he got a text from his father, or the way his brows would furrow if he was struggling with a subject he didn’t like. and the honest and pure smiles he would take to wearing whenever you held his face between your arms and kissed his forehead, his nose, each rise of his cheeks and the very corner of his lips, you get to see everything that your world didn’t get to see. and why would they? to him, no one else needs to see him like this — it doesn’t matter to him whether or not the world understands him for more than his powerful spikes; with your heart connected to his, he has everything he’d ever dream of having.

you remember one particular day during the summer. you’d met with him briefly before he went to practice, letting him know that you were heading home early instead of heading to your dance practice, the headache from your newly-done box braids wearing you down. and so, he gently kissed your forehead and reminded you to take painkillers to help. (“try and drink a lot of water,” “do you have your silk bonnet?” “i could come and help you apply your oils later on,” “no i won’t be too tired after practice. it won’t matter if it’s for you.” you could tell he felt the obvious fluttering and the gratitude in your heart when he smiled down at you and squeezed your hand in his.) after wishing him good luck, and giving him a swift kiss when you were sure no one was there to see the pair of you, you took the bus straight home where you showered, ate a light snack and immediately crashed into your bed.

what woke you up wasn’t the six pm alarm that you set so that you could start your homework, but rather a sudden spike in your heart that had your blood burning beneath your skin and rushing like molten gold. it was the same feeling that would flow down to you through your bond, during ushijima’s games where you knew him to be domineering and competitive, and yet, this one was somehow different. rather than the familiar sense of we’ll win this round, no doubt about it, the same unyielding confidence that filled you up with pride, you were instead left reeling from an overwhelming need to crush, crush, crush! it was intense and all-consuming, like the heat of a particularly hard dance number that so often emptied your lungs of that well-needed air and replaced it instead with pure and unfiltered adrenaline. a shiver ran up your spine, forcing you to sit up and hold a hand over your chest. the pump, pump, pump of your heart was reminiscent of a long day of practice, the satisfaction that you felt when you finally completed an entire routine without mistakes. it was exhilarating and consumed every thought you had, and you had to wonder if it was the match against that college team that had wakatoshi feeling this way.

the bond you shared with him told you that it wasn’t.

“i met two volleyball players today,” he explained to you easily, his voice sounding relaxed as his legs nestled you between them. his hands worked their way between each box of hair, applying drops of lavender oil and using one finger to gently massage the pain out of your scalp. you did nothing to hide the content in your voice, humming at his actions and closing your eyes to the relaxing feeling of his hands in your head.

“is that what had you so worked up earlier?”

his answer came to you in a slight nod that you caught in your mirror, his hands not pausing in their journey over your hair. your eyes held on to the reflection of his face, you watched with a smile as his lips pursed and you felt the remnants of that intense competetive fire fluttering through your bond as he remembered the two boys he met that day. “they’re interesting,” he said to you, but you knew that there was much more to it through your connected hearts. i will crush them, the words still echoed in your mind.

“you’re excited to play against them,” it wasn’t a question, left your lips with assuredness as you tilted your head back to meet his eyes. in them, you could see the very same fire lighting the green colour until it they burned like liquid lightning. when he nodded, you turned yourself around so that you could face him, lifting yourself to your knees as his hands fell from your head and instead to your waist, where the tips of your braids tickled his knuckles. “play a fun game against them and win, okay?” you whispered with the palms of your hands against his cheeks, gently caressing the skin there and placing a tender kiss to his lips. you felt your heart swelling up with every ounce of love you felt for the boy-turning-man before you, and felt it all multiply with his own affections until both your hearts were singing in sweet harmony. he smiled and chased your lips before you were able to pull back before wrapping his arms around you and placing his head in the valley of your neck.

now, as you feel a million things running through your heart, you remember the same sensation that had woken you up that evening. the overwhelming urge to crush him, crush number 10, that near consumed your entire being has you cheering louder than you ever had in your life as the fifth and final set against karasuno drew closer and closer to its end. wakatoshi is absolutely relentless, each ball he shoots over the net a command for them to stay down, to drop the ball and crumble in the face of his power. it has you burning so viscously that your hands tightly clutch over the metal bar to the point of cramping. annoyed, impatient, eager, they all choke the breath from your lungs and force you to gasp for air at the summit, and yet, you can feel his heart singing on the nodes of pleasure. he’s having fun, you know this when he glances up at you from the benches during the final time out. through your connected hearts, you’re able to feel every rise and fall that follows his jumps, his spikes, his serves; every bit of emotion that he feels wounds around the red string that binds you together and you share them as your own. as you watch your soulmate blend into his element, you support him in the best way you know how, taking everything he gives to you and pushing it into your voice so that you’re the loudest in the audience.

and through your connected hearts, you’re able to feel the love and gratitude that he bears for you.

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

haikyuu!! soulmate au taglist: @nishiya-is-baby @aiiishiiiteru

wow this was longer than i expected it to be?? i decided to cut it short since the rest of it would delve into the rest of the shiratorizawa vs karasuno match and i didn’t really want to repeat what everyone already knows happened :v sorry if it’s a lil over the place, my brain’s been filled up with ushi brainrot and i kinda let myself go on this one. im not sure if i wrote him the way everyone likes but i tried to emphasize on him being more than just “ushijima the southpaw,” especially during his family’s divorce. i hope i did a good job trying to translate what i think he might have been going through during that time? in my head i feel as if his homelife with his mother would be a kind of smothering place where he wasn’t able to open up to her, and when his father was suddenly gone one day, he didn’t have anyone to show his heart to. and so the reader would do her best to let him know that, even if they haven’t met yet, she was there for him, that she could feel his pain, and that she wouldn’t ever make him hide those from her. she wanted him to know that whatever it was, he could express it to her without fearing those feelings being brushed off.

this is part of a series, so please send me an ask or dm if you’d like to be apart of a taglist! i’m currently taking request for haikyuu characters and soulmate au’s, so please come and leave your requests for those as well! thank you for reading!  ♡

previous: asahi azumane | next stop: hajime iwaizumi!

[betafibiiiiiivviiixiiixxixxxiv]

so i saw a take about eula that made me mad so here’s my (biased) rant about her

i’m pro-end user license agreement, i think she’s cute, not just appearance-wise but personality-wise too

(didn’t pull her tho bc the kinda obvious powercreeping made me salty, might pull her when her rerun comes around just to have her and not level her)

but basically the gist of this rant is gonna be i think people unfairly mischaracterize her and i’m gonna talk about why i think she’s a good bean based on the two things about her that i’ve seen people mention they dislike the most: the way she talks and her relationship to/feelings about her family

disclaimer: a lot of this is my opinion and my interpretation of her character, probably has a lot of typos

this will probably be really like

incomprehensible i’m tired sorry but i’ll try to make sense

okay so

a lot of people from what i’ve seen dislike eula bc of the way she talks, but at least try to understand why she might talk the way she does

putting aside the reason why she talked the way she did to the people of mondstadt during her story quest (i’ll get to that later), let’s talk about her whole focus on vengeance first

imo her whole thing about vengeance is a shield of sorts for her

many of the people of mondstadt would only ever see her as a descendant of the lawrence clan, someone who means to do mondstadt harm

so might as well give them what they expect, even if it’s not what you really mean

her story in her character profile even says this

“Her grievances and vengeance are but a habit, a signal, a shield.

“What remarks she should just laugh off, what concepts she should bear in mind given her unique circumstances and position...“

one has to remember that eula is a descendant of the lawrence clan, a clan that is hated in mondstadt bc of how corrupted they became during the era of the aristocracy

it’s likely that when she was a child she was ostracized even though the sins of her family, her ancestors, aren’t her own

even if she wanted to make friends with the other children of mondstadt, they were probably too distrustful of her

in her story in her character profile, there’s no mention of jean or diluc in regards to her past, but amber is mentioned to have been her friend even before eula joined the knights of favnious

it’s likely amber was one of her few friends growing up, if not her only friend

and amber is a pretty easy-going and welcoming person; she probably didn’t care about the way eula spoke all that much and bc they’re friends she understands the feelings eula hides behind her seemingly contentious words

anyways about her and the people of mondstadt

the people of mondstadt only see the family she’s a part of; they don’t see her

from her profile story:

“Eula has been viewed with contempt by the citizens of Mondstadt since birth. The Lawrence name stands for a legacy of depravity and despotism that stains Mondstadt's past and scars the minds of its citizens even to this day.

“So, whenever Eula appears, old wounds resurface. People despise the aristocracy, and this does no favors for her reputation.”

“In truth, Eula is nothing like the fearsome predator many imagine her to be. On the contrary, constantly being met with prejudice at every turn means she is often the victim.

“At one time, shops would refuse to sell her their goods, restaurants would put no care and attention into her orders, and the citizens on her patrol route would refuse to cooperate with her. So, Eula's work is fraught with difficulties.“

and in her voicelines:

“The life of a Lawrence doesn't include much worth talking about... Basically, whatever you say, whatever you do, people will always despise you and treat you like a potential threat to society. It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, though. Before I'd joined the Knights, good grief... I couldn't even buy groceries. Even Good Hunter and Mondstadt General Goods wouldn't take my money.”

“People tell me that if I just spoke more softly, or was more polite, or acted more deferentially, others may find it easier to forgive me, but the only reason they think that way is because they've never been branded a pariah before. There is no easy path to redemption when you're a social pariah. I'm more inclined to stop tiptoeing around everyone all the time and just get out there and make them respect me the old-fashioned way! As in, we square off and if they win, I humbly accept my punishment, but if they lose, they must acquiesce to my demands... Such as... Well, I mean, if I want to buy a loaf of bread, take my darn money, for crying out loud!“

the people of mondstadt wronged her and were mean to her simply bc of the blood that runs through her veins, and i think it’s bc of that she says that she’ll have her vengeance

imo her act of vengeance against the people of mondstadt is being a faultless knight, a knight who completes their duties flawlessly and is without reproach

from her story in her profile:

“...she is a law-abiding citizen and has never harmed another Mondstadter in her life. She may come across as having a somewhat frosty demeanor, but she is entirely scrupulous in her speech and conduct.”

“When Jean sends a new recruit to track down Eula in the wilds and deliver a new set of verbal orders, they always receive the same response: ‘If you have to resort to tasking the descendant of your former oppressors with doing your work, then perhaps you are not as strong as I thought’

“But despite the antagonism in her words, she will complete her newly assigned tasks to perfection. The new recruit is invariably forced to admit that with her abilities, it is no wonder she was able to achieve a captaincy within just a few years of joining the Knights.“

and honestly i just think she’s a tsundere

my evidence, your honor?

her “About Us: Feud” voiceline:

“Our feud is for the long term, so rather than get payback on a piecemeal basis, I think I'll make things easier for myself and wait for a day when I can settle the score once and for all. It could be in ten years, could even be twenty... But don't worry, I won't forget. In the meantime, I'll need you to take good care of yourself and have a happy, healthy life, okay?”

anyways about the way she spoke in her story quest

one first has to learn that this was what she was taught that way since she was young

reading up on the lawrence family based on her profile story, the renmants of the lawrence family are pretty much a cult i think

“The Lawrence Clan may have been overthrown a long time ago, but they have never given up hope of one day rising again and reclaiming their place as the ruling class. So that they are always prepared for this monumental moment, their offspring are subjected to an educational regime so unbelievably harsh that it is considered borderline abusive.

“’Noble obligations’ must be performed to absolute perfection in every possible sense, and these obligations cover etiquette, ritual, and study as well as cooking and other domestic chores.”

and also

she clearly doesn’t talk that way all the time?

personally the reason i think the mondstadters we talked to were like ‘ugh, this again?’ is bc all of the lawrence clan does it, and eula is part of the lawrence clan so it’s like, expected of her to talk that way

but the main reason she talked that way was to give an example to the traveler

she didn’t talk that way to us when we first met her, and she didn’t talk that way to amber and sarah

and some people think she still supports her family? like man

i don’t know if we went through the same story quest or not

but eula quite clearly ruined a plan of her uncle’s that was to harm mondstadt? and during that quest she quite clearly shows her disdain for her family and her family’s ideals?

“I’ve never experienced the age of ‘glory’ you always speak of, and I’ve never understood our family’s incessant pursuit of it. [...] The Lawrence Clan should never and will never become what you’ve dreamed it to be!”

not to mention her voicelines where she makes fun of her family often:

“Knights and aristocrats share the same cultural heritage, but the knights had enough sense to do away with all the superfluous detail.“

“Aristocratic etiquette is all just for show... Just smile and nod along! I was forced to learn all of the rules by heart, but even I don't take them that seriously.”

“I heard that bard sing a few songs about the Lawrence Clan... They were lighthearted and funny stories that mocked the clan in a way I've never heard anyone else do. Even I couldn't help but burst out laughing... And for this, he must pay!”

“Technically, aged Dandelion Wine should be poured into a silver goblet and allowed to breathe for 12 minutes, then you're supposed to add ice cubes, ideally so 60% of the ice is submerged beneath the wine. I refuse to do all that though, it's not worth the hassle.”

and not to mention this voiceline where she outright states that if her family crossed the line she’d end her family herself:

“If my family members refuse to change their corrupt ways, or worse, continue to cause active harm in Mondstadt... I should be the one to end them, along with the Lawrence name itself. For once, it'd be a family obligation I'd actually enjoy. And once the deed was done, I'd be free to pick any name I wanted. Or even let you pick one for me!“

also about her saying she wants to avenge her kin in her voicelines, (this is me kinda reaching, ngl) imo it could just be her sarcasm, or she could be trying to change mondstadt’s view of the lawrence clan so that others in the family like her who aren’t as attatched to the aristocratic customs and share her beliefs can walk freely in mondstadt’s streets without fear of reprisal, which can be evidenced by this voiceline:

“The name Lawrence only became a social stigma after the clan fell from grace. It was once an honor to be called a Lawrence, but unfortunately, most people have forgotten about that part of history. The Grand Master says that I am performing rather well as a knight, and that if it's not enough to restore the honor of the Lawrence name, it's certainly a strong rebuttal against the one-sided opinions so many people throw around. I'm quite satisfied with that appraisal.“

furthermore based on her voiceline about barbara, i’m pretty sure she wants to be liked? to be acknowledged in a good way?

“Everyone loves her. What's her secret? Maybe I could learn a thing or two from her... Hmm, or maybe not. I can't imagine a ‘Shining Idol’ would want anything to do with a descendant of a depraved dynasty.“

like, she doesn’t want to be thought of as just a descendant of the lawrence clan

she wants to be known for who she is, not her family

i think this is why she avoids lisa too, since lisa would have read all about her family and she doesn’t want lisa’s judgement

lastly, what she learned from amber’s grandfather, found in her profile story:

“From him, she learned an open-mindedness and down-to-earth persistence that she had heretofore not possessed. Before grievance and vengeance, before clan and outsider, one must find "oneself" first.

“One's way of living, self-preservation, objects of perseverance...

“Then call it "grievance" and name it "vengeance" — that will not change its essential strength and goodness.

“It would be Eula's very own gentle path of revenge...“

she didn’t turn against the people of mondstadt and join her family in their crusade for glory even though the people of mondstadt treated her horribly

she instead strove to be someone worthy of being respected, someone who is more than just a part of a disgraced and despised family

anyways i think that’s all i wanted to say

basically tldr: end user license agreement is a sweet and gentle person and i like her very much

[twstarchives]

Jade Leech・Voice Lines

Additional Voice Lines

Beans Camo event card

Scary Dress event card

School Uniform - R

Unlock Card “I was just preparing some tea. Why don’t you take a break?”

Groovy “I’d like to enjoy my time here on land.”

Home Setting “Pardon me.”

Home Transitions “Floyd comes to visit my classes every once in a while. He may not look like it, but he’s rather clingy.”

“History on land is quite interesting. It’s very different from the stories they tell us in the sea.”

“Clothes feel so restrictive... It’s been a while since I came on land, but I’m still not used to them.”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “How coincidental it is that we meet here. ...Hm? What’s the matter? Of course it was only coincidence.”

Home Taps “My grades? Hm... I apologize, but I’m not interested in receiving any judgment from others.”

“Are you familiar with terrariums at all? Caring for miniature gardens is difficult, but I truly enjoy it.”

“Riddle is very dedicated; I respect him as a classmate. I’m not sure what he thinks about me, however.”

“I don’t particularly enjoy having attention on me. I’d say Azul is the best suited for attracting others.”

“Oh dear, you might hurt yourself if you keep acting so rash.”

PE Uniform - R

Unlock Card “I’m not keen on the idea of running around, but... I will do it if I must.”

Groovy “Let’s strive to be neither good nor bad.”

Home Setting “Now then, we must work our hardest.”

Home Transitions “What’s the matter? ...It makes it difficult to keep going when you’re watching me move so intently.”

“Initially, it was very difficult for me to run, much less stand on my feet. But I’ve gotten quite used to it now.”

“I think I’d like to eat something light before exercising. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I tend to get hungry easily.”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “Keeping up your fitness is an important factor in enjoying the mountains and all of our surrounding nature. What do you say about joining me?”

Home Taps “My parents trained me in the art of self-defense starting from a young age. That’s something I’m very grateful for even today.”

“I thought we’d be cleaning the Mostro Lounge today... but it seems Floyd has run off again.”

“I picked some odd plants I found in the mountains to grow in my terrarium. I hope I raise them well.”

“I’m not the best at Flying. ...Heheh, who am I kidding? I’m not as awful as Azul.”

“Are you perhaps...? Nevermind, it’s nothing. Bravery and recklessness aren’t the same.”

Lab Coat - SR

Unlock Card “If there’s something I’m interested in, I’m going to want to thoroughly research it. I have a passion for learning.”

Groovy “If you’re curious about the Mountain Lovers Club, feel free to stop by to take a look anytime.”

Home Setting “Conducting experiments is one of my strengths. ...Do you have any questions?”

Home Transitions “Magic Potions requires intelligence, not so much magic power. As someone who has no magic, this is the perfect subject for you, don’t you think?”

“Heheh. Perhaps you should consider having a talk with Azul if you hate studying for exams this much.”

“I’m rather confident in my ability to brew potions. ‘Why,’ you ask? Who can say?”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “I was completely engrossed in a sketch I was working on, that when I snapped up, I saw everyone had already left the lab. How cold-hearted of them all.”

Home Transition (Groovy) “Would you mind telling me your preferences for the Mostro Lounge menu? I will use them as a reference.”

Home Taps “I enjoy the thrill of never knowing what’s going to happen next whenever Floyd is around. If only we were put in the same classes...”

“Heheh. Whenever I see someone heavily concentrating on something, I get the urge to start talking to them. ...Is that cruel of me?”

“Carrying out an experiment is a race against the clock. Sometimes it’s important to start taking risks and trying your hardest with them.”

“I like the Botanical Garden. ...Oh, is that a surprise? I may not seem like it, but I’m always brimming with curiosity.”

“Have you heard of the phrase, ‘Haste makes waste’? ...No, I suppose I shouldn’t even ask.”

Home Tap (Groovy) “In the Mountain Lovers Club I founded, we study the plants we pick as well. ...Oh my, are you perhaps interested?”

Ceremony Robes - SR

Unlock Card “The entrance ceremony is truly nostalgic. Have you grown accustomed to Night Raven College yourself yet?”

Groovy “I hope your time at this academy is a pleasant one.”

Home Setting “There’s so much to do on the day of the ceremony.”

Home Transitions “I’m not used to outfits with so many layers. After all, I don’t come from a race of fish with fluttering tail fins, such as the ones they keep in aquariums.”

“I enjoy observing people, however I get uncomfortable when it’s done to me. I suppose this would mean I’m shy?”

“If you have any spare rooms in the Ramshackle Dorm, how much would you charge to lend them to other students? I think I’d enjoy living somewhere with ghosts...”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “It’s nice how quiet ceremony days are. Normally everything is so wild.”

Home Transition (Groovy) “Are you nervous? I’ll brew some relaxing tea for you. It will almost put you to sleep.”

Home Taps “I was quite surprised when I learned which dorms the Mirror of Darkness had sorted us into. Although, I had thought Azul and Floyd would be in the same dorm.¹”

“Floyd caused a bit of an uproar during our entrance ceremony as well. Just like you and Grim. Heheh.”

“The custom humans have of changing their clothes depending on the circumstance is very interesting. It’s similar to fish who change the color of their scales to blend in with their surroundings.”

“I often lose track of time while gazing at the stars. I’m not necessarily into astrology, I just find them interesting.”

“Heheh, that isn’t very nice of you. Please don’t mock me.”

Home Tap (Groovy) “Are you familiar with the history of Night Raven College? These ceremony robes have a greater impact on you once you know.”

Dorm Uniform - SSR

Unlock Card “There’s no need to worry; I only want to help you.”

“Heheh... I’m truly honored you called for me. There is something I could do to make all your wishes come true.”

Groovy “I will take care of any requests you may have. Please don’t worry; I’m very familiar with self-indulgences.”

Home Setting “I will show you around Octavinelle any time you wish.”

Home Transitions “I’m employed as a waiter at the Mostro Lounge. I’ll strive to receive you with the utmost hospitality.”

“Should you ever find that something is troubling you, I recommend paying a visit to Azul. He could make any wish come true. Heheh.”

“Merfolk must be prepared for all sorts of problems when living on land. This lifestyle is so terribly different.”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “It must be fate that I ran into you like this. Would you care for a spot of tea? I will prepare some.”

Home Transition (Groovy) “Azul would do anything to achieve his goals... That is to say, he truly works his hardest. It’s easy not to perceive him as such, though.”

Home Taps “Pay what you owe. Even a baby fish should understand this, but every once in a while I run into some unreasonable people.”

“Contrary to what some may think, I’m not exactly interested in earning money. I simply enjoy anything that entertains me.”

“We may not have enough legs to say ‘Just like the Sea Witch’s,’ however the deep, glossy black of our dorm uniforms certainly gives off the impression of her hidden power.”

“Floyd always whines ‘I hate it so tight!’ and undoes his bowtie. I keep tying it for him, but it always ends the same way.”

“This will certainly cost you a heavy price. ...Only joking. I would never say that. Yes, ‘I’ wouldn’t.”

Home Tap (Groovy) “I always welcome the unknown. Please, I encourage you to play an even more active role in everything.”

Duo Magic Jade: May I ask that you entrust me with this today, Floyd? Floyd: ‘Kay~ Jade. What’re you going to do~?

Birthday Celebration Outfit - SSR

This card was only obtainable during Jade and Floyd’s birthday event (Nov 04 - Nov 11, 2020).

Login on Birthday “Welcome to our birthday party. I’m certain Floyd will be very happy to know you’ve arrived. Now, I’ve prepared some food. Heheh, there’s no need to be shy. I’m simply doing as I please.”

Unlock Card “I’m looking forward to seeing how you’ll receive me as a guest.”

“What day is it today? Let’s see, what is it...? Only kidding. I know. Floyd and I have our birthday today.”

Groovy “I’m very pleased you came to celebrate for me. You have my sincerest gratitude.”

Home Setting “So this is the outfit we have to wear today... I will try to pull it off.”

Home Transitions “Azul gave me a large aquarium for my birthday. No, it isn’t for me to swim in. I’m using it for my terrariums.”

“Simply watching everyone put together this party didn’t sit well with me, so I contributed one dish. Do you know which one?”

“It’s surprising that I eat so much? I hear that a lot. But it’s because of that that I’ve grown this tall.”

Home Transition (Login Greeting) “I enjoy parties. They allow you to hear many unusual stories from those who always have dynamic surroundings.”

Home Transition (Groovy) “Should I pour some tea? ...The star of the day shouldn’t be the one doing that. Well, let’s just say it’s my thank-you for coming to celebrate.”

Home Taps “Ruggie gave me two wild plant recipes for my birthday. I believe I still know how to cook them... I’m very curious.”

“Our parents ask us what we want for our birthday every year, but Floyd and I have never asked for the same thing. Even twins have different tastes.”

“I received special tea leaves blended by Vil himself. The flavor is phenomenal; you can tell it’s a high-class product.”

“What do I want for my birthday? ...Art supplies. Lately, I haven’t just been collecting fruits and herbs from the mountains; I’ve started working on field sketches as well.”

“How playful you are to fire a party cracker without warning me first. It’s only right if I return a surprise to you... isn’t it?”

Home Tap (Groovy) “Hm? What was it you just said? Could you repeat that one more time? Only joking. I just wanted to hear you wish me a happy birthday over and over.”

Duo Magic Jade: Oh, you came to wish me a happy birthday as well, Jack? Jack: Yeah! Happy birthday, Jade!

Tutorial “May I ask what your plans are for today? Wherever you go, I shall accompany you.”

Lv Up “Oh my, you seem to have taken a fancy to me.”

“My apologies. I’ll strive to live up to your expectations.”

“Heheh. This feels rather nice.”

Lv Up Max “Brimming with all of this power... I am shocked to say the least. Heheh, it’s certainly not a bad feeling.”

Episode Lv Up “How strange. At first, I thought you were nothing but a drab human, but... Ah, don’t get mad at me. My impression of you has changed since then.”

Magic Lv Up “Magic on land is so interesting. I absolutely want to try it out.”

Limit Break “How very kind of you to have gone this far for me. I will do my best to live up to your expectations.”

Groovy “I seem to have gotten ahead of myself and acted rather unsightly. Heheh.”

Lesson Select “Please, choose any class you like. I will join you if I’m interested.”

“Trust that I will aid you in any of your classes. I am always prepared for anything.”

“Would you like me to choose my most recommended class for you? As you can’t make up your mind.”

Lesson Start “Let’s enjoy ourselves again today.”

Lesson End “Good work everyone. Let’s do our best next time.”

Battle Start “Please don’t be too rough.”

Battle Win “I had hoped I could keep having fun with this... Oh well.”

Other

Profile Quote “It’s your own fault that you didn’t fulfill the contract you signed.”

January 2020 Trailer “If you ever have any problems, then we will help you.”

Countdown Poster “If you’d like all your dreams to come true, then come here.”

Login Bonus Greeting “Since you work so hard, I’ve prepared a gift for you. I won’t request any compensation for it. Please, go ahead and accept it.”

Player Birthday Wish “Happy birthday. This isn’t much, but here is a present from me. Oh! But don’t open it here. That wouldn’t be fun at all. You must do it in secret, when you’re all alone... Understood?”

[scripttorture]

Hello! I’m a long time follower of this blog and first of all, I wanna thank you for your amazing work! I’ve learned so much from your analysis and explanations! My question is: I have a character that is kidnapped along with two partners/friends that are beaten to death in front of her. She then endures torture such as being repeatedly drowned, tased and whipped, and she spends most of the time in a stress position (hands tied above her head from the ceiling). That lasts about 2/3 days (1/2)

When they threaten her with rape, she says the information she’d been withholding in an attempt to escape it. Is this realistic, or does it go against the fact that the most you torture, the less the victim is likely to cooperate? Also, they end up raping her still, and shortly after that she is rescued by her friends. What would be the extent of her psychology damage? I don’t want her to bounce right back into work like nothing’s happened - that would be disrespectful to actual victims (2/2)

-

I find gauging/explaining the extent of psychological ‘damage’ difficult because one of the things I try to avoid here is grading people’s pain. We have a tendency to default to almost ranking these things and I don’t think that’s helpful. It’s a perfectly legitimate question (and I don’t think you are trying to rank how much this character suffers) but it’s a… cultural quirk that makes answering a bit more difficult.

 The truth is that with all of these things there’s a range of individual responses rather then one universal ‘right’ answer. So if you’re struggling remember that the target you’re trying to hit isn’t a pin, it’s a boulder.

 As you practice writing different survivors you’ll get more confident handling symptoms and long term mental health problems.

 I’ll circle back to that, let’s tackle the question of whether people ‘talk’ first. I think a lot of people get confused by this because there are a lot of factors at work and it’s difficult to picture the knock on effects of all of them at once.

 Torture does not lead to accurate information. It fundamentally can’t. And it can’t because of mixture of factors including:

how our memory works

how our nervous system works

how torturers behave

the effect torture has on organisations more broadly

the erosion of public trust torture causes

 The question of whether an individual victim ‘talks’ or not concerns the first two points. Which (putting it briefly) are: pain and trauma cause memory problems meaning that torture actively destroys the evidence it claims to seek and that we are stubborn creatures who become a lot less inclined to actively cooperate with people who hurt us.

 However the issue is bigger then the victim here.

 When an organisation uses torture they lose the public trust, people stop volunteering information. And volunteered information is the main source of accurate information for any organisation.

 This means that the majority of people arrested by these organisations typically know nothing. They are then tortured and given a big incentive to lie.

 This creates a cycle of increasing misinformation. I talk about this effect in more detail here.

 On top of all this torturers… how to put this… They don’t give a fuck about genuine investigation.

 They claim that they do. But their actions tell a different story.

 Torturers don’t record what their victims say. They do not fact check what their victims say. There are multiple recorded incidents of torturers continuing to ‘interrogate’ prisoners who did not speak the same language and of torturers continuing to torture when victims were clearly physically incapable of responding.

 There have also been cases where victims have reported trying to give up information only to have torturers completely ignore it and carry on.

 And torturers are no better at telling the difference between lies and truth then anyone else. They often believe lies told by victims who know nothing. And they are equally likely to dismiss the truth.

 The main point to understand here is: there’s a difference between a character giving up information and a torturer/organisation that tortures obtaining accurate information.

 Personally? I think it is easier from a writing perspective to have the character lie, especially if this is your first time writing something like this.

 Writing torture is hard. It will be a lot easier to avoid falling into the common torture apologia trope that ‘torture works’ if the character lies. Especially if you don’t think the narrative has the time and space to explore the knock on effects of torture on the villainous organisation.

 So this isn’t so much an issue of realism as what you feel you can take on in this story.

 A small number of people do try to tell torturers the truth or give up information. But the scale of misinformation that torture produces is so vast that any small truths get lost among the lies.

 Conversely readers expect that if they see a character telling torturers something true, there are going to be narrative consequences. They expect this to mean the Bad Guys ‘know everything’ and will act on it.

 Realistically… torture can’t produce that sort of coordinated, thought through response. Because for everything this character says there are twelve others in separate cells contradicting that information. Because her torturers may not actually want to hear the truth, because they’ve probably sunk a lot of time, effort and personal prestige into a lie they heard a month ago being ‘true’ instead.

 But that’s not a leap most readers will make. It isn’t a context you can expect the average reader to understand. That isn’t me disparaging your readers it’s just… accurate information on torture is hard to find or access, so most people believe the apologia they see everyday. It’s another kind of trope and we’re all used to tropes playing out a particular way.

 Question whether your story has the space to explain this context and whether it can be done in a way that’s narratively satisfying.

 If the answer is ‘no’, or if you just feel like it’s a lot to tackle, then I think you’re a lot better off with the character lying to her torturers.

 Looking over the torture scenario itself I think you do have a survivable scenario here.

 I would say that it’s uncommon for victims to be put in stress positions for a few hours: generally the typical time frame is around 24-48 hours. Using a stress position in this scenario would still be painful but you don’t need to use it. You already have a lot going on with five separate tortures (six if this character is beaten as well.)

 I don’t see anything wrong with keeping it in here if you feel it adds something to the story. But if you want to drop one of these abuses the stress position seems like the odd one out.

 Circling back to the beginning and the psychological problems torture causes, I think a definition of ‘disability’* is helpful here. Disability is any impairment, mental or physical, that has a substantial, long term, negative effect on daily life.

 That’s what we’re talking about with torture survivors.

 Recovery is possible. Life for survivors can get better. Every common psychological condition torture causes can improve with time, treatment and life style adaptions.

 But we are talking about disability. Improvement and a happy life doesn’t mean that someone goes back to the way they were before.

 Let’s take a few examples from the list of common symptoms which you can find here.

 An ‘easy’ example to think through would be something like chronic pain. I think most of us can imagine how being in pain every day would have a negative impact on your ability to do things.

 It can make it harder to perform normal, daily tasks. People with pain in their knees might struggle climbing stairs and walking long distances for instance. People with pain in their arms or shoulders might struggle to get dressed, hang washing on a line and access things on shelves above chest height.

 Chronic pain can also make it harder to interact positively with people and socialise. We’re rarely at are best when we’re in pain.

 A harder example to think through might be the kinds of long term memory problems torture commonly causes. You can read more about them here.

 One possible type of memory problem is a sort of general forgetfulness that a lot of survivors experience. It is not dementia, it isn’t a progressive loss of memory. But some survivors find it a lot harder to remember information and that can have a huge impact on a person’s daily life.

 Typical examples are things like:

forgetting medical appointments, which can lead to people being denied treatment

being consistently late for work, which can lead to loss of employment

difficulty managing money

forgetting to pay bills, leading to essential services being cut

forgetting meetings with friends, leading to reduced social life and isolation

 That’s not a complete list but hopefully it gives you an idea of some of the ways this particular symptom impacts daily life.

 This thought process that I’ve outlined is what you’re aiming for when you’re trying to think through symptom severity. It imagining the knock on effects on daily life and ensuring they’re at a level where the character is disabled.

 That will look different depending on the combination of symptoms you pick.

 Survivors don’t typically experience every possible symptom. As I said there’s variety; survivors of the same traumatic event can come out with completely different sets of symptoms and we’re not always sure why.

 Given that I think the best thing a writer can do is pick 3-5 symptoms from the list for their character and show those symptoms consistently over the course of the story.

 Remember that symptoms can improve. A person’s mental health problems can get better; but this means ‘easier to deal with’ rather then ‘no longer there.’

 It’s also worth keeping in mind that the same mental health problem can look different in different people. It’s common for people with depression to experience insomnia but it’s also common for people with depression to feel tired constantly, sleep excessively and find it impossible to get out of bed.

 Decide on the symptoms you want to write then take a moment to think about how they should manifest in this particular character.

 I find it helpful to consider what it will add to the story. If a symptom works well with a theme in the story or creates interesting narrative opportunities then it’s usually a good pick. When thinking through the severity of the symptom consider whether this particular disability would create interesting challenges for the character as the story progresses.

 Recovery and learning to live with disability takes months or years. It’s not linear and there are some people who will require regular assistance.

 Essentially because symptoms are so varied between survivors and because they can manifest is different ways I can’t give you a perfect road map to writing trauma. There isn’t one ‘correct’ way to do it because there isn’t one way it manifests in life.

 But it isn’t necessarily as hard as it sounds. Writing this stuff well takes practice, trial and error. That shouldn’t stop you from trying.

 If you can I’d recommend finding a beta reader or writing group. Having other people reading over your stuff and giving feedback can really help. It’s a good way to make sure your scenes are coming across as you intend them to.

 I’d also recommend taking a look through ScriptTraumaSurvivor’s archived blog here.

 I hope that helps. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*I’m quoting from UK anti discrimination law here mostly because I think it’s a clear, helpful way of picturing what we’re talking about.

[giuliafc]

Stuck in a Cabin (with you)

Stuck in a Cabin (with you)

Read on: Ao3 || FFN || Wattpad

Summoned to save his Lady's life, Adrien gets stuck with her in a cabin during a blizzard. Identities get revealed, feelings come out...but who's been plotting to kill Marinette? Will the culprit be punished? Read to find the answer :) (Adrienette)

Written by: JuliaFC

Betas: Khanofallorcs, Agrestebug, Etoile-Lead-Sama and genxha. Thank you all so much!

Cover Art credit: Rosehealer02 on Deviantart

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc, TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Chapter 1 — Lila’s plan

Lila sighed looking at the message that had just pinged on her phone.

Mamma: [Sorry, tesoro. I got stuck at work because of the snow, don’t know when I’ll get home tonight. If you want, you can order something. Otherwise dried pasta is in the first cupboard at the side of the hob. I’ll make it up to you. Love you!]

Even after all those years, messages like those left a hollow feeling into her heart. Lila had been moving around a lot in the last few years, because of her mother’s job. She hated her mother’s job. Because of it, Lila had had to leave her grandparents and aunt in Sicily and all her childhood friends. Besides, her mother had been completely absent since she started working at the embassy, sometimes not even coming back home before Lila went to bed. Sometimes she wouldn’t see her for days in a row because when she woke up to go to school, mamma was sleeping and when Lila would go to bed, mamma wouldn’t even have started to come home. Mamma tried to make up for it by filling her days off with a lot of activities they could do together, but that wasn’t enough for Lila. She wanted more. She wanted her mother all for herself, like she had been at home, when papà had been there and mamma hadn’t yet obtained her role at the Italian Embassy.

She had been moved around like a pawn: Vienna for a couple of years, then Berlin, Geneva, Dublin and finally Paris. A lot for a 14 year old girl, having to leave it all behind way too many times.

When she moved to Vienna, she had been bullied quite badly because of her accent and her difficulty speaking the language. She had been ostracised and had spent the better part of two years fighting against stupid kids that she couldn’t even understand very well. Add to the mix the fact that papà ended up having an affair and mamma decided to divorce and leave him, and Lila’s life became even worse, even lonelier.

Luckily her mother had been moved to Berlin, but the situation hadn’t improved for her. Vienna or Berlin, the language was still incomprehensible to her and the kids didn’t like her because she was new, uncool, and because her accent sucked. Because her skin was too olive. Because her hair was too brown, or her eyes too green. They used to make fun of her hairstyle, of her clothes, of anything they could put their hands on. Lila started developing a huge amount of rage, frustration and anger. Plus, she missed her papà terribly, and she couldn’t understand in her mind why her mamma had decided to leave him.

Then she moved to Geneva, and on her first day there she met a girl who ‘acted’ cool. She was a couple of years older than Lila; her name was Charlotte, but she allowed Lila to call her Lottie. She took her under her wing and gave her some very interesting lessons. Lottie was a manipulative wench. She used to be the most popular girl in class because she always knew what to say in order to flatter the interlocutor, twist words around and obtain their favour. Lila was fascinated by her ability and craved to learn how to do the same. She worked for months to copy Lottie’s mannerisms and behaviour.

‘In life, you need to always take the upper hand,’ Lottie told her. ‘Tell people what they want to hear. This will automatically bring them to your side, and when you have them wrapped around your little finger, there’s nothing that they won’t do for you. You just need to keep up the appearances and you’re set for life.

‘Always settle for the best. If you set your eyes on a boy, make sure that he’s the best catch in the whole school. Make sure to understand what he likes and slowly set your trap. Let him fall for you, and you’ll be automatically the most popular gal around.’ Lottie had proved her own advice right easily, and had ended up in a relationship with a pop singer that attended their school. That increased her popularity even more and Lila became much more envious of her.

‘If someone bothers you, destroy them before they can attack you, or as soon as you can after that,’ was Lottie’s last bit of advice.

Lottie taught Lila to act cool, taught her that image was everything. Soon ,they had become like twin sisters and instead of being the bullied one, for once Lila enjoyed the feeling of being the bully. They were L&L’s, and they were respected. Her heart broke the day her mother told her that they were moving again, but she had no choice. Saying goodbye to Lottie was one of the most difficult things she had to do in her still young life.

‘Stay strong, Lil,’ Lottie had told her. ‘Remember, image is everything. Teach those Dubliners how great you are and you won’t have any trouble. And if you do,’ she added with a wink, ‘send me a message and I’ll hop on the first flight!’

That had made her laugh. Lottie acted strong and rich, but Lila knew that in reality she would never have been able to uphold her promise, as she was still too young, and had no money.

Dublin hadn’t been that bad for her. Except the weather. The HORRIBLE Irish weather. She still had nightmares of the torrential rain and the storms. But at least, there was the sea. Lila had missed the sea so much in the last few years. She used to make excuses that she was sick, to skip school, take the DART metropolitan train and get off at Portmarnock, Greystones or Bray (more the first two than the latter, because the sandy beach reminded her more of the shores at home). She would walk on the beach without a care in the world, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the sand.

She had followed Lottie’s advice and had acted cool as soon as she started in her new school. She had gotten used to lying when she was in Geneva under Lottie’s wing, and now the lies came out more natural than the truth. She had become immediately popular when she started, managing to get into a relationship with the most exclusive guy in the class (she didn’t like him, as he was a twat, so full of himself that you could hear him boasting from a distance, but she didn’t care. He was popular and that was all that mattered. He would never realise that she was only using him). She learned how to trick everybody, making them think that she knew all sorts of actors and celebrities. It was fantastic, she was loved and popular and her life was amazing. She was so upset when her mother was moved once more.

And that’s how she ended up in Paris — again far from her beloved sea. She hated the city, she hated the noise and the frantic way of life. Despite the horrible weather, she had loved Dublin because it was smaller and reminded her more of the small town she was born in. But Paris was massive, full of people, of noise. She couldn’t stand the noise. And she hated all those lights. Ville lumière my foot.

Immediately as she started in Françoise Dupont, she tried to remake the same setting she had carefully created in her previous location. But she found the big obstacle of Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The most annoying girl Lila had ever dealt with. Except Ladybug, obviously. Such a tiny girl, but such a big problem for her, and for her resolution to follow Lottie’s footsteps. From the very beginning, Marinette had never fallen for her lies. From the very beginning, she had tried to unmask her and show to everyone her true colours. From the very beginning, she had been an absolute and utter pest.

Lila had fought back. She wouldn’t make it easy for Marinette to win against her; Lila had soon managed to get every student in the class wrapped around her little finger, as Lottie had taught her. She had hoped that soon Marinette wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But unfortunately, she still was. Even more annoyingly, Adrien, whom she was trying to charm in order to again be the most popular girl in school who dated the most handsome and popular guy, seemed to believe Marinette.

Lila had tried all her tricks. She had tried to bring the whole class to her side, she had tried to even manipulate Adrien’s father and make him think that Marinette was a bad influence on his son. But nothing seemed to have an effect on the blond model, and Lila had gotten desperate. She had finally managed to set up a great trap and had gotten Marinette expelled. However, the joy hadn’t lasted long because Adrien had threatened her and had gotten to the point of making a deal with her so that Marinette would be readmitted to school.

Lila was seething that day, but she had no choice. Losing Adrien’s friendship would have been even more detrimental to her image. It didn’t matter if it was only a fake friendship; it would add to her image, and image was everything, as Lottie said.

The more time passed, the more Lila hated Marinette. She had tried everything she could to make her life miserable, but the young designer somehow always managed to resist. Even getting akumatised and trying to use Hawkmoth’s power against Marinette didn’t work, because Ladybug and Chat Noir would get in the way and protect her. They would try to expose Lila’s lies. She had had to make her lies become bigger and bigger and create more and more imaginative excuses in order to keep up with the popularity she craved. And it was never enough, because Marinette always managed to dismiss her claims and most of the time prove her wrong.

From Lila’s point of view, Marinette was the enemy. She was the sole obstacle left in her path to getting what she wanted, and she would get what she wanted, no matter the cost. In her mind, there was only one path left to take to get rid of her.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng had to DIE.

Finally, she had managed to come up with the perfect plan. The perfect opportunity.

The perfect excuse: a school project. She had cheated the sorting and gotten paired with Alya, and the weather today was giving her even more help. When something is meant to be, it’s meant to be. It had already been a cold winter up to then, but very unusually for Paris, in the last week the temperature had dropped way below zero. In fact, it had dropped so low that it had been declared the coldest winter in history, only topped once in the late 1800’s.

Lila didn’t like the cold. Her family came from a little village on the sea, where it was always warm even in the bad season. Yes, it had been cold from time to time, but the sea warmed the temperature up and made the chill more bearable. Her beautiful sea, which she missed so much after having gotten a taste of it back in Dublin. But there was no sea in Paris, only that stupid river… and no warm weather in the winter, especially not this year.

But that cold weather, for once, wasn’t upsetting her because it was helping her craft her plan; she had faced the freezing temperature that very morning before school, and had set up her trap. She would use the cold to her advantage. And this time, she’d have the perfect alibi, and not even Adrien would suspect of her.

This time Marinette would be gone. Forever.

“Are you all right, Lila?” asked Alya, her face showing genuine concern when Lila dumped her phone on the desk in front of her with a pout.

“Yes, I’m fine. Just another charity event being cancelled this week because of the snow,” she made up. Alya’s frown disappeared and the girl gave her a look full of admiration.

“I don’t know how you do it, Lila, your commitment to charities and people in need is admirable, really.”

Lila gave Alya her best puppy eyed glance. “This city, and especially Ladybug and Chat Noir, have done so much for me with all the times I have been akumatised. It’s only nice to give something back!”

Alya put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re a truly amazing person, Lila. I have been akumatised four times, and I guess half of Paris has been in a way or another, but nobody does all you do to ‘give it back to the community’.” The girl with glasses looked at her door thoughtfully. “But if you’ll excuse me a moment, I need the restroom.”

And that’s when the perfect opportunity arose. Alya’s phone was resting on the desk in front of them. Lila gave a cunning side glance to the brunette who had just stood up and was fixing her glasses on her nose and, with a graceful flick of her finger, she pushed Alya’s phone slightly making it fall to the ground, quickly kicking it with her foot underneath the computer desk so that Alya wouldn’t find it.

“Uh… I’m sure my phone was here a moment ago…” muttered Alya looking at the computer desk and scratching her head. She moved her gaze around superficially, but since she couldn’t see the phone anywhere, she sighed. “Well, never mind. I’ll be right back,” she said, looking at Lila before disappearing from view.

“Take your time,” said Lila, her lips curling in a wide smirk as she picked up the phone from the ground. Things seemed to be going her way this time. The phone was unlocked. Lila’s eyes had a triumphant gleam in them as she looked for a conversation with Marinette.

She quickly peeked to ensure that Alya was still in the restroom and opened the chat with Marinette. Then she typed the message she had been planning all day, clicking send immediately after.

Alya (Lila): [Hey, girl! The girls and I are planning to go to Lac Daumesnil. Fancy doing some ice skating with us?]

She kept eyeing the door of the restroom with concern, but Alya was still there. Soon she saw the three dots of the conversation flashing, meaning that Marinette was answering.

Marinette: [It’s been some time since I went ice skating. Last time was a disaster. Sounds like a good idea, Alya. I will be there in an hour]

Alya (Lila): [Great. Start skating if you get there before us. We’re on our way!]

Marinette: [OK!]

Lila looked at the messages with a smirk and took care of deleting each of them one by one. Alya wasn’t going to find out. It was after she had just deleted the last message that Alya emerged from the restroom and she put the phone down immediately.

Alya frowned at her. “Are you okay, Lila?”

“Yes. I found your phone; it was on the floor here.” She pointed at the side of the desk. “I thought I heard it notify you of something, but there’s no notification, nothing at all.”

Alya looked at her phone with interest. “Oh. Maybe an akuma alert?” She started scrolling through her phone, but she didn’t find anything new. “That’s peculiar, there’s no new announcement.”

“Don’t worry, I must have made a mistake,” said Lila, dismissing the conversation with a gesture of her right hand. “So we were saying, about Napoléon?”

This took Alya’s attention away from her phone and brought her back to concentrating on the project they were working on. Lila smirked — her plan was unfolding well.

Author’s Note:

Hi again! I know, I know, another story. I told you I was going to unload everything I had this weekend. This isn’t finished yet (well, one part is, and in theory it could be left like that, but the second part I thought is worth writing!) so I will update this, the AU and “When Magic Fails” as soon as I can. Hope you liked getting inside Lila’s head. The next chapters are not about her, don’t worry. Or rather, worry, because the next chapters are her plan unfolding. And the title of the next chapter (and the beautiful cover art) is kind of revealing… so, well, I’ll hide again… ^^;

In the next instalment of “Stuck in a cabin (with you)”, “Drowning”:

— “I don’t know, Marinette. This sounds fishy. Why aren’t your friends here yet?”

— “I can’t move, Tikki, I think I have cramps! HELP ME!”

— “Sugarcube! It won’t happen again, not if we can help it, don’t worry!”

Ehrm… I know. Doesn’t sound good, right? ^^ Please subscribe if you’re interested in knowing what is going to happen, so you will know when the next update is!

Last but not least, as usual, if you read this and you’re not part of our wonderful Discord server already, but you enjoy reading, writing and talking about Miraculous, please join our Discord server, Miraculous Fanworks (for people on FFN, discord dot gg slash mlfanworks). See you there soon. Not sure when I will update this story but it won't be too long! Promise!

[ronnytherandom]

I forgot to watch content all week so i wrote about games ive been playing

9/2/2021: The Truman Show

You should fear your fears but embrace them and use them to guide you into the unknown, to explore and experience what life has to offer. Fear stands between you and the fullest experience of life so you must pass through it to better yourself. Heed not the walls built about you and the chains made to hold you. Though the architects insist it will preserve your life, containment is anathema to life. Do not take in faith the benevolence of powers that be; instead trust those who would support and liberate you, guide you through fear and into life.

As best I can lay it out, I think this is the philosophy of the Truman show but there is so much more to read into it also. There is critique of systems of commodification and celebrity (i.e. capitalism) reducing human beings to a consumable good as well as encouragement to find and pursue your goals despite adversity and even sensibility which is also tied to the illusion of economic responsibility. You can’t put a camera inside a human head, you can never “know” them without being an active and intrinsic part of their life, but also there is need for reciprocation. If one half exists with ulterior motive then the entire relationship is rotten; sincere humanity is what creates real connections. Without such your world is fake. A world built around one person is a world where no one can truly live. All these actors have given up basically their entire lives for the sake of watching Truman have his life built around him by outside forces, have allowed themselves to be commodified and dehumanised for the good of one man, Christoph. The man at the top has delusions of grandeur and thinks only of his own bottom line, he cares not for his subjects but simply wants them to do as he tells them because it benefits him to commodify their lives and interactions. Even then he cannot stand to lose control and in seeking to demonstrate Truman’s “realness” he structures his life so thoroughly that eventually there’s no reality left, only a script and adverts. But the people watching still empathise with Truman because everyone in the working class understands what it is to be trapped because real life is our own Truman show and one day we must all pass through fear, step out of the dome and create a real life for ourselves outside of the system of commodification which consumes everyone’s life and removes all realness and sincerity and emotional catharsis from it.

I unreservedly love this film.

14/2/2021: Assorted Game Reviews

Horizon Zero Dawn (Unfinished due to technical issues, 45 hours inc. parts of Frozen Wilds): This game is really cool and really fun. I think it is defined by its incredible setting which somehow creates a fresh feeling post-apocalyptic environment. Said environment creates intriguing alt-future lore and some very interesting environments to explore. I love the machine designs (especially tallnecks!) and was very sad to hear one of their contributing artists passed away recently but I’m glad their work lives on in this visually stunning game. I’m a sucker for Ubisoft-style open world games simply because it tickles a certain kind of itch and somehow this non-Ubisoft game has outdone Ubisoft on their own formula, which is hilarious, but also good for me as running around this world exploring and clearing map markers is engaging fun. Not least because of the combat. I have a minor criticism here that the combat feels slightly awkward on mouse and keyboard, the arrows never seem to go where I’m aiming, but aside from that the experience of fighting is a grand one. Enemies never lose their threat and I love the weak spot system the game employs which makes every tool useful in niche circumstance and rewards curiosity. It specifically manages this in a way that I feel the Witcher series could learn from if it ever returns; by making head on assault less viable and encouraging tactical hunting. I do feel this system makes hunting robots so fun that by contrast hunting humans becomes a chore however, though I noted this improves in the dlc with the addition of humans with elemental weaknesses limited in number as they are. I cannot speak for the story in entirety but what I encountered was pretty good, though I feel as if it was only just really getting going at the point where I could not continue. I find Aloy to be a compelling and well portrayed protagonist and though I can guess about her origin and the ultimate end of the alt-future apocalypse I still want to see how it plays out on screen, so will return to this as soon as I’ve fixed it.

Rimworld (122 hours. Familiar with but do not own Royalty Expansion):

Rimworld is one of those super special games that I don’t think I have a single problem with. Fair warning it can be brutal and is heavily dependent on RNG but this allows it to create truly unique and interesting scenarios on a constant basis. In the wider perspective it could be described as formulaic, with regular cycles of managing the settlement between raids and random events, but the devils in the details. Colonist traits, health and skills dictate how you play and sometimes you’ll be forced to adapt as some colonists simply refuse to perform some tasks. The depth of health particularly amuses me, in that each little part of someone’s body is modelled in a way. If you’re in a firefight you may take a single bullet which grazes your finger and you’re fine. Alternately it could pierce your human leather cowboy hat, your skull and kill you instantly and the game will tell you exactly what happened. The risk/reward element is addictive enough, and that’s without accounting for just how cool it is to see your colony slowly expand. Establishing more and more options for crafting is fun and shows off the full range of different items in the game which is fucking extensive. Between clothing, weapons, armour, sculpture and drugs to name only a few you have the opportunity to create many varied production lines either for your colonists or to trade for money and there is a lot of fun to be had here as well as it is quite satisfying to see psychoid you have grown personally become the cocaine your colonists snort to help them stay awake on limited sleep. From an archaeologist’s perspective it is especially cool to look back over your base and see the hints of how and why structures were built and remember the history of your limitations and development through structure. I think the lore of the universe is really cool too, a very 40k-esque kind of place except with far less order, somehow. But the universe does an excellent job of feeling alive and moving constantly on both a planetary and interstellar level. You can fully believe that while you build wooden shacks to shield yourself from terrifyingly low temperatures there are simultaneously rich pieces of shit living it up on the glitterworld that’s one system over. The music does an excellent job of creating the wild west frontier atmosphere the game cultivates to great effect. Ultimately, for just being a grid with a series of different numbers attached, this game does a fantastic job of creating a compelling, brutal and very real colony management experience. I dont think I can properly put into words the grandness and scope of this one. I didnt even mention the modding scene, which is expansive and tailors to basically any need you could have. The Rim is a terrifying place but theres so much fun to be had.

Factorio (86 hours, mostly 1.1): Having completed a game of Factorio I can tell you reliably that this is one of the best games ever made, thoroughly addictive and fun. If you like numbers, logistics, TRAINS, its gonna be your thing. Not to mention its probably the only documented case of a game with no bugs (so far as official forums are concerned). Strictly speaking this games combat is not the most engrossing thing but good lord do you feel it when you acquire a flamethrower. The way each aspect of the game (production, research, logistics, combat, upgrades for everything therein) feeds into the next is a really well constructed balancing act such that you must experience the full game in order to complete it and I always appreciate this kind of design. I think its one of the best tenets of factory game design especially as its something present in Satisfactory too. Beyond all of this generalised good the game is also excellent in its intricacies, the architecture necessary to build a maximum efficiency base, the level of planning and organisation that can be employed is mind-blowing. Not to mention the mod community, factorion is already an extensive experience and some mad bastards have seen fit to complicate it further, hats off to them. This really is a great moment in gaming.

 Destiny 2 (198 hours, all expansions, played some post Forsaken release, mostly Season of Arrivals onwards, spent roughly £20 on microtransactions):

This is a very interesting and enjoyable experience, but I must say it can be a bit controversial at times. What its does particularly well is moment to moment gameplay and design in all aspects. The game is stunning; between environments, cosmetics, shaders ships and ghosts there’s a vast range of incredible things to see, all rooted in the “pseudo-magi-science” aesthetic it’s got going on. The class design is excellent and you really do feel like you embody this rampaging madman / agile gunman / space wizard archetype, whichever you choose to play. The abilities, especially supers, are very satisfying. Everything has heft and power behind it which can be felt in all aspects of design; sound and animation is top notch. Movement is cool, you can feel how fast you move both on foot and in vehicles and the navigation has a little fun subtlety depending on your class jump, even if you can bounce unpredictably occasionally. But for the love of god why is the wall kick in there? It has only ever served to push me from a ledge into a bottomless pit. You're looking to remove antiquated content? Start there. Some guns are not so good to shoot but there’s such a great range of guns that are fun its like complaining about one drop in an ocean; and enemies are fun to shoot at, each faction distinct in meaningful ways and presenting an effective challenge. Speaking of oceans, that’s one way to describe the lore. I haven’t dived too deep but it keeps going down forever and everything I’ve read is intriguing. As a former Elder Scrolls lore nut this is something I could definitely sink my teeth into, though its much more of a pulpy sci-fi vibe than a pure nonsense vibe. I do think the game has a bit of a loot problem, primarily in regards to the conflict between high stats and looking good. This should never be a conflict, and yes you can apply ornaments to any purple gear but that’s not enough when I spend the entire time grinding power levels and thus must change armour and weapons on a constant basis to progress. This game needs a true transmog system and if not that, rethink how gear power level works. Perhaps rather than earning new instances of gear you always possess a version of it and the loot you acquire in missions just upgrades your instance to your current overall power level? This would serve to do away with the current upgrade system which I think is a needless additional grind. Perhaps it could be retained in using enhancement cores to empower gear as present but necessitating a whole upgrade module to keep your favourite weapon on hand is kind of painful honestly. There is also at present the issue of sunsetting gear, mildly controversial to say the least. If it’s necessary to streamline the game and make it function moving forward so be it but surely loot pools should be adjusted so you can actually get useful loot from older locations? And why sunset personal instances of gear which can be acquired at the regular power level anyway? I had to throw away my favourite bow and hunt down a new version of the exact same weapon for… what reason? I do think destination navigation leaves a little to be desired also. I get that having a physical hub world is meaningful but Destiny does not have a very extroverted community; I can count the times someone noticed me in the tower on one hand. And its not even like there’s fun activities to be found in the same sense as say Deep Rock Galactic, which really does take advantage of its hub. Perhaps for players who simply want to go about their business all of the vendors could be set into a menu system where just clicking an icon takes you to their menu from anywhere in the system rather than, per se, having to go through an entire loading screen (Which takes you to orbit and back) to reach a location which serves simply as the front for four menus. These are established player problems. As a dedicated PvE player I can say that this game is immensely fun in combat and growing in power does feel really good. It’s something I recommend getting into, there’s just some very large creases that need ironing which the Bungie should really take the time to address rather than pushing out new in game content every three months.

[shakespeareanwannabe]

Drowning

Santiago Pope Garcia x F!OC/Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia x Rebecca Cooke

Summary: Santiago follows through with his escape plan, only to find that his freedom comes with a heavy price.

Warnings: Drinking/Alcohol Consumption, Swearing, Benny being Benny, references to war time injuries, references to Anxiety if you squint, ghosting, nightmares, crying

A/N: Hey y’all. Sorry it’s been a while. Some stuff came up, but I was inspired to write this chapter anyway! Here’s chapter 6. Please enjoy!

**********

Santiago Garcia was one of the best of the best. One of the top ranked soldiers in the US Military. Delta Force, Special Operations…his team was the one you called when things got bad. And things often got bad.

Tom ‘Redfly’ Davis oversaw the team. Laser focused in the field and a brilliant tactician who always seemed to be able to get his team out of tight spots, Redfly saw Delta Force through multiple missions, as well as two tours of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia was his right-hand man, his second in command. Where Redfly focused on the minor details, Pope was able to see the big picture. Combined, their abilities to plan and execute earned them the respect and admiration of their team.

William ‘Ironhead’ Miller was third in command. His cool head and philosophical manner ensured cohesion in the group of macho men. While the team was busy fighting the enemy, Will was busy making sure there was no fighting amongst the team.

Francisco ‘Catfish’ Morales was the pilot. The most intelligent of the bunch, he was often overlooked when it came to lauding praises, even if Pope would always claim that it was because of Frankie’s skillful maneuvering and calculating nature that they made it back in one piece.

Benjamin ‘Benny’ Miller was the youngest of the team, the most hotheaded, and the most emotionally vulnerable. Added to the team after their original fifth member was killed in action, Ironhead automatically took it upon himself to protect his baby brother, while the rest of the team protected Ironhead.

Together, they were the most successful, most ruthless, most cunning team to ever wear the United States flag on their shoulder. Ironhead, Catfish, and Benny trusted their fearless leaders to see them through any mission, no matter how bleak. Where they led, the team followed, no questions asked. Well, on the battlefield, that is…

“You fucking what!?!” Frankie exclaimed angrily while Benny and Will stared at him in astonishment.

Santi felt himself shrink. While he knew that his plan of action wasn’t the best, he didn’t know what else to do.

“I can’t drag her into all my bullshit, ‘Fish,” Santi sighed, dragging a hand down his face before chugging from his nearly-empty beer bottle.

“So, you thought that ghosting her was the best thing to do?” Benny exclaimed, leaning around his brother to get a good view of his former lieutenant. “Are you fucking stupid, Pope?”

“Ay, watch it, kid!” Santi grumbled. “You’ve seen her! She’s fucking perfect. I’m not ruining her. No way, man.” Santi chose to ignore Frankie’s mumbling in their shared mother tongue and cast his fishing line out into the lake once more.

It had been two weeks since the wedding, 13 days since the last time he saw Rebecca, and it was killing him, even if he knew it was for the best. So, when Will had offered up his fishing cabin in the woods for a boys weekend, he had jumped at the chance to get out of that big empty house, away from the clinic that he was slinking around under Charlie’s hateful glare, and far enough away from Bex’s building that he wasn’t tempted to just get up and drive there and beg for her forgiveness. It would be good for him. Clear his head. Get her out of his system, even if he was waking up every morning hard as a rock with thoughts of her smile and her softness and her heart at the forefront of his mind.

“Well, that fucking explains why Charlie went from crying over your speech at the wedding to asking me if I’d be okay burying your body in the backyard,” Frankie finally spoke in English.

Santi winced. After a week of actively ignoring his phone whenever it lit up with Rebecca’s name and smiling face, he supposed that Bex had asked Charlie what was up. And, since Charlie knew him well enough to know what nothing was actively wrong, he’d spent the last several of his physio appointments having to shield himself from his friend’s icy glare.

“What are you doing, man?” Will sat back with a sigh. “She’s the best you’re ever gonna get. You know that right?”

Santi clenched his fist around his fishing rod. “You think I don’t know that? She’s fucking perfect! Sweet and kind and unselfish and loving and sexy as all fuck! Who wouldn’t want that?”

“So, you’re either really fucking stupid or really fucking scared…” Benny muttered, leaning back to fetch another beer.

Santi felt something inside him burst. He was doing what was best for her, even if nobody in his life seemed to agree.

“Fuck this.” He threw his fishing rod to the ground and stood up. “I don’t have to deal with this shit. I’m going home.”

Frankie slowly stood up next to him with a few crackles and pops of his joints. “I drove you, dipshit. And you drank an entire six pack on your own. I’ll take you home.”

Frankie ambled over to give his goodbyes to Will and Benny while Santi stood with his arms crossed, staring out into the distance. He had thought Frankie and Will would understand. Frankie, who had to fight tooth and nail to keep the woman he loved after getting his license suspended. And Will, whose fiancée had left him six weeks before the wedding day, claiming the war had changed him and that he wasn’t the same man she fell in love with. Benny, who had loved more people than he could count, had never experienced that kind of love and loss before, and Santi hoped he never did. Everyone around them got sucked into their bullshit, and he wouldn’t let that happen to the most wonderful woman he had ever met.

“Hey,” Santi startled when a warm, gentle hand landed on his shoulder. He turned to meet Will’s warm gaze and placating smile. “We just want you to be happy, man.”

Santi sighed and nodded slowly. “Yeah, Will…I know, but��”

“But nothing, man,” Will interrupted gently, pulling him into a one-armed hug. “She makes you happier than I’ve ever seen you, Santi. Don’t lose that, or you’ll spend your life regretting it.”

Santi watched him walk away as Frankie came up beside him and started ushering him towards the truck.

**********

The two-hour drive home was longer than expected due to traffic on the highway, but the length was exasperated by the silence that was dragging out between the two men. Unlike the drive, the silence was atypical. Santi, who had grown accustomed to Frankie’s quiet calmness, usually filled the silence with stories to get Frankie talking or laughing. Now, the tension between the two was palpable, and Santi wasn’t about to try to break it when he had so much on his mind.

After almost three hours in the car together, Frankie pulled into Santi’s driveway and killed the engine.

Santi sighed, both in sadness and relief, and went to open the door. “Thanks,” he mumbled, hand resting on the handle and the door partially open.

“Listen, man…” Santi turned slightly to see Frankie had removed his cap and was rubbing at his forehead. “If she doesn’t make you happy, that’s fine. No point in making yourself miserable trying to drag out a relationship that just ain’t gonna work. But if that’s why you’re doing this, or if you’re doing it because of some bullshit protector instinct, then why are you so miserable? If she makes you happy but you’re worried about infecting her with your shit, then protect her from that by staying close and working hard.”

“I…” Santi swallowed. “I don’t want to hurt her, man.” He got out of the truck and stood next to the open door. “I won’t hurt her.”

Frankie fixed him with a glare, and Santi saw a flash of the old Frankie for a moment. “And what exactly are you doing right now, cabrón?”

Santi let the door swing closed as Frankie peeled out of his driveway and down the road.

**********

It took another week for Santiago to get his act together. The day Frankie dropped him off, he spent in his backyard, grilling and listening to music. If things were normal, it would be the day the whole gang got together at Frankie’s for food and fun and laughs, but things weren’t normal, so he settled in for some solo grilled chicken and some alone time. He woke up with nightmares around midnight, and when he woke up again around 2 a.m., he moved into the living room and resigned himself to crappy early morning TV until the sun came up.

The next day, on a whim, he started drafting a proposal for a private security company. He still had enough money from selling his weapons collection in Colombia to put together a decent business proposal, and it was better than sitting on his ass drinking all day, so he put his famed planning skills to work. Got Your Six Security would provide state of the art security systems as well as armed guards for those who desired them. The fees would be reasonable, they would cater to both private homes and public settings, and, best of all, they would only employ military or former military personnel. Luckily, Santi had kept in contact with a couple of the surveillance techs from his time overseas, and he knew that a small crew of them had been working on a state-of-the-art closed circuit security system and were looking to market it to high end customers. They had already agreed to work with him, he only needed to get a business plan and a small loan to get it up and running.

The day after that, he had a meeting with the bank, who had met his proposal with enthusiasm. (It helped that it was a company employing veterans, run by a veteran, who already had some capital to put up upfront.) All they asked was that he find his first customer before they signed off on the loan.

So, the following Monday, he straightened his suit and tie and headed into the last place he wanted to be: the art museum where Rebecca worked. It was the only business that had availability as soon as possible, they were willing to pay top dollar, and they seemed fairly desperate.

He met with two of the higher ups of the museum, Douchebag Derek’s mom and the owner of the building, and soon found out why they were so desperate.

“One of our paintings got stolen two nights ago,” Derek’s mom sighed. “We don’t know how, or why, but somebody got in, stole one of the Blair’s, and walked out with it. Our security guard claims that he didn’t hear anything, but the police are looking into it.”

“The point is,” Mr. Carlisle butted in. “We need something more high-tech than a retiree aged security guard. We need something that can send an alarm to the police if someone does get in, but also a few highly trained guards to watch the museum at night, in case someone does get in and the police are too slow. It seems to me that a military grade security system and some highly trained former soldiers are the perfect thing to protect the priceless works of art we house here at this institution.”

“Was anyone in the building when the painting was stolen?” The words escaped his mouth before he could even think. “I mean, besides the security guard.”

“No, thank god,” Mr. Carlisle replied. “Jerry, the security guard, says he saw out the last employee in the building before locking the door.”

“I’m just happy that nobody got hurt,” Derek’s mom simpered, and Santi caught a glimpse of her son’s douchebaggery in her voice.

“We’d be happy to help,” Santi smiled once he regained control of his voice, his shoulders relaxing at the news that Jerry had been alone in the building. “We’ll just need 50% of the cost of the alarm system up front before installation, then we can discuss how many guards you want on premises during the day and at night. Once we’ve got a number, we can go through the applicants together and we can find the ones who best suit your needs.”

It was after they dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and Santi had received a firm handshake from Mr. Carlisle that it happened.

He was exiting Mr. Carlisle’s office, still facing the occupants of the room as he thanked them for their patronage, when he turned and bumped into something hard but soft and comforting and, even worse, familiar.

“Oof!”

A chill ran down his spine at the sound, the same sound she had made when he spanked her ass that morning.

“Shit, I’m…I’m, uh, I’m sorry.” Rebecca stilled in her crouched position, one hand on one of the loose sheets of paper he had knocked out of her arms. “Uh…here, let me help.”

He started to lower to the ground, wincing at his knees crackling, when she snatched up the paper he was reaching for and stood up. “Don’t bother.”

Already crouching, he let his head hang. He didn’t know how he expected their first encounter to go, but it certainly wasn’t that.

**********

A flash…a painful scream…his legs caught in quicksand…red pooling on the pristine white marble floors…the dull thud of her body dropping…the faceless thief escaping into the edges of his vision…cradling her lifeless body…

Santiago sat bolt up in bed, his heart racing and his chest heaving, his curls drooping onto his forehead with accumulated sweat.

Three nights of the same dream. Three nights of not being able to save her from the art thief. Three nights of sitting in bed, trembling while staring at her picture on his phone, his thumb hovering over the ‘Call’ button but always unable to take that final step.

First, she had bewitched him. Now, she was haunting him. One short, angry interaction was enough to bring her to the forefront of his mind (not that she was ever far from there), and now he couldn’t sleep.

Maybe Frankie was right. Doing the right thing shouldn’t make him this miserable. His heart shouldn’t ache when he thinks of her, he shouldn’t be so depressed when he sees couples together, and he really shouldn’t be dreaming about her death and waking up in tears.

He didn’t think. About any of it. Instead, he acted on instinct, throwing on a pair of threadbare sweatpants and a white vest and collecting his wallet and keys before hopping into his truck and driving the path he knew by heart.

**********

Bang Bang Bang!

Rebecca’s first instinct was to shout at whoever was knocking on her door at three a.m. to fuck off or she would call the cops. Her second instinct was to grab the baseball bat in her front closet and scare the intruder off herself.

She blamed the pint of Cherry Garcia (flavor chosen ironically, of course) and the three glasses of red wine she had drank before falling asleep on the couch for her poor decision-making skills as she stumbled off the couch and grabbed the bat.

“What the fu—”

“Holy shi—”

Santiago ducked away from the door, hands out in front of him as if to calm a wild animal.

“Bex! It’s me, Jesus Christ!”

She huffed. “Yeah, and? After the shit you’ve pulled, being met with a bat is the least of your concerns.” She rubbed her eyes. “What the hell do you want, Santiago?”

He winced at the full name. “C…Can we talk?”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, bat hanging loosely between her fingers. “You’ve had three weeks to talk to me, asshole. What the fuck could you possibly have to say to me?”

Santi turned to look down the hall, wincing and apologizing as one of her neighbours shot him a dirty look. “Can we talk inside? Please? If you don’t like what I have to say, you can kick me out or call the cops. I really wouldn’t blame you. Just…please?”

Rebecca rolled her eyes, poking her head out. “Sorry, Mr. Chen. Tell Cindy that it’s the asshole boyfriend come to grovel.”

The man nodded knowingly and retreated into his apartment.

“I deserve that,” he mumbled, looking at her pleadingly.

Rebecca considered him for a moment. “You look like shit.”

“And I feel even worse. Baby, I…”

Rebecca cut him off. “If you seriously want to do this right now, I’m gonna need more wine.”

She turned her back on him and retreated into the apartment, leaving the door wide open. Santiago followed her after a beat, making sure the door was locked tight behind him.

“Baby, I—”

Bex held up a finger, pouring herself a large glass of red wine and sitting as far away from him as possible, draping a grey throw blanket over her lap before fixing him with a glare.

He met her eyes and felt himself deflate. “Fuck,” he groaned, raking his fingers through his hair. “I had it all planned out, every word I was going to say to you, and now I’m lookin’ at you and it’s all…” He made an exploding motion with his hands. “Poof. Gone.”

Rebecca burrowed further into her blanket. “Well, try. Because from where I’m sitting, you’re the one who needs to do the talking here. I’ve done my talking. On the half-dozen voicemails I left on your phone, in the dozens of texts I sent you, and in the email I wrote because I was panicking at the thought that you had gotten into some terrible accident and that was why you weren’t responding anymore. Because that is the only reason I could think of that you would suddenly stop talking to me.”

“I know. I know, you’re absolutely right. I fucked up in a major way, and I am so sorry. I know I messed up, but I need you to know that I never meant to hurt you.” Rebecca scoffed. “I’m serious, honey. In my own backwards as fuck way, I thought I was protecting you.”

“From what?” she asked angrily.

Santi felt something snap inside of him. “From me! From this forty-year-old fuck up sitting in front of you! Because I’m not a good man! Because I was shooting people and detonating bombs when you were still in grade school! Because I’ve killed people, good people…innocent people. Because my life is a mile-wide shit stain, and you don’t deserve to deal with that. Because…” Santi took a raggedy breath. “Because when I look at you, I see everything good about the world. And I know I’ve got blood and death on my hands, and I couldn’t live with myself if I let any of that effect you in any way.”

“Don’t you think that’s my choice?” she countered in a cold voice. “Don’t you think I should get to decide who deserves to be in my life? I might be a hell of a lot younger than you, Santiago, but my life hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns. I know my worth. I know who belongs in my life. Not my narcissistic mother, who used my accident for sympathy from whoever she could get it from. Not my best friend from high school, who managed to turn everything into a fucking competition and only got bitchy when she ‘lost’. Not Douchebag Derek or fucking College Boyfriend Ben. And like it or not, I chose you. You with the bad knees and the greying hair and the blood and shit on your hands. God help me, but I chose you.” She chugged the rest of her wine, placing the glass harshly down on the coffee table.

“I know, sweetheart. God, you’re so fucking amazing, you know that?” he blinked back tears in his eyes. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t get emotional, that he would lay the facts out for her, but just being in her presence screamed safety to him and he could feel everything he had pushed down rising to the surface. “Y…you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, okay? And I know that’s a shitty, corny line, but it’s the truth. When I met you…I was in a bad place. My life had been one shit storm after another, and I thought coming home would fix that. Being around Frankie and Charlie, getting to bond with Mateo, having a home of my own for the first time…I was doing better. And then you crashed into my life, and all of a sudden everything felt good again. Like…the sun was shining on me but all of a sudden I could actually feel it and, for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of getting burned. You turned my whole plan upside down, and I was actually okay with it.” He chuckled, swiping at his cheeks as the first few tears started to fall. “I thought I could live in your orbit and just circle around you, not hurting you or effecting you in any way. But then…” he smiled softly. “Christ, that morning…Fuck, I realized that I was in so deep. Way deeper than I ever thought I would get. I was honestly, genuinely happy for the first time in years, and it was all because of you. And you were smiling at me all soft, and I realized something. I realized that living with you, spending the rest of my life with you, was something I could easily do and desperately wanted. And that scared the shit out of me. Because guys like me don’t get the happy ending. The credits start to roll just as we start dealing with the aftermath of whatever shitshow we just lived through, so that the audience doesn’t have to watch everything fall apart again. I…I couldn’t put you through that. Not when you’ve already got all your own stuff to deal with. Adding my own just felt selfish. And I know that’s a cop out, but it’s the truth. I honest to god just wanted to protect you.”

Rebecca’s gaze softened as her voice enveloped him. “So, why now? Why come to me now, if you’re so set on protecting me?”

He met her gaze. “The break in. At the museum. I-if you had been there, if you had gotten hurt…I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle it. That, plus some of Frankie’s patented wise wisdom, woke me up to what an idiot I’ve been. If I want to protect you, I’ve got to do it by being with you, and god baby, that’s all I want. And I know I fucked up. I basically did the same jackass thing that your college boyfriend did, only ten times worse because I promised I wouldn’t. I know I don’t deserve you, but I swear to god, baby, if you let me back into your life, I will work with you. I won’t keep anything from you, and I’ll always be honest with you, and when I try to protect you, I’ll do it by standing by your side and letting you know that I’m here. Even…” he gulped painfully. “Even if it’s just as a friend.”

Rebecca considered him carefully as Santi waited on bated breath. Finally, she spoke. “You really hurt me, Santi.”

He nodded, clenching his eyes shut. “I know. I know, baby, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Everything I was scared of, happened. I let you in, and you made me fall in love with you, then you left. You fucked me then fucked off. And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me why. I agonized for weeks over what I could have possibly done wrong.”

“No, baby,” he took a chance and shifted to sit next to her, gently cradling her hand in his. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. This is all on me, okay?”

She played with his fingers, rough and callused from his time handling firearms. “It is,” she nodded. “It is all on you…but when I ran into you at the museum, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in weeks. I wanted to be angry at you, but I just felt sad because…because I wanted you to do some stupid, corny, romcom level bullshit like fall to your knees and beg for my forgiveness or sweep me up into your arms and say that you would never let me go again.”

Santiago cupped her cheek, carefully brushing away the stray tear meandering over her cheekbone. “What are you saying?” he asked, trying desperately to keep the hope from his voice.

She sighed. “It means…that I’m too tired to deal with this right now.” She stood, not releasing his hand. “C’mon. You can sleep here tonight, and we can figure this out in the morning.”

He stood hesitantly. “Are you sure? I can sleep here on the couch?” He eyed the leather distastefully. “Or I can go sleep in my truck. I…I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She was already shaking her head. “No, then I’ll just feel guilty. That couch is not comfortable and your truck with play hell with your neck. You can stay in my bed. Just…don’t worry about it.”

She padded silently into her room, tugging him behind her. Swiftly, she tugged down the meticulously straightened sheets and slid into her side of the bed, Santiago following after a short pause.

He laid there for what felt like hours, staring up at the ceiling, thanking god that he was there with the woman he loved and praying for a chance to make things right.

For the first time in forever, his prayers seemed to be answered quickly.

“I can hear you thinking,” Rebecca mumbled as she rolled over and placed her head on his chest. “Stop thinking, Santi. We can figure out everything in the morning.”

He carefully wrapped his arms around her and buried his nose in her hair, eyes drifting closed to send him into the deepest sleep he’d had in a month.

**********

He awoke the same way he’d fallen asleep, wrapped around Rebecca like he was afraid that, should he let go even an inch, she’d disappear.

He pulled back a fraction of an inch to gaze at her peaceful face before pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.

She released a soft, sleepy mewl before her eyes blinked open.

She smiled softly at him. “Hey…”

The words poured out of him before he could even think. “Move in with me.”

She crinkled her brow. “What?”

He caught her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing her palm. “I love you. And I want to prove to you that I’m in this for the long haul. You’re it for me, Rebecca. So, move in with me.”

Her sleepy eyes took him in for a moment, and Santi’s breath caught in his chest. But before he could backtrack or explain further, he felt his heart stop.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

**********

Tags list (open): @darksideofclarke, @writefightandflightclub, @rae-rae-patcha, @himbopoes, @sophoclese, @phoenixhalliwell, @buckstaposition, @who-talks-first, @hkmultifandom, @youhavereachedtheendofpie

[dreamwithoutreason]

Really need people to understand that there is a difference between your diagnosis being stigmatized (what usually happens with mental illness) and your diagnosis resulting in you being subjected to ableism (disability) because those two things are a bit different and the distinction is important.

I want to start by saying that I am in no way attempting to minimize the struggles that mentally ill people face. I am mentally ill and have depression, anxiety, and ADHD as well as a physical disability, Cerebral Palsy. The line between the struggles of people with mental illnesses and the struggles of disabled people is thin but there is still a line. I just want to highlight some of the ways that disabled people are especially discriminated against in a world built and run by abled people and how that can be different from how mental ill people experience alienation or stigmatization. These differences are also why I think that comparing a mental illness to a disability can be problematic. I am, however, also aware that there is overlap and that some diagnoses can be considered to have a foot in both arenas, this is in no way meant to be a hard and fast rule. I also don't claim to speak for the entire disabled community but a lot of the things under the ableism list are things that I've experienced myself which is the place that this post is coming from. I want people to realize that ableism is more than stigmatization and that it is engrained in the world that we live in.

Stigmatization comes from people misunderstanding your illness and how seriously it can impact you and your life. I would consider stigmatization to be things like:

People using your diagnosis as an insult or joke, further stigmatizing it. Ex: When ppl say things like "I'm so ocd" or "I'm so bipolar"

People ignoring your symptoms or attributing your symptoms to your character. For example, instead of recognizing the symptoms of your illness like executive dysfunction, someone might just call you lazy.

General lack of understanding or sympathy towards mentally ill people

Lack of accurate representations of mental illnesses in media. Most of the time the character with the mental illness is made to be the villain or antagonist. Once again, very stigmatizing and gross.

Also, for both mentally ill and disabled people it can sometimes be difficult or expensive to get the right medications you need.

Examples of everyday ableism and systematic ableism that's ingrained in our society which particularly affects disabled people include:

Someone using derogatory language to belittle and degrade your existence as a person. It positions you as less than. Can often be a targetted, direct attack at a disabled person. Ex: the r slur, words like "cripple", and using "deaf", "blind", or "disabled" as insults.

Mocking the way someone walks, moves, speaks, or exists as a disabled person.

No one taking you seriously because you are disabled/being subjected to infantilization. People assuming that you can't do anything for yourself.

Able-bodied people assuming the needs of a disabled person without asking them. Often this comes from a place of trying to be helpful but make sure you always ask what you can do to accommodate someone before assuming what they might need help with because it can be infantilizing

Example: I've had a lot of people assume that I need help putting on a jacket or getting my shoes on so they automatically start helping me with it and they basically end up treating me like a child because they assume that I can't do something.

People touching you or your equipment or mobility aids without your consent. Mobility aids can be like extensions of our body so do not touch them without our permission. This urge to violate a disabled person's space comes from the subconscious assumption that disabled people don't have their own autonomy.

Example: many times when I was a full-time wheelchair user people would come up behind me and just start pushing my wheelchair without asking or saying anything. Their intention was to help me get where I was going but it was very jarring to suddenly start being pushed without asking.

Being denied a job because you are disabled.

Job applications including physical ability requirements for non-physical or desk jobs to discourage disabled people from applying. Ex: "must be able to lift [x amount] of pounds"

Being denied the accommodations you need to be able to function in a school/work/home/other environment.

Lack of captions or audio descriptions

Being expected to work and move at the same pace as your peers all of the time.

Constantly feeling the need to "prove" yourself to the abled majority.

The idea that being abled is the ideal and that you need to do everything in your power to try to be as close to abled as possible. The idea that you shouldn't be comfortable with your disability. The notion that being disabled cannot be a whole or fulfilling identity.

A good example of this that people don't often think about are the viral videos that are like "Sally worked for months so that she could [struggle] to walk down the aisle at her wedding! Isn't that sweet?" Or the videos of kids feeling pressured to walk across the stage at graduation. These videos imply that struggling to perform ability is somehow better than being comfortably disabled.

The idea that disabled people can't be desirable, attractive, or sexy. The idea that they don't make good romantic partners.

Using disabled people as inspiration porn. This happens a lot with viral videos of disabled people where the comments amount to "if they can live with a disability, then you have no reason to complain about your life!" Disabled people do not exist to inspire you.

Also another personal example but one time in gym class I did more push ups than a girl who was able-bodied so she got all defensive and said "well if she can do that many then I'm gonna do more!" Like girl.... anyways...

Having to jump through a million hoops to get disability benefits. Or being denied disability benefits for arbitrary reasons.

Also once you get disability benefits it's barely anything. Also when you're on benefits you're not allowed to save up money and if you get married you lose benefits. I could make a whole other post about how disabled people are expected to live off of nothing but...

MOBILITY AIDS ARE SO EXPENSIVE HOLY SHIT

The world was built by and for able-bodied people. Architectural/environmental ableism occurs when there are no ramps, no accessible bathroom stalls, no elevators, no disability parking spaces, and/or no space for wheelchairs/mobility aids in public places.

This also happens a lot with public transportation. When I tried using the metro with my friends in DC, I had to have a security guard help me get down the escalator because there wasn't an elevator nearby. Right before I got on it, I saw a man force his wheelchair onto the escalator.

A smaller example but it can be as small as there not being a sidewalk ramp. One time I couldn't even cross the street because there was no sidewalk ramp and I was in a wheelchair. Once again, the world was built by able-bodied people.

Eco-ableism. It's when disabled people aren't considered when it comes to environmental activism. The best example of this is the straw debacle that happened last year. Every abled person and their mama wanted to complete ban plastic straws without acknowledging that a lot of disabled people need to use blendable, flexible plastic straws.

Another example that I've witnessed myself has been with automatic doors. I've had to tear down signs at my university that were put on automatic doors that said "save a polar bear, use the other door". Stop blaming disabled people's survival for environmental issues and blame big corporations.

Almost a complete lack of disability representation in media. Disabled kids don't have many people who they can look up to. I know I didn't have any.

The ableism that comes from abled parents of a disabled child.

For years I was told inaccurate information about my disability by able-bodied people, including my mother. It was only when I started researching my disability myself that I actually began to understand it.

Related to the previous point, lack of information or knowledge about certain disabilities

People assuming that just because someone is in a wheelchair that they can't move their legs or walk. This feeds into the idea that disabled people are "faking" their disability. The idea that someone is "faking" can lead people to be attacked or have people tell them that they don't "deserve" things like benefits or parking spaces.

People who straight up pretend they don't see us. I've had so many people try to cut me in line over the years just because they didn't think I would say anything or wanted to pretend they didn't see me.

I have friends who have delayed speech as part of their disability. If you know someone who has delayed speech or a stutter, don't fucking cut them off or try to finish their sentences for them. It's super rude and disrespectful.

DON'T FUCKING SAY THE R WORD. DON'T SAY IT! DON'T SAY IT EVEN IF YOU ARE DISABLED! THE R WORD IS SO ABLEIST AND STIGMATIZING STOP SAYING IT! DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR WRITING EITHER!

Lastly, about half of people killed by police have some sort of disability or mental illness. Disability is intersectional and it's important when talking about things like the BLM movement, women's rights, lgbtq+ rights, etc.

Hope this helped you learn something about ableism and how prevalent it is!

[blitzkrieg-mit-dem-fleischgewehr]

Headcanons for Balthier mied Bunansa Pt. 1

I had an amazing conversation with my roommate tonight about our above-mentioned leading man.  In fact.....the details of what we discussed were so enlightening (as well as building on some of my headcanons already) that before I forget a lot of it, I would immortalize it here on Tumblr so that I can come back and read it when needing details.  We spoke specifically about Balthier’s past and his relationship with his family. 

It is known that Balthier had siblings, I believe it was two older brothers, and aside from that nothing more is known of them. We also know that at some point Balthier’s mother passed away which caused Cid to fall further into his research, estranging him from his children, and then Giruvagen occurring which had many believe Cid to have gone insane (which I guess some could argue isn’t entirely false). 

For me, I like to headcanon that Balthier did have good relations with his entire family. That his mother’s death definitely but a strain on it especially when his father began pulling away from everyone. 

Timeline wise, I like to think that there’s a year of mourning for Cid that his children understand that he needs to process the pain of losing his partner. However, once that year is up, I headcanon that he leaves for Giruvagen on his research trip, which lasts approximately two years, where the middle son ends up taking care of Balthier while he’s gone. 

  This ends up leading to resentment because the moment Cid returns it’s like he’s become a different man. The eldest brother realises right away that his father barely acknowledges him. The middle brother is upset because he put his life on pause to help with Balthier and keeping the estate running and wasn’t expecting their father to return and discard all his duties as a father.  In terms of Balthier, having lost his mother, and then having his father disappear for two years to only return and also barely acknowledge him. I can’t imagine that would be easy on him especially if we go with the idea that he did have a good relationship with his father. 

I want to say that Balthier was probably around 9 or 10 when his mother passed away (not sure if they gave a date for her death but lets go with that for now). Which would mean by the time his father returns Balthier is around 13 years old. I can see Cid telling Balthier that it’s his turn to be of use and gets him enrolled in Judge Academy. I like to think that because of Cid’s position as head scientist that he was able to pull strings.  Thanks, nepotism!  And he gets Balthier in earlier than is strictly legal. Many would turn a blind eye to those high in power. So, Balthier, wanting to see if he can mend his relationship with his father, reluctantly commits to it (not that he had much of a choice anyway) and performs to the best of his ability during his time at the academy.  Astounding even.  I’m going to switch over for a few seconds to mention that I feel as if Balthier is the one that was upset with how broken his family had become after his mother’s death. I headcanon that the Bunansa family dynamic was actually quite good and they were all quite close. So seeing both his brothers take several steps back from the family really hurt.  I also headcanon that his eldest brother, upset that his father doesn’t acknowledge any of the work he’s done, ends up going on this diplomatic mission/trip and gets killed in the process. This occurs right before Balthier graduates (which would have come at a later date due to Balthier’s age (( I think 16 is wayyyy too young to be a graduated Judge and one in active duty)) but thanks to Cid gets him to graduate ‘early’/ on time (if he had been of proper age to enroll).  For me, it just hammers the fact that Balthier will forever be in his father’s shadows in Archades. That even though he did deserve to graduate because he did spectacularly in Judge Academy, that it was still not his own merit that allowed him to graduate. So that would be another component to stoke the flames of his upset. Plus, then he hears that his brother died just before and it really shows that his family won’t ever go back to the same dynamic they once had.  It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Then, learning everything the Empire has been doing throughout the war and how the Counsel as well as the palace work environment is like, it cements the fact that Balthier would rather do anything but work as a Judge. Yes, he’s the youngest Judge in history but none of this is worth it and none of this is what he wants.  I will add that throughout his time in the academy, he has been working on an old airship because he’s been considering running away for a while now. However, he had hoped that maybe he could get through to his father, which he does not, he leaves.  He packs as much as he can and he escapes from Archades.  This is a side-note on the part in the game when they make it to Archades and Balthier excuses himself to go take care of some business. My roommate and I thought it would be tragic if it was to see his dying brother who had grown ill while he was gone. And he learns that day that his brother was actually very proud of Balthier for leaving and getting to live his own life because that was not a luxury he had gotten. And Balthier at that point feels guilt for leaving because he could have been there to take care of him but at the same time Archades and their father had been a suffocating cage for him and all he ever wanted was freedom. Which, he did get to a degree. He was still chained to his father and the past they shared as well as a lot of unresolved feelings but he mostly deals with that throughout the game.  So, he leaves, crashes the ship near Balfonheim and then realises how alone he is and how little he knows when it comes to survival. Seeing as he’s lived quite a comfortable life as an aristocratic Archadian, it makes sense that he would be out of his depth as a 17 year old having to figure out how to make money, where to sleep, how to cook, and just how to get around in a world that he’s actually not at all familiar with.  Being that young too and having lost so much, there would be a long period of mourning. Of stupid decisions. Of self-reflection and of figuring out what he can do to support himself. I give it around 6ish months before he runs into Fran and she’s the one that starts piecing him back together, giving him a reason to live and reminding him that family doesn’t necessarily have to be blood-related. 

Then the next several years he’s working to make money, making other stupid mistakes but necessary ones for his own development, fixing the Strahl with Fran’s help, and discovering how sheltered he’d been and how beautiful life outside of Archades really is. Then there’s becoming as notorious as he does as a Sky Pirate which I feel like would take a few years, so I headcanon that Balthier is between 25-27 in game rather than 22. I just think that given his history and everything that he’s had to go through, that he wouldn’t be as mature or as stable as he is as a 22 year old. This is off topic but on topic, I also headcanon both Basch and Gabranth as being 32 rather than 36. I just think that as warriors and being as good of a swordsmen as they are, being a bit younger would still afford them the flexibility of being able to bounce back from injuries. I see it as professional athletes who are forced to retire in their thirties because they can’t compete with younger athletes anymore. Of course, I could argue that being a Judge Magister you can get away with being older given you probably don’t actually see action that often. However, Basch on the other hand, was constantly on the batllefield and then he was tortured and practically starved for two years in Nalbina, which....would take time to recuperate from if you’re getting up there in age.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, Square Enix, please hire me to do the aging of your characters. I’m not sure who does this but there are some odd ages for some of these characters that I feel need to be reconsidered. 

And that will be that for part 1. xD

[worldofandromeda]

Stray Kids Headcanon: As Boyfriends.

A/N: I spent over two and a half hours writing this, I hope you fucking enjoy it. Requests are open. (I swear, if the fucking gifs don’t work, I’m gonna sue my mother for making me exist).

Requested: No. By Who: my fucking imagination.

Word Count: 2052.

Not proofread or edited.

BANG CHAN

extremely loyal but also a bit of a shameless flirt, so he would need a partner that is able to snap him out of that habit

doesn’t overreact in fights, is actually pretty calm and rarely loses his temper

indecisive, so his partner would nearly definitely always end up being the one picking where you two eat or going on vacation together, stuff like that

loves when you compliment him but will give you ten more for every single one you give him, he just wants to make you feel loved

I feel like he would really enjoy simple date nights at home like when you two have a movie night or cook together, it doesn’t matter what you do, he just wants to be with you

but, I also feel like he is a big money spender, so i feel like he would spend a lot of his money buying you unnecessary gifts when he travels and treating you to really expensive and fancy dates whenever it is possible for him to do so

KIM WOOJIN

impulsive, probably really into spontaneous sex, maybe even public but he wouldn’t do anything you weren’t comfortable with even if you were misbehaving (I think he’s a dom but eh, who knows, his personality seems a bit sub to me, so maybe a switch, who knows?)

easily jealous, will actually hit a guy if he won’t leave you alone, yelling at anyone who looks at you the wrong way and don’t get me started on if some dude groped you or slapped your ass, cute little Woojin is about to unleash his inner WWE wrestler

would love being near you but also needs his alone time, so sometimes he would just turn his phone off for a couple of hours, just to have a bit of time to himself and you understand that, so you’re all good, no fighting about it, except maybe the first time he does it without letting you know, making you worry for him when he wasn’t replying

gets bored easily and is probably really adventurous, so sometimes you two would just be watching TV when he’ll say, ‘wanna go rock climbing?’ or ‘I want to go on a hike this weekend, you in?’ something like that.

problem solver, you got an issue? Tell him. Will encourage you to be open with your feelings and he will try his hardest to find a solution and make you feel happy and content again (p.s. he loves your smile)

his partner will most likely plan most of the dates but he would really love them if they had to do with something active, like ziplining or ice skating, even just going through a haunted house will really excite him (but be ready for him to cling onto you whenever there is a jump scare)

LEE MINHO

wants to know everything about you, might come off as a little nosy but really, he just wants to feel like he knows you better than anyone else because that would make him feel really proud

it would probably take a bit of time for him to open up to you and also, he would probably be the most cautious member when it came to announcing your relationship to the stays

would tease you a lot but he does it out of love, sort of like a little boy pulling his crush’s hair to get her attention (except he already has your attention, have you seen him?)

wouldn’t let anyone else’s thoughts of you change his opinion, if he thinks your beautiful then he thinks you’re beautiful, if he thinks you’re his soulmate and the most intelligent person he has ever met, then you’re his soulmate and the most intelligent person he’s ever met, he doesn’t care about what others think of you or your relationship as long as you are both happy, healthy and together

I swear, he’s a psychic, knows what his partner is thinking before they do. notices when his partner is sad, even when they try to hide it. he can tell how his partner is feeling just by the littlest things and he always tries his best to make them smile and feel better

is very good at knowing when his partner is lying, will find their tells very quickly and he would be really sad if they were lying about something that could hint at them cheating but he would feel even worse if they lied about their problems as to not ‘burden’ him. he wants to know about their problems, so he can help.

SEO CHANGBIN

always wants your attention, probably a bit clingy but not in the annoying way, in the cute way, would love just talking with you, no phones or anything, just you two, focused on each other

dramatic, always showing you off and yelling about how pretty you are and about how perfect he finds you, even when you’re not there with him

i feel like he’s actually really sensitive (i mean, when chan wrote that letter, remember?), so, there’s a chance a chance that when you guys argue he would start crying, most likely after though because he wouldn’t want you to see him break down

low maintenance, you don’t need to do much to make him happy, kiss his cheek and ruffle his hair affectionately and damn bitch, you got yourself a tamed and cheery pup

would probably really like singing with you, so, look out for all of those karaoke dates, even if you do sound like you’ve just swallowed a pineapple whole, including the skin and leaves (leaves, stalks? i don’t fucking know)

will always try to impress you, showing you new dances and raps, really wants to make you proud (even though you obviously already are)

HWANG HYUNJIN

hates fighting with you, so he tries to quickly resolve fights but if he’s actually really pissed off then it would probably end up with him breaking down and you having to comfort him

probably didn’t make the first move but was definitely crushing on you and really excited when you approached him and introduced yourself

will blush whenever you kiss his cheek or doing anything affectionate, especially in public or in front of the members, no matter how long you’ve been dating

really romantic, gets you flowers all the time, always takes you out for a fancy dinner whenever he sees you after a long time, buys you cute gifts, etc.

tells you that he loves you all the time. no matter the situation, when you leave the room, come back to the room, go out, when you wake up or at just random times, he just blurts it out. you two could be paintballing on opposite teams but he would still yell those three words across the field to you.

really loves holding your hands or just touching you in general (sexual and not 😉), puts his hand on your thigh when you two are in the car, always has his arm around your shoulders, kisses your jaw head every time you hug

HAN JISUNG

for some unknown reason i feel like he would have really high standards, so his future partner better feel fucking good if he chooses to be with her

gets shit done, you need to pack? bitch it’s done before you get to your bedroom. you want food? he’s already on the phone calling the local pizza place.

would notice all the little things about you, like the way you bite your nails or pull at your hair when you’re annoyed. he would be able to easily figure out how you’re feeling because of his observations

loves planning dates with you and always has the most ridiculous but ultimately hilarious and really fun ideas.

loyal as fuck, no hoe is getting their hands on your man, probably really sassy with anyone that hits on him.

bit picky about everything but i think he would try his best to compromise with you when it comes to certain things.

LEE FELIX

Plays video games a lot which really annoys you sometimes and you tend push him off the bed if he accidentally yells at you when you unintentionally distract him.

Really talkative and has the most random conversations with you but you don’t mind because they either turn out really cute or funny as all hell. Said conversations tend to happen at 3am in the kitchen while you two eat ice cream out of a tub with you sitting on the counter and Felix standing between your legs.

Loves taking you everywhere, whether that be to events, dance practice, concerts, on tour, everything. He just wants to be as close to you as possible and refuses to let anything get in the way of that.

Tends to show up late to dates but it definitely isn’t intentional, he just loses track of time or on some occasions dance practice, recording or song writing ran late. Always makes it up to you though.

A bit crazy but I mean so are you if he agreed to date you. Dance battles, food fights and hysterical laughter are all very common within your relationship and you both adore those regular occurrences.

Something you are very jealous of is his ability to look like the human definition of a rotten egg (bitch, he could never look anything less than perfect) and then, 10 minutes later, this GREEK MOTHERFUCKING GOD walks out of the damn bathroom.

KIM SEUNGMIN

really good problem solver and refuses to let arguments get out of hand. He doesn’t want you to be yelling at him when you could be cuddling or making out or watching tv or making music or laughing (etc.) with him.

does random things for you, like grabbing your phone for you, carrying your bag, bringing your dishes to the sink, answering your phone (if you say he can because you’re busy doing something), brushing your hair and more. He just likes helping you out as much as possible even if it’s with little mediocre tasks.

is very, very honest with you. Will tell you the truth about anything, how an outfit looks on you, his feelings, what happened to your leftovers, that rash on his ass (CUNT, WHAT-).

likes easy dates, going to the cinema, aquarium or zoo, a small picnic, a music festival maybe, even an art museum.

sometimes gets insecure and needs you to help him out of that bottomless pit, like, when he had so much trouble confessing to you because of his fear of rejection, it was fine though seeing as you liked him back (obviously! Who wouldn’t?)

is randomly silent sometimes which worries you but most of the time he’s either staring at you or daydreaming about you.

YANG JEONGIN

sometimes gets randomly moody but tries his best not to take it out on you and instead, walks out of the room to try and calm himself down or sometimes he just ignores you, so he doesn’t accidentally hurt your feelings, even though that would end up annoying you, lol.

Really likes receiving sentimental gifts, he doesn’t care if it’s not expensive or designer, he would definitely love a scrapbook or photo album about your relationship more than some stupid Gucci belt (can’t say the same for Taehyung though, lollll, I’m not funny).

Whenever you guys fought, he would leave because he hated the drama of it all. He would probably write you a letter as a form of apology. Speaking of letters, love letters! Or poems! Wait! Songs, he would fucking write songs for and about you, yes. Bitch!

Always sees the best in you and literally nothing about you seems like a flaw to him. In his opinion, you are legitimately perfect and bitch, if you tried to change anything, just know that this cutie would throw you over his shoulder before you even tried to change your style to look like everyone else.

He would love every second he spent with you, always taking pictures of you and everything you guys do, he’s just really fucking cute, which we all obviously already know.

If you rejected him because you were worried about him hurting you, get ready for this determined boy to prove you wrong, if he wants you, he’s going to get you (as long as it doesn’t make you uncomfortable).

[phoenotopia]

2020 March Update

Happy New Year! Well, I guess it's a bit late for that...

Much of what transpired in the past few months will fall under polish and bug-fixing. Will and I have a mutual friend who got married, so I had the occasion to visit Will to attend the wedding as well as have Will playtest the game in its most complete form yet. He logged 24 hours of playtime and just reached the entrance of the final dungeon. Then we had to call in for the night since it was 5 AM, and I had a flight to catch in the morning.

His completion rate where we stopped was 42% of Heart Pieces, 33% of Energy Gems, and 44% of Moonstones. So... I think we have a pretty lengthy game!

This will take a while to playtest & polish... Will's daytime profession is QA Engineer so he's pretty great at catching bugs. From his playtest, we jotted down 200+ items to fix/adjust. Some as small as a simple misspelling, and some more significant (like Gail being unable to jump when standing at the edge of a steep slope). I'm about half-way through fixing that list...

(Will’s living room where much playtesting was done)

Here are some other things we've accomplished in the past few months. A lot of it falls under polish and bug-fixing, which won't sound outwardly impressive, so I'll dive in a bit under the hood.

-------------------------- Item Balancing --------------------------

There are over 200 items in the game. Of which, 90+ are healing items. While much of their flavor text was already written, their stats weren't yet finally decided. So a large effort was spent to balance them as well as possible. Initially, I balanced items by observation (ex: "The player is relying on this item a lot, so I will nerf it...") Now, I've moved to a more systematic way of doing things. I made an equation that takes in all of an item's parameters, and spits out a score. The higher an item heals, the higher the score. The longer an item takes to consume, the lower the score. And so forth.

As usual, I used google spreadsheets, since they support equations. I could tweak the values of a healing item, and immediately see how its final score was affected. I also made use of automatic color formatting, so a field becomes highlighted red, if it's particularly bad, or green, if it's particularly good. Of course, the sheet is just a guideline. The aim wasn't to make all items have the same final score, but that they made sense for what they were and when you could get them. Late-game items tend to have higher overall scores versus early-game items. Some items, like doggy biscuits, have notoriously low scores across the board - as a joke!

-------------------------- Cooking Systems --------------------------

Another thing that had to be done with the healing items was finally determine their cooking sequences. 38 healing items could be cooked and will transform into something else. The way I specified that an item could be cooked was to add a a little snippet to an item's "meta data". An example would look something like, "COOK,57,62,ABXY,10,1.5,1".

In order, this specified the item_ID that would result on success (57), the item_ID that would result on failure (62), the button sequence (ABXY), the time you had to complete the sequence (10 seconds), how quickly the cursor should move (1.5x speed), and if the item multiplied on success (1). The system appears simple enough - but it was actually extremely inefficient!

For one, this system didn't allow random button sequences - all "berry fruits", when cooked would have the same button prompts and in the same order every time (ABXY). Initially, I thought having set button sequences would be a feature, but in practice, it was less fun. 

Two, this system wasn't human-readable at all. I'd see a sequence of numbers, forget what they were, and have to look them up over and over.

But the biggest problem was that you couldn't evaluate an item's cooking difficulty from these numbers without manual testing. At 1.5 cursor speed, how many times does the cursor pass the center panel in 10 seconds? Maybe that's 15 times... for a 4 button sequence, the player has 11 opportunities to miss - that's too wide a berth for failure. The system also had variable penalties - if you misspressed a button prompt you loss time on the cooking meter. If you didn't press anything, you missed the opportunity, but not the time - but the clock was still ticking, so you did lose time, just not as much. In the end, the difficulty of cooking each item was all over the place. It was also possible to create "unwinnable" scenarios if I made the button sequence too long, the time too short, or the cursor speed too slow. Testing each item manually to ensure doability was too tedious and unreliable - it was a mess!

Which is why, the underlying cooking system was revamped. The new meta data looks like : "COOK,57,62,seq_length,5,spd,1.5,ease_add,2". This is a lot more readable. Beyond the first 3 entries, the arguments could be specified in any order. And their meanings were easy to understand.

"seq_length,5" means a random button sequence of 5 will be generated (no need for me to personally generate it)

"spd,1.5" means the cursor moves at 1.5x speed. I could also leave this field out to get a default value of 1x cursor speed.

"ease_add,2" - the biggest improvement to the system is how we now approach difficulty. We streamlined a miss-press and a missed opportunity as the same level of "mistake", and difficulty is framed as, "how many mistakes is the player allowed to make and still have a successful result?" By default, the player is afforded the ability to make 2 mistakes, and "ease_add,2" bumps the number of allowable mistakes to 4. We then automatically calculate how much "time" the player should have to cook something based on its cursor speed, how long the button sequence is, and how many mistakes the player is allowed to make. This was a more sensible and efficient system that let me knock out all 38 healing item cook sequences in one sitting!

-------------------------- Badges Nearly Done --------------------------

As you may recall from the last update, I was working on implementing the badges.

Thinking up the badge and having its graphic drawn is just the first half. Underneath, the code also needs to be made to track all the relevant player stats - how many times the player fished, ate, got money, used a certain move, etc. Some badges require extra guards, because they can be spoofed. For instance, the "Treasure Hunter" badge is obtained when the player has collected XXXX RIN through the course of your journey. However, there is something like a "gold exchange" in the game, where you could circularly trade gold and RIN to boost this number artificially. It's important to guard against cases like those.

So far, 30 of 33 badges are implemented. The last three have to do with late-game things that have inter-dependencies that we're still figuring out. The Speed running badge for instance is still dependent on two things. One, I need to speed run the game a few times to see how fast it's possible to beat the game and decide finally what's a reasonable time-limit. Two, there's actually a time-keeping bug which can inflate the game time if the system is left in sleep mode. I don't expect either things will be too hard to figure out - just gotta find the time for it.

-------------------------- Script Extra Polished --------------------------

We continued to polish the script, which I thought was basically done before. We added some extra NPCs here and there, and fleshed out the world with lore text where it seemed appropriate. In the end, the game's script ballooned to over 100,000 words! Hah... It's definitely DONE now however!

Some interesting things I noted as I was polishing old text - there were quite a few instances where Gail talks. I began the game's development with the idea that Gail should definitely talk since I wanted her to be a more active participant in what she chose to do. But I discovered later that if Gail talks, but only talked a little, she comes off as a very reticent person. There's no middle lane here - you're either all in or all out.

If Gail was a silent protagonist, she still talked symbolically. She is understood to be talking based on how people react to her - kinda like Link. So that's the direction I went with in the end (again). When Gail has occasion to talk, it comes in the form of a player dialogue choice. She also has an inner voice when she needs to remind the player to do something.

Another reason I went with this direction, is for brevity. Take this exchange for instance: QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : Maybe. I can't make any promises...

If Gail is silent, I can reduce those 2 lines to 1. QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : ...

-------------------------- Business Taxes --------------------------

Not too exciting, but new year means I gotta do taxes for the business. They're a lot more complicated than personal taxes, and more expensive! Since the game hasn't sold anything, you would think there'd be nothing to file. Hah! If only... The business is there so we can act as a legal entity and record expenses for when we do start selling. I really want to focus on making games, but there’s a small percentage of it that is sometimes boring and dreadful (-_-) ... still it needs to be done.

------------- Why no Public Beta Testing? -------------

As you may have noticed, I haven't put out any public calls for testing help despite being at that stage. Some have offered to help, which I appreciate! But sadly, I cannot accept. Here's the story for that.

Two and a half years ago, I got my hands on a console dev kit - that's very exciting, so I hurriedly took the steps to convert my dev station to be console-capable. After about two weeks, I had the console version working and integrated into my workflow, so all appeared good...

4 Months later, an artist needed an updated PC build to test some new art assets, so I went to build a new PC version. We use Unity, so generally you just need to click your desired build target, and hit "build". However, I now discovered that by attaching the console "hooks" into my work environment, I could no longer build to PC... It was possible, from my end, to test the game from the dev station in dev mode, which was why it went undiscovered for so long.

I did try to excise the hooks, but proved unsuccessful after a day of work. I decided to take this as an opportunity to focus exclusively on the console version first, which afforded me some niceties. Knowing that there's a standardized control scheme meant I could make full use of the control stick for the fishing mini-game. I also didn't need to create a rebindable keys menu - which is a MUST for PC versions... Most importantly, it lets me focus on making the one version as good as possible before moving onto the next. I have NO idea how those other guys release on all platforms at once...

Chalk it up to inexperience. In my defense, this will be my first commercial release, so bear with me. Don't worry, I still plan to make the PC version! It's a bit unconventional, but we're just going to go in the reverse direction of the usual. Console first, then PC, then other consoles. Wherever it makes financial sense, there we will be. (Sorry Ouya!)

Back to the original question - that's why I haven't sent out any public calls for playtesting. Current playable builds of the game are locked to my console dev kit. So actual playtesting unfolds in a very closed setting. Like what I did with Will, I literally sit behind the playtester, breathe down their neck, and watch them play, taking notes all the while.

But since I'm observing the player directly, even just one playthrough nets me a TON of bugs and adjustment tasks. So it evens out I think.

-------------------------- Trailers, Release Dates, etc. --------------------------

Alright, get your frowns ready...

We finished two trailers, and they're raring to go. BUT! We can't show them yet... We're sort of at an awkward spot where we're waiting on some conversational threads to conclude. Say we win a slot in a show - that'd be a HUGE plus for us - but that may also be contingent on us having NOT shown anything substantial yet. The game in its unrevealed state is a negotiating chip. So we're trying to leverage that... and you can only do the reveal once...

We also want to have some "actionable" items in the trailer - a launch date you could mark on your calendar, a wishlist, a website you can visit, etc. So since those things aren't entirely lined up yet, we can't let the trailers rip just yet...

Right now, I can only say we're *aiming* for a late Q2/early Q3 launch. But I can't commit to anything concrete yet. As soon as we know, we'll happily sing it from the rooftops. I hope I can update this blog sooner with good news, but if things move slowly again, I'll send out the next "we're alive" update 2 months from now (end of April).

I know it's frustrating to have nothing major after so long still, so I captured some gameplay footage... May it sate your hungers!

-------------------------- Footage 1 : Fishing --------------------------

You've seen pictures of the fishing, but never video of it in action. Well, here it is!

(And right after I uploaded the video, I noticed there actually was a video of fishing before. D’oh)

The idea is simple. First, get the lure in front of a fish, and assuming the fish isn't scared, it will soon bite. Then begins a fight sequence, where your energy meter is pitted against the fish's energy meter. Whoever's energy outlasts the other's wins.

The fish's resistance is represented by a red moving circular subsection. You fight the fish by pushing the control stick and keeping it on the subsection, which will dart around and try to escape you. Bigger and tougher variants of fish will do a "shake" which will reverse the wheel. When the wheel is reversed, so too are the controls, so it gets extra tricky!

While fishing, your energy meter doesn't recover, so one of the ways you level up your fishing ability is by finding energy gems to increase your max energy. There's another way - but we'll keep that a secret.

-------------- Footage 2 : Kobold Boss Fight --------------

You can actually skip the next section if you'd prefer to be surprised and you find your hunger for info sated. That's how I prefer to consume the games that I know I'm going to get. If you're still hungering for info, and you don't mind the slight spoilers, then feel free to proceed!

The next video shows the new Kobold Boss fight. Let's take a moment to reflect on the old game's visuals and how far it's come...

(we've come a long way since the time of the flash game)

You'll notice the Kobold boss has a name now - Katash! He's a significant enough character that he's earned it. The second thing you'll notice is that he looks better!

Some people have humorously pointed out that the old boss looks like Wolf O'Donnel from Star Fox. There's a funny story behind that. Basically I asked an artist to draw me a space wolf. And the artist, whom I'm assuming wasn't familiar with Wolf O'Donnel, drew that - all of it - all the animations and everything. The first time I laid eyes on it, it was already done, so it was too late to ask for edits. So I just ran with it.

That was seven years ago. Nowadays, I know to involve myself more in the process. I ask for just the design first, and we don't move forward with animations until we're happy with the design. Life lessons!

By the way, if you like Katash’s personal boss theme, give it a lesson on Will's Sound cloud (LINK)

-------------------------- Fan Arts -------------------------- Lots of fan art came in over the past 3 months!

This one is a pixel animation made by Pimez, and shows Gail singing a Christmas carol in various parts of the game. So cute! Years ago, I too was making little animated gifs for my favorite games, so it really brings me back!

This one was made by cARTographer (twitter link) after a request by Deli_mage, so thank you both. Gail rocking stylish boots with a pose that shows confidence in her batting skills. Very anime - Love it!

Another submission of laptekosz of the Last Song of Earth area. Whereas the last picture depicted the night sky, now the orange trees are lit by a rising sun. Artfully done! Kinda makes me want to eat eggs. I hope you'll like the new Last Song of Earth area just as much :D

A new artist to the scene, Not_Quin, submitted two pictures, one of Gail and one of the Sand Drake re-imagined as a centipede. I'm always a fan of these re-imaginings! I like how it's spiky all over and appears to be wearing a skull mask. The Sand Drake is often pointed out to be too similar to Zelda's Dodongos, so maybe a long slithery body would have indeed served better. Fun fact, long ago, when we were working on Phoenotopia 2 in earnest, we actually had a giant man-eating worm planned - WIP animation depicted below. One day... one day...

Negativus Core made two cool new arts! I'm really impressed by their use of unique perspective! Having characters run towards the screen or reaching close to the screen from afar is tricky since the proportions get all distorted - but not an issue for Negativus Core! Love the blur on Gail to show speed, with 66 in focus - really skillfully done! And the cube. Amazing!

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

I'm really honored by the huge fan art community. Thank you all! 

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One:  Storybrooke, Maine

Chapter 6:  Parents

The magic in Snow's necklace was working, but there was a problem. As far as the rest of Storybrooke was concerned, magic was a fairy tale…at least for now. Still, it meant that he couldn't very well open the door and let the magical flying necklace out into the World Without Magic. Regina was out there, he didn't know how much of this she was aware of, but he wanted to remain as anonymous in the situation as possible. So he pocketed the necklace, locked the shop, and hobbled into his car.

His car. The car he knew how to drive despite never being taught.

The Dark Curse was so much more amazing than he'd ever imagined.

But he couldn't allow himself to be distracted.

As he turned the key, he let the necklace out of his pocket. It floated up into the air and knocked against his back window. It wasn't ideal, but at least it would be contained and not as obvious to those he drove by. He drove off the lot angling his car to face whatever direction the necklace wanted to go was a challenge, especially once the necklace led him out of the main town. He was nervous. They were close to the town line, and it only made him feel like he was running out of time. And then, just before he could get on the road out of town, the necklace turned back into the forest. It was something of a relief, but not by much. Snow and David weren't playing around. If they could get the magic in that flower to work, to form a portal to their daughter, they'd be gone in a heartbeat.

This was going to be difficult. Finding them was only half of the fight. After he found them, he had to convince them to take the potion. If they were back in the Enchanted Forest, he could overpower them or erase their memories, but he didn't have those abilities here. He'd have to get them to take the potion willingly. He tried to control his breathing as he drove on. He knew Snow White and Prince Charming well. He'd watched them both nearly their entire lives. He knew how to make deals with them. He'd make them see, leave them with a very clear choice. They could be heroes, or they could help Regina and actively participate in leaving the town, and all their friends, trapped in a terrible curse for the rest of eternity. He couldn't force them to do anything; he just had to trust it would be as it was supposed to be.

The Locator Potion led him to a farmhouse just on the edge of town. Mr. Gold knew that no one lived there or had for years. Oh, he hated not having magic. The Seer, in the back of his head, he could feel her there, taking up space, but he couldn't hear what she was trying to say, what she wanted to warn him about! He couldn't even make out the voices of the Dark Ones; they were but shadows to him now. And the voices. It was like they were trying to call to him through a thick sheet of ice. He could feel them and their desire to scream…but he heard nothing but white noise. Still, the Locator Potion indicated the royal couple he sought was close. Warning or not, he couldn't lose this opportunity.

So he got out of the car, checked the jewel in his hand, and went in the back door. If the voices he heard coming from the front room were any indication, he'd come just in time.

"Regina's onto us. It won't be long before she finds out," Snow was muttering quickly.

"Did you bring it?" David asked. There was a pause and some heavy breathing before he heard David continue. "Rumple said its magic is strong enough to lead us to Emma."

"Let's go find our daughter," Snow whispered. Just in time, as he'd feared…

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," he explained, sauntering into the room.

The couple looked shocked to see him. Their hands were joined, and in David's other hand, he held a flower that he recognized all too easily. It was the pixie. That was the source of trouble. He hoped that whatever had occurred to make it grow didn't happen again. They couldn't do this over and over again until the girl came of age. He understood that. But now he had to explain it to her parents. He doubted they'd take it as well.

"It appears we've only been cursed for ten years. She's still years shy of her 28th birthday, the day she's destined to become the Savior."

"No, she doesn't have to be the Savior anymore. We're awake," Snow argued.

"Well, Snow White and Prince Charming may be awake, but the rest of this town is very much asleep. Find Emma now, and she will never fulfill her destiny, the Curse will never be broken, and everyone will be trapped here forever."

"What do you expect us to do...just leave her out there?"

He took a breath and reached into his pocket. "Drink this, like I'm going to," he explained. "It'll put you back under, and then, when the time is right, Emma will find us."

"That's easy for you to say. You don't have a child who's out there by herself."

"You have no idea what's out there for me," he growled. If he had his magic, he would have choked him to get his point across or even make him back up. David stepped up to him so close that they were nearly toe to toe. "You can't stop us. You don't have magic in this world. Here, you're just a man," he proclaimed.

"I don't need magic to stop you," he commented as David moved around him. And he hoped those words were true. He couldn't appear to be an antagonist to them now. He had to be a friend, someone who appealed to their lighter side. David was hot-headed and always would be. But his wife, the lovely Snow White…there were tears gathering in her eyes at this moment. She was the weaker of the two. She'd understand. She'd sent their daughter here to save everyone…they'd already done what he was asking them to do once. They could do it again. David would just need the convincing of his wife. His potion was going to make it easier. For all of them.

"You see," he muttered, stepping up to Snow. Was she the weaker of the two…or was she the stronger? This would give him that answer. "This potion...is the only way forward…for everyone. That flower in your hand, the dust will open a portal. It'll allow you to see your daughter and get to her if you choose. You and your husband and your daughter, you will live happily ever after. But the rest of us, everyone else in this town…we'll all be doomed. No happy endings. Just the same day over and over again, just as it's been for the last ten years."

Snow's face was iron, a mixture of every possible emotion frozen on her face. The eyes were angry but also still wet with tears. Her mouth was puckered with frustration, but the corners were turned down in sorrow. And her breathing...it was calm, but too even to suggest true peace; it was as if she were counting her breaths out. Oh, she wanted to say something to him, but she didn't know what. She was conflicted to the very marrow of her bones. A seed was planted. With her, that was all it would take.

He heard heavy footfalls on the floor behind him, and suddenly he felt David over his shoulder. "And who's to say you don't deserve that?" he asked. "Everything you've done, who's to say you don't deserve to stay in this town and rot?!"

"Perhaps I do," he answered, keeping his gaze firmly on Snow White. "But you can't say the same about your friend Red, or her dear old Granny. You can't say the same thing about the dwarves you've known and loved so well."

"We'll come back for them."

"For everyone? All the children in your classes, the mechanic, your next-door neighbor? Or just your friends. Even if you did, they don't even know who or what they are right now. Only that something is missing and they can't find it. Taking them out of town won't change that. Only a Savior will. The only one with the power to stop it is Emma."

"We'll bring her ourselves." Suddenly David moved around him and pushed himself between him and Snow, breaking their contact. It didn't matter. Before he'd been shoved aside, he'd seen her face. It was already done. "Snow, we can bring her back ourselves when the time is right. We can come when she turns twenty-eight."

"Are you sure about that?" he interjected before Snow could reply. "You've been asleep for the last ten years. You know nothing of this world or how difficult it is for young people to take vacations and get away from their lives. Who's to say she'll want to come? Or that she'll stay once she's here? Or that she'll be strong enough? It's a difficult path she has to trod ahead of her and a delicate one. But Emma is our best chance and her best chance at besting Regina…it's not with the two of you."

David whipped around so quickly that he had to bite his cheek to keep from reacting. "That's enough! We know what's best for our daughter! She needs her parents. And now we're leaving. Snow, let's go." He grabbed his wife's hand and pulled her around him so that they only locked eyes one more time for a brief second. His heart raced as David pulled her away. The potion was still in his hand.

"You're not leaving with something that belongs to me, dearie!" he called after him.

"What?!" David inquired, pausing in the doorframe.

"That sword."

"What about it, it's mine?!"

"In another world, maybe. But in this world, I have the paperwork that says it belongs to me. I have the appraisal for what it's worth and the bills from the insurance company. That's a lot of money there. I'm sure Mary Margaret would be happy to explain what happens to people in this world who steal such precious objects. I'm sure she'd also be happy to explain my reputation for protecting what's mine."

"David…" Snow breathed, tugging on his arm. "He's right. It's not worth it."

"Here…an exchange, not that I'm owed one as it belongs to me, but I'm willing. The sword for this potion…do we have a deal?"

David squared his eyes at him, and his nostrils flared in anger. He didn't mind. It wasn't really him he was making this deal with. It was his wife.

"David, let's just…let's just take it and leave. We can toss it in the flower bed on the way out," she sighed. Then she stepped forward in an attempt to take the potion from him, but he quickly pulled it away.

"The sword…" Snow White turned around to look at her husband, and after a few seconds of staring at one another, he tossed it onto the floor with a huff. "Excellent choice. Just remember…do this my way, and you may wait a while longer to see your daughter, but the town will be saved, and Emma will fulfill her destiny."

Snow made another reach for it, but he pulled it away again and took her hand in his own.

"Do this your way, and…well…let's just say…it would be an awful thing to deprive a Savior the opportunity to save," he muttered, placing the bottle in her hands and folding her fingers around it. They locked eyes for a second longer, then David grabbed her hand, pulled her free, and the pair wandered out through another door.

[zydrateacademy]

First Impressions / Review - Cyberpunk 2077

I have some screenshots but they’re mostly photo mode and the occasional interface showing off my gear. So this review will be pic-less for now. I got Cyberpunk off of Stimulus money so as far as I’m concerned, the government paid for this game which does negate some of the problems I’d normally have for dropping 80$ or so on a preorder. Use that information how you will. First, I want to address some technical issues. In the sense that I don’t have very many. I have a 1050 GTX, an i5 processor, and 16GB of Ram. That’s about as complex as my knowledge goes on that. I’ve had a few glitches like Jackie ghosting through a closed door, some vans were clipped into the parking lot, and some NPC’s being stuck in furniture. A lot of ghosting around, really. The odd frame drop but nothing game breaking, and I haven’t had any crashes except one on startup, right after updating my drivers. Just the one in ~21 hours of gameplay. I play on High (but not ultra) settings. So all in all, not a bad experience. Everyone’s computer is a unique butterfly so while you will see a lot of yelling on various communities, some of us are trucking along several hour sessions at a time and not having a problem. Let’s do a quick dive into the story, and there may be some spoilers here but it’s mostly for Act 1, which is reachable just a couple hours depending on how quickly you want to unlock the whole city (as you’re locked to one region until you complete a major heist). 

You play as V, of any variety of gender identity you wish (though you are stuck with he or she pronouns). Basically a futuristic mercenary that does any kind of work available, kind of giving me some vibes from Burn Notice. Arms deals, stealing fans, VIP extraction, and so on. Of course, nothing goes as plan and you more or less lose your entire initial team after a heist goes wrong in every way possible. You’re witness to a world changing shift in a power structure and are forced to insert a chip with the ‘soul’ of Johnny Silverhand, an angry and incredibly bitter man who staged a bombing decades before V enters the game. This becomes the driving force of the game as you work to remove him safely from your body before he replaces you entirely - Something that not even he can stop, really. I’ve only had my toes dipped in Cyberpunk as a genre but it seems pretty standard fare. The concepts of “do cybernetics eat your soul’ and the various debate of how much human makes a human, all that. You’re put right there in center force as you grapple with these questions, even though our avatar as V is more concerned with just curing themselves like it was any other terminal disease. Even in-universe, the idea of a soul-preserving microchip is still a relatively new invention, though still in development enough to be advertised and talked about in news circuits. So let’s approach my first problem. It takes several hours for the game to essentially ‘wake up’. For a long time, you’re stuck in several conversations and interactable cutscenes with very little gameplay except taking advantage of V’s chosen origin in dialog. A couple of firefights here and there but the initial region locks you in and there’s only so many world encounters to just run into. The game more or less railroads you into completing Act 1 with some haste, because it also unlocks the ability to get more cybernetics and even some actual, full on mechanics. Within that railroading, you’re witness to so. Much. God. Damn. Talking. Mercifully you can press or hold “c” to skip through some things if you already understand the gist, but the first several hours of the game can very much feel like a very pretty walking simulator. Thankfully this kind of goes away after Act 1. You suddenly get called by a variety of Fixers that preside over various regions and they toss you dozens of side-jobs to do and so far, I find them to be delightfully varied. As a stealther, I found great joy in having a VIP escort quest with the optional objective of not sounding any alarms. So I went and bought myself a silencer and happily snuck around some gang mates boxing in the middle of a building, retrieved my guy, and escorted him outside while leaving several enemies alive. It was a great achievement. These side-gigs can be as complicated or straightforward as you please, giving me some Dues Ex vibes. The tutorial introduces you to hacking so you can distract and destroy your enemies how you see fit, and I have found that most encounters are designed with alternate routes to deal with enemies. Others are less clear. During one gig, I opened a door and the entire bar went ape on me, so I shot my way through and earned two stars from the police. Turned into a massive shootout that led to a dropbox that had gang members in it that also shot at me. Playing on Easy is a saving grace, but as someone who typically likes sneaking around games when the option is available, I wish the game made it more clear if I'm in a "suspicious" type zone. I also have no idea which NPC's are counted as potential enemies (the scan early in the story tells you if they're in a gang or not), as perfectly normal NPC's in the aforementioned bar just began unloading on me. It was wild, and I survived and got paid but the mission giver telling me it was sloppy work. Thanks, lady. Another time I opened a gate and trained my silenced pistol on the guard only for her to slightly sidestep as the gate opening “alerted” her. So I missed the shot, she opened fire, and the entire structure came out to play. It was an intense gunfight in which I was victorious, but it felt hollow as my silenced approach just botched the entire encounter. It was difficult for me to figure out what the game’s general “loop” is. So far it gives me the Ubisoft vibe of “hit everything you run into”. I do like the idea of V being something of a vigilante, as random police encounters pretty much allow you to intervene and gun down gang members without them bothering you about it. I must admit, however, I wish there was more to actually DO in the game. So far it’s mostly just side-gig after side-gig. Escort guy here, steal a van there, eliminate all enemies here. Though again, I said before that some of this can be quite enjoyable under the right circumstances. Maddening in others. In a way, this is kind of the Rage 2 problem all over again, in the sense that people loved the general gunplay but there wasn’t actually a lot of gameplay beyond the decent combat mechanics. Cyberpunk 2077 is certainly no GTA5, but I hope some day it can become that with DLC’s that add actual activities.

A couple of quick asides. I despise the driving, as most vehicles seem to want to spin out very easily if you hold the turning key for a second too long. In some fashion, it forces you to drive like an actual sane person and mowing down civilians (even accidentally) adds a GTA-esque wanted level though it seems stupidly easy to avoid. Narratively, it makes sense as the authorities in this universe are incredibly corrupt and it basically amounts to “eh, they’re too far now, let’s not waste resources”. So, fair enough. Still, I hope to GOD there’s no mandatory story-based racing. Games have screwed me on that before, and I have not beaten most GTA games because of that. Secondly, I don’t think the origin choice does a lot. You get different dialog choices and being a Corpo did lead to one interesting turn when you just ‘knew’ a credit chip had a virus on it. So there is that, but ultimately the rest of the dialog is identical. You could chalk this up to V spending six months with Jackie and he, more or less, lets your V really swim in Night City culture but honestly ALL V choices feel like they’ve become the same person. I was originally a Corpo but it just feels like her past and culture didn’t seep in through most of the dialog. At the end of the day, V is always just some mercenary punk. The world is gorgeous, albeit not as alive as it may have been advertised in promotions. Random civilians just have canned dialog, a lot of it rude. However I’ve been hard pressed to find doubles or clones of anyone just walking around, but that may change once I get into the hundreds of hour counts. It’s a very pretty game and despite some of my qualms, I am enjoying the experience. There’s a photo mode which is wonderful to utilize when you run into an environment that just captures the imagination. I took a screenshot of Jackie’s wall of pinups, including a typical slutty nun but as per the universe, her chest filled with beautifully placed cybernetics. It was just fun to see, and there’s a lot of semi-subtle world building like that that I just adore.

The game has issues. However, if you wanted a slightly scaled back idea of GTA5 with a different aesthetic, this is not at all a bad choice. However I will not blame anyone if they wait for the “GOTY” editions to come out. And on sale.

[metellastella]

Mao Mao Pride Week Prompts, Part 2

A continuation of the prompts put out by @maomaosmother Previous batch here: https://metellastella.tumblr.com/post/621726687992872960/hello-everyone-happy-pride-month-to-all-of-you

4. Who I am

Mao said, “You know how some people like B.C. marry the other sex and have children to ‘fit in’?”

“Yes.” Snugglemagne said. “It’s something that’s crossed my mind once or twice, to be honest.”

Mao started in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes, to continue the throne. Hard to imagine committing to someone you weren’t drawn to, but …” he shrugged. “Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad?”

Mao rubbed his chin. “I don’t think a lot of people would agree with you there. But. For my own part. A good number of Mao members choose celibacy, because of our offered teachings. Would that not simply be a form of celibacy, just on one side, not the other?”

The king thought about it. “Well, it does seem to make it more manageable, when put that way. I’ve been visited by groups of nuns traveling from their covenants, and they don’t seem to be worse off for it. But, obviously it’s easier for women than men.”

“There are friars, too,” Mao pointed out. “Wanderers. Tending to the poor. Stand-up characters. I felt lucky whenever I’d run into one. Camped out with a few of them in my time. Nice fireside chats.”

“Oh, yeah.” 

“Both of those genders we just talked about  . . . and we in the clan tend to think of all of it, more of as an option. Not a core part of who I am.”

“Hm.”

“How about yourself?”

“I’m with your battle partner on this one, Mao.” 

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

The cat chuckled. “It was kinda cute on nights when he’d pick up a partner and I wouldn’t, and he would get all anxious on my behalf, and, say, ask if they should go to a different floor and not the next room so I wouldn’t feel more ‘lonely.’ He just doesn’t get it’s not that big a deal. He never has.” he shrugged. “And, heh, I have more than enough training to block out distracting sounds from my mind, and I sleep really deeply. But, I appreciate his being concerned over me anyway.”

“I guess I might think of it a little less as a central tenet than he does. After all, I haven’t been actively courting anyone since you both got here, or a little before that, either.”

“So, nothing to do with me?” Mao quirked an eyebrow.

“Heh, unfortunately not. I’ve experienced ‘love at first sight’ before, but for your particular case, it crept up slower. Sometimes that’s just how it is.”

Mao opened a gloved hand. “Right! That’s kinda like the point I was going to make about marrying someone the spouse wasn’t drawn to. Think of the reverse! At least among us siblings, no matter whom we’re drawn to, or how strongly, we tend to seek the same sex a lot, anyway, because it’s just much less hassle and worry, you know? Somewhat because we have warrior duties that take precedent over having children and domestic life, somewhat because we’re wielders, when mixed-magic-and-non-magic opposite-sex pairings can be complicated. We do have, not only the magical blockers to consider, but we’d like to have more wielder children if we’re going to pair up and take that risk in the first place. My sisters would be … I guess a word for it might be … embarrassed? Or frustrated …? To go through an entire pregnancy and not ‘gift’ the world with a wielder. A new dragonslayer! It’s not just outside pressure, either! The bond between a wielder child and parent is just … unfortunately more satisfying than not.”

Mao paused, examining the non-magical animal’s face.

The lion carefully guarded his expression at that. It really didn’t sound like prejudice. He seemed apologetic enough. But it felt that way.

Of course, he could never understand it fully. 

If Mao was looked down on for being the weakest … what gauntlet must a non-magical child born into the clan go through??

Maybe it was sheer, pure benevolence on the womens’ part to do what they could to prevent that. 

But that in itself was kind of hard to think about. 

Mao didn’t get any hint as to his thoughts.

Another animal might have given into an angry or irritated expression, but the king’s diplomatic and political training paid off. 

Not finding anything amiss, Mao resumed. “Sometimes, we just want to let off steam. We seek the same sex. Sometimes, in the past, despite being drawn to both sexes, I’m not really all that attracted, but I want the option anyway. The ‘option’ concept goes both ways.” 

“I . . . guess I understand that, though I still have a hard time picturing being intimate with someone I wasn’t drawn to first. Despite my idle musings on the possibility.”

5. Obstacles

“What?” Mao’s sister asked. “Just because I’m up for fun, you think I’m any less controlled than you, little brother? Conscious decisions are just as fun. Get over yourself.”

His ears went all the way down. “I … I’m so sorry,” his green eyes got bigger than ever. “So sorry! I always thought you were so impulsive … How could I think so badly of my own kin…”

“Aww, it’s all right, Mao,” she backpedaled. “Oh my gosh, stop taking everything so seriously.”

But he looked genuinely grieved. “I don’t have any room to talk,” he looked at his own gloved hands. “Was it my Ego defense mechanisms kicking in? A blind spot? Or … I mean … the others don’t approve of your actions either. Was I just emulating them? They don’t care as much about my actions. Is it because I’m a man, and you’re a woman? Is it prejudice?”

“Really Mao, stop stressing over it. The elders have their penalties in place for both men and women! The social aspect of it … it is what it is. All people have got their personalized hurdles in life. Like the athletes! Tiring, sure. But. Everybody’s just gotta buck up and jump over them.”

“You think maybe that’s a reference to real bucks?” the badger wondered. “Man, imagine catching an antler to the chest.” His voice faded, losing its joy. Did the lion spot him trembling? “Think of facing an even more massive caribou or wildebeast! All antlers, all business. All genders. I mean even a bare-headed female moose with her mountain of muscles is nothing to sneeze at. I do feel sorry for any one of them who might consider themselves male, though. Antlers are hard to fake. All those dudes and dudettes are WAY scarier than predators. Preds like to make out like they’re hot stuff! Psh!” the animal shook his head. “Many bovine species outweigh them several times over … ” 

“Didn’t stop me,” the black cat said confidently.

“Yeah, yeah,” the badger waved his paws dismissively at the magically strengthened animal. 

“I guess in that case the phrase ‘buck up’ might be slightly sexist,” she hummed thoughtfully. “Deer can definitely jump hurdles, though. Way higher than bears could. Like horse jumping! I wonder if their sports earn more money because the audiences like them better? It’s more graceful, they have more natural ability? Higher stakes, too. Their legs are very slender even though they’re strong … it’s very easy, with their massive weight, to totally shatter their bones if they land wrong. Even just racing, not jumping. The same isn’t true, for, say, greyhounds. Their welfare isn’t as endangered. Enough money flows that there are always magic salves on hand, but bone still takes pretty long to heal after the initial injury. But, because they’re so graceful and skilled, they’re drawn by the money rewards. Bears, who usually do it more for status and reputation, are trundling, bumbling, and clumsy by comparison. Even though they’re half-predators. How did they ever manage to make any kills in the old days? I guess a diet of mostly fish didn’t favor their developing grace and speed, as with canines and felines.”

The badger crossed his arms. “With the other type of ‘hurdles.’ I guess even though I admire you in a lot of ways, I don’t envy you outright being a woman. I can lie about attractions and pretend that I’m never drawn to men, if the situation demands it. There is no ‘closet’ for presenting as a woman. That’s tough, though you’re a wielder, so that offsets it a lot.”

“It’s not like being an average woman. Not nearly! Even if I didn’t have powers though. Being drawn to men is a whole lot harder than my stuff, too,” she disagreed.

Snugglemagne thought it was sweet how they seemed to be mildly arguing over whom to support more.

6. LGBT+ Safety

“There was the phenomenon of ‘male daughters,’ in the ancient world,” the lion said. “They were as perfectly ordinary legal designations as a birth certificate nowadays.”

“Oh?” Mai perked his ears, interested.

“Yes, I’ll give you some material on it. They lived like men did, and inherited wealth like they did. They were treated as men in pretty much every way. No having to conceal for safety concerns, like the mess in some places in the modern world. It was just obvious, and pedestrian, to that culture and those individuals. They weren’t harassed because they looked different, nor was a body seen as gender role ‘destiny.’ The approaches and conceptual framework to this issue have varied so much from place to place, and time to time.” “Can’t wait to read about it.”  

The sister made a face. “Oh yeah, that’s Mao, always holed up with his scrolls. I’m more of a party girl.”

“Same,” the badger said.

“I told him …” Mao sighed. “I told him that you all seek the same sex often too. But it’s different for guys.”

“Why?” the lion asked. 

“Remember what I said about the ‘lower’ position,” the badger reminded him flatly. “Actually, among most adventurer circles, at least, it’s totally OK for a pair of guys to get jiggy with each other, as long as neither does that. It’s called a warrior bond.” 

“The warrior bond was something B.C. and I considered,” Mao said quietly. “Out on the road, you never knew whose nose you’d run into. Subbing is not something you can conceal. With animals who aren’t nose-blind, there is no ‘closet.’ We’ve been to places where birds could do things on the sly. But that’s a rarity. Everywhere else, there are predators, or heavyweights, or wielders who’ll take a piece out of your hide for it. Of course I’d have zero problems defending us if necessary. A random group of anti-heroes or bandits just nosing around for trouble in general didn’t have any chance against me, either. But. Just not worth the hassle. Not to mention I’d want to break the nose on whoever it was. All it would take is one good pop.” He made a lighting-swift motion-retraction with his fist. 

The smiles on both the badger and the bigger cat faltered. They looked at each other in concern.

Mao either pretended not to notice, went on because he wasn’t about to soften his feelings on the matter, or was so absorbed in his own reflection that he really didn’t see them. “And I’d enjoy it too. I always did.” He glanced up at them, expression unreadable. “I won’t apologize for thinking it. In fact, I still do. Being a wielder, though, fanning those thoughts is not a good idea. I had to learn that through trial and error.”

“That’s not healthy for anyone,” the badger shook his head, “wielder or not. You’ve managed to avoid growing more of a … like … you said Blue mentioned … a ‘martyr complex’ over it? Right?”

Mao sighed in aggravation. 

“Yeah. I was in the throes of that before. Anyway. For other normal or lesser powered people, the warrior bond provides safety.” Next:  7. Marriage 8. Self-Acceptance   V Click below V https://metellastella.tumblr.com/post/622003595371544576/mao-mao-pride-week-prompts-part-3

First chapter of the fic here: https://metellastella.tumblr.com/post/617045879413719040/piercing-the-swordsman-chapter-1