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overnightheartbeats · 1 month ago

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"Hm," he wondered what the question meant. Was it related to him having someone during the holidays? The answer was no regardless. "Nope. I really only spend holidays with the family and at work. Extended family occasionally," momentarily thinking of Wally. "Not all through the holidays, but I don't mind it. It's a profitable time for us. Tourists wanting things to do, and we also have our donors often feeling generous during the holidays." Her conclusion that it was smart was probably mostly for his benefit, but he appreciated it, a wide toothy grin to show for it. "You understand my vibe, I love it. Yep, and I don't have to worry about the clean up of the winter wonderland," he teased. "I'm a sucker for sales to be honest. I have the alerts set up on my computer, credit card information saved, and everything. It's bad."

Matt couldn't be certain, but something seemed to be on her mind. It was very slight, but her demeanor had changed. The poor salad was being poked like she had a personal vendetta with it, it was unlike her. That, and the yapper's energy just wasn't the same. Not what he was used to. "Huh," he hadn't considered it that way, but he supposed it made sense. Though, he also figured that partners were more understanding, not immediately jumping to cheating. "That's, yeah people aren't the brightest sometimes. I guess some of the things do sound odd, but to immediately jump to the worst conclusion? Well, yeah I think you'd need to be kinda weird to want messy or complicated. Funny you say that, because I think friends with benefits is probably the fastest way to jump into messy. It's unavoidable though, that's part of life, I suppose." Matt's brows furrowed as if to deny her words, but instead, a smile quickly spread. "Bingo, I cannot have that kind of information getting back to the family."

His warm smile remained, nodding in acknowledgement. Matt knew how difficult it was, to come to terms with being left behind. And even when you do, you never fully heal from something like it. "That's the important part, focusing on who we do have in our life. Not who left." His own reminder that he now shared with her. "Not good reasons, I'm sure." Did he have any context to her past? Any information on the how and why? No. Yet, Matt still spoke confidently. "No one deserves that kind of abandonement."

He was caught off guard by the sound of the wind chime, especially when there was no breeze inside her place. Matt looked up in the direction of the chime, unsure what could've caused it. It felt unsettling, just for a moment. But, his focus moved back to Jax instead. "It is a good movie. I do feel like him when I'm presenting trying to get funding for an exhibition, just as crazy. Milo features, it's the glasses. Isn't it?" He was merely teasing, a chuckle falling from his lips as she assigned him a Disney prince. "That's...the guy from The Little Mermaid, right? Is that your favorite princess movie?" Hey, he was keeping up with the movies. "Hm, water yes I like it, but I am missing my own ship."

Matt just shrugged when she answered. "Random, but guess I can't be too surprised with you. What song though?" Looking down at his empty plate, he shook his head at her. "Oh, no I'm good. Won't starve with this, thank you. Yes, please. Don't feel like you need to ask me all the time. I'm here because I want to be." He wasn't aware there was dessert in the oven, it was a bit odd but he just didn't know enough to question anything. Just find it odd, and let it be. "Sure thing. Do you need help with the dessert? Or do you want me back on Christmas lights duty?

"Do you have help?" Curiosity got the better of her in that moment. "Do you work all through the holidays? What on earth do you need museums open for during the holiday season?" Because some people don't actually have plans and would rather go to a museum than be stuck at home? Duh. He is kind of a workaholic. Jax had to keep her eyes from rolling as she asked Matt and not her annoying companion who had just poofed into her home. "I'd say smart. Less time pulling things up and down. You can just literally walk into a winter wonderland without the work. More gifts I'm always a fan of that. Do you buy into the sales of the stores? Since you've got so many family to get things for."

She sees ghosts, handsome. Actually can talk to them but most people think she's looney tunes. The figure eyed the male and hummed. Jax, seriously? He's eye fucking you. Jax sighed and looked at her salad as she poked it with her fork rather roughly. "Ah, you know. I work and travel a lot so I don't keep great hours. Most people would just jump into conclusions and think I'm cheating or something dumb like that. I'm not always home so you know, thing not being as they appear." Jax smiled and nodded, agreeing with that statement of his. "No one wants messy or complicated. They want easy. Hence why friends with benefits work for a lot of people." Glad for the switch back to him she laughed. "Oh, what I'm getting is you're afraid to say."

"Thanks," she looked up briefly and felt an easy smile grace her lips. "It means a lot. I've had my issues with them but I got a good family. I wouldn't trade them in for anything. I would have preferred to not be left but they had their reasons. As people have told me before." Even if their reasons were stupid. Who trades in their own kin just because they could see ghosts.

You two are so nerdy just do it already. A wind chime started to jingle as the figure went to pull on it. Leaving Jax to snap her head in that direction. "I do like that movie. I watch it when I don't feel good. But you do have Milo features." she pretended to think and got the perfect prince. "Eric. You've got the light eyes. Do you like water?"

One point for bulky milo. Yes, she's talking to me. I need you two to do it already so she can help me. No offense hot dude. Jax covered her face and shook her head. "No, no. I was just —singing under my breath. I have a song stuck in my head. It's random I know. Do you want some more? Okay, I'll stop asking you just enjoy your company. If you excuse me for just a second, I'll need to take out the desserts out of the oven."

#whole corner reserved just for matt!!#hahaha the ghost has priorities...asking them to get it together #wally pls!! send him help

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babycharmander · 4 years ago

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If you think you have never stolen artwork, read this post.

So, art theft. If you've been a follower of mine, you've heard my barely-coherent rants about this before, but I thought it might be more productive to make a more coherent post on the subject.

If you're wondering about the title of the post here, it's because I feel like a lot of people aren't really grasping what exactly art theft is, and a LOT of people, even well-meaning ones, do it without even realizing it.

"But wait," you say. "I would never STEAL from an artist!! I never claim it as my own!" And that's all fine and good, but you're missing something here.

To start things off, what IS art theft? (It's not what deviantART said it was several years back, I'll tell you that much. *cough*)

We all know what art is, so let's talk about theft. Dictionary.com defines "theft" as "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny." Okay, makes sense, but what about that other word there, stealing? Dictionary.com defines "steal" as "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force."

From those definitions, we can go on to define art theft as, specifically, "taking art without permission or right." In the context of art, that typically involves reposting it (not reblogging--reblogging is different) or using it for other things.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

If something is taken or used without permission, it is stolen. Permission is the important thing here--if an artist says "oh yeah, you can go ahead and use this!" then it's not stolen. You have their permission. But if you DON'T have that, then it IS stolen. It IS theft.

"But I'm not claiming it as my own!" you say. But you don't have to claim it as your own--the act of taking it in and of itself is an act of theft.

"But I said 'credit to the artist!'" The "credit" thing is a whole other conversation, but here's the short of it: The entire point of credit is to direct people to the source of something. If you are not directly linking to where you got the art from, you are not giving credit. "Credit to the artist" is not actually credit of any kind whatsoever. (Also, Google and Pinterest are not sources.)

"But I DID link back to the artist!" Okay, now this is where it may get confusing, because you may think you're covered because you actually did give credit. Here's the problem: if you reposted it or used it without permission, regardless of whether you gave credit or not, it's still stealing.

I'm bolding this because it's a point that a lot of people get tripped up on. Let me explain it this way: If you went into your neighbor's house and took something of theirs without their permission, but you told people "oh yeah, I got this from [neighbor]'s house!" that that would still, of course, be stealing, and it's no different for art.

Another thing is that even when you credit, people don't always check the source. Very recently I found a case where someone had reposted a piece of artwork of mine to Pinterest that was deliberately made to look like it came from the source material (it wasn't meant to confuse anyone, though--the description of my original post made it very clear that it was fanart). The person who reposted had linked back to my original post. The problem? The comments had people asking if this was official, where it happened in the source material, etc. Despite the fact that the source was right there, no one thought to look at it.

Even if you link back to the source, if you did it without the artist's permission, it's still stealing, and still causes problems for us artists.

"But I just posted it to my Pinterest--" DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT POST AN ARTIST'S WORK TO PINTEREST IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

"But this artist friend of mine says they're okay if I post their work to my Pinterest so long as I link back to them!" Good for your friend! But the fact that your friend is okay with it doesn't mean that all artists are okay with it. For me, personally, I am very not okay with my work being posted to Pinterest, and say as much on my art blog description and posts (which people tend to ignore).

The problem with Pinterest--and reposting art in general--is that we artists don't know when it happens unless we're told, or unless we find it ourselves. It causes us to lose control of our art. And because of this, our art can spiral further out of our control, because when our works get posted to Pinterest or other similar websites, people who have no grasp whatsoever on how art works will just take it as "free art" and then use it for whatever they want.

That's how a piece I spent 20+ hours on was used as a poster for a paid event, without my permission, and without any payment or credit to me.

If an artist has said nothing about Pinterest (or other similar image sharing sites), your default should be to assume that they don't want their artwork posted there.

"Well I didn't repost someone's art, but I did use it for my avatar/RPing icon/video/fic cover/photo edit--" That's still stealing. If you're using it without their permission for any reason, that is stealing. Not to mention, the artist may not be cool with what you're using their art for anyway. (Looking at you, people who use platonic art in your shipping videos.)

“I MEANT to ask them for permission, but I forgot!” This can ONLY happen if you used the artwork BEFORE you asked for permission. You can resolve this by asking for permission BEFORE you use it, rather than assuming the answer will be “yes” and using it before asking.

"But it took me a really long time to make that icon/video/cover/edit!!" How long do you think it took the original artist to draw their piece? It doesn't matter how much work you put into modifying someone else's art--if you're doing it without their permission, you're still stealing.

"But I couldn't find the original artist! I tried to find them, I really did, but I couldn't. Is it okay to use their art then?" No, because you still don't have permission, and by reposting it anyway, you’re continuing to make the artwork spiral out of their control.

"What if I found the artist, but they speak a different language from mine? I can't ask them for permission, so is it okay if I repost their art anyway?" NO!! DO NOT DO THIS!! If there is a language barrier, use Google translate or find someone to translate for you and get a hold of the artist that way to ask them for their permission. The language barrier is NEVER an excuse to steal artwork. There are plenty of non-English-speaking artists who have taken ALL OF THEIR ARTWORK OFFLINE because the art theft was completely out of control. (And this isn't just exclusive to English-speakers stealing art from people who don't speak their language. It happens artists who don't speak English stealing art from English-speakers, too, but as this post is written in English it doesn't do much good for me to rant about this here.) If you can’t ask their permission, do not use it!!

"But what about reblogging?! Isn't that the same as reposting?? Should we not reblog art at all then?" No, reblogging (or retweeting) is not the same as reposting. If you reblog art, you keep all the information that we attached to the art, including our blog name and the description attached to the art. Reblogging/retweeting actually helps us artists A LOT, so as long as you're reblogging from the original artist (and not someone who's reposting their art), by all means, reblog our art!

"What if I just want to share someone else's artwork on Discord or show it to a friend?" This one's a bit different and is not actually as problematic. If you want to share our work on Discord or whatever, just link directly to where we posted it. Please don't post the art itself, unless you're doing it alongside a link because Discord won't show a preview or something.

"What about a forum or a site like Reddit?" This one's a bit different, since due to the way Reddit functions, if you LINK to the art, you have to go directly to the artist's original page to view it. (At least, that’s what it’s like the last time I was active there.) In a way it's roughly the same as with Discord--be sure you're linking directly to the actual post rather than just uploading the art on its own--but I would also ask the artist if they're okay with it, because they may be a member of the subreddit or forum and want to post it themselves, or they might not want their work shared to specific communities. (Some communities have a function where a bot will repost the artwork to Imgur, and some artists don't want that done with their art.)

"What if I'm saving it to my computer/phone to look at later, or making it into my desktop/phone wallpaper?" IMO this is fine, since your computer/phone files aren't public, and neither is your wallpaper. It's only a problem when you post it to public places without our permission.

"What if it's art I commissioned?" Well... like... in that case, it's art you paid for, so unless the artist you commissioned laid out very specific terms for you, you should be good to use that art. Like, at most, the artist may ask you to credit them somewhere in your blog description if they drew your icon or something, or credit them in a fic description if you commissioned a fic illustration from them, or something to that effect. It's really something you should have already worked out with the artist beforehand, but for the most part you should probably be fine to use art you paid for however you like.

"What about art I requested?" This is a bit different from commissioned work. Just because the art was drawn at your request doesn't mean it's explicitly yours (unless it's like, a drawing of your original character or something). Some artists take requests more as suggestions, so the art they draw in response to a suggestion or request is still theirs. Treat this as you would any other artwork and ask the artist for permission first before you do anything with the artwork you requested from them.

“What about NFTs?” ... Okay this one I can’t really go over too much because I barely understand it in the first place, but NFTs are BAD for artists and are a form of art theft. Do not turn people’s art into NFTs. This is a crappy thing to do. (If you want more information on this one, you’ll have to look it up yourself. It’s a form of cryptocurrency and it’s confusing.)

“If you don’t want your art stolen you shouldn’t post it in the first place.” This is fascinating logic. Try applying it to something else and see how it holds up. “If you don’t want your merchandise stolen, you shouldn’t open a booth.” “If you don’t want to get poisoned you shouldn’t eat food.” “If you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t walk outside.” Yes. Flawless logic. Truly.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?! I'm sharing your art because I like it! That's a compliment! Shouldn't you be happy?" Well, we're certainly glad you like our art, but the problem is... as I've said before, reposting our art causes us to lose our control over it. When we lose control of our art, that damages our livelihood. As I said before, other people have made money off of my artwork. As well, some artists lose jobs because when their potential employers check out their portfolio, they may find artwork that's been reposted everywhere online, so they cannot hire the artist because they believe they may have stolen the artwork in their own portfolio.

Your reposting an image you thought was cute to Facebook or Pinterest could cost an artist their job. Think about that.

So, tl;dr, keep this in mind: you need the artist's permission to repost or use their artwork. If you do not have it, it is stealing, even if you credit the artist.

I know this post is really harsh in places, but this is such an important thing for all artists, and there's so many misconceptions about art theft online. And I feel like one of the biggest problems is that when some people see posts on art theft, they ignore them, because they think they've never done it or would never do it, so that's why I worded this post the way I did. I'm not trying to hurt anyone--I just want people to understand what art theft is, how it affects us artists, and how you can avoid it. Thank you for reading.

#long post #psa #drawing #art theft

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extasiswings · 3 years ago

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you make my heart beat

I played myself...anyway, if you’re interested in the post that inspired this, it’s here, asking how I would write a forgotten first meeting + hospital AU. Also on ao3 here. Have about 2k of Buck and nurse!Eddie set between seasons 2 and 3.

Eddie is at the reception desk reading a chart when a cup of coffee slides over the counter and settles by his forearm. He glances up—

“Usually it’s the doctors bringing me bribes, not the patients,” he says, a small smile curving his lips. “Last I checked, you didn’t have charts for me to transcribe for you—what’s this for then?”

Buck shrugs and leans forward, elbows on the counter.

“Who says it’s a bribe? I can’t just do something nice for my favorite nurse?”

Eddie closes the chart and picks up the cup—his eyes slip closed as espresso and cinnamon bursts across his tongue, and he barely holds back a groan—fuck, but it’s been a long shift.

“Thank you,” he replies. “Did I know you were coming in today?”

Buck shakes his head. “Last minute check-up. Got new scans on Monday—if everything looks good, Dr. Graves should clear me to take my recertification test.”

There’s a hopeful note in his tone even as Eddie catches the flicker of nervousness that passes through his eyes, and Eddie thinks about running into him a few months earlier, about I don’t know who I am without the uniform, and reaches out. His hand curves around Buck’s elbow where it rests on the counter—it makes his breathing go a little unsteady, touching Buck without the justification and distance provided by clinical professionalism, but the touch elicits a soft smile that does funny things to his heart, so Eddie can’t quite regret it either.

“That’s really great, Buck,” he says quietly. “I’m happy for you.”

One of the new residents comes around the corner and Eddie clears his throat as he pulls back his hand.

“I guess I know what the bribe was for then,” he teases, trying to push them back to their prior, lighthearted zone. “You just wanted me to do your work-up instead of Shirley.”

Buck laughs. “Can you blame me?” He asks. “She’s mean and her hands are always cold.”

“You complain that I’m mean all the time,” Eddie shoots back as he logs into the computer to check Buck in.

“Yeah, well, maybe I—” Buck cuts himself off and Eddie glances up in time to catch the flush darkening his cheeks. There are a lot of ways that sentence could end and all of them make his own face heat.

Maybe it’s silly—he’s an adult, he’s single, he gets flirted with all the time, even, or maybe especially by Buck, he shouldn’t get flustered. But it’s because it is Buck and not just any random patient or family member that he does. Because Eddie doesn’t know what he’s doing but he wants—

He busies himself grabbing a clipboard and a check-in form and clears his throat again before looking up.

“Come on, I’ll take you back.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” Buck replies, and his smile is back, the soft one. It’s only because Eddie’s distracted by it that he notices the way it twists into a grimace when Buck takes a step.

Eddie’s brow furrows. “You okay?”

Buck waves him off. “Fine, just—I’ve been training a lot so I can take my test as soon as I’m cleared. Must have pulled a muscle or something. Twinged a little is all.”

Eddie makes a note on the clipboard and Buck groans.

“No, come on—I pulled a muscle, I’m fine, you don’t have to write that down.”

“Maybe you pulled a muscle, maybe it’s nothing—regardless, Dr. Graves should know that you’re having leg pain just in case,” Eddie says. He pauses and narrows his eyes. “You weren’t going to tell him.”

“Because it’s nothing,” Buck insists. “Come on, Nurse Diaz, isn’t there some saying about hearing hoofbeats and thinking horses, not zebras?”

Eddie steers Buck down the hall to an exam room.

“Yeah, sure. I’ve heard it,” he replies.

“So?”

“So…” They step through the door and Eddie nods at the exam table before reaching for a blood pressure cuff. “There are a lot of very common things that could be causing pain in a limb that you’ve had multiple surgeries on, only one of which is that you pulled a muscle, and some of which could be serious. No zebras required. I’m not taking the note off the chart and you’re not going to lie when you get asked about it, okay?”

He fastens the cuff around Buck’s arm and presses a button to start the reading—he can’t help the way his lips twitch at Buck’s exasperated look.

“Little pressure,” he adds, and Buck rolls his eyes.

“I should have taken my chances with Shirley,” Buck grumbles.

“Yeah, well, if there’s a next time you can bring her coffee instead—I hear she likes hazelnut lattes.”

The cuff loosens, the monitor beeps. Eddie scribbles down the number. It’s a little high—Eddie glances over, takes in the tension in Buck’s shoulders, and bites his cheek.

“It’ll be okay,” he says, even though he usually tries to avoid promising patients anything. “Best case, they run a few more scans and waste a couple hours of your afternoon to find out that you’re right and perfectly fine. Worst case, something’s wrong and they catch it now and fix it and you’re still on track to get back to work, just maybe a couple weeks later than you planned.”

“It’s already been five months,” Buck sighs, his fingers raking through his hair.

“I know it’s frustrating—”

“How’s Christopher?” Buck interrupts, and Eddie levels him with a sharp look for the obvious deflection, but allows the subject change as he logs into the exam room computer.

“He’s good,” he replies. “Great, actually. Keeps asking about you—he, uh, he had a really great time the other day, even if it was just hanging around here. I can’t thank you enough for watching him.”

It’s not something Eddie normally would have done at all, but his abuela had a fall, Pepa had to go back to work, he couldn’t take off because they were already short-staffed with three other nurses out with the flu—

And Buck had just…been there. Finished with his physical therapy and offering to stick around so Eddie could finish his shift, all smiles and no judgment, and after five months…well, they’re something like friends, right? They're...something, anyway.

“He’s an amazing kid, and it was the best day I’ve had in…awhile, actually,” Buck admits. “You really don’t have to keep thanking me. I would do it again any time.”

I do, though, Eddie thinks, but he bites it back. He bites back, I’d like that, too.

He finishes filling in the intake information and steps back.

“You should be all set. The doctor will be in any minute.” He pauses before he reaches the door. Swallows.

“Find me after?” He asks. “Let me know how it goes? I’m on until four.”

“I’ll find you,” Buck promises. “Have to say I told you so when it turns out I just pulled a muscle.”

“I’ll be glad to hear it,” Eddie replies. He gets one more smile to sustain him before he walks out, leaving Buck behind.

He’ll see Buck later.

Except…he doesn’t. The rest of his shift passes without another sign of the other man and the gnawing worry in his gut worsens. The exam room is empty when he checks, he doesn’t have any new pages or texts—it would be easy to pull Buck’s chart and find out if something happened, but that feels like it would cross a line when it’s not strictly necessary—

He shoots off a text of his own, but there’s still no reply by the time he’s showered and changed out of his scrubs.

It’s happenstance that he runs into Dr. Graves’ favorite resident outside the locker room.

“Hey, Cassie—Graves had a patient today, Evan Buckley? I did the intake, and I was wondering—”

“Oh, he was admitted,” she says. “Room 312, I think.”

Eddie’s stomach drops. Sometimes he hates being right.

“Thanks,” he says faintly. She gives him a distracted hum, preoccupied by responding to a text, and Eddie heads to the elevators.

“Hey,” he greets a few minutes later, leaning against the doorway in Buck’s room. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he’s not entirely sure whether to cross the threshold.

Buck looks…tired. Frustrated. Upset. Raw. He tries to cover it when he sees Eddie, but it doesn’t fully work.

Eddie’s heart aches.

“Blood clots,” Buck sighs with a rueful shrug. “On the screws in my leg. They said it was lucky they caught it before one broke off and traveled anywhere, or it could have killed me. Guess you saved my life, Nurse Diaz.”

“Well…” Eddie weighs his hesitation against his desire to be closer and ultimately pushes off the doorframe to step inside. “You are my favorite patient. Who else is going to bring me coffee if you died?”

“Oh, I’m sure a lot of people would be more than happy to do that,” Buck replies. “I’m picturing a line around the block here.”

Eddie settles into the chair next to the bed.

“I think you’re vastly overestimating there, but—” Eddie wets his lips as he meets Buck’s gaze. Fuck, he’s not good at this, but he would do just about anything to bring Buck’s smile back. “—but, for whatever it’s worth, I wouldn’t want anyone else to.”

“Because I’m your favorite patient?” The look in Buck’s eyes is hopeful but wary, the kind of look that says despite his easy flirtations, he’s been burned before and expects to be again. And maybe it’s that honest vulnerability that finally unsticks Eddie’s tongue because when he opens his mouth to respond, what comes out is—

“You’re not just a patient, Buck. Not to me. You have to know that.”

“Do I?”

The skepticism feels like a challenge and Eddie rises to it by leaning in—he slides his fingers into Buck’s hair and closes the gap, kissing him once, twice, as Buck makes a startled sound against his lips and curls his own fingers into Eddie’s shirt to kiss him back.

“I don’t do that with just anyone,” Eddie breathes when he pulls back. “And I definitely don’t let them meet my son. Clear enough?”

Buck clears his throat, and nods, flushed and a little dazed in a way that makes Eddie bite back a grin.

“Speaking of, I have to go pick him up, but…” Eddie steals another kiss. “I’ll come see you tomorrow? And maybe we can…talk about this a little more?”

“I’d like that,” Buck admits. “And—Eddie—I—” His throat works as he swallows.

“Thank you,” he says finally. “For not letting me brush it off.”

Eddie’s thumb rubs against the edge of Buck’s jaw before he finally drops his hand.

“I care about you. Part of that means wanting to see you care about yourself,” he replies. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

Buck looks like he might argue with that, but ultimately just tugs Eddie in for one final kiss before releasing him.

“Tell Christopher I said hi.”

“I will.”

#chapel writes #buddie #buddie fic #eddie diaz #evan buckley #you're all horrible enablers

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idrellegames · 3 years ago

Note

So I had a coding question that I've been trying to find the answer for, for a while. I've tried searching up information online and such but haven't been able to find anything.

I was wondering though how exactly someone would go about creating a main menu screen with the whole being able to create a new game, load one or change the settings? Like I said I've tried searching it up but haven't been able to find anything except for information on creating a transition screen.

You’re going to need an understanding of CSS for this, but I’ll do my best to walk you through it, alongside some basic functions of the UIBar and UI APIs. Also, like pretty much anything to do with coding, there is more than one way to do something (and there may be a more efficient/effective way than mine).

Like all of my tutorials, this is written for SugarCube 2.34.1. Since this one mainly deals with CSS, I’m sure you could adapt it to another format, but I’m not familiar enough with Harlowe, Snowman and Chapbook to add specifics.

Additionally, I use the Twine 2 editor version 2.2.1. This tutorial can be used with later versions; some of my example images may look not look exactly like what you have because later versions of the editor launch test files in your default browser (the 2.2.1 version creates its own mini-browser).

Making a Main Menu Page

Step 1: Hiding the UI Bar

If you want a clear main menu page without the UI bar, you can hide it in several ways.

<<run UIBar.destroy();>>

This will remove the UI bar completely from your game. Not recommended unless you have an alternative way of adding access to the Save, Settings and Restart functions.

<<run UIBar.stow();>>

This stows the UI bar. It will still be partially visible on the side and the player can interact with it to open it. The UI bar can be unstowed manually (without needing the player to do it themselves) on the next passage with:

<<run UIBar.unstow();>>

If you don’t want the UI bar to show up on your main menu, but you want to have access to it later, you can use:

<<run UIBar.hide();>>

To bring it back, you will have to use the following on the passage where you want the player to have access to it.

<<UIBar.show();>>

You may want to use the stow/hide and unstow/show functions together. Hiding the UI bar only makes it invisible; it will still take up space on the left-hand side of your game. Stowing and hiding it makes it a little more even.

To use them together, you can do this:

On the passage you don’t want the UI bar:

<<run UIBar.stow();>><<run UIBar.hide();>>

On the passage you where you want to restore the UI bar:

<<run UIBar.unstow();>><<run UIBar.show();>>

TIP 1: Using <<run UIBar.stow (true)>> gets rid of the slide animation as the UI bar collapses/restores, so you may want to use this so you don’t have any weird animations when you menu passage loads.

TIP 2: If you main menu is the first passage of your game, you can run the scripts for storing and hiding the UI bar in your StoryInit passage and it will run it when your game loads.

TIP 3: You can also use the Config API to have the menu bar be stowed automatically when your game starts.

Pop this code into your Javascript:

Config.ui.stowBarInitially = true;

However, if you have any links that navigate back to the main menu without restarting the game, the UI bar will be in whatever state the player left it in last. If you can only access the main menu by launching the game or hitting restart, don't worry about this.

If you want to double-check the SugarCube documentation for these functions, see here.

Step 2: Tagged Stylesheets

If you want to create a menu page that has a different appearance to your game’s default look, you can do so by using a tagged stylesheets. When using a tagged stylesheet, every passage with the same tag will have its appearance overridden to match what you’ve adjusted in your Story Stylesheet.

Let’s make one called main-menu. You can tag passages like so:

You can also tag the passage a different colour to make it special passages like this one stand out.

Step 3: Adding CSS

Now that the passage is tagged, you need to add a new CSS class to your stylesheet to change its appearance.

To change the appearance, you need to decide which selectors to target and what about them you want to change. Every default SugarCube game has the same set of selectors (you can find them here in the documentation). The most important ones are:

body – the body of the page. You can use this to change the foreground and background colours.

.passages – the element that contains your game’s main text. This is where you can change things like the colour that displays behind your game’s text, the font family, line height, letter spacing, all that stuff.

For the sake of this example, I am going to use the default SugarCube stylesheet and edit it from the ground up. You can find the code for SugarCube’s built-in stylesheets here.

In your stylesheet, you will want to use the tag you created earlier as the new class name.

.main-menu

Put this with the selectors you are going to change.

Let’s start with the body.

body.main-menu { color: #fff; background-color: #000; overflow: auto; }

The color property controls the colour of the font. Here I’ve set it to the hex code #fff and the background-color #000.

So now I have a black page when I start the main menu passage, and thanks to the code for the UI bar I put in earlier, the UI bar is gone.

Adding a Background

Now, we might want to spice up the background with an image to make it more interesting.

To add an image to the background, you need to use the background-image property.

body.main-menu { color: #fff; background-color: #000; background-image: url("images/main-menu.jpg"); background-attachment: fixed; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: cover; -webkit-background-size: cover; -moz-background-size: cover; -o-background-size: cover; background-position: center center; overflow: auto; }

You can read more about the different background properties and what they do here on W3Schools, but the code above will center your background image in the middle of the page and also make sure that it covers the entire container.

IMPORTANT: If you intend to upload your game as a ZIP file containing a .index HTML file (this is recommended if you have a lot of image assets or don’t want to link to an outside host, like imgur), you will need to use relative paths with any image URLs in your game.

Relative paths mean that the file is relative to the directory it’s in. In the example above, you can see that the background URL is "images/main-menu.jpg". This means that when the file is uploaded to itch.io, it will find the file—main-menu.jpg—inside the images folder, regardless of where the images folder is located.

For reference, this is what my game assets folder looks like for Wayfarer:

Relative paths are different than an absolute path, which begins with the drive letter. For example, the main-menu.png may be stored on my personal computer in a path like this one: C:/game/images/main-menu.jpg.

If I use this absolute path in the game, the image asset will not show up for players once it’s uploaded to itch because the image is not hosted on the player’s device in C:/game/images/main-menu.jpg.

This can cause some finnicky issues with the Twine 2 editor because the editor cannot find and display images from relative paths (unless you’ve put the editor in the same directory as the one you’re storing your assets in; I haven’t bothered to try this, so I’m not sure).

While working on your game in the Twine editor, you may need to use an absolute path to see what your asset looks like while you're editing. When it comes time to publish, make sure you switch it back to a relative path, otherwise the image will not load for players.

Step 4: Adding & Styling Links

Now that we have a background, we’ll want to tackle the links themselves.

Adding Links

You can link to the starting passage of your game using your preferred method—the [[ ]] link markup, the <<link>> macro, etc.

But for Saves and Settings (and also a Resume Game link, if you’re using the autosave feature), you’ll need to manually call the functions for accessing those dialogs. You can do that with this code here:

This will add a Load Game link that opens the Saves dialog when clicked.

<<link 'LOAD GAME'>><<run UI.saves();>><</link>>

This will add a Settings link that opens the Settings dialog when clicked.

<<link 'SETTINGS'>><<run UI.settings();>><</link>>

This will add a Resume Game link that loads the player’s last autosave.

<<link 'RESUME GAME'>><<run Save.autosave.load()>><</link>>

TIP: To enable autosaves on your game, add this code to your Story Javascript:

Config.saves.autosave = true;

This will autosave on every passage.

Config.saves.autosave = ["bookmark", "autosave"];

This will autosave on passages tagged bookmark or autosave.

Styling Your Game Title & Links

So this is where you can get get fancy with your CSS. For now, we’re going to keep everything within the .passage element (which is where any text inputting into the editor goes), but I will show you how to move the links and title to wherever you want further down.

Importing Fonts

First, go font shopping.

Google fonts has a very large library of free-to-use fonts that you can import directly into your game via your Story Stylesheet. After you browser Google fonts for the fonts you want to use, scroll down to the Use on Web section and click @import. Google will automatically generate the code you need to import the fonts you want to use.

Ignore the <style> </style> and copy everything else inside it and paste it in the top of your Story Stylesheet.

For this example, mine looks like this:

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Almendra+Display&family=Nova+Cut&display=swap');

TIP: If you are importing fonts that a bold weight and italics available and intend to use bold and italics, make sure you import the bold weight and the italic versions of the font as well as the regular one. This will stop your fonts from having weird printing issues when you use bold and italics (especially on non-Chromium browsers like Firefox).

Below the import button, Google will show you the CSS rules for each font family. Keep these in mind, you’ll need them later. Mine, for this example, are like this:

font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive;

Basic Styling

In your stylesheet, you’ll want to target the .passage element with the .main-menu class.

.passage.main-menu { background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: center; }

Make sure there isn’t a space between .passage and .main-menu, otherwise it won’t work!

Here, I’ve changed a few properties.

font-family – this changes the font to Nova Cut

font-size – this changes the font size. I’ve used the unit em, which is relative to the element size (you can read more about CSS Units here)

text-align – this centers the text to the middle of the .passage element

I have also added:

background-color: transparent;

This makes the passage background transparent so you can see the background image. This is only necessary if you’ve added a background-color to your default passages.

Now, for the links.

Links have their own separate selector.

a means is the link as it usually displays

a:hover is the link when the player hovers their cursor over it.

It's generally a good idea to use different colours on the links—one for the normal display, one for the hover—so the player can visually see that they are hovering over a clickable link. If you don't want to use different colours, you should consider using some other visual cue to make that differentiation.

.passage.main-menu a { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; color: #C57C25; text-decoration: none; }

.passage.main-menu a:hover { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; color: #dcb07c; text-decoration: none; }

I’ve added an additional property here:

text-decoration: none.

This gets rid of the underline that happens on all default links in the default SugarCube stylesheet. Currently, this only targets the links on passages tagged main-menu; if you want to get rid of the text-decoration on all links, you can change the styling of your links like so:

a:hover { text-decoration: none; }

Choosing Colours

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to picking hex codes, color-hex.com is a really helpful site. It gives you related tints and shades of for every hex code, which makes it a lot easier to find colours that are slightly darker or slightly lighter than your base hex code.

For choosing colours initially, there are plenty of hex code colour palette generators available online. One of my favourites is the one on Canva, which lets you upload an image and then it creates a colour palette from there. You might not want to use the exact colours it pulls, but checking the colours on color-hex can help you narrow down something that works for your aesthetics.

This is what our template now looks like:

Giving the Title a Unique Style

Right now, the title is styled by the .passage.main-menu selector and it’s default font size and font type is the same as the links below it.

If you want to style it differently, you can make a new class for it. In this case, I’m going to drop the .passage.main-menu and make a class called .game-title.

.game-title { font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; color: #ca893a; line-height: 1.0; font-size: 1.8em; text-shadow: 1px 1px #dcb07c; }

Because the font I selected didn’t come with a bold version, I cheated a bit a used the text-shadow property to bulk it up. I also had to adjust the line height. SugarCube’s default .passage styling gives everything a line height of 1.75 and there was too much space once the new font family and font size were applied.

To add this styling to your title, go into your main menu passage and wrap your game’s title in a span, like so:

<span class="game-title">GENERIC FANTASY GAME</span>

It now appears like this:

TIP: If you want to play around with your appearance, you can use your browser’s Inspect tool to see the page’s CSS and play around/edit it. Either right click and hit Inspect or hit CTRL + SHIFT + I to open the Inspect tool. Once opened, you can go in and adjust things. If you make and a change and like it, remember to copy the code over to your stylesheet before you close the inspect tool.

Placing a Title & Links Outside the .passage element

If you want your game title and menu links to be elsewhere on the page, you’re going to need re-write some of your CSS and add some additional CSS.

The first thing is that you’ll want to remove the styling from .passage.main-menu. I’ve left background-color to transparent, but you’re not going to be using this to style your game title and menu links.

.passage.main-menu { background-color: transparent; }

For the title:

I’ve created two elements, one called .main-title and one called .main-title-item.

.main-title creates a container that will hold the title. This is what I use to tell it where on the page to appear.

.main-title { display: block; justify-content: space-evenly; position: absolute; top: 10%; left: 4%; }

.main-title-item styles the actual text.

.main-title-item { font-family: 'Almendra Display', cursive; text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: normal; font-size: 6.5em; line-height: 1.0; text-align: left; color: #cf944d; text-shadow: 1px 1px #cf944d; }

To apply this to the game title, go back to the main menu passage and apply your new elements to the game’s title:

<div class="main-title"><span class="main-title-item">GENERIC FANTASY GAME</span></div>

For the menu links:

Here, we’ll do something really similar—a container to hold the links and a separate element to style them.

.subtitle { display: block; flex-wrap: wrap; flex-direction: column; width: 60%; justify-content: space-evenly; position: absolute; top: 46%; left: 8%; }

.subtitle-item a { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-weight: normal; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: left; color: #cf944d; line-height: 1.3em; }

.subtitle-item a:hover { font-family: 'Nova Cut', cursive; font-weight: normal; font-size: 3.5em; text-align: left; color: #dcb07c; text-decoration: none; }

Go back to your main menu passage and apply the elements. Because all of the menu links will be in the same box, you only need to open/close the .subtitle element once.

If you want to change where the title and menu links appear, you can use the Inspect tool to figure out different percentages and spacing until you find something that works for you.

There are a lot more things you can add (like animations that appear when you hover your cursor on the link), but I’ll leave it there for now.

Additionally, if you intend to make your game mobile compatible, you’ll want to read up on media queries and learn how to adjust font sizes and any other units of measurement for different viewports. This is how you shrink things appropriate to fit on small screens.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, please let me know. I’m still a newbie at CSS (so I’m sure there are ways of doing things more effectively), but these are some of the things that I have helped me along the way.

#coding in twine #coding help #twine #twine game #interactive fiction #resources #answered #long post

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azucanela · 4 years ago

Text

FAULT | BAKUGO KATSUKI X READER

SUMMARY: Y/N accompanies her mentor, Aizawa Shouta, to the homes of her fellow students after the incident at Kamino Ward. One moment with her classmate Bakugo Katsuki stands out in particular.

WORD COUNT: 1.7k

WARNINGS: injury, insecurities, self-blame, is damn a curse word?

A/N: this is chill, i wrote it pretty quickly because i wanted the idea out of my head and onto the computer screen so lmk if its bad pls ashdkjashdjh

“Why exactly is she here again?”

Toshinori Yagi, better known as the Pro Hero All Might, stared at the girl that stood beside Aizawa Shouta. Scrolling on her phone with one hand, and the case that held her hero outfit in the other. Y/N L/N, one of the top students in Class-1A, and the entire Hero Course. Since she’d gotten in on recommendation, her name had been on Principal Nezu’s list of potential successors. After seeing her skill, he understood why, and to gain Aizawa’s favor? That was a talent in and of itself.

Shrugging, Aizawa brought his capture weapon and scarf further up around his head in an attempt to shield his face, they’d already been harassed by reporters about a dozen times and he didn’t want to be in any of the photos, “we have training after this.”

It appeared this young girl was also Aizawa’s protege, though the man would likely never admit it, Toshinori could tell he’d taken a liking to the young girl, and taken her under his wing. She’d received additional training from the Pro Hero just like Midoriya received extra training from Toshinori.

“So... I can go retrieve young Midoriya?” They’d just left his house, and now they were heading over to Bakugo’s. Y/N knew him fairly well, he’d insisted they train together when she’d scored better than him on quirk tests, and then he insisted they study together when she’d performed better on written work as well. In exchange, he helped her with the more physical aspect of being a Pro Hero. Her least favorite part if she was honest. But it was worth it, training with Bakugo was difficult, but it had certainly helped her improve.

Their time together had gone from... strictly competitive to competitive and fun she supposed. Y/N had found that after spending a while with Bakugo, it was easier to understand that he had his own way of expressing his care for you. When Y/N forgot to bring lunch, he’d call her an idiot but he would share his own nonetheless, and this was a frequent occurrence so Y/N was shocked when he’d told her to stop trying as he’d slammed another lunch down in front of her.

He’d made her lunch everyday since then. Nobody dared comment on it purely out of fear for their life. It was an unspoken rule not to discuss the way that Bakugo treated Y/N, the different way he treated her. Of course, this was a rule Kaminari and Kirishima broke frequently, earning them quite a few —empty— threats.

Watching her teacher, Y/N rose a brow as he practically glared at the former Number One Pro Hero, “absolutely not.”

The man opened his mouth to protest, only for Y/N to interrupt before the pair of teachers could argue, “I’m not interrupting anything by waiting outside.” Looking up from her phone, she offered him a smile, “if one of the parents happens to have a problem with it, I don’t mind waiting in the car.” Sitting outside was much more enjoyable than staying in the stuffy car with the scarily silent chauffer, but if she had to do it, then she would.

Aizawa gave Toshinori a look as Y/N spoke, and the man simply sighed in acceptance. “Onto the home of young Bakugo then.”

Y/N had been to his house a few times. Whenever the café they usual studied at wasn’t open, they either went to her home, or on rare occasions, his home. Of course, Bakugo had ensured his parents weren’t home whenever they did this, though Y/N wasn’t sure why. Regardless, most times at his house they’d get sidetracked, much to Bakugo’s dismay, and end up in his kitchen.

Pulling up in his driveway, a smile found its way onto Y/N’s face. She’d suggested numerous times that they have a picnic on his neatly trimmed lawn, though Katsuki shot her down most of the time.

Stepping out of the car and sitting on the steps that go up to his front door, she watches as Aizawa and Toshinori enter with few questions from Bakugo’s mother. She looked a lot like him if Y/N was honest, and from the sound of it, they also shared a similar personality. Y/N could hear their yelling from outside.

Smiling at the sound of Bakugo yelling out insults, Y/N let out a small laugh as she leaned her head back against the wall. Though her laughter came to an abrupt stop when she heard what his mother yelled next.

That it was Bakugo’s fault he’d been kidnapped.

Y/N found herself sitting up as the boy grew silent, coming to a stand to see if she could see his living room from the window beside the front door. But there was no view of Bakugo himself.

Perhaps thats because he was the one slamming the front door behind him, coming to a stop when he noticed Y/N’s attempts at snooping. She immediately turned to him, trying her best to look normal, though it was clear he’d noticed what she was doing. They made eye contact, and Bakugo opens his mouth, only to shut it as he narrows his eyes at her, “how much did you hear?”

His voice is oddly calm as his stare pierces into her soul, and its an odd change of demeanor for him, one that takes Y/N a few moments to understand.

He was embarrassed.

If Bakugo was honest, Y/N was one of few people he actually respected. She’d exceeded him in certain areas of school, and helped him improve in more ways than one. To make matters worse, despite his intent to get through his years at UA without a... distraction. Y/N had somehow wormed her way into his heart, no matter how hard he tried to keep her out of it. The fact that she’d come to his rescue when he was kidnapped, despite the potential consequences, hadn’t helped. She’d seen him at his weakest.

“Bakugo-”

His name alone is answer enough as Bakugo lets out a noise of frustration, moving to leave, only for Y/N to grab his hand despite the pain that spreads through her own at the feeling of small explosions emitting from his palm. Yanking him back towards her, Bakugo is opening his mouth once more, likely to yell at her for her idiocy as he attempts to remove his hand from her grasp. But Y/N doesn’t relent as she sweeps her foot under his leg and knocks him down, effectively allowing her to straddle him and hold him down.

“Let go of my hand you damned idiot!” There’s a panicked look on his face as he speaks, but the only thing Y/N can think of is the fact that he hadn’t threatened her yet. He hadn’t aggressively shoved her away with his free hand, nothing.

No, his concern was different, and Y/N’s concern probably should’ve been the same seeing as she could practically feel her skin sizzling from the heat of his own, but at that moment, she didn’t care as she grinned down at him, “bet you regret teaching me that move now, huh?”

He pauses his writhing beneath her, chest heaving as he glared, “are you serious-”

“You know, what your mom said isn’t true.” This makes him go silent, and Bakugo finally allows his head to fall onto the grass as he looks away from her once more. “It wasn’t your fault Katsuki.

Bakugo inhales deeply, “I ruined All Might-”

In response, Y/N uses her free hand to push his shoulder harder into the ground and hold him still, “no! You didn’t.”

“Didn’t I?” He finally manages to snatch his hand away from her, flipping the two of them over, Bakugo plants his hands beside her head, the grass singeing black because of the misuse of his quirk. Almost instantly, he frowns, “I can’t even control my stupid quirk-”

“You have some of the most impressive quirk control in the class, is that a joke?” Y/N brings both her hands—including the one that probably would’ve hurt a lot more had it not been for the adrenaline flowing through her veins— to his face, and as Bakugo brings his hand to her wrist, Y/N wonders if he’s going to rip her hands from him as she speaks, “Katsuki it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be kidnapped, and at the end of the day we are just kids. You can’t be expected to save yourself against villains.” His hand remains on her wrist, but he doesn’t remove it from his face as Y/N inhales deeply. “If anything it’s my fault-”

“Shut up.” The hand still beside her head clenches, tearing at the grass. “Shut up.” He repeats, exhaling sharply as his eyes squeeze shut, Y/N realizes this is because a tear successfully managed to fall down his cheek, despite his attempts to prevent it. “Don’t be dumb.” He practically growls at her, trying to hide his pain with aggression once more.

Brushing her thumb against his cheek, Y/N offers him a smile, “then I guess its nobody’s fault.”

He’s silent for a moment, eyes piercing in hers as he tries to figure out what to say. “Sure,” he grumbles in response, gently pulling her hand from his cheek, Y/N allows him to examine the damage, his brows furrowing at the sight of charred skin. He doesn’t say anything as he does, but Y/N can practically see the thoughts running through his minds at a million miles per hour. His fingers brush over the now raised skin, and when Y/N flinches, Bakugo’s fingers immediately leave her palm, causing her hand to drop.

Pushing herself up on one forearm, Y/N presses a kiss to his cheek, and she can practically feel his skin warm as she speaks, “it’s fine.”

He averts his gaze from her as her cheeks redden, “ I hurt you-”

“I’m fine.” Y/N disregards his words as she moves out from under him.

Bakugo’s brows furrow as he moves to a stand as well, “come over next weekend,” his words sound like more of a demand than an invitation.

“Sure, but can I ask why?”

He grabs her uninjured hand, moving to bring her back inside his home, “let’s get something to help with your hand.” Bakugo doesn’t turn back as he continues, “and I owe you a picnic.”

Needless to say, it was a very nice picnic. One that Y/N left with a boyfriend.

A/N: this idea came to me at exactly 9PM

#katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugo x you #bakugou x you #bnha x reader #mha x reader #katsuki x you

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feralphoenix · 3 years ago

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SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS: The Mechanics of the Infection

welcome back to feral’s essay tag where the hot takes don’t stop from keep being hot!

this particular meta has a Lot of citations from canon, and my plan is to have them as actual footnotes in the dreamwidth mirror when that goes up (as i always crosspost my meta there in case my layout text is too small for any folks accessing these from computer and not mobile).

CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay contains discussion of body horror, cancer, and many of the darker aspects of Hallownest’s society.

ALSO, AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight as anti-colonialist fiction and all of my meta approaches the text from that angle. This essay is strongly critical of the Pale King and Hallownest, and affords sympathy to pre-Hallownest societies & native characters, including Radiance. If you come from a Christian cultural background (regardless of whether you currently practice the religion or not), some of the concepts I am going to discuss may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.

SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS: The Mechanics of the Infection

If you’ve ever looked through my Hollow Knight tags, you have probably seen me joke about the Infection like a lot, usually along the lines of Radiance casting Level 9 Inflict Tang on Hallownest, or “(radi voice) the End of EVA will continue until you Let My People Go” or some such. In addition to being some of the most beautiful body horror I’ve yet seen in fiction, its appearance also makes it a veritable meme factory.

It is also something that inspires a lot of very wild theorizing amongst fans, because canon tells us WHY the Infection exists but doesn’t ever directly explain WHAT it is. To name just a few of the guesses I’ve seen, people have posited that it could be some sort of pupa juice, or maybe some type of parasitic fungus.

I have my own guess, though, and it’s based on hints we can find in-game. I would like to share it with the class today, so let’s take a quick look through the sauce, starting with what we already know!

WHY

We learn why the Infection happened from Seer and Moss Prophet, and this is also summed up more directly in Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.

The Pale King wanted to be the only god of light in the crater,* so he tried to kill Radiance by thralling her children - attracting the moths with his light and making them forget about her,** assimilating them into Hallownest. Radiance survived because some moths still remembered and tried to preserve what they could of their original culture,*** and eventually she attempted to reassert her existence and communicate with the bugs of the crater by speaking to them through their dreams. However, the Pale King realized what was happening and ordered his worshippers to shut her out.****

Radiance did not give up, and continued to broadcast her message through dreams. This unstoppable force VS immovable object conflict could not last forever - something eventually had to give, and what gave was the mortals.***** The Infection was an accident that Radiance did not initially intend, but presumably chose to weaponize after the fact as a way to attempt to pressure TPK into releasing the moths and leaving her alone (or, barring that, a way to thoroughly destroy his kingdom at the very least).

SOURCES:

* “No blazing kin. Only one light shall shine against the dark.” - Lore tablet hidden beside the Pale King’s throne in the White Palace.

** “None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters.” - Seer’s 1200 Essence dialogue.

*** “But the memories of that ancient light still lingered, hush whispers of faith... Until all of Hallownest began to dream of that forgotten light.” - Seer’s 2400 Essence dialogue.

**** “The King and the bugs of hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the infection.” - from Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.

***** “Light is life, beaming, pure, brilliant. To stifle that light is to suppress nature. Nature suppressed distorts, plagues us.” - Moss Prophet's dialogue.

HOW

Now that we’ve recapped why the Infection exists, let’s examine the process of how the Infection works. We see some examples of this with various characters in-game, and the Hunter also shares his observations of the Infection’s mechanics in his commentary on the Infected Crossroads entries.

Since we’ll be bringing up the Hunter's Journal here, I want to first examine three entries to establish its dual authorship and how trustworthy it is: The Shade’s entry, the Lightseed’s, and Radiance’s.

We know that the bottom section of the Hunter’s Journal is the Hunter’s personal notes on each creature because the game itself tells us so. So who writes the notes on top that give a brief explanation of what each creature is? It’s a common fan theory that Ghost writes these, which I believe is indeed the case.

First let’s look at the Shade, which is automatically unlocked when we receive the Hunter's Journal in-game regardless of whether we have died and fought the Shade or not. Mechanically this is important because if the Shade weren’t unlocked by default it would be impossible to attain the Hunter achievements without dying at least once - this would REALLY suck for anybody who likes to suffer enough to try to complete the journal in Steel Soul mode.

The Shade’s entry reads:

Echo of a previous life. Defeat it to retake its power and become whole.

Each of us leaves an imprint of something when we die. A stain on the world. I don’t know how much longer this kingdom can bear the weight of so many past lives...

Notice that the top text knows exactly what the Shade is and how it works. In story terms, this would imply that Ghost has died and come back enough pre-game to understand the mechanics of how their revivals work.

The Lightseed’s entry reads:

A single-celled organism, completely infected. Scurries about simple-mindedly.

Strange air has been seeping down from above for years. Some of the air became liquid, and some of that liquid became flesh, and some of that flesh came to life. I don’t know what to make of it.

In this entry, the top text assumes that Lightseeds are a Lifeseed-like creature that has been infected, and the Hunter’s notes reveal that this is incorrect and the Lightseeds were actually born from the Infection itself. From this we learn that the top text isn’t omniscient and can be mistaken: It’s written from a limited perspective.

And here’s Radi’s entry:

The light,* forgotten.

The plague, the infection, the madness that haunts the corpses of Hallownest... the light that screams out from the eyes of this dead Kingdom. What is the source? I suppose mere mortals like myself will never understand.

Here, the top text has information that the Hunter doesn’t, and which only a handful of bugs are privy to anymore.

From these three examples, I believe it is safe to say that Ghost is in fact the author of the journal entries’ top segments.

It’s important to remember that the observations these characters make can be not wholly correct, and I’ll bring that up when I believe it to be relevant, but for now let’s build a picture of how a case of the Infection generally progresses by looking at the Hunter’s commentary on Infected Crossroads enemies, and at a handful of characters whose Infection we directly observe: Bretta, Sly, Myla, and Moss Prophet.

The Hunter describes the broad arc of Infection progression in the Violent Husk's entry: “First [the bugs of Hallownest] fell into deep slumber, then they awoke with broken minds, and then their bodies started to deform...”

The two NPCs who we can save from becoming Infected, Bretta and Sly, are initially found emitting orange fog and mumbling to themselves. In Bretta’s case, when listened to, she initially talks about being left behind and forgotten** as she assumes that all people will treat her this way even though she craves affection and attention; Dream Nailed either before or after being listened to, she mentions a “shining figure”.***

Meanwhile, Sly speaks about his pupil Oro and someone named Esmy, and when his symptoms subside he identifies that he was led to the Crossroads village ruins by a dream.****

Listening to Bretta and Sly completely brings them back to reality, after which they leave the underground area entirely to return to Dirtmouth. However, when the player encounters Myla after defeating Soul Master and obtaining Descending Dive, listening to her does not cause any change in her condition despite that she is not yet hostile.

During these encounters, Bretta is surrounded by orange fog, Sly is surrounded by orange fog and his eyes have also begun to turn orange, and Myla's eyes are glowing but there is no fog around her. So, we can deduce that for as long as the orange fog is present, a bug may still be awoken and cured (Bretta and Sly both show no signs of relapse over the course of the game), but once the fog disappears the bug can no longer be saved by external means.

The "deformation" that the Hunter mentions in the Violent Husk entry refers to the large blobs of Infection that develop on the bodies of creatures that have been infected for a long period of time. We observe these upon the Infected Crossroads enemies, as well as on Hollow and the Moss Prophet. We also see that these Infection tumors can eventually kill bugs once they grow too large and impede bodily functions, just like real cancer: The Moss Prophet and Mossy Vagabonds are all discovered in this state after the Crossroads become infected, as are the Husk Guards in the Crossroads.

So, the progression we can see here is that bugs become infected through their dreams, and while they can initially be woken, if left alone they will fall into too deep a sleep to wake up. Some time after this they will start to move around again but will be hostile to any creatures that are not infected. And, if left in this state for a very long period of time, they will develop tumorous growths which are potentially fatal.

Potentially fatal. This is an interesting contradiction to a basic assumption that most players - and even Ghost and the Hunter - seem to hold about the Infection: That is, that the Infection functions like a pop-culture zombie plague, and infected creatures are all undead (reanimated dead things that can't be killed); thus that the enemies that respawn after resting or going offscreen are the same ones that Ghost just murdered, and have simply been reanimated by the Infection once again.

But infected creatures can die of the Infection. What’s more, bosses and unique instances of generic enemies (such as Myla and the Moss Knight at the pier of Unn’s lake) do not respawn once killed. And it’s definitely not that Ghost killed them that counts: Traitor Lord dies whether Ghost fights him solo or whether Cloth is brought along, in which case she always gets the final blow. This creates the argument that the respawning generics are NOT in fact the same individuals reanimated over and over, but different individuals of the same enemy class, and that their different respawn rates speak to how plentiful those creatures are - small animals respawning faster because a new one will arrive in the recently killed one’s territory sooner, for instance.

Ghost and the Hunter both seem to assume that infected enemies are all undead - many creatures are identified as “husks” or “the remains of [whatever specific bug]” in the Hunter's Journal. But we’ve already established that sometimes Ghost and the Hunter are wrong.

So, if infected creatures aren’t undead, then what are they?

SOURCES:

* I find it a very interesting tidbit of characterization for Ghost that they refer to Radiance as the Light, as native bugs do, rather than calling her the Old Light, as Hallownest bugs did. This has some fascinating implications for where Ghost feels their allegiances to be, but that's neither here nor there right now lol.

** “Ohhh... please... don’t leave me behind! You... forgot about me...? I knew you would... everyone always forgets about me...” - Bretta’s dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter

*** “...Shining figure...So bright...” - Bretta’s Dream Nail dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter

**** “...ugghh, Oro you oaf.... You wield your nail... like a club... ...Esmy... how much deeper do we have to go... Oh! What?! Who are you?! ...I see. This old village. What a strange dream, to have led me down here! If you hadn’t found me, I don’t think I would’ve ever woken.” - Sly’s dialogue, Crossroads village encounter

WHAT

In a move very on-brand for Hollow Knight, there’s actually a line from Seer that gives the whole game away - and I mean this incredibly literally, she declares her loyalty to Radiance and says Fuck Hallownest and also hints at what she hopes for from Ghost all in two breaths!! - except that most players are never going to see this line because Seer only says this if you screw up platforming in the Forgotten Dream and yeet yourself off a platform before picking up the Dream Nail.

I do not doubt that I could wring a whole essay out of this one line by itself (and Seer deserves an essay from me so maybe I will), but today the part we’re concerned with is the third line of this dialogue, i.e. how she describes the Dream Nail to Ghost: “The power to wake this world from its slumber[.]”

Its slumber.

The Infection doesn’t only spread through dreams. It is a dream.

To put it in a more meta/video game mechanics sort of way, the Infection is a status ailment. Sleep exists as a common status ailment in RPGs, strategy games, and even some adventure games and platformers. Usually the status ailment of sleep is a mild nuisance that wears off after time, when a character is struck, or if the requisite curative is used; in comparison the Infection is Sleep But Bass Boosted. Appropriate, for a glorified status ailment that’s inflicted by the literal actual god of dreams.

The Infection can only be cured in the very early stages. Once an infected creature has fallen into a coma, there’s no longer any hope of a third party breaking the curse... and also, infected creatures sleepwalk. Violently.

This may also provide an explanation for why mummified bugs in the catacombs have been infected, too: If they were freshly dead and their lingering spirit was still attached enough to their corpses, and that lingering spirit retained enough of a mind to dream...

Aside from those mummified bugs, though, I believe it likely that most if not all of the infected enemies in-game are very, very much alive.

Beyond all the dialogue and lore crumbs pointing to the Infection simply being a cursed sleep, this explanation makes the most sense when thinking about Radiance as a character. She is the literal embodiment of dreams as well as the sun, so inflicting eternal slumber with bonus malignant sleepwalking is a natural extension of her power and a way to use it offensively without being directly violent.

(I've written about this at length elsewhere, but signs point to Radiance having been a pacifist prior to the Pale King’s invasion. Short version: The Moth Tribe were pacifists and Radiance was the center of their culture so it would be odd if she were an exception; she is incapable of inflicting any physical harm whatsoever in a game where lack of contact damage from an active enemy indicates helplessness and such enemies always flee from Ghost unless they have a tool they can use to fight with; her behavior in her boss battles indicates a lack of combat experience, and her nail-generating spells seem to be based on Hollow’s abilities. Real-life adult moths cannot fight - they defend themselves with flight, camouflage, mimicry, and I’m Poisonous So Fuck Off coloring.)

Now, I don’t want to downplay the harm the Infection causes - it doesn’t have to turn bugs into literal undead zombies to be devastating. What we can glean of Hallownest’s ruins suggests that as a state it was heavily dependent on labor to run its industry, so incapacitating the laborers would have turned the whole country on its head, especially because those laborers cannot be woken. The Infection also created an intense atmosphere of terror throughout Hallownest as bugs tried to discover ways to cure it or at least protect themselves. And as the Hunter observes,* because of how the Infection is caused, the harder you try to block Radiance out, the worse the Infection will get.

(A sidebar: Interestingly, the Infection's progress seems to be very slow when a creature willingly accepts it; Moss Prophet has Infection tumors when met but doesn’t die of them until the Crossroads is infected, though many Crossroads bugs are found dead of tumors immediately. Traitor Lord and his followers opted in to the Infection long ago, but Traitor Lord is still at the “orange fog” stage and could theoretically be cured, if he wanted to be. Both Traitor Lord and Moss Prophet are still completely lucid, too.)

Radiance may not have committed any direct violence against Hallownest, but the Infection does incite violence: infected creatures become hostile to and will attack the uninfected. And as we’ve discussed, the Infection itself can become fatal once it’s progressed far enough for tumorous growths to form.

A god smiting the shit out of her people’s oppressors by nonviolently but thoroughly disrupting their kingdom, Especially if that kingdom is a genocidal colonialist slave state,** as a Let My People Go And Leave Me Alone :) ultimatum is not unreasonable. (And Moss Prophet tells us point-blank that literally just listening to Radiance in the first place would have prevented the Infection before it began!) But despite that Hallownest as an institution is unambiguously awful, Hallownest bugs victimized by their own state (such as the maggot slaves and other menial workers) probably saw much less benefit from Hallownest’s genocides than the rich and nobility, and likely deserved the smiting way less than said rich and nobility.

Meanwhile Hallownest’s neighbors - all native nations who are just as much victims of TPK’s bullshit as the Moth Tribe - did not deserve to get caught up in the smiting at all.

Lateral harm in Hollow Knight is another topic that deserves its own essay - and more than that, lots of in-depth conversation! - but, again, that’s not the topic we want to focus on today. I do want to make it clear, though, that infected creatures being alive and theoretically wakeable if the curse should end doesn’t suddenly mean the Infection was actually no big deal. If you want your jimmies rustled, try Dream Nailing enemies that pull from the generic Dream Nail dialogue pool: They are on some level aware that they’re dreaming and can’t wake.***

Clues that the Infection is literally a dream are littered all over the game, from Elderbug’s initial dialogue**** to the name of ending 3, Dream No More - not only named that because that’s the ending where Ghost sacrifices Radiance’s life as well as their own to end Hollow’s suffering rather than only sacrificing their freedom.

Some of what Bardoon and Moss Prophet have to say about the Infection is suggestive of the nature of this dream, though. Moss Prophet appeals to their audience to find unity through the Infection,***** and Bardoon also remarks on this, though he cautions that this comes at the cost of being reduced to instinct.****** Dreaming does tend to come hand in hand with lack of inhibition and suggestibility, but I’m more interested in what Moss Prophet and Bardoon mean by unity, since infected creatures’ thoughts are different depending on what they are and what they were already doing while awake.

There's less specific hard evidence for this aside from how we can observe that Infection blobs are connected to Radiance, transmitting her heartbeat and birthing the Lightseeds, her unintended creations. But given that those blobs do originate from Infection fluid according to the Hunter... Radiance is not just the embodiment of dreams but the heart of THE Dream. So could the Infection be a forcible pseudo-immersion into that capital-D Dream, the Dream Realm itself?

Whether my hunch here is right or not, I can’t in good faith end this essay without bringing all y’all’s attention to absolutely my favorite bit of The Infection Is A Dream foreshadowing: The way multiple parties mention the fact that the Infection smells and tastes sweet.*******

You know... it’s sweet... it’s a sweet dream... get it.........

And now that you can no longer unsee that brilliantly awful pun, I think I'll see myself out!

SOURCES:

* “The infection that swept through Hallownest so long ago... they say that the harder you struggled against it, the more it consumed you.” - Hunter’s commentary, Slobbering Husk Hunter’s Journal entry.

** I’m referring, of course, to the maggots. See: “Weakest members of the kingdom of Hallownest. Generally looked down upon and forced to do menial labour.” (Ghost’s commentary) and “If they try to bargain for their life, just ignore them. They have nothing to offer.” (Hunter’s commentary) from the Maggot Hunter's Journal entry as well as False Knight/Failed Champion’s backstory. Remember also that maggots are the larval form of flies like Sly (you’ll see the resemblance if you compare Sly’s features to the maggot siblings’), meaning Hallownest employs child slavery. In more cheerful news Sly’s backstory must be absolutely goddamn wild.

*** “I’m not...Dead..” “Am I...Sleeping?” “I can’t....Wake up...” - Dream Nail dialogue from generic Hallownest bugs (Wandering Husk, Leaping Husk, Horned Husk, Husk Bully, Husk Warrior) and from God Tamer for some reason

**** “Perhaps dreams aren't such great things after all...” - Elderbug’s initial dialogue

***** “Embrace light! Achieve union!” - Moss Prophet’s dialogue

****** “Theirs is a different kind of unity. Rejection of the Wyrm’s attempt at order. I resist the light’s allure. Union it may offer, but also a mind bereft of thought... To instinct alone a bug is reduced...Hrrm...” - Bardoon’s dialogue (Listen four times, not counting other dialogue flags)

******* “A thick orange mist fills these walking corpses. It has a sweet, sickly taste to it. I find it foul. After you kill these creatures, I suggest you do not eat them.” - Hunter’s commentary, Husk Bully Hunter’s Journal entry, just for one example.

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #long post under cut -#essay

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askingthe-rfa · 3 years ago

Text

// I TRIED MY HAND AT WRITING !! I did a small 707 x reader thing-- I’m a bit nervous to post it but I’ma do it anyways !! QuQ

PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR HIS ROUTE IN HERE THANK YOU !!

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

Fingers tap quickly over the key’s of his computer, eyes focused on the task ahead as his mind runs through a billion different combinations and equations. It was nothing for him, and he would continue to tell himself that nothing was too hard as long as he didn’t unlock the box around his heart. Emotions complicated things, bled new numbers into questions and just made everything confusing. He’d preferred to keep himself on a path of familiarity, any distractions were not welcome, and the hacker would have liked to keep it that way -- had there not been a bump in his plan.

Eyes running over the screen once more as the music covering his ears played to kill the world outside; if he could just keep himself focused, there would be no problems. ‘No problems, and you can leave’ he’d told himself this too many times that it was almost a mantra, and he’d feared that if he strayed that there too much longer would be some price to pay.

Your hand hesitates over the knob to the living room, the space beyond was quiet all aside from 707’s fingers tapping away on his keyboard. Digits lay on the brass handle before you had even thought to gather the courage, your body acting on it’s own before turning it and pushing the door open. A mess of red sat in the same corner you’d seen him in the night before, his body unmoving (the mountain of soda can’s however had grown) as he focused himself on his task. Golden optics flicked up over the top of his screen for a moment before, as if by force, they had dragged themselves back away. You could feel your heart drop as he’d pulled himself away, as if to try and squeeze himself into the corner even more, regardless of his back already being pressed against the wall.

Swallowing your nerves, your hands on your stomach to stop yourself from bringing back your lunch, you slowly pace yourself toward the hacker, eyes never leaving him before you stop before him. Once more, eyes bring themselves up to yours, tired, and unfocused. ‘When was the last time you slept, Seven’, you wanted desperately to ask but your lips remained sealed, and all you could do was stare back at him.

“-- What…?” His voice was hoarse, as if the air around him was suffocating; a hand reaching up to push his headphones back to hang around his neck. You shook your head slowly, tears stinging your eyes before you started to rapidly blink to banish them. His brow raised as he watched you, his focus returning as he studied your face carefully.

“I-- … Are you okay?” his eyes seemed to gain back some life, wide and confused at your sudden question.

“I’m fine, didn’t I tell you not to bother me…?” “You did, but--” “Listen, I’m not a good person, don’t waste your time on me.” “But Seven--!”

“Just stop!!” Putting the computer down beside him, he stands up slowly before he seems to tower over you. His face scrunched in anger, although you felt as though it wasn’t anger meant for you, but for himself. It was expressions like that, that killed you. Your heart was breaking every moment he was in pain. You wanted to reach for him, to hold him, to tell him it was okay. Yet something stopped you, something about him terrified you, and in turn it only upset you more. Tears formed once more, spilling over as they ran down your cheeks, eyes never leaving his once. Whatever secrets he held, you wanted to share in them; to understand why he would push you away like this.

Spotting your tears, 707 sighed to himself, tearing his optics away from yours. The simple sight of them was enough to make him wince, regretting his very existence. Shaking hands reached, clinging gently onto his jacket to hold him there, to keep him from just simply fading away; his body flinched, contacts turning back to yours as he stared into you even harder then before.

“Please … Don’t push me away anymore … I-- I want--”

“You want what…? I can’t give you anything… I can’t even save myself, what could I possibly give you…?”

“All I want is you…”

His heart seemed to stop as he stared, eyes widened at your claim; golden hues seemed to shine but only due to the storm that clouded them. Lashes covered that beautiful gold, teeth sinking into his bottom lip to stop himself from feeling anything. The pain in his heart was too great, and he was shattering. He pleaded, begged himself inside to keep it together, or he would really lose.

“I don’t know how to be free… I can’t give you a life worth any value… I’m nothing--” “You’re everything… I don’t care what dangers lay ahead, all I know is that I want to walk and fight it with you…”

‘I’ll break … I’ll break, please stop…’ he’s begging for you not to say more, his lip quivering, he’s afraid. He’s never been so scared in his life, his hands reaching to gently take yours which held onto him; his fingers shaking.

“I love you…”

…

...

…

Something inside seemed to shatter, his eyes slowly opening to look at yours again, yet this time his expression was softer -- eyes behind lenses spilled over, years worth of emotions seemed to leave him all at once; and whatever strength he had was gone. Slowly sinking down, 707 sank to the floor, you following suit as he still had somewhat of a grip on your hands. For the first time, you felt as if you had seen the real him, you had cracked the code and hacked your way into the shield that had kept him safe for so long. Slowly, your hands released his as he crumbled quietly before you, your arms embracing around his neck to hold him to you; his body tight before he tells himself that maybe it really is okay. Slowly, unsure of himself, he carefully wraps his arms back around your middle; holding tightly. His tear stained face pressing against your shoulder caused his glasses to push up to his forehead and for the first time he finally felt peace.

“You’ll never be alone again… Rely on me, I’ll hold your hand and we can face it all together…” “...” “You’re free, Seven…” “-- Saeyoung.”

“Huh..?” Tipping your head to him, you barely heard him between painful sobs, quiet yet with every tear it seemed to impale your heart like shards of glass. You watched him for a moment before he unwillingly released you, bringing his hand up to rub his eyes with the back of it; peeking at you once more and this time his eyes were clear.

“My real name… It’s Saeyoung…”

“Saeyoung…” the name danced on your lips, and it was beautiful. For the first time, the air around him seemed light, and warm. Perhaps it was the first time that Saeyoung could truly breath, his canvas relaxed before giving you a small smile that could have been mistaken for the sun itself. Your heart felt fuzzy and warm, it’s pace seemed to speed up as he carefully took your hands once more, giving them a small squeeze back to let him know you were really there.

“Saeyoung?” “Yeah…?” “I love you…” “...I love you too.”

#GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH #tap dances idk what to do with this so #uh #here LOL #*ALIX SPEAKS

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clockworkspider · 2 years ago

Note

re: reply on post abt enstars (i feel like it'll get confusing if i keep going on the post lol)

i could have sworn it didn't appear on the app even a week after the eng release (even though i could see it on google play on my computer) but i just looked it up again and it's... actually... there... so yeah, nevermind, it is available

i'm in europe but a non-english speaking country, which might be the cause of the lag? maybe they waited until they had a translation or something to avoid just chucking a game in english to an audience of ppl who can't speak it (or speak it well), or maybe they needed to get some kind of approval to distribute it in my country idk

so congrats on pulling yet another person into this game? tbh i'm not sure how into it i'll be but i kind of want to give it a try, if only to see what the hype is all about :3 can't wait to get whiplash seeing akatsuki and madara in a game about idols :D

I'm sorry. I'm obligated to send everyone I get into gacha to Darkpattern.games

Anyway sorry for the late answer. I got caught up in stuff and things.

So uh... a little bit about the lore. Ensemble Stars!! Music is actually the second game of the franchise. The first game was called Ensemble Stars!, and took place in Yumenosaki, which is an idol high school that most of the cast attended. (There was a "war", people died [suicide], and then there was a revolution.) You can get that part of the lore by reading up fan translation [see masterlist here, open on browser instead of tumblr app] or by watching the anime.

I want to make a note that the anime is... extremely condensed. So if you watched it and just don't feel anything towards any of the characters... don't let it discourage you.

My personal recommendation is to start by playing the current game, and if you're interested enough, pick out your favorite character/ship and read up their wikia entry. The wikia actually have a very thorough relationship section on each character, which will mention significant events in this character's history. Then you find those events on the translation masterlist and read them.

I made a uquiz to help you pick a unit to start reading up on, btw.

After you read a few events, then watch the anime to get the basic chronology if you're still interested.

I know a lot of people recommend starting with the anime. I personally just didn't like it very much so it would have been discouraging if I started there.

There's also this twitter account, which gives context to game 2 by sharing relevant game 1 history as new events are dropped in the English server.

As a general rule of thumb, I recommend reading Meteor Impact and Element (Gathering of 3 magicians) for key lore regardless of which characters you end up following. Tho... they're a little... intense. So I would get to know the characters a bit before diving into the deep end.

If this whole thing seems very intimidating to you, then just save yourself and run.

#enstars

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senseiwu · 3 years ago

Note

Any random oc facts? ;:3

YES. I wanted to make sure I was on my computer for this.

I don't know how long this'll be.... I'll try and keep it to basic facts, not expand too much on them because then I'll be talking forever �� even still, I'll put it under a read more.....

Estelle

Estelle was given her name because of her mother's love of space, which she also shares.

Dareth is her older cousin, probably at least second cousin. He's the person she's closest to in the family.

She and Cyrus met in university, when she saved him from drowning.

She feels awful when people assume it's because of Cyrus that they don't have biological children; she has been cursed by her brother to perish, should that ever happen.

The last time Estelle ever saw her father was when she gave him his invitation to hers and Cyrus' wedding. He ripped it up in her face. Dareth was the only family member of hers to attend.

Jun

Often falls asleep while reading, her glasses and lamp still on and book open.

Some pages of books have been damaged a bit by this, much to her despair

She can read very well for a four year old

Has a goofy owl plushie named Hoohoo

She loves owls

She also likes catching butterflies and describing them to her parents and anyone who will listen

Stumbles over complicated words but she Must say them and show off how smart she is

She loves facts and is a little walking encyclopedia.

"Fun fact!" is how she starts most of those conversations.

baby

the most adorable oc i have ever made

Florence and Leanne

Leanne is a chemist, Florence is a biologist

Were in their late fifties when they adopted Misako

Regular humans, so they probably did not get to meet Lloyd, since Misako became a mother late as well, and they'd passed away. But they would have loved him and been the type of grandmothers to spoil him whenever they saw him. And Misako would have left him with them.

Quite protective of Misako when she was young

They didn't really approve of Garmadon, but were always kind to him regardless

Mei

Reluctantly trained by her father as a doctor; she wanted adventure instead, but was happy to help others

Weapon of choice, if needed, is a bow and arrow.

She and Izanagi (the FSM) bonded over telling stories when they met

She came up with her own stories; most of Wu and Garmadon's books were written by her.

Speaking of her sons, she called them many nicknames, mostly sunshine (Wu) and sugarplum (Garmadon)

She passed away when Wu was around the equivalent of three or four.

Her last words to her husband were something along the lines of "thank you for making my life an adventure"

MISC.

Dennis has been known to throw things like eggs at people who are transphobic or otherwise jerks towards his mum, Susan.

They both work in the employee cafeteria at Borg Tower; Susan is the head chef and Dennis is a trainee.

Susan wants to open her own restaurant

Susan and Dareth are together :) Dareth is a bit of an awkward stepdad to Dennis

Dennis has a white cat named Yuki

Autumn (Ray's mum) made stuff out of glass using her powers, cause she wasn't interested in being a blacksmith like most of the family.

She picked up glass blowing when her powers passed on to Ray.

Lesley is vision impaired, and they have a staff similar to Wu's but with a replaceable ball at the end, so it works as both a cane to help them get around and a staff for self defence

They are the Elemental Master of Dreams, though as of yet they do not know it. They tend to drift into others' dreams, very confused by some of them.

okay..... i think that's all i can think of for now,,,, i mean, if you wanna ask specific stuff,,,,,, 👀 feel free to ask,,,,

#asks #my ocs #ninjago #ninjago ocs #estelle borg #jun #florence montgomery #leanne montgomery #mei - ninjago oc #dennis o'malley #susan o'malley #autumn smith #lesley #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sorry this was a lot

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dalekofchaos · 4 years ago

Text

I do not justify or excuse Nathan’s actions, but he also did not deserve his fate

Been receiving some rightful criticism for including Nathan in my “they deserve better/they are products of abuse at the hands of adults” and my LIS 2 change post. As well as critiquing Chloe but not Nathan.

So to clarify. No I do not justify Nathan Prescott’s actions, but he did not deserve his fate and I feel he could’ve been more. I will explain

Nathan is responsible for his own actions. Jefferson and Sean are just products of how he got to where he was in LIS.

I will NEVER excuse Nathan's action, to me, he is just as guilty as Jeffershit, David and Frank and even Victoria(bullying Max, Kate and making the video rival and responsible for putting Kate on the roof), Nathan knew kids were drugged on campus and he was an active participant.

Nathan was a bully who lorded over Blackwell with his money and his privilege. Bullied Drew, Luke, Warren and countless others. Acted like king shit and used his status in the Vortex Club and his family name to get away with anything and everything in Blackwell.

It could be argued that Jefferson killed Rachel, there is enough evidence. But, everything from DONTNOD and Square Enix says that Nathan killed Rachel. Nathan overdosed Rachel to impress Jefferson, that may be just Jeffershit manipulating the story, but this cut content puts things in perspective.

Nathan drugged Kate, which led to Kate’s video fiasco(Kate’s video being viral is Victoria’s doing) and instead of taking Kate to a doctor, he took her to Jefferson and viral video aside, Nathan taking Kate to Jefferson is what led up to Kate being on the roof. Nathan even keeps the video on his personal computer. Slut shames Kate for being in the video and victim blames Kate for being on the roof and for her suicide

He has framed pictures of torture porn in his room and possibly in his movie collection too. Whether it was before or after Jefferson’s influence, Nathan still had an unhealthy obsession of sexually abused women.

Nathan drugs Chloe and attempts to do what Jeffershit does with his victims. Chloe may have started the conflict by attempting to steal money while he was drunk, but he still drugged her and that is not a justification. Luckily, Chloe escaped. When we first meet Nathan, he brags that he could blow up Blackwell and no one would bat an eye. Nathan brought a gun to school intending to kill Chloe because she got away. Unused audio suggests he never meant to kill Chloe and his medicine causes muscle spasms so it went off on accident and after he shows remorse, but in episode 5 there is unused audio of Nathan telling Chloe “you could’ve been my best model” he had bad intentions for Chloe regardless. He killed Chloe whether he meant to or not. He had the intent but did not want to kill her, but he killed Chloe nontheless.

Nathan harasses Max. Went to the parking lot with intentions to hurt Max because she talked to Wells about the gun. Then he beats up Warren. Then Nathan trashes Max’s dorm, writes a threat in blood, makes a photoshoped picture of her severed head and sends her threatening texts, graffities that Max is a “feminazi” hurls misogynistic and homophobic slurs at Max’s way. He also photoshops Warren’s photo and hurls the F-slur his way for defending Max. If you tell Wells the Truth, Nathan will steal one of Max’s pictures. If you are unable to save Kate, he steals a flower and cross from Kate’s memorial. This isn’t because he’s remorseful or had a crush. It’s a trophy. A trophy to remind him of what he’s done, that’s the kind of thing rapists and serial killers do.

Just because Nathan was physically and mentally abused by Sean and Jeffershit does not give Nathan the right to be a shitty person. Nathan became an abuser himself. He was mentally ill and abused and manipulated by awful people which is shitty and definitely warrants sympathy, but that doesn’t absolve him of blame. it’s really unfair and, dare I say, ableist to excuse this sort of action based on mental illness. Mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims of violent than the enacters of it. This falls in an eerily familiar pattern where the violent actions of privileged white boys are always excused as mental illness. He still had SOME autonomy. Nathan’s trauma caused by his abusers doesn’t justify being a horrible person. Nathan deserves to get help for his problems whilst facing justice in jail. But that doesn’t mean he deserved to die, he deserved to face justice, feel remorse for his actions and atone for what he’s done.

I do not excuse Nathan’s actions, I recognize him being mentally ill played a factor and Jefferson and Sean’s influence as well, but Nathan is responsible for his own actions. I only think he could’ve been better or at the very least atone for his actions, cause a mentally ill child deserves a chance to redeem more than the child abuser and the violent drug dealer.

I only included Nathan in certain posts because if he was not influenced by Jeffershit or his father, I think he would’ve been in a better mental health state, that is more evident in the alternate world. Even Max thinks this in cut dialogue. “If Nathan had more help, more support… this might have gone a different way… I think about him chilling out on the grass in the other timeline. I hate what he did, but I can’t hate him.” So yes, I recognize that Nathan is as bad as Jefferson, Frank and David, but there was potential for Nathan to atone for his actions, if he did not have Sean or Jefferson in his life he could’ve been better or at the very least, there could’ve been potential if Max had just talked Nathan down in the bathroom instead of just letting Chloe die.

#Life Is Strange #Nathan Prescott #Max Caulfield #Chloe Price #Rachel Amber #Amberprice #Pricefield #Kate Marsh

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marshmallowprotection · 3 years ago

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more danger ray, please?🥺

[Previously on Danger Ray]

Her fingers dug into the fabric on the interior of the borrowed coat. She only had so much strength in her hands to keep it from gliding off her shoulders, but that was what kept her afloat. It was the one thing that grounded her thoughts and it was the only option she had left. Ray had dug into the deepest recesses of her mind and there was nothing that hadn’t already been laid bare. He knew about everything.

Because she wrote about everything and put her words to print. It was all there for him to see. There was no stone left unturned. She hadn’t even needed to say a word or explain everything, Ray seemed to adapt faster than she had power to pry into his mind. Once, she thought she knew what he might do regardless of what happened, but now she knew that Ray was someone who could go beyond those means.

He salivated for revenge and control, even if there was a part of him that really clung onto fantasy. Those parts of him were what drew her to him, because they had that in common. She could be obsessive, too... she could be angry... she had the ability to be all those things when pressed, and even if sometimes they felt like ugly thoughts—

Ray made her feel validated. He made her feel like it was okay to think how she did. But, that was when he was a comfort character. That was when she didn’t have a chance to ever get close to him... when there was a line between fiction and fact. His vinegar was dangerous. He wouldn’t stop if he knew how to get the point he needed. It stung.

No matter how much that mentality hurt him, he was willing to cause suffering if it was needed. That was the prize of being desired. That was the price he had to pay if he wanted to be... wanted. It was what Rika used against him and why he was so desperate to win. Her eyelids felt heavy as she stared at the monitors, it was exhausting to be awake so much.

When she wasn’t working with him, he would escort her back to his room that had steadily become their room. it wasn’t the princess suite. It was a room that wasn’t far from the intelligence room. It was a small area that held a desk and a bed; but, the window was capped shut and locked.

There was nothing of hers in that room but why would there? She didn’t exist in this reality... though, the journals on the desk belonged to Ray, and the knot in her stomach told her it was the same journal in the Special Believer box.

She never dared to touch it.

Ray would know if she touched something.

Even though he had started to add more clothes to the closet and place new flowers in the vase every other day, it felt like she was more of his plaything than a partner... a part of her didn’t mind that aspect, since she was tired of thinking all the time and aching for someone to do everything so she could stop hurting when she thought too much.

But, the other part of her screamed that if she gave up for even a moment...

Well, she just might forget that she was ever anyone else to begin with. Kaitlyn couldn’t afford to do that. If she let things go that way, Mint Eye would win in this universe and nobody would be safe... and she would be the one to blame for the price of putting the game into Ray’s hands. She couldn’t do anything about that, though. He had her phone.

He was moving so fast, too. She couldn’t even keep up with it. She had a feeling that Ray didn’t want her to keep up with it. He was doing everything as much as he could manage alone. He didn’t ask her much apart as far as she knew, but it felt like she was in such a daze sometimes that he could’ve asked without her remembering he did.

The elixir had done a number on her head... even if they had only forced her to drink it once. She feared if and when it might happen again. She already had a hard time with her body... anything that could’ve made it worse would’ve broken what little control she had. She blinked a few times, pulled the jacket closer to her body, ignoring the shiver that ran up her spine.

This room was freezing... it was so cold that she couldn’t even think about going to sleep. It wasn’t so cold that it made her want to pass out, but it was just cold enough that she wanted to cry. He didn’t even need the cold. His computer was already internally cooled down, the A/C was just cold to torment him. Did he even control it?

Hell, she didn’t know!

“Ray...?”

There was no response at first... perhaps because her voice was so soft and broken. She frowned but kept her arms close to her body as not to disturb him or distress him. It wasn’t a good idea to touch him when he hadn’t made the first move or was aware of what she might do. He was just as skittish as he was an angry person.

“Ray,” she tried again, this time, speaking louder and turning her head to look at him directly. Ray heard her, though, and he paused what he was doing as his fingers came to rest against the keys. Now that she had his attention, she wasn’t sure what to do. “Can’t I do anything to help?”

There was a brisk chuckle at the back of his throat. He twisted his chair to the side to face her directly, cocking his head in a curious manner as if she were prey to inspect side by side. “You’ve already done enough to help me, princess,” he said. “You’ve given me the tools that I need. I don’t need you to do anything strenuous.”

“But, I...”

“Precious flower,” Ray affirmed once again. His voice was firm and he sounded serious. A line set in his lips as he beckoned her closer until she was just close enough for his gloved hands to grasp her cheeks. Even without his coat to keep him warm, he seemed unbothered by the gap. “What have I told you? You really need to stop talking yourself into trouble. You don’t have to do anything anymore for anyone. You just need to be by my side.”

“Ray, it’s too much work for—”

His grip tightened, not enough to make her wince but just enough to remind her what he could do. His eyes glimmered with a warning behind them but he kept his smile on his face. He wasn’t paranoid right now, he was in control and he’d gotten what he wanted. “You give me energy. I can do anything as long as you’re by my side. I know you’re a gentle soul but... please, you have no need to do a single thing.”

She remembered to breathe. Her trembling hands steadily came out of his coat and grasped at his wrists. It was a gentle touch... but she could barely hold onto him. She still felt woozy. “It doesn’t feel fair... if you could let me just help you get the right information from my phone, I want to—”

“No.”

That time his voice was serious. His smile faded from his lips just as quickly as the words came out. It was sharp and dangerous. She felt her body recoil with the sound, but unable to pull away because he wasn’t letting go. He needed her to know his thoughts.

Ray leaned in closer and let his eyes search her soul. “You’re mine. I’m not letting you ever be swayed by them. I know you’re soft on them, and I refuse to let them trick you when I’ve already got you with me. I’ll destroy all of them for you as they are, and I’ll save the ones you pity so you can have more family in our ever-growing paradise. You’re going to sit there and stay with me... understand? I don’t want to leave you alone in our room, so please, be patient with me. I don’t want to be upset with you, flower. I just want to save you.”

Silence was his only answer at that moment.

He brushed his lips against the crook of her mouth, not quite against her lips but just enough that she’d know how serious he was. His face was warm but he had no fear in his heart. “Mine,” he gently repeated once more. “That means you’re my responsibility. I’ll keep you safe and sound... so, stop thinking so hard and let me do this. I’ll keep you close... this is what you wanted, remember? To be mine and only mine.”

The truth was... he was right.

#self insert #danger ray #ray choi #choi ray #anon #ask #mod kait #mystic messenger

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riversofmars · 4 years ago

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Can I ask you for a prompt about Thirteen stalking River at a dozen points throughout River's timeline (and all out of order)?? xx Thank you.

Hello! This is a brilliant prompt that I’ve actually been saving for the right moment :D I wanted to do it as a slightly bigger project and here we are. So this is going to be the first chapter of 12, one for each encounter (no way was I gonna do this in a one-shot lol), they’ll probably vary in length. I’m also planning on using some of the other prompts I’ve got sitting here for the encounters cause some are just perfect for it. All one big story though, chronological from the Doctor’s point of view, all over the place for River. :D

Starting off a bit serious but will turn lighter as we go along. Something (relatively) light and entertaining before I throw myself into something more serious again. Hope you’ll enjoy this!

Rating: G

Word Count: 2600

Read below or on AO3

Big, Vast, Complicated and Ridiculous

Chapter 1: The Library

The TARDIS materialised in the complete silence that engulfed the Library. Only the light atop the TARDIS reflected on the marble floor, the whole planet was shrouded in living, breathing darkness. There were a great many terrifying things in the universe, the Vashta Nerada certainly ranked right up there, but very few things actually scared the Doctor anymore. When she opened the TARDIS door, the golden light shining from behind her pushed the shadows back.

“I’m the Doctor, remember me?“ She spoke into the silence as she stepped out of her TARDIS and the shadows retreated from where she set her foot. “I’m not here to disturb you, I just want to see my wife.“ She said but didn’t get a response. She hadn’t expected one, there was no body for the shadows to inhabit and talk to her. “I just destroyed an army of Daleks… don’t mess with me right now, keep out of my hair and I will keep out of yours.“ Her voice was low and threatening. She hardly recognised herself anymore. It was one of the many reasons she was here. Nineteen years she had spent locked away with plenty of time to think. Being rescued and seeing off a Dalek invasion hadn’t done much to alleviate her gloom. If anything, it had pushed her further in a direction she wasn’t sure she wanted to be going in.

“Where are we going to go?“ Yaz had asked after Ryan and Graham had left the TARDIS.

“I…“ the Doctor hadn’t been sure what to say, heading off on another random adventure just didn’t feel right. Not when she had so many questions that needed answering, so many things she needed to figure out about herself. “I need to find out who I am, Yaz…“ She had said at last, squaring her jaw. She couldn’t just keep going, carrying all these questions with her. She felt so far removed from herself, how could she be carrying on in the name of the Doctor, when she didn’t even know who that person was anymore?

“Then we will do that.“ Yaz had said encouragingly. “Where do you want to start?“

The Doctor had thought about the answer to that question a lot in the nineteen years she’d been locked up. She’d taken a deep breath, gathering herself.

“There is someone I need to go and see, someone that knows me better than anyone else in the universe.“ She’d answered.

“Right, great, who is it? Where are we going?“ Yaz had asked, full of enthusiasm that had just been too much for the Doctor at the time.

“Yaz, this is something I need to do by myself…“ She’d said after brief consideration and Yaz’s face had fallen. “I promise I won’t keep you waiting long, I will pick you up again soon, but this bit… it’s personal.“ The Doctor had looked away, busying herself by setting coordinates and not face Yaz’s disappointment.

“Oh… but you said…“ Yaz hadn’t given up easily and it had taken a lot out of the Doctor to muster the needed enthusiasm.

“I’ll be back by the time you’ve packed a bag.“ The Doctor had smiled and meant it. She was glad at least one of her friends still wanted to travel with her but the place she needed to go, that was something she had to do by herself.

“I will be back here in an hour and if you’re not, Doctor, so help me, I…“ Yaz had tried her best to understand, she’d known her friend was struggling and if that was something she had to do by herself, she would have to give her that time.

“One hour it is.“ The Doctor had put on an optimistic smile. “I got my phone back as well, you can reach me any time, don’t worry.“

Yaz had given in to her persuasive and optimistic promise. Any trace of that enthusiasm the Doctor had mustered for her companion had drained away now. She didn’t need to pretend here, amongst the shadows. She had every right to be bitter, every right to be angry and sad and grieving. The shadows had been there and seen it all and they understood. Her threatening tone certainly had the desired effect as the shadows retreated and created a walk way to the nearest computer screen. The Doctor made her way over to the terminal and accessed it right away, before she could let her anxieties overwhelm her.

“CAL?“ She spoke as the computer engaged and powered up. “CAL? I need to talk to River.“

“Way ahead of you, Sweetie.“ River’s face appeared on the screen, giving her a warm smile that made the Doctor’s chest tighten immediately. She’d known seeing her like this would be hard, but to see that love and warmth in her eyes was more painful than anger at her long absence could have been.

“River, I… I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner…“ The Doctor grabbed on to the terminal, trying to get as close as she could although she knew, of course, that it made no difference. River wasn’t physically there. She was just a voice, a consciousness, inside a computer. That knowledge made it hard for the Doctor to breath.

“I’m sure you have been very busy, saving the universe and all that.“ River chuckled lightheartedly and the Doctor couldn’t be sure if she actually meant it or if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t good at reading people’s expressions at the best of times and she certainly didn’t feel her best right about now. “What brings you here now?“ River asked, tilting her head and the Doctor’s hearts sank. She knew her too well to assume she’d come without an anterior motive.

“I, uh… I’m feeling really lost right now and I thought… I just needed to see you again… I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be the Doctor…“ The Doctor confessed, unable to keep up the pretence any longer. They were alone, just her and River, the woman who had seen the best and the worst of her, knew everything about her, every face, everything she’d done… and still loved her regardless.

“Ah this again.“ River gave her a kind smile. “You have an identity crisis and you come to your old wife for a pep talk?“ She chuckled.

“River, you don’t understand, the timelords, they kept so much from me, I don’t even know my own life. I’m not even one of them. Turns out I’m just a foundling with these abilities that they then took for themselves. And I don’t even remember any of it, they took the memories…“ The Doctor started rambling. She didn’t know what to say or how to explain, it was just so much. River remained silent, just listening, allowing her to carry on: “I’m just so angry, I’ve done some really bad things and I can feel myself slipping into all that anger and…“ The Doctor closed her eyes, trying to block out the memory of Gallifrey burning, of the Master laughing, of her destroying a TARDIS to wipe out the Daleks…

“The anger of a good man is not a problem.“ River smiled, echoing a voice from their joint past and the Doctor actually laughed.

“You know I’m not a good man, River.“ She shook her head bitterly.

“That’s where you’re wrong, my Love. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. Or woman, come to think of it.“ River chuckled.

“I’m being serious, River.“ The Doctor shook her head. Why wasn’t she taking her seriously?

“So am I.“ River replied more firmly and the Doctor looked up at her. “You might feel yourself slipping and you might end up doing bad things, terrible things even but never without reason. Sometimes there isn’t a right choice so you have to make a hard one and you do. It’s what you have to do. And it’s not always easy but you always find your way back to yourself.“

“Last time this happened, you were there, to pull me back from the brink. At Demon’s Run. You said I make them so afraid… and I could see that. And I do again, now. This is not what Doctor is supposed to mean.“ The Doctor lowered her eyes again, ashamed for her actions. She remembered Demon’s Run well. Her hubris had been her downfall then. She could feel herself slipping back into that dark mindset, the anger she’d felt towards Madame Kovarian, the fear for Amy…

“Oh darling, you might have a temporary and possibly well founded identity crisis but you’re still the Doctor, my Doctor.“ River smiled kindly as it was the best she could do and the Doctor wished nothing more than to be able to touch her. Fall into her arms and have her tell her everything would be alright again. That she would work it out like she always did. That she was still proud of her, still believed in her, still loved her.

“You know I want nothing more than to be that person. For you, if nothing else. But how do I do it?“ She retorted, almost desperately.

“I’m sorry, my Love, I can’t tell you that, those experiences have to be lived, not told. I think you’d been sitting still for too long, you’ve forgotten what the thrill of adventure feels like, the joy of helping and saving someone. What it means to be the good guy and stand up for what’s right… To actually have fun again.“ River’s smile was full of compassion.

“Is that your advice? Just go back out there and find adventure and live?“ The Doctor laughed in a bitter sort of way and shook her head in disbelief.

“Something like that. Answers to the big questions have a habit of finding you along the way… I’m afraid you have quite a way to go yet before then but you want to be your best self when you do, don’t you?“ River shrugged.

“That’s not… how am I to do that if I don’t know how to carry on?“ The Doctor snapped, frustrated. Did River not understand what she was saying? How could she just suggest she carry on and find herself along the way. She had tried on Earth, fighting off the Daleks, and she had not acted like the Doctor at all. If she put herself in the midst of another adventure, what was to stop her from making the wrong choices? How was she to act like the Doctor if she couldn’t think like them anymore?

“What did you expect to find here? I’m just a face in a computer.“ River retorted pulling the Doctor out of her frenzied thoughts.

“River you…“ The Doctor felt guilty immediately, she had been so wrapped up in herself. River was so much more than that to her, even now.

“No, Doctor, you can’t come here and expect me to help fix you, you’ll have to do that yourself and you’re only going to do that by carrying on.“ River said sternly.

“To do that, I need you, I need your help.“ The Doctor confessed why she had really come. “When I’m with you, it’s like… I know who I’m meant to be. You make me a better person.“ She couldn’t help but think back to the time right after Darillium. How she had kept her diary close, River’s words guiding her through some of the hardest decisions of her life. She pushed her hand into her coat pocket and pulled out River’s diary. “I need… I need more.“ She looked at the well worn blue cover and then to River. She could see the flash of deep emotion in her eyes that she tried to hide with a dazzling smile as usual.

“Then you have come to the wrong version of me, haven’t you.“ River chuckled, the sadness gone from her eyes. “I’m stuck in a computer, Doctor, but there are plenty younger versions of me running around out there.“

“But, the diary…“ The Doctor had read it cover to cover many times. Even all the encounters River had had with her past selves before she’d even known who she was. It was all there. She had lived and read it all already.

“Oh Doctor, my dear Doctor, I was never going to put it all in there, was I.“ River smirked and the Doctor looked up dumbfounded as the penny dropped.

“You recognised me!“ She exclaimed. “You knew it was me straight away!“

“Of course I did, Sweetie. That particularly pretty face of yours has been all over my timeline.“ River grinned.

“It has?“ The Doctor’s head was spinning as her world turned upside down. Was this River’s way of telling her that this was not the end of their story?

“Well, it’s one of those timey wimey things, isn’t it. You come here distraught and talk to me, I tell you to see my younger selves, you tell my younger self not to put it in the diary, so you don’t know about those adventures and come here distraught to talk to me…“ River smirked drawing a circle in the air as the Doctor buried her face in her hands and groaned, annoyed at how she hadn’t seen this coming, it was just them all over. Her and River, time and space… Rule 1: The Doctor and River lie. She looked at River’s smiling face and felt much lighter than she had in a long time. Perhaps she could do this after all. Perhaps if she had those encounters to look forward to, she could keep going. River laughed: “See Sweetie, it’s never over for us, is it. All that time and space, we’re still running together, somewhere out there, and we will never stop. Maybe just delay for a time.“

“Maybe I’ll even get you out of here one day.“ The Doctor said the words before she could think better of it. Maybe she could, one day, make up for the one thing she regretted more than anything else.

“Maybe you will.“ River chuckled airily. “Until then, have fun with my younger self. Those were some good times.“ She gave her a wink.

“I will come back.“ The Doctor promised with renewed determination.

“Until then, my love.“ River blew her a kiss and before the Doctor could muster the strength for more meaningful goodbyes, the screen went black. The Doctor shook her head to herself, she was sure River had done it on purpose to make sure she would actually come back.

It was a strange mix of feelings as she returned to the TARDIS, she still felt the anger bubbling inside her, the nagging questions… but there was hope now, too, something to look forward to. The TARDIS hummed and wheezed as the Doctor closed the door behind herself, back in the comforting light and safety.

“Yes, she’s fine…“ The Doctor answered the TARDIS’s question as she stepped up to the console. “At least I think so… I didn’t exactly ask but she looked fine… I mean, she’s an image on a computer screen so of course she looks fine, she’ll always look like she did when she was uploaded I guess… But she didn’t say anything about not being fine… She did say we would see her again though.“ The Doctor found herself grinning now. “Let’s pick up Yaz and then, who knows… maybe we will run into her, wouldn’t that be something.“ She pushed the lever down and the TARDIS jumped into the time vortex. Th journey took no time at all and they landed only moments later. The Doctor skipped over to the door, already picking out suitable travel destinations in her head for their next adventure, and ready to welcome Yaz back.

“Okay… this is not Sheffield!“ The Doctor’s face fell as she opened the TARDIS door. Slowly, she stepped outside into blinding sunshine. “Yaz is going to kill me if I’m late.“ She scolded the TARDIS. “Why are you doing this?“

#doctor who #river song #thirteenth doctor #Thirteen #river x thirteen #space wives #thirteen/river #fanfiction #prompt #mild angst #general #TARDIS #The Library #femslash #Big Vast complicated and ridiculos #Jodie whittaker #Alex Kingston

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itgetsdarksometimes35 · 5 years ago

Text

Love in True Form II

Warnings: Non-con, dub-con, A/B/O, loss of virginity, breeding kink, lactation kink, multiple pregnancies, multiple children, birth, maybe more, 18+

Word Count: 2,720

Pairings: Dark Alpha! Steve Rogers / Omega! Reader, Dark Alpha! Bucky Barnes / Omega! Reader

Summary: Reader moves to the country side to live a slower life she’s not used to after living all her life in the city. She meets two men who can’t seem to get out of her life, and she sees them everywhere. What happens when their instincts get the better of them?

Chapter summary: Reader starts to settle in and has her first meeting with a new client.

- indicates POV change

~ indicates a time change

A/N: WOW this is completely overdue. Hope everyone enjoys, my masterlist should be working soon. ALSO the POV will stay first person, so sorry if you’re not into that. I’m trying to interoperate different writing styles, and I have plenty of other fics in 2nd person (3rd person will be next at some point in another fic)

xxx

When I got home, I was still a little shaken from the two guys I had encountered. Their crystal blue eyes made me feel unsettled, yet I couldn’t shake the familiarity I got from them. Had I met them before? Were they there when I was scoping out this place a few months ago? Questions racked my brain, but it was impossible. The only person I had met was my real estate agent. Nobody had been around for miles, and today was the first day I had traveled into town.

I decided not to think about it any longer due to the countless emails from patients trying to set up virtual appointments. I opened them up and started working my way through each person, delicately reading and responding appropriately with a time that worked for us both.

Steve slammed down the supplies he had bought at the store into the shed. Bucky was inside working on the fire to keep them warm for the night. Steve’s body tingled as he remembered the omega they encountered, as he remembered her faint scent, saw her beautiful body. He felt his blue jeans get a bit tighter at the thought of having her as his own. It’s what they’ve been dreaming of for years, him and Bucky.

Steve ventured back into the house to find Bucky pacing about with his hands behind his back. When Steve shut the door, Bucky turned to him, halting his pacing.

“We have to find her.”

“I know,” Steve sighed, moving to the kitchen to start dinner.

“She smelled magnificent, Stevie, I never thought I’d find someone. She was an omega. A real omega. They don’t exist anymore!”

Steve nodded along. He wasn’t ignoring his friend, quite the opposite actually. He was devising a plan to get their omega. He wasn’t sure how he would, but he wanted it to be as sweet as possible for her. But he also thought of possible reasons she was alive. It didn’t make any sense. Like Bucky said, omegas didn’t exist anymore.

In their day, there were thousands of them. Steve was a beta then so he had no chance at them, but Bucky was always an alpha. From both of their understanding, omegas had died off while they were still in ice. The omegas had bred with alphas, nothing else was possible, but their offspring seemed to be only beta. Now, nobody really knew what alphas, betas, or omegas were; they were just humans. No special category to go into.

“Steve?” Bucky was sweating at this point, the worrying for the omega was bringing his alpha out of him. He was looking at Steve with wide, blown out eyes. Steve smiled sweetly before clapping his hand over Bucky’s shoulder.

“Buck, I know. Her scent hasn’t left me since we saw her in town, and I’d be lying if I said this all made sense. We’ll get her, though, don’t worry. I have a plan.” Bucky nodded his head and glanced at the ground as he put his weight on another foot.

“When?” he asked impatiently yet gloomfully, meeting his eyes again.

Steve sighed and removed his hand. “We have to ease her into it, Buck. We can’t scare her or force anything, it’ll just make everything that follows way harder than it needs to be.”

Bucky nodded at Steve’s words. He knew what he said was true, but he needed his omega. Their omega. The thought of sharing an omega would typically never be an option for him, but with Steve it was different.

Steve knew this girl had no idea what he or Bucky was. Hell, she didn’t even know what she was! She was going to be scared and reluctant, and she’d fight them until the end. They were going to have to shape her into an omega. No doubt she wasn’t taught properly how to be one, but Steve could be patient. He had waited this long, he could wait a little longer.

Bucky switched from foot to foot one last time before retiring to the kitchen. Steve looked at his friend and shook his head. He had a feeling his Bucky wasn’t going to be as willing to wait as him.

I was jerked from my dreams with a loud snore. I looked around and saw my small home completely dark, save for the little moonlight coming through my living room curtains. I sat up from my couch and grabbed the book that I had been reading, that had fallen to the floor, before making my way into the kitchen where my laptop sat.

I pressed a few keys to wake up the monitor, and I looked at the time--when the screen lit up--to see it was half past 1. I scrolled to my email tab and saw a new email request from someone who wanted to set up an appointment. I clicked on the email and quickly typed in a response for a time to talk that suited us both.

This Steve Rogers seemed nice.

My hands ached as I planted the last cabbage plant into the ground. So far I had a garden of carrots, cabbage, broccoli, and celery. This new vegetarian diet was something I had never tried before, nor were these foods something I was particularly fond of, but I was more than willing to give it a try.

I dusted my hands off and ventured inside the cabin to where my only two pieces of technology lay. I checked the time on my phone before setting it back down. I still had 15 more minutes before my online meeting with Steve started, so I walked to the fridge to cool down with water and have a break.

I looked at my bookshelf and decided I needed more books. All I could fit in my car was about 30 books, but I had already read most of them. It wouldn’t take long to get through the rest, but thankfully Molly told me she had some I could have. I smiled to myself at the thought of being met with a bunch of planting books when going to retrieve the older woman’s stash. Not that I wouldn’t use them, though, Lord knows I certainly need to get better at this whole gardening thing. My hunger kinda depended on it.

I was brought from my thoughts when my computer started ringing from the Skype app, causing me to frown at the screen. Who could that be? No patients were scheduled right now, and nobody else would want to call me; my family and few friends seemed to be shunning me on my choice to leave. Maybe they believed if they shunned me enough I’d come back to the city. I scoffed at that. Not a chance.

I pushed myself from the counter I was leaning on and walked to the screen to look at the ID. “Steven Rogers.” I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at the clock at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. We still had 10 more minutes. Regardless, I reluctantly pressed “answer”; what else am I doing right now?

Skype connected us, but Steve’s screen was completely black. I checked my connection, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t hear anything, so I decided to wait a few more seconds for him to connect. His internet must be bad.

“Steve?” I smiled at the dark screen, and hoped he could at least see me. Putting a face to a name and voice could really help someone who’s going through something; it can help them realize other people do care.

“Hello?”

“Hey! Oh, erm- can you see me? Your screen is black, so I can’t see you.” It got silent for a second.

“Oh, yeah I can see you. I don’t know why you can’t see me; I’m sorry it’s probably me. I’m not good at this technology stuff. I had a hard time turning on my mic, that’s why I was silent at first.” He gave a dry laugh.

“Don’t apologize, it’s okay. I had a hard time getting used to this when I first started, too, so don’t worry! You’ll get used to it soon.” I smiled at the dark screen, I was glad Steve could see me. “I should apologize for my appearance, though, I was working in the garden.”

“Oh, you look lovely, don’t worry.”

I blushed at his compliment and reached for the bag leaning against the table’s leg. Inside was a notebook that contained details about my patients. I didn’t like discussing much over email or text--I liked talking about it face to face, or face to black screen in this case-- so that’s why Steve’s section was mostly empty. All I knew was his name and that he lived about 10 miles from me.

“Well, enough about me. What did you want to discuss today?”

Steve and I ended up talking about how he felt different from everyone else. He felt he couldn’t relate with everyone else and that he just felt alienated. I nodded the entire time he spoke, stealing glances at my notebook to take notes every few seconds.

When he was done I asked him a few questions. Any reasons he may have as to why he felt this way, when did he start feeling like this? Was there any dramatic change in his life? He answered he used to feel normal, in his early years, but one day he just woke up and felt unable to relate to the people around him anymore. He even felt he lost family and friends. My heart broke in my chest as I jotted down more notes. That was something I could sort of relate to, I thought.

We talked about ways he could enter outside of his comfort zone, finding hobbies that others enjoyed in order to feel a bit more connected. Go to stores that, not many people shopped at, but enough to let him ease into a life that involved other people again.

I asked him if he had any social media. If he wasn’t comfortable with doing social things in person yet, there were plenty of groups to join online that incorporated fun activities and joined people together virtually. It could also be a good way to connect with lost connections and maybe make new ones.

“Oh, no Doll, I can’t say I do. I’m not really into anything like that. I don’t even have a tv, and, as you can already see, have bad internet.” He chuckled again and I joined in a bit.

“Oh yeah, I understand.” I had sworn off phones--except my cell that was stripped of everything except my contacts list-- and tvs, so I understood where Steve was coming from completely. “Well hey, no harm in that. Social media can be good, but in my opinion the best contact can be made face to face. No offense.” I laughed at the irony and Steve did, too.

“Thank you, and I agree.”

I hummed in response and pulled out my calendar from my bag. I looked for a free spot next week, and saw an opening on Thursday at 3:45.

“Alright, Steve, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, but our time is up, sadly. I’d like to reschedule an appointment with you, if that’s okay, next week. How does Thursday at 3:45 sound?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Great! Okay, remember what I said. I look forward to our next chat. Hopefully I can see you next time,” I added with a smile and a small giggle.

“Me too, talk to you soon, Doll.” There goes that nickname and my blush again.

“Bye!” The call ended and I made a few more notes in my notebook before closing it. My next appointment wasn’t for another hour, so I thought maybe I could go to town to get some stuff I couldn’t grow myself--or at all.

As I went to shower and look presentable, I couldn’t stop thinking about Steve. He was a charmer, and for someone who felt disconnected was able to connect with me fast. I tried to destroy the barrier I tended to feel with patients that had been made. They sometimes saw me as a figure, but I wanted them to feel as if I were a friend they could confide in. I was there to help them, yes, but I didn’t see the need in them calling me Miss. My name would do just fine, or any other nickname they picked up along the way, but Steve chose “doll” fairly quickly. He even asked me a lot of questions. Where I lived before, where I lived now, where I went to college, things like that. We had a lot more in common than I thought we would, though, so maybe that’s why we just clicked better. Everyone moves at different speeds, and I needed to remember that.

Steve pushed the laptop further down the table, away from him. He had a giant smile on his face, and he couldn’t deny the hard on he was sporting from just hearing her voice. He couldn’t believe the tape and microphone trick had worked. He felt bad about lying, but he didn’t want to scare her off by seeing him. Plus, he needed to hear her voice and her breathing for a bit, just before he started speaking.

When she introduced herself to him, it took him everything not to repeat it over and over like a love poem his mother used to read to him. He wanted to draw her in her “messy” state, her hair sticking up in wild places; some strands sticking to her forehead from sweat. He wondered if that’s what she’d look like under him.

He disappeared into his room and shut the door. Bucky went back into town after he found they had forgotten something at the store. Steve had a while before he got back, and he decided to take advantage of it.

Steve laid down on the bed and shimmied out of his suddenly tight jeans. He gripped his member through his underwear and groaned at the feeling. He stroked his member over the fabric a few more times, teasing himself, before removing himself from his confides completely. Steve’s rock hard cock sprung out and hit his stomach, slightly bobbing. He sighed in frustration yet relief at the feeling. The tip was fiery red with precum oozing out from the slit. He spit into his hand before grabbing the base firmly.

Steve stroked himself, slowly at first, up and down. He moaned and panted as his hand got him off, his mind on the woman and her sweet voice the entire time. How her boobs would look when they were released from the tight black shirt she had worn in the meeting. How she’d look begging for her alpha’s fat cock to plunge into your tiny cunt, milking him and bringing on his knot. How’d it feel to claim her and ceal you both in a bond. How she’d look carrying his pups, her tits leaking for milk he’d happily drink up. Steve took a break from working himself to tease his tip with his thumb, shuddering a bit before he pumped himself faster as his moans got louder and more desperate as his need to cum became greater and greater. He was whining the omega’s name like a chant as his other hand reached down to start playing with his balls. His hips were rising, fucking his fist harder and harder. He moaned a few more times before he felt the sweet swell of his cock as his knot grew. Spurts of cum flew from his pulsing member as he worked himself through his orgasm. He continued to roar and growl her name as he came down.

When Steve was satisfied, he just stared at the ceiling, a smile still playing at his lips. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cum that hard. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he was that hard! As he waited for his knot to subside, he started cleaning up his mess and headed into the shower. Bucky would be home any minute now, and he had to tell him everything that he had learned about you.

xxx

#dark!fic #dark!steve rogers #dark!steve rogers x reader #alpha!steve rogers #alpha!steve rogers x omega! reader #alpha!bucky barnes #alpha!bucky barnes x omega! reader #dark!mcu #dark!marvel #dub con #non con

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alienisticxo · 3 years ago

Text

X Angel - (Elon Musk x Reader) Chapter One

Hi there! I’m Dream and I’m new to posting fanfiction to Tumblr. I’ve currently been pining away for Elon Musk (why am I so strange?!) and this odd little story has been trapped in my head for a little while. I’m only posting this little prelude excerpt, so if anyone out there wants me to continue it, let me know or I won’t post the rest otherwise. This is also very obviously inspired by Cyberpunk a bit as well, and it's a super mega alternate universe kind of sci-fi story. Also a reader-insert / first person POV. (So really just wow a whole mess).

If you do happen to decide to read the shit that spews from my imagination, I hope you enjoy!

Warnings: None... yet.

Saturn’s effervescent rings hung like a million tiny, shimmering diamonds in the atmosphere behind a sprawling city skyline. Neon buzzed along the metallic buildings, bright hues of hot pink and electric blue casting an endless glow of variant shades against the night air and all who inhabited the city beneath the lights. Planet X was fairly new in the grand scheme of things, discovered by NASA years before they publicly announced it. During the lengthy stretch of time between their findings and the grand announcement, they focused purely on colonization. While the entire planet had not yet been inhabited, the metropolis they built from the atmosphere down and then the ground up quickly became a booming, cyberpunk inspired dream by 2024. The planet itself was as large as Earth, or maybe small, depending on who you asked, and if you were lucky enough to step foot on the new ground for yourself, you had it all.

See, things had changed back on Earth. So much so, it was now only a nostalgic destination to those who were forced to return to its remnants for some form of business, or a vast, broken society far beyond how it had already been to those who could never escape.

The unfortunate part was that not many were able to escape compared to Earth’s population.

As cautioned for years, mother nature began to reclaim the land with no help from her careless inhabitants. Natural disasters and technological meltdowns were imminent— with much thanks to the major technology boom that took artificial intelligence from labs and computers and introduced it into the human population. Earth was now akin to a desolate wasteland save for any major cities which had already been crumbling long before the final blow. People woke up everyday just to survive until they didn’t anymore. They had nothing much to hold on to but the dream of seeing Planet X for themselves, and not just in news casts or online. Earth was stuck in what very quickly became the past to those who no longer inhabited it. People who were billionaires and celebrities still remained, most of them boasting that it was by choice in some form of protest against giving up on the land.

Everyone was left with their own ruins, but life continued in such a declining state, whether they wished it would or not.

Planet X, however, otherwise known as just X, was now the hot new place to be. While most everyday humans still remained on Earth, the elite, the fortuitous, and freshly built A.I. lifeforms lived there. Despite the glitz and glamor of the main circles that people dreamt of belonging to in the main metropolis, the rest of the planet was a far cry from established. Those who were able to make it by the skin of their teeth, but not of the wealthy or powerful, ruled the rest of the newly conquered world. Gangs were prevalent and cryptocurrency exchanged hands that it shouldn’t for things no one spoke of. The outskirts of major cities were riddled with crime and people who held a passionate disdain for the corruption the higher-ups of X indulged in like candy.

A.I. creations ran rampant, cybernetic figureheads graced holographic magazine covers and television screens. Man made pop stars and film icons required little to no attention to keep happy, but were programmed to want it all in order to keep the public inspired and working for the coin, just as your average Hollywood celebrity might. Because of this, they were showered with luxuries and opportunities that made the lower class outliers sick to their stomachs, thus causing them to vow to bring down the hierarchy if it was the last thing they did. The individuals that couldn’t stand these cybernetic beings' lack of empathy for humanity fought against them, and in turn, the big-wigs played dirty to see that things worked in their favor at every turn.

In this grand metropolis of Drax City, where I also lived, the famous and infamous alike resided like royalty beyond comprehension, crypto that ‘normal people’ could never afford being passed around like penny candy in order to meet the petty whims that kept the A.I. stars working and hungry for more. There were truly no consequences to denying them, but they gave it up all the same. You see, humans didn’t become famous on X once executives realized how much easier it was to work with artificial intelligence. If you had a dream on Earth, and managed to find yourself in this new world to make it happen, you ended up tossing it into the fire with everyone else who’d made the venture before you. If a human was lucky enough, they worked for the stars. But they’d never become one.

Humans were simply too demanding and extremely disposable.

However, there were still average people of sorts, both cybernetic and human. They filled in the gaps in between. They held jobs and went to school, they owned shops and were complacent with their lower class lives. Most were just thankful to be away from Earth and the ruin it’d become outside of its own major cities, where people in power that stayed behind in an effort to figure out some last ditch plan to reverse the mess they’d made of the planet still roamed like infamous gods. Despised by the lower class; adored by the ones who felt they could still salvage the only home they knew.

Still, they tried their best on Earth. The entertainment business and corporations were still up and running, new celebrities were being ‘discovered’ every day on the streets in hopes of one or two truly catching fire enough to bring up the revenue of whoever’s contract they ‘signed.’ Earth was running out of options once they banned the use of A.I. the best they could. It was still very prevalent in some areas that could no longer be controlled, but they’d set themselves back decades in comparison to X by doing so.

But as the saying goes, the show must go on and money must be made. Regardless of how life had so drastically changed for everyone between the two planets, super stars were still the quickest way to influence the weak and naive minded. Executives and CEO’s knew that all too well.

And so, “eat the rich” was spray painted onto every alley wall, and thieves and hit men were prevalent; sneaking around corners, smiling from grungy doorways on the more dangerous streets around Drax City. Planet X and the beautifully sickening metropolis in it was plucked straight from a movie scene and plopped into the middle of the galaxy in all regards.

But that was the beauty of X.

I thanked the stars every single night that I was one of the lucky ones.

#elon musk #fanfiction #elon musk x reader #spacex #elon musk fanfiction #elon musk imagines #tesla #fanfic #fanfic writer #elon musk fanfic #cyberpunk #cybernetic #x angel #darklydreamingxo #space

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