#created from a fever dream and for a never-made game

[ruth-the-artblog]

Compilation of Lau and James

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

dude. dude. angel and devil steddie au!! but they get baby fever. the second they see u being all soft and taking care of a baby/toddler, the idea flashes into their heads n it just won’t leave.

can see them slipping it into their dirty talk slowly, and they amp each other up and up even more (idk the logistics of if they could even actually get her pregnant, but that could be a cool little “we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we sweetheart”)

A/N: idk what it is about you guys, but you have all been screaming for them to knock you up. I truly apologise for making up a rule that they can't back in the very beginning when I brainstormed their lore. (.........and now you are making me remember of some of the very dark ideas I had back in the beginning, thoughts of them holding you captive, kidnapping you to their world and using you as a means to create more of them because they so rarely find a human who can take it, who will be able to survive it, that that is is the reason for why you could suddenly see them....)

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

masterlist | join my taglist | devil & angel AU masterlist 

“Wait,” you reached down and cupped your sensitive cunt, messy and oozing with their cum, “I thought you told me that this isn’t how you reproduce,” goosebumps erupted all over your skin as the filthy fantasy they had just unravelled kept going long enough for you to grow nervous. 

“Did we?” Eddie smirked, his bliss bleeding through his faked confusion, “I have absolutely no recollection of that, do you?” he looked to the angel sprawled out beside him. 

“Nah,” Steve chuckled, “I don’t think so.”

“No, no, no,” genuine terror filled your voice, “I thought the whole we’re gonna fuck you so hard you get knocked upthing was just dirty talk, just a fantasy.” 

“I mean, it is the dream,” Steve’s vision drifted up from your used and leaking core to your heaving abdomen. 

“Stop it!” your bottom lip trembled, “can you get me pregnant or not?” you thought of just how many times they had repeatedly made all of your holes outflow with their seed, day in and day out, “a-am I pregnant?”

“What if you are, huh?” the devil inched in closer, his obnoxious grin never faltering even a second, “what if you do already have a little fiend growing inside your belly?”

“Okay, alright,” Steve planted his palm on Eddie’s shoulder, making him reluctantly back down, “you’re freaking her out,” visibly shaking the game off of himself, Steve looked back at you sincerely and said, “no, honey,” trying his best to calm the anxiety that had so quickly spun out of control, “everything we told you before is true. We were just playing.” 

© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble

[echantedtoon]

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Ch4 M I N E

(Hey everyone. I just wanted to thank everyone who read this far and liked my story enough to read it to it's end. I had a lot of fun writing it and it makes me happy knowing some people loved it enough to read it fully. If you liked this consider checking out my other works. Thanks to everyone for reading this, faving it, or leaving a nice comment. And thank you to Eiichiro Oda for creating such wonderful characters and giving me the opportunity to make this wonderful story.

Warnings for yandere themes, mentioned entertainment district and spicy stuff but it will STAY sfw, Kid's in cannon killing streak and violence, maybe some cussing, and kidnapping.

The song used is Apple Blossoms from the anime Mashiro no OTO linked below.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XAqYuYkw32s&list=LL&index=4&pp=gAQBiAQB )

Tagging @punks-never-die205 @feiatjjk

@karmadglory @babygurlenthusiast

@swampstew

@purplesoulsapphire

The nature of the night brought out the animals and fever in all man. Blinding them all to their whims and igniting a natural crave in all to satisfy.  The festival held up tonight started that bright desire.

Fireworks are chaos and unpredictability. Their explosive gifts like heaven's art. Filling the night with their bright dreams, born to live through colour then die again. The spectators seeing their blazing trails arc above. There's something about them that warms the heart even in the cold, as if their stray sparks passed into their blood.

So tell her why must the heavenly lights bring amongst their happy lights such sorrows?

Why must such sorrows take a hold of your skin at the time of happiness amongst the hundreds of others laughing at the company of others and the dazzling gleam of lights reflecting off their eyes like hundreds of tiny mirrors to the souls. The laughter's ambience and joyous sights held nothing within the mind of one that found nothing but sorrows.

She felt no happiness. Just a sense a duty. A 'must get the job done' attitude with a true neutrality. Felt no spark when you were ushered away to be properly dressed up as beautiful as the lights in the sky. Felt no hope despite the immense dancing of the crowds and the joyous laughter they exuded towards the heavenly lights of the dark abyss.Filling their heads with joy and their hearts with warmth. 

The music of the giant celebration gently flowed throughout and between the beautiful decorations wrapped around the walls of buildings. The way the candles inside lanterns lit up the surroundings and made the shadows beautifully dance against the walls. The way the smell of delicious foods being sold by vendors and the thick gunpowder and smoke wafted through the air. The beautiful music mixing with the laughter and talking of the guests around the lights.

It was almost like a dream. Everyone having a great time behind their happy faces, no one telling who they were or maybe that was all part of the game. The fun of not knowing who you were speaking too and being able to be your own person tonight. But maybe she wasn't meant to join the fun and laughter that everyone else seemed to be having. 

For tonight the merriment was not going to be able to get to her. For it had started with a fear. A fear stricken girl whom had immediately barged onto the stage the star was performing her dances and smiling sweetly at the happy crowd gathered to watch the performances. Stopping the smile on her face by uttering twenty eight words.

"I-It's Eustass Kid! He's back! P-Please come back to the house!," she pleased clutching a hold of the oiran's sleeve crying. "H-He's demanding that you sho-show up or else he's going to do something bad. Ple-Please come back!"

So the night begin. 

First coming back to the house in an extremely ungraceful fashion. Her arm clutched within the death grip of the scared girl pulling her along in a run. Her shoes lost in the scuffle and her flowing robes clutched up into her arms to avoid dragging the ground. The crowds murmurs blurring hearing and crowds bumping constantly enough to feel like being squeezed in a sardine can. Secondly arriving at the home only to be greeted by quite a sight. 

Girls crying out. Sobbing and cheeks tear soaked. Even those whom weren't crying were scared. Cowering in corners and against walls curled up and clutching onto each other for comfort. Some hiding behind furniture or within the curtained doorways. 

This never happened. Something had happened in the hours she was gone entertaining and now a dreaded feeling of wrongness painted these walls. 

"Oiran Y/n-san!," the house master cried out in relief somehow looking even more pathetic and scared than the girls around himself. "Thank the gods you're here! He's going to murder everyone if you don't do something!"

"Master, what happened here?"

"It doesn't matter!" He screamed in her face forcibly grabbing her by the arm and pulling her along harshly towards the nearest flight of stairs. "You get in there and please him so my business doesn't burn down with him!"

Stairs winding and long greeted feet as they thudded along. Marching on their death parade to execution. Or it felt that way. Climbing wider and higher towards the dead end that sank in their doom. The only thing between her and the fate being a thin sliding door that even seemed thinner, barely containing the fright that stood behind it's barrier. To be seen by the orbs that were pulled harshly and yanked towards the door by the man who shot a snarl at her.

"I don't know what happened between the two of you the last time he was here-" A finger pointed at her face. "-but whatever it was caused me a week's worth of free business then and now he comes back strolling in like he owns my very house. So whatever damages he causes remember that YOU are solely responsible for it! As you are responsible for gett rid of him!" With that the harsh grip around her wrist left. The man instead using those hands to straighten his appearance before inhaling and forcing a smile on his face. The door sliding open just slightly to peep his head in. "I'm so sorry for the wait, Sir. She's here now so I'll send her right in."

With that he turned back to bore a deep scowl at the woman whom blinked as the man backed away leaving her to be left alone to face the ever looming danger on the other side of the door. 

The door that should have closed two years ago.

The one week two years ago that seemed more like a distant dream than an actual memory. It had been so long ago that she last saw the pirate. The red haired devil that roamed the seas. The very one claimed to be behind the door again. For what purpose has he returned? Perhaps the festivities attracted more than just the citizens' attention but the attention of sea fairing men as well. After what must've been forever in silence passed, footsteps approached the door. A small hand reached out to grab the door. With a drag sound it opened up for the calm woman to step instead.

And the calmness was quickly replaced by shock and frozen ice as they widened at the sight they beheld. 

Amber eyes turned on the beautiful woman who stared back at him with shock. Red lips pulled back in a smirk. "Dove. You haven't really changed much."

He chuckled at the reaction of hers but he was expecting that. After all he did look quite different than the last time they saw each other. He wasn't really offended by the way beautiful eyes followed the movements of his metal arm as it reached out for a gourd of sake and brought it too his mouth. The sweet bitter sour taste of the liquid burnt out his throat but was a welcomed one. Eyes roamed over his body. Noting the radical changes to it.

Eustass Kid no longer had two arms. Well she supposed he did but one was clearly prosthetic and clanked lightly with his movements. Gone were the jewelry on his wrists and the old coat she remembered. He seemed much more..

Larger. Stronger. Opposing.

Dangerous.

She supposed that a life of a pirate would lead to that. Changes of one's self was a part of life. Though the dangerous part still stood. While she had not seen him, takes of his misdeeds were not unheard of to her ears. Most noticable that his previous bounty had been. Raised to four hundred seventy million berries for the astrocities occured by his hands. But even so she quickly calmed herself before bowing with a smile.

"Captain Kid-san. What a nice surprise. It has over two years since we had met last."

"Again with the formal shit huh?" He huffed leaning his head into his remaining arm maintaining that smirk. "Cut that shit out. We're both pretty...familiar  with one another. We got pretty close  during my stay here.~"

Yes. The physical intimacy they did partake in. However she merely chuckled at his overtly flirtatious innuendos thrown her way used to such things in her line of duty. However that still begged the question in her mind.

"Your arrival is an unexpected surprise but a welcome one. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

Amber eyes seemed to hyper focus as she walked in calmly closing the door behind her. Closing the two inside and blocking out any outsiders. Walking into his wanting space that DEMANDED he reach out and take. To hold, keep, and take for himself. 

The want started when he first saw her. Increased with a single kiss. And solidified itself when the first intimate act was initiated. He had brushed it off back then. He had important goals and wants to do like becoming the Pirate King. But the want jabbed his head every moment he left. Dreams consisting of beautiful eyes staring at him. Mornings women up in disappointment there was no sweet warmth beside him to greet him. No sweet smiles staring at him with eyes so bright and without fear of approaching the Red Devil. 

He refused to give into the wants. He wasn't about to be weak with emotions. But after so long the WANT became unbearable. Then the epiphany hit him. He could fucking do whatever he wanted. If he wanted riches he took it. If he wanted power he took it. So if he wanted this woman-

"I happened to be in the area and wanted to stop by. That a problem?"

"Of course not. I'm just surprised that you showed up so quickly. Usually I am the one who goes to visit my customers." She calmly walked on over to the tea kettle in the middle of the room, leaning down to fiddle with the top before it came off. "Would you perhaps like a cup of tea?"

"And drink that liquid donkey shit? No thanks." His eyes narrowed slightly. "What took you so long to get here? Was it..another one of those customers?"

Her head turned at him. The tone underlining with something sinister but she smiled. "Not tonight. I was performing for the festival when you sent for me. I do apologize for my delay but I am here now. That's what's important."

"...Heh. You're dam right about that part." Her eyes blinked when the cold of metal touched her skin and tilted her head up to him. "I missed this pretty face."

"I thank you for the compliment. It'll be nice to catch up before I leave."

In an instant the air in the room shifted. Becoming so tense. Thick enough one would have to cut it with a knife just to hear the silence. The smirk previously on his face gone as nothing was left behind but a blank slate. It took maybe two minutes of them staring at each other in the silence. Before a new emotion wrenched his gut making him growl.

"What?" 

"My contract has been bought by a man named Orochi. I am to be sent to his personal residence the first of next month." Her palm demeanor never changed despite the goosebumps crawling across her skin from the intensity of the look in his eyes. "Although I do not know who he is or what he looks like. My contract was bought through messenger. I have no choice in the matter of my contract."

She decided to add that last part in a way to deflect anger from herself and hopefully bring calm to the way his jaw clenched. He did not move as she reached up to gently cup the cold metal arm in hers. 

"It doesn't matter however. What's done is done and there's no point in getting brash over it. We have now so let us make the most of it."

Perhaps the mentioning of her contract will spare the house and get him to leave the poor girls alone like the house master wanted. If she wasn't here there'd be no reason for him to return. He still did not move staying eerily quiet, before a strained almost manic smile crossed his face. 

"That's right, Dove. It doesn't fucking matter cuz you're mine now. Why don'tcha grab that guitar over there and play me that song from last time? I wanna hear your pretty voice.~"

She smiled. "If that's what you'd like."

She happily (and secretly a bit relieved) got up and shuffled to the other side of the room to grab the shamisen leaning against the wall and turned. He kept smiling widely and a hand slowly patted the spot next to him.

"Come sit down right here, Pretty Dove. That way I can get a first row seat to my show."

The same prickling goosebumps feeling went down her back but she merely only bowed before shuffling over and calmly sitting down into place, holding her shamisen ready, and starting to prick away the notes to the song that was her favorite.

"Saa! Ah!   Ah, ah, saa!"

A beautiful voice waved off the walls with the echoes of music notes playing just for the two in the company of the room. The distance cheering of voices and bursting fireworks being the only ones accompanying her music.

"Now we begin.  Ah even the trees on winter days, repose with their limbs buried in snow awaiting the moment for their buds to emerge."

A feeling on her forehead caused orbs towards the touch despite her hands keeping up with the tempo of the song and her voice still singing the song. The touch was his hand reaching out to remove a few stray strands of silky shiny hair from her face allowing him a clear view of her.

 "Ah, in Spring they are delicately, deftly pruned. Wearing medicinal herbs as make up, they revisit their youth."

Her eyes watched his own as amber eyes stared at her.

WANT.

Want they said. Not in lust. But as a whole. Want. Take. WANT WANT WANT!! NOW!! Her eyes slowly closed-

"Don't close your eyes. I want you to look at me while you sing," he said organic hand cupping her cheek.

It didn't sound like a threat but she complied opening her eyes again much to his pleasure as he practically melted watching her. As she continued to sing through this strange eye contact.

"These flowers blossom but once a year."

He leaned closer. Enough for her to feel a bubble of uncomfort and the warmth radiating off his body. It was equal parts frightening and worrying but she wasn't confused. She knew what she was seeing and she was frightened by it.

"Ah when Autumn comes and it shows it's face once more it has ripened and taken on a luscious red hue and it's taste is even finer than it's color-"

She stopped when something suddenly happened. She gasped out as she was pulled forward, and in a second found herself placed in a rather compromised position, the shamisen falling with a clatter to the ground. Now in the pirate's lap with his strong arms cradling her to his chest. The redness in her cheeks was instant as he chuckled which ended in a relaxed exhale through his nose before looking at her surprised face.

"You're fucking easy to surprise, Dove.~ I thought you would've been used to a man's touch by now 'specially mine."

"I-...This D-Does not happen often. You caught me off guard."

"Better get used to it, Doll. It'll happen more often." She blinked foreheads suddenly touching.

"What?" 

Hold increased on her as his insane grin widened. "Did you forget? Nothing matters cuz you're mine now. I said so." Orbs widened in realization of the words spoken. "You ain't leaving next month. You're fucking coming back with me and I'll fucking tear whoever gets in my way limb from limb slowly from the joints."

Whatever the Captain wanted he got. 

WANT. TAKE. PLUNDER. KEEP.

M I N E.

[oleever-does-stuff]

TADC Yapfest Timeee

As a certified yapper, the need to shove my random assortment of ideas down your throat has been tearing me apart. Therefore, I deem it yapfest time. Also, media literacy is apparently at an all-time low and I am nothing but a product of the environment I am molded in and I require you to understand that.

~♡~

Do you guys know that face Caine made when talking about mixing up NPCs and humans? What do you guys think that implied? Was it a red herring or hinting at something else? Because I so happen to have two things going on in my head.

Firstly and most obviously, I believe that some of the cast are NPCs in disguise. This first came to me with the realization that Jax, Pomni, and Ragatha all sound like real names (Jack or just...Jax, Penny, and Agatha) while Gangle and Zooble didn't (unless there are names similar in other countries I'm unaware of). Then I remembered that Kinger exists, and if Kinger is an NPC I won't recover. The idea that Zooble might be an NPC does seem likely to me for a multitude of reasons.

The first reason: Zooble's refusal to go on Caine's adventures. I doubt an NPC would like to go anywhere in a fake world after discovering what you were. Secondly, Zooble (to me) looks vastly different from the rest of the cast. She looks like she doesn't belong with the other circus members. I can't really find the description of what the rest of the cast looks like other than neat, while Zooble is just a jumble of objects and assortments. It looks like she belonged to a different world and ended up there. That might just be cool character design though and I'm an idiot. Overall Zooble just seems out of place but that might just be because it's episode ONE.

My second idea, one thats been lingering in my mind that Caine himself is human and just forgot after being there for so long. While maybe not as coherent or has as much supportive evidence as the previous it's still there. Perhaps Caine worked for the company that created the Circus, was put in there to run the first run-through, but never made it out. If he was the first trapee, maybe he would have been given host commands, and that would explain why he was the control of the circus (like a party leader).

~♡~

Within my no-sleep-filled fever dream of a mind, this led me to another conclusion. If people had been around this long, why was the game so unfinished? Why were people from the outside not helping. Now this is where my incompetency comes in because due to the Caine actually being human thing I had the idea, maybe the Circus project was abandoned, and that's why the game itself is so unfinished with people abstracting, no exit, things glitching in and out of the world so easily. After Caine they were just like "Oh shit, yeah let's not work on this no more", but people still end up finding their way in. (I also had the idea, as my boyfriend keeps trying to put random numbers in this paragraph, perhaps they queued too many testees. Every time someone abstracts, the next person in line joins but has no memory of that wait.) There's that one thing about Pomni working for the company that created TADC, +8and like I'm not well-versed in TADC theory and canon things I watched like maybe 2 episodes, saw a couple funny posts but...

The place looks run down, abandoned. What self-respecting office space would allow papers to litter the floor. Or a dusty, moldy-looking computer.

It looks like the company abandoned the workplace, this project, everything. Maybe Pomni got put in a queue of sorts, waited until there was an open space available to play. (Kaufmo. R.I.P)

~♡~

A different tangent. I saw something that mentioned TADC was inspired by "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". Although I'm unaware how true that is, it does lead me to wonder what the end for Pomni will be like. Will she end up saving the others from the digital hell, but be stuck there forever in return? Would she end up as Caine or be stuck with him to live out eternity?

also this is 100% going to be a problem, look at all of them just chilling.

I wrote this tangent at almost midnight, please forgive me I will edit in the morning (Afternoon).

Edited: more well written

[sparrowseagles]

The terror 2018 & religious symbols in storytelling and character development

Religious themes are widely used in cinema mainly because religion is an inherent part of our culture. The story of the bible is told using tropes and storytelling devices that are still prevalent to this day. It can help the audience recognize themes, character archetypes and offers the storyteller/director an opportunity to play with those common ideas and reshape them to create a unique piece of art.

We will be looking at first season of The terror series and how that applies to it. I have not read the book on which it's based, so I'll be focusing on the show's version.

(Disclaimer, I was raised catholic but never went to catechism class, so my knowledge of the subject may be flawed as it dates back to my childhood. Also, I am awfully uneducated and don't know anything about other religions or how they may apply to any of this. Therefore I'll be sticking to what I know here, but you're welcome to add to this and enlighten me!)

Episode 6 "A Mercy"

This episode quite obviously relates to religion as Fitzjames names the event they organize after the Catholic season of Carnival. All the episodes after it also follow the events that come after Carnival in the catholic faith, fasting for 40 days and then the resurrection of Christ.

Fitzjames orders this Carnival to keep the crew's spirits up and to "prepare them for what's to come". The walk home and/or the Lent season.

In the catholic faith, Carnival is a celebration of worldly pleasures. People eat in abundance, expensive and unhealthy foods, lots of sweets and fat. This is a time of celebration, with dancing, music and playing games. And of course lots of alcohol consumption.

We see the event through Francis' eyes, still afflicted by withdrawal. There is a fever dream quality to the place. The abundance of everything, the time it must have taken the men to not only build the place but their costumes as well, it all feels exaggerated and far too elaborated for the resources available to them.

This furthers the idea of abundance that Carnival represents.

Francis congratulates them on their skills, their creativity, and their cooperation in building this place that he calls a 'temple'. Again, the word is significant in the sense that a temple is a church.

He goes on to tell the men what's awaiting them. A long walk, to get back home. After Carnival comes a season of fasting in the Catholic faith during which people atone for their overindulgence. They eat sparingly, no meats, sweets, dairy, and liquor and everything else they did at Carnival.

This fast lasts 40 days. A parallel can easily be made with the imminent starvation the men are about to go through.

One of the most important things that happen at this Carnival is its end. Dr. Stanley foresees these horrors awaiting them all and opts for mass murder, in his eyes it's the gentler end, 'a mercy'.

He attempts to save the men from this otherwise inevitable fate by setting himself on fire and walking out with his arms spread out like a burning cross.

There is a tradition at the end of Carnival where the Carnival King is burned, it represents the end of the festivities and the beginning of lent. It's a scapegoat for all this excess.

Also, before Carnival Kings were puppets or floats, they were an appointed person. During Carnival, this 'king' was allowed to speak freely, even against their own government and would not be punished or imprisoned for it afterwards. They were meant to advocate for the people and bring up potential issues. Where Crozier tries to be honest with the men and make them feel brave to face the task ahead, Dr. Stanly, knowing the truth about the cans, goes against that directly, to him there is no hope. He advocates for the crew through an extreme act, which looking back on by the end of the season can indeed look like the lesser of two evils.

The 40 days of fasting are a call back to the 40 years the Hebrews spent in the desert, before reaching the promised land. When looking at the visuals from the episodes following the Carnival, the landscape is strongly reminiscent of the desert. The rocky hills look just like sand dunes. It's just as barren, nothing grows and nothing lives there. Where one is hot, the other is cold.

Dr. Goodsir as a Christ figure

First off, Goodsir's nature and personality can be compared to that of Jesus. He is a man who acts out of compassion and who believes in the goodness of human nature. He doesn't project racist beliefs onto the Netsilik people, like most of the crew does. He treats Silna as an equal and a friend, not a captive. He is the one who brings her her food, symbolically breaking bread.

He even continues to believe in the good of the British people despite the horrors he realizes they are responsible for, he claims this is not all his people are. His profession itself is reminiscent of Jesus, as they both heal the ill.

But his Christ-like metamorphosis really shines through in the latter half of the season.

As we established, the 40 days of fasting relate to the 40 years of wandering in the desert. However, it most importantly relates to the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and being tormented by Satan's temptations.

Many times in the 4 episodes that follow the Carnival we see Goodsir refusing to eat, because he knows of the cans. Later Hickey's group stops eating the cans as well, but they don't fast, they resort to cannibalism. Where satan tempts Jesus to turn the stones into bread, Hickey makes Goodsir turn men into food. Still, despite being hungrier than any of them because of his fast, Goodsir does not yield to the temptation Hickey lays in front of him.

Furthermore, the only way he can be coerced into participating in this horrible act and preparing the flesh to be eaten, is by being threatened that harm could befall Hodgson if he refuses.

Witnessing Dr. Stanley's suicide planted the idea for Dr. Goodsir's own early on, but what triggers it is Hodgson's story about attending papist mass.

He describes the vivid elated feeling of being purified through eating the body of Christ. In the Catholic faith Jesus died for our sins and by doing so, absolved us of our wrongdoings. By consuming him, we become a little more like him ourselves. If you attend Mass on Easter Sunday, the lights will be off and then turned on to symbolize the resurrection of Christ, then you are called to eat the wafer. It's Christ's body that you first consume after your fast, it gives you life again.

But even dying on the cross, Jesus continued to love people, even the ones who put him there and asked God to forgive them. Goodsir, captive in Hickey's camp and pushed to his limit, takes another route. He only lets Crozier know of the plan, therefore sentencing Hickey's followers along with him.

Hodgson told Goodsir that if he were a braver man he'd kill Hickey, implying not Hickey's group. Francis tells Hickey that he forgives everyone, except for him. Goodsir, however, is starting to embrace his former colleague's point of view, and opts for mass murder as well.

He tells Crozier that even through all of this he still finds beauty in the environment that surrounds them. As he bleeds to death, it is not loved ones that welcome him, like he had told David Young in the beginning, but symbols of nature.

In many ways, Goodsir represents an alternate path Jesus could easily have taken, one in which he lost his faith in the goodness of people and his faith in God.

"Any God?"

Still, Goodsir is a martyr and makes the ultimate sacrifice, like Jesus did, dying for the sins of others. But by eating his flesh Hickey will not be washed of his sins but punished for them.

[hwaightme]

Your fan, Yunho (part 1)

(part 2) (your fan ml)

🎮pairing: yunho x game developer!reader 🎮genre: fluff, slice of life, opposites attract, serendipity, humour summary: a bulletpoint-style wordstream of what it would be like if yunho was stanning you 🎮wordcount: 2.6k 🎮warnings/tags: language, reader is a developer, coding and gaming is life, wooyoung knows, yunho as a gaming enthusiast, reader is a serious introvert, business friend playing wingwoman, flirting in chat, reader is oblivious, yunho wants to be noticed, possible gaming dates, ateez have potential as twitch streamers, let me know if anything else 🎮a/n: Hello everyone! This is a wave I had in relation to 'Your fan,___', now for Yunho! Thank you everyone for your likes, comments and reblogs <3

You were a game developer, who started out quite early with simple arcade style games, and progressed to more complex rpgs story-focused fps games, which had given you recognition and helped you rise to where you were today.

And where were you now? Well, you were your own boss, a developer self-started Cogent Studio, in the heart of Seoul, working with some of your closest friends.

When you had the time and energy, you would attend cons, do interviews here and there, or join your gamer friends' streams to either play together if the game was multiplayer, or merely enjoy a peaceful couple of hours together, talking about the greatest love of your life - games and computer science

Other than that, you never really chased the limelight, nor felt the need to. So long as you could keep on doing what you did, you were happy.

This was why you were grateful that one of your friends was terrifically social media savvy, and could start a trend out of nothing if they wanted to.

They were normally the ones do give you nudges as reminders that "it was time to do some publicity"

This was exactly how you had stumbled upon a livestream which ended up changing your life for even better

It was a couple days after the official release of your studio's latest, rather ambitious project, Aenigmata.

This fever dream had, from initial character sketches to final implementation and server testing and the sort had taken a grand total of five years, with you repeatedly reworking one part after another as your skills improved and you found other experts to mentor you along the way.

On top of this being a career challenge, you wanted to be extra evil and create countless riddles and adapting puzzles, making them the way to have the highest chances to succeed in the more "action-packed" parts of the game.

So bent on wanting to create the perfect intellectual challenge, in fact, that you had dabbled in the implementation of machine learning into the game, to make the World of Aenigmata feed on your mistakes and challenges (to a limit, of course)

This strategy/shooter/rpg crossed with a science experiment had already done some rounds among enthusiasts and critics, being very well received, and commended for its "disruptive nature" compared to the current market.

You were not too bothered by the sales, seeing as your less multifaceted projects were doing well enough (unlike your distributors), but they appeared to be as stable as a game of such a style would allow.

Your extra sleepless nights dedicated to ensuring there were both single player and small party multiplayer paid off too - Youtubers and Twitch streamers were starting to get in on the fun and publicise the game you had made with your very own hands.

And on this particular day there was one livestream in particular that had caught the attention of your friend and marketing guru.

A certain 'Jeong duo' from an idol group by the name of ATEEZ were live on YouTube, actually had been for almost an hour, and lo and behold, were playing your game.

"Can you imagine, Y/N? THE Wooyoung and Yunho from ATEEZ, playing Aenigmata. This is like, gold for us. Can you believe how many potential buyers we could be hitting right now? Come on, take a look here-"

"Do they like it?" You deadpanned, not wanting to take your eyes off the code you were currently debugging.

Your friend wiggled her phone right in front of your face. "Y/N, this is IMPORTANT!!! This could bring us the BIG FIGURES if we use it right!"

Back at it again with the business-speak... you were glad that this was not your task to take care of. So to satisfy your now pouting marketing chief, you switched attention and repositioned the phone to take a closer look.

Oh no, they were handsome. Here lied your rationality. No, Y/N, we must stay focused, brothers, we must stay focused.

You actually bit the inside of your cheek to remind yourself that it, in fact, was not simp o'clock, and you had hot two-dimensional characters to design. Okay that brought you back down a few notches. Now for the...

Wait, they were pretty good! You took note of what stage of the game they were at, and called out for your friend who was texting on her other phone (yes, she was that type of boss lady)

"You said they were idols, right?" After receiving an enthusiastic confirmation, you rubbed your chin, pensive. "Okay you know what they are cool, I respect them. And look at that set up sheesh flexing that alienware..."  you trailed of, seeing as your friend began to lose you after the first sentence.

"Then how about you say it?"

"Didn't I... just do that?"

Your friend pinched the bridge of her nose.

"No, you dufus. IN CHAT."

"Oh."

After a couple more minutes of pointless back and forth, you were convinced. One could even say you were excited. Normally you would only make appearances in streams of people who you knew personally (even in chat) so this was a first. Even though you were going to be sending a message through the studio's account, it felt personal.

Here went nothing.

<cogent_studio> Happy to see you enjoying Aenigmata! Thank you so much Wooyoung and Yunho, ATEEZ hwaiting!

At first everything was quiet - honestly you were a little disappointed.

Well, it turned out to be lag, because after giving it a few more seconds, chat exploded, @ing you and the two members, saying that this was the world's most ambitious crossover in history.

This fanbase was wonderful, you decided.

"Wait... wait... DID THE STUDIO WRITE TO US IN CHAT?" The louder of the two exclaimed.

"Let me check... Oh my, Woo, yes they did, HELLO!!!" the one who you now knew to be Yunho waved at the camera.

He was about to leap into the air and never come down. His fans knew that he was pretty good at certain games, though still often attributed the title of gaming king to Yeosang, but what they did not know was that your work was especially meaningful to him, and your drive and wit made him look beyond the products. He was your loyal fan, and was not ashamed to admit it.

Of course, it was the studio account that had written in chat, meaning it could be anyone with permissions (as far as he could remember you had entrusted three people with rights to spreading culturally significant memes) but he could not help but hope that of all the staff it was you who had noticed him. So he tried his best to be ever so gallant and attractive, much to Wooyoung's amusement. His friend was well aware of Yunho not so subtly being starstruck by you, but so far was not wrecking havoc.

Your friend looked particularly smug when she saw a grin spreading across your face. And not while you were amidst work... well kind of related, but still, much further away from the centrepoint of your comfort zone.

What sealed the deal for you and kicked you over the edge and into checking ATEEZ out was when Yunho, allowing Wooyoung to take over the gameplay for some time, decided to try directly interacting with you.

Patiently waiting for every message from you. Asking questions. Gushing about your other projects.

Finally, Yunho thought, it was his geek side's time to shine. The more challenging part was not keeping up the conversation that was getting progressively more technical, but to stop himself from over sharing.

And that was HARD when he had your mains in various games down pat, memorized the funniest moments from streams where you were hanging out with your friends and had read up on the theories and conspiracies attempting to connect the various games you had released over the years.

He had found out about you through a group of game connoisseurs back in high school, and had not looked back since then. Mingi knew the best about all the ins and outs of Yunho's stanning (though it spread rapidly enough - not that anyone minded, it was cute; besides, you had expert and exclusive knowledge on such a grand variety of things in the industry, that sometimes a member would even Yunho in watching bits of press or streams)

Being your fan was a way for him to keep himself grounded and and connected to other parts of life when he was a trainee, when he had events back to back and was sometimes struggling to function.

Just seeing you, of similar age to him, out there, going through your own battles and coming out on top, continuing to hone your craft whilst ignoring any hate spat in your direction... that had motivated Yunho to go on.

To put it simply, it was had for Yunho to contain his inner fanboy. So he switched it up and instead acted like a gentleman.

At one point your friend even half-whispered "is this... a date?" To which you countered

"How would it be anything except business? He is talking to the studio, and I am merely a rep."

"Uhhh.... what did he say just now?"

Yunho had suddenly grown quiet, stumbling over his words a couple times - some observant fans had pointed out that his ears were growing pink. Why was he so cute and bashful all of a sudden?

Your friend leaned into the screen peering at the two ATEEZ members and the chat like a scientist into a microscope - "What is happening, I lost the plot"

Luckily for you, Wooyoung had found Yunho's behaviour and inaudible question entertaining, so he paused the game and placing a hand on the taller man's shoulder, smirked right at his audience.

"Yunho, I think you might actually be Sherlock Holmes with your deductions. Let's try it out. Who do we have the pleasure of talking to, could it be the Y/N herself?"

Oh. So apparently the style of your responses was enough for Yunho to figure out it was YOU?

More than enough, actually. He had seen you chat enough times to know your style.

You wanted to run and hide. Or more specifically, to lie and say "unfortunately not, this is her friend. But at the studio we are pretty much a hivemind so you could say you are talking to Y/N!"

You were about to send those exact words when your friend SLAMMED the back space and literally hissed at you

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, YOU FOOL???????? CAN'T YOU SEE?????? THIS IS CRITICAL!!!!!!!!!"

"Okay bro chill"

<cogent_studio> yes, indeed it is! No wonder you are acing Aenigmata

After that, Yunho's behaviour had noticeably changed. So did his body language.

He had adjusted his posture to be somehow even more proper, you swore his voice got slightly deeper, and he got more... competitive? With his own team mate?

It was almost as though upon finding out that it was YOU he was talking to he felt it to be his mission to impress you with his skills... at playing your own game.

Wooyoung had an unreadable yet sly expression, giving Yunho the occasional jab on the shoulder or giggling to himself.

As a wise man once said "this is kinda sus"

And that was pretty much how the next two hours passed. You had transferred the stream to one of your monitors, and during intervals when the guys were in hardcore focus mode managed to finish your debugging duties. This sort of contact was not as bad as you thought.

Once the livestream ended, with Yunho shining like a thousand suns when he saw a final message from you thanking them and hoping to stay in touch, you deflated.

Who was this social person and what did they do to Y/N? You desperately needed to lock yourself in your gaming lair and play some mind-numbing simulator. Just as you were about to clock out you caught the devious winks from your business friend who started this whole thing.

"Hello hello, I see you are free again, how are you feeling, darling?"

"Drained, tired, overwhelmed, was about to go hermit mode for the rest of the day."

"Ah brilliant, then I caught you at the right time. You have a call with ATEEZ's management at two fifteen in the afternoon tomorrow, don't worry I'll be handling the details there you just have to look pretty and do your big brain things. But if all goes well there, you will be having a gaming session organised with ATEEZ to promote their activities and your game."

Oh what the hell did you get yourself into?

Surprise surprise, everything did go well and you were to have an official scheduled activity with a major idol group.

You did not want to admit it, but inside you were shaking. This live would have an astonishing number of people compared to what you were used to, or at least a totally different type of crowd. Maybe there would be some of your diehard supporters here and there, but without a doubt 99% would be ATINY.

On the day you had met two new additions to the gamer squad, in the form of Yeosang and Mingi, wit the former recognising the brand of your gaming chair and complimenting it. Needless to say, you had labelled him as a homie straight away.

Just because they were apparently famous did not mean you went easy on them, oh no, they were with a person who had deliberated going pro into esports at one point.

And your good-humoured and well-balanced competitiveness paired with a genuine passion for the craft and activity had resulted in a record number of views - two disparate fanbases coming together, confused but enjoying the show nonetheless.

One of the most popular highlights from the stream ended up being you and Yunho's genius sabotage in Among Us, where literally everyone was clueless of who was impostor until you got to steal the victory. And another, that had gained more likes upon being turned into an edit was one from the couple of Overwatch 2 rounds you had played. Specifically, it was after you had solo carried your team to victory after their elimination and got MVP.

The edit was simple, and all it really showed was the MVP reel and Yunho's face cam. The caption did all the work:

"Get you a man who looks at you the way Yunho looks at Y/N getting MVP"

You rewatched that edit an embarrassing number of times. Fooling yourself into thinking that it was because it was just that funny (no, fam, no)

A couple of days after and your routine had gone back to normal, aside from a considerable increase in sales of Aenigmata, as well as your older games, and being mutuals with ATEEZ on Twitter.

But one night, marking nearly a week since the scheduled gaming session, when you booted up Steam again to pick your way to unwind, someone sent you a chat. Like they had been waiting for the your little status icon to turn green, all this time.

When you opened up chat, you did a double take. The username was of none other than Yunho, asking if you were free to play.

And thus began your story as an unbeatable duo.

You had finally gotten yourself a new gaming companion, while Yunho started falling for you, far beyond what was previously just being a fan. Now, he was getting to know the real you, and you could not be more attractive.

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook: Clingy [Part 9]

In which living together feels completely surreal to Jungkook.

Tags/Warnings: Hybrid AU, Wolf hybrid!Jungkook, Otter hybrid!Reader, Angst, strangers to lovers

Additional Chapter Warnings: Fluff, he's so in love eww

Length: short

<- Previous | Next ->

♥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♥

"Have you seen my toothpaste?" Jungkook asks in the morning, your sleepy face coming into view as you rub the sleep out of your eyes. "I can't find it." He asks more quietly now that you're close, no need to speak and louder in the small confined space of your rather cramped bathroom.

"Hm?" You wonder, before you point to a tube of toothpaste at the side of the sink. "Its right there?" You say, and he looks at it- before he turns back towards you.

"But that's yours.?" He questions, making you giggle and roll your eyes, reaching for your own toothbrush from the side.

"What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine." You mumble, screwing the cap of the tube off before you reach for his wrist to put some on his toothbrush as well. "Its called sharing, kookie." You joke, before you start to brush your teeth.

He watches for a short moment before he does the same, though his mind keeps thinking back to your words. It's a little odd to be living with you now- he's never truly lived with anybody before, apart from his father when he was younger, though his dad wasn't home a lot. It felt like he was alone ever since he was a kid, having to grow up fast to take care of himself to lift at least a bit of weight off of the shoulders of his old man.

In the end, it didn't help much, apparently. He still died from a heart attack, presumably due to stress.

Living together with you now feels more like a fever dream. The good kind; the one where once you wake up, you keep your eyes closed in hopes to just return back into that world your head had made up in its hazy state. Even the small irritating moments seem to have their own charm- he happily accepts being a little annoyed at your constant change of plans last minute if it means he gets to spend those plans with you in the end.

You include him. You don't just blindly offer him a place to stay, or let him live with you out of pity- you make sure he pulls his weight too, scolding him if he forgets chores or leaves things messy somewhere around the apartment. And in return, he finds things that are his own completely blended into the decor of your place-

Truly making it his own as well now, after almost two months of living here.

His scent has mixed with yours now, creating a new, distinctive feeling of a home rather than just a place. Old blankets of his, books and video games, even pictures and cutlery he'd packed from his old apartment have now found their place in between your things as if they'd always been there.

He truly loves it.

"...-kook?" You ask again, ripping him from his thoughts. "You're drooling." You tease, laughing as you wipe his chin, before leaving the bathroom to move around in the kitchen.

When he joins you not even five minutes later, he's still not wearing a shirt- intricate details on his tattoos clear to see for you as you look at his arm wrapping around you from behind, warmth of his body seeping through your shirt, making you lean into him. And as soon as you do, his tail wags- and he's unashamed of it, because he knows there's no shame in being this happy.

He finally feels like he deserves all of this. Because you make him feel like he does.

[thenhlteaissuperhot]

Watching Edmonton has truly been devastating so far this regular season. I’m constantly thinking about whether Draisaitl and McDavid will stay together or depart to two separate teams.

It's absolutely tragic, honestly.

You have to go to the second page of the goalie stats of the league to find Skinner and Campbell, they are ranked 58th and 59th out of 71 goalies, who have so far made their NHL debut this season. They both have only one win and four losses, a safe percentage around a pitiful 0.850, and four goals let past a game on average... That's anything but a statistic of goalies of a Stanley Cup-deserving team.

McDavid is still not fully healed, he is not playing at 100%, even a blind person can see that. He was rushed to play for the Heritage game because of commercial purposes and now the management is shitting their pants too much to pull him out at this state, and give him a chance to properly heal whatever is bugging him, because they are afraid that it would get even worse without him.

Draisaitl is getting actually and understandably pissy out there because who wouldn't at this point? You are a top 5 player playing on the top 5 shitiest team in the league and wasting your prime there.

Edmonton doesn't even have attractive prospects, let alone an environment, that would create attractive prospects out of underwhelming or mediocre ones after a certain period of time of cautious bringing up outside of the league like for example Boston has.

The current management won't trade Connor or Leon to address the issues the team suffers from in the net and in the defense (well, basically everywhere), those two would have to request the trade themselves or just wait for their contract to run out and leave afterward because those up there are still stuck in the mentality that they can make a Stanley Cup-winning team by having Connor and Leon at the front and a bunch of cheap plaster-like players around them - similar mentality to Toronto, though their case is not as miserable as Edmonton's.

If they were to trade one of them, it would definitely be Leon. The Oilers will never want to let McDavid, their golden boy, go, and if that Leon trade ever happened, it's safe to say that the two of them would probably never end up playing on the same team ever again, even if Connor eventually decided to leave on his own after not renewing a contract in Edmonton - hardly any team is and is going to be in the state where they would be able to afford both of them without creating the same shallow team situation as Edmonton has right now, which both of them would definitely want to avoid diving into again.

Really, it is like a fever dream and while I am curious about how it is going to be handled, cause it NEEDS to be addressed somehow, I am frankly scared of what Edmonton will come up with because I have no trust whatsoever in them making sensible decisions.

[ritunn]

5 TTRPGs to Try in 2023

With the OGL being a thing WotC is certainly hitting rock bottom, this is a great time to try out new TTRPGs! I'm not going to recommend you Pathfinder 2e because that is an obvious pick, but if you're looking to expand your experiences, here's 5 TTRPGs to check out this 2023. I've also done a post for 2024, so feel free to check that out here if you like this!

1. Fabula Ultima

Fabula Ultima is a tabletop Japanese roleplaying game, or to put it simply, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Ni No Kuni, and so many more classic JRPGs as a tabletop game. A game of Fabula Ultima allows the players to create and design the world in conjunction with the GM and add on to it later with the Fabula/Ultima point system, allowing everyone to contribute to the world building! The actual mechanics are simple however, with minimal math involved and fights taking place like they would in say in the classic Final Fantasy games: enemies on one side of the screen and heroes on the other. No grids needed. Tactics are still full of depth however as you can mix and match 2 - 3 classes together at beginning levels to make any of your favorite JRPG archetypes and work with your team to exploit vulnerabilities of the foes you face. The bond system however allows players to grow more connected with each other abd the world, even getting bonuses for doing it and RPing, which is always a plus. Overall, an amazing fantasy tabletop for anyone who loves JRPGs.

2. Wanderhome

A pastoral fantasy TTRPG, Wanderhome is Redwall after the war when peace has finally come to the land. In Wanderhome, you take on the role of one of the many beastfolk of Haeth, wandering to somewhere across the land. Together with the GM or with no GM at all, everyone will make the towns and fantastical locations you come across together, populating them with NPCs and stories, all made with a simple trait system. Speaking of trait system, that's exactly what you use to build your character! You pick a playbook and from there pick traits and various things you can do, these aren't hard and set the only things you can do mind you, just things you're capable of. The gameplay itself is mostly about telling stories and solving problems via giving and taking, do something difficult and you'll be able to get a token that'll let you create story elements later on to help with problems. Via this you can build up a story together with everyone as you wander through the seasons, growing, and eventually leaving, as your journey one day comes to an end.

3. Troika!

Troika! is a game that exists. A very strange game. One with befoulers of ponds, journeymen from the guild of sharp corners, fellows from the sublime society of beef steaks, and vengeful children. A science fantasy TTRPG, Troika! certainly borrows from OSR but I wouldn't exactly put it in that either. Troika! is in league all its own, one where your adventures across the infinite weird and wonderful lands will certainly make your TTRPG group either concerned for you as the GM or give them a laugh. Plus, it has a vibrant third party community on Itch.io! So, you'll never really run out of new content for the strange game that is Troika! But to understand Troika! you'll need to read it yourself. Really. I can't explain this fever dream of a game.

4. Vaesen: Nordic Horror

In Call of Cthulhu you fight against eldritch horrors and dangerous cults, in Vaesen you fight against forces of an ancient and terrifying world being pushed aside as the world becomes more and more industrialized. Set in the very real country of Sweden, along with the rest of Northern Europe (and now Britain and Ireland too!) Vaesen is a horror TTRPG where you fight against faefolk, dangerous spirits, trolls, and other monsters of European folklore. Each player is a fairly normal person besides the fact that they have the gift to be able to actually see these monsters, so it's up to you to hunt them down and figure out what's wrong when they cause trouble. Whether that be via a simple conversation or a race against the clock to complete a ritual that will end their terror once and for all. As a Free League game, it uses their dice pool system. Add up together d6s based on your skills and circumstances then if you roll a 6, success! Other than that however, when you're not hunting creatures, you build up your home base, an ancient castle, customizing it according to the your party's needs to create the perfect place to relax after a job well done.

(As of writing this all Vaesen books are available with Forbidden Lands on Humble Bundle. I highly suggest buying it if interested.

5. Agon

From Evilhat, well known for Fate, Monster of the Week, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians (all great games as well), Agon is yet another amazing game with a focus on storytelling. Agon sets you as a hero of an epic in mythic Greece (but can be easily adapted to other mythos) sailing home and creating your heroic legacy. Gameplay consists of coming upon an island and challenging its threats, win or lose, you continue onwards afterwards dealing with the consequences of whatever happened and your legend grows as fate comes closer to claiming you. The dice system used is easy to pick up, simply requiring you to roll higher than your foe to succeed in contests. But with every success, the more your name die grows and with it, how many will tell your story at journey's end. If you fail however and are drawn closer to your inevitable fate, you also grow stronger for the rest of the game, gaining new boons to aid you in future adventures. If you want a relaxed fantasy journey, pick Wanderhome. If you want an epic adventure worthy of heroes of legend, play Agon. Both are great for one-shots and short 3 - 4 month campaigns however.

[lutethebodies]

A playthrough sans companions is utter bliss

I'm very curious if the "Party Limit Begone" mod would be part of any official Patch 7 mod support on Mac. Because, well, I've been ready—and you can be too, especially if you've already explored all aspects of gameplay with the BG3 companions.

Are you tired of constantly managing your companions' approval? Weary of walking on eggshells lest you spoil your Faerunian fuckability? Absolutely over the idea of imposing real-life "morality" on a video game? Then have I got a playthrough style for you: ignore every single companion! Sure they're all well-written and compellingly voiced and whatnot. But after a year and umpteen dozen playthroughs, I'd had enough.

About the time of Patch 6 I belatedly figured out how to customize hirelings and then fake out the game to play as multiple Tavs (a chore on MacBook, but worthwhile). After that, ignoring the six origin companions (and pets) in Act 1 has made for a powerfully annoyance-free experience. No religious bickering! No selfish whining about vampire lords! No devil-related daddy issues! No needy arcane hunger! No plot-dependent rejection if you don't do stuff they don't like! Hell, you can even ignore the later companions too. Discovering everything the game allows is always fun.

What's more, I get to play as my own characters—whom I'll always love more than all the companions. Yes, even more than Minthara, my favorite romance in the game and favorite companion overall. I've played my characters in tabletop for years, some even dating back to AD&D 2e circa 1992. The greatest thing about D&D/BG3/any role-playing game is the ability to create your own heroes. To never be stuck as Link or Aloy (as lovely as they are) or whomever The Story says you have to be.

And that's not even getting into the true glory of emotionally divesting from fandom fights about ascension or breakups or whatever fever-dream hyper-judgmental silliness gets associated with companions. Want to get back to that true first-playthrough-feeling, where obnoxious fandom-based melodramas need never intrude on your brain as you play? Well, this...won't do that, sadly, but it will free you from other people projecting their insecurities onto pixel-spouses. And that, folks, is liberating.

When I consider the possibility of creating four completely customizable Tavs and three moderately-customizable hirelings versus the backstory baggage, approval-mining, and seven levels' worth of terrible camp clothes (because why dress like a chump when you can knock out potential companions and steal their kits?), the choice is clear. Tav is greater than all of them (and for me, more than the Dark Urge), and Four Tavs are greater than one.

"Okay fine, smart guy—even if I wanted to throw out all that stuff, how do I do this?" For a MacBook, the TLDR is basically "launch the game as four separate logged-in Mac accounts, use the LAN option, create your characters, and save once the opening cinematics are done." My laptop doesn't have max memory, so it had to work hard and was really slow with multiple concurrent BG3 sessions. There are better step-by-step details on the web somewhere, I can't remember where.

Anyway, happy Wednesday. Raid the Grove.

[small-artist-oc-showdown]

Wait, what’s that!? Two PEOPLE are better than one! Let’s give a warm welcome to @hermannsprecursors’s OLIVER FERNSBY AND LADY GUINEVERE!! I’ll just be calling them Oliver and Gwennie, since Gwennie is canonically her nickname, and it’s too much to keep on saying Oliver’s last name. Anyway, they are a human and dream entity and go by he/they and she/her respectfully!

You thought the last one was long? Well this one was only one submission and more text than Leo! The info will be UNDER THE CUT!

This is bound to be an interesting duo! What’s their story? Well...

“SO the year is 1994. This pathetic little shithead of a 15-year-old boy, Oliver Fernsby, is sick in bed and is having an absolutely HORRID fever. So there's this whole idea that thoughts have power, yeah? Well, his fever dream created an entire world in his head full of fictional versions of the people in his life. Except the world actually exists via magic, and it isn't just a fiction in his head. Anyways.

Guinevere, better known as Gwennie, is the heir to the throne of the kingdom of Wands. Gwennie is representative of Oliver's sister, Stella, who he never got the chance to meet before she died of heart complications when she was only 2 and a half. She represents what he wishes his sister could have grown up to be, and that forms their sibling relationship. They become co-dependent on one another, as Gwennie tries to teach Oliver how to survive in the new world he's become an inhabitant of, and as Oliver tries to teach her to be a proper queen like she should be someday. The two end up needing each other. Their lessons become especially valuable after Gwennie's father is killed in war, and she's forced to prematurely take the throne. Oliver stays by her side the entire time, and ends up helping her kill the person who killed her father, quelling her need for revenge and her violent outbursts. Through his help, she learns to control herself and her abilities. And Oliver learns more about himself, too, and he grows as a person. He learns to be more humble, be kinder, and to rely on others more. The issue is, in his real life, he doesn't really have anyone to rely on. Why else would he have to form an entire world in his dreams? If reality were as it should be, he wouldn't have needed to create Gwennie.”

YAHOO !! We love characters that rely on each other and become better people :] Now why should you vote for these two?

“I WAS gonna submit them on their own then I remembered their stories literally hinge on one another and they cannot be separated. Well they're separated in canon eventually :( but they should NOT be separated in general. They're siblings!!!! They are the found family trope! And also it's really nice and refreshing (in my opinion) to see a m/f duo that isn't really forced into a romantic relationship. BESIDES DO YOU KNOW HOW COOL IT MUST BE TO SAY "YEAH MY SISTER IS THE QUEEN OF A DREAM KINGDOM AND SHE'S MADE OF SHADOWS AND KILLED THIS DEMON KING WITH SHADOW MAGIC. SHE'S AWESOME" AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE LIKE "OLIVER YOU'RE INSANE".

Leaving the dreamworld is literally what traumatized Oliver and what's going to make him a distant father in about 25 years. So. Definitely should not be separated from Gwennie. They need each other in such a unique familial way and it's just so interesting. Plus if you like them then that's one vote toward me actually finishing the game that they're the main characters of.”

[avoutput]

The Beautiful and Exhausted || Final Fantasy XVI

Since the release of Final Fantasy VIII, there has never been any way to tell what a Final Fantasy game would be like. The reason I point to FFVIII in particular is because, had Final Fantasy VII been less popular or an outlier, we could count it as a once in a series event. But with the release of FFVIII, we could see the beginning of a pattern. This would be even more obvious if you looked at the Squaresoft Playstation 1 lineup as a whole; and even more clear if you look at the Fifth console generation in its entirety (which included the Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64). This was the beginning of the third dimensional era of gaming. A place to turn games into a more cinematic affair. A time to change the way we interact with the media of gaming. It produced blockbusters in the way of fever dreams. It paved the path for gaming today. But across generations, we had franchises like Final Fantasy; a franchise that would come to embrace this experimentation as part of their DNA. This alchemy of gaming and storytelling has led to some of the most memorable moments in the history of this hobby. But experimentation has a downside. More often than not there are failures. You can’t create gold from lead; a hard truth we have had to learn as both fans and developers. Some of us take to fool’s gold as if it were the same; it shines the same but lacks the value. This might not be the most glowing introduction for a review, but I want you to know that Final Fantasy XVI was the desire to return to the days of old while maintaining modern standards. It’s a messy affair, this alchemy. The melding of generations of gaming. Final Fantasy XVI caused me to feel a mixture of frustration and admiration. It made me believe the developers had a desire to lead into gold, but just weren't sure what the recipe should be. In the end, it was all placed on a single protagonist’s shoulders.

Everything leading up to the release of the Final Fantasy XVI led me to believe I wouldn’t like it. That it wasn’t a game built for the fans of Final Fantasy, but the fans of a completely different medium, like television’s Game of Thrones or the worlds of The Witcher. And while I have no aversion to the latter and no love for the former, I still couldn’t help but feel immediately displaced by the look, feel, and direction of all the media. A purchase to be made in favor of a completely different medium. While gaming as a whole seems to be escaping me into the hands of another generation, I thought I could find solace in the old guards from my youth. Squaresoft had an air of measured science. Creating and innovating in a way that favored an entire generation of fans while pulling in new ones with their modifications of play. They built an empire that has long since rested on its laurels. And like every empire unhappy with complacency, they are trying to conquer new lands in spite of the cries from their constituency. But, let me be clear, that doesn’t make Final Fantasy XVI a bad game. It doesn’t make it an experiment gone wrong. What it means is that it’s different. It’s a new battle plan finding its legs. What it means is that, as a long time fan, I had a very strong reaction that led to very nuanced feelings.

This was the first Final Fantasy I thought I wouldn’t buy the moment it came out since the release of Final Fantasy VIII on 9/9/99. But like many stans, the demo changed my mind almost immediately. It was fast, sleek, and brutal. It delivered that delicious vertical slice of everything the game had to offer. It knocked me out of my chair by the end of the demo. A mainline Final Fantasy putting a real blade to the neck of our heroes and drawing real blood? The performances were the perfect mix of melodramatic and serious. Theatrical and operatic. Essentially, I was praising Final Fantasy for actually trying to do outloud what it had always done behind the veneer of a PG-13 rating. Like a fish after a lure, I was hooked. The day I finished the demo, I *dun dun dun* PRE-ORDERED THE GAME! I gave into the beast. Though, to be fair, I already mentioned that I have been doing that for years in the case of this series. Anyway, the demo did its job unlike any ever had. And if this one page introduction wasn’t proof of that I have a lot to say, then the next several pages will. Buckle in. We have the story, the gameplay, the presentation, and the impact to discuss.

The biggest selling point of the demo was the bombastic end. Essentially, what struck me most in the vertical slice was the story. Not necessarily any one part of the story either, but the veritable roux of all of its elements. The characters by themselves are not very compelling, neither is the world of Valestha or the countries that carved up its landscape. The Mother Crystals, the magic, the slaves, the townspeople, all of them are spices awash in a story that at first taste goes beyond quenching your thirst or satiating your hunger. It makes you believe that something profound is going to happen, that you are just at the beginning of a story with depth. The story starts as a portrait of one young man, Clive Rosfeild, first son of the duchy's ruler, and head guard to his younger brother Joshua who was born with the generational gift of a god that appears in the family line. The immediate implication of this familial line is that we are going to get a series of history lessons throughout our game that will enrich the decisions around our characters, but ultimately, the story remains focused on a single character, Clive Rosfield. And from the first moments that we get to control Clive as an adult, we spend several hours focused solely on his need for revenge. The world takes a backseat to Clive’s journey through it. Looking at all the previous games in the series, the world was just as much a character in a Final Fantasy game as any of the people in it. Even in Final Fantasy X, in which Tidus is whisked away to a world he knows nothing about, we get to learn everything about the world through his eyes. And on the other hand, in Final Fantasy VIII, all the characters grew up in the world we are exploring, but each of them have their own opinions, come from different places, and give the world a little more depth than it otherwise would have had. But with Clive, a bit of lone wolf, we don’t get to experience this depth, particularly for two reasons. First, it's not that there are no other cast members, there are plenty and they all come from different places and backgrounds. It's more that, because of the nature of the story, all the places they are from are inaccessible, either because it was destroyed or because it will at some point be destroyed in the near future so that when you arrive, it isn’t the same place anymore. Secondly, the characters we play are all aristocrats and very educated about the world around them, and as such, they don't spend time talking about the world around them beyond the direct nature of what they have to do. This means that Clive bears not only the burden of saving the world, but also holding our undivided attention. Unfortunately, he can do the former, but not the latter.

This leads me to our roster of characters, some of whom have come under considerable fire for their lack of emotion, while others are lauded for the breadth of their voice. Clive is wrought with feelings of loss and failure. His woes seem to be endless. And yet, he finds a way to be the kind of hero you can get behind. He is the theater of this story. He is constantly in the depths of tears and pain. He is unlike any other character in the Final Fantasy series, possibly because he has a fantastic voice actor and because he got all of the writer’s attention. That being the case, every other character suffers for it. They are merely there to give depth to Clive. They don’t become anymore than who Clive sees them as. And sadly, because Clive is constantly in the midst of pain and responsibility, he only has a few notes, and no matter how many times they play them, he doesn’t make for a more compelling song on his own. But in the accompaniment of his friends and allies, we get a very passable verse that sounds great, but still doesn’t make up for the lack stories lack of awareness of the history of their surroundings, especially because there is both and in-game historian who plays a background role, and because all of our characters are especially privileged and educated. My gripe is that the story writer’s can’t have it both ways; a huge political story and a very centralized character at the heart of that story if neither in turn recognizes the other. In the end, it doesn’t matter how great Cid was or how good of an independent female protagonist Jill was because they only are there to serve the forward momentum of a single character at the cost of the vibrant world the framing tries and fails to establish at almost every turn.

Now we can zoom out and look at the world of Valisthea and the history surrounding it. At best, it is incredibly confusing. From the moment the game shows you the world map and gives you access to the history, you aren’t entirely sure that its trustworthy because it is in constant conflict with its own language and the world at large. Simply reading through the “Active Time Lore” and speaking with Hipocrates “Tomes”, you are never truly sure if Valsithea is the entire world or if it is a smaller offshoot of the world, like a zoomed in map of Australia. It turns out that this is a little of both. Largely because it doesn’t matter to the story that other places exist, but even the people of Valisthea are not entirely sure anyone has been “overseas” despite some people claiming to hail from there. At points in the game, they gesture to Samurai through sword making, and at other points to ingredients from “the West”. The issue I have with this is that the game wants us to take it seriously. That the world of Valisthea and the people in it have a rich history akin to Game of Thrones, but as soon as you go looking, it fails to provide anything more than a mishmash of incomplete speculation and fan service for the player. One could argue that in a world as fractured as Valisthea, the history would also come up short, but this isn’t entirely framed as the case to the player. We are given knowledge from this Lore Menu that their tomes would never have, made up entirely of our current knowledge and flavored with lore from the game. It was meant to outright explain the reality of the game’s world, to help you frame the actions of the people in it, and explain everything happening around you. However, it fails to make clear things that should be. And as a side note, it contradicts itself at times, saying one thing happened and then saying another. For instance, there is a battle between two nations in which two entries say the other won. It could be flavor, if it had been framed correctly, but I think it was simply an honest mistake.

The more you examine the world of the game, you realize it was meant to be smoke and mirrors for Clive’s journey. The various makeup of each of the nations that make up Valisthea seem deep, and admittedly it is more than nothing, but every other Final Fantasy did a whole lot more with a whole lot less. The governments for each are completely different, but it hardly matters to the story as a whole. None of this does anything to alter the course of Clive or his party or how they handle any situation. No one they deal with has any level of political intrigue that interferes with the story, with the exception of Dion, but it only has to do with Dion and simply leads him to do something completely outlandish that ultimately makes this intrigue completely flaccid. One of the best aspects of this game is that it absolutely shocks you. It throws curveballs that you don’t see coming exactly when they need to. But these curveballs undermine the entire purpose of setting up the foundation of the governments and countries of this world. Even attacking the Mother Crystals, the thrust of this games story, are consistently caught with a lack of meaningful defense or even realistic concern for their wellbeing in a world that both relies on and reveres them. Again, only because the game begs us to take it so seriously do I find this to be such an egregious issue. They set up so many things, only to have Clive basically mow down the world around him without ever considering any other way than knocking down the front door. I hate that the various countries amount to nothing, especially when they could have had something to say about our world or even their own. They are simply Legos for Clivezilla to knock over while we play superheroes vs monsters. It’s simply a shame.

The presentation of the game is meant to be in a state of constant forward motion, but the popularization of chapter based gameplay as of late really makes the world feel less like a place you might role play and more like a classic platformer. By that I mean that the game is a series of stages instead wherein you hold right, interchangeably fighting monsters and listening to dialog, until you reach the end of the stage. While this might work in favor of books and film, this really changes the entire frame of an RPG as we classically know them. This design is taken further once you unlock the Arete Stone. This allows you to repeat any of the main stages of the game, from start to finish, collecting points to try and get a high score. It furthers that the main design of the game was around completing scenarios in tight packages, which could have been fine all on its own, but by calling attention to it, I can’t help but feel taken out of the moment. The landscape never feels like a continuous world because we have to be told to stop and recognize a “new” stage or moment is beginning. I like to escape into the world of Final Fantasy and this format ultimately pulls me out of “the world” and back into “the game” instead of the seamless merging of the two in the classic format. And it would have been one thing if it mentioned chapters at big moments, but it does it at every turn. To put it mildly, it puts a damper on the experience as a whole.

While the framing of the game was not exactly to my liking, the gameplay was a fresh change for the series. A fresh change, but not entirely welcome. It felt like this game deserved a subtitle instead of the mainline marquee of the 16th entry. If they had called this Final Fantasy Valisthea, or Final Fantasy Action in the same way Final Fantasy Tactics was to the point, I think it would have matched the fans tastes a little better. No one wants to order pizza, take a bite, and taste fruit punch. This is a hill I would rather not die on, and while I feel this way, it ultimately would not have changed my feelings on the game as whole, but instead is more of a judgment of the decision makers at SquareEnix. On one hand, it’s great for marketing and ensures a certain number of sales and general interest. On the other hand, you are basically walking into the room and asking for fans' forgiveness. “Everyone, I know this isn’t exactly what you expected, but we promise it will be worth your time. Please give it a chance.” I want to point out that the issue isn’t that the game is completely action focused, but rather that the game is comprised of 40 to 80 hours with an entire cast of characters, and you only get to play a single one. Other RPG’s have taken the action route, but most of them have the sense to offer you access to some of the cast. It would be one thing if they didn’t have any good examples of this, but their own Final Fantasy VII Remake gives you access to play, equip, and customize the entire team, all while giving you a complete action based game. And while Final Fantasy XVI gameplay is fun and has some strengths, it has many competitors that did a better job in the current generation (like God Of War) and several that did it better in generations past.

Where the game really shines, truly surprises, and earns some forgiveness is in the moments where Clive is pitted against the various Dominants of Valisthea. The game is largely broken into three portions. Clive’s quest for dialog. Clive’s battle through monsters. And Clive’s transformation into the kaiju-like god-beast Ifrit, a being they called an Eikon (which I have to point out begrudgingly is pronounced like icon). This final play style creates bombastic scenes of epic proportions. It feels like 3 separate teams were all given completely different instructions on the tone of the game and that no one at any point during the final construction batted an eye when putting it all together. The Eikon battles are so jarringly different from the rest of the game that, like the chapter style, it completely removes you from your immersion in the world. You are shaken from the dark and dour world one team created and into the Godzilla/Tokusatsu, B-Movie of your dreams. It is both entirely welcome and completely incongruent with the rest of the game. At one point in the game, you could swear they forgot that it wasn’t 2008 or that they weren’t making a Sonic the Hedgehog game. And in another moment, you think they were going for Gundam meets Transformers or that Freeza was about to roll onto the scene. This is just another place where the game further deserved a subtitle instead of the titular 16. And while the actual functionality of the battles as an Eikon are simply mirrors of playing as Clive, replacing his sword with claws and firebreath, knowing that these moments are fleeting is a little disappointing. Unlike your battles in the rest of the story, these are clearly numbered. But it is another feature that kept pushing me through the game and a very powerful Phoenix feather in its cap.

As for playing as Clive outside his Eikon form, from the moment you start training as a young upstart knight, it shows promise. It’s simple with the promise of depth. Playing as Clive and zipping around the battlefield feels right. The game grows to give him a myriad of skills that, when used right, allow you to become the god he truly is. I found early on that it is best to cycle through the various control schemes and decide which one fits you best, as it enhances the game as a whole. Growing your skills is limited by the story, unlocking new abilities as you encounter other human-god hybrids called Dominants and taking their power. You begin to look forward to what kind of abilities you will get next. Looking back, it was the most motivating thing,  after the story, that motivated me to continue pushing Clive to the end of the game. And while none of them are entirely disappointing, you will be hard pressed to use many abilities beyond the first two trees unlocked. It’s not that the later skills are useless or even hard to use, there are just too many advantages to the first set to bother experimenting with the others. On the bright side, they allow you to completely change out any skills at any time outside of battle by letting you refund the skillpoint necessary to unlock the skills. This gives you complete freedom to try out any combination of skills as long as you have the necessary ability points.

Still, in the moment to moment play of the game, what you come to realize is that it suffers death by a thousand cuts. On the next stop on our autopsy, we get to dissect beyond the good points because every single choice they made beyond those detracts from any enjoyment the game offers. A series of very common, modern tools and shortcuts are completely absent. The first thing is that there is no mini-map. I can understand that this may have been removed in favor of immersion, but because each area ultimately feels like a stage with a very obvious beginning and end, you end up checking your map just to make sure you explored everything. It’s very easy to keep going the “right way” at all times and miss places to explore, treasure chests, or even battles. You essentially can’t get “lost”, which when well balanced, can make RPG’s very fun to explore. At some points the game offers several paths to get to the same endpoint, but you would have no idea if you weren’t checking the map. I must have hit the map button a million times to make very simple checks that the mini-map could have easily solved and kept me playing instead of pausing. 

 Another immersion choice I imagine was not letting Clive traverse the game at any other speed than a slow, agonizing crawl. You have no ability to choose your run speed, and only get to “run” outside of towns after having held down forward for 7 or so seconds. And if you stop, get ready to wait for the sprint again. You eventually get a Chocobo, but it doesn’t move any faster than Clive’s run. It simply gives you the ability to use a run button. Inside towns, you can only move at a light jog and you can’t at any point use any of your teleportation battle techniques to traverse any faster or just have fun being weird in the town. And yet, this game has giant monster battles and yells fuck at every awkward moment. You do get fast travel, but another weird point of the game is that it recognizes the points (large stones similar to the Arete Stones) are activated because of Clive’s presence, but then the rest of the game acts like what we are doing is not “teleporting”. This means that everyone walks or rides everywhere in Valisthea, including your own party, even though the game recognizes these points. Another very weird choice, as it would have been better to simply ignore it if the game wanted to be “serious” over being “fantasy”. You even have a boatman at one point that I never spoke with unless I was prompted, found in an entire section of your hideout completely unused after you first meet him. It’s a burden to get to know the people living in the hideout because of how large it is and how slow Clive moves, making you want to skip any conversation I would normally have enjoyed having. The dialog is actually a good point of the game for the most part, not exactly in the content of what is said but rather how it is said. 

For the most part, the extra conversations feel natural, if not a little too slow. They have weird pauses in their speech, but that isn’t really an issue of the content as much as the delivery. The real sin is that they frame most conversations in this one on one, switch screen between Clive and the target that feels so shamelessly lazy and boring, you are thankful that at least the words themselves aren’t boring. In these moments they pass each other invisible items that make the same sound no matter what it is. And while every item has some small art and very detailed descriptions that mix lore and colloquialisms, it's a real shame that almost every item has no in-world design. The most obvious place you can feel this is absent is in your gear. The only visible gear is Clive’s sword. He can equip a belt and a bracelet, but these are never visible. There is no menu to view your sword as the 3 dimensional object it is without setting Clive up in the perfect position in the Photo Mode. So many RPG’s at this point allow you to view the in-game model in a special menu so that you can really appreciate it. This became a major point that made the game feel so much cheaper than it was meant to. It almost feels like they went out of their way to remove this feature instead of adding it. It would have been minor if there weren’t so many other issues, particularly these kinds of features that are in other games I always felt were minor, but when they are all absent at once, it's very noticeable.

While the pacing of the story is pretty brisk, the disbursement of sidequests is outlandish. Sidequests are a staple of the genre and have increasingly become part of all sorts of games. You would think that a company full of people steeped in the RPG genre would do better in this arena, but this game may rate as one of the worst in both meaningful content and pacing. Most of the quests are not available until the very end of the game, and the ones you play along the way dole out minimal amounts of character content. You do meet and learn more about the characters in the game and the world at large, but none of it feels worthwhile. There are moments where you feel as though you have accomplished something significant, but it makes no difference to the storyline at large. There is no interaction between the quests and main plot, which for a game that is supposed to live in a world of political intrigue, it feels like a completely missed opportunity to deepen the lore. The other facet of the sidequest system are the Hunts. The hunts are largely the standard enemies with extra movesets, hit points, and color changes. They are actually pretty fun for the most part and a fun change on the basic enemy formula. However, the slightly deeper lore and expanded enemies is the only highlight of this whole portion of the game, largely because thats all you really get for doing any of this. 

The spoils for quests and hunts are often crafting materials, which already have a limited use. The only person you can equip is Clive, and he can only equip 3 craftable items at a time, and you can’t build accessories. This means that you are constantly getting completely useless materials, that while you can sell, the only thing you can buy are healing items, accessories, or waste on beer and music (which sounds pretty great if this were real life or if it had any effect on Clive and company). The accessories are also largely useless in the grand scheme of the game, as most of them only shorten the rest period of your special moves by minor amount of seconds. You are rarely in need of any special move at any given interval, and simply waiting an extra few seconds for the skill to return is not difficult by any means, especially outside of boss battles. The accessories that increase your stats are also completely invisible. Because of the speed of battle and the general design of the HUD, you can’t really tell how much any stat increases are working in your favor. The HP bar has no numbers visibly attached to it, so when you get hit, you have no real idea how much 50 defense points is really helping, and ultimately it doesn’t really matter anyway. Another staple of RPG’s missing is that Status Effects are almost completely absent in the game, both positive and negative. You can basically up your defense or your attack, but that's about it. Even if they do exist, they must have happened so infrequently, that I hardly found any use for them or was ever hindered by them.

In battle, your only real ally is Torgal, your faithful pup. His abilities are pretty limited and his basic function is to help you continue or finish combos. He also has a heal ability, but it can only heal your most recent set of damage, and by such a small percentage at a time, his heal is largely useless. But not as useless as the rest of the characters feel. You can’t control or request assistance from any other character that works with you throughout the entire game. You don’t have any traditional party aspects. While Jill might be able to freeze enemies, because you can’t control who she is doing it to or when, it’s mere coincidence if it works in your favor. Still, the game shines when you blow away your opponents with your entire arsenal. And maybe in an effort to balance Clive’s overpowered abilities, many of them obstruct the field of battle so completely, that the stronger enemies can still make strikes even though you can’t see them. At times, because of this, the camera is your worst enemy, always focused on Clive’s “sexy little waist” (a line from a completely different review that I can never unread). While your moves continue to destroy the battlefield, the best you can do is dodge around and counter blindly. Clumsy fun is what you might call Final Fantasy XVI’s battle system. It can be easily broken in your favor but that never stops it from being fun.

The backdrop of Valisthea is often a visual treat, but in spurts. Large swaths of the game are simply rock backgrounds or bland terrain. But when you run into ruins or waterfalls, it is quite a sight to behold. Just before XVI came out, I got obsessed with a feature of video games I never thought I would use; Photo Mode. And while Ghostwire: Tokyo was its own special kind of gaming hell, its photo mode was exhaustive. It was like using a real camera and photoshop in a game. I can recall games as recent as Red Dead Redemption 2 have photo modes and graphics so good, they tricked local television stations into thinking they were real photos of their own towns. And this is yet another place that XVI comes in last, with an overly basic photo mode with very minimal options. Hilariously, the camera is not free to move around anything other than Clive, so you have to work really hard to take shots of other people or things. And if you want to remove Torgal or Jill from a shot, tough shit, you can only toggle Clive in and out of pictures, so get ready to maneuver a bit. A quick aside, on the most disappointing aspects to the game is actually one of the most beautiful; the ruins. Throughout the game, ancient societies’ powerful ruins and ships have been hollowed out and used as city centers or bridges or highways. They, at best, get a few lines of dialog explaining them, but never come to fruition beyond that. They are simply pyramids, spectacles hinting at an ancient world, but go nowhere. This might be a little too realistic. The beauty of Final Fantasy and RPG’s is that in most cases, this kind of scenery ends up becoming something other than background information. Another shame because it was not just beautiful, but it looked and sounded interesting. Below you will find an album of every picture I took throughout my time. Seeing it all lined up like that felt like I hadn’t spent 2 months leading Clive through his journey.

As much as I wanted this to be a review, it really turned into a list of grievances. Because the save file doesn’t have an hours played clock, my best guys is what the PS5 recorded as my playtime. I put 88 hours into Final Fantasy XVI, and another 5 or so if you count writing up this article. As I have made clear, Final Fantasy games are an event for me. I look forward to them even if they don’t have a story, setting, or characters that appeal to me. It’s a bit of stockholm syndrome, held hostage by nostalgia. Since the release of Final Fantasy X, I have felt the franchise walk further and further away from me. It made the battles slower and more methodic, added a turn gage, and put a stop to general feeling of exploration. The XIth entry moved online and bloated the experience into a slog with lengthy hours spent leveling up and somewhat trivializing the personal nature of the stories that used to be relegated to a collective cast of characters. In XII, the world of Ivalice brought a broader, impersonal nature to the adventure, giving you deep characters and a wide world, but very little glue keeping all the pieces together. With XIII, we were on rails where there was little strategy  in battle, but a bombastic scenery and convoluted story encompassed the cast. The legend of XIV’s epic failure is only encompassed by its meteoric rise from the ashes as one of the best online games still played today, and while it is loved for its story and cast, everyone essentially being the main character in their own right never passed for me. The road trip dramedy of XV and its splintered sales tactics of Anime, Film, and DLC just to keep up with the bland and incoherent story was still blessed with some heartfelt moments between its lead boys. And of all of these games, XVI is the one I have had the hardest time with. There are so many missed opportunities to be a great game, simply by absence of features alone. This game is marked by its absence of not just things that are sacred to Final Fantasy and RPG’s, but by basic gameplay features that would have otherwise elevated and erased this deeply held sentiment expressed before you. This game only treads water on good graces of the old fans and the surprise of new ones. It holds its breath on the talent of its voice cast and how well they express what little they are given. And most of all, makes land on the backs of its grand beast battles which, while tone deaf to the rest of the game, break through the malaise that otherwise would have compromised the game as a whole. Final Fantasy XVI makes land, but only barely. There really is nothing left to say except for, “I forgive you, and I look forward to XVII. Godspeed and Thank You.”

[wild-grinders]

Wild Grinders: The Fan Analysis (Pt.1)

Okay. This entire analysis of Wild Grinders will end up being a trilogy because IT. WILL. BE. LONG. (for Tumblr) This one is the defense of Wild Grinders. It will focus on what the series “is” and “isn’t.” Basically, the main idea is to look at it directly and avoiding opinions.

The next mini-essay will be a criticism, and the final will focus on the improvements of the series. But here, we need to lay out some rules/disclaimers:

the person writing this is already consider deranged for liking wild grinders. if you’re here to be a hater, then youre the one whos losing the sanity game

the person writing this is not affiliated to Wild Grinders in any form, tried tagging Dyrdek and Tracy my fanart and they did not look at it

there will be no academic sources for this because there aren’t any peer-reviewed articles of wild grinders that exist

 it’s 2023, everything’s a fever dream in our timeline

no beta at all

Let’s begin by addressing some statements that the internet loves to share. (It’s misinformation actually).

Wild Grinders is a rip-off of Rocket Power! >:(

Let’s address that this statement is half-assed. Yes, both TV series are about skateboarding. Yes they’re aimed at preteens. And yes they aired on Nickelodeon. However, they are actually not the same.

Rocket Power’s main focus was on extreme sports and accuracy. The cast was accurate from the way they behaved to even their ethnic voice actors. The settings are based off the real locations of Southern California and Hawai’i. And the sports were highly accurate in terms of safety and the way they are practiced. They don’t focus on skateboards only; they include surfboarding, roller blades, and hockey. But they also include the injuries that can happen in these sports.

Wild Grinders takes on ‘artistic liberties.’ The show is inaccurate when it comes to actual extreme sports, but everything is given an imaginative twist. None of the characters are fatally harmed from getting shocked or eating concrete. There’s shrink rays, fairy tales, and pop culture references everywhere. Even the setting is a “we can do whatever we want because everything is not real” situation. Earlier projects (the toy line) takes place in ‘Ketterville’, inspired by Rod Dyrdek’s hometown in Ohio. However, the most of the show takes place in the fictional ‘Sprawl City’, a setting influenced by the west coast of California because that’s where Dyrdek lives (present). Most likely because it is where skateboarding originated. This is the reason why Wild Grinders is very skateboard-centric (surfboards/snowboards are an exception). Rather than looking at multiple extreme sports, Rod Dyrdek wanted to focus on the idea that skateboarding can build a community and bring people from different backgrounds together.

While Rocket Power has a narrative that’s written accurately, but Wild Grinders is more focused on creating a quirky kids’ cartoon. Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo have lifestyles that cannot compare to Rob Dyrdek and Tracy Tubera’s. Dyrdek hosts the show Ridiculousness, and it’s literally what the title implies; everything is ridiculous and over-the-top. Not only that, but Rob Dyrdek owns the Fantasy Factory; literally an extreme playground of an office! You can skate in there or drown in a ballpit full of foam cubes! Wild Grinders is an embodiment of what Rob Dyrdek loves; fun.

Another thing to add on: Rocket Power is for a different generation compared to Wild Grinders. The pop culture of 1999-2004 is different from Wild Grinders being aired in 2012-2014. In 1999, most kids never owned a phone. In 2012, there was new generation of children who grew up with smartphones and Instagram and my entire middle school (in that year) all had an iPhone. Wild Grinders was made a for a different generation where everyone knew about Ke$ha, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga. Rocket Power aired during a time where everyone knew Backstreet Boys, Blink-182, Hilary Duff, and Mariah Carey. Two completely different generations.

Isn’t Wild Grinders the kid version of The Nutshack?

Listen. It aired a bit before Wild Grinders and ended before the TV series aired. It seems uncanny. But you need to stop comparing both of these shows just because it has a similar art style. Tracy was never involved in making The Nutshack. Tracy’s style is a lot more simplified and cuter than the animation.

However, it wouldn’t be a stretch if there was someone in the animation studio who ended up working on Wild Grinders and disrespecting Tubera’s original style. There are more post on this blog discussing the difference in quality of the animation and Tracy Tubera’s earlier works.

What is Wild Grinders then?

[From an Artprojekt Interview]: The original idea was a toy line that Rob Dyrdek wanted to create for Walmart. He had the idea of different types of skateboarders on different styles (and backgrounds). Since Dyrdek wasn’t an artist, he hired different artists to create his character designs, most of them didn’t live up to his vision. Chub City was the art style he was aiming for. He went to find out the artist who created the characters of Chub City and immediately hired Tracy Tubera on spot, saying that Tubera nailed the characters “first try.” They launched the Wild Grinders toy line from there. And it was successful from what everyone says. There’s no complaints about the toys (Just gonna insert that the Wild Grinders panel was around the same time as Monster High. To the Mattel employee reading this: you knew that Draculaura and Emo Crys were gonna be the best sellers).

On Rob Dyrdek’s first season of Fantasy Factory (01x07), he was always in the works about Wild Grinders. He made an episode where he made mascot costumes of the characters for everyone to wear and promote the toys. He even attempted to make everyone skate around the Fantasy Factory while in costume (it didn’t go well). But they all drove to Walmart to promote Wild Grinders and sign for fans. Later, Dyrdek was told to make another character for the toy line; Shark Attack. Rob Dyrdek had the abstract idea of this new character, also took it a step further. He went out to Florida to get “attacked” by sharks. Specifically, he was there to experience a shark feeding frenzy (A/N: Respect sharks please). Anyways, the character Shark Attack never got bitten by sharks, Rob Dyrdek said that his character got the ‘shark bite’ from a chain link fence. But Dyrdek had fun feeding the sharks underwater anyways. The things he does for his OCs.

Based on many interviews, he constantly refers to many of his characters as “cute.” Rob Dyrdek is a grown man and yet he’s able to say when something is cute. But that also leads to his intention when making Wild Grinders, he wanted the series to has a “cuteness factor.” Not like the sense of Hello Kitty or Littlest Pet Shop, but this he has his own definition of what it means. The best examples are Meaty and Emo Crys. Meaty is a dog, it’s easy to make dogs cute in media. But Emo Crys? A human character? Yes. Rob Dyrdek has said that Emo Crys was one of his most favorite designs if he couldn’t say Meaty as an answer. When he worked on Emo Crys’s character, he seemed to have put the most thought into it and fans also adored him. He only states that Emo Crys is a crybaby and wears a cute little scarf, but that was just enough for him to be lovable. But it wasn’t just that one character, he also thought most of the characters were cute in their own ways.

Then there came the animated shorts and movies. “Golden Grinders” and “The Lost Skate Spot” were short movies that actually focused on making an actual narrative, but still keeping the imaginative tone that Rob Dyrdek wanted. These shorts were focused on promoting the toys; by giving the characters personalities and voices that can be seen. Some of the animation would soon become the 2012 show, but adjustments would be made that many people didn’t notice right away. One of them was the change in tone for Emo Crys and Jack Knife. Where they had different tones in the pilot animations, but drastically became different in the 2012 animation.

Out of all the early animations, this has to be the best one. It really captured Tracy Tubera’s art style and compliments the characters and setting and just the overall tone of Wild Grinders.

After the animated shorts and pilots, Nickelodeon greenlit the series. No one understood why, but the answer was simple: Nickelodeon was focusing on NickSports at the time and promoted things like football and endorsed famous sports celebrities. Rob Dyrdek was famous and popular at the time (my friend from Europe recognized him as the guy who built a giant skateboard). You get the idea by now.

Lo and behold, the Wild Grinders TV series was born.

In conclusion, Wild Grinders is a project made out of love and more of a personal work. Unfortunately, the craftsmanship doesn’t reflect the process of it. It was created from the idea of Rob Dyrdek’s original pack of skaters from his childhood. He rejected 5 artists on a deadline because they couldn’t capture what he envisioned. He and Tracy Tubera were fond of these characters throughout the toy line era. Then Dyrdek decided to feed sharks in Florida to gain inspiration for another character. Clearly, Rob Dyrdek was having fun and putting effort in the creative process. It’s just that people were more focused on the final product of Wild Grinders and that lead to hate and criticism of the series.

Next

[fluffypotatey]

Silly/Dumb Things that Make Me Irrationally Angry

disclaimer: the key words here are “silly” & “dumb”

The “Narnia Kids are the Founders of Hogwarts” theory

The “it was all a dream” theory

Thinking protagonist = hero

When fandom villainizes a character simply because they’re “in the way of a ship”

Character in relationship starts pursuing a different character (typically the MC) but doesn’t break up with the character they’re currently dating?????

Speed running enemies to lovers trope (that’s a trope for slow burns wtf are you doing put it down!)

Calling Disney’s Beauty & The Beast a story about Stockholm Syndrome 

Calling any diverse media “woke” to undermine it

Misunderstanding how tags work on ao3 (particularly the / and & for pairings)

Misunderstanding the purpose of tags on ao3

Calling Lucy Heartfilia weak 

Forgetting that Dick Grayson was a mathlete

Basing all of Jason Todd’s personality on his anger and ruthlessness 

Misunderstanding Jason Todd’s anger

The DCEU butchering my boy Batsy

The “I was accidentally eavesdropping and left believing they were talking shit about me but turns out I missed the most important bits” trope

Being a military historian who loves the Civil War (I don’t trust you)

Using the word “females” to sound smarter (you just sound dumb also “women” is right there)

Spring Break being colder than usual (IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF MARCH IN TEXAS WHY WAS I SHIVERING)

Calling me by a nickname that I already refused to (you gotta earn that shit)

Ep 2.08 is never really touched on again after it’s “resolved”

vld’s lost potential (while i have made my peace, i will still bare my scars)

text blocks in fics

dialogue with no quotation marks 

“Oh lookie, we got this wonderful fantastical world (that takes some inspiration from history) with it’s own politics and world building BUT we keep the sexism and racial prejudice bc the inspiration we pulled was medieval times :)” <- i will fight you for sport

mistaking rivals to lovers for enemies to lovers (similar flavor just R to L is slightly tamer. can they blend? yes, but they are not the same thing)

the blatant disregard for internet safety on tiktok (why tf would you announce your age, show your face, and air out your dirty laundry to everyone??? where is your caution? this is not vine, lil beans, y’all are stressing me out. did you miss the pbs episode about the dino agents and stranger danger??? or the fever dream computer game our 1st grade class had to play at school???)

if you have the sniffles, for the love of all things holy, please stand up and get a tissue. no one cares if you get up. i honestly prefer hearing you blow out your nose than hearing you suck up snot every 5 minutes.

taking the backstories told by Macaque and Azure about the Monkey King in lmk at face value (biased narratives are a thing! unreliable narrators are a thing! i will give the biggest sigh if Sun Wukong is placed as the sole character at fault in another fic i read with this)

“redemption” arcs

“sympathetic” villains

missing the fucking point about why Batman chooses mercy and rehabilitation over baseless violence (this also coincides with my issue with how some people view Jason as the Punisher 2.0 bc it suffers through the same fucking glorification of justifying apathy of human life and rejection of 2nd chances)

missing the fucking point about what makes Superman super (here’s a hint: it’s not his fucking power)

the fact that i missed most of Vine’s peak bc i wasn’t allowed a phone until middle school

i lost my post canon script of Cinderella in the prince’s POV that i wrote in 6th grade (rip, i should have created a personal gmail so much sooner, i could have saved you T^T)

understanding a motive does not equal justifying or excusing said motive. you just now understand why a person did what they did. maybe you find justification in it, maybe not, but it’s not absolute!

[always-andromeda]

I posted 2,422 times in 2022

That's 2,421 more posts than 2021!

1,070 posts created (44%)

1,352 posts reblogged (56%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@riddlersbimbo

@lost-in-sokovia

@trelaney

@sweetums0kitty

@quietsounds

I tagged 1,514 of my posts in 2022

Only 37% of my posts had no tags

#askmeda✨ - 476 posts

#medarants✨ - 282 posts

#anon ask✨ - 280 posts

#danonation - 150 posts

#paul dano - 144 posts

#danocel - 118 posts

#strange trails milestone✨ - 111 posts

#soph 🧸 - 111 posts

#bowie 💕 - 96 posts

#meda’s fic recs✨ - 81 posts

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#the second we throw out nuance in favor of simplifying everything to the lowest common denominator we lose the chance at actual growth

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

i. Maneater

Eddie Munson x Henderson Sister!reader

Word Count | 2,020

Summary | You have a bit of a reputation for...getting around. But you pretend to be a sweetheart oh so well. Luckily, Eddie "The Freak" Munson knows how to see right through the rumors.

Author's Note | just a casual little three parter! also, I apologize in advance if this one is a little out of character for him. I kind of struggled to get his vibe accurate. also omg I'm in love with the cover. this picture of him has me frothing at the mouth just a tad. his gaze is so soft. and. his arms. I am in love again. I most likely will make a sequel for this little trilogy because I have IDEAS.

Warnings | mentions of promiscuity, mentions of drug usage, nothing else I can think of!

Parts |

Maneater

i. | ii. | iii.

Head Over Heels

i. | ii. | iii.

Your brother was a fanatic at this point. He talked about Dungeons and Dragons almost all the time. In the car on the drive to school, during school, at the dinner table, and any other conversation he could slip the game into. You wouldn’t be surprised if his dreams were filled with it either. Neither you or your mom really bought into the conspiracy that it was indoctrinating kids into a satanic cult, but you both agreed that the obsession Dustin had slowly been cultivating throughout his childhood was reaching a fever pitch, especially when he joined the high school's D & D club.

There was one other thing that Dustin talked about a lot too, and that was the Hellfire Club’s Dungeon Master, Eddie Munson. Being a teenage boy with no father figure in his life, Dustin latched on to almost any older male in his life. And he got protective of them very quickly.

For example, when Steve came around, Dustin made you swear up and down that you weren’t going to fall madly in love with him. That had been an easy promise to make. Steve Harrington wasn’t exactly your type. Yeah, he was cute and had been a basketball player, but he lacked the grit that you really looked for in guys. Besides, you hadn’t forgotten how he’d bullied a bunch of your friends during sophomore year. Steve was too conventional, you decided. Too much like the kind of guy your mother would adore if you took him home.

And as much as you loved your mother, you did enough with your life to make her proud. So what if you went to the occasional party on the weekend? So what if you snuck a few guys into your room? As long as you made it home before your 11 pm curfew and kept your grades high, you were just fine. Your mother didn’t have to know about any of your exploits outside of school.

Except Dustin knew. A little. He couldn’t be stopped from pushing his nose into your affairs on a good day but when he walked into your bedroom as Connor Fielding was putting his shirt back on after a particularly eventful night, Dustin swore he’d keep his mouth shut about all of it if you did one thing. That one thing was driving him to every place his social life required him to be at. Thus began your thankless career as Dustin’s chauffeur.

Though you’d driven Dustin to D & D meets about a dozen times before and went to the same high school as him, you’d never met this Eddie Munson. All of your classes were in advanced placement so you’d certainly never been in a classroom with him. You hadn’t even had a chance encounter during his infamous rants in the cafeteria where he teased the jocks and cheerleaders. The way your classmates talked about him with such disdain combined with Dustin’s idolatry of him fueled this legendary status. The man might as well be a god, as far as Dustin had convinced you.

So when you saw the leather and denim clad, curly haired, dark eyed guy with chains and jewelry dripping from almost every part of his look, you didn’t think twice. In fact, you wouldn’t have thought about him again if he hadn’t spotted you in your car and sauntered over as Dustin ran to get into the backseat. And nothing, absolutely nothing, could’ve prepared you for seeing him up close.

“Well, hello there.” He purred with a lazy smirk. He had a bit of a six o' clock shadow forming along his jaw, telling you that he couldn't possibly be a high school student. Yet, he wore the same baseball style tee that members of the Hellfire Club wore. Whoever this guy was, you didn't care exactly.

“Hi,” you muttered, returning a tight lipped smile. You were just waiting for Dustin to buckle his seatbelt when the guy brought his fists up to rest under his cheeks, elbows planted firmly on your door.

“Uh…do I know you?” Your brow quirked up at him.

“I was wondering the same thing.” His eyes went wild, his expression almost theatrical in nature.

“I’m Dustin’s older sister.” You shook your head slowly, hoping the interaction would soon be over. Through your rear view mirror you could just start to see Dustin’s face contort into a horrified frown.

The guy gave Dustin a brief but knowing look before replying, “Ah, makes sense. I’m-”

“Eddie Munson! He’s Eddie Munson, the Dungeon Master, and he’s totally off limits!” Your brother screeched from the backseat.

“What’s that all about?” Eddie chuckled awkwardly.

You lowered your voice, scrunching your nose, “Nothing, he just gets fussy when he hasn’t had a snack in a couple of hours.” The little comment earned a snort from Eddie and he dipped his head, covering his face with his hair, so Dustin wouldn’t see him laugh

His gaze peeked out from behind his dark locks, “So what’s a girl like you doing toting her brother around all day?”

You sighed, already exasperated at his antics. Based on the stories, you’d expected Eddie Munson would be…well…a freak. But at that moment he looked just like any other guy trying to philander his way into your life.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s none of your business.” You said sweetly.

See the full post

537 notes - Posted June 5, 2022

#4

@ all the children on tiktok that were saying “they won’t kill eddie!!! they just introduced him!!!”

(don’t worry I was in denial too)

552 notes - Posted July 3, 2022

#3

iii. Maneater

Eddie Munson x Henderson Sister!reader

Word Count | 4,111

Summary | You have a bit of a reputation for...getting around. But you pretend to be a sweetheart oh so well. Luckily, Eddie "The Freak" Munson knows how to see right through the rumors.

Author's Note | this one...has me feeling some kind of way. I wasn't planning to include smut in this one but like...once I got going I could not stop my disgusting little hands from typing these words.

Warnings | smut, thigh riding, mentions of masturbation, mentions of drugs, bits of fluff, nothing else I can think of!

Parts |

Maneater

i. | ii. | iii.

Head Over Heels

i. | ii. | iii.

“You better not be taking me out here so you can murder me.” You shot Eddie a suspicious look as he parked in front of the lake. He scoffed, taking his keys out of the ignition and twirling the key ring around his index finger before giving you that maddening look you were quickly becoming acquainted with.

“I’m taking you out here because it’s romantic.” The corner of his lips curled up into a little smirk.

“Mmm, very believable.” You opened the passenger side door, shoes landing firmly on the damp grass. You didn't like being out this late. Especially out in the middle of nowhere. As boring as Hawkins was, the darkness of the forest brought a kind of eeriness that left you on edge. You clung to the fondness your brother had for Eddie as proof that you could trust him too.

Eddie shut his door, resting his arms on the window opening like he had done on your car only days before. Even with his face obstructed by the night and his hair sweeping down his forehead, you could see the light in his eyes from where you stood on the other side of the van. How they were filled with a flicker.

Eddie was already over the moon that you’d gone with him. He half expected you to bail out on him. He kept checking his wristwatch every few minutes, preparing to drive himself back to the trailer park and tucking in to smoke some of his good stuff. But when you rounded the corner, he had to try hard to contain the joy he felt.

He shook his head, “It’s true. I can have my moments. Besides, you're gonna try and tell me that you haven't been out here once?"

You turned, back against the side of the van, looking up at the stars. You didn't want him to see the flush on your face when you answered, "I haven't, actually." It was a little embarrassing that the first proper date you were going on was with Eddie. You’d come to terms with how attractive he was but he wasn’t right for you. Just like Steve wasn’t enough, Eddie was too much. He was proving it with his incessant wisecracking and sharp tongue.

"But you're the...what word did you use again?"

You didn't want to say it again, lingering at the edge of the van, the mushy ground beneath you suddenly becoming very interesting. "Maneater?" You cringed.

Eddie popped around your side of the van, making you jump slightly. "The Maneater! I thought some sap had to have brought you here sometime."

"I don't really go on dates exactly." Shaking your head and scrunching your nose at the idea, Eddie had to admit he was a little confused. He'd yet to piece you together. In his head, most of the preps were the same. When he heard people gossip about what drunken thing you'd done at a party, he concluded that you were just another boring suburban girl trying to distract yourself through little acts of degeneracy and voyeurism. That must have meant you were going on dates every weekend, right? But the way Dustin and his friends talked about you...their tales were so far removed from the rumors. And you were acting almost timid about the whole thing.

"You can't expect me to believe that."

You became indignant, “Listen, I can count on one hand how many guys I’ve actually taken home.”

“And how many have you kissed?” Eddie bit down on the cold metal ring wrapped around his index finger as if he had any actual shame asking you the question. Truthfully, he was dying to know where the real you began.

The indifferent front cracked when you let out an audacious smirk of your own. “I’d need a lot more hands for that one.”

He brushed the statement off. In the hours between asking you out and now, he had cleaned up the back of his van like never before. Hell, he drug out his Uncle’s old Hoover so he could attempt to vacuum the back. Old beer cans and pizza boxes were discarded as he made room to lay down some old fleece blankets that he and his uncle kept stashed for winters. In the same closet they were kept in, he found an old string of Christmas lights from a season that had long since passed. They were old but battery operated, thank god. He wanted the mood of the night to be perfect. 

When he flung open the vans back doors, he quickly flicked the switch on the battery pack, the lights were weak and flickered every few seconds. They shed the whole backseat in a delicate yellow light. Eddie had obviously sprayed some sort of flowery scent. But underneath it…yeah…that was weed. He’d even thrown some lumpy pillows in for good measure. The patterned tapestries he’d pinned up along the sides reminded you of when you'd make blanket forts when you were little. The sight left you somewhat speechless.

"Oh my god..." You breathed. Eddie sat on the edge of the van, patting the spot next to him, urging you could join him. Quickly, you followed his direction, shifting until your thigh was just barely touching his. This close proximity became all too real when he bumped your shoulder with his own.

“So, would I be part of your…collection now?” The wash of sadness that passed over his face made your blood run cold. 

See the full post

656 notes - Posted June 5, 2022

#2

I'm Not Looking at Your Junk | Timothy Klitz x fem!Reader

Timothy Klitz x fem!Reader

Word Count | 6,206

Summary | Despite being an infamous prude, Timothy Klitz wasn't expecting it when you said you hadn't watched the sex ed tape he and his friends made during senior year. Little does he know, however, college has given you a chance to become a bit more experienced.

Author's Note | The way I love and hate this so much is ridiculous. I had to get this idea out of my head because it was just clawing at the inside of my skull!! Also, I called him Tim the entire time because I definitely would've been hella uncomfy in high school calling him Klitz all the time if this was an irl man??? I hope I did my man Klitzy justice because I love him so much. I am so nervous about posting this but fuck it!!!

Warnings | smut, (protected!) sex, loss of virginity, fingering, mentions of masturbation, mdni, please let me know if I need to add anything else!

You sighed as you flopped down on Timothy Klitz's couch. The cushions had flattened so much that you were only raised inches from the ground. Even though he was going to Yale, Tim and his two other roommates were set on spending the least amount of money possible to furnish the place. So when one of the guys found the couch free for the taking on the side of the road, of course he picked it up and had it hauled up the apartment stairs.

Tim didn't even know the guys that well. They were nice enough but obviously weren't his type of people. He was sure they'd drop out before the end of the year. But the two brothers were holding their own. Sent there with daddy's money, they'd refused to stay in the dorms where the campus security could bust them for underage drinking and the litany of drugs they were using. When Tim had found out that there weren't any dorm spaces left, he outsourced. The brothers wanted a third person to get in on the rent so they could spend more on supplies for their weekly parties. And with the meager pay Tim was making at his internship, their range met his budget.

On the bright side, their absences made it possible for you to visit more often.

You had your own dorm room but both of your roommates had boyfriends. Most nights you were stuck in your room listening to the sounds of intense lovemaking on the other side of one or two of your walls. That being said, Tim's sparsely decorated apartment with cracks in the drywall was clearly the better option to hang out in.

Tim wasn't complaining about it either. He'd known you since freshman year of high school and considered you one of his closest friends. Having Eli and Matt at his side made it a bit difficult to spend alone time with you. Any time Tim would tell Eli that he had to get off the phone because you were on your way over to his house, Eli would be wailing at the other end: Klitz, you better bang her. Or else I really might kill myself this time. In Eli's eyes, Tim was wasting a situation that was just dripping with erotic potential. She adores you, man. You could slap her ass in the middle of class and she'd thank you! Eli was so sure of himself.

Tim would never do that though. Sure, he liked you, but he couldn't imagine you seeing him in any similar way. You weren’t really the type to just hook up with some guy like it was nothing, especially if some guy was your nerd of a best friend. So just like every other weekend before, he shoved the video tape into the VCR and settled on the uncomfortable couch alongside you.

He'd found some horror flick at Blockbuster a few days before that he thought you’d get a kick out of. As terrible as the effects were in movies like this, the sight of even fake blood freaked him out. You made enough jokes to compensate for the moments where he got too queasy, but this one might be the death of him.

The dramatic title card flew towards the screen: Return of the Bloody Boogeyman!

Your face lit up at the text, already excited for what the night would bring. "You gonna tap out on me for this one?" you spoke teasingly.

He shook his head, brown hair flipping with the action, "You know, I am insulted you'd think I'm that much of a chicken." You laughed with a nefarious anticipation. You couldn't wait for when he would break and start gagging at the low budget visuals.

Of course it started with a completely clothed sex scene. Two teenagers packed into the back of a Cadillac convertible, gasping and moaning exaggeratedly. The black and white filter made it difficult to scrutinize what was going on in the darkly lit scene but the point was made very clear.

"God, it must have sucked having sex back then." you mused.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's not like people were casually hooking up all the time. You had to wait until you were married to some guy and even then, they'd probably be super disappointing in bed. But by the time you figured that out, you're locked in." You were talking with your hands now.

Tim wasn’t really used to talking about the topic of sex with you. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. "Yeah, that probably sucked." Agreeing would probably be his best bet, he decided.

"Now, we have whole instruction manuals to show us the way." You poked at his side. You occasionally teased him about the sex ed tape he and his friends had made on prom night. Though you'd been there that night, watching doors with Tim while Eli and his actors were filming, you had tried not to get too involved with the actual crew. The whole prospect was way too awkward.

It's kind of weird, isn't it? You had said to Tim as you two stood outside a classroom door, guarding it. Your voice was hushed with a tinge of anxiety behind it.

What's weird?  He said vaguely. 

I dunno, it's weird that right behind us are two pornstars just...hanging out in our English class... Tim had let out a stifled snicker. You all would've done anything to help Matt and Danielle out. But that didn't mean it wasn't super uncomfortable.

"Oh yeah, like that taught you some actual techniques." Everyone knew how reserved you'd been in high school. No matter how informative the video was, you were set on being as prudish as possible. 

"That tape didn't teach me jack shit." You spat.

Tim scrunched up his face and shrugged his shoulders, "I didn't think it was that bad. It wouldn't be selling so well if it was complete nonsense, right?"

"I wouldn't know how much of it is or isn't nonsense." You mumbled, finally having gotten to the end of your teasing. And Tim now got what you were hinting at.

He scoffed and looked at you with a cheeky grin, “You haven’t watched the video?”

See the full post

662 notes - Posted June 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Eating Out | Eddie Munson x fem!Reader

Eddie Munson x fem!Reader

Word Count | 3,422

Summary | Eddie can't afford to take you out to dinner. Naturally, he decides to treat you to an enlightening night at Chez Eddie.

Author’s Note | remember that time I said I'd write a thing where Eddie rails you after making you dinner??? so yeah, about that, I slightly adjusted the idea to make a pun with the title...if y'all want a sequel, I am very up for it (I'm begging, please someone give me an excuse to write a sequel because if y'all want it I will do it, I know we're gonna need some fun content after the new episodes come out tomorrow lol)

Warnings | smut (MDNI), oral (male receiving), mentions of drugs, nothing else I can think of!!

Eddie Munson hates spending money on dates. He's not a cheapskate. It's just that he can't exactly spend money he doesn't have. Sure, he does odd jobs around the trailer park to make some cash on the side and gets paid in singles to play at that hole in the wall bar in Hawkins. But it's nowhere near the kind of money that would allow him to take you somewhere like Enzo's. Enzo's wouldn't be his speed anyways. If he walked into a joint like that, they'd tell him to march right back out of there after their eyeballs were done popping out of their sockets.

He loves you. God, he loves you immensely. But he'd rather pitch himself into the quarry than treat you to fine dining. That doesn’t matter anyways, he has a better idea in mind.

Eddie tells you to come to his trailer after school on Friday night. His uncle is working. You are already well acquainted with this routine. You come with minimal makeup (Eddie will end up making it run anyways) and a short skirt with panties he can easily pull aside. But when you’re knocking on the trailer door and he opens it, it’s not the Eddie you’re used to seeing. 

He’s wearing a white t-shirt that’s a little too small on him, as if it’s been a few years since he’d first gotten it. The most shocking part is the bowtie sitting right above his collarbone. It's not real, of course, but drawn on. You can see the marker streaks that reveal how he attempted to spruce up the ill-fitting garment. Your mouth hangs open at the fabric stretching across his chest, accentuating the full shape of his torso and exposing his midriff. Somehow, it’s more suggestive than if he didn't have a shirt on.

“Good evening, mademoiselle. Are you ready for an extravagant night at Chez Eddie?” He asks with a wink and a smile that shows he knows exactly what he's doing with the ensemble. His jeans hang dangerously low as he sways his hips ever so slightly. He knows exactly what’s running through your mind as you drink up his delectable figure. 

You cough and bring your gaze back to his eyes, “Excuse me?” You stare at him, brow raised. You’re used to his antics by now, but this was a new one.

Eddie rolls his eyes, “Just come inside, you dork.”

Then you’re wandering in the dim trailer where Eddie has set up a fold up table in the middle of the tiny living room. Two fold up chairs are pushed in on either side of the table.

Eddie leads you to the chair that faces away from the kitchen and pulls it out, saying, “Sit. Dinner will be out shortly.”

He disappears behind you. You hear him moving things around in the kitchen and it finally sets in what he’s trying to do. You smile and look down at your hands. There’s even a little candle on the table! Wait…that’s-- that’s a stick of butter that Eddie stuck a rolled up toilet paper wick in on a plate. You’re taken aback but still smitten at the effort.

A few seconds later, Eddie comes around with two bowls, setting one down in front of you and the other on his side of the table.

“From our esteemed Chef Campbell we have…chicken noodle soup.” You hold back a giggle when you see the familiar watery soup of your childhood, little pieces of chicken and vegetables floating along the surface. Eddie has lived in the trailer park with his uncle long enough that he knows how to get by when it comes to food. He has a taste for junk food, knows how to mix things together to make something that’s just edible enough. Your tastes must be a little more refined, he figures.

So he had pulled out some of the dried herbs and spices from the kitchen cabinet that never got used. Fuck, they’re so old that the expiration date has long since passed. Eddie just shrugged. That just means the flavor has faded a little, right? He’ll just have to use a little extra. 

Thyme? He’s got all the time in the world for it. Rosemary? Sounds nice. Oregano? Fuck yeah. Chef Campbell can make a mean soup, but Eddie is a wizard with seasonings.

When the spoon is in your mouth, you're hit with the flecks of flavor that don't quite make sense together. But Eddie looks at you with an anticipation that forces you to smile through the strange bite.

"It's good!" you chirp.

Eddie grins and holds his hands up, "What can I say? You've got a man who knows his way around a kitchen, princess."

No, I absolutely do not. 

But you laugh and take another spoonful of the soup. If this will make him happy, then you can suffer through the assault on your taste buds.

The next course is grilled cheese, though it's quite obvious that Eddie had burned the bread while cooking it. That's the one Eddie gets nervous about. With money being so tight, it had been a while since he or his uncle went grocery shopping. He only had so many pieces of bread left. He tried to keep an eye on them as they cooked. But it was just his luck that in the few minutes he took to rifle through the fridge, looking for a drink option, the kitchen became engulfed in the bitter charred stench. Hoping you would notice, he sprayed some artificial floral air freshener and scraped the burnt bits of bread off the side he'd overcooked.

You actually didn't mind the grilled cheese too much. Sure, it wasn't the prettiest sandwich to look at, but it tasted alright. The plastic cheese was overpowered by the toasted bread that tore at the roof of your mouth. Your throat overwhelmingly dry, you drank from the glass of liquid that Eddie poured out for you. Apple juice. Thank god. You could drink apple juice all day if it got the rancid aftertaste of the soup out of your mouth.

About an hour had passed since you'd first arrived. The butter candle had long since burned out, leaving you mostly in the dark. The sun was quickly disappearing from the view of the living room window and you wonder when the dinner will be over and the real fun part of the night will arrive. Being around Eddie was always fun. But nothing beats the feeling of his hands running over your thighs and up your shirt. And as the night gets later, you clench your thighs more and more, impatiently waiting for some sort of relief.

"Now, we have our dessert!" Eddie walks back into view. “This one is extra special.”

In both his hands is a plate. A sad, lumpy cake placed on top. You can tell that he must've ran into some sort of problem during the baking process.

See the full post

1,026 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[always-me-meha]

Sooo insanity has turned up abit.

Im tryna run a bath but the plug is hovering in circles or sliding 😵‍💫 I was like it's a puck! Curling rock! Ooooo..... ufo.

I know in reality it's not moving. But I see it and it is.....

Can one manage living with hallucinations while being self aware they are not there or i mean how as i see it???

⚠️Extremely long word vomit, dropping off topic constantly. Totally sound cooked haha I'm not.

I might put this to a test. I have a psychiatrist appointment on the 28th anyway if I lose it completely lololol

The goal is to manage my symptoms, aka hiding them from the 'real world, folks, friends, maybe bf. While also living with them face to face, haha inner self to self.

Like damn tumblr, get ready to be my crutch for the next two weeks. If I have to act normal infront of people, imma needa release lol.

Imma take notes of this shit going on in my head till I can piece it together and show the bf damn proof or at least a clear visual representing to EXPLAIN exactly what I'm seeing, and freaking out about and believing is fucking true.

As once again I struggle to put words to the knowledge in my head LMAO.

I kinda mentioned the show we watched last night, he didn't really act anything about it.

It's fucked in my head for me that's shit was intense like looking at a past life of ours or something front in of me in real life that other people can see lolol I thought he felt how I felt to watching it.

But nah, he didn't get it. Cool beans.... another Easter egg.

Fuck maybe I'm so sucked away from reality. Movies and tv shows feed my delusions, gives more beliefs, and theories made up in my head to be legit. they're an escape as well. To pointI can't just watch any old movie.... it actually has to catche my attention to the point I'm so attached to it like.... it fuels something inside me. I'm actually able to point the phone down and focus.

I donno where I was going with that. Convincing my self last night, that tv episode was just..... a fucking show. There's no real... idk what they are..... grrrr I don't wanna let this theory go. Never in my life have I seen a show like that, felt like my life.

Maybe it's cause we had a wicked intense make out session before he put it on and he made look me at the TV just as the guy and her started partying and hooking up all intensely like we were. So I was just feel all that grrrr fire I guess I donno dammit what's it called!!!!!

Just I can say I fell madly in heat hahahaha yet it feels like a fever dream now funny. weird. Maybe that's why I felt so focused to the TV lol cause it was 'us' at the moment. Then he looked like man. Black clothes. Piercings tattoos almost in the same spots. I look nothing like the bimbo lol but her lust for him and the way she starred at him is so me. They way they'd stay in bed or fuck everywhere lol I'm like shit balls we need to do that more. I think made the heat rise in the room even more lol

But I'mma pause here and put it on. I wanna list every 'Easter egg' I seen. Like I swear even tho it's based on that couple, we were meant to watch it cause it's like seeing who we are from another reality in away idk smh. Idk if meant to watch it general, but I think he was meant to show me it at that exact day and moment.

(Going off topic)

Timing is everything..... it's crazy what all in the world happens in one minute...... all these people in the world is doing everything and anything imaginable this very second. It's crazy to think about. Idk even know if yall get me there....

Example. I'm fucking still sitting on the side of this bathtub typing this lol someone else is typing accounting at their pc, another's gaming, ones picking his nose, a groups on yacht partying, ones picking up cans, driving somewhere, doing the dirty, making art, building towns, welding ships. Dancing the pole lol, creating glass art, you name it.

So fucking much going on in the world this very minuet..... well that last minuet plus now lol.

And I'm still here typing away habahaha I move to the bed least. Fuck chill girl, have a bath, lol why was I even thinking of the world just now.... hmm distraction to stay in the reality lane. Interesting.... masking symptoms!!!

But fuck yes that episode man!!!! Grrrr caige had to have felt at least something of it. Especially when the guy asked her to marry him.

He looked at me and said what would I say if I proved liked that lmfao I was like I'd be shy af cause you put me on the spot in a crowd lol but of course I'd say yes. Fuck intense perfect night..... but.....

I hate how he's hot and heavy. And then in the morning it's like meh. Snuggles. Wake up gotta go. No intensity, while I myself still have the energy inside me from it lmfao I donno the word for it... just for me it was a really good night tho I fucking got lost in that show. But I am crazy rn so guess it's different.

Fuck the guy even has has.... personal similarities other then looks and the attuide, give no fucks guy, as caige lol. Me and her not really besides I get really ditzy my self. When my smart, thinking meter disappeared wah. And just that obession over him!!!! The sexual fire ro devour him lolol at all times, everywhere.

But in our reality.... haha we old. Drugs took a beaten to uh body ..... i forgot the word dammit....., I will say no more lolol that's why you fucking make it the best you can in all ways, other then just popping it in, so old school lol haha

Heheheh gotta work for that moment lololol now I'm just talking sex here I'm sorry. But dammit I've been with to many hooks that were just BLAH. That it was all same man, just a stupid body counr rising.

So having sex with someone who loves you and building up to it is much for funner and better and just grrrr intense. (Don't forget I have hypersexuality lmfao bipolar emotions even more amped up) like he traced all over my body with a knife one time. Fucking different as hell ( I always loved him tracing with iPad pen sooo) but I was like I trust you and dark kinky hehehehe

Omg tho he spanked way to hard yesterday repeatedly 🥺🥺🥺 never done that to me before. I was like you supposed do that while I'm bent man lolol just a punishment wahhhhh like shit balls were a mix between just like intensity make out session and pressing against eachother as much as possible. To the biting and choking. Go from soft to idk rough hahahahah grrrrrr fuck Idk why I'm word vomiting all this.

Hey it gives you sex advise to please a women tbh especially one like me HAHA But I'm taken.

But dammit I can't get enough! for someone that wasn't satisfied for like ever hahahaha at least with him it's like fuck yes. Score hahahaha and I don't even have to take care of my self like some women secretly do after lol like WTF where has this man been all my life lol. Poor guys gotta maniac in love with him. So embarrassed he seen me this looney.

Deep down disappointed he didn't tell me to go to my step dad's in the condition I'm in. I think he thinks I'm just high. No bruh this the psychotic side slipping out lol not like murderer psychotic but idk just I say weird shit lol not like the 'earth is flat people' smh hahah like I've been trying to say this whole time. I

There is something here, nort sure exactly where or what, around us or idk .....

One version/theory i can of is like you can roll the sheet down infront of yours (think of sunglasses) and see things in way that idk..... you would never of thought of. Same plain of earth just different...... see what others don't see.

Which fucking doctors say HALLUNINCATIONS and blah blah, you crazy. Maybe maybe. But what if I wasn't and this shits true!!!! And it's fucking everyone else that's just blind. Almost like that movie the giver, how no one saw color, it was taken away, BUT IT WAS STILL THERE. Just had to see it.... not that third eye bullshit, lol or maybe? I quickly read that up for a sec....

I remember seeing posts on this one topic...I obviously forgot what it's called maybe all this confusion in my head is simply just that and many people know actually wtf I'm talking about in the mental health tumblr communiry lol but nah I don't think it's that hahaha just food for thought to had add to theory list. It'd be easy to accept that's what I'm seeing BUT NO

I refuse to accept that lol. This is deeper hrmph and it's been hitting me since 2020. Just flash backs of stuff I was 'believing'. How some of it connects to back then lol

Back then I knew in my head heaven and hell everyone's waiting for is exactly on this earth with them, it's where you choose to be of course or I guess think red dead redemption 2, that good or bad karma bar lol kinda leads you to the side your on. Many are in the grey area not knowing exactly where they stand. Or idk much about it or any of it. Just a theory that clicked to me back then (a belief, right now a theory lol) I guess some people born get the shitty dice roll again you may start at the bottom but you cam still get here. Some get a lucky roll and still end up on the other side, tho they had advantages. Don't ask me why dice is involved at all. Part of God's game? Creator? Whoever you believe in.

And hell and heaven is what you make it i guess to. Nothings the sane for everyone. So fucking weird man to think about. Almost like the show upload but without the fucking uploading part lol. Natural way of fuckin life hahaha

As spirits or souls go or do as the please! Like god damn we dont really know do we..... i believe they're real, even fuck.

Zombies could be real lmfao they are depressed empty people like myself ( in my long depression episodes that is ) just drag along life, not really here, maybe eat brains lolol jk naw that's straight cannibals. Anything in this world that scares me is that, mountain man cannibals.

Anywho I was told everything goes black when you die... naw no way. That's like Detroit become human the robots or whatever that would break through thw third wall to be there own.... indiviual with feelings and pain as humans. To not be controlled anymore and stand up for themselves, basically escape and be free cause they we're being mistreated and abused and lots were scared to die cause there'd be nothing? They didn't know what would happen.

I don't know why I compare to games or movies as examples haha makes it easier I think for some to understand who know the reference or so haha.

Oh shit time to take notes.